Fatal Enquiry (31 page)

It is a long drive from Newington to Hampstead Heath, such a drive, in fact, that I scarce have been there five times in my entire life. It looks prosaic enough during the day with its hills covered with East End families eating packed lunches and larking about.

In the early morning, however, it appears antediluvian; its furze-covered juttings grasping at tendrils of fog and land covered in scores of wet, glistening species of plants like the tops of a South American tepui. One would hardly believe that man had set foot there, which made it the perfect place for two implacable men to attempt to hack each other to death with good Sheffield steel at six o’clock in the morning.

They were awaiting us under a tree that cut the moving fog like the bow of a ship. From a distance I could see the carriage and Nightwine off to the side in a white shirt, hacking at the fog with his sword. It would not do to appear either too eager or too afraid, so I brought Juno up to him with a steady pace. Psmith suddenly detached himself from a tree he had been leaning against.

“You’ve arrived, then,” Nightwine commented as we alighted from our vehicle. In his white shirt, tan trousers, and knee boots, he looked every bit the military man he was.

“Was there any doubt?” Barker asked as his booted feet landed on the wet grass.

“None, I suppose. You can be relied upon to do the predictable thing.”

“It is my duty to stop you from plundering Tibet. They have enough troubles as it is. Not a single Dalai Lama has reached the age of twenty in the past fifty years.”

“All the more reason to take them under our protection if they cannot run their own affairs. But we haven’t come here to discuss politics. Psmith!”

Psmith stepped forward without a word, and I could see he was wearing a light gray suit almost the color of the mist. He opened an ancient sword case, lined in tattered jade velvet, containing French sabers of surpassing beauty. Barker must have noticed it, too, but he stood before the sword case, ignoring the weapons, and looking beyond them.

“Hello, Mr. Psmith,” he said, extending his hand. Neither of them moved until it began to become ridiculous. Psmith finally glanced over at the top of the case and that seemed to settle matters. He closed the lid with ill grace and took the offered hand, which hadn’t wavered once.

“Mr. Barker,” he muttered, and then opened the case again. It had been a little thing, but then even little things added up in battle.

The Guv took out each of the swords and examined them thoroughly for straightness and quality.

“These are very good, Sebastian. How did you acquire them?”

“I bought them from an arms dealer in Bond Street at midnight last night. They belonged to a member of the king’s musketeers. I could not resist them.”

“I’ll take this one,” Barker said. “Shall we get on with it? I’ve got a man from Kew Gardens coming this afternoon to look at my penjing trees.”

“I’ve got tickets aboard a steamer bound for Istanbul,” Nightwine said, taking the remaining sword and beginning to slash at the air. “I do believe one of us will miss his appointment.”

The sun was beginning to slash at the fog as if with a sword of its own. I could feel the dew slicking my hair and weighing down my suit and shirt. All creation seemed to be wrapped in wet cotton.

Barker slapped at a fly on his neck and looked absently at his fingers.

“Êtes-vous prêt?”
Nightwine asked, after the time-honored custom.

“Oui, je suis prêt.”

“En garde!”

Both men charged at once and there was a clang of bell against bell as the swords came together and then sprang apart again. My employer retreated slowly, drawing Nightwine along with him, closing the gap, but at one point he stopped and would go no further. I noted then a small spot of blood on his collar, very red in the half sunlight, left by the insect that had bit him. I waved at one near my head and waited for the next clash, which was not long in coming.

I had fenced in school and knew a good match when I saw one. In this case, all the form went to Nightwine. Beside him, Barker, in his black waistcoat and striped trousers, looked ungainly. The saber did not seem as natural in his hand as, say, a claymore might have. It looked dainty, though deadly enough for the purpose. Had he been overconfident? I wondered. Barker had often told me to choose a weapon and stay with it. One will only get into trouble if tricked into using another man’s weapon.

There was a third clash, a parry and riposte, and this time, blood was drawn. Nightwine was the first to spill claret, slipping his blade just past Barker’s ear and cutting him near the back of the head. A second bloodstain appeared on the Guv’s collar.

I stepped forward and Psmith’s thin arm crowded me back, showing me how much power was contained in that wiry frame of his.

“A wound has been delivered, gentlemen,” he announced in a public school voice, Eton, perhaps, or Rugby. “Is honor now satisfied?”

“No,” Nightwine said shortly. “It is not.”

“What would you know of honor?” Barker answered in return. “You who have none?”

“Oh, yes,” Nightwine said, slashing at him and meeting resistance. “Cyrus Barker and his famous sense of honor. The natural, self-made gentleman of great renown.”

Barker lunged forward, whether as a tactic or in anger over the slight I could not tell. They passed each other quickly, then turned and engaged each other in the other direction.

“I contend it is you who have no honor, sir!” Nightwine continued. “You’re nothing but a lowborn Scot!”

Barker’s blade finally found flesh, glancing past Nightwine’s elbow and slicing a groove along the bicep. Nightwine, a little more sure of his skill over his opponent, had become momentarily arrogant. Each word Nightwine said seemed to sear into my memory, but at the same time, I thrust them away for now. Words didn’t matter, not when lives are on the line.

“Forgive me for speaking plainly, Cyrus. I am your oldest and best friend, after all.”

“Save your breath to cool your porridge, Nightwine,” Barker answered. “Everything that needs to be said between us was said a long time ago. And if you’re thinking you’re leaving London any way other than in a pine box, you’d best think again.”

Nightwine charged with a growl in his throat but Barker wouldn’t be moved. The sun played on their flashing blades, too fast and bright for the eye to follow. I waited for a grunt of pain, a cry, hoping it would not be Barker from whom it issued. If there’s anything I’ve learned by now, however, it is how rarely we get what we want.

“Aargh!”

The blade point pierced the Guv’s shoulder and Barker added a third bloom of crimson to his white shirt. His blade slipped from nerveless fingers, bouncing off the hard ground with a dull ring. For a second he was unarmed and at Nightwine’s mercy. The shoulder of his sword arm had been pierced. I felt the breath drawing in through my lungs, awaiting the fatal coup de grâce. Instead, Barker kicked the sword up into the air with his foot, and caught it with his left hand. When the inevitable blade came his way, he parried it and stepped back, holding the sword high over his head.

“None of your Chinese nonsense here, Cyrus,” Nightwine taunted. “You’re on English soil now. You’re merely prolonging fate, you know.”

“That’s not water spilling down your arm,” came the reply. “I’m sure we could do this all day.”

The fight continued, becoming less civilized as it went on. They were no longer gentlemen duelists, I told myself, but gladiators. Both men were bleeding heavily and their shirts stuck to their frames. They were sweating in the moist heat, and their fencing form was long gone.
Will it never end?
I asked myself. How long had they fought already? Ten minutes? Twenty? Why hadn’t I thought to bring a watch?

Both men showed signs of fatigue now and were blowing like racehorses. I spared a moment to glance at Psmith, wondering if he was armed. There was no pistol visible on his skeletal frame, but another case of swords lay at his feet in the event that one was damaged. I looked back, just in time to see Barker stumble.

His boot heel struck a tree root in his way and he fell. His left heel slid across it and through the grass while his right lay straight behind him. His limbs scissored open and his sword hand came down in an attempt to correct his balance. His right shoulder passed just under Nightwine’s guard and struck him heavily in the hip. Nightwine suddenly fell across Barker’s splayed body, toppling forward. There they came to a standstill, with Nightwine curled over Barker’s prone body.

I looked at Psmith and he back at me. Then as the sun pierced the fog, it illuminated the red-hued blade rising from Sebastian Nightwine’s back. Psmith gave a low curse.

Slowly, the body atop him slid over onto its side and Cyrus Barker scrambled to his feet unsteadily. He looked down at his vanquished foe and the saber that pierced him through. His hand, his
right
hand, still held the hilt, I noticed. He looked at us as if aware for the first time that we were there.

Psmith stepped across and bent down to see if there was still life in his employer. He held two fingers to his throat for a few seconds, but could find no pulse and shook his head in my direction.

I turned to say something to Barker. I don’t even recall what it was, now. Before I could say a word, the Guv gave a sudden moan and a spasm. Then he fell over onto his side and lay still. I froze, unable to move, unable to comprehend, my heart in my mouth. There was no new mark on him. Nightwine’s sword had little blood on it. What in the world had happened? I flew to the body; not Barker’s, but Nightwine’s, ripped open his sleeve and found there a small engine strapped to his arm, a length of copper pipe containing a device able to shoot a small dart, tipped with poison, perhaps across a clearing into a man’s neck, one which might be mistaken as the bite of an insect. Then I jumped to my feet, and began kicking at the ribs of the dead man in my rage.

Calm, matter-of-fact in that desiccated way of his, Psmith crossed to my employer and checked his throat, as well. Then he turned to me.

“Dead as the proverbial doornail. I suggest we call this a draw.”

Then he turned and walked away into the early morning mist and was almost instantly swallowed up in it. I had never felt so lost and alone in my entire life.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Dead. Cyrus Barker was dead. Everything was over. No more following after him in the teeming streets of London. No more putting up with his moods and tricks. No more nights in my little room with Harm snoring at the foot of my bed. With leaden feet I crossed to his body and looked down. He was a bloody mess. One arm was scarlet with it. He lay profoundly still, as if carved in stone.
It is ironic,
I thought, Stone Lion,
Shi Shi Ji,
his name in Cantonese.

I heard a branch move overhead, though that sort of thing didn’t matter much anymore. Then Sofia Ilyanova landed beside me, trying to get her balance. I was so astonished at her appearance, I couldn’t speak.

“Open his shirt,” she ordered, fiddling with the tip of the parasol in her hand.

She sounded so sure of herself that I obeyed, opening his waistcoat, shirt, and singlet until his pale, cold flesh lay exposed. I saw the hypodermic apparatus with the strange green liquid that was attached to the tip of her parasol. Before I could stop her, she lifted the black folds of her gabardine skirt and straddled him with her dainty boots. She raised the parasol high, and then brought it down with all her weight, dead center, piercing the breastbone. I watched with horror as the green, viscous liquid pumped into the wound.

Immediately, she crossed to where her father lay crumpled in death.

“He finally did for you, Father,” she said with something approaching disdain. “You never could let well enough alone.”

I jumped when the corpse beside me started. Cyrus Barker’s body suddenly drew a deep, agonizing breath.

“Dear God in heaven, what have you done?” I demanded.

Abruptly, the figure at my feet shot up to a seated position and exhaled in something approaching a roar, before falling over inert once more.

“It is the antidote to Father’s poison, mixed with some adrenaline and a few other things,” Sofia explained. “It’s quite a potent little concoction. I offer no guarantee, you understand, but your master is rather tough. If anyone will pull through, it is he. You’d better get him to the priory immediately. This lying about in cold, wet grass cannot be good for him.”

I sprinted to the cab and brought Juno through the grass to where Barker lay and then climbed down again. It was a hard scrabble dragging his dead weight up into it. I could hear him breathing now, a blessed sound. Then I climbed back onto my perch and looked down on the little angel of death, who had unexpectedly brought life instead.

“Are you going to be all right?” I called down to her.

“I always land on my feet, Thomas.”

“Will I see you again?”

“Go!” she cried. “You look after Mr. Barker and I’ll attend to my father.”

“But he weighs almost fifteen stone. You couldn’t possible move him.”

“Thomas, you should have learned by now that I am not without my resources; however, I cannot guarantee that your master will survive such a shock to his system. I suggest you get him to a hospital as soon as possible.”

There was no time to argue. I flicked the reins and turned the cab about. Then, with a final glance her way, I seized the whip and cracked it above Juno’s head.

“Hee-yah!”

That morning I was being unaccountably aided by females, first Sofia, who had brought Cyrus Barker back from the grave, and now Juno, our cab horse, who stretched out her feet and ran like the wind. She instinctively avoided the snarls of slow morning traffic and at one point even hopped the curb and clattered down the pavement for a hundred yards. She knew my desire instinctively and has been the most reliable female of my life’s acquaintance, all this for a chance of a gallop, a good brushing, and a bag of oats.