Fatal Enquiry (35 page)

“We’d need to stop the cheque, anyway,” Hoskins pointed out.

“We should get to the Bank of England the moment it opens in the morning,” Warren agreed. “I pray it’s not too late. Come, Hoskins.”

“Good luck,” the Guv offered them again, and even shook their hands. I wondered whether I would ever be canny enough to start a conversation with imminent arrest and end with a handshake.

Hats were adjusted, gloves pulled on, and eventually our guests left. Barker stood with his hand on the knob, listening for sounds of the two men walking away. Then his knees began to sag, and he toppled over like a pile of books stacked too high. I jumped forward and caught him by the elbows and cried out for Mac.

I’d hoped to prop him up, but instead he pulled me down to the floor with him. When Mac opened his door, I was pinned under our employer with the odd limb sticking out, waving feebly. He helped pull Barker up and each of us, holding an elbow, dragged him to the parlor sofa. There we opened his collar and I put my ear to his chest. His heart was beating, at least, but his face was ashen gray. The conversation and his appearing to be hale and hearty had taken every last ounce of his energy.

“Water, Mac. Bring some water,” I said, waving a cushion to cool the Guv’s face. I chided myself for allowing him to go downstairs in the first place. A good assistant would have said he was resting and “You’ll have to go through me to see him.” Of course, that discounted the Guv’s iron will.

Mac brought a tumbler of water and I poured a little down his throat. Barker raised his head and took the glass, drinking it down, some spilling over his open collar.

“He’s not going upstairs tonight,” Mac ordered. “Let’s bed him down here on the sofa. I’ll get a pillow and a blanket. You get his boots off.”

I unlaced his boots and pulled them off, then unbuttoned his waistcoat and braces. It would do for the present. Mac returned with the pillow and a sheet and blanket. Together, we bedded him down for the night.

Harm came in from Mac’s room and sniffed at Barker on the sofa. We had gone and changed things, and he didn’t like change. As far as he was concerned, the house was his and we were all his servants, the prerogative of a royal dog, and all this changing things about was irksome. Didn’t we know he had a schedule? Mac’s bed from eleven to one, mine from one to three, and Barker’s from three until he rose shortly after five. This was going to upset the apple cart dreadfully, I thought, as the little black Peke regarded us dourly.

“It’s only for one night,” I told him.

“If I had my way,” Mac said, “he’d be chained to a stake outside, no matter what the weather.”

The animal continued to glower at us disapprovingly.

“He probably thinks the same thing about us,” I said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

A month later we were seated in our chambers. It was a warm Monday afternoon in late May and Whitehall Street was baking like a kiln. The windows and doors were open as wide as they would go, hoping for the slightest movement of wind. We sat in our shirtsleeves, with the cuff links out and our sleeves rolled to our elbows.

I cannot say that Barker looked exactly the same as he always had, but he was getting closer. His mustache had grown in, but he was at least a stone lighter than before, though Mac and Dummolard took turns inducing him to stuff himself at every meal. He was getting about, though he tired easily. I tried to get him to take afternoon naps on the camp bed but he would have none of it. The Guv’s idea of a compromise involves his giving twenty-five percent to your seventy-five, and you’re feeling glad to get it.

We were puzzling over a case we’d just begun, making plans to go to various businesses that evening when travel was more bearable. However, the old case kept intruding upon the new. Events continued to transpire, set in motion when Nightwine was still alive; for example, the booking agents and the various bets on Barker or Nightwine, mostly among the Underworld. The fact that the Guv was recovering and Nightwine nowhere to be found was proof enough who had emerged victorious. The losers attempted to kick up a storm, but the agents were intractable. It is far easier to change the mind of an MP than a member of the betting establishment and probably more healthy, too. It is their game and they play by their own rules. A few bettors were still inclined to grumble, but there were always bets to be made and opportunities to make money, and eventually the matter was forgotten.

Then there was the fact that by law, Barker had committed murder. It was while Barker was recovering that it finally dawned on me. What a predicament he was in. Dueling was illegal, and had been for fifty years. All that was necessary was for Sofia Ilyanova to present her father’s body to the police with the assertion that she had seen the Guv kill her father with her own eyes, and all would be lost. All the claims that Nightwine had made against him would be brought up in court. Barker would go to prison, the agency would close its doors, and I would be tossed into the street. Nightwine would have his revenge, after all. Had Sofia saved his life in order to see him punished?

If this was a plot hatched by Barker’s old nemesis, it was a very good one. Sofia had seemed sincere. In fact, I wanted to believe her, and so I did. However, that does not mean I did not worry about it and think every footfall in the hall was an inspector come to arrest us.

Then there were the constant interruptions. Not long after Barker returned to work, a full week before any of us believed he should, we received an unwelcome visitor at our chambers. Seamus O’Muircheartaigh came into our waiting room, still looking ill and fragile, but without his breathing tank. I would not have called him a good-looking man before the ricin incident, but what looks he ever had were now ruined. He looked fifteen years older than his true age. There were heavy parentheses on either side of his mouth and his eyes had sunken into their sockets permanently. He looked like the father of the man I had first met. He entered, speaking not a word either to Jenkins or Barker or me until he was seated in our visitor’s chair.

“Water,” he said when he was seated. I poured him a glass from the pitcher on the table behind my employer and he drank it down. He had a spasm of coughing then, but mastered himself, an act of iron will.

“So, he is dead, then. You gentlemen saw it with your own eyes.”

“A saber blade thrust through the heart,” Barker said.

“The point came out near his shoulder blade,” I added.

“No!” the Irishman exclaimed. “I thought that was impossible with a saber blade.”

“I saw it with my own eyes, sir.”

“I am gratified to hear it. Did he suffer much?”

“No. It was over quickly.”

“A pity. If you had accepted my commission when I offered it, you would be several thousand pounds richer now.”

“That may be true,” Barker said, “but as you know, I didn’t need the money.”

“You are a poor capitalist. Fortunately, I am not. You won me a packet of money last month and I thank you.”

“Congratulations.”

“I am back in business as of this morning.”

Barker looked at him levelly. “Still funding the financial side of the Irish Republican Brotherhood?”

“To my last sou and my last drop of blood. I will not stop until Ireland is free and this accursed city is a smoldering wasteland, as you would be if you had any pride in your heritage. That goes for you as well, Mr. Llewelyn. Cardiff and Edinburgh are no more free than Dublin, and won’t be until London is covered in ash.”

“And here I was thinking you a common criminal,” Barker said.

O’Muircheartaigh’s wizened face broke into a nasty grin that was almost skeletal. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Cyrus. Well, perhaps not that sorry. I’ve come here to say that our temporary truce is at an end. I cannot speculate and attend to my business concerned about anyone or anything save my own interests. I suggest you do not attempt to hamper me in my work or it will not go well with you. Let us go to neutral corners and lick our wounds.”

“That is not bad advice, provided you understand that at some point our interests will conflict.”

The Irishman lifted a wide-brimmed hat that he had been holding to his head. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Slowly, he pushed himself painfully to his feet and began to shuffle out with no more of a good-bye than the greeting when he first arrived. He slowed, however, when he reached my desk.

“Survived another one, have you?” he asked.

“As you see,” I answered with a shrug.

“Remarkable.”

He continued on and a few seconds later I heard the door close. I let out my breath.

“He really thinks himself a patriot, then?”

“Aye. He uses the money produced by his own criminal enterprises to fund the government’s enemies. It is ingenious when you think about it.”

“Doesn’t he keep a few pennies for himself?”

“Oh, he has a wealthy lifestyle, but I don’t begrudge him that. It’s one less rifle or bomb that won’t go off in London.”

“I suppose I could live with that.”

Then Jenkins came in with the second post on a silver tray, just as he always does. I noted a large envelope among the letters, but wasn’t especially curious about it. Barker stopped leafing through the stack and stared at it. Then he gently put it on the tray again and pushed his green leather chair away on its casters.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s for you, from Ceylon.”

“Ceylon? I don’t know anyone in Ceylon. I don’t even know anyone who’s ever been to Ceylon.”

“I assume the package is from Miss Ilyanova.”

“Oh,” I said, reaching for it. The Guv caught my wrist in his big hand.

“Do you remember the ricin that nearly killed O’Muircheartaigh, lad? I think it’s best if we take this outside.”

It suddenly seemed to me that there were an inordinate amount of dust motes swirling about our chamber in the sunlight. Holding my breath, I followed my employer out into the small courtyard behind our office. I even followed his example and held a handkerchief against my mouth as a precaution. He cut the string with his dagger and sliced the top of the envelope open. Then slowly he tented it and peered inside.

“There doesn’t appear to be any granular material. I’m going to let gravity pull the contents out. Be prepared to jump back if anything looks untoward.”

He lifted one end of the envelope and decanted a letter, nothing more dangerous than that. Barker used the blade of his dagger, poking it about the envelope, looking for anything dangerous. The breeze I’d been waiting for all afternoon arrived unceremoniously and picked up the letter, and I was obliged to catch it before it went over the wall.

“Stuff and nonsense,” I stated.

“Better that than gasping out your last breath,” Barker said. He looked faintly disappointed that the envelope contained something as mundane as a letter.

I examined the letter at my desk. It was written in Sofia’s hand. I laid it on the desk and unfolded it slowly.

14 May 1886

Dear Thomas,

I am sitting here on the veranda of a quaint little bungalow overlooking the Mahaweli and thinking of you. I hope Mr. Barker has recovered from his ordeal and your lives are no longer turned upside down as they were. I should be sorry, I suppose, for the events I helped to facilitate, but then if it had not happened I should never have met you, and I am glad I did. Kidnapping you from the priory was a whim, but our time together during your recovery may have been the best moments of my life. I have given over my father’s body to a Buddhist monastery for burial and am now free to live as I choose. I have money enough to last until I decide what that life shall entail. Your chastisement of me for the murder of Andrew McClain was the first regret I have ever had for a death at my own hand. I would like to think it was my last, and that I may in time forget the training that was forced upon me. And yet, I understand I am my father’s daughter. I have always liked shiny baubles, and I’m not very good at penurious living. If I return to my old habits, you must share in the blame for not coming to rescue me from it. I should not need to make the only sacrifice. And yet, dear Thomas, you have given me a seed of hope. Perhaps I may live a normal life yet. Certainly, it was what my mother wished and prayed for. Ceylon is so peaceful, and it would be wonderful to live here forever, working with my hands by day and sitting on the veranda at evening’s end, watching the sun go down. I wish you could be here to enjoy it. But don’t worry. I do not expect you.

Sofia

I read it once, twice, thrice over, while Barker sat in his chair regarding me and practicing his much espoused patience. It was a private letter, but I knew he would need to see it. I got up from my seat and put the letter on his desk. He leaned back in the corner of his swivel wing chair, resting his chin on his left hand while reading the letter as many times as I. It was that kind of letter.

While he read, I thought about Sofia in far-off Ceylon. It was certain to be an exotic place, with elephants and palm trees, and I could picture sitting on that veranda beside her at sunset. The vision evaporated when the Guv cleared his throat.

Barker put the letter facedown in the center of his desk, crossed to his smoking cabinet and selected a pipe. He chose one of his favorites, a lion’s head in mid-roar, stuffing its skull with tobacco from his jar. Seating himself again, he swung his heels up onto the edge of his desk and crossed them neatly at the ankle. Then he struck a match against the little French porcelain striker and puffed until it lit. It was one of the few liberties he allowed himself, resting his heels on his desk, and he only did so while cogitating. His mind was like a vast difference engine, working out equations, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he started asking me questions.

“Are you contemplating a trip to Ceylon, Thomas?”