Will Thomas: Fatal Enquiry

Barker waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t do bodyguard work, but I have a good man I could suggest if you require one.”

“No need. I myself have been given the duty. I understand Commissioner Warren asked for me especially. I only wish I could say I care for the assignment.”

“I doubt the new commissioner loses much sleep at night worrying whether or not his inspectors like the assignments he gives them.”

“True,” Poole conceded. “At any rate, a steamer will be arriving tomorrow from Calcutta with a passenger who has been afforded diplomatic status.”

“You are drawing this out on purpose. You must really want me to ask. Very well. Who is this man, Terry, and from whom are you protecting him?”

“I am to protect this man from a certain Mr. Cyrus Barker of Craig’s Court, Whitehall.”

The Guv’s brows furrowed. “You’ve been hired to protect someone from me?”

“You have been known to take a man apart like a watch.”

Barker considered this. “Not unless he deserved it. Who is this fellow who claims I’m an imminent threat to his safety?”

“You’re the enquiry agent. You work it out.”

“I can’t possibly-oh, no. Surely you don’t mean him .”

“Who?” I spoke up.

“Please tell me Her Majesty’s government would never grant him diplomatic status.”

“Who?” I repeated.

“They have, Cyrus. I’m sorry.”

“Damn and blast!” Barker growled.

“Who is it?” I demanded. “Will someone please tell me?”

“Sebastian Nightwine!” they barked simultaneously.

“Oh,” I said faintly, sitting back in my chair.

We had crossed paths with the Honorable Sebastian Nightwine a little over two years before, during my very first case. He met us in a jungle of a conservatory, accompanied by a live jaguar. At the time I had guessed him to be a large-game hunter, but apparently he was a criminal, whose father had been a noted explorer and philosopher. I got the impression from Barker that the two had a long and problematic history together.

“How long have you known of this?” my employer asked.

“All of about an hour. It is a state secret.”

Barker unhurriedly struck a vesta against the striker on his desk and lit his pipe before settling back in his chair again. I admit I was surprised by his reaction, or lack of it. I had met Sebastian Nightwine only once, but I thought it might have provoked some kind of response.

“Did the commissioner send you here to warn me to stay away, or did you come on your own?”

“He sent me, actually,” Poole said.

“I was not aware he knew of my existence.”

“He has since Nightwine insisted he needed protection from you.”

“The man is not even in town and is blackening my name already.”

“Warren wants you to know that if you go to the docks and attempt to interfere with his arrival in any way, he shall have me effect your immediate arrest.”

“You’ll put the darbies on my wrists yourself, then?” His fifteen-stone frame, his square jaw overshadowed by that proscenium arch of a mustache, and the black-lensed spectacles covering an old scar on his right brow and cheek made him a man to reckon with.

“If I am ordered to, I must, yes.” Poole looked for a minute at the Guv. “So, you won’t come, then?”

Barker raised a finger. “I have not decided yet. I must consider what action to take.”

“Don’t be mule-headed. You don’t want to do anything that will harm your reputation.”

“You admit, then, that he is damaging my reputation. What has he said about me, precisely?”

“Merely that he fears moving about the city freely with you in it.”

“He has reason to fear me.” Barker leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers.

“I’ll trod on him like the vermin he is.”

Poole leaned forward with his hands on Barker’s desk. “You’re not going to listen to reason, are you? As an official of Scotland Yard, I’m warning you to stay away from the docks.”

“Which docks in particular would that be? I’d hate to be working on a case tomorrow and accidentally pass by the one dock I was supposed to avoid, only I didn’t know it.”

“Just stay away from all the docks,” Poole answered, running a finger over his mustache.

“I would not want to inconvenience Captain Nightwine when he arrives.”

“That’s Colonel Nightwine. He has been promoted.”

“Really? When last I saw him he was slinking out of town with a knot in his tail. How is it that he is returning two years later with diplomatic status?”

Poole shrugged. “I only know what the commissioner told me.”

“Do you still have the files you collected?” Barker asked.

“They are hidden where I can get to them if I need them.”

“Good. You understand him, then. He’s got powerful friends and a long memory.”

“I don’t believe I was chosen to protect him out of pure chance. I’m having my nose rubbed in it.” Poole stood. “I should be getting back. You’ve been officially warned off.”

Without a good-bye, the inspector quitted our chambers. There was silence in Barker’s office, save for the occasional drawing on his pipe.

“He forbade you to go, but I suppose you’ll go all the same?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“And what was that about files?”

“I gave Poole a copy of everything I’d gathered for years on Sebastian Nightwine. I was naïve enough to believe it would at least make the CID aware of the scope of his activities.

“Then Terry made some of the information known to Henderson and it even reached the point where the former commissioner considered doing something about it, but the aristocracy closed ranks against him. After that, Henderson dropped the investigation. Poole told me later he went to ‘A’ Division every morning for six months believing he was going to be sacked. In the end, however, it was Henderson who was dismissed.”

“Black Monday,” I said.

“Aye.”

Two months before, on February 8, two rival unions had organized demonstrations in Trafalgar Square. The meetings occurred without incident, but afterward, the crowd, five thousand strong, had no way to work off the emotion engendered by the impassioned speeches. The mob smashed windows in Pall Mall and St. James’s, waking aged peers from their club chairs. A similar meeting in Hyde Park that evening resulted in looting in Oxford Street.

Two days later, during one of London’s “particulars,” word got out of another approaching mob and the citizens panicked. However such false rumors spread, Scotland Yard was blamed for instigating the warning and probably for the fog, as well. Realizing that he was about to become the scapegoat in the whole affair, Henderson promptly resigned. Feeling, perhaps, that radical unionism required a firmer hand, the selection committee replaced him with a commissioner who had a background in the military.

“I thought the commissioner was sacked over the riot.”

“He was, but they were already inclined against him for daring to make charges against Nightwine. That’s why I’m a private enquiry agent and not a CID man. I prefer to be beholden to as few men as possible.”

“Did they ever offer you a position?”

“No, they didn’t.”

I thought about that. If I were in charge of hiring constables, would I choose a man who wore black spectacles and knew a hundred ways to kill people?

“Their loss, then,” I replied.

Barker flashed me a rare grin. “I was of the same opinion.”

Cyrus Barker may not be an aristocrat, or the son of a famous explorer and philosopher, but his money has allowed him to grow accustomed to being waited on. It was one of my duties whenever I attended the sparring matches he held irregularly with Brother Andrew McClain to tie on his boxing gloves. He didn’t thank me; he was off in that little self-contained world of his behind his quartz spectacles, fighting whatever demons dwelled there. His arm was out, and I was tying up his glove, but the Guv seemed unaware of my existence.