Will Thomas - Fatal Enquiry

An hour later the Guv lay propped up on several pillows, being fed gruel by Mrs. Ashleigh under the watchful eye of the monk. Barker spoke only one or two words, and there was no volume behind them. I wondered if he had any memory of dying. The widow, who had nearly become one twice over now, provided conversation enough for both of them. I had sent a small batch of telegrams, stating he was awake but not receiving visitors. Barker’s face looked ashen and he was so weak he could barely raise a hand, but when I chanced to sit beside him once, he seized the coat button of one of my sleeves and gave me a brief, urgent look. It occurred to me he had no idea how he had got here or what had happened to him. The last he recalled, he had been dueling with Sebastian Nightwine. Perhaps he did not remember the duel at all. Memory can be a very tricky thing.

I hadn’t spoken in a while myself. It was pleasant to have Mrs. Ashleigh’s kind words wash over us like a balm. She balked a bit when the monk suggested he needed rest, but promised to return the following day. When she left, I sat at the head of the bed and spoon-fed him information, one morsel at a time. Nightwine is dead. He shot you with a poisoned dart. His daughter gave you the antidote.

Eventually, the monk returned and shooed me out as well. Apparently I was keeping the patient awake, too. I promised to return later, and before I knew it I stood in Clerkenwell Street again. Hospitals are cottony places, insulated against the outside. It’s always a shock to step back into the bracing workaday world and hear dray vans passing or news vendors crying the latest disaster. The sun seemed unusually bright now and I noticed the air was gritty with soot.

I went south into the city and had a chop and a glass of wine at the Barbados. Afterward they brought the long clay pipe with my name on it that hangs over the bar and I smoked and pondered for a while. This death and resurrection of my employer, was there a cost? Had the shock to his system shortened his life? All these demands I had seen him make on his body, were they all being subtracted from the end? Someday, I wanted to see him living on the Sussex coast with Mrs. Ashleigh, enjoying a long and well-deserved recompense for his many years of service.

Afterward, I went back to the office long after Jenkins had gone, more to be able to tell Barker I had been there than anything else. There wasn’t much to learn, anyway. Abberline had been in, requesting information about a certain woman named Sofia Ilyanova. A few people had wished to engage the agency, but had been put off, and some reporters had arrived, wondering how Barker felt about the charge of murder being dropped and the reward being mysteriously lifted. I didn’t respond to any of them.

Where is she now? I wondered. There was the matter of her father’s body to dispose of. I doubted Sebastian Nightwine would ever lie in a cemetery somewhere with an ordinary tombstone over his head. He had held no belief in the afterlife, but I did not doubt he would have liked a monument built over his remains. Now he would never have a stone erected describing him as the Hero of Lhasa, and it was all due to Cyrus Barker. If there is such a thing as Eternity, and I believe there is, then the Guv had given Nightwine something to wail and gnash his teeth over for all of time.

“Thomas, wake up,” Barker said to me the following morning.

I opened my eyes instantly and realized I had nodded off while waiting for Barker to waken. Sitting up in my chair, I rubbed my eyes for a moment before they finally focused on the Guv. He was sitting on the side of the bed with his feet on the floor.

“Can I help you do anything, sir?” I asked. “I can call for a nurse.”

“That won’t be necessary, but I need you to get me a new set of clothes and my long coat.”

“Were you thinking of leaving today, sir? I’m positive the doctors here would be against it. You’re still weak.”

“That does not change the fact that this case is not finished. There’s a killer loose in London and we must stop her before she kills again or escapes to the Continent.”

“Are you serious? The woman just saved your life!”

“Aye, she did, and I am grateful, but she has still taken eleven lives, and that’s just here in London. There is no telling how many she killed elsewhere before coming here.”

“But she was forced to work for Nightwine, sir,” I argued. “He made her do it. I’m sure she has no intention of doing so again now that he is dead.”

“That does not change the fact that she is a murderess. She must be held to account for the lives she has taken. Besides, if pushed against the wall by person or circumstance, she is bound to use those skills again. She is a menace to the public welfare and must be incarcerated for the rest of her life, if not-”

“If not hanged?” I interrupted.

Sometimes I despise my own imagination. Suddenly, I could picture her with a noose about her slender neck, the pale blond hair pulled up behind her head. They’ve dressed her in a drab, blue-black prison dress. She has been moved about from cell to cell for weeks, never knowing when the final day may be. Finally, they slide a partition to one side, and the noose is there. She’s trussed up quickly and a priest reads from the Psalms. Then the trap is sprung and she falls through.

“Oh, God!” I moaned.

“Tell me you haven’t fallen in love with the girl, Thomas,” Barker said.

“No, sir, I have not.”

Barker clasped his hands and rested them on his knees. “One can train a docile dog to attack, but afterward, it can never go back to its old life. It has become too dangerous.”

“She’s not a dog, sir,” I argued. “She’s a person.”

“That doesn’t prove your point, lad. A human is infinitely more dangerous than a dog.”

“She killed eight people at once. Suppose she sent one of her packages to the royal family, or left it on a train, or exposed it at a station. The carnage could be in the hundreds.”

I said nothing, but put my face in my hands, feeling miserable.

“I’ve nothing against the girl, personally,” he went on. “I do not believe her heart is naturally black because her father was a Nightwine.”

“Do we have to do this?” I pleaded. “Couldn’t Scotland Yard handle it for once? Abberline is a keen fellow.”

“He is, but I’d have to convince him that she was responsible for all the killings. By then, who knows where she would be. No, Thomas, it has to be us.”

“You can barely stand, sir, and I’m injured, as well. How are we going to subdue her or convince her to come with us?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but be certain to bring along a brace of pistols for each of us.”

That was that. He had patiently answered every one of my questions, but would not be dissuaded from his quest. I left Barker to haggle with the staff about whether he should or shouldn’t be traveling that day. Taking a cab to King’s Cross Station, I boarded the Underground for Elephant and Castle. Coming up the stairs into the bright sunshine by the old public house and the Baptist Tabernacle, eternal enemies, I promised myself that Sofia would not be harmed when we found her.

“Thomas!” Mac called when I entered. “How is the Guv?”

“Belligerent,” I said. “He’s determined to track Miss Ilyanova to her lair today.”

“What do the doctors say?” he asked, coming out of his room. He wore his cheater spectacles, which meant he’d been reading. The hall smelled of beeswax and not a mote of dust hung anywhere, so I supposed he deserved his rest. I knew Mac’s deep, dark secret: he liked to read romances.