Fatal Enquiry

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I awoke sometime later to find myself in a strange bed. I was no longer at the St. John’s Priory, and by the look of the ornate but impersonal furniture in the room, it appeared that I was in a hotel room. Mystified, I looked about, trying to place where I was and to figure out how I had been transported there. Had someone told me I was being moved and I’d simply forgotten it in my haze?

“Hello?” I called out weakly, hoping to rouse someone.

Sofia came in then, wearing an elegant white day dress with an apron tied about her waist and holding a large bowl containing a clear, gelatinous substance.

“You’re awake,” she said.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“You’re at the Albemarle Hotel. I was concerned that they were not taking proper care of you, so I had you moved to a residential hotel. I told them I was your sister.”

“You’re holding me hostage.”

“Don’t be like that. I’m trying to help you.”

“I need a doctor,” I protested.

“I’m well trained in tending wounds,” she said, trying to assure me. “Far better than the priory with its iodine washes. I would not have moved you unless I was sure I could restore you to health.”

She began painting my face with the pungent concoction.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m using a mixture I’ve made up. Your bandages are off so the wounds can air for a couple of days. I know what I am about. I’ve used this before several times. It will minimize the scarring considerably. Your face won’t be the worse for my father beating on it, I promise you.”

I suppose I am a very private person. Before being ushered in front of someone the caliber of Miss Ilyanova, at least in regard to her beauty, I like to be freshly shaven, my hair trimmed, and wearing one of my better suits. Instead, I lay in a strange bed, my face about to be coated in something that resembled aspic, while a woman I barely knew tended to my wounds.

“I should let someone know where I am.”

“Later,” she said, raising a glass to my lips. Unfortunately, I knew that odor. It was Thompson’s Licorice Elixir. I tried to cough it up, but most of it went down my throat anyway. She dabbed at my mouth with a serviette.

“Get some rest, Thomas. It’s really the best medicine for you.”

The next day, she told me later, we repeated almost the entire conversation word for word. Mostly I slept around draughts of laudanum. I was concerned that Sofia was dosing me too readily, but I could do nothing. I was as weak as a kitten. There I was, being tenderly looked after and all my needs met, yet at the same time I knew I was a prisoner. My ribs began to ache exceedingly and in my drug-laced delusions I believed I was being eaten by worms. No amount of assurance from Sofia that the medicine was actually working gave me any peace and I was agitated or sedated all day.

On the third day, I finally felt better and she assured me the worst was over. I was able to sit up and we played cards for a time. She had laid out a strip of oilcloth under my limbs to keep the sheets from being soiled from her concoctions. As bad as the cuts looked, they had stopped bleeding and in no way looked as if they were becoming infected. I began to believe I was actually going to recover from this ordeal. Had Cyrus Barker tried to get in contact with me? Had others noticed my absence? Who knew what sort of mischief Nightwine had gotten into during my convalescence?

“I must go,” I told Sofia when she brought in breakfast.

“Out of the question,” she said. “You still have one more day of treatment with my ointment before you will be properly healed. Anyway, what do you propose to do, hobble about London with broken ribs? I doubt you can even stand.”

To prove she was wrong, I insisted upon standing there and then, but in doing so I proved her point better than my own. While I could stand, it would be a day or two before I could walk properly again, and then upon a stout cane. I sat back on the bed, considering my predicament.

“I’d like a mirror, please,” I said.

She opened her mouth to protest, but saw the determined look in my eye. Opening a drawer in a chest, she pulled out a hand mirror and gave it to me and I surveyed the damage. There was now a bump on the bridge of my nose and the skin under my eyes was yellow and purple. Thankfully, my teeth survived intact. There were various abrasions and a scratch along the left jaw. It was an unpleasant sight after several days of healing. I gave her back the mirror.

“I fear for your reputation, having a man in your rooms for so long. What must the people in this hotel think of us, closeted here?”

She covered her mouth with a hand, hiding her smile. I was still quite callow then, in spite of all I had encountered in life and as Cyrus Barker’s assistant.

“Oh, Thomas,” she responded. “This is residential hotel. I have paid well for whatever opinion they have of us.”

“But are you not concerned about your reputation? This is London, after all.”

“I am a woman of no reputation. I have not so much as spoken to a woman since I arrived. I shall meet nobody of good society while I am here and would not care to impress them if I did. The rules of the English bourgeoisie are of no concern to me. I can do whatever I like and generally do. You need not leave early on that score.”

“Very well,” I said, admitting to the truth of what she said. “But I still must go. I need to get back to the office. Who knows what has happened since I was brought here? Barker might be in trouble.”

“If he were, pray tell me what you could do in the state you are in? You came very close to death a few days ago. I am stronger than you at the moment and will have my way. One more day and you may go.”

“Why am I here?” I countered. “You have not answered that question.”

She looked vexed and for a moment did not speak.

“If I had not brought you here, my father would have had you killed. Your death is not something he would leave unfinished. He despises you.”

“Yes, I never quite got that. Why does he hate me so?”

“You work for Mr. Barker. You’re the one who is the closest to him. I think he may even be jealous of the relationship between you.”

“He should have thought of that before he killed the Guv’s brother.”

“What?” Sofia asked. For once, I had shocked her. “What are you talking about?”

“You hadn’t heard, then?” I told her of the events Barker had relayed to me about himself, his brother, and her father during the Taiping Rebellion. She took it all in and thought it over.

“That’s just like him,” she finally said. “My grandfather had taught him to set aside all feelings of familial bond. He never had brothers or sisters with whom he could experience a relationship. I must admit I have wanted a brother or sister of my own; I covet a family’s bonds.”

“I have nine brothers and sisters.”

“What’s that like?” she asked, moving closer to me.

“Oh, no,” I said. “I will not be sidetracked so easily. Thank you, Sofia, for saving me from your father while I was in a weakened state, but I really need to go.”

“Leaving today would be foolhardy. Give me one more day and I will let you go without an argument. I realize you must be at your master’s side, wherever he is, but I seriously doubt you will make it as far as the lobby.”

“I still don’t like it,” I grumbled.

She patted me on the shoulder. “Tomorrow, I promise.”

Lock two young people together in a room for a few days and they shall talk about everything under the sun. They’ll discuss their hopes and dreams, their concerns, the battles they have faced in life. I had begun to get over my surly mood and relax in her pleasant company, and so, of course, I ruined it. That’s the way humans are; we can never leave well enough alone.

“I’m going out for more bandages,” she told me after lunch, putting on her hat. “We can wrap your wrists without the danger of the bandage sticking now. Is there anything else I can bring? Chocolates, perhaps?”

“Whatever appeals to you.”

“I’ll return in half an hour. Don’t move about much. You’re still unsteady on your feet.” She picked up her reticule, and feeling some need of intimacy at our parting, patted me on the hand. Then she left me alone in the hotel room.

When she was gone, instinct took over. There were questions to which I wanted answers, answers which might be found in Sofia’s luggage. Now that I was able to move about again, if slowly, I searched the rooms.

Rummaging through the dresser drawers, I marveled at the sheer variety of feminine articles of which I had little knowledge, items that buttoned and hooked and laced, some stiff and some hard, others so thin and silky as to be almost gossamer. Though I was alone in the room, I felt embarrassed searching through Sofia’s intimate apparel, but thought it likely she might hide something of importance therein. It proved to be a waste of precious time.

I was in no condition for a strenuous search, but that was what was needed after the drawers revealed little of interest save that Miss Nightwine purchased her foundation garments from expensive places in Paris, as near as I could tell. Like her father, she had excellent taste, and must require a good deal of money to live.

The first thing that made me realize that all was not as it seemed was her parasol. A superficial glance at it revealed nothing out of the ordinary, but as soon as I lifted it I saw the shaft was made of metal and not ash or malacca. Raising it by the middle, I immediately realized that the tip end was heavier than the handle. A sharp tug upon the tip removed it, revealing a thin needle about four inches long. A tiny hole at the bottom showed it for what it was: the tip of a syringe. A bit of fumbling on the shaft opened a hollow compartment, and farther up near the handle was a small catch which, when pulled out, formed a kind of trigger. I put it down again as I had found it and continued my search of the room.

It was under the wardrobe, pushed far to the back, that I found what I was looking for, a thin case tightly squeezed into the small space. I put a pillow on the floor and lay on it in order to work the case from its location, and when I did, was rewarded with the realization that it was locked. True to form, the woman preferred to keep her secrets.

No matter. There were hairpins to hand and I was not unacquainted with picking locks. It took precious moments, and I shall never again believe stories in which the hero uses a hairpin to open a locked door with relative ease, but eventually I got the thing open. Immediately I wished I hadn’t. Once it was unlocked, I could not stuff the demons and evils back in fast enough. I sat on the bed pillow and contemplated the array of weapons in front of me.

The case belonged in the Black Museum at Scotland Yard. Exhibit 43, Case of Professional Assassin, Female: one unassembled air rifle; vials and ampoules containing what must surely be poisons; a thin silk rope for climbing and garroting; various small spring-loaded devices for shooting projectiles; and a few weapons I had no clue about whatever.

No wonder Poole hadn’t found any evidence of Nightwine killing anyone. His daughter had done it for him. It was she who had delivered the package to O’Muircheartaigh’s offices, and met Lord Clayton in the folly on that dark night. Then I found a slip of paper squeezed in between the ampoules and the velvet-lined case. It was folded over, so I opened and read it. It was an address: 821 Mile End Road. Immediately my shoulders sagged and I leaned back. The possibility that she had ended the life, aye, and the ministry of that fine man, and the work he did against all odds in a section of London that needed him desperately, was unspeakable. It was a near fatal wound to my psyche, the only part of me that had not been injured so far, and was until that moment still intact.

She came in then, her arms full of packages. I did not bother to hide or to look like I wasn’t searching through her things. I am an investigator, an enquiry agent. It is what I do, what I am, for good or ill. I am innately curious. I could not stop myself, even if it meant finding out things I wish I had never known.

“Oh,” she said, putting down her burdens on the bed. She’d brought back some treats for me, for us, but I never found out what they were. She had aplomb, I’ll give her that.

She was not shocked or angry and made no pretense to be. Had she been emotional, it would have made her less the consummate professional. In fact, I would have preferred it had she shied something at my head.

“Did you kill Brother Andrew?” I blurted into the deafeningly quiet room. I lifted one of the glass ampoules, which held a green-colored liquid. “Did you jab him in the stomach with one of these?”

“No,” she responded. “It’s meant for the leg. It was designed to kill someone in a crowd, or someone highly dangerous, which, of course, the Reverend McClain was.”

“It must be convenient to be able to turn off one’s emotions as if with a gas cock. I’m not certain I could do it.”

“You have not had the training I’ve been subjected to. Are we going to have a row?”

“I’d like to yell at you right now, but I don’t think it would do much good. I don’t think I could convince you of anything, and I honestly believe the circumstances of your life were not of your own choosing. You are what your father made you.”

“But you do want to leave as soon as possible,” she said.

“Oh, yes. Whatever this was, it is over.”

“Nothing I can say will make you forgive me? I was not aware that the Reverend McClain meant so much to you.”

“He was a friend,” I said, putting the vial of green liquid back in place in the brown velvet of the case. “More than that, he was a good man.”

“I wish,” she began, and as she said it I wondered what it was she really wished, what regrets she had or whether she was merely saying what I wanted to hear. “I wish I could only kill men who desperately need killing, instead of disposing of obstacles to my father. I am leaving him, you know. But I’m afraid it’s too late for Brother Andrew.”

“What is it you really want, Sofia? Why did you bring me here?”

“I wanted to be with someone my own age who wasn’t tainted by the world, a nice, normal young man who might help me attain some sort of ordinary life.”

“I don’t think I am untainted by the world,” I stated. “I have my own demons to fight.”

“Yes, but you are succeeding. You’re resilient. You heal quickly.”

“You helped heal me.”

“Yes. Now I was hoping you would heal me.”

“I’m not sure I can. You need more than I’m able to give. You might even require an alienist,” I pointed out.

“If I find one he would lock me away. I’ve killed several people. And the worst thing is that I like it. I derive satisfaction in a duty well done, and in besting someone larger and stronger than I. That’s what I was thinking when I killed the Reverend McClain. He was heavyweight champion of the world. It was only afterward that I realized he was also a good man. Do you know how many good men I have met in my life? Just the two of you. And you see, I had to kill him, because I was not able to kill you.”

I instantly recalled the raised parasol at our first meeting. “You were sent to kill me, but you didn’t.”

“I had to make up for it by killing the Reverend McClain.” She sat on the edge of the bed, folding her hands in her lap. “Isn’t it ironic that the very principles that attracted me to you are the very ones that are making you leave?”

I wanted to say something then, but I couldn’t think of what, and the moment passed.

“I’m not all bad. Tell me you don’t hate me,” she said. “That you don’t thoroughly despise me for what I’ve done. I won’t ask you to forgive me.”

I closed the lid of the case and slid it back under the wardrobe. Then I stood. She looked as fragile as the blown glass in the ampoules I’d been handling, though every bit as deadly. She desperately wanted something from me I was not able to give.

“Thomas?” she choked out, extending a hand.

In spite of everything she had done, I couldn’t help but respond to her pain. I ignored the outstretched hand and hugged her to me instead. She did not move at first. In fact, she went rigid for a moment. But then she relaxed and held me in return, resting her head against my chest.

“You’re not thinking of turning me in to Scotland Yard, are you?” she asked.

Actually, I was, but unless she came with me willingly I doubted I could do it. At the moment, she was by far the stronger of the two of us.

My mind was still forming a response to the question when the door opened and her father walked in.