Pax Britannia: Unnatural History

by Jonathan Green

  The constable scanned the card revealed inside the wallet with its visual receptors, the red glow behind its eye-visor panning from left to right. "I am sorry, sir," the drone apologised. "What can I do for you, Mr Quicksilver?"

  "I wish to inspect the scene of the crime."

  "Certainly, sir."

  The constable unhooked the tape, allowing Ulysses into the wing.

  "This way, sir. If there is anything else I can do to help..." the robot began.

  "I'll be sure to find you," Ulysses interrupted, finishing the constable's sentence.

  In the main hall of the wing Ulysses found more policemen - both mechanical and human - as well as other men not in uniform. A team of these, dressed in starched white lab coats, were dusting various cabinets and wooden benches.

  Ulysses ignored them and made for the entrance to one of the secondary galleries, again flanked by automata-constables, through which a steady stream of forensics staff were flowing. Mote-shot beams of afternoon sunlight entered through skylights high in the ceiling. Ulysses took in the display cases, the doors to offices and workspaces beyond and the cluster of men working in the centre of the room. He could just make out a figure, lying awkwardly within the ruins of a glass cabinet.

  "Oi! Stop right there!" came a shout from behind him.

  Ulysses turned to see a look of shock seize the approaching man's face.

  "Bloody hell! I thought you were dead."

  "And I've missed you too," Ulysses said, regarding the pale-faced, weasel of a man before him, his ginger mop of hair an unruly riot as always. "You shouldn't believe everything you read in the papers, Inspector," he added with a smile.

  For a moment the trench-coated policeman said nothing. The human sergeant accompanying him looked from his superior to the dandy in bewilderment.

  "Inspector Allardyce, shall I have this man removed?"

  "W-what?" the inspector managed. "Yes. No. Not yet," he snapped, never taking his eyes off Ulysses. "What are you doing here Quicksilver?"

  "Oh, you know how it is. I've not been in town for a while and someone said that I simply must see the Ascent of Man exhibit in the Darwin Wing at the Natural History Museum."

  "Don't give me that bullshit!" Allardyce snarled. "What are you really doing here?"

  "I'm here to investigate a murder," Ulysses said darkly, his face suddenly an impassive mask. "What are you doing here?"

  "Oh, ha ha, very funny. And what the hell do you think you're doing investigating my murder?"

  "Your murder? Oh, I'm sorry, no one told me. My commiserations. Where shall I send the flowers?"

  "You know what I mean you arrogant bastard."

  "You know how it is. Orders are orders."

  "Well you're too late. We've practically finished here. You want to try getting up before midday occasionally. There's nothing for you here."

  "I think I'll be the judge of that if you don't mind."

  "Well I do mind. The forensics boys have already been over the place with a fine-toothed comb," Inspector Allardyce sneered. "If there's anything to find, they'll have found it. I doubt there's anything you can add. Like I said, there's nothing for you here."

  "Yes, and we all know how thorough your lads can be, don't we, Allardyce?"

  The policeman flashed Ulysses a look of volcanic anger. "I don't like your tone! I could have you arrested for wasting police time, you know that?"

  "I thought it was you who was wasting my time," Ulysses goaded.

  "Look, Quicksilver, do I have to remind you that I am an Inspector of Her Majesty's Metropolitan police force? I won't be spoken to like this!"

  "And do I have to remind you of whose authority I am here under?" Ulysses said reaching inside his jacket again. He pulled out the leather wallet for a second time and flipped it open. "My card. It certainly impressed your constable enough to let me in here in the first place."

  "Yes, all right. You can put that away. You've got five minutes, then I want you out of here, never mind who pulls the strings."

  "That should be more than enough time," Ulysses said, and strode past the inspector leaving the policeman grumbling to his sergeant.

  Ulysses approached the men clustered around the body. The corpse was that of a man who had been enjoying portly middle age until the events of the previous night had resulted in his untimely death. He lay sprawled amidst the ruin of a shattered display case. The waxwork reconstructions that had been housed inside the cabinet had been removed and were now leaning against a gallery wall, baring their plaster teeth at anyone approaching the crime scene.

  "Excuse me please, gentlemen," Ulysses said as he nudged his way between the white-coated men, waving his open cardholder casually at them. In the face of such superiority and upper class confidence the forensic technicians moved aside.

  Blood, most of it dried, covered the jagged glass shards beneath the dead man's head and Ulysses could see that the victim's hair and scalp were matted with it too. Tiny slivers of glass, some of which were still embedded in the clay-like flesh, had cut the dead man's face and hands. But worse than the blood and mess of gore oozing from the back of his head, was the expression on his face. The night watchman had died in utter terror. His rigor-frozen features were a mask of dread, his lips pulled back from his teeth, his mouth open in horror.

  "How did he die?" Ulysses asked, already suspecting the answer.

  "A blow to the head; several in fact," one of the white coats said.

  "Indeed," Ulysses mused.

  But who, or what, had killed him? Ulysses wondered. What could have caused the poor wretch to die with such an expression of horror on his face?

  "What time did he die?"

  "From the onset of rigor mortis I would say... sometime around midnight," the pathologist examining the body replied. "Probably just after."

  "Was anything taken from the body?"

  "No," another technician said. "It doesn't appear so."

  Ulysses stepped back, leaving the white coats to finish their work. He had his murder victim but Wormwood had said that there had been a burglary as well. So what had been taken?

  Behind him a ransacked office gaped open, the shattered door wrenched from its frame. Policemen were busying themselves around the area. With cautious steps Ulysses approached, crunching tiny pieces of glass beneath the soles of his shoes. He paused at the entrance to look more closely at the splintered mess of the door frame. Then, in the muted sunlight spilling into the gallery Ulysses caught sight of no more than a thread of something, something all of Inspector Allardyce's forensic team had missed. Snagged in the splintered wood were three reddish-brown hairs. At first glance they made Ulysses think of coarse animal hairs. They certainly hadn't belonged to the murdered night watchman; they were the wrong colour.

  The policemen and scientists around him were so caught up in their own work that none of them paid any heed as Ulysses took a small evidence bag from a jacket pocket, a pair of tweezers from another and, without touching them with his bare hands, extracted the hairs from the door frame, sealing them safely within the bag before returning it to his pocket. Then he entered the office-lab itself.

  The place was a mess. The level of destruction suggested that more than a mere robbery had taken place here. There had been a struggle as well.

  From the detritus now filling the office space and covering the floor, Ulysses was able to build a picture in his mind of what the laboratory had looked like before it had been invaded. There had been bookcases and shelves containing all manner of scientific journals and reference books, which now littered the floor, and tables covered with distillation apparatus, that was now just so much broken glass. One of these tables had been overturned and a leg broken off it. A framed print of a classic cartoon from Punch magazine disparaging Darwin hung lopsidedly. There were stains across some of the furniture and even the walls, suggesting a vessel containing water or some other liquid had been smashed, spraying the room with its contents.

  To Ulysses
' trained eyes, amidst all this chaotic mess it was quite clear that something was indeed missing. Careful not to lose his footing on any of the detritus covering the floor he made his way to the far corner of the room. Here there was a desk, a jar of upended ink, its blue-black contents covering most of the papers spilled across the top. Amongst the mess of papers there was a curiously clear space, as if something had been resting on the desk and had only been removed after the papers had fallen into disarray. Ulysses moved the papers out of the way altogether. There, in the green cracked leather of the desktop was a clear indentation, where something square and relatively heavy had sat. And there was more evidence on the wall itself, a discoloration of the paint, suggesting something hot had marked it over time. Ulysses considered the size and position of the marks. Something hot, something box-shaped; something like a small difference engine. That was what the mysterious thief had claimed from this sanctuary of peaceful scientific enquiry.

  Ulysses glanced around the room one more time but he was certain he had seen enough. Besides he wanted to get a private opinion about the contents of his pocket. He began to pick his way carefully across the office-lab again.

  But there was something else, gnawing away at the edge of his conscious mind. It was not something seen but something he had smelt, a rancid odour that caught at the back of his throat and which left his mind buzzing with more questions. Ulysses sniffed and caught for a moment the trace of a smell like beef and fennel stew past its best. That was it - aniseed and spoiled meat; a truly unsavoury and unusual combination, certainly not the usual aroma of a musty old museum.

  Ulysses paused in the doorway and looked more closely at the broken door, now propped against the wall. Its brass plaque was still attached. It read, 'Professor Ignatius Galapagos' and underneath, 'Evolutionary Biology Department'.

  Leaving Scotland Yard's finest to it, Ulysses made his way out of the gallery. He was pretty certain that there was nothing else for him to see. It was time he pursued his investigation elsewhere.

  Inspector Allardyce was at the entrance to the gallery talking to an anxious-looking member of the museum staff. There was no way Ulysses could avoid him.

  "I thought I said you had five minutes. I make that seven," he said looking at his pocket watch.

  "I'm sorry if I've outstayed my welcome."

  "You always outstay your welcome. As soon as you turn up you've outstayed your welcome. So, what do you make of it all then, Quicksilver? Do you have anything new to shed on the case?"

  "Oh, I'm sure you already have a theory or two of your own. You don't need me complicating matters."

  "Indeed I do, and I certainly don't," Allardyce confirmed. "It's actually very straightforward if you know what you're looking for and how to read the signs."

  "Really?" Ulysses said. He had been ready to leave but the opportunity to provoke the pompous inspector again - having had so few opportunities in the last year or so - was just too tempting. "Would you care to elaborate?"

  Inspector Allardyce could not resist the opportunity to expound on his masterly skills of deduction and chalk one up against the aristocratic know-it-all.

  "It's very simple really. All the evidence is there for those who have eyes to see it." Indeed, thought Ulysses. "Our thief was disturbed by the night watchman and then killed the poor bugger so he could make his getaway."

  "And do you know what was taken?"

  "Not yet, but we will do, once we have tracked down Professor Gapalago and got a complete inventory of the room from him."

  "Galapagos," the museum staffer corrected.

  "What?"

  "It's Professor Galapagos."

  "Does it matter?" Allardyce bit back.

  "Yes, I rather think it does," Ulysses muttered under his breath. And then, so that Allardyce could hear him quite clearly, "If you don't have a full inventory of the contents of the room, how do you know that anything's been taken at all?"

  "Isn't it obvious?" Allardyce asked incredulously. "Why else would someone break in here? It obviously wasn't to bump off that poor bastard lying over there with his head smashed in."

  "Indeed," said Ulysses, "which brings me to another point. The injuries sustained by the victim look like the result of a frenzied attack. Why would a thief stop to make such a brutal job of doing away with one, aging, overweight security guard? And what of this Professor Galapagos," - he made a point of annunciating the name with added emphasis - "the man whose office was broken into?"

  "Look, I told you, he's not turned up yet. You know what these academic types are like."

  "Better than you, I'll warrant."

  "Are you lecturing me on bloody police procedure?" Allardyce challenged, stabbing his index finger at Ulysses' chest. "Because that's exactly how things got out of hand last time."

  "Heaven forbid, Inspector."

  "I'll get round to this Gapalogo soon enough. But it's quite clear what happened here last night. I told you there was nothing to see here, Quicksilver," he spat, his voice dripping with undisguised contempt. "Unless you've got any other amazing insights to offer then I rather think you're done here, don't you?"

  Ulysses paused. Should he share his own theory with Allardyce, that be thought the inspector should be looking for two culprits, connected certainly but not as he might at first suspect? It was tempting, if only to see the look of exasperation on Allardyce's red face. But as long as the police were following up red herrings of their own making it would at least keep them out of the way while he continued his investigation and allow him to get to bottom of things, such as why Wormwood had set him on this case in the first place. And, Ulysses had to admit, he was hooked. There was far more to this mystery than merely a break-in and incidental murder. There was something else afoot, he was sure of it.

  "I couldn't agree more, Inspector. Good day."

  "And don't come snooping around my murder scene again, you hear?"

  "Your murder scene?"

  "Look, just piss off!"

  "With pleasure."

  As he made his way out of the gallery, Ulysses halted again. He felt someone's eyes on him. He looked around and then the feeling was gone.

  Putting it from his mind Ulysses made his way out of the museum, cane in hand, evidence in his pocket. He would need to pay Methuselah a call but he decided that it could wait until after he had dined. It had been too long since he had last visited the Ritz.

  Another thought distracted Ulysses as he exited the museum and hailed a hansom. There were many unexplained mysteries in the world - such as who built the giant heads of Easter Island and the mystery of the Whitby mermaid - and Ulysses had even solved some of them in his time, but how Maurice Allardyce had ever made it to inspector he would never know.

  From a dark recess behind a roof strut, unseen eyes watched the exchange between the fair-skinned red-haired man and the taller, more confident interloper. The watcher had found sanctuary here in the darkened, elevated tunnels of the museum's ventilation system following the events of the previous night. After the attack it had become confused. Its mind was a fractured collection of half-recalled memories that made less and less sense as instinct gradually overtook rational thought.

  It had wanted to flee but there had been something familiar and safe about the vaulted, hallowed halls that had made it stay. It felt curiously comfortable here. Besides, there were too many people around at the moment. There would only be more upset if it revealed itself now, more shouting, more panic, more fear.

  No, the watcher would wait. It was safe here. It was secure. This was its home.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  An Unexpected Visitor

  Having enjoyed an exquisitely prepared dinner of roast pheasant, seasonal vegetables and dauphinoise potatoes, all washed down with a half bottle of finest claret, Ulysses Quicksilver exited the Ritz, fully intending to hail a cab to convey him back to his house in Mayfair. Outside the hotel the gas lamps and sodium lights were glowing into life, the buildings of Piccadilly were da
rk monoliths against the russet and mauve sky.

  Ulysses took a deep breath. The full-bodied scents of the fruity aftertaste of that last glass of claret mixed with the fumy air of the city, the bitter reek of the gas lamps and the smell of horse manure. London might have had combustion-driven automobiles for the last ninety years or so, and trams and trains for even longer than that, but there were still companies and private individuals who employed horses to carry them to and fro.

  Cane in hand he paused for a moment as he savoured the familiar - even comforting - smells of the city and listened to the endless background noise that told him London was as alive as it had ever been. There were the unintelligible cries of the newspaper vendors, trying to shift the last of the late editions and the shouts of street sellers. There was the clatter of hooves and wheels on cobbles and the rumbling of petrol engines. There was the clamour of bells and whistles of the Overground as the trains rumbled past overhead, the cross-town railway network a black spider's web of seemingly infinite complexity with London ensnared beneath it.

  Turning left out of the Ritz, rather than hail a cab, Ulysses followed the railings that delineated the boundary of Green Park as he made his way past the thinning crowds making their way along Piccadilly in the dusky half-light. It felt good to have the London streets beneath his feet again. It reminded him of where home was and what it meant.

  It was that curious time after the sun had set and the working day, for most, had come to an end but the revelries of the night were yet to truly begin. It would not be long, though, before others claimed the city as theirs. Not so very long ago Ulysses would have been one of them. He briefly considered returning to the Inferno Club to while away the evening over port and cigars but almost as quickly thought better of it. His body still ached and he suddenly found himself stifling a yawn. It would still take him some time to fully recover from his journey back to civilisation and, besides, his mind was awhirl with questions. Keeping his own company over dinner had only allowed him to go over and over all that he had seen at the Natural History Museum and ponder the nature of the crimes that had been committed there.