Fatal Enquiry

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?”

“No, sir. I am not,” I lied.

“Then the two of you did not share a grand passion.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “No. I wouldn’t call it that.”

“Are you under the impression that she may have been in love with you?”

“She was the practical sort, I’d say. She wouldn’t lose her head over a fellow, although she might make him feel that she did.”

“It’s getting close to lunch. Go over to the Grapes public house and bring us some meat from the joint, and bread, and a pitcher of beer. I’m suspending work on the new case for the day, until I’ve studied the letter thoroughly. My thumbs are pricking. Pricking fiercely, in fact.”

I returned with the food and drink, having liberated also a nice wedge of cheddar and a jar of pickled onions. We ate at our desks, making rude sandwiches of the beef and the thick bread. I believe it was his favorite meal, a businessman’s lunch for busy men in the middle of Whitehall. In the Grapes, I rubbed shoulders with men from the Admiralty, the Foreign Office, Downing Street, and the Houses of Parliament. If Etienne Dummolard suspected that, he would have torn his hair out.

He was munching onions with the aid of a small fork Jenkins had brought from somewhere, and taking swallows of beer as he read the letter once more. Something about it truly excited him. At one point he even drew the lamp closer and perused it flat upon the desk with his face but a few inches away.

For my part, I was back as I had begun, with little to do, waiting for him to say something and unable to interrupt him. It was my letter, after all. Therefore, I studied my notes from the new case while he studied the old one. Finally, he tossed it across the glass top of his desk, where it fell off on my side and landed on the Persian rug.

“We’ve been fooled, lad,” he said. “She tricked us. She tricked everyone to get what she wanted. I did not take this girl seriously enough. I thought it mere coincidence that I never encountered her the entire time she was in London, but she planned it that way before she even arrived. I was too preoccupied with her father.”

“I noticed she disappeared the minute you arrived at the Albemarle,” I said.

“In many ways, she’s worse than Nightwine.”

“Wait,” I said, waving my hands. “You’re the one who said a girl her age could not attempt such a complicated venture.”

“I know,” my employer said. “I was wrong.”

That was a remark I never expected to hear from Cyrus Barker’s lips.

“Go on,” I said, looking at him skeptically.

“I didn’t understand her motivation, or rather, her desperation. She came here with the express intent to kill her father.”

“But she couldn’t kill her father,” I pointed out.

“That’s correct. But I could. She saw a chance for her own freedom, if she played her cards right.”

I crossed my arms, thinking furiously.

“Don’t forget, lad, Sebastian Nightwine was here two years ago, before he even met her.”

“And caused her mother’s death,” I added.

“Precisely. When he was here last he already had the plan to attack Tibet, and had possessed it for over twenty years. Why should he choose now to go ahead with it, after all this time?”

“He said it was his pension,” I said. “He was keen as mustard after it.”

“Perhaps she put the thought in his head. She had to make her father think it was his idea in order for him to go through with it.”

“It’s too fantastic,” I argued. “To come halfway round the world to rid oneself of one’s father.”

“Believe what you want, but think about this: why the British backing? They could have eventually gotten funding elsewhere and taken Tibet on their own, but Nightwine became convinced he must make his money here.”

“Where you would be in his way.”

“Exactly. And Miss Ilyanova knew we would inevitably clash. I was the blunt instrument she would use against her father. She would not kill her father on her own, but she could manipulate matters so someone else could do it for her.”

“What about me?” I summoned the courage to ask. “She manipulated you and Nightwine. Was she manipulating me, as well?”

“Just because she couldn’t kill you doesn’t mean she couldn’t manipulate you. Miss Ilyanova has been damaged by the events of her life, possibly beyond her ability to return to a normal existence. Despite her claims in the letter, which you must understand was written for a purpose, I cannot picture her living a life of quiet domesticity, even to please you.” Barker got up and went through the entire ritual of lighting his pipe again. I suspected he was summoning his thoughts, or thinking how best to express them.

“Thomas,” he said when his pipe was going again. “You’re an intelligent young fellow, educated, bright-”

“Get on with it,” I remarked.

“But you’re not on her level. She is the daughter of a Russian countess and a famous explorer. She is beautiful, clever, and perhaps the most dangerous woman in Europe. She is an adventuress, as much as I deplore the term. She could have her pick of any man in London or Paris. Wealthy men, powerful men, aristocrats, even kings. Instead, she chose the son of a collier, a disgraced scholar, assistant to a man on the run from the law, with seemingly little going for him.”

I saw it coming, but it stung anyway. Barker is a very good man but he can be uncommonly blunt. I felt I should say something in my defense.

“She said we were in unique positions, because of the battle between you and her father.”

“Do not take everything she said at face value, lad.”

“She was just using me, then?”

“I’m not saying she had no feelings for you. She has not invited you to Ceylon in order to punish this agency. However, you had one attribute no one else possessed. Her father despised you.”

“Oh, he did,” I answered. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“Nothing, or quite a lot, actually. I suspect she used you to make her father irate. You wouldn’t be the first unsuitable young man thrust under the nose of her father, I’m sure.”

“Balderdash,” I said, crossing my arms and leaning back in my chair.

Barker removed the pipe from his mouth and shook his head. “What happened between you and Miss Ilyanova does not concern the agency. I’ll only say this. You have told me recently that you are content with your employment here and that you intend to continue with the agency indefinitely. What means could she employ to get you to abandon your career and follow after her? She tried to make you fall in love with her, but that did not succeed. You chose instead your responsibilities here. Her only way to bring you to Ceylon is by impressing upon you the belief that she has something more to offer.”

Barker put his pipe in an ashtray on top of his smoking cabinet to cool. I started to go through the post, but suddenly stopped and looked up at my employer. “There’s another letter here, sir.”

“From whom?”

“From Sofia. And it’s addressed to you.”

The Guv stood and leaned over the desk, snatching it out of my outstretched hand.

Dear Mr. Barker,

I was going through my late father’s effects and found this photograph. I thought it might be of interest to you.

Sincerely,

Sofia Ilyanova

Barker separated the letter from the photograph and studied it as if it might produce information beyond the few simple words it contained. Then he regarded the sepia-toned image with such intensity, I wondered what it could possibly be. His wrist dropped and he held it loosely between his fingers, looking stunned. It dropped onto the desk and I retrieved it, wondering what had astonished him so. The image was octavo-sized and someone had inked the date 1885 in the lower right-hand corner. A group of men in large hats of the sort worn in western America stood formally in a group in front of a bunting emblazoned with stars and stripes. The men were all armed and one of their heads had been carefully circled in the same ink as the date.

“It’s him,” Barker said at last.

Who on earth is he talking about? I wondered.

After a moment, he finally found his voice. “It’s Caleb,” he said, breathing hard. “My brother is alive. And Nightwine knew it the entire time!”