“Yeah!” Molly said happily. “Someone phone Guinness! Go, Drood. Go!”
And then we all stopped and looked round as the intercom lying beside Heather’s desk buzzed loudly. A cold, calm voice sounded clearly in the office.
“Heather, if Edwin Drood and Molly Metcalf have quite finished striking dramatic poses, ask them if they’d like to come through. I can give them ten minutes.”
“Yes, boss,” said Heather.
“How did she know we were here?” Molly said suspiciously. “How did she know it was us? I don’t see any surveillance cameras here.”
“The boss knows everything,” Heather said scornfully. “In fact, that’s probably part of her job description.”
The highly impressive door swung smoothly and silently open on its own. I nodded briskly to Heather and strode into Catherine Latimer’s very private office. Molly hurried after me, determined not to be left out of anything, her shillelagh still slung casually over one shoulder.
The grand old boss of the Carnacki Institute, Catherine Latimer, her own very bad and intimidating self, sat stiff-backed behind what I immediately recognised as a genuine Hepplewhite desk. Latimer had to be in her late seventies, but she still burnt with severe nervous energy, even while sitting still. She was medium height, medium weight and handsome in a way that suggested she had never been pretty because she’d always had too much character for that. She had a grim mouth and cold grey eyes and looked like she’d never been pleased to see anyone in her life. She wore a smartly tailored grey suit and was smoking a black Turkish cigarette in a long ivory holder, supposedly an affection that went all the way back to her student days.
While I was busy looking her over and working on my best opening gambit, Molly just sauntered round the office, displaying a keen avaricious interest in everything on display. There was a lot to look at. She made a series of loud ooh! and aah! noises as she cooed over the various intriguing objects in their display cases, many of which I remembered from my last time in the office. Catherine Latimer wasn’t much for change for the sake of change.
There were reminders of past triumphs, famous cases ancient and modern, and souvenirs of people and places best not discussed in polite company. Molly ignored the many valuable books and folios crammed onto shelves all over the office, and had no time at all for the endless locked and sealed case files in their colour-coded folders. She bent over a goldfish bowl full of murky ectoplasm in which the ghost of a goldfish swam slowly, solemnly backwards, flickering on and off like a faulty lightbulb. Next to that a crimson metal gauntlet with two broken fingers, twitching unhappily inside a brass birdcage, was labelled THE SATAN CLAW. Farther along, a badly stuffed phoenix posed awkwardly inside a hermetically sealed glass case, to keep it from smouldering. And finally, on open display on a black velvet cushion, the Twilight Teardrop. Molly actually crouched down before it so she could set her face on the same level and study it better. The fabled ruby stone was actually composed of fossilised vampire blood made into a polished gem in the shape of an elongated teardrop, some four inches long and two wide, set in an ancient gold clasp and chain, supposedly taken from a dragon’s hoard. I say supposedly; there’s a whole lot said about the Twilight Teardrop, most of it contradictory and all of it upsetting. All anyone knows for sure is that it’s a major magical depository for unnatural energies, mad, bad and dangerous to own.
Molly snatched it up and held it dangling before her eyes before flipping the gold chain over her head and round her neck, so that the glowing bloodred gem hung over her bosom.
“Mine!” she said loudly. “I’m taking it.”
“Put it back!” I said.
“Shan’t!”
“Molly, I don’t want that nasty thing anywhere near me, never mind you. And need I remind you, we’re trying to make a good impression here?”
“Don’t care. I want it. Pretty, pretty.”
“I’ll take your pony away.…”
“You wouldn’t! All right, you probably would. You big bully, you. Oh, but, Eddie…I really do need this. There’s enough magical energy stored in here to replenish all my spells and abilities! And you know I have to be strong if we’re going after You Know Who.…”
I looked apologetically at Latimer. “Sorry about this.…”
“Oh, let her have the bloody thing,” said Latimer. “Given the sheer number of curses and bad vibes associated with the thing, she’s welcome to it.” She ignored Molly as she preened over her new toy, and fixed me with a cold glare. “Is she always like this?”
“Mostly,” I said.
“It’s all part of my charm,” Molly said easily.
Latimer and I exchanged a look but said nothing.
“I have to admit, I’m surprised to see you here, Edwin,” said the boss. “I have heard about what’s happened to Drood Hall. I really thought all you Droods were dead and gone. I should have known the reports were too good to be true. And don’t you raise your eyebrow at me like that, Edwin. You know very well your family has always been as big a threat to freedom as most of the threats you take on.”
“An argument for another day,” I said. “Right now I’m here to ask for your help.”
It was Latimer’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Really? And just why would I want to do that?”
I leaned forward across her desk and showed her my hand encased in a golden gauntlet. Vicious barbed spikes rose out of the clenched metal fingers.
Catherine Latimer smiled briefly. “Typical Drood.”
She didn’t speak a Word or even gesture, just looked at me in a certain way and an invisible force snatched me up and held me tightly in its grasp. I fought against it but couldn’t move a muscle. I was picked up off my feet, lifted up into the air, spun around several times and then slammed, spread-eagled, against the ceiling, looking down. I called for my armour but it didn’t come. The boss had cut me off from my torc. I hadn’t thought that was possible.
Molly started forward the moment she saw what was happening to me. The boss fixed her with a certain look, and Molly froze in place, locked between one movement and the next, in a stance that looked excruciatingly uncomfortable. Her face strained, her eyes full of silent fury, but she couldn’t move a muscle. Any more than I could. The shillelagh slipped out of her paralysed hand and fell to the floor. Catherine Latimer allowed herself a brief smile.
“You don’t spend as much time as I have operating in the hidden world, in any number of influential capacities, without picking up a useful trick or two. Never bait the bear in her cave, children. If I let you both down, will you behave?”
“Almost certainly,” I said from the ceiling.
Molly managed a more or less compliant grunt.
The boss sat back in her chair and drew deeply on her cigarette holder. I fell down from the ceiling, only just managing to get my feet under me in time. I also only just managed to grab Molly by the shoulder as she lunged forward again. I wrestled her to a halt, murmuring urgently in her ear, and she finally stopped. She shrugged sulkily and turned her back on the boss and me. I looked at Catherine Latimer.
“I’m pretty sure Crow Lee was behind the attack on my family,” I said.
“Unholy Crow Lee?” said the boss. “Could be. He’d have the power and the gall, if anyone would.…I was at Cambridge with him, you know. Back in the day. Had no doubt he was a bad sort even then. Cheated at cards, wouldn’t pay his debts and insisted on reciting his own poetry in public. And now he’s the Most Evil Man in the World…or so people in a position to know say.…Why should I help you against him?”
“Because if Crow Lee has become powerful enough to remove the entire Drood family from the playing field, how long before he comes after you and your organisation?” I said.
Latimer nodded slowly and blew a perfect smoke ring. “Good point. All right, Edwin. A temporary alliance. But you’re going to owe me a really big favour for this.”
“Agreed,” I said. “A favour for a favour.” And then I stopped and looked at her thou
ghtfully. “I have to ask: Did you by any chance know that something really bad was going to happen to my family? Did you have any information or warnings in advance and not tell us?”
“No,” said the boss.
“Would you tell us if you did?” said Molly, slipping into place beside me.
“Probably not,” said the boss. “I tend my own garden.”
“So, why are you so ready to help me now?” I said.
“Because I’ve wanted a chance to bring Crow Lee down for ages,” said Latimer. “I really hoped your family would kill him long ago, just on general principle, but somehow you were always too busy with other things. I half expected to see him go down with the Great Satanic Conspiracy, but of course he was smart enough not to get involved. Personally, I think they weren’t extreme enough for him. And, of course, he never was interested in joining any group that wouldn’t immediately accept him as their leader.…If they had, they might have beaten you. But he’s always been too powerful and too well-connected for me to touch. So, you kick the little turd into the long grass with my blessing, Edwin. If you can.” She looked at me for a long moment. “Is it just you, Edwin? Did any of the other Droods survive?”
“No one else from my family made it out of the Hall alive,” I said carefully. “There’s always the rogues, of course.”
“Of course. I am sorry for your loss, Edwin. Some of them were my friends. And I do know what it’s like to lose family. Now, what can I do for you?”
“I need information,” I said. “Where, exactly, can I find the Department of the Uncanny and the Regent of Shadows?”
Catherine Latimer looked genuinely surprised. “Why on earth would you want him, of all people?”
“Because my family never wanted to talk about him,” I said.
CHAPTER SIX
Department of the Unexpected
It doesn’t matter how much experience you have of the world or how much you think you understand how things work; every now and again the way things really are will just rise up and slap you round the head.
Molly and I stood together looking up at Big Ben, with Molly not saying I told you so so loudly it was almost deafening. As Catherine Latimer had taken a certain delight in telling me, the Department of the Uncanny was indeed currently based at Big Ben. Just as Madame O had said back on Brighton Pier.
“Smugness really is very unattractive in a woman,” I said, looking straight ahead. “Bloody Big Ben…I’ve heard of hiding in plain sight, but this is ridiculous. Hiding one of this country’s most secret organisations behind a major tourist attraction? That’s thinking so lateral, it’s positively perverse.”
“Big Ben is actually the name of the bell,” Molly said solemnly. “Not the tower, or the clock at the top. I know many other useful facts about Big Ben, if you’re interested.”
“I mean, we’re talking about a bloody big tower right next to the House of Commons!” I said bitterly. “And no one in that place could keep a secret even if you put a gun to their ’nads.…”
Molly looked at me sharply. “We’re not going to have to go down into Under Parliament again, are we? That whole layout gave me the creeps big-time.…”
“No,” I said. “There’s a hidden door right at the base of the tower. Raise your Sight and look straight ahead.”
I was already looking at it. A simple everyday door, standing upright on its own some two to three feet in front of the tower. Invisible and intangible to the rest of the world, it was a dimensional door, kept subtly out of phase with reality to provide a gateway to another place. Which meant the Department of the Uncanny wasn’t actually in Big Ben, but somewhere else. Which meant that technically speaking, I’d been right all along. I had enough sense not to say that, of course. There was even a very neat and polite sign on the door saying, DEPARTMENT OF THE UNCANNY; ENQUIRE WITHIN, for those with the eyes to see it. What next—a welcome mat? Guided tours? A souvenir shop?
“Stop frowning,” said Molly. “It’ll give you wrinkles. Tell me things about the Department of the Uncanny. Lecture me. You know that always puts you in a better mood.”
It would have made a much better peace offering if she could have said it without the smirk, but of such compromises are successful relationships made. Or so I’m told.
“Catherine Latimer had quite a lot to say about the Department of the Uncanny,” I said. “While you were prowling round her office, looking for more things to steal. Most of these remarks were of a somewhat jealous and judgemental nature, but that’s competing secret organisations for you. It’s what she didn’t say that intrigues me the most. She seemed to know things only about the Department’s previous incarnation, when it was run by the Shadowy Cabinet. Political appointees, the lot of them, and living proof that it’s who, rather than what, you know that gets you ahead in government circles. They’re all gone now, of course; the entire Shadowy Cabinet was killed off during the Great Satanic Conspiracy.”
“Whose side were they on?” said Molly.
“No one knows,” I said. “The Satanists wiped them all out, apparently for not making up their minds quickly enough. To my mind, the very fact they were considering the question was good enough reason to stamp them all into the ground with extreme prejudice. The Regent of Shadows was invited to come in and do the whole new-broom thing shortly afterwards, and that was when Catherine Latimer’s information stopped. Which suggests, if nothing else, that the Regent runs a tight ship and holds his secrets close to his chest.”
“Good for him,” said Molly. “He’ll talk to us, though. Won’t he?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “He’ll talk to us.”
“If he knows what’s good for him.”
“Exactly! Can I lecture you some more?”
“Oh, go on, then. You know that professorial voice gets me all hot. And it’ll help cheer you up for being so totally and utterly wrong about Big Ben. If you start to get boring, I can always heckle and throw things.”
“The Department exists to keep an eye on the hidden world,” I said. “To find out and know everything that matters about those aspects of the supernatural world that might pose a threat. Or at the very least, to know as much as possible. Because everything is always changing in the hidden world. Which is why the Department’s agents are always so busy, overworked and just a bit twitchy. The Department then passes the relevant data on to those best able to make use of it, or at least to those the government of the day approves of. The Ghost Finders, the SAS combat sorcerers, the London Knights…even the Droods; after they’ve tried everything else, including prayer, and closing their eyes and just hoping it all goes away. Governments have always hated going cap in hand to my family.”
“Gosh,” said Molly, “I can’t think why. Could it be because you always want something really hefty in return?”
“Who’s telling this?” I said. “The Department of the Uncanny is part of the Establishment, though they like to say they’re separate from it. But then, everyone in the Establishment likes to think that. Helps them sleep better at night. Catherine Latimer told me that Big Ben is the real London Eye, the Eye on the outer worlds. That the clock faces are just a disguise, a distraction. Because apparently someone or something lives at the top of the tower and Sees all and knows all.”
“Like Madame O?” said Molly.
“Rather more clearly, one hopes,” I said. “The Department gathers most of its information through field agents. They work in the shadows, as shadows, entirely undetected. No one knows who they are.”
“Not even each other?”
“Must make for some stilted conversations in the staff canteen. And then there are the special agents, not unlike Drood field agents, for when something must be done. Usually in a hurry.”
“I suppose no one knows who they are, either,” said Molly.
“Got it in one! In fact, there are those who have been known to suggest that these Special Agents may not exist at all. Just smoke and mirrors to fool all the other secret organis
ations into taking the Department of the Uncanny more seriously.”
“Don’t the Droods know?”
“Oh, I’m sure someone in the family did,” I said, and then stopped to correct myself. “I’m sure someone does. We always make it a point to know the things that no one else knows. Knowledge is ammunition in the hidden world of secret organisations.”
I glanced casually about me. Night was falling, the lights were coming on and tourists strolled up and down the pavements, stopping now and then to take photos of one another before places of interest. And to peer uncertainly across the River Thames at the Houses of Parliament and wonder if anything important might be going on. And all the time they had no idea a door stood before Big Ben, unseen and unknown, that could have delivered them right into the heart of the secret world. But then, that’s always the way. Wherever you are and wherever you go, you’re never far from someone or something you’re better off not knowing about.
Once again, I’d left the Phantom V parked so illegally it was practically committing treason just sitting there. I’d told Catherine Latimer I’d be parking the Rolls right next to the Houses of Parliament, so she could warn off the security people. In the full knowledge that the boss might or might not pass the information along. Depending on whether she thought it might be funnier not to. Like most people in positions of power, Latimer was famous for her perverse, not to say downright peculiar, sense of humour.
“Poor car,” said Molly, running her hand affectionately over the gleaming bonnet. “It must get really bored, left on its own so often. Maybe we could leave the radio on.…”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Poor car…Who’s a good car, then?”
“Don’t encourage it,” I said sternly. “The Armourer’s personalised cars have more than enough personality as it is.”
We left the Phantom V behind, and strode determinedly towards the door only we could See. None of the tourists noticed a thing, of course. The door saw to that. It waited till the very last moment, and then swung smoothly and invitingly open before us.
Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel Page 20