Will Thomas - Fatal Enquiry

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.