From Hell With Love: A Secret Histories Novel (13 page)

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Authors: Simon R. Green

BOOK: From Hell With Love: A Secret Histories Novel
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The Sarjeant-at-Arms saw the look, and the gesture. He started to say something, so I cut quickly across him.
“Stabbed right through the heart,” I said, bending over the body and examining the wound closely. “A practised, professional blow. And no defensive wounds on the arms . . . No signs of any struggle, the bedclothes are hardly disturbed. All of which suggests the attacker was someone she knew, and trusted, right up to the last moment. He must have just knocked on the door, and been invited in. She sat up in bed, he walked up to her, and . . . He must have been quick. She was a teacher of unarmed combat for thirty years. No one could have overpowered her, if she felt threatened. She could have held off even the most determined assassin long enough to summon up her armour. But a face she trusted, with a knife she never saw until it was far too late . . .”
“But how could the killer just walk in here?” said Molly. “Didn’t she have any guards outside her door?”
“Inside the Hall?” said Howard, shocked. “We don’t have guards here. We’re safe, here. Danger always comes from outside.”
“There are . . . protections in place, to prevent any outsider from doing harm inside the Hall,” said the Sarjeant. “But they wouldn’t affect any member of the family, or a really powerful magic-user . . .”
I didn’t like the way he was looking at Molly. “Now wait just a minute . . .” I said.
“You threatened to kill the Matriarch,” the Sarjeant said to Molly. “To her face, in front of the Advisory Council.”
“I was angry!” said Molly. “But I’m not stupid enough to kill her here, surrounded by her family. And I’m certainly not stupid enough to stick around afterwards. Besides, I wouldn’t just stab someone! I’m the wild witch of the woods! I’d use some really subtle magic, make it look like natural causes. Or, if I wanted you to know it was me, I’d do something really vile and horrible, and then disappear while you were all still throwing up. I don’t do stabbings.”
“What better way to disguise your involvement, than a crude attack with an anonymous blade?” said the Sarjeant.
“Stop this,” I said. “Stop it right now. Molly had nothing to do with this. She’s been with me ever since we left the Sanctity. It couldn’t be her.”
“Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” said the Sarjeant. “But even if it were true, you had to sleep sometime. She could have left your side, done the deed and returned while you were still sleeping. Couldn’t she?”
“No,” I said. “No.” I looked at the Armourer. He was still holding the Matriarch’s dead hand, his head bowed over it. “Uncle Jack? You don’t believe it was Molly, do you?”
“Hush, Eddie,” he said, not looking round. “My mother is dead.”
A thought struck me, and I looked back at the Sarjeant. “Does Alistair know? Has anyone told him?”
“The Matriarch’s consort doesn’t know anything anymore,” said Howard. “It’s a miracle he’s still alive. After what you did to him.”
“He threatened to kill Molly, and me,” I said.
“He’s still in a coma,” said Howard. “Hooked up to a whole bunch of life support, down in the hospital ward. He hasn’t said anything in months. Why disturb him now?”
I leaned forward over the bed, and studied the Matriarch’s face. Dead bodies were nothing new to me, but it’s always different when it’s someone you know. There was nothing in her face—no shock, no outrage, no fear or pain. It was just . . . empty. She seemed smaller, as though the most important part of her was gone, and this was just something she had left behind. I took her free hand in mine, and then dropped it again because just like that she was standing beside the bed, staring at me. A tall regal figure in her best tweeds and pearls, looking very much alive. I looked back at the bed, but the body was still there. I looked at the others, and it was clear they could see the vision of my grandmother as well. It couldn’t be her ghost; Martha had always been very firm that ghosts had no place in the Hall. The family always looks forward, never back. So this must be a vision; a recording made earlier, and activated by the touch of my hand. I felt obscurely affected, that she had chosen me as the trigger for her message. The Matriarch started speaking, and I gave her my full attention. Her
˚
face was calm and unmoved, as though this message from beyond was just another necessary task.
“If you’re seeing this, then I’m dead,” she said flatly. “I suppose it could have happened in any number of ways, but I’m betting on violence. Droods live well, but we don’t live long. Comes with the job. It doesn’t really matter how; what matters is the family. Do not let my death divide or weaken the family. The Council must take over the running of things, until a new leader can be decided on. Work together; this is my last instruction to all of you. Edwin, we never agreed on anything much, except that the good of the family must always come first.
Anything, for the family. Anything, for England. Anything, for Humanity.
Remember that, and you won’t go far wrong. I was always proud of you, Edwin, hard though you may find that to believe. Even when you outraged and defied me. Perhaps especially then. It’s good to know the family can still produce lions as well as drones.
“Jack . . . Good-bye, my dear. My only living child. I wish . . . we’d found the time to talk more. But you were always so busy in your Armoury, and I had the family to run, and the world . . . just kept getting in the way. You always think there’ll be more time, to say the things you want to say. Until suddenly there isn’t.
“Sarjeant-at-Arms, do your duty. Protect the family. And if I have died at some assassin’s hand, let nothing stand between you and getting to the truth. I think that’s it. I can’t think of anything more to say. I have no regrets. No apologies. Everything I did, I did for the family. Nothing else matters.”
She stood there for a moment, seeming to see us all clearly with her fierce cold gaze, and then she was gone. I looked back at the body on the bed. It was hard to think of them as the same person.
“So,” said the Sarjeant. “An unliving will. How very . . . practical. A pity she didn’t name a successor. We can’t take time out for elections; it would leave the family vulnerable.”
“Who would have been the next Matriarch?” said Molly.
“Irrelevant,” said the Armourer. He held his mother’s dead hand in both of his, squeezed it briefly, and then let it go. He stood up and looked severely at the rest of us. “The old ways are gone. No one can inherit leadership; we have seen where that leads. We are a democracy now, for the good of our souls.”
“The family chose to put Martha in charge again,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms.
“As leader,” the Armourer said firmly. “The title Matriarch was purely honorary. The family just felt . . . more secure, that way. No, the Advisory Council will run things, for now.”
“The line of inheritance is broken anyway,” said Howard. He was still by the doorway, still unable to bring himself any farther into the room. “The Matriarch’s only daughter, Emily, is . . .”
“Dead,” I said. “My mother is dead.”
The Armourer came forward, and we looked into each other’s faces. Then he opened his arms, and we hugged each other. Two sons who had lost their mothers. We let go, and the Armourer stepped back and nodded to me brusquely.
“I’ll make all the arrangements. I know what she would have wanted.”
“Any funeral will have to wait,” said the Sarjeant. “The body must be examined, and the room, and the whole Hall must be searched, thoroughly.” He looked at Molly again. “But the witch . . . must be excluded from all our discussions. She is not family. Edwin must also be excluded, because of his relationship to the witch. Both of them must be securely confined, until their guilt or innocence can be established.”
“Not going to happen, Cedric,” I said.
“You heard your grandmother’s last orders,” the Sarjeant said, unmoved by the clear threat in my voice. “Let nothing stand between me and the truth. Certainly not an ungrateful grandson and a notorious witch.”
The Armourer made a sudden shocked sound, and we all looked round sharply. He was leant right over his mother’s body, pointing at her bare neck.
“Her torc is gone! How did we miss that? How is it even possible? Every torc is bound to its wearer on the genetic level!”
We all crowded round the bed. There was no torc. Martha’s neck looked almost obscenely naked without it.
“Is that what this was all about?” said Molly. “Was she killed so someone could take her torc?”
“No,” the Sarjeant said immediately. “Far easier to kill a field agent, outside the protections of the Hall, and take their torc. But . . . there is a very old and awful weapon, right here in the Hall, that could have been used. Armourer, where is Torc Cutter?”
“Still safely locked away in the Armageddon Codex, along with all the other forbidden weapons,” said the Armourer. “And no, the Codex hasn’t been opened. I’d know. Whatever did this, it wasn’t Torc Cutter.”
“Could anyone have got the torc outside the Hall without setting off all the alarms?” said Molly.
“No,” said the Sarjeant. “Which means it must still be here. Somewhere in the Hall.”
A sudden thought struck me, and I contacted Ethel again. “Did you see what happened here?”
You know I don’t watch individuals anymore,
she said reproachfully.
Not after we had that little talk about personal privacy. Still not sure I entirely grasp the concept, but whatever keeps you happy . . .
“Can you locate the Matriarch’s missing torc?” I said.
Hmmm . . . That’s odd. No, I can’t. I should be able to, I should be able to isolate and identify every individual torc; but not this one. How very intriguing. Either someone of great power is blocking my probes, which I would have said was impossible, or . . . Actually, I don’t have an or. The Sarjeant is quite correct, however, it must still be in the Hall somewhere.
“You’ve been listening!”
Of course I’ve been listening! This is an emergency, and I am part of the Hall’s protections, after all.
I passed Ethel’s comments on to the others, and they all considered them, in their various ways. The Sarjeant wouldn’t stop staring at Molly.
“Inside job,” she said. “Has to be.”
“But not by one of us,” said the Sarjeant. “It would take a witch of your power to block Ethel’s probes.”
“You really are pushing your luck, Cedric,” I said.
“You keep using my name as though it is an insult, or a weakness,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “It’s just my name. And all of your sentimental attraction to the witch, and all your usual arrogance, will not stop me from carrying out my duty.”
I sneered at him, but I was already preoccupied with another thought. When the Blue Fairy died, I took back his stolen torc by absorbing it into my own armour. I didn’t know my new armour could do that, until it did. I hadn’t told anyone about that. Could another member of the family have discovered this trick, and be hiding the Matriarch’s torc inside their own armour? It would explain why Ethel couldn’t find it . . .
“Who investigates murders, inside the family?” said Molly, still doing her best to seem reasonable and cooperative. “I assume such things do happen, even in this best-regulated of families?”
“Rarely,” said the Sarjeant. “And then it falls to my office to investigate. With the help of my CSI people. They’re on their way.”
“CSI?” I said. “You’ve been watching far too much television.” He sniffed loudly. “We have tech those people never even dreamed of. And all kinds of forensic magic. I will discover the truth, Edwin, no matter how hard you try to muddy the waters.”
“There’s a lot of blood, on the body and on the sheets,” Molly said doggedly. “Whoever stabbed the Matriarch must have got in close, and been covered in blood themselves. Surely your special CSI people can track down a set of bloodstained clothes?”
“Of course,” said the Sarjeant. “Unless someone has already removed the bloodstains magically.”
I moved in close beside Molly, glaring at the Sarjeant, and he glared right back at me. The threat of violence hung in the air. And then we all looked round sharply, distracted by the approaching sound of urgent running feet. The Sarjeant suddenly had a gun in his hand, trained on the open door. Perhaps coincidentally, it was also covering Molly. I moved forward a little, to put myself between Molly and the Sarjeant. We were both just a moment away from armouring up, when Harry burst in through the door, and then stopped dead at the sight of the gun in the Sarjeant’s hand. He was breathing hard, sweat on his face. He looked past us at the Matriarch, dead in her bed. He swallowed hard, and then turned his gaze back to Molly, and me.
“You’ve got to get her out of here, Eddie,” he said harshly. “There’s an angry mob headed this way, dozens of them, and not that far behind me. News of the Matriarch’s murder has spread all over the Hall. Most of the family are shocked, or mourning, but a hell of a lot of them are out of their minds with shock and fury, and the need to take it out on someone. They’ve decided Molly is guilty, and they want blood. Someone’s been whipping them up against the two of you, and for once it wasn’t me.”
“Really, Harry,” I said. “Couldn’t wait to bring me the bad news, though, could you?”

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