Agatha & the Scarlet Scarab

by Karl Fish

  ‘Eight, eight hundred. Nine, nine hundred. T–’ Ilya counted to himself before the heavens were ablaze with the summer storm that brought pyrotechnic sheets of lightning to the sky. It was so bright that if anyone at that time had gazed towards the heavens, the silhouette of a green-eyed gargoyle glaring from the roof would surely have caught their attention.

  The extending creak of timber cracking under pressure was suddenly met with a ferocious explosion of forty dogs forcing their way out of the kennels. Light work was made of the sack as the pack tore it to shreds and ran off with the rope on the scent trail Ilya had set for them. Wild animals scattered and took cover in their burrows as the canine force thundered across the grounds. The pack was so loud that even the heavens themselves could not drown out their noise. Within a moment, the servants and staff at Huntington Hall had fallen silent, the dawning of the commotion and the escaping hounds triggered them into action. Alighting from their quarters they hadn’t expected what was to happen next.

  ‘Oh Christ, I think the main gate is down,’ cried one man.

  ‘I locked it. I definitely locked it!’ shouted the gatekeeper back.

  ‘The pack are getting further away. I can hear them. They’re tracking something.’

  ‘Everybody who can handle one – grab a shotgun or rifle. All others, grab leashes and low lights and follow me.’

  Ilya had calculated at least twenty staff during his weeks of surveillance. Sure enough, he counted twenty-two as they were leaving the servants’ quarters and chase the disappearing pack out of the grounds. He waited patiently for any more signs of life but Huntington Hall was eerily silent itself as the flashes of lightning and thunderous rain deluged it from the skies above.

  Chapter 30

  Pieces

  ‘Lemons?’ Belle replied, confused. ‘No, not really.’

  Nathaniel’s acute sense of smell was certain that the sharp citrus undertones emanated from the remains of the papers that were ripped to pieces and lay in the discarded bin, disguised by the mound of coats on top of them. Removing several remnants, he held them aloft, one by one, to the dimly lit single bulb at the centre of Monty’s office, as if he was surveying negatives in a lab. Squinting with his good eye, he focused intently on the paper.

  ‘Help me, Belle,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure in this light my eye can focus as well as it would in the daylight.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’ she enquired.

  ‘Whatever clues your father saw fit to leave us,’ he replied. ‘Inhale from the paper before you look. I guarantee you will eventually pick up a scent of lemons. We need to focus on the papers with the lemony smells first, which will give us the pieces of the puzzle before we put them back together.’

  Belle duly copied Nathaniel, sceptical there was any scent of citrus at all. Then, after several pieces of paper, it hit her, a full zing of zest. ‘What now?’ she asked.

  ‘Try and piece the torn segments back together. There may be dozens of them but once we are able to determine a single page the rest will follow.’

  ‘Just like a jigsaw then, Nate, “Corners first?” as Dad would say and then all the straight edges.’

  ‘Corners first,’ Noone agreed.

  They worked relentlessly into the night. Noone had wished Monty had been less aggressive in his shredding of paper but no doubt there had been good reason. The first piece of paper they were confident they had solved was stuck together hastily with Sellotape. The bonded edges coursing like veins across the paper jigsaw.

  Belle held up the paper towards the low wattage of the pendulous office bulb. Sure enough, an image began to present itself. Concentrating in detail, the light revealed the negative lines of lemon that had been quickly transferred onto the paper in its transparently copied outline.

  ‘It’s difficult to catch the full image, Nate. You’re right, the bulb is too dim. I think we need the daylight from the windows to see it for sure.’

  ‘Let’s carry on until morning. We should have resurrected all the documents by then,’ Noone said and reluctantly sighed.

  *****

  Nightfall came before Professor Malcolm finally finished removing the parchment from the scrolls. It was too late to sufficiently observe them from the pinnacle window and via the natural sunlight that streamed through intermittently during the day. Instead, the Professor used a single candle, as he had employed so many times in his Entomology department back at the Museum, and moved from square to square to reveal the true images and negative impressions of the original glyphs. If this was now the true face of the original and which would lead to the code being broken, it would come to fruition with the sunrise. He turned to the untouched G&T, the ice now melted, and drank the clear liquid in one large gulp. He hoped it would help him sleep and postpone the decision he would need to take the following morning, but it did not work.

  It would be hours until daybreak when he could truly look upon the ancient scrolls with revised wonder. He feared what they may reveal. As he searched for his spectacles, which were usually on top of his head whenever he lost them, he heard the tiny tapping of insects on glass. The noise was consistent and repetitive. Taking the candle that was now in the final stages of its waxy life, he made his way to the wall of vivarium’s and enclosures. Fumbling the spectacles downwards on to his nose, he focused his stare onto a revelatory site. Each insect, be that beetle, scorpion, locust, spider, all species that were in the laboratory had all moved to their casings’ edge and were directing themselves to a single point of focus. It appeared they were all moving in unison.

  ‘Well, I never,’ he whispered to himself, surprised. ‘What are you all so interested in?’

  He turned his back on the creatures and viewed the surrounding vista from their perspective. It seemed to point him towards the large laboratory table amongst the splayed-out scrolls. Tentatively, he paced towards the table. The wick was beginning to falter and the candle flickered a reminder of its final moments. Professor Meticulous Meredith Malcolm did not want to use up any more of his nine lives by blundering in the dark and damaging the ancient scripture, so he took stock and sat at the chair equidistant between the sentry of bugs looking on obediently and the mahogany exhibit table. The candle finally faltered and what little light he held in his hand was now gone.

  As his eyes cast green negatives in front of him, pupils expanding to focus, the intermittent light of the moon between the clouds beamed through the prism pinnacle above and gave him the occasional chance to observe the room again. He scoured the table from where he was, between the changing night-time shadows, and there he spotted it. A tiny emission of orange light throbbed between the spread of scrolls. It was already receding, growing weaker with each throb, like a failing heartbeat in its dying moments.

  ‘To hell with it,’ he chastised himself and stumbled towards the small amber glow. Grabbing the palm-sized object he found draped in a dirty muslin cloth, its ember pulse like that of the last coals, the object, which appeared to emanate heat and suggested itself to be hot to the touch remained chillingly cool. Unveiling it slowly, one layer of fabric at a time, the light grew stronger as it unravelled. It must have been the dirt and grime of the well-worn muslin cloth that gave it an orange glow for as it revealed itself, the deeper red, an opaque crimson, penetrated through. Fully visible in its natural glory, he could now see the aptly named fossilised creature emitting its powerful stream of light from within its crystallised coffin. The Scarlet Scarab shone brightly.

  ‘You are truly astounding. How come you are so shy in the daylight?’ the Professor asked it.

  As he carried the entombed anthropoid towards the insects, they followed its every change of direction. When the Professor moved the scarab left, the insects followed it left. He moved right and they moved right, like a cheap illusionist at a penny fair.

  ‘Truly amazing.’ The professor beamed.

  The scarab’s light began to fade. Mimicking an Indian summer sky, it turned scarlet to rose-pink and
then to a light orangey-yellow before it stopped glowing. It was not the revelation he had quite expected. The professor’s focus had been on deciphering the scrolls, which would now wait within the dawn.

  Rewrapping the crystallised insect carefully, he placed it back on the table before walking pigeon-step by pigeon-step back to his chair. As if that was not enough for the Professor to absorb within one day, he took a final glance at the insects in their cases. Nearly all of them had returned to their normal evolutionary states. The mesmerisation had passed. All of them with the exception of the common scarabs, the scavenging dung beetles. Their iridescent shells had metamorphosed from a reflective purple-black to a palette of vibrant violet hues, which were now emitting a twinkling of violet light.

  ‘I am lost for words, Meredith,’ the Professor spoke to himself again. He would observe them for the rest of that night until daybreak as their micro-luminescence revealed their tiny travails as they scurried in the dark.

  Chapter 31

  The Russian Pt. 2

  The hounds’ barks disappeared into the distance as they followed the bloodied trail that would lead them towards the Amble. The chaos he had created at Huntington Hall would now allow the final act of his plan to be enacted.

  Descending from the hidden safety of the kennel roof, the rains lashing down now as the angry heavens jostled in the summer’s worst storm, Ilya Derbrovska took nothing for granted and crept in and out of the shadows. Camouflaged in black with those jaded eyes to guide him, he maintained the silent thunder count though it barely reached two now as the skies erupted in powerful lightning. During the chaos, the doors to Huntington Hall remained unsecured and he entered directly via the grand entrance.

  Passing walnut-panelled hallways, multiple portraits of the ancestral Huntington’s sneered down on him as he ascended the broad tread of the grand staircase where he had two rooms to conquer. The first room was where the family safe and their most valuable jewels were kept. In Lord Huntington’s office, behind a decade-old portrait of the aristocrat, a two-inch-thick steel safe was set into a concrete wall. It was impenetrable to most men. The elderly aristocrat, despite his age and frailty, changed the combination weekly, always hidden behind closed doors. The Russian had neither the affordability of time or considerable skills required to crack such a safe. Instead, he pulled two sticks of explosives from the satchel and placed them specifically at the lock end of the safe’s door. Waiting patiently, he peered out of the window. His thunder count had been reduced to two. As the clouds battled one another, and their guttural rumblings came again, he lit the touch paper and took cover. The lightning illuminated the sky and within seconds the explosion from within Lord Huntington’s private office created the chink in the safe’s armour he required. It was loud but not loud enough to alert anyone outside during the storm and amongst the cacophony of canine whelping.

  The safe remained relatively intact, with the exception of a fist-sized hole where the lock had been. It was all Ilya required. Inside were a collection of jewels and gold worth tens of thousands of pounds. Each of them sat within leather or crushed velvet casings. Ilya began to fish each individual case out. What he sought most was the small blue velvet sack of diamonds, which were the last and most rewarding jewels he removed. They alone could fund his disappearance and place him firmly on the path to prosperity once this final adventure was complete.

  The storm raged on outside. The count between thunder-and-lightning strikes now becoming greater as it began to move away. Ilya knew time was of the essence and the greater prize he sought just a room away. Tidying his tracks, trying his utmost to conceal the safe breaking, he tiptoed out of Lord Huntington’s office delicately locking the door behind him. His next and final visit was the Lord’s private chamber.

  Now, while it was quite obvious families of such wealth would indeed maintain a fortified vault on their premises, the true treasure he sought was one that the Lord had hidden away privately and confidentially. But for a couple of solicitors and trustees, no one else knew. Lord Huntington knew that when his remaining days finally came, the vault would be the first place his grieving family would come to pay their respects. However, what they were not aware of was that he kept vital copies and details of his estate and final will under lock and key in a hidden panel of his private chambers. So secretive he had been over the past forty years that his own flesh and blood were not even aware. It was only Ilya’s intricate observations that allowed him to stumble upon the routine. It was his patient peering through his spyglass over days and weeks that meant he now knew where to look.

  Ilya rounded the corridor that led from office to chamber. The private room was locked. It took a minute for him to pick, although it was more complicated than he had thought. As he entered into darkness, a deep rumbling met him. It wasn’t the thunderclouds outside since they had begun to draw away. The noise moved closer and with it an unnatural familiarity. Ilya desperately fumbled in his bag. The noise turned from a rumbling to a ferocious growl. It was still dark but the vision of the canines being borne and the pressure the hounds’ jaws would crush down on him flashed through his mind. Retrieving his tiny flashlight, he shone it directly towards the beast. Sure enough, the snarling muzzle of a large male German Shepherd was just yards away as the light reflected the green eyes to mirror his own. As if the flash of light had been a starter’s gun the animal bolted out of the blocks and launched itself skyward towards Ilya’s jugular. The satchel was merely a paper shield as the Russian held it in front of himself, the dog making light work of piercing the leather with its canine protrusions. Ilya’s hand was still inside fumbling around for a sharp object. The dog’s impatience allowed a brief pause as it took breath before a second wave of attack. It was just enough time for Ilya to locate the object he was looking for. As the dog launched his paws forward, the Russian crouched into a ball and thrust the tiny syringe between front leg and rib cage, piercing the animal’s fur and sending it whelping into a heap. It was almost instantaneous. The dog’s pupils dilated, it slumped sideways as its tongue lolled out of its mouth, and it struggled to breathe. The tiny skull and crossbones phial had shattered, and Ilya, cut and bruised on his arm had been lucky not to ingest the poison into his own bloodstream. Taking a moment to compose himself, check the savaged satchel and its remaining precious cargo, the Russian ensured the dog was still breathing. It was too close an encounter than he could have wished for but an ironic sense of justification that whatever he now found was more precious than gemstones and gold.

  Why else would old Lord Huntington-Smythe leave his most aggressive dog on guard?

  Chapter 32

  Night at the Museum

  Gideon regretted not responding to the calls of Major Boyd Collingdale. Unwittingly, the army man had offered him his biggest lifeline in over a decade. But with so much at stake, Gideon’s focus was solely on visiting his old friend and mentor at the British Museum. He wandered the surrounding streets with Ilya’s keys in hand. Half an hour passed until there, with a covering of dust, a product from the recent airstrike that had sealed the Russian’s fate, was the BSA motorcycle Ilya had hidden out of view.

  Gideon dusted it down, engaged the throttle, and kick-started it at the first attempt. The low revving tone reminded him of the God-awful Thunder Machines so familiar across the capitals. He looked to the cloudless heavens above. He doubted such a clear night would warrant such an attack. The spotters would too easily observe enemy fighters and implement citywide protocols to protect it. As he pulled away slowly, he took care not to turn on his lights until he was at least half a mile away. He couldn’t risk being stopped nearby. As long as he could navigate the frequent bombed-out ruins between Mayfair and Fitzrovia, it would be thirty minutes before he arrived near Russell Square where his old tutor could shed some light on Ilya’s maps and papers.

  It had been a while since Gideon had made the journey between Natural History and British Museums. Dawn was approaching and for once the city was eerily si
lent. Cascading colours were breaking through against the dark shadows of the barrage balloons that perched upon giant metal cables above the ground.

  His preferred route was obstructed by devastation. Almost at every turn, he had to redirect himself because the destruction and collapse of waves of buildings were incomparable to the solitude and impeccably unscathed Ambledown. This new city vista served as a pertinent reminder as to what was at stake for the country. Frustrated after the now-complex navigation of bombed-out London, he ditched Ilya’s beloved BSA near Bloomsbury and continued on foot. Ilya’s torn satchel was firmly strapped beneath his long trench coat.

  The British Museum, despite the decimated streets and tumbled-down buildings that presented their iron and brickwork souls, was proudly intact. Gideon looked upon its large Grecian pillars with relief and approached the sentries that stood guard amongst the wood and barbed-wire barricades. In the shadows from just across the street, two black sedans were parked. Their windows were masked in condensation.