The Great Game (Royal Sorceress) (12 page)

“They won’t shout at you any longer,” Gwen assured her. The rat-like man was Lestrade, she guessed; there had always been something a little ratty about his face. “How did you stay in the house after Lady Mortimer died?”

“Her Ladyship insisted that I dedicate myself to the house,” Polly said. “She taught me how to read and write and do figures – and made me promise that I would keep the house as clean as possible for the next generation. And her son just kept me here.”

Gwen felt a flicker of sympathy for the young girl. She’d been a child when she’d been enslaved, then liberated, and then moved to a different kind of slavery. Her wages wouldn’t have been very high, if they’d existed at all. And one person, no matter how experienced, couldn’t hope to keep the entire house clean indefinitely. Mortimer Hall needed a small army of servants just to keep it free of dust. No wonder so many rooms were locked up. Polly had had no time to clean them at all.

And she’d been alone for at least five months. Gwen could understand
that
.

“I think you should get something to eat,” she said, finally. Polly
had
to be starving; Lestrade probably wouldn’t have allowed her anything to eat or drink while she’d been under arrest. “And then I need to have a few words with the Inspector.”

“Thank you, Milady,” Polly said. “Do you want anything to eat? Should I make food for the policemen?”

“Maybe later,” Gwen said. The nasty part of her mind was tempted just to say no, but the police would have to guard the house for several days. “Eat whatever you need to eat, then we can talk about what your master was doing before he died.”

She left Polly in the kitchen – after satisfying herself that there was no way out of the room that wasn’t guarded by a policeman – and found Lestrade studying some documents he’d found in a room on the ground floor. One of them was Lady Mortimer’s will, which noted that Mortimer Hall and its remaining contents were to be passed down to her son, but her jewellery collection was to be given to Polly. Judging from the descriptions, Polly should have found herself a few thousand pounds richer once they were sold, enough to convince London to overlook the colour of her skin. Assuming she’d ever received them...

“A motive for murder,” Lestrade said, in a tone that suggested that he found the case closed. “She would have inherited the jewels...”

“She would have inherited them without having to kill Sir Travis,” Gwen pointed out, coldly. Her mother had gone over writing a will with her, pointing out that it was a skill young ladies desperately needed. “There’s nothing written here to suggest that Polly would have to wait until after Lady Mortimer’s son was dead.”

She scowled down at the Inspector, allowing some of her anger to leak into her voice. “I Charmed her,” she added. “She wasn’t the murderer, Inspector.”

“Maybe Sir Travis insisted on keeping the jewels,” Lestrade insisted, stubbornly. “Wouldn’t
that
have provided a motive for murder?”

“She isn’t the murderer,” Gwen repeated, feeling her patience starting to snap. Lestrade might have had a point, but she doubted that Polly had it in her to be a killer. “Besides, we don’t even know if she
knew
she was going to get the jewels. She would hardly be the legal custodian of the estate.”

Lestrade grimaced at her for a long moment, then bowed his head. “Someone would have to serve as custodian while Sir Travis was in India,” he said. “I shall have him located and then we can ask about how the will was handled. But if the jewels went elsewhere...”

“I can pay for a lawyer, if necessary,” Gwen said, tartly.

Her mother’s lessons had been very clear. There were certain circumstances in which a particular bequest in a will could be overturned, but if the jewels in question had been Lady Mortimer’s, there should have been no grounds for refusing to pass them to Polly. Polite Society might want to balk at passing anyone to a black girl, particularly one of such questionable origins, yet they wouldn’t want to create a precedent that could be used to overturn other wills.

She smiled, remembering one of the stories her mother told. A will had gone missing and the property had been divided up according to law – and then the will had been rediscovered, several years later. Much of the property had gone to the wrong person. It had taken nearly a decade of legal wrangling before the property had been divided up again – and, in the meantime, two great families had practically been torn apart.

“But if not her,” Lestrade said, “then
who
?”

“A very good question,” Gwen agreed. “I plan to spend several hours speaking to Polly and learning everything she knew about her master’s business. Hopefully, that will give us some clues to follow. Meanwhile, I’d like you to have a few words with the constables who... interrogated her. They’re both fined one month’s salary.”

Lestrade stared at her. She rarely asserted herself so bluntly.

“Ah... one of them has a family,” he protested, finally. “Losing so much salary would be a grievous blow.”

“And yet he tortured a young girl in the hope he would learn something useful,” Gwen reminded him. “Would anything she said have been useful, if she said it just to make the pain stop? And the real killer would have made his escape while you were busy putting Polly in front of a judge, who would sentence her to be hanged.”

She frowned, then relented – slightly. “Half of his salary for the month,” she said. “And made it quite clear that I gave him that as a mercy, because of his family.”

“Thank you, Milady,” Lestrade said.

Gwen skimmed through the rest of the will. Most of it was legalese, but it seemed fairly straightforward. Sir Travis would inherit everything passed down from his father – Lady Mortimer would have been the custodian, rather than the owner – and most of his mother’s personal possessions. There were no charitable bequests or donations to the King, unsurprisingly; Lady Mortimer hadn’t had the financial resources to give much away on her deathbed.

She looked up at Lestrade. “Did Sir Travis leave a will?”

“We have yet to find one,” Lestrade admitted. “He had a locked safe in his bedroom, but we have been unable to open it. We think it has a magical lock.”

“I’ll deal with it,” Gwen promised. That was going to be tricky. Magical locks could be incredibly difficult to pick, even for a Master Magician. But there was no choice. No mundane safecracker could break into a safe that had been sealed with magic. “Once Polly is ready to attend, we’ll start going through his papers.”

“He may have left a will with a lawyer,” Lestrade added. “We’ve started some enquiries...”

“You might want to ask Lord Mycroft,” Gwen suggested. “If Sir Travis was working for him, it’s quite possible that any papers of his were stored in the government’s vaults.”

“He would probably give them to you,” Lestrade reminded her. “But I don’t think he would allow me to see the papers.”

Gwen had been told – by Mycroft’s brother – that in any crime scene it was important to look for three things; means, motive and opportunity. Put together, they always pointed to the most likely suspect. But right now, all she really had was the opportunity. Polly had been locked in her room, unable to interfere as the murderer entered the hall...

... And yet, how had he managed to prevent Sir Travis from noticing him until it had been far too late?

“Have the body moved to the hospital and ask Lucy to take a look at it,” Gwen ordered, as she passed the will back to Lestrade. “And then we’ll see what we can dig up.”

Chapter Ten

S
ir Travis’s suite was the cleanest part of the hall, Gwen decided after the body had been removed, leaving behind a chalk outline to signify where it had been. The bedroom was definitely intended to be regal, complete with a four-poster bed, while the bathroom was surprisingly modern for such an old house. It even had hot running water, something that she suspected that Polly would have found a mercy. The only alternative would have been to boil the water in the kitchen and then carry it up three flights of stairs to the bathroom.

The bedroom reminded her a little of David’s bedroom, back at Crichton Hall. Gwen had spent enough time sneaking in and out of her brother’s room – mainly to borrow books that her mother felt were unladylike – to know what a boy’s bedroom was like – apart from fewer books and more toys, there was little difference between this one and her brother’s room. Sir Travis had left his model soldiers on a table, even if he hadn’t played with them in years. Perhaps the adult had found it comforting to sit and contemplate the time when all that mattered was playing with toys.

She picked up one of the model soldiers and frowned. One of her detractors had sent her – anonymously, although she suspected Colonel Sebastian – a set of expensive dolls, handmade by craftsmen in Surrey. It had been intended as a mocking reminder that she’d spent most of her childhood playing with dolls, like any other well-bred young lady... but men spent time playing with dolls too. Only they called them toy soldiers, not dolls. The difference escaped her, unless the adults thought that they taught valuable life skills. Given how poorly Gwen had treated her dolls, it was easy to believe that she would make a very poor mother.

The wardrobes were almost empty, apart from a number of trousers and jackets so outdated that they had to have belonged to Sir Travis’s father. There was very little that seemed to belong to Sir Travis, which struck Gwen as odd. Most upper-class men had considerable wardrobes, even the ones who professed to disdain fashion; one never knew when one might have to change suddenly. Even if Sir Travis had only had his salary from Mycroft, he should have been able to buy more suitable clothes. Perhaps he just didn’t care enough to bother.

Or maybe he didn’t want to be lumbered
, she thought. She’d had to attend the departure ceremony for Lord St. Simon, the new Viceroy of India, and he’d taken seven trunks of clothing with him. But Sir Travis might have been smart enough not to want to drag so much gear with him, wherever he went.

She stepped back and peered over at the portrait of George III on the wall. The King looked like he had in his youth, before the mental troubles that had eventually caused him to collapse into madness – a curse, some said, put on him by an American rebel. George had been the backer of Professor Cavendish when he’d been systematising magic, his redemption for his disastrous decision to dismiss Pitt the Elder years ago. If Pitt had remained Prime Minister, France would have been defeated so utterly that she would never have been able to challenge Britain again.

“It’s behind the portrait,” Polly said, as she entered the room. “It took several days to install it properly.”

Gwen nodded, running her hands down the side of the portrait until she found the lever. There was a click and the portrait swung open, revealing a metal safe blurred into the wall. A Changer had been involved, Gwen realised, as she studied his handiwork. It would be very difficult to hack it out of the stone and cart it off to open at leisure.

“The key only worked for him,” Polly explained. “When he died, I think it was meant to stop working.”

Gwen scowled. That was... odd, even in the most paranoid government departments. If someone died unexpectedly, there should be at least one other person with access to the safe – or the contents would be lost forever. Lestrade had left Sir Travis’s keys on the desk when he’d had the body removed, so Gwen used her magic to call them to her – Polly’s eyes went wide when she saw them flying through the air – and pushed the key into the safe. Nothing happened.

For the key to work, it has to be held by the right person
, she reminded herself.
For the lock to work, it has to have the right key, which has to be activated in turn. And it can only be activated by one person. Very secure
.

“I think it did,” she said. There was no point in pressing the dead man’s hand against the key; the magic woven into the object wouldn’t recognise the corpse as its rightful owner. “I’m going to have to break into it.”

“You can’t,” Polly objected. “The Master was very certain that no one could break in.”

Gwen smiled. A Mover could have opened the safe – if he could see what he was doing, which the magic would render impossible. But a Mover and a Seer, working together... it wasn’t possible for anyone other than a Master Magician. And it would be difficult even for her.

“Let me concentrate,” she said, pressing her hand against the safe and closing her eyes. The safe seemed to glow in her mind’s eye, warded with enough magic to make opening it a nightmare. Whoever had done the Infusing had done a very good job. “And don’t let anyone into the bedroom while I’m working.”

She pushed her awareness towards the safe, wishing that she’d spent more time practising Seeing. It had its own dangers; like Sensitives, far too many Seers ended up in the madhouse when they lost control of their gifts. The safe looked oddly translucent in her mind’s eye, as if it wasn’t quite there. And it wasn’t, in a sense. She could send her awareness drifting right through it.

Concentrate
, she reminded herself, as she studied the lock. It was incredibly complex; if she hadn’t seen watchmakers at work, she would have suspected that magic had been used to build the mechanical side of the safe. The right key would open it; the wrong key would jam the lock permanently, if pushed too far. And the wrong sort of magic...

She realised the danger in the next second. Someone had been
very
clever and woven enough magic into the safe to trigger a fire if a Seer got too close. Not a protective rune, created by an Infuser, but something more basic. Gwen cursed out loud – she heard Polly gasp at the language – and reached out desperately, trying to pull the magic out of the safe. It was reluctant to bend to her will, but she pulled at it until it snapped. The rush of energy tore through her body and flashed out, smashing against the far wall. Polly let out a cry of shock, which Gwen barely heard. Instead, she sucked in the remaining magic and turned the key again. This time, the safe opened effortlessly.