'I'm not sure. Frankly, I wish I knew.'
'Oh well. The glory is all yours. It does strike me as almost uncanny how you knew where to look for Master Provender.'
'It was luck. Well, no, skill played a big part. The anagrams guided me to where I needed to be, even if the reason I was there wasn't the reason I thought I was there. If that makes any sense. SHORTBORN THEATRE, which I anagrammatised as BROTHER SON THREAT, I see now didn't actually refer to Arthur Gleed, at least not directly. It referred to his role as Hamlet, Claudius's brother's son, the nephew who opposes his uncle and ultimately proves his undoing. Which, however, got me to Arthur's house, which in turn brought me to Provender, or should I say Provender to me, and then --'
A sudden sharp rap from Great's signet ring shut him up as effectively as any words would have. Moore had to believe the timing was coincidental. He knew Great had no control over the only part of him that moved. All the same, it was hard not to feel he had been commanded to silence, and the balefulness of Great's gaze did nothing to vitiate that impression.
'Yes, yes,' said Carver, 'your methodology, most intriguing. But perhaps you can tell us about it some other time, when there are less pressing matters weighing on all our minds.'
'Of course. I'm sorry.'
'No need to be. I just happen to be conveying Great to pay a visit to Mrs Gleed. Come with us and I will direct you to a room where you can wait until such time as I can arrange transportation for you back to London. That young lady who was with you and Master Provender - I trust she would wish to return home too?'
'I have no idea. I expect so.'
'Very good. This way, then.'
They walked, the three of them, or rather one of them walked while one of them walked-and-pushed and one of them was pushed, and Moore was in a subdued mood, thinking again about how this hadn't turned out as he had hoped. Carver, for all that he had said complimentary things about Moore's work, didn't seem unduly impressed or full of admiration. That might simply be down to the way he was - Moore thought it would take a lot to impress Carver - but equally there was an inescapable sense that he was annoyed somehow.
Or was that just Moore's insecurity? His heightened sense of self-criticism getting the better of him?
As they journeyed onward, the only sound was that of the wheelchair tyres rumbling and the tapping of Great's signet ring, which was intermittent but unrelenting. Moore remained sunk in thought but not so deep that he didn't find the continual clack of gold against steel just that bit distracting, and after a while aggravating. How did Carver put up with it? No doubt over the years he had learned to tune it out. Didn't even notice it any more.
There was something about its arrhythmic insistence, though.
Something that demanded attention.
That would not be ignored.
If it had been just that bit less repetitive, just that bit more random...
Random? Moore was puzzled. The tapping was quite clearly random. Why would he have thought it was anything else?
He began listening to it, as opposed to simply hearing it, and yes, he could detect no obvious pattern. There were sequences of impacts, some louder than others, which came in clusters with short and sometimes long intervals between. Nothing regular about it other than that it kept happening. Random.
Some louder than others.
And Moore listened more closely to it, and then even more closely, and oh God, it couldn't be, it wasn't what he thought, it surely could not be...
And the pattern became apparent.
There was consistency.
'Great's real name,' he said, needing confirmation, 'his first name - what is it?'
'Why do you ask?'
Moore tried to sound casual. 'Uh, curiosity. Nothing else.'
Carver seemed to think there was no harm in telling him. 'It's Coriander.'
CORIANDER GLEED...
The letters whirled like wind-blown leaves, then settled again.
And Moore said, because he couldn't help blurting it out:
'Morse.'
And Carver halted, and swivelled his head, and pinned the Anagrammatic Detective with his gaze, and said, 'I beg your pardon?'
And Moore said again, because that gaze of Carver's brooked no lies or evasion:
'Morse.'
And Carver said, 'Ah.' And then said, 'Oh.' And then said, 'What a shame.'
'You didn't know,' said Moore. Hopefully.
'Know?' Carver replied. Evenly.
'You did,' said Moore. 'Of course. You communicate. Army. You understand him. He can ask for things. Give you orders...'
With that, Moore's voice trailed off into silence.
He saw it.
Saw everything.
Provender's insider. The brains behind the abduction.
Insiders, plural.
Why else was Carver glaring at him now? Why else was Moore not supposed to have spotted that the tapping was not as uncontrolled as it was claimed to be? It was obviously a secret shared by only Carver and Great. And why else would it be a secret if it wasn't being used for some kind of subterfuge?
With that revelation, the wider picture began to open up. Why had Carver hired Moore and Milner if it was against his own interests? Why else unless...
'Yes, a shame,' Carver said, nodding. 'I mean it sincerely. And I'm being just as sincere when I say that you're good at your job, Mr Moore. Exceedingly so. Far too good, indeed, for your own good.'
'We weren't supposed to find him,' Moore said, meekly, weakly. 'We were meant to fail.'
'With the greatest of respect: Anagrammatic Detectives? Jumbling up words in order to solve crimes? It's just plain silly. There's no earthly reason for it to work.'
'But it does.'
'It did. Or you just got lucky. You've just got lucky in every one of your few successful cases. Who knows?'
'But you took us on, threw money at us --'
'-- so that I could be seen to be doing something. Within the remit I had, you were perfect. Private investigators, not police. Detectives but not, as far as I could see, especially effective ones. You'd tackle the case but had little chance of cracking it. Provender would remain a captive as long as was necessary.'
'Which was how long? What were you hoping to achieve?'
'You'll never understand,' Carver said. 'It's not your place to, anyway.'
Great had begun tapping furiously, and the difference between the dots and dashes was all too apparent now, soft for short, loud for long, and Moore knew the individual letters of the Morse alphabet but Great was going too fast for him to keep up. Words were pouring out. The wheelchair frame rang with speech.
'And,' Carver continued, 'I regret to say I cannot allow you to share this discovery of yours with anyone. Damage limitation is now my goal. Given the latest turn of events, Mrs Gleed's act of self-harm. it would reflect badly on Great and myself were we implicated in Master Provender's kidnap. I cannot allow that to happen.'
'Can't allow it?' said Moore, dry-mouthed. 'Or are you being told not to allow it?'
Carver appeared to smile. His scar, at any rate, puckered more deeply at the bottom and became curved like a hook.
'It amounts to the same thing,' he said, and lunged.
71
'It's a snug fit,' said Extravagance.
'Tight, you mean,' said Is, struggling with the zip at the side of the skirt. 'Do you have anything even a little bit looser?'
'That's the biggest-size thing I've got. I'm not sure why I bought it. Moment of madness. Perhaps I was a couple of pounds overweight that day. I've never worn it, anyway, because it hangs off me like a tent. I thought it would be fine on you, but...'
'But I have hips.'
'You're rounded.'
'And my bum is twice as large as yours.'
'Rounded.'
Is fought with the zip for a while longer, Extravagance assisting, but eventually both accepted that it was going up only so far and no further. An inch-long V of unmeshed teeth rema
ined above the fastener. The skirt, however, stayed on, and when Is tugged the hem of her jumper down, the gap in the waistband was hidden. She did a couple of turns in front of Extravagance's dressing-room mirror. It was a lovely skirt, Italian silk screenprinted with a floral pattern and trimmed with lace which slithered pleasingly around her calves. Not the sort of item she herself would have bought, even if she could have afforded it. Too feminine-looking, too impractically delicate. But as a one-time-only deal, a substitute for the skirt Mrs Gleed had been sick over, she was happy to wear it.
'I'll get it back to you as soon as I can.'
'Oh God, no. It's yours. Keep it.'
'But I can barely breathe in it.'
'Well, I don't want it. Think of it as a thank-you gift.'
'Thank you for...'
'For Mum, of course. What you did.'
'I didn't do much.'
'You saved her life!'
'But --'
'Is, none of us had a clue how to help her. We all stood around like prunes, whereas you got straight in there and did all that chest-pushing and whatnot.'
'Provender pitched in.'
'Only because you told him to. You were amazing. A miracle-worker. A saint.'
Is could not look her in the eye. Extravagance didn't know yet about her role in the kidnapping. No one in the household did, apart from Provender.
Is felt she was still a long way from redeeming herself.
'Will she be all right, do you think?' Extravagance asked as she and Is left her room.
'I can't say. A full recovery is perfectly possible. Then again, worse comes to worst, she might lapse into a coma.' Seeing Extravagance's face fall, Is hurried on, 'But that's unlikely. On balance, if she's otherwise healthy, your mother ought to be fine. We got there reasonably soon after she took the pills, and she threw up, which helps.'
'I still have a hard time believing it. It's just not like Mum to do something so ... extreme.'
'The circumstances were extreme. People respond unpredictably to pressure.' Is had offered such soothing bromides to patients' relatives in the past, but never before with an underlying sense of guilt. The guilt was starting to feel constricting - or maybe that was just Extravagance's skirt. Either way, getting away from Dashlands was now more imperative than ever as far as she was concerned. Worse than the Gleeds' enmity, she was finding their gratefulness hard to bear.
'Look, Extravagance...' She stumbled over the name. It was quite a mouthful.
''Strav,' said Extravagance. 'It's simpler.'
''Strav. I really think I should be getting back home.'
'Oh, you can't go! Mum --'
'-- is in very good hands.'
'But then there's Provender.'
'What about Provender?'
'Well, don't you at least want to say goodbye to him?'
'Maybe another time. When he hasn't got so much else to worry about.'
'How did you and he meet anyway? There's still a lot I don't understand about all this. Come on, at least stay till tomorrow. We've plenty of spare rooms. You can even have the official guest suite. You'd love the guest suite. It has a Jacuzzi, a four-poster, a hell of a view... Normally only Family heads get to sleep there but I could swing it for you I'm sure. And in return, you can fill me in on what's been going on and you can tell me why my brother looks at you in that way.'
'He looks at me in a way?'
'Don't be daft, you know he does. When we were out there on the road to the tram stop, and even when you were bossing him about in the television room...'
'He doesn't look at me in a way.'
'Trust me, he does. He's smitten. You can see it a mile off.'
'Please, 'Strav, he doesn't.'
'You may not want him to but that's not the same thing. It's nothing to get alarmed about. I mean, you're not Family, but at this stage, frankly, we're past caring about that. It's just a relief that he's considering anyone at all.'
'"Considering".'
'Yes.'
'Implying I don't have any say in the matter.'
'Is,' said Extravagance, sweeping an enthusiastic arm around, 'what choice is there to make?'
They had arrived at the head of the staircase that curved down around the perimeter of the cylindrical atrium where Triumph stood, and Is had to admit that, if what you were after was a life lived amid splendour, Dashlands House was unquestionably the place for it. Extravagance's gesture took in the statue itself, the apexed glass roof, the staircase's ornate wrought-iron banister, and by implication the whole of the rest of the house. She was offering Is, in effect, a future as glittering as Triumph's gold accents.
Before Is could respond, there was a commotion down below, quickly followed by the appearance of Romeo Moore in the atrium, fleeing, and Carver, in hot pursuit. Moore took to the stairs, and Carver was right behind him, arm out, inches away from grabbing hold. Halfway up, Moore missed his footing and stumbled. Carver seized him by the jacket collar. Moore writhed, wriggled free from his jacket, and resumed running up the stairs. Carver tossed the item of clothing aside and carried on after. His face was set in a ferocious leer. Moore's expression was pure terror.
Near the top of the stairs Moore caught sight of Is and Extravagance and faltered. The pause was brief but enough to allow Carver to catch up with him again. This time he took a firm hold of the Anagrammatic Detective, swung him around with appalling ease, as if he weighed next to nothing, and slammed him against the banister. The air was driven from Moore's lungs. Carver then proceeded to bend him backwards over the banister's handrail, fist locked against the base of his throat. Moore's head was canted directly over Triumph's upraised left hand; her fingertips daggered up approximately four yards below the back of his skull. He grunted, he grimaced. Carver's contorted face, looming over his, was surely the worst thing anyone would want to see when in a position like this, and Moore's bulging eyes said exactly that.
'Carver!'
Extravagance's sharp cry had little effect on the manservant. He pushed Moore further over, until the detective was touching the stairs with just his toecaps.
'Carver, what are you doing? What is the meaning of this?'
'It doesn't concern you, Miss Extravagance,' Carver said from the side of his mouth. 'You should leave. You too,' he added, meaning Is. 'This is between me and this ... thief.'
'Thief?'
'I caught him attempting to pilfer some small trinkets. Great and I both witnessed him getting ready to stuff his pockets with Family valuables. Naturally, when we came upon him in flagrante, he ran, and naturally I gave chase.'
Moore was whipping his head from side to side and would have denied the accusation out loud had Carver's knuckles not been sunk into his windpipe.
'You're hurting him,' said Extravagance. 'Let him go.'
'I can't do that, Miss Extravagance. Not without risk to yourself. He's a desperate, dangerous man.'
'He's half your size,' said Is, 'and from what I know of him he's no danger to anyone.'
'Nobody asked your opinion,' Carver growled.
'Let him go,' Extravagance said again. 'That's an order.'
Carver did not obey, nor did he openly disobey. What he did was shove Moore fully onto the banister, so that all that was supporting Moore and keeping him from falling was the banister itself and Carver. Moore's arms flailed and his eyes rolled, panic-stricken. The drop beneath him, assuming he missed Triumph on the way down, was far enough to kill a man.
Is took a step towards Carver, and at that same moment the banister groaned. A shudder ran through it from top to bottom and from somewhere along its length there came a resonant metallic snap. Moore let out a strangulated moan. Is took three more steps. Carver turned his head and shot her a look that would have scorched paint. The scar was a livid lightning flash against the thundercloud of his face. His lips were pulled back and Is could see that several back teeth were missing on the same side as the scar, presumably knocked out when the injury was inflicted.
'
Do not interfere, girl,' he said, reverberantly low. 'Stand back or I will mess you up so badly your life will not be worth living.'
'You don't scare me,' Is said.
'I should and I do.'
'No, you don't.' She meant it, too. 'This man hasn't tried to steal anything. You're lying about that and I think I know why. He's rumbled you, hasn't he? And you want him out of the way, you want to silence him. I know who you are, Mr Carver. I know what you've done.'
'You know nothing.'
'You're Damien's insider.'
'Shut your mouth. You're talking nonsense.'
'Is, what do you mean?' said Extravagance. 'Who's Damien? What's going on here?'
'Gleeds not paying you enough, Mr Carver? Oh no, wait, all the money was going to Damien. So what was your angle? What were you after? Do you not like Provender much?'
'I have never,' Carver said, 'ever done anything to the detriment of the Gleeds, any of them, and never would. I have served this Family immaculately all my years. I am loyal to them to my core. You're speaking of things you have no way of understanding, girl. I reiterate: shut your mouth.'
'Will someone explain this to me immediately!' Extravagance shouted.
Is said, 'Put him down, Mr Carver. We'll sort it out without hurting anybody.'
The banister gave another groan and wobbled slightly beneath Moore's back. Moore yelped and clutched Carver's sleeve in fright.
'No one has to die over this,' she said. 'There's no point in killing the detective because I know your secret now and so does 'Strav.'
'I do not,' said Extravagance. 'Do I?'
'Carver masterminded the kidnapping. He's behind it all.'
'Carver? This can't be true. Is this true?'
'An abject falsehood, Miss Extravagance.'
Extravagance looked puzzled. 'Why don't I believe you?'
'Probably because he's holding a man suspended over a thirty-foot drop,' said Is. 'That puts a bit of a dent in his credibility.'
'But what's my brother ever done to you?' Extravagance wanted to know.
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