Will Thomas - Fatal Enquiry

“Gentlemen!” Barker growled, silencing everyone. “I do not believe Mr. Llewelyn or I are going anywhere tonight.”

“What makes you so sure?” Hoskins demanded.

Cyrus Barker turned to me and put out a hand. “Mr. Llewelyn, the watch.”

I stood for a moment, confused. Was he going to perform some sort of magic trick? I pulled the ticking engine from my pocket, removed it from its gold and platinum chain, and handed it to him. Immediately, he thrust it into Hoskins’s hand. The man looked at it, as perplexed as I, then his brows rose and he handed it to Warren without a word. I had forgotten the inscription.

To Cyrus Barker, from HRH the Prince of Wales for services rendered to the Crown

Barker knew that the prince bestowed these upon his guests like party favors, and I knew it, but these gentlemen did not. If they did, they still couldn’t tell what the service had been. It could have been anything from being a good baccarat partner to saving his life. In this case, it just happened to be the latter.

Without a word, Warren gave me back my watch, which I reclasped and put in my waistcoat pocket with all due reverence.

“You’re sure Nightwine said he was leaving on a ship, and not a train?” Hoskins asked.

“Definitely a ship. Did you catch the name, lad?”

“I don’t think he threw it, sir,” I answered.

“There you are, then.”

“You were still seen going into the Albemarle this afternoon,” Hoskins said.

“We haven’t denied being there,” Barker answered. “We were as curious as you as to whether they had gone. One might assume Nightwine burned the maps himself, before he left.”

Hoskins looked at Warren and Warren looked back. It wasn’t that they wanted to believe the Guv. They didn’t, but he had pulled a trump card from my pocket and they didn’t know him well enough to know if he was bluffing.

Warren raised a finger. “If we learn you’ve been lying to us, you won’t be able to tell the difference between my wrath and a ton of brickbats falling about your head.”

“I shall certainly remember that, Commissioner,” Cyrus Barker assured him. “I wish you luck with your hunt. You know there is no love wasted between Mr. Nightwine and myself.”

“Mr. Barker,” Hoskins said, now cordial enough to add the word “mister” to his name. “Can you offer an explanation as to why Nightwine would bring maps all the way to England merely to burn them?”

“I believe I can,” he said. “He has had the maps for a while, the only maps that show the entrance and fortifications of Lhasa. By memorizing and then destroying them, he is assured that he alone has the knowledge of how to get in and out of Tibet. He may still intend to take the country, only for himself, with your money to finance it. You may recall I sent the lad to your office with just that suggestion over a week ago. Were I you, I would stop payment on that bank draft immediately.”

If I ever felt at any time that my employer lacked imagination, it was disproven that day. While Nightwine lay in the grave somewhere, or in a coffin crated up and bound for the East on some steamer, Barker spun a tale of a mythical Nightwine attempting to bilk the government of its money and making it sound plausible enough to be true. There was enough truth to it that Warren and Hoskins were unable to punch holes in his logic.

“Sebastian would not do such a thing,” Warren maintained, but I could sense a hesitancy in his voice.

“Believe what you will, sir. That is only my theory of what he plans to do, but I have known him more than twenty years and you not even twenty days.”

“We’d need to stop the cheque, anyway,” Hoskins pointed out.

“We should get to the Bank of England the moment it opens in the morning,” Warren agreed. “I pray it’s not too late. Come, Hoskins.”

“Good luck,” the Guv offered them again, and even shook their hands. I wondered whether I would ever be canny enough to start a conversation with imminent arrest and end with a handshake.

Hats were adjusted, gloves pulled on, and eventually our guests left. Barker stood with his hand on the knob, listening for sounds of the two men walking away. Then his knees began to sag, and he toppled over like a pile of books stacked too high. I jumped forward and caught him by the elbows and cried out for Mac.

I’d hoped to prop him up, but instead he pulled me down to the floor with him. When Mac opened his door, I was pinned under our employer with the odd limb sticking out, waving feebly. He helped pull Barker up and each of us, holding an elbow, dragged him to the parlor sofa. There we opened his collar and I put my ear to his chest. His heart was beating, at least, but his face was ashen gray. The conversation and his appearing to be hale and hearty had taken every last ounce of his energy.

“Water, Mac. Bring some water,” I said, waving a cushion to cool the Guv’s face. I chided myself for allowing him to go downstairs in the first place. A good assistant would have said he was resting and “You’ll have to go through me to see him.” Of course, that discounted the Guv’s iron will.

Mac brought a tumbler of water and I poured a little down his throat. Barker raised his head and took the glass, drinking it down, some spilling over his open collar.

“He’s not going upstairs tonight,” Mac ordered. “Let’s bed him down here on the sofa. I’ll get a pillow and a blanket. You get his boots off.”

I unlaced his boots and pulled them off, then unbuttoned his waistcoat and braces. It would do for the present. Mac returned with the pillow and a sheet and blanket. Together, we bedded him down for the night.

Harm came in from Mac’s room and sniffed at Barker on the sofa. We had gone and changed things, and he didn’t like change. As far as he was concerned, the house was his and we were all his servants, the prerogative of a royal dog, and all this changing things about was irksome. Didn’t we know he had a schedule? Mac’s bed from eleven to one, mine from one to three, and Barker’s from three until he rose shortly after five. This was going to upset the apple cart dreadfully, I thought, as the little black Peke regarded us dourly.

“It’s only for one night,” I told him.

“If I had my way,” Mac said, “he’d be chained to a stake outside, no matter what the weather.”

The animal continued to glower at us disapprovingly.

“He probably thinks the same thing about us,” I said.

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.