Will Thomas - Fatal Enquiry

“It doesn’t matter what the doctors say,” I countered. “Unless they can successfully tie him to the bed, I’ve got to get him some clothes and his pistols.”

Harm came out of the parlor where he’d been napping on a hassock and favored me with a reasonably enthusiastic wag of the tail. It was only me, the Fixture, nothing to get excited over. I reached down and scratched the back of his head.

“Can you recall precisely what time the Guv collapsed the morning of the duel?”

“They fought for about ten minutes and there was a bit before and after. I’d say a quarter past six. Why?”

“This is going to sound odd. At six-fifteen, Harm suddenly began howling in the garden. I’ve never heard anything so loud and strange in my life.”

“Pekingese were bred as guard dogs for the emperor, Barker told me. They do have an alarm cry, but are you having me on? It’s miles between here and Hampstead Heath. How could he possibly know?”

“He couldn’t,” Mac insisted. “He’s completely untrainable, and has a brain the size of a walnut.”

“How long did he howl?”

“About a minute and a half. I came out the back door to see if something had happened, like a cat getting in the yard. Then he suddenly stopped, and got himself a drink from the pond. I doubt he even remembered doing it.”

“Strange, indeed. Well, I’d better get on. I’m sure the Guv’s waiting impatiently.”

I gathered the items, loaded the pistols, and carried everything out to the Newington Causeway where I found a cabman willing to go as far as the priory. When we arrived, he waited while I entered with the clothes. Barker had prevailed over the doctors, or at least was being released on his own assurances. Having failed, the doctor turned on me, giving me a list of things to look out for: if he looks faint, looks tired, starts to wobble, turns pale, has trouble breathing, et cetera, I was to bring him back at once.

Cyrus Barker stood in the lobby of the priory, pacing like a Regent’s Park lion at feeding time. I brought him his clothes and he changed in his former room. He came out looking pale and damp, as if the exertion of changing clothes had been taxing to him. I knew he wouldn’t admit it, but he was barely holding himself together.

I saw no good outcome from this, but plenty of horrid scenarios: Barker’s weakened heart giving out a final time from too much activity; Sofia captured and denounced as a gruesome murderess in the newspapers; Sofia jabbing the Guv with her poisonous parasol, and he shooting her dead on the spot. It is times like this that I long for a normal situation, like a patent clerk or a shopkeeper.

In the cab on the way to the Albemarle, Barker sat back and rested, marshaling his energy for the coming battle. The last one had killed him. What drove this self-appointed guardian of the city to perform the acts he did? He was rarely paid and never thanked. Generally, he made more enemies than friends. Perhaps I would never understand what drove this man to do the things he did.

When we arrived in Praed Street again, I had the strangest sensation. I had stood there so recently facing Sebastian Nightwine that I recalled him in vivid clarity, the color of his bronzed skin, his blond mustache and eyebrows almost white against it, the honey color of his remarkable eyes. Now he was gone: to a just punishment in Barker’s opinion, to oblivion in his own. Is not infamy another form of fame?

Barker spoke to the doorman as if they were old friends. This was the man who had lent him the hat and coat and had traded places with him two nights before. I speculated he had met him earlier than that, keeping an eye on me when I was carried there against my knowledge a week earlier by Sofia. The doorman informed us that Miss Ilyanova had not vacated her rooms, although he had not seen her in a couple of days. Barker led me up the stairs to the door to her rooms and stopped. He pulled out his pistols and I mine. Another scenario presented itself: me shooting her dead, and having to carry that on my conscience for the rest of my life.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, when he hesitated.

“The room could be awash in ricin. There could be an unknown poison on the door handle. She could have packed the place with explosives.”

“Oh, lovely,” I muttered.

“Or she could have left it as she found it. I’m trying to piece together her actions based upon what little I know of her. Have you any insight?”

“I would say she fears you, based upon her sudden departure the moment you appeared here the other night, but she bears you no malice for her father’s death.”

“Good, then,” he said, and before I could stop him, he unlocked the door with the betty he kept in his waistcoat pocket and threw it open. He trusted me far more than I did myself.

There was no poison, unless it was a slow-acting one, no ricin, no explosives. The room looked deserted. There were no suitcases and her clothing was gone. I even looked for her weapons case under the armoire. She had decamped while Barker was convalescing. Good girl, I thought. I hope you’re far, far away from here.

“Thomas,” Barker said, directing my eye to the fireplace. There was a leather case there, a tube-shaped affair leaning against the side. She’d pinned a note to it that read “Mr. Barker.”

“The maps!” I cried.

The Guv crossed the room and squatted beside it.

“Ricin” he repeated. “If it is anywhere, it would be here.”

“No,” I assured him.

“Very well,” he said, and opening the lid, poured the contents out upon the floor. I held my breath, expecting to see powder pour from the tube. I had assured him, but there was no one to assure me.

Barker reached inside and pulled out a half-dozen parchment maps. They were yellowed with age and lettered in what I supposed to be Tibetan script. These were Nightwine’s private maps, the ones too precious or valuable to simply hand over to the Foreign Office. Nightwine was dead, but with them Britain could still launch an offensive action against Tibet of its own.

Still resting on his boots, he spread out the maps on the floor. Some were larger scale, showing mountain ranges and entire countries. Others were plans of buildings.

“Shambhala,” he said, pointing to the smallest of them all, no more than two feet by three. “Here is Lhasa. This one appears to be a detailed map of all the monasteries in the Himalayas, and this looks like a map of the Dalai Lama’s chambers. There’s even a hidden chamber marked to get in and out without detection.”

“Some of them look new and some look very old,” I remarked.

“They know how to preserve manuscripts in Tibet. Some of them could be as much as five hundred years old.”

Right after saying that, he lifted the corner of one and began to rip it in two.

“Sir!” I cried. “Stop!”

“It’s too dangerous, lad,” he said. “Far too dangerous. If these were in the hands of the Foreign Office, they would get into all sorts of mischief.”

“But is that your decision to make? I mean, we could bring them missionaries and medicine and education-”

“And smallpox and instability and slavery,” he continued, still ripping and destroying the maps. Some were on fresh onionskin and made a sharp, crisp sound as they ripped, while others crumbled into powdery pieces. It hurt my eyes to see such beautiful ancient works of cartography destroyed.

Barker stopped at the final map, the one of Shambhala. His hand hovered over it.

“I believe I’ll keep this one,” he said. “I’ve destroyed the one showing its location.”

He set it aside and then began shoving the torn maps into the room’s grate. A single match and they all ignited like tinder. I watched the fire consume them in the reflection of Barker’s lenses.