Seed.
He left Margaret standing by the latticed windows without answering her question –
– and pulled up sharp in the hallway. What was the name Cline had given to such things? Lust murder. You damned idiot, Wyre. It had been staring him in the face from the moment he arrived.
Tearing aside the ribbon that placed the Valet’s chamber out of bounds, he pushed open the tiny door. The bent nail at the top of the bedpost was a beckoning finger now. Business-like, he drew a line with his eyes from post to fireplace. The iron backplate was cast in alternate glints and shadows by the shafts of last sun. He through the burning martyrs – there was the old man, clasped hands raised to heaven. The light ricocheted off his tears.
Tears that shimmered through the soot.
He dropped to all fours like a supplicant. So Tranter had died shortly after Margaret arrived at the Palace. That made it, what, April? Already unseasonably warm; not much call for fires.
He touched a finger to the old man’s tears, then pressed a fingernail into them. It left an impression. Lead. Soft, compacted fragments. Wyre swivelled round, calculating a line from bed to fire plate. The ricochet must have sent the bullet . . . more or less . . . there, to the right of the door where a patch of plaster took the light differently from the surrounding surface. Scrambling to his feet, he went over, heart hammering against his ribs. The plaster was rough, a clumsy repair. If he scraped away, would he find buried in the lathes the deformed remnants of the slug that ended Tranter before the footman’s body was moved and dumped so unceremoniously outside the stables?
He fished around in his waistcoat pocket for the key to Mrs Mason’s apartment. He could dig the bullet out with that, present the evidence to Read.
He stopped, and slipped Mrs Mason’s smooth key back in his pocket, knowing he was too late. The verdict would already have been delivered. Even if his rough calculation had yielded the right spot to delve – and now he began to doubt – time had already rendered the bullet inadmissible. Any new evidence would have to wait for a re-trial, which would never happen. A bullet worth, literally, a King’s ransom? There wasn’t a strongbox in the country that could keep such evidence from walking. Even if he made it to the retrial alive, all he had was a theory, the airiest of citadels, easily dismissed along with all the other fantasies of conspiracy being rehearsed in taverns up and down the country.
Head bowed, he headed in the direction of the piazza exit, pausing at a door marked KEY ROOM. There was always the outside chance someone had handed in his notebook. It was a vestige of Rose he was unwilling to give up. His handkerchief, too; though he doubted he’d ever see that again.
Benjamin Smith’s head appeared. The white hair and boyish complexion was a singularly unpleasant combination. “Nothing of that kind, Mr Wyre. No ’ankychief. No notebook, neither.” Along the length of one wall, dozens of square-tooth keys hung from hooks. Smith followed the lawyer’s eyes to a conspicuous gap. “Them along the top are for the state rooms,” he said, pointing with an arthritic finger. “Them in the middle’s the public rooms, west wing. An’ them along the bottom . . .” He grinned. “Servants’ dormies. That’s where the maids cuddle up at night.”
Wyre looked at him sharply. “You have keys to the private bedrooms?”
The Porter nodded.
“For Sellis’s, too?”
Another nod. A smidgen of uncertainty had crept into Smith’s face.
With a yawning sensation in his stomach, Wyre stared at the space beneath the hook. It was a tiny void, but it seemed to suck the whole room into it. “That was Sellis’s key, wasn’t it?”
“One of ’em, sir. He had two, did Mr Sellis. Two doors to his room, see. The spare for the one that opened into the rear passage went missing th’ night of the assault.”
“And you didn’t think to mention this to anybody?”
“Mr Read spotted it,” answered the old man defensively.
“Mr Read knew?”
“Wrote it down, sir. In his little notebook.” The Porter looked away. “He ’adn’t lost his, see.”
Wyre shook his head. What did it matter now? What did any of it matter? He stepped out into the hallway, and set off again for the exit that would bring him onto the piazza, and away.
And stopped. Things had gone far enough. Even a moral victory was a victory of sorts.
At the foot of the stone stairs leading down from Smith’s den of keys, Paulet was chatting with a girl on her knees next to a steaming bucket.
“The Seddon Room?” Wyre demanded, as the maid rose to let him pass. He looked dubiously at Paulet. “You always seem to be on hand.”
The phrase triggered a smile. “These corridors, sir. They’re something befuddling. It’s the great long room downstairs, across the courtyard, you’ll be wanting. The one they ’ardly never use.”
63. Deluge
When it arrived, the rain was the kind that could beat fruit off trees. Pulling his jacket collars up around his ears, Wyre hurried across the courtyard’s gravel paths, now slushy conduits. Palace gardeners moved through the flower beds with protective hessian sacks that abrupt gusts of wind threatened to tear from their fingers. He turned into a cloistered walkway, the quickest way, according to the ever-obliging Paulet, to the Seddon Room. The inquest jury would have arrived at their verdict. Perhaps everyone had already left.
He reached the low arch Paulet had described. It was decorated with snakes eating their tails. A stocky man stepped out of the shadows at the dripping entrance. He wore a burgundy long coat, his blue conical hat pulled down against the weather, eyes slits beneath the reinforced brim. Wyre made to go round him; the other mirrored his steps. He went left – the same; a dance in place. Wyre stood still, water cascading from his hair.
The man tipped back his hat. That misshapen nose, there was no mistaking it. Wyre stared through sheets of rain at the stocky waiter from The Sun.
“Ev’ning, Mr Wyre,” the waiter called across. “At the centre of the storm again. Quite certain yer don’t aspire to become th’ storm itself?”
The eloquence was a slap across the cheeks.
“What are you doing here?”
“Just a bit of bollocks. Feeding the mystery.”
It sank in. “You’re one of Cumberland’s men,” Wyre shouted over the slaps of rain and noisy squalls. “You might as well know I intend to make the Duke answer for his deeds.”
“Nah.” The waiter gave him a look of disdain. “You’ve got it all wrong. My master’s York, and he’d probably applaud yer ambition.” He tilted his face up to the hanging clouds. “But then there’d be the scandal to consider. Yorkie’s baby brother in the dock?” He smiled, frowning at the same time. “I don’t think so.”
“I won’t shrink from my duty.”
The other gave him an appraising look. “You’ve got a strong belly, I’ll give yer that. Tipped enough nasty in your soup to down a cow.”
Had he heard right?
“Think of it as a parting gift from ol’ Leager and Oakden. Good hearts, both of ’em, who didn’t deserve t’ dangle.”
The mention of those two soiled names had only one meaning: he was staring at a lieutenant in Yardley’s molly regiment – a corps within the Duke of York’s own corps. In William’s terms, the cup within the cup. Was this the penetralium itself? It was certainly payback. Retribution for failing to indict Neale, for failing to salvage Sellis’s sullied reputation . . . and, it seemed, for having had the temerity to do his duty from the Prosecutor’s bench. So he was to be ended under a pagan arch. He almost felt resigned to it.
“The dog – ” he yelled over the gusts. “I suppose that was you, too.”
“Nah, you’ve got Cumberland’s people to thank there. Tend to get ahead of themselves, that lot.” The man wiped water from his eyes. “We were all saying, us York men were, how well yer did to get away from the General. Years of experience, that mutt. You’re a man of hidden resources.”
“I’ll call
the guards.”
That elicited a smirk. “’Arf of ’em are wiv us, Mr Wyre,” he said, stepping towards Wyre. The waiter drove a fist into the lawyer’s stomach that sent him spluttering to his knees. “That’s from the Vere Street boys. Would have been worse, if I’d had my way, but Yardley thinks you’ll have yer uses in the future.”
“Best . . . will . . . uproot you,” Wyre said between sucking breaths. “You and your kind . . . are a disease. Human effluvia . . .”
“And you, Mr Wyre,” the lieutenant said, “are like a once-respectable woman reduced to the condition of a whore, begging every physician to inspect her stinking parts.” He knelt; Wyre felt the man’s wet lips at his ear. “When the old donkey blows his horn, it’s time to cock yer hay an’ corn. Ain’t that what they say, Mr Wyre?”
He clutched at his assailant’s sleeve, but the waiter flicked him off contemptuously. Whistling cheerfully, the man vanished into the cloistered walkway beyond the arch.
Somewhere, a solitary mistle thrush was trying in vain to sing the sun back.
Wyre flung the enormous door to the Seddon Room open on its hinges, and staggered in, his cheeks burning. The inquest chamber was set out like a courtroom, with a dock near the middle, but the benches were empty. He registered a set of double doors on the far wall – the jury must be inside, still deliberating. He wasn’t too late! In the far corner, standing at one of the Seddon Room’s tall windows, Read was conversing with the Duke. Adams and Jackson stood to the side. All four were looking at the lawyer.
“I won’t be party to this,” said Wyre over the booms of the storm, stumbling towards them, clutching his belly. “This inquest’s a sham!”
“Hell’s despair!” exclaimed Read. “Remember whose presence you’re in.” He took a menacing step forward.
Momentum swept Wyre along. “One of the maids saw you with Sellis,” Wyre said, looking past Read’s shoulder to Cumberland, who was framed by flashing geometries of light.
“You’re making a fool of yourself,” Read growled.
“It’s quite alright, Mr Read,” said the Duke, his face displaying mild amusement. “Let him say his say. Adams . . . Jackson. If you wouldn’t mind.”
With courtiers’ bows, Coroner and Royal Surgeon stepped out into the corridor.
Read remained, his look black.
Wyre appealed to the magistrate. “Neale murdered Sellis, I’m sure of it.” He was suddenly unsure. “But it was at the Duke’s behest. Neale stole the key to Sellis’s back door – it went missing from the Porter’s room that night – and surprised Sellis while he was shaving. That’s why the jacket and trousers were neatly folded over the chair. The sound of dropping water reported by Mrs Neale, the shuffling in the corridor that frightened the maids . . . Not Sellis. Both down to Neale!”
“Mystery-mongering,” the Duke said in a quiet but perfectly audible voice, his eyes tiny points. His black silk cap had made of him a demonic cardinal, or an antichrist. “You’re worse than a pamphleteer.”
“One of the maids saw you,” Wyre said, voice rising, “in the Valet’s Room, standing behind Sellis. You were – ”
Read leaped forward and wrestled the lawyer to the floor, smothering his mouth with a broad hand. Wyre kicked and bucked, but the magistrate was the stronger man. In seconds, Wyre was pinned. He was aware of the Duke standing over them both, watching them struggle.
“Tell me, Mr Wyre,” Cumberland said, looking down, “did your father beat you till the stick broke?”
“Why didn’t you allow Sellis to leave, as he desired?” Wyre said, choking against Read’s hand. “All this could have been – ” He cried out in pain as the magistrate’s knee drove into his abdomen.
The Duke raised his cane. “Let him speak, Mr Read.”
Wyre strained against Read’s hold. “They hang men for what you do!”
“I could almost get used to your familiarity, Mr Wyre. But not your fables. I am guilty of precisely nothing. I exist in a state of grace.”
“Ask him to remove his cap,” Wyre said, trying to make eye contact with the Chief Magistrate. “You won’t find anything more than a few light scratches.” The girl with the needles – that’s what Cline had been trying to tell him. “All self-inflicted . . .”
“An ingenious confection,” Cumberland said. Then, in a sharper tone: “Get up, both of you. Enough!”
Read allowed the lawyer to rise, but kept his arms pinioned behind his back.
“You’re wrong,” the Duke said, pacing. “I wasn’t in the valet’s bedroom that night. You’d be more likely to find my brother there than me.”
“Lies!” Wyre’s cheeks burned. “You had Tranter killed, too. You blew his brains out in the valet’s chamber. Leighton cracked your case.”
The Duke stopped abruptly. “Can you prove this, or am I expected to set fire to my own beard?”
Wyre turned to Read. “The bullet hit the fire plate, sir,” he said, with all the urgency he could muster. “It ricocheted back into the room. You’ll find it buried beneath the plaster.”
The Duke reached into his jacket pocket. Shit! Wyre strained against the magistrate’s grip. Cumberland still had the razor.
“If your soul was on the outside,” he yelled at the Duke, struggling, frantic now, “it would be a black flapping thing. Someone will sit at your gate in judgement.”
“There goes your imagination again.” The amused expression reappeared on Cumberland’s face. He opened his hand to reveal a silver pocket watch. He tapped the timepiece smartly, and glanced at the double doors. “The jury must be debating the finer points. While we’re waiting for them to return, let’s put Mr Wyre’s theory to the test. The Valet’s Room, gentleman.” He extended his good arm. “Shall we?”
They followed the Duke, Wyre frog-marched by Read. The householders they met coming from the opposite direction kept their heads down, but Wyre felt their eyes on his back.
Rain sheeted against the Valet’s Room’s latticed windows, backed by dark shadows.
“Well, Wyre?” Read pushed him away. “This had better be good.”
Rubbing his aching arms, Wyre went to the door jamb and ran his fingers over the plaster. It was perfectly smooth. Had it ever been anything other than that?
The Duke watched for a moment, pulling at his cuff. Finally, he said, “You were right in one respect, Mr Wyre. Right to surmise Sellis was an extortionist. But there was no impropriety. I have never thought of him in that way, and the very idea is repugnant to me.” He glanced through the window at the dark clouds. “But you’ll know better than most the mere accusation of a certain crime is sufficient to ruin a man. Physical injury – ” he lifted his bandaged arm “ – is bad, but injury to character far worse. Mr Sellis demanded a thousand pounds.”
The lawyer said nothing; his ears filled with a strange roaring sound.
“Are you getting this, Wyre?” Read said. It seemed none of it was news to the Chief Magistrate.
“At first,” Cumberland went on, “I contemplated paying off the villain.” He shrugged, an odd gesture for a Duke. “However, on the night of his demise, Mr Sellis informed me the price of what he called his silence had doubled. Such a sum was impossible to procure discreetly, even for a royal scion. I explained this. Again he threatened me with newspapers.” He smiled thinly. “I informed him I’d sleep on it, and give him his answer in the morning. Perhaps Sellis correctly guessed my intention to turn the case over to Bow Street. That night, he struck at me as I slept. The rest occurred exactly as I deposed.” He took a deep breath. “So you see, Mr Wyre, I neither committed murder, nor caused it to be committed.” He moved to the arched fireplace. “Shall we adjourn the flames, and forget this confusion of ways?”
Wyre stared from one to the other, weighing the Duke’s story against Margaret’s, against Leighton’s. A royal shirt dance? It made some kind of sense: a molly scandal of such proportions would deliver a crushing blow to the nation’s morale . . .
He breathed out.
No . . . It was creaky as a newlyweds’ bed. He shook his head. Slow, deliberate movements.
“I came to pursue the case,” he began, “wherever it took me. It has led me to you.”
The Duke stared at him for a moment. “Come, Mr Read,” he said at last. “Mr Wyre knows what he’s about. The jury will be wondering where we’ve got to.” With his good hand, he pulled his lapels together. “By the way,” he said, as if inquiring about a trifle, “who was the maid?”
Wyre pressed his lips together. His heart tightened to a clenched fist.
The Duke nodded. “I thought so.” He left the Valet’s Room, giving no sign at all of having registered the enormous figure that had appeared behind the frame, looming.
Read turned in the doorway. “You idiot, Wyre. I told you to go home.”
64. After the Fire
In an old column from The Gazette, Wyre remembered reading about very large human ribs unearthed by Spanish peasants ploughing a field. The fragments were of such proportions, the ignorant joskins believed they’d discovered the relics of a wandering descendant of Rapha. Scholars from the university at Valencia dismissed the bones as whales’ ruins.
“But whales are denizens of the sea,” objected the villagers, who complained for years of a conspiracy.
An oddly dissociated corner of Wyre’s brain weighed the respective arguments, bumpkins versus scholars, while a central core of self screamed at him to act – and quickly.
The colossal stablehand had been forced to crouch low to squeeze under the doorframe; once inside, however, he was surprisingly fast, advancing with arms spread wide like a playful uncle come to catch a child.
“A hide comes sooner or later to the tanner,” he said, his voice incongruously reedy.
Backing away desperately, a tide of terror washing through him, Wyre screamed for Read. With a thud, his heels knocked against the skirting. Trapped.
The giant drew back a ham-like fist. The belly clout seemed to slow as it approached, its half-second transit splitting off into ever-more generous divisions. Wyre had time to speculate how Leighton would react in his place; whatever the man was, he’d throw punches wherever he found a target. He remembered him once trying to explain fear: Let it make you clever. He seemed to hear Leighton’s voice at his ear now. Dive and deceive! Fuck’s sake, Kit, what are you waiting for?
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