Pax Britannia: Human Nature

by Jonathan Green

  "But as soon as we heard that Inspector Allardyce of Scotland Yard was staying here, in Whitby," said an enthusiastic young constable, coming to Allardyce's aid, something like hero-worship sparkling in his eyes, "we knew that we just had to get him on the case."

  Allardyce smiled, looking half embarrassed and half delighted with the complement he had just been paid.

  "Ah, so it is a busman's holiday then."

  "You could say that," Allardyce conceded. "Now, Quicksilver, if you wouldn't mind being about your business, then I can be about mine."

  Pushing past Ulysses, Allardyce approached the belligerent constable still questioning the increasingly irritated ringmaster.

  The near-skeletal MC gave Ulysses the impression that he was an incredibly patient man - having developed his tolerant attitude in the face of society's mistrust and ostracising, coupled with its fascination, nonetheless, for the freaks that inhabited the otherworld of which he was the master - and yet who was now being pushed to his absolute limit.

  Allardyce interrupted the constable's ongoing fruitless line of questioning with an abrupt: "Have you finished with this one?" pointing an accusing finger at the ghoulish ringmaster. To his mind, the man had already been tried and convicted, and now he was ready to see sentence passed.

  Ulysses sidestepped past the inspector and extended a hand towards the suddenly startled master of the Circus of Wonders. "Ulysses Quicksilver, special investigator of rum goings-on and uncanny occurrences," he said. "And you are?"

  Eyeing him like a hawk, the circus-master ignored Ulysses' proffered hand and instead doffed his hat - to expose a few straggly strings of lank grey shoulder-length hair - and took a bow, bending low at the waist.

  "They call me Steerpike, and I am indeed master of ceremonies at this Circus of Wonders," he announced, unfolding his body again and returning the hat to his head. "I am also known as the Incredible Eating Man," he said.

  With a flourish, he took an Edison bulb from a pocket of his tailcoat, a clockmaker's hammer from another, and then proceeded to break the bulb into a fingerless-mittened hand, and popped one of the larger pieces of glass into his mouth. There followed an uncomfortable crunching sound that set Ulysses' teeth on edge, which was followed by some moments of mastication, that sounded like the man was chewing a mouthful of grit, before Steerpike swallowed noisily and with an exaggerated dip and rise of his head. He opened his mouth wide, sticking out a long pink tongue, to show all assembled that his mouth was now completely empty, ever the showman to the last.

  "Very impressive," Ulysses said, offering up a short burst of applause.

  "Never mind all that," Inspector Allardyce butted in, his face locked in a grimace that made Ulysses think of a pit-bull chewing a wasp, and demanded of the man, "what have you found out?"

  "Still claims 'e and 'is freaks are innocent," the constable sighed with frustration.

  "Innocent?" Ulysses said, his ears pricking up at the merest hint of any miscarriage of justice taking place here.

  "Oh, here we go," Allardyce complained.

  "Innocent of what, exactly?" Ulysses asked, visions of local newspaper headlines cramming his head.

  "Murder, of course! I thought you had to be clever to go to Eton," the inspector added, giving Ulysses a disparaging look.

  "But not to be a policeman, eh? Just blinkered," Ulysses countered.

  "Look, if you're not off my patch in the next thirty seconds, I'll have you up before the local magistrate for obstructing police business!" Allardyce snarled. "Or perhaps," he said, suddenly smiling darkly, "you know more than you're letting on, and I should take you in for questioning."

  "Oh you know me, Inspector; nothing to hide here. In fact I would gladly offer myself up for interrogation, if you feel that it would help you bring this particularly nasty case to a satisfactory conclusion," Ulysses offered magnanimously.

  "Not bloody likely," Allardyce snarled. "Now bugger off."

  "Gladly, Inspector," Ulysses said, doffing his deerstalker to the red-faced policeman. "We wouldn't want to get in the way of justice now, would we, Nimrod?"

  "No, sir. Good day, Inspector."

  Without another word, Ulysses turned and began to stride away from the enticing Circus of Wonders and Inspector Allardyce's ham-fisted murder investigation.

  He glanced back over his shoulder once and caught the eye of the enigmatic Steerpike, and the waif-like girl now hanging off his arm, as the labouring policeman attempted to wheedle anything that might amount to an admission of guilt from the circus folk. Such a thing would wrap up this case nicely and be a feather in the cap of the disgraced copper as he was no doubt still trying to live down the disaster that had been the Jubilee debacle.

  Ulysses was certain that the mysterious master of ceremonies and his cronies had plenty of things to hide - secrets that they didn't want the rest of the world knowing about - but murder? Ulysses wasn't so sure. Why hang around in the wake of ten murders, when they could have packed up and been on their way by dawn the next day, if they were responsible? Travellers like those who made up the Circus of Wonders were good at avoiding unwanted attention by never staying in any one place for too long.

  And besides, the paper had recorded that the killings appeared to have been carried out by a wild animal of some kind. Some of the circus performers might be a little wilder than was the norm, but unless the freakshow's star attraction was the Hound of the Baskervilles, Ulysses sincerely doubted that anyone from the circus had anything to do with the mysterious deaths.

  "What did you make of that little lot, Nimrod?" he asked when they had left the Circus of Wonders well behind them.

  "If you ask me, sir, they're queer coves the lot of them," Nimrod said, his impeccably cultured tones dismissively aloof.

  "Hmm, I thought you'd say that," said Ulysses. "Anyway, we'd best not dally here any longer; we have an appointment to keep with our new friend Mr Rudge, do we not?"

  From behind a grassy hummock, inquisitive eyes watched the man in the deerstalker and his servant leave the circus behind and continue on their way, along the path that would lead them to the blasted expanse of Ghestdale.

  The sentience behind those eyes hoped that the men knew what they were letting themselves in for. Surely they had heard about the deaths. They had just been talking with the very policemen who were investigating the Barghest killings after all.

  Those same eyes had observed the meeting between the man in the deerstalker and the ginger-haired inspector with interest. There was obviously a history between the two of them and a mutual lack of respect.

  And yet still the man in the deerstalker and his companion were leaving to continue on alone to Ghestdale, that most damnable godforsaken place.

  Keeping low, out of sight of both the policemen and the circus folk, the watcher left the cover of the hummock and, keeping to the shelter of an ancient ditch, set off after the dandy and his valet.

  Chapter Eleven

  A Damsel in Distress

  Scuds of cloud raced across the leaden face of heaven, the greens, yellows and blues of sub-dermal hematomas bruising the corpse-grey epidermis of the sky.

  Everything in this wilderness had been shaped by the elements - the wind most of all - from the few gale-bent trees, looking like dowager-stooped witches, and the storm-scoured slabs of sandstone, denuded of any living thing other than the ever tenacious lichen, to the hardy heather and prickly gorse. Springs bubbled up to gurgle their way between the roots of grassy mounds, reshaping the landscape with geological slowness.

  With the rock-gnawing wind pricking the exposed skin of hands and faces, Ulysses took out his pocket watch for the umpteenth time since he and his manservant had begun their trek over the blasted heather and gorse-blanketed moors, between the wind-scoured tors of tumbled boulders and skirted the meandering streams and bogs of Ghestdale.

  He harrumphed and, flicking the case of his father's watch shut again, returned it to his waistcoat pocket.

  Nimr
od looked at him, raising one expectant eyebrow.

  "Three thirty. He's late."

  Eyes straining, Ulysses peered at the horizon, where the grey, overcast sky met the blasted moors, seeking the big man's brick shithouse silhouette. If it hadn't been for his trusty pocket watch he wouldn't have had any idea as to what time it was; it could have been any time between dawn and dusk, the quality of the light hadn't changed once since sun-up.

  Ulysses scanned the horizon again, as he had done every thirty minutes or so since they had come upon the tumbledown shepherd's hut. Rudge might only be half an hour late, but Ulysses had been waiting to meet with him again as soon as he and Nimrod had left the Black Swan three hours before.

  "It looks like the mysterious Mr Rudge is going to prove himself to be as untrustworthy as you at first suspected, Nimrod," Ulysses said, with a bitter sigh.

  "It would appear so, sir," Nimrod agreed. "If it helps to settle your mind at all, I do so hate it when I'm right."

  "Thanks, Nimrod, but don't worry, old chap. We'll give him until four, shall we, before heading back?"

  "As you wish, sir."

  Ulysses felt irritable, a condition brought on not only by Rudge's failure to make their meeting. It was also exacerbated by the biting cold and the gurgling, churning hunger gnawing away at his belly. He realised now that he hadn't eaten anything since putting away the full English Nimrod had served up that morning back at the guest house. The only sustenance he had had since then were a couple of drinks back in Whitby and the revitalising effects of the alcohol had long since worn off.

  It was already beginning to get dark, the texture of the sky becoming still more leaden as the sun sank steadily towards the horizon, behind the ever-present pall of cloud. It was as if North Yorkshire had its own inescapable pall, just like London had its ever-present Smog.

  For want of anything better to do, considering the circumstances, and as a means of trying to keep the marrow-numbing cold at bay, Ulysses continued picking his way between the hummocks of knotty, yellowing grass and the peaty bog-holes that could so easily ensnare the unwary.

  A hundred yards away he could see the start of a defile among the otherwise near-featureless rolling moorlands of Ghestdale; a stream-cut hollow between scrubby bushes, exposed sandstone stacks. The air was redolent with the peaty smell of standing water and no doubt buzzing with moorland midges. Ulysses turned his steps towards the moorland morass, watchful for rabbit holes and half-hidden sink-holes between the tufts of grass and tangle-stemmed bushes of gorse.

  There were worse things than rabbit holes on Ghestdale that might endanger the unwary explorer, of course. First there were the peat-steeped pot holes, sucking hollows of saturated peat-mud, perfectly blended into the surrounding landscape thanks to the rafts of sphagnum moss and grasses that anchored their roots in the rich loam, insubstantial as water and yet with all the lethal clinging might of quicksand. Any who stumbled into one of them had better have some means of getting themselves out again or they would be swallowed up within a matter of minutes, drowning in the soupy mud.

  And then there were the abandoned mine-workings that riddled the rocks beneath Ghestdale. Whitby and its immediate environs possessed some of the finest deposits of jet in, not only the British Isles, but the whole of the empire of Magna Britannia and, in fact, the world. A black, fossilized wood, jet could be intricately carved and given a superb polish which made for some fabulous pieces of jewellery and other trinkets. The stuff had been mined in the region for centuries and during the mid-nineteenth Whitby supported a very successful jet industry, the interest from the royal family at the time helping it become highly fashionable.

  Although the manufacture of jet jewellery and the like still took place in the town, it was nowhere near the peak it had enjoyed a hundred years before. The mines, however, remained, many of them worked out completely, treacherous tunnels left neglected, pit-props left to rot, galleries becoming water-logged by the run-off that was once pumped out, so that now many tunnels were unsafe, or flooded, or had collapsed under the weight of rock and earth above them.

  Ulysses was roused from his distracted musings by the cry of a woman.

  "Did you hear that?" he asked, turning to his companion.

  "Yes, sir, I did."

  "Unless I'm very much mistaken, that sounded like a damsel in distress," Ulysses said, his pace already quickening to a run, forcing Nimrod to lengthen his strides to keep up.

  Running as fast as he could, almost entirely heedless now of any potential pitfalls that might catch him out, Ulysses sprinted for the defile hidden between the gorse, from where he was certain the cry had come.

  And as he ran, so his mind raced too, as - adrenalin flooding his system - he began to imagine what might await them. The first thought that came into his head was that the woman had been attacked; the next moment his mind was flooded with images of savaged bodies, like those unfortunate wretches that had been found dead here on the moors, carcasses slashed open, gutted by gouging claws, arms and legs bent at unnatural angles, looking like so many discarded ragdolls. Suddenly his comment about there being a damsel in distress seemed in terribly bad taste.

  Reaching the top of the defile, he flung himself through a tangled thicket of thorns, tearing the lining of his cape open as he ran, stumbling down over the tumbled stones at his feet. He rounded a spur in the defile, half-expecting to see the body of a young woman lying there, gutted and jointed like a Sunday roast, some monstrous hellhound - all black fur and glowing-coal eyes - standing over its trophy, blood dripping from its cruel jaws; so much so, that he stumbled to an abrupt halt in surprise when that wasn't what confronted him in the hollow at all.

  Sitting rather uncomfortably on the damp ground, with her back to him, was indeed a young woman, her taut figure hidden beneath a well-tailored Harris tweed jacket and knickerbockers of the same material, long woollen socks covering the shapely curve of her well-toned calves, with practical walking boots on her feet and her long blonde hair carefully plaited and tied up in a bun beneath her hat. And rather than further cries of pain or terror, Ulysses could hear her berating herself.

  "You fool girl," she said, "you've been out on these moors a hundred times and look at you, caught out by a rabbit hole! You can be such an idiot!"

  The expectant look of horror on Ulysses' face turning to one of curious delight, he picked his way across the floor of the shallow gorge that he might come to the aid of his damsel in distress.

  His highly developed sixth sense flared, shaking him out of his ever-so slightly lecherous reverie, with white hot awareness. He already had his hands up to defend himself as the animal launched itself at him, yapping furiously.

  Hearing the noise, the woman's head suddenly snapped round, and for a moment, Ulysses fancied he could see the image of the devil dog reflected in the pupil's of her wide brown eyes, behind the lenses of her round, wire-rimmed glasses, as if she too were half-expecting to see the same thing that his imagination had conjured. And then, with a blink, the imagined monster was gone, as was the brief grimace of terror, to be replaced by a pink-cheeked look of embarrassment.

  "Rover!" she barked at the terrier now leaping up and down in front of Ulysses. "Leave the poor gentleman alone. Now, Rover! Heel!"

  "Oh, don't mind him," Ulysses said, keeping his hands out low at his waist, just in case, "he's only looking out for his mistress."

  "That's very gracious of you, Mr...?"

  "Quicksilver, Miss, but call me Ulysses, please."

  For a moment something like recognition or curiosity flashed across the young woman's features. Her clear complexion and soft, yet firm skin gave her the natural, understated beauty of an English Rose. Ulysses judged that she couldn't have been older than thirty and was most likely still in her mid-to late twenties.

  "But his mistress should be looking out for herself, the silly thing," she said crossly. It took Ulysses a moment to realise that the 'silly thing' she was referring to was herself and not
the terrier, which was now prancing around the young woman, watching Ulysses intently and giving off the occasional small growl to remind this interloper who the alpha male was around here.

  Ulysses knelt down beside her, meeting her worried, embarrassed look with a kind smile. "Now, what seems to be the problem, Miss...?"

  "Haniver. Jennifer Haniver."

  "Haniver," Ulysses repeated. There was something strangely familiar about that name. Now, where had he heard it before?

  Ulysses offered her his hand and she took it, surprising him with the firmness of her shake.

  "Pleased to meet you, Miss Haniver," unable to be anything other than utterly charming, finding himself in the company of another attractive young woman. There was a tired sigh from Nimrod behind him and Ulysses could imagine his manservant's eyebrows raised in disapproval and exasperation.

  "It's my ankle," she explained, rubbing at the joint beneath her sock. "I caught my foot in a rabbit hole - silly old fool - and went over on it. Should've been looking where I was going, rather than for paw-prints, shouldn't I?"

  "May I?" Ulysses asked, reaching out towards the young woman's ankle.

  "No, please do."

  He carefully squeezed the flesh beneath the wool.

  "Out doing a bit of hunting, were you?" he asked, innocuously.

  "You might say that."

  "Partridge? Woodcock, was it?"

  The young woman paused for a moment before answering, as if trying to assess how this stranger might take her next remark. "The Barghest Beast, actually."

  With a sharp intake of breath Miss Haniver flinched, trying to pull her foot away, which only caused her to actually cry out in pain.

  "I'm sorry. I'm being as careful as I can."

  "Go on," Jennifer said, holding her leg and biting her lip, in an effort not to jerk her leg away again. "I'll try not to move this time - I promise."

  Holding the back of her leg in his right hand, Ulysses tentatively felt the flesh around the ankle itself.