Medi-Evil 3 (9 page)

 
“It’s the same smell,” Rupert confirmed.

 
“The same, I imagine, that you’d notice if you burned one of these,”
O’Calligan
said, sidling along to a pile of tallow candles. “Certain candles in this house have been impregnated with the same agent. I believe one such was given to Lord and Lady
Chillerton
.”

 
“By Jove!” the judge blurted out. “There
was
a curious smell in that room.”

 
“It probably became evident when the candle had burned half-way down,”
O’Calligan
said.
“A clever device.
And just to make sure it wasn’t detected, that candle was later removed. If you remember, Cedric, it wasn’t there when we went back to the room?”

 
Cedric nodded, almost despondently. “That’s right, sir, it wasn’t.”

 
“Lady
Lightbourne’s
pomander had also been taken,”
O’Calligan
added. “You recall I said there was something missing after she’d died? At the time we looked for jewelry, but actually it was the pomander that Lady
Foxworth
herself tied to Lady
Lightbourne’s
wrist as a Christmas gift. You see these ingredients?” And he presented a dish containing dried, sliced oranges, bundles of herbs and what looked like a scattering of cinnamon and nutmeg. “That pomander was made up down here. Almost certainly, it too was laced with the fatal material, so that at some point the smell was given off. We didn’t notice it when we arrived up there because the window was open. The cold air had wafted it away.”

 
“But if the smell had gone and the pomander been taken, how was Lady
Lightbourne’s
husband killed?” Rupert asked.

 
O’Calligan
moved to the final item on the work table. It was a block of household notepaper, gold-trimmed.

 
“We found fragments of paper just like this in his fire.” He glanced up at them. “An element of conjecture is perhaps required at this point. Suppose an unsigned letter was slipped under the bedroom door. Who knows what it contained … maybe a promise to reveal the identity of Lady
Lightbourne’s
murderer before the night was out.
Whatever it said, suppose it intrigued Lord
Lightbourne
enough for him to keep it secret.
Suppose it also instructed him to burn it once he’d read it.”

 
“You mean the letter itself was imbued with the substance?” the judge said. He sniffed at the notepaper. “Good God, it
is
.”

 
“As soon as it burned, the smell became strongly noticeable,”
O’Calligan
said. “Again, it became a deadly lure.”

 
“It’s ingenious,” the judge replied.

 
“And quite fiendish.”
O’Calligan
moved to a corner, where, alongside another line of bell-ropes, some bulky object was hidden beneath
a dingy
sailcloth. “Because the real horror, gentlemen, lies under this.”

 
When he whipped the sailcloth back, even
O’Calligan
wasn’t entirely sure what he would find. He’d already heard the thing, but he hadn’t seen it. He hadn’t expected, however, to find an empty cage.

 
It was filthy, packed with straw and sawdust, and all manner of foul detritus, but it was empty all the same. However, as they gazed at it, their eyes took in other things. The cage was large, for example; much larger than the average rabbit-hutch. Also, it had what looked like a gate in its rear section, and, thanks to a rope-and-pulley system, that gate currently hung open, though it only gave access to a wire-grille passage which vanished through a cavity in the wall, almost certainly joining with the labyrinth of priests’ tunnels.

 
It seemed to take an age before the
realisation
struck home.

 
“It’s on the prowl again,”
O’Calligan
said slowly.

 
Just as he said this, a shrill scream came echoing down through the vaults of the house, amplified by the network of passages.

 
“Hannah,” Rupert breathed. “Good God, Hannah!” And he dashed to the stairs.

 
They raced up through the building, drawing their weapons, and at last reached the door to Lady
Foxworth’s
apartments. Inevitably it was locked. This time they didn’t wait for tools, but went at it with the hilts of their swords and grips of their pistols, and at last they broke it down and burst through. The opulent living chamber within was bare of life, but on the far side another door stood open on the bedroom. They dashed through it as a group – and were greeted by a scene of nightmarish terror.

 
The handsome mistress of the house lay twisted across her divan. Her flowing chemise had been torn open at the front, exposing her breasts but also her milk-white throat, now ripped asunder and spouting blood.
On the far side of the chamber, crouched in a corner as though trying to hide amid the drapes and cushions, the miscreant was still present.

 
“Behold, gentlemen,”
O’Calligan
cried, “the assassin of
Silvercombe
Hall.”

 
They gazed, hair prickling, upon a ghastly, misshapen creature. It was a rodent; of that there was no doubt. In fact, by its hooked front teeth, grey matted fur and blood-dabbled
whiskers,
it was a rat, a buck-rat. But the size of it! Though huddled in a ball, it was over three feet long from nose to tail. Its crimson eyes were pin-points of evil, its claws horribly twisted, as though they’d many times been broken and re-formed. As it gazed back at them, it gave a hideous, hoarse squeal, a deep, guttural thing that seemed to rumble in its blood-filled guts.

 
“Good God!” Judge Prendergast exclaimed. “Good God in Heaven!”

 
They were, all of them, still
paralysed
with shock when it sprang on the offensive. This time, though, it was outnumbered. Before it had even crossed the room, either to attack or simply to bolt back through the aperture in the adjoining bath-chamber, they’d discharged their firearms. A succession of explosive
roars
boomed through the house; the room was suddenly swimming in gunpowder smoke.

 
And the rat-thing lay dead.

 
Killed instantly.
Torn apart by a great storm of shot.

 
Slowly, still astounded, Judge Prendergast stumbled forward. “What in the name of Heaven … is this some demon from the pit?”

 
“Not at all,”
O’Calligan
said. “It is – or was – as real as you or I. One of those many famous exotic pets brought back from the Indies.
Or a descendent of one.
Either way, it was beaten, mistreated,
brutalised
to the point where it would kill on command.”

 
“And still you blame my sister?” came Rupert
Foxworth’s
voice, suddenly thick with grief. He turned to face them from the divan, his eyes swollen with tears. “You have the nerve to blame Hannah, though she also lies dead by this monstrosity’s teeth?”

 
O’Calligan
was confounded. In the shock of the moment, the factor of Lady
Foxworth’s
death had eluded him. But if she wasn’t the one, who
… ?

 
With a loud
click
, a firing-pin was drawn back.

 
The men turned – to find Cedric in the doorway, a massive blunderbuss in his hands, which he trained on them unwaveringly. “No foolish moves, my lords,” he said gloomily.

 
There was brief stupefaction, and then
O’Calligan
gave a long, low sigh of understanding.
“Of course.
The loyal servant.
Who loved Lady
Foxworth
from when she was knee-high, and raised her almost as his
own.
”

 
“
Him?
”
Rupert said incredulously.

 
“Who else?”
O’Calligan
replied. “Who else would be party to the inner secrets of this house?
To your sister’s private affairs?”

 
“I advised her against it,” Cedric said mournfully. “All her life, I advised her. To walk the thorny paths of political intrigue is foolish, I said. Enjoy the comforts of
home,
be content as lady of the manor. But no … the older she grew, the more her ambition to glorify the
Foxworth
name. Especially when King James came to the throne and all doors seemed to close on her. She became more determined than ever. She was still comely, she said. She knew she could gain from it …”

 
“You killed my sister, you wretch!”
Rupert shrieked.

 
Cedric remained calm, if deeply sad. “Once news came that James would flee, the careful work of seducing him was for nothing. In fact, as has been astutely
recognised
, it backfired badly. My lady thought she’d head to France. Maybe re-join with His Catholic Majesty there. But with Master Rupert back home again, she’d have had to leave everything …
Silvercombe
Hall, the family plate. In short, she’d have gone there a pauper. And would King James want her then, when he himself was shriven of wealth?” The retainer shook his aged head. “It’s bad enough even for women who succeed in wielding their charms as political weapons. Look at the vilification heaped on Countess
Castlemaine
after the death of Charles. But if they
don’t
succeed … they become guttersnipes, drab-tails. Well, I loved her too much to let that happen.”

 
“You loved her, yet you planned a fate for her like this?” Judge Prendergast said, indicating the ravaged body.

 
Cedric shook his head: “It wouldn’t have been like this, but you gentlemen forced my hand. I thought to weave a web of deceit, to eliminate a number of prominent folk … in a baffling, bewildering way which no man could fathom. All along of course, the
real
target would be Master Rupert, the agent of our misfortunes.”

 
Rupert looked aghast. “What’s that?”

 
“You heard me, my lord,” Cedric said, his tone turning sour. “You and your cronies, not seeing the way the wind was blowing when King James came to the throne. Making war on him like it was a game in the nursery.
And when it’s all over, rushing off to exile, leaving your sister to pick up the pieces.
Little wonder she did the things she did. She needed to, just to survive.”

 
“But, but …” Rupert seemed lost for words.

 
Cedric continued: “But you were to die here because you
had
to, not because you deserved it. As I say, I sought to hide your murder amongst a number of others. And once you were dead,
Silvercombe
Hall and all its trimmings would belong exclusively to my lady. She could then sell it off, and live abroad in safety and comfort. Unfortunately, because of this fellow here,
O’Calligan
, the plan failed.”

 
Cedric now turned to face the Irishman. “You’ve always performed your office well, captain. You treated my lady with respect and courtesy, but the further you progressed in your investigations, the more apparent it became that she, herself, might take the blame for my scheming. As you said, she had reasons – unlikely reasons, but reasons nevertheless – to kill all of her guests. Your discoveries tonight were the final straw.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “It was an
easer
decision to end it for her than it should have been. Her life as she knew it was finished anyway. Better to make her a victim rather than a perpetrator, I thought. Better to spare her the shame of the block and eternal infamy.”

 
“Are you a madman?” Rupert breathed. “You condemned my sister to death rather than face a trial that might very well have acquitted her!
And a torturous death at that!”

 
“She was unconscious,” the servant replied. “She’d have felt nothing.”

 
“We heard her scream …”

 
“A fleeting thing, while she was deep in sleep.” Cedric seemed utterly convinced of this, or perhaps he wasn’t allowing himself to consider otherwise. “When I attended to her earlier, I didn’t actually come up here to check that she hadn’t taken a sleeping-draught, but to make sure that she
had
. And then I doused her bed curtains in the carrion-effluent that I used to train the Sumatran rat. Compared to the others, it would be painless for her.”