Fatal Enquiry

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Dead. Cyrus Barker was dead. Everything was over. No more following after him in the teeming streets of London. No more putting up with his moods and tricks. No more nights in my little room with Harm snoring at the foot of my bed. With leaden feet I crossed to his body and looked down. He was a bloody mess. One arm was scarlet with it. He lay profoundly still, as if carved in stone. It is ironic, I thought, Stone Lion, Shi Shi Ji, his name in Cantonese.

I heard a branch move overhead, though that sort of thing didn’t matter much anymore. Then Sofia Ilyanova landed beside me, trying to get her balance. I was so astonished at her appearance, I couldn’t speak.

“Open his shirt,” she ordered, fiddling with the tip of the parasol in her hand.

She sounded so sure of herself that I obeyed, opening his waistcoat, shirt, and singlet until his pale, cold flesh lay exposed. I saw the hypodermic apparatus with the strange green liquid that was attached to the tip of her parasol. Before I could stop her, she lifted the black folds of her gabardine skirt and straddled him with her dainty boots. She raised the parasol high, and then brought it down with all her weight, dead center, piercing the breastbone. I watched with horror as the green, viscous liquid pumped into the wound.

Immediately, she crossed to where her father lay crumpled in death.

“He finally did for you, Father,” she said with something approaching disdain. “You never could let well enough alone.”

I jumped when the corpse beside me started. Cyrus Barker’s body suddenly drew a deep, agonizing breath.

“Dear God in heaven, what have you done?” I demanded.

Abruptly, the figure at my feet shot up to a seated position and exhaled in something approaching a roar, before falling over inert once more.

“It is the antidote to Father’s poison, mixed with some adrenaline and a few other things,” Sofia explained. “It’s quite a potent little concoction. I offer no guarantee, you understand, but your master is rather tough. If anyone will pull through, it is he. You’d better get him to the priory immediately. This lying about in cold, wet grass cannot be good for him.”

I sprinted to the cab and brought Juno through the grass to where Barker lay and then climbed down again. It was a hard scrabble dragging his dead weight up into it. I could hear him breathing now, a blessed sound. Then I climbed back onto my perch and looked down on the little angel of death, who had unexpectedly brought life instead.

“Are you going to be all right?” I called down to her.

“I always land on my feet, Thomas.”

“Will I see you again?”

“Go!” she cried. “You look after Mr. Barker and I’ll attend to my father.”

“But he weighs almost fifteen stone. You couldn’t possible move him.”

“Thomas, you should have learned by now that I am not without my resources; however, I cannot guarantee that your master will survive such a shock to his system. I suggest you get him to a hospital as soon as possible.”

There was no time to argue. I flicked the reins and turned the cab about. Then, with a final glance her way, I seized the whip and cracked it above Juno’s head.

“Hee-yah!”

That morning I was being unaccountably aided by females, first Sofia, who had brought Cyrus Barker back from the grave, and now Juno, our cab horse, who stretched out her feet and ran like the wind. She instinctively avoided the snarls of slow morning traffic and at one point even hopped the curb and clattered down the pavement for a hundred yards. She knew my desire instinctively and has been the most reliable female of my life’s acquaintance, all this for a chance of a gallop, a good brushing, and a bag of oats.

I opened the trap and looked down into the cab as we sped east toward Clerkenwell.

Barker lay sprawled in the corner, his head lolling with its motion. I had lost him, my teacher, my mentor, only to find him again, to lose him to death, only to see him brought back to life. Surely that was enough for even the two of us to go through in as many days. His life was now a burning ember, the merest spark, but surely it would not go out again.

“Come on, come on, come on, come on.” I realized I was chanting under my breath, but whether I was speaking to Juno or to God I couldn’t say. If the latter, it wasn’t the most reverent prayer he’d ever heard, certainly nothing compared to one of Barker’s declamatory speeches which lasted half an hour while the Sunday joint went cold.

Finally, I was turning into the cobblestone alley with the stone archway, and Juno clattered to a stop when I set the brake, skidding the last ten feet. Good old Clerkenwell, mundane as a Sunday afternoon. I hopped from my perch to the ground and ran into the building.

“I’ve got an injured man here!” I yelled to no one in particular. Two men in morning coats came running to the cab. One of them called for a hand litter, and within two minutes, Barker was being carried inside. I followed him, but was stopped by one of the men.

“Name, sir?”

“Mine or his?”

“His.”

“Cyrus Barker. Is this going to take long?”

“Not if you answer succinctly. Age?”

“I’ve never asked him. He’s around forty, I think.”

“Is he a member of the priory?”

“I believe so, yes. I was a patient here myself last week.”

“What seems to be the trouble?”

“He was in a duel this morning and was cut by a saber in the back of the head as well as stabbed in the shoulder. Just after that, I think, he was struck by a poison dart, because he collapsed in a heap after the duel and registered no pulse. Then he was given an antidote to the poison by an injection directly into the heart. I understand the serum contained a dose of adrenaline. It brought him round in that his heart is beating but he’s not conscious and is pretty much like you see him now. Do you think you can do something for him?”

The porter or what-have-you simply stood there with his pencil poised over his notebook, not writing or doing anything, but standing with his jaw half open.

“Do something, you idiot! The man may be dying!”

The porter wheeled about and went into the room where Barker had been taken. I had intruded into his ordered world with my reanimated corpse and my talk of deadly toxins. I followed him into the room. A second man came out and pushed me out of the way to use one of those metal tubes to listen to my employer’s heart.

“It’s Cyrus Barker,” I said to him, a stocky sixty-year-old man with brown hair shot with gray and a beard white as snow, a much more confidence-inspiring sort than the one before him.

“Oh, we know Mr. Barker here,” he said. “No idea what sort of poison he was given?”

“No, sir. I’m sure it was probably exotic.”

“What physician administered the antidote?”

“No physician, sir. It was a bystander.”

“I see,” he said, as if he got this sort of emergency all the time. “And did he say most definitely that what he injected was an antidote to the poison?”

“Yes, she did,” I told him. “I gathered she had created both.”

The doctor opened Barker’s shirt and inspected the wound on the breastbone, an angry pucker of red skin.

“Wait outside in the hall,” he finally said. “We’ll do what we can.”

“I’ll see to the horse and be right back.”

I’d seen a few stables in the area before and found one that I thought would take good care of Juno. Then I walked back to that medieval alleyway which now contained a secret hospital where, right then, the Guv was strapped to a gurney, fighting for his life.

I sat in a wooden chair against a wall near the front entrance. One hour stretched into two, and two became three. I told myself this wasn’t a simple case. He’d been stabbed twice and poisoned twice, for in a way, the antidote itself was a kind of poison. Administer it to a healthy man and I’m sure it would kill him stone dead. I couldn’t expect to go in a few hours later to find the Guv sitting up and taking nourishment. The doctor, a man named Strickland, finally came out and took a seat in the chair beside me.

“We can’t do a thing for him but wait,” he explained. “Oh, we’ve sewn up his wounds, but with no idea what he’s been exposed to, it would be negligent to start giving him useless medications. We’ll administer digitalis if his heartbeat weakens. Other than that, we must let him rest.”

“Has he awakened at all?”

“No, and I don’t expect him to for a while. He’s always had an iron constitution. We’ll let him sort himself out for now and check his progress.”

“Yes, sir. Whatever you think is best.”

“Now, Mr. Llewelyn, let us talk about you. You left this hospital under rather unusual circumstances a week ago. Is that correct? Your sister had no business taking you from this facility in such a state.”

“She wasn’t my sister, actually,” I admitted. “That was the girl I was talking about to your porter.”

The physician raised his eyebrows. “Can you explain why she felt you were better cared for outside of this hospital?”

“You’d have to ask her.”

“If she shows up again, I hope you will alert someone immediately.”

“I shall. Thank you, Doctor.”

An hour later, I thought to inform Terry Poole that our friend was in hospital and fighting for his life. Some people should know, I thought, such as Mrs. Ashleigh. I also sent word to Mac and Jenkins. Poole arrived within the hour and stood at the foot of Barker’s bed listening to him breathe.

“Any idea when he’ll wake up?” he asked.

“When he’s good and ready, or so the doctor tells me. I say, are those dark spectacles you have there in your pocket?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “Warren finally saw sense, but only after we threatened to form a labor union and strike. There were so many spectacles about the place by the end he said he’d fire the next man who wore a pair. I’ve been reinstated, but assigned to ‘K’ Division. It’s a demotion. No more chances to nip home for lunch, it looks like, not for a while, anyway.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Mrs. Poole must be disappointed.”

“She said she was just getting accustomed to my being underfoot.”

“Have you heard anything about Sofia Ilyanova?”

“She has not been seen since leaving the Albemarle.”

“What about Psmith?”

“I hope he’s long gone.”

“Keep me informed. I’m sure the Guv will want to know.”