Ghosts by Gaslight (14 page)

“I expect there was a queue, after all,” said Susan. She took Magnus by the arm and led him out into the corridor, hustling him along past the startled Sergeant Cumber and the department’s best silver tea tray loaded with the good china.

“You know we can’t let you out if you will insist on telling people the truth,” she admonished him as they climbed into their hackney cab, which was not, despite its very ordinary appearance, one for hire by the general public.

“I can’t help it,” said Sir Magnus. “Krongeitz really knew what he was doing with that curse. It’s all I can do not to babble out all sorts of esoteric stuff.”

“It is fading, though,” remarked Susan. “You’ll be right as rain in a few months.”

“The forced veracity is fading,” said Magnus. “But the transformations continue.”

“My, you are cheerful today. Magister Dadd says it will go in time, with the treatment, and he should know.”

“He also said it will get worse before it gets better,” said Sir Magnus. He leaned over and took Susan’s hand. “Promise me that you’ll act at once if it seems to be . . . spreading into the daylight hours of its own accord. I mean, without the use of the blue pill to bring it on.”

Susan gently withdrew her hand and rested it on her Gladstone bag.

“You know I will do whatever is necessary, Magnus,” she said. “But I am sure it won’t be necessary. Now tell me, do you have any thoughts about who might be behind this moondawn daffodil business?”

“An adept who can make a golem from blood, mud, and flowers on the fly? And who wants moondawn daffodils to reap their poison? I’m not sure we should try to find whoever it is. Could be very dangerous.”

“Magnus. We can’t leave it to the police. Tell me about this moondawn poison business. Does it really make the flowers that much worse?”

Magnus chuckled grimly.

“I didn’t even tell the inspector the best part. If you distil the poison properly, you don’t even have to deliver it physically to the target. You can use the poison on something sympathetically attuned to a similar object the victim will use. A comb is quite popular.”

“A comb?” asked Susan. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s quite straightforward sympathetic magic,” said Magnus. “In essence, the adept makes an identical copy of the target’s favorite comb, using some of their hair. Then, some distance away, they drip moondawn daffodil poison on the copy and by magical transference, the poison soaks into the real comb. The next time it is used, the poison enters the victim through their scalp and kills them instantly, with the perpetrator nowhere to be seen. Even better, someone else may have been plying the comb, so they get the blame.”

“I see,” mused Susan. “And is this process of distillation difficult to manage? Does it require any particular apparatus?”

“Yes it does,” said Magnus. “And I see what you’re thinking. Interestingly, and I never realized it before, it also ties in with a comb being the typical sympathetic object of moondawn daffodil poisoning.”

“Why?”

“Because the ritual involves the daffodils being cut up with a silver blade and placed in a retort with a scented oil. A silver razor, or scissors, would work a treat, and for the scented oil you could use the barber’s favorite—”

“Macassar oil!” interrupted Susan.

“Indeed,” said Magnus. “So the adept works with hair, silver razor or scissors, and hair oil.”

“What else?”

“It needs to take place underground, with the usual harmonization requirement,” mused Magnus. “An old Mithraeum, or something like that. An Anglo-Saxon crypt would work, maybe a Norman one at a pinch. It all points to one of those below-street barbers—”

“How long does the ritual take? How much time do we have?”

“I’m not entirely sure, never having undertaken the dastardly deed myself. But I seem to recall the daffs have to fester for several days in the oil, with lots of highly repetitive incantation . . .”

“So we need to look for an underground barbershop on the site of an old temple or church.”

“Yes . . . it will also be relatively close to Green Park, as the daffodils have to be in oil before the sun is fully up. Even so, it could take a while to find out somewhere that matches all that. There are a lot of barbers about. Damned tedious to sort through them all, looking for old temples or whatnot.”

“You could ask your cousin.”

“Sherlock? He hates this kind of . . . oh . . . Mycroft. I suppose I could think about that.”

“It might even be in his bailiwick, as it were,” said Susan. “After all, who would our adept want to poison in this way? Someone difficult to reach by other means.”

“Yes,” said Magnus. “The Queen is one possible target, though perhaps the prime minister is more likely. Easier to get his hair, anyway. I suppose if I put it like that, Mycroft might even be polite.”

He tapped the ceiling twice, and the small hatch beneath the driver’s seat slid back.

“Carstairs! The Diogenes Club, thank you.”

F
OLLOWING HIS VISIT,
Sir Magnus returned to the hackney in a bad mood and handed Susan a note on which an address was written in Mycroft’s distinctive copperplate.

“It really is the most boorish place,” complained the baronet. “All I said was ‘Good morning, Mycroft.’ I whispered, but you would have thought I was bellowing out ‘Hello, ladies, I’m just looking in’ from the way they carried on. Mycroft wouldn’t even talk to me, I had to write everything down for him.”

“You know their rules,” said Susan. “I believe you talk just to annoy him. Anyway, you got an address.”

“Gregory Cornet’s in Curzon Street is the only barbershop that fits all the criteria,” said Sir Magnus. “Its lower cellar was a temple to Bast, once upon a time.”

“The Egyptian goddess?”

“Yes, the fiscal procurator for several successive Roman governors was Egyptian and had a thing for the old cat . . . I get my hair cut at Cornet’s by Radziwill. I do hope he’s not involved. A good barber is hard to find.”

“Really?” asked Susan, pointedly staring at the not very successful Vandyke which was a fairly recent addition to Magnus’s upper lip and chin.

“Yes. It makes the whole thing so much more difficult. Maybe we should hand this over to Dadd and the Peep O’Day Boys.”

“Because of your barber?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. I suppose I’ve lost confidence after the whole Krongeitz business.”

“I think we should go to Cornet’s and you should get your beard shaved off,” said Susan. “I will wait and observe, making caustic comments, in the role of your fiancée.”

“I wish you would be my fiancée.”

“You know we’re not going to talk about that until you’re completely recovered,” said Susan. “As I was saying, this will allow us to get a feel for the place, and we may well sense any unusual vibrations that would confirm the location.”

“So we walk into what is probably an enemy lair and I sit down and ask to have a razor put to my throat,” said Magnus. “Besides, what do we do if it is the place?”

“I doubt the barbershop, or your Radziwill, is actually involved,” said Susan. “Think about it. They’ve been there too long, and it’s too public. I expect we’ll find they’ve a new odd-jobs man who lurks in the cellar, or something like that.”

“Maybe,” replied Magnus. “But it could be they’re all in it, a secret society of barber-illuminati.”

“Yes, it could,” admitted Susan. “In which case, I will give you the blue pill.”

Magnus looked at her very seriously. “I really would prefer it didn’t come to that.”

“Dadd is sure that occasional use of the blue pill will actually advance your cure,” said Susan gently.

“Dadd is sure of more things than he should be,” said Magnus. “But it’s you I’m worried about. You know I can’t control—”

“I have the necklace, and the antagonist. I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t hand this over to Dadd?”

“Yes,” replied Susan, with considerable certainty. “Here we are. Do we go in?”

“I suppose we do,” said Magnus.

“Y
OU WISH ME
to shave the beard?” asked Radziwill. “It has barely had a chance to begin.”

“Cut off in its youth,” sighed Sir Magnus. He rolled his eyes to where Susan was sitting primly on a chair, apparently reading the copy of the
Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine
that she had taken from her bag. “But it has to go.”

“Interesting place you have here, Mr. Radzorwell,” said Susan over the top of the magazine. “I’ve never seen anywhere like this.”

“Ladies do not usually come inside,” said Radziwill in a very dampening manner. He began to strop his razor, which both Magnus and Susan noted was silver handled, and possibly the blade was silver too. “It is a gentlemen’s establishment.”

“Where does that charming little stair go?” asked Susan. She pointed past the row of curtained booths to the far end of the room, where a brass-railed stair curled down beside a wall of massive, ancient stones.

“The cellar, ma’am, where we store our scents and oils,” said Radziwill.

“Oh, I should like to see that!” exclaimed Susan. She got up and started to walk towards the stair. But she had hardly taken a step when the curtains of every booth on either side slid back, to reveal twelve other barbers, each holding a silver razor. Radziwill made the thirteenth, and there were no customers in sight.

“Damn,” exclaimed Magnus, delivering a savage kick to Radziwill’s groin at the same time he leapt out of the chair. The barber grimaced and swung back with the razor, which Magnus countered with a swirl of the sheet that had been around his shoulders a moment before.

Susan sat back down and opened her bag with a click. Reaching quickly inside, she pulled out a large blue pill.

“Magnus!”

Magnus turned his head and opened his mouth. Susan threw the blue pill unerringly down his gullet and immediately reached into the bag to withdraw a necklace of shimmering blue stones, which she dropped over her head.

“I really wish you weren’t involved in this, Radziwill,” said Magnus, parrying another swipe. “You’re an excellent barber . . . argh!”

Radziwill looked at his razor in puzzlement. He had swung, but as far as he could tell had cut only the sheet which Magnus had been employing as something between a baffle and a main-gauche.

Magnus screamed and raised his arm. Only it wasn’t an arm anymore, but a loathsome tentacle, lined with huge suckers that were ringed with glistening fangs.

Radziwill was clearly the adept, for he immediately recognized what Magnus was becoming. He shouted a word of power that had no effect whatsoever and ran for the door, only to be shot in the head by Susan. She stood on the chair with her back pressed to the wall, the glowing necklace on her breast and a lady’s purse revolver in her hand, the barrel smoking.

Magnus’s screams quickly became no longer human, many more tentacles manifested out of what had once been his body, and within a minute at the most, there were no more living barber-illuminati.

The thing that Magnus had become slid across the floor of the shop, squelching through blood and torn flesh towards the front door and the street.

Susan put her revolver away, took a twisted paper packet from her bag, and stepped off the chair. The monster paid her no attention. One long tentacle began to caress the door, feeling for how it might be opened.

Susan lifted off the necklace with her left hand. Instantly the creature swung about. Two tentacles shot towards her, sucker-rings protruding, all the teeth out. She calmly ducked aside and threw the contents of the paper across the tentacles, creating a cloud of blue dust that very slowly twisted and danced about on its slow way to the floor.

It took a few minutes for Magnus to become human again. Susan spent the time preparing a slow match to the store of hair oil in the cellar, being careful not to disturb the daffodil brew that was bubbling on the iron stove in one corner, though she did pocket the comb that was on a worn marble plinth next to the stove. It was a very fine ivory comb engraved with a crest that she recognized at once, though it was not a royal one.

When she came back up, Magnus had managed to get most of the blood and matter off himself and was wearing a clean robe with a towel wrapped around his head. He had not managed to completely clean the vomit from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were wild.

“He . . . the adept . . . put a s-s-s-ilence charm and interrupt-me-not on the d-d-door,” he said, teeth chattering. “It will break when you pull it open. N-n-n-ice of them, don’t you think?”

“Very handy,” agreed Susan. She took him by the arm and pulled the door open, putting two fingers in her mouth to whistle for Carstairs. The cab was just down the street and it came smartly up, so that Susan and Magnus could jump inside and be away at least thirty seconds before smoke began to billow from the underparts of the barbershop.

“What was I this time?” asked Magnus, as they sped away.

“I don’t know,” replied Susan. “Something with tentacles. A lot of tentacles.”

Magnus was silent for a while. He looked out the window at the city and all the people and the life beyond. Susan watched him. Finally he turned to her and spoke.

“Sometimes I think you are too ready to employ the blue pill.”

“No!” protested Susan. “I really didn’t expect to need you to transform. I never thought they’d all be in it, or that they would suspect us and be ready. I mean, how could they know we were coming . . . oh, I see.”

“Yes,” agreed Magnus. “Much more convenient for Mycroft if all the barbers were eliminated. He, too, finds feeding me blue pills useful. Especially when I can be directed against enemies of the state. Sometimes I wonder if he has told Dadd to tell me they are helpful, when I fear that in fact they prolong my condition.”

Susan nodded and reached out to pull him down, so that his head was on her lap. Magnus resisted for a moment, then relented. Susan took off the towel and lightly scratched his head through his hair.

“I’ll get better,” whispered Magnus. “No blue pill then, and my nights will be my own.”

“Yes,” said Susan. “You will get better.”

She did not look at her bag, and its box of Krongeitz pills, the blue . . . and the yellow. Magnus did not know about the yellow pills.