The Women of Nell Gwynne's (13 page)

"I shall endeavor to be," said Lady Beatrice. With a significant glance at the Devere sisters, she hastened up the back stairs.

"Lordship's good name at stake and all..." muttered Mrs. Duncan, and had another dram of gin.

L
ADY BEATRICE RAN at her best speed, and arrived at last in the gallery. She paused a moment, catching her breath, listening. She heard Prince Nakhimov telling a long anecdote, to which Sir George, Pilkins, Ali Pasha and several valets were listening. Creeping to the edge of the grand staircase she beheld them through a fog of cigar smoke, seated around Lord Basmond's corpse.

Turning, she crossed the gallery and went up to the guests' rooms. She opened the count's door and stepped within. The candle still illuminated the room. By its light Lady Beatrice made a quick and thorough search for the levitation device.

Opening the count's trunk, she dug through folded garments. Upon encountering a book she drew it forth and examined it. It was merely a popular novel, but stuck within were a number of papers. One in particular bore an official seal, and appeared to have been signed by Metternich. Lady Beatrice's grasp of French was imperfect, but sufficient for her to make out a phrase here and there.
You will attempt by any means possible to see if bis lordship would be agreeable...do not need to remind you of the consequences if you fail...

"I did not know that whores were fond of reading."

Lady Beatrice looked up. A man stood in the doorway of the antechamber connecting to Count de Mortain's room. His accent was harsh, Germanic; he appeared to be the count's valet. He was holding a knife. Lady Beatrice considered her options, which were few.

"We aren't," she replied. "I was looking for the count; did you know there's been an accident? Lord Basmond is dead."

The valet had started toward her, menace in his eyes, but at her news he stopped in astonishment. "Dead!"

She hurled herself at him and bore him backward. They fell across the bed. The valet stuck at her with the knife. Lady Beatrice experienced then an eerie sense of stepping away from herself, of watching as the patient draft animal of her body bared its teeth and fought for its life. The struggle was a vicious one, as any fight between animals must be. Lady Beatrice was pleased to observe that her flesh had not lost the strength it had drawn upon in the Khyber Pass. She was particularly pleased to see herself wrenching the knife from the valet's hand and stunning him with a sharp downward strike of the pommel. He sagged backward, momentarily unconscious.

So far sheer instinct had preserved her; now Lady Beatrice picked herself up, poured a glass of water from the carafe on the bedside table, and dropped into it a button torn from her blouse. The button dissolved with a gentle hiss. She lifted the valet's head, murmuring to him in a soothing voice, and held the glass to his lips. He drank without thinking, before opening his eyes.

"
Danke, mutter...
" he whispered. He opened his eyes, looked up at Lady Beatrice, and started. "Filthy bitch! I'll kill you—"

"Bitch, unfortunately, yes. Filthy? Certainly not." Lady Beatrice held him down without much effort, as the drug took its swift effect. "And certainly not the sort of bitch who allows herself to be killed by men like you. Yes, you do feel unaccountably sleepy now, don't you? You can barely move. Just close your eyes and go back to Dreamland, dear. It will be so much easier."

When he lay unconscious at last, and having verified by lifting his eyelid that he was, in fact, unconscious, Lady Beatrice rose and considered him coldly. She lifted his legs onto the bed, removed his shoes, and moreover made certain adjustments to his clothing in order to suggest the lewdest possible scenario to anyone discovering him later. Then Lady Beatrice retrieved the papers she had dropped from the floor and secreted them in her bodice.

She left the room and closed the door quietly.

SIXTEEN:

In which a Curious Creature is introduced

Y
OU KNOW, I believe my sight has returned," said Ludbridge, blinking and rubbing his eyes. Mrs. Corvey, who had just finished changing her clothing while explaining how matters presently stood, turned to raise an eyebrow at him.

"My congratulations, Mr. Ludbridge. Lovely feeling, isn't it?"

"It is indeed, Mrs. Corvey."

"Now, Mr. Ludbridge, I believe I'll just go see how my ladies are getting on. Like to know why all the lights are burning at the Hall, as well. I suggest you avail yourself of the soap and the washbasin and polish yourself up a bit, eh? So you don't look quite so much as though you'd spent the last fortnight mucking about in caves. There's a hairbrush and a comb on the table you can use, too."

"Thank you, ma'am, I certainly shall."

Mrs. Corvey drew her shawl around her shoulders and stepped out into the courtyard. She walked briskly toward the Great Hall, watching the lit windows, and consequently was startled when she trod on something unexpected. She looked down. She stared for a long moment at what lay in the courtyard. Then Mrs. Corvey turned around and walked back to the room behind the stables. She opened the door and beheld Ludbridge in the act of washing his face. When, puffing and blowing like a walrus, he reached for a towel, she said:

"If you please, Mr. Ludbridge, there's a dead Frenchman outside. I wonder if you would be so kind as to come have a look at him?"

"Happy to oblige," said Ludbridge, and followed her out into the courtyard. When they reached the corpse he drew a small cylindrical object from his pocket and adjusted a switch on it. A thin beam of brilliant light shot from one end, occasioning a cry of admiration from Mrs. Corvey.

"Oh, I do hope Mr. Felmouth makes up a few of those for me!"

"We call them electric candles; very useful. Let's see the beggar..." Ludbridge shone the light on the dead man's face, and winced. Count de Mortain's features were still recognizable, for all that they were distorted and frozen in a grimace of fear; quite literally frozen too, blue with cold, glittering with frost. His arms were stretched above his head like a diver's, his fingers crooked as though clawing.

"What the deuce! This is Emile Frochard!"

"Not the Count de Mortain?"

"Not half. This fellow's a spy in the pay of the Austrians! But they've been blackmailing the real count. Shouldn't be surprised if they hadn't intercepted the invitation to this auction. Well, well. Damned odd. I wonder how he died?"

"I believe I have an idea," said Mrs. Corvey, glancing it the house. "I'll know more presently." "Ought we to do anything with him?" "No! Let him lie for now, Mr. Ludbridge."

L
ADY BEATRICE STOOD still a moment in the corridor outside the bedchambers, listening intently. Prince Nakhimov had apparently launched into another anecdote, something to do with hunting wolves. An icy gust of wind crossed the floor, so unexpected as to make Lady Beatrice start. Were she a less ruthlessly pragmatic woman, she had imagined some spectral origin to the chill. A moment's keen examination of the hallway revealed that a tapestry hung at the rear of the hall, moving as though stirred by a breeze. Lady Beatrice glimpsed the bottom of a door in the wall.

She approached it warily and drew the tapestry aside. The revealed door was ajar. Lady Beatrice saw beyond a short corridor, lit by moonlight through unglazed slit-windows, with another door at its end.

Venturing into the corridor, Lady Beatrice peered through one of the windows and saw that it was high in the air, in effect an enclosed bridge connecting the rear of the house with the tower atop the motte. She hurried across bare wooden planks and tried the door at the other end. It opened easily, for the lock was broken.

Lady Beatrice stood blinking a moment in the brilliant light of the room beyond. The light came not from candles or oil lamps, but from something very like an immense battery of de la Rue's vacuum lamps; and this astonished Lady Beatrice, for, as far as she had been aware, no one but the Gentlemen's Speculative Society had been able to build practical vacuum lamps.

Her astonishment was as nothing, however, compared to that of the room's occupant. He turned, saw her, and froze a moment. He might have been Lord Basmond's ghost, so like him he was; but smaller, paler, infinitely more fragile-looking. His hands and naked feet were white as chalk, and too long to seem graceful. In the way of clothing he wore only trousers with braces and a shirt, cuffs rolled up prodigiously, and a leather band about his nearly hairless head. Clipped to the band were several pairs of spectacles of different sorts, on swiveling brackets, and a tiny vacuum lamp that presently threw a flood of ghastly light upon his terrified face.

He screamed, shrill as a rabbit in a trap, and scuttled out of sight.

Lady Beatrice stepped forward into the circular chamber. Against the far wall was a small bed, a dresser and a washstand. In the midst of the room was a trap door, firmly shut and locked. Beside it was a sort of workbench, on which was what appeared to be a disassembled clock, and it was plain from the tools scattered about that the creature had been working on it when Lady Beatrice entered. The most remarkable thing about the room, however, was its decoration. All around the room's white plaster, reaching as high as ten to twelve feet, were charcoal drawings of machines: gears, pulleys, pistons, springs, wires. Here and there were what seemed to be explanatory notes in shorthand, quite illegible to Lady Beatrice. Nor was she able to discern any purpose or plan to the things depicted.

She walked around the workbench, searching for the room's inhabitant. He was nowhere in sight now, but there beyond the trap door was a chest roughly the size and shape of a blanket-press. Lady Beatrice knelt beside the chest.

"You needn't be afraid, Mr. Rawdon," she said.

From within the chest came a gibbering shriek, which cut off abruptly.

"Leave him alone," said another voice, seemingly out of midair. The illusion was so complete Lady Beatrice looked very hard at the wall, half-expecting to see a speaking tube. "Can't you see you can't talk to Hindley? Go talk to Arthur instead."