The Dark Enquiry

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  I sat back with an air of triumph. Brisbane gave me a slow-lidded stare.

  “Then who blackmailed Bellmont?”

  I thought for a moment. “Her partner. He had Bellmont’s letters in his possession for safekeeping and realised he could make a fortune from them.”

  “Then why not actually take the money? And why set fire to our house?”

  I nibbled at my lip again. “It was a warning. Agathe knows who we are. She would have told her partner. The relationship between you and Bellmont means that you would certainly work on his behalf to sleuth out the blackmailer. So you must be discouraged from participating in the case. You must believe I am in danger. And when you are busy attending to your wife, the blackmailer will strike Bellmont again.”

  The cigar fell from his mouth, scattering ash and sparks. Brisbane retrieved it with a smothered curse and fixed me with a smile that was very nearly accusing.

  “That is a damned fine piece of logic,” he said, almost grudgingly.

  “Thank you.” I smiled sweetly at him. “Your trousers are on fire.”

  He looked down and swatted idly at the lazy plume of smoke upon his thigh.

  “Do not tell me you failed to think of it,” I said once the fire was out.

  He gave me a nasty look. “Of course I did. I sent word to Bellmont to reply to no further demands until he heard from me.”

  I felt a little deflated then. “Oh. Then why were you so astonished to hear my theory?”

  “Because it was the same as mine,” he explained. “All this time, you have stumbled into murderers and bumbled into solutions, and I thought it was an accident.”

  “I ought to be tremendously offended by that, but you are right. Most of my solutions were somewhat accidental.”

  “No, they were not,” he maintained. “They were not the product of analytical reasoning, at least not that you realised. But you took in the information and created a working hypothesis and followed it through, the same as I do. Only the method is at a variance between us. I knew you were clever,” he finished. “I just did not realise that you do have a methodology. It is entirely unique, but you have one.”

  I preened a little. “I will go even further and say that I think Madame’s murderer will have wanted to be on hand when the murder was committed. I think it must have been one of the guests at the séance.”

  “I hardly think that General Fortescue or Sir Henry Eddington fit the bill.”

  I turned the notion over in my mind and was forced to agree. “No,” I said slowly, “and I don’t suppose Sir Morgan is a likely candidate, either. He has pots of money.”

  Brisbane went dangerously still. “Sir Morgan?”

  “Hmm? Oh, yes. Sir Morgan Fielding. He was the last of my calls the day I visited the general and Sir Henry.”

  “Why?”

  I wrinkled my nose, thinking. “I suppose I went there last because his address was the farthest from home.”

  Brisbane’s voice was tight, as if he held a close rein upon his temper, but only just. “I mean, why did you call upon him at all?”

  “Because he was there the night of the séance. But you knew that,” I said rather unhelpfully.

  “I did not. From my vantage point in the spirit cabinet, I could see only you and Madame and our American friend, Sullivan. I think you might have mentioned at least once that you had called upon Morgan Fielding in the course of your investigations.” The last word was delivered with tight-lipped fury, and I adopted a soothing tone.

  “Brisbane, really, you needn’t fuss. I know he’s a terrible flirt, but I was in no danger whatsoever. In fact, I discovered that we are cousins. As it happens, he is one of my Uncle Benvolio’s by-blows. There is a family resemblance, I thought. He looks a bit like Plum.”

  Brisbane’s jaw was clenched so tightly, I could hear the bones grinding. “I have no concerns about your fidelity, Julia. I have grave concerns about your intelligence.”

  “I do beg your pardon!” I sat upright and the dormouse, still nestled in my bosom, gave a little squeak of protest. “You just complimented me upon that very faculty.”

  “I withdraw it. You embarked upon a line of enquiry you insisted was essential without ever once giving me the name of the one person who is doubtless at the centre of the whole damn affair!”

  I matched his heated tone with one of pure ice. “I believe I did attempt to relate to you the facts of my calls and you interrupted me with a rather magnificent display of temper, much as you are doing now. If you do not have all the facts of the case, perhaps you have no one but yourself to blame.”

  Brisbane opened his mouth and shut it with a snap. His mouth remained closed, but I could hear him muttering under his breath.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I am counting. To one hundred. In Cantonese.”

  That took the better part of five minutes, but once he was finished, he had a better grasp of his temper and we were able to discuss the matter more cordially.

  “Perhaps, my dear,” he began with exaggerated politesse, “you would be good enough to relate to me the details of your call upon Sir Morgan.”

  “I would be very happy to,” I replied with equal civility. Hastily, I sketched the pleasant hour I had spent with Morgan, and Brisbane’s expression grew blacker the longer I talked. But I omitted nothing, and when I was finished, Brisbane eyed me narrowly.

  “Is that the whole of it?”

  I sighed. “Really, you are the most exasperating man. Haven’t I just told you everything? Now it is your turn. Tell me precisely why Morgan Fielding holds such interest for you.”

  Brisbane lit another cigar, taking several deep inhalations of the heady smoke before beginning his tale.

  “To understand Morgan, you must know the history of the Spirit Club itself. At the height of the Regency, the Spirit Club was built as a brothel by one of the most notorious madams in London. It was unlike anything ever built before, and it was designed to cater to the most decadent fantasies of the most exclusive clientele. In particular, it was created as a haven for gentlemen whose tastes ran to watching rather than doing.”

  I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  He slanted me a look full of meaning. “There is a certain species of gentleman who prefers to watch the goings-on rather than participate.”

  “Good heavens, why?”

  Brisbane flicked me a smile and continued. “There were accommodations made for all sorts of tastes, but this particular one suited the madam, as well, for the various peeps and trapdoors installed in the house for her clients’ pleasure also ensured she could keep a watchful eye upon her ladies. The house was extremely successful, and the proprietress took that success as a motivation to build another house. Only, this time she borrowed, heavily, and overextended her credit. She was forced to sell both houses, and after that, the original house passed through many hands and many incarnations before falling empty. It had been a brothel, a gaming hell and even a school at one point. But in the end, all of the ventures failed and it closed its doors until 1870.”

  “What happened in 1870?”

  “Cast your mind back to Continental affairs at the time.”

  I furrowed my brow, and a sudden image of the Empress Eugénie sprang to mind. “The fall of Napoléon III?”

  “Precisely. So long as Napoléon III was in power, there was an effective counter to Bismarck’s rise in Prussia. But when the emperor was daft enough to start a war no one wanted and got himself thrown out of France, suddenly the entire Continent was no longer stable—an untenable state of affairs for any of us.”

  “What does Continental politics have to do with a club for Spiritualists?” The connection eluded me.

  “Because the Spiritualist trappings of the club were only so much window dressing. It was formed as a sort of hive of espionage.”

  “Espionage!”

  “The house was purchased by the British government in order to provide a place for coded messages to pass bet
ween English and French agents, a sort of cooperative effort against the Prussians.”

  I could scarcely take in what Brisbane was telling me, it all seemed so fantastical.

  “Why a central point for their meetings? Would not a series of clandestine arrangements work better?”

  “Yes, and that’s why the club eventually fell into disuse. For a time, it was convenient. There were so many agents in England and France and no one knew what anyone else was doing. Spymasters have a passion for secrecy and obfuscation, even when it serves no purpose,” he added with a wry twist of his lips. “The crux of effective espionage is that no one can know what anyone else is doing. This sort of front made things infinitely more complicated, which suited the spymasters whilst matters on the Continent were sorted. It was actually rather effective for a short while. The spymaster would give coded information to the medium who would pass it along to the operative at the next session. Because there were so many regulars, the mediums never knew to whom they were actually giving the message and neither did anyone else.”

  “If they did not know to whom to address the message, how did they pass it along?”

  “Because the messages from the spymaster always began with a specific phrase. ‘A message from a dark lady.’”

  I sat bolt upright. “Brisbane! That is the message Madame delivered at our session!”

  He swore softly. “If I had heard that at the time, it would have made this all a damned sight easier.”

  “Madame must have been involved in espionage,” I said, catching my breath. It was almost painfully exciting.

  “Except that the Spirit Club has not been used for that purpose in a dozen years,” Brisbane told me gently. “It was a mad idea in the first place. Gathering all of those spies in one place seemed like a sound notion as it meant the English could keep an eye on their Continental opposites. In practise, it was utter chaos, and its best use was in keeping aristocratic dilettantes from doing any real mischief. Society gentlemen could play at being spies and feel they were doing their part without ever having access to the most important information. They were useful at best, but too often they bungled—and badly. They were always finding themselves embroiled in one fiasco or another. It took endless sorting out and finally, the whole thing got to be so much trouble, the government just packed it in and went back to the old ways.”

  “How do you know so much about the Spirit Club?”

  Brisbane ground out the glowing tip of his cigar onto the sole of his boot. “Because just at the start of my career I had to sort out a very thorny problem that almost got me killed by an unhappy English spymaster. A terrified and very elderly widow hired me to protect her as she attended séances because she was quite certain she was being followed every time she left the club and she feared for her life.”

  “Was she being followed?”

  “Yes,” he answered in some disgust, “by a cotton-headed fool who thought she might be in Bismarck’s pay. He did not take kindly to my interference, and I ended up the subject of a rather vigorous interrogation in the basement of the club.”

  “Oh, dear,” I murmured.

  “Not one of my happier memories,” he reflected, rubbing at his chin.

  I sat for a long moment, digesting all he had told me.

  “What became of the club after the government disbanded it?”

  He shrugged. “It became an actual haven for Spiritualists. There has been no reason to connect it with anything more—until now. There is one man in England who would know if the Spirit Club is once more being used as a rendezvous for spies,” he said slowly.

  “Sir Morgan Fielding?”

  “Morgan was the spymaster who interrogated me in the basement of the Spirit Club.”

  I groaned and put my hands over my face. “And I interrogated him.”

  “I daresay Morgan found it all highly amusing,” Brisbane told me. “And I will further wager that he deliberately charmed you and told you precisely as much as he wanted you to know and nothing more to set you haring off in the wrong direction.”

  I peeped through my hands. “You think that he made up the tale about us being related in order to get into my good graces? You think that Morgan may not be my uncle Benvolio’s bastard?”

  Brisbane’s lips thinned into a bitter smile. “That Morgan Fielding is a bastard, I have absolutely no doubt.”

  “I still do not understand the need for all the theatrics. Surely Special Branch is up to the task of monitoring such activities.”

  Special Branch had been formed at Scotland Yard some six years previously to keep a watchful eye upon Irish agitators, but it soon became apparent that every corner of such a far-flung empire ought to be observed and their duties had been expanded.

  Brisbane sighed. “Special Branch are overworked and under manned. They are too new to be of any real use yet, although God hopes they will be someday. The truth is every bit of this ought to be taken out of amateur hands and left to the professionals. But there are those, the queen among them, who believe that the inherent superiority of the gentleman gives him a unique ability to serve his country in any capacity. Too often they are inbred idiots who merely muck up the field, and the professionals like Morgan have to clear up after them.”

  “I would have expected Sir Morgan to fall into the class of gentleman-dilettante,” I argued.

  Brisbane rolled back a sleeve, revealing a whip-thin scar that snaked from his wrist to his elbow, curving up the length of his arm like a serpent. I had often traced it with a delicate fingertip, but I had never asked him where he had acquired it.

  “Morgan Fielding is no amateur,” was all that he said. He rolled the sleeve back into place.

  “I hope you returned the favour.”

  Brisbane gave me a slow, chilling smile. “I did.”

  I considered this and came to the conclusion that the less said upon the subject, the better. In fact, I had an entirely different matter of conversation already at hand.

  “I am glad you played tonight. The music was most affecting.”

  He canted his head, his mouth curving into a slow smile.

  “Was it?”

  “Yes, it was quite exhilarating. I cannot think when I have been so…stimulated by a piece.”

  “Show me,” he commanded. And I did.

  The Eighteenth Chapter

  Be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.

  —Henry IV, Part Two

  The next morning we rose and washed and dressed ourselves, making as presentable a toilette as we could under the circumstances. We collected Rook and I tucked the dormouse into my décolletage once more. Granny gave us more of her rank tea and some cold meat for breakfast and walked us to the edge of the camp when the time came for farewells.

  “You did not tell my fortune with the bones,” I teased.

  She shrugged. “Sometimes it is best not to look too closely at the future, child. Look to today.” But she hugged me tightly, and when we broke apart, she put a finger to my brow, pressing firmly to the spot just between my eyes. She did the same to Brisbane and I realised it was a blessing of sorts.

  “Thank you, Granny,” he said softly, kissing her on both cheeks.

  She wagged a finger at him. “Sometime Granny will ask you to pay a reckoning,” she said. “You must not forget. Ja develesa, children. Go with God.”

  With that, we left, and I noticed Brisbane patting his pockets.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making certain I still have my pocketwatch,” he said drily.

  I gave him a little push, but as I did, I felt something in my pocket bump against my leg. I put my hand into my pocket and drew out a small calico bag.

  “What is this?”

  Brisbane gave a look. “A charm bag. Do not open it or you will spill the magic.”

  I was not certain if he was serious, but I decided it was better to be safe. I tucked it carefully back into my pocket.

  “What is in it?”
>
  “Probably a feather, a stone, a bit of bone.”

  “Bone?”

  He smiled. “Animal, not human. A few other things, as well. Granny will have said an incantation over it. Do not lose it. A charm bag is protection.”

  “From what?” I demanded.

  But Brisbane said nothing more and I did not like to ask.

  * * *

  The morning sunshine was bright and the trees on the heath were ablaze with autumn colour. Juniper berries shone in the hedges, and here and there spotted scarlet caps of toadstools peeped through veils of green moss. A light breeze buffetted the trees, streaming the gold-and-red leaves like silken banners held aloft. It seemed impossible that we should have to investigate anything so awful as murder on such a day, but as soon as we reached the copse where Monk had hidden the carriage, Brisbane resumed his inscrutable mask and I knew he was pondering the case. We arrived in due course at Sir Morgan’s house in St. John’s Wood, and were shown in at once. I was surprised to find Morgan awake and ready to receive visitors. I would have thought him a late riser.

  “Good morning, my dear Lady Julia. And I see you have brought your estimable husband this time. Good morning, Mr. Brisbane,” Sir Morgan said, and there was a note of humour underscoring his polite greeting.