Agatha & the Scarlet Scarab

by Karl Fish

  Gideon collapsed backwards, exhausted from the relentless stoking. He patted Tate Braggan on the back before composing himself as he climbed out of the engine room and onto the ladder that led to Nathaniel’s sentry point.

  ‘Nathaniel, are you OK?’ Gideon asked in a concerned tone.

  Covered in soot and dust, Noone had worn his gas mask for most of the journey. Removing it to reveal his clean but terribly scarred faced, he gestured to Gideon to be both quiet and listen towards the steep, wooded banks that aligned and masked the Bracken Line.

  ‘What is it?’ Gideon mouthed to his friend.

  Nathaniel acted out a circular driving wheel as if he had heard a car.

  Gideon grabbed a rifle and joined his friend. He focused through the sight and analysed the dark foliage and trees for any signs of activity. A snap of a twig saw their firearms align straight ahead of them. A moment of silence, and then another snap of a twig from behind them, high in the trees. They rounded to point their guns at the steep banks. Noone cocked the weapon in anticipation.

  A whoosh of air through the trees and Gideon’s rifle point was weighted downwards as the large black-and-white bird landed, pecking at the sight’s reflection of the moon. A bright light ignited from behind them, blinding them both as they turned towards it.

  ‘Evenin, gentlemen,’ came the welcome guttural tone of Pop Braggan.

  ‘Was that your car?’ Noone asked.

  ‘Don’t ’ave no car. Just me pony and trap. Saw it though. Posh like, wiv driver in an ’at, coming from the direction of Huntington Hall. The mutt chased a vixen into the road and almost sent it crashin’,’ Pop confirmed.

  ‘OK,’ Gideon acknowledged ‘What news for us, Pop? Is my niece safe?’

  ‘Walked ’er ’ome with Eric meself.’ The huge man smiled. ‘And plenty to report.’

  Chapter 45

  Captives

  ‘Ambledown? Are you sure?’ Belle questioned, as they made their way back to her father’s office.

  Closing the door for privacy they planned their next move.

  ‘I’m not sure of anything anymore, Belle. But one thing is certain, Gideon and Nathaniel know more than us,’ Thompson replied, staring hard to suggest she too knew more than she was letting on.

  ‘Don’t stare at me like that,’ Belle bit back. ‘I thought he was dead!’ she shouted.

  Thompson wanted to believe her, yet remained sceptical.

  ‘Look, perhaps we should try and figure this out ourselves. Nate and H–’ She paused and started again. ‘Nate and Gideon will not desert us. I’m sure.’

  ‘A minute ago, you told me that you thought he was dead. Where’s the trust there?’ Thompson pointed out.

  ‘I cannot explain it, but everyone I cherished kept that secret far from me. It must have been for good reason. But they are good people. I know they are good people.’

  A knock came from the door, interrupting them, and suppressing the tension between the pair. Thompson’s subordinates, Smith and Jones, entered.

  ‘We have them, sir,’ Smith replied.

  ‘Who? Which ones?’ Thompson requested.

  ‘All of them, sir. Everyone on the list,’ confirmed Jones.

  ‘Everyone? That was too quick,’ Thompson challenged them.

  ‘We agree it was. The most peculiar thing, sir. Nearly all of them were coupled together. Like Noah’s Ark, they came in two by two.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why would they be paired up?’ Thompson asked, puzzled.

  ‘That’s not the only thing. All of them have the same sets of responsibilities. And all of them deny knowing the tiger-lady, but openly accept owning one of the cards.’

  The men produced almost a full deck of the OSIRIS calling cards, passing them to their superior.

  Thompson looked increasingly perplexed.

  Belle returned to the glyphs and the sequence of cartouche they represented. ‘What is it that you actually represent?’ she spoke theoretically to the ‘All-seeing eye’ as it stared back at her. ‘What is your secret?’

  Returning to the original photograph, Belle scrutinised the lady in the cat skin. Tiger-lady was smiling with a cigarette in one hand and using the other to shake Malling’s.

  ‘Thompson, fetch me that magnifier will you,’ she asked pointing to an old magnifying glass on her father’s desk. ‘Look, there.’ She pointed to Thompson. ‘Between her thumb and forefinger.’

  ‘Got him!’ Thompson smiled.

  ‘It could be anything, a hankie, even a fleck on the negative,’ Belle suggested.

  ‘Oh, come on, who passes a hankie in a handshake? It’s one of these cards,’ Thompson insisted. ‘Come on, Belle, none of us want to say it but they are all lying to us. This goes to the very heart of government. Some way or another.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure? I’m not convinced. It would be too difficult to manipulate so many. Perhaps there’s an alternative explanation?’ Belle questioned, as she walked to the tiger-skin coat and reached deep within its pockets.

  *****

  Gideon and Nathaniel had used the pony ride hidden under hay on Pop’s horse and cart for much-needed rest. Noone whimpered in and out of his recurring visions, while Luna, Pop’s faithful hound, snuggled up in sympathy next to him.

  As the Steep came into view, dawn was breaking and the light crimson of daylight pierced through.

  ‘Red sky in morning, shepherds warning,’ Pop announced to wake his two companions.

  As they approached the edge of Ambledown and spied the Steep, Pop encouraged his equine transport forward. Two small candlelights flickered and hovered bug-like in the distance where the junction divided the trinity of alehouses.

  Wilson Bott, the town’s sheriff, who resided above The Hart and kept a watchful eye on the Poacher, had been woken from his comfortable sleep and was being harangued by Elizabeth Peabody on the cobblestones outside.

  ‘You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to look this early for your sister,’ Wilson advised her, still yawning.

  ‘Please, you’re the sheriff, aren’t you? She was here one minute and then gone. Something’s happened, I know it. Something has happened to her,’ Elizabeth insisted.

  ‘And where’s Eric?’ Bott yawned again, now conscious he was still in his nightwear.

  ‘He’s missing too.’

  ‘Elizabeth,’ Bott said calmly. ‘They are likely to be together. You know what your brother is like.’

  ‘Please, Mr Bott. Eric went out without her. She went to greet him on his return and then neither of them returned. Please, help. Please,’ Elizabeth begged through tearful eyes.

  ‘What’s goin’ on ’ere?’ Pop asked as he halted his large Shire horse.

  Gideon, soot ridden and sweaty, unusually dishevelled from his gentlemanly persona, sat adjacent to Pop. His heart sank as he spied Elizabeth’s worried disposition. Nathaniel remained hidden beneath the hay.

  ‘Elizabeth, what’s happened?’ Gideon asked, leaving his seat to comfort her.

  ‘Gem’s gone missing and I think she’s in danger,’ she replied.

  ‘Just Gem?’ Gideon immediately questioned.

  ‘Eric’s missing too,’ Elizabeth added.

  Gideon looked at Pop and began to run uphill towards The Keep.

  ‘I walked ’er ’ome meself!’ Pop shouted at him. ‘Giddy up, girl!’ he ordered the horse, clicking his tongue to his palette. The large workhorse followed Professor Belchambers who had launched into a sprint.

  Elizabeth was already in hot pursuit just yards behind him.

  As Gideon rounded the corner to his black-brick home, he immediately noticed the dislodged cobbles at the foot of his steps. He quickly checked and confirmed the key had gone. Hammering on the metal lion’s head knocker, he woke his sleeping housekeeper.

  ‘Alright, alright. Where fire?’ Nan hollered back.

  ‘Nan, quickly. It’s Gideon. Nan, where is Aggie?’ he shouted, peering with fingers pressed through the letterbox.
>
  Nan fumbled with the keys, unlocking the door from the inside. She realised the bolts had been moved since she had last locked them.

  ‘She was here. I tuck her in. But locks, they have moved.’

  ‘Aggie?’ Gideon shouted frantically. ‘Aggie are you here?’

  He vaulted the stairs to the first floor and entered the room. The force of his entrance gusted notepaper off of the bed. The drapes were still drawn shut. He turned the light on. The dolls’ house and rocking chair were untouched as was the bedding on top of an un-slept-in bed.

  ‘No!’ Gideon cried out, thumping his hand down so hard that it smashed the dolls’ house roof.

  Hearing Gideon’s cries, Nathaniel Noone could not remain camouflaged any longer. He leapt out from Pop’s wagon and made light of the steps to Gideon’s home. Elizabeth gasped in horror as he sprinted past with pistol drawn. One flight of stairs up and he found his friend hunched over sobbing.

  ‘She’s gone. They’ve taken her, Nate. After all this time, I’ve lost her. How could they even know? Damn you, Ilya!’

  ‘Well, if they did take her, they were kind enough to let her leave a note,’ Noone replied, picking up the folded piece of paper addressed to Gideon, which had been placed obviously for him to find upon her bed but had simply blown off upon his entrance.

  Gideon read it aloud.

  ‘Dearest Uncle, I am on an adventure with Eric. I shall explain everything on my return. I promise. Just like you promised.

  Lots of love

  Aggie x

  PS – Eric says the pound smells terrible. A hairy man from the Institute gave it to him.’

  Gideon was relieved, he wiped his tears from his cheeks then re-read the letter. Noone soon located the banknote from beneath the bed. Examining it, his senses detected the subtle citron zest as it wafted towards his nostrils. Opening the drapes, Nathaniel presented the note to the early morning daylight.

  ‘S.O.S. – PMM,’ Noone read out. ‘What is PMM?’ he asked.

  ‘Who is PMM? is the real question,’ Gideon replied.

  The grin across his face turning from fear to hope.

  *****

  Belle had the tiger-skin coat in her hands. With her fingernails, she was scratching at the inside of the pocket and had found the remains of violet-tinted tobacco amongst the lint and fluff.

  Placing the tobacco next to the rouged cigarette stub, forming the tiniest pile of microscopic kindling she dimmed the lights.

  ‘Do you have a light?’ she asked the man.

  Jones produced a neat box of matches.

  Sparking a solitary match, she lit the small amount of tobacco while keeping the violet beam fixed on it. It was a minuscule amount but just enough to demonstrate a small experiment to Thompson and his men. The tobacco and saltpetre accelerants duly obliged in igniting the tiny fire while the subtle smoke now took on an ethereal violet hue. Flitting between violets, pinks, and purples, the minuscule clouds revolved and danced until they disappeared into the dust-speckled atmosphere. It was mere seconds in its balletic performance but enough to prove her point. She then switched the light back on.

  ‘The lady in the photo. She has that cigarette in hand. This type of cigarette.’ Belle pointed out to the stub. Holding it aloft, the particles of violet shimmered against the darker ginger flakes of tobacco. ‘The colouring of these particles, as with the colouring of the smoke it produces, are illuminated by the torch.’

  ‘Go on,’ Thompson encouraged her.

  ‘As are the markings on both the OSIRIS cards and the painting in the halls,’ Belle confirmed.

  Thompson and his men listened intently as Belle explained her theory.

  ‘I am unsure how it specifically works. But all the attendees have the cards. No doubt all of them inadvertently witnessed the markings on the wall, having attended the fundraiser’

  ‘Obey, follow, etcetera,’ Thompson added.

  ‘Precisely, but more importantly, the tiger-lady, smoking the unique filters in their company. Who knows? Perhaps she was poisoning them.’

  ‘It’s certainly a theory,’ Thompson added.

  ‘The thing is,’ Belle continued. ‘Who else do we know that smokes, literally, all of the time?’

  ‘Wink Waverley,’ Thompson replied.

  ‘And she’s on the list,’ Smith and Jones added.

  ‘Precisely,’ Belle reaffirmed. ‘But what role does she play?’

  Thompson paced the room, scratching his head in deep thought. ‘OK, I have an idea, but if we are wrong this may be a treasonable offence so I’ll understand if you wish to bow out now.’

  ‘We’re in,’ Smith and Jones replied in stereo without hesitation.

  Belle nodded in agreement.

  ‘Whitehall it is then,’ Thompson confirmed. ‘Let’s go to Whitehall with all our temporary prisoners. I doubt any traitor would keep their cool when presented with such a sight. If Wink or even Malling decides to run, we’ll have them. Or we’re wrong and we’ll likely to face prison. It’s a plan of sorts, or the beginning of one anyway.’

  *****

  ‘Gideon, where are you going? Who is PMM?’ Nathaniel asked.

  Gideon had left Aggie’s room in a flash and was already mobilising himself to depart for the Institute Silvera.

  ‘We need to go to the Institute. Seek out Professor Meredith Malcolm! Or the hairy fellow as Eric so eloquently put it in the note!’ Gideon shouted from his quarters as Nathaniel Noone followed.

  ‘And who is the Professor exactly?’ Noone enquired.

  ‘He’s already sent me a warning message. Not sure he truly knew what he was dealing with but now he needs our help. Ilya had wanted something in his possession.’

  Noone rolled his eye. ‘That bloody conniving Russian. He’s the key to all of this.’

  ‘Quite possibly,’ Gideon confirmed. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘What, all guns blazing? And what do we know about this place?’ Noone replied.

  ‘It’s forty-fied,’ Pop Braggan’s deep voice interrupted as he stood dwarfing the threshold to the house. ‘That much I do know. But why let us go to the mountain?’

  ‘Pop ... no games now. They may have taken Aggie,’ Gideon responded in all seriousness.

  ‘I ’as ’em coming to me, today. And the airy fella Eric describes, I spent the company wiv all day,’ Pop advised. ‘Man of learning. Big tache.’

  ‘OK. You need to tell me much, much more,’ Gideon demanded, slowing down and taking a breath.

  ‘They fink I ’ave perrygrins for ’em. I fink Lyle died trying to get ’em in the first place. Why d’they need ’em up at the hospital.’

  ‘Why do they require birds of prey at all?’ Gideon questioned.

  ‘Dunno. Perhaps they want company for the ugly cat or somefink for it to chase.’ Pop laughed.

  ‘Purrsia? The bald cat from Cecile’s?’ Gideon quickly replied. He flashed a worried look towards Nathaniel.

  ‘Do you have a plan?’ Noone directed to Pop.

  ‘I does as it goes,’ Pop replied. ‘And it involves you, Mister Noone.’

  Behind the men, staring on desperately was Elizabeth Peabody. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ she shouted angrily. ‘Three children are missing. Why is your priority a Professor all of a sudden?’

  Gideon exhaled impatiently as if his decision should not be challenged.

  Pop stepped in to defuse the situation.

  ‘D’ya know Eric was harvesting the bugs for these men, Lizzy? Just, well you ’ave been nursing Gemima all day. You may not of known they paid ’im. Eric that is, a lot of money. He could’ve gone after more, roped the girls in or any-fink. Wot we does know is he did it for them. Men from Institute. It’s connected,’ Pop explained to her.

  ‘Still doesn’t explain why all three are missing. Gem went to greet Eric and didn’t come back.’

  ‘Eric and Aggie were in it together,’ Gideon confirmed, flashing the letter over. ‘He used the key from the cobbles to help her e
scape. No one else knew where they were. They were up to something.’

  As the four of them thrashed out ideas, the slight figure of Nelly Parker strolled briskly towards them.

  ‘Oh bleedin’ ’ell, that’s all we need, Nosey Parker,’ Pop moaned.

  ‘Morning, Nelly’ Gideon welcomed her. ‘How can I help.’

  Taking Gideon by the elbow she led him away and whispered in his ear. A few moments later he thanked her with a gentle embrace before she left and he returned to his comrades.

  ‘Nelly saw a large black car with a silver bird parked on the Steep last night. She reckons she saw the driver bundle something into the boot and drive off.’

  ‘Bundle what, a person?’ Elizabeth quickly shot back.

  ‘Possibly. Never quite sure with Nelly, her eyes are not the best,’ Gideon confirmed. Although Nelly had specifically told him a girl with black bobbed hair but couldn’t confirm who, Gideon decided to keep that a secret for now.

  ‘Pop, does that sound like the car from last night?’ Noone asked.

  ‘Yeah, could be I s’pose. Heading in the right direction, for sure.’

  ‘Then I think we are right in our assumptions for now. The Institute is our priority. But nevertheless, we should start a search of the village just to be certain Eric isn’t up to his elbows in something with the girls,’ Gideon confirmed.

  ‘Who, what and where?’ came Wilson Bott’s voice as he turned the corner now fully dressed. ‘Eric caused a revolt at school yesterday. Had all town folk and the Priory tutors rounding up kids for hours. Apparently, they were paid a penny per bug. Lord knows where he got that money from or why.’

  Gideon looked towards Pop, whose expression was that of knowing more then he should be letting on right now.

  ‘Wilson?’ Gideon asked. ‘Is it possible you can help corral the WI into looking for them? The children that is. We have additional, sensitive, business to attend to.’

  ‘Sybil Smythe helping the hunt for public “Ericy” number one in her eyes?’ Bott replied. ‘I doubt it. But I’ll see what I can do. They all seem so pre-occupied with their charity work, I really would be surprised.’