by Anna Butler
YOU MUSTN’T think I threw over all my old friends to spend time with Ned. I saw Will Somers often, the baker next door who’d been my first friend in Londinium, wrote to old Mr. Pearse twice a month, and even obeyed the occasional summons to tea from my cousin Agnes, who could leave Mrs. Deedes choking in the dust when it came to indomitable, ladylike tyranny.
Two weeks before Ned was scheduled to leave, Will and I shared some rather fine scotch after a late lunch. Mrs. Somers was resting after the close of the season at the Opera House, where she was one of the principal sopranos, and was out that day visiting her mama somewhere in Marylebone. Will took the opportunity to socialize a trifle before he’d have to muffle up against the inclement weather, go and find a cab, and escort his lady home. Mind you, a sandwich and scotch was hardly pushing the hospitality boat out to sea. It barely left the shore.
Still, he was a good friend. He listened patiently while I groused about losing Ned for the winter, and his only response was to refill my glass. I could wish for an understanding nature like his, but I comfort myself that being a graceful recipient of kindness is just as virtuous as being the giver.
Replete with ham sandwiches made with Will’s own superlative bread, I returned to the coffeehouse by means of the side door. Molly was in my office, curled up on the dog bed. I stopped in my tracks, feeling the warmth build.
Ned.
I went straight into the coffeehouse, holding my pace back to a saunter. It didn’t do to look too eager. It was our quiet time, with few customers. Each of the booths held a couple intent on each other and their conversation, and a thin young man huddled in front of the fire.
Ned sat at his usual table with Sam. Without young Harry, for once—a disappointment I found I could bear quite well. I was surprised at the child’s absence, as I tended to associate Harry with Molly. I said so as soon as Ned and I had greeted each other and Sam had glowered, which for him was almost a fulsome welcome.
“He and Jack are with my mother today. Mama’s pugs fare rather better if Molly’s with me.” Ned let go of my hand with obvious reluctance. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“I’m delighted you’re here.” I turned as Alan called me from behind the counter—Hugh was on roasting room duty—and held up a cup of coffee for me. But before I could collect it, Sam put one hand to the Marconi communicator in his left ear.
“Wait! The House just signaled an alert.”
Ned tensed. “What is it, Sam?”
“I’m not sure.” Sam glanced around the room. “Could be nothing at all, but if it’s serious, let’s not have you in clear sight of anyone looking for us. Can we use your flat, Lancaster?”
“What?”
“Can Ned and I go up there to get out of the public eye? Just as a precaution.”
Ned sighed and got to his feet. The good humor was wiped from his face.
I spread my arms as I followed suit and rose. “Be my guest. I suppose if it comes to the worst and we’re besieged, we can always leave by the unofficial route over the rooftops. I’m quite blasé about tiptoeing along roofs these days. I’m thinking about taking up tightrope walking as a hobby.”
Ned’s laugh sounded forced. “Not the flying trapeze?”
“Swings make me seasick.”
Sam ignored the pleasantries and ushered us to the office, giving Alan a nod in passing that had that worthy frowning, and from there to the side passage and the stairs to the upper floors. Molly opened one eye as we passed, but on Sam’s command to stay where she was, wagged her tail and returned to her slumbers.
Sam rolled his eyes. “At least she’ll bark loud enough if a stranger gets in here.”
I paused at the office door. “I’ll join you in a minute. I’ll tell Hugh and sort out some coffee for us.”
While Sam and Ned went on up to the flat, I cut back through the office to the storerooms and coffee roasting room beyond, where Hugh was bagging freshly roasted beans. Selling our own coffees was an expanding sideline.
“Hugh, I’ll be upstairs for a little while, with Ned and Sam. House Gallowglass has a problem.”
Hugh looked up, wearing the classic “Never! Say it’s not so!” expression—eyes wide, mouth dropping open. “Again?”
“Again.”
It struck me then, just why Ned’s laugh had been so forced. What a life he led! Circumscribed and narrow, always guarded, always in danger. Nothing could be taken at face value. Everything had to be examined for potential threat. And no imaginary peril either, given it was just two years since the “accident” that had robbed him of his wife and not quite four months since we were rescuing him from a kidnapping attempt. Thank God I was such an unimportant House member. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than the restrictions Ned had known since birth.
Hugh pushed the pile of packages to one side. “I know we’ve always had the Houses, right back to the days of Good Queen Bess, but crikey, they’re a troublesome lot.”
“You’ll get no argument from me about that. But while I’ve no time for the Houses, I’d do anything for Ned.”
Perhaps it was looking down to pile the packages carefully, to stop them slipping, that made Hugh’s ears redden and muffled his voice. “Well, sir, me too, if you’ll exchange your name for his.”
I had to swallow against a lump in my throat. Hugh straightened up, his ears brick red now. He coughed, and I essayed a brief touch of his shoulder, withdrawing my hand quickly.
I truly can’t find a reason to explain why woman is lauded as the gentler sex that understands emotion and man deemed such an unfeeling clod. Men don’t talk it to death, that’s all.
“What do you want me to do, sir?”
“Keep an eye on things out front, with Alan. If it turns out to be something to worry about, Sam will send our tenants down to hold the fort alongside you. But first, would you bring us some coffee? I’d appreciate that.”
Hugh agreed and went through into the coffeehouse to arrange sustenance for those of us lurking in my flat, leaving me to make my way upstairs. Ned was in my sitting room, watching Sam pace about as he listened in to the Marconi.
I joined Ned on the large red sofa set before the fireplace. “Well?”
Ned’s face was expressionless, his hands folded neatly on his lap. He took a deep breath. To steady himself, I realized.
Great Caesar’s ghost. This was serious.
“It really is trouble?” I spoke before he could.
“It might be. Robert Ellis is dead.”
“Who?”
“The pilot we hired last year to fly the House aeroship. The pilot taking me to Aegypt next month. Except now, of course, he isn’t. I don’t know the details yet, other than he should have been at Friary Park Aerodrome this morning for a training flight. He didn’t turn up. They’ve been searching for him most of the day and found him an hour ago.”
Sam joined us then. “So far as I can tell, Ned, Ellis was found in an alley backing on Ballards Lane in Finchley, behind one of the pubs. The Elephant.”
“An accident?” Ned sounded more hopeful than convincing.
“No. Not an accident.” Sam briefly put a hand over Ned’s. “It was murder.”
Chapter 7
MURDER.
The word hung in the silence that followed.
Murder. It’s just a word, but one with a peculiar resonance, strident with fear and heavy with the stench of blood and ordure, bringing a sense of defilement with it, a sense of something corrupted into violence and chaos. Six innocent, cleanhanded letters brigaded into a line, doing an honest job of spelling out the sudden, vicious ending of a life.
Ned hunched in on himself, his shoulders drooping, mouth in a dejected curve. Even his hair fell forward to obscure his downcast face. Sam tightened his grip on Ned’s hand for an instant before releasing it and going back to his listening and pacing. I put a hand on Ned’s shoulder. He straightened at my touch, pushing against my hand and increasing the contact. He glanced up long enough to give me a twitc
hy, wholly unconvincing smile.
“I didn’t know Ellis very well,” he said. “I know he lived in Finchley, near the aerodrome. Not far from where he was found, I suppose. He and Mrs. Ellis have two girls with a third child on the way. He was worried he wouldn’t get back in time for his wife’s lying-in, and we were making arrangements for him to come back briefly in March, to be sure he’d be there. His poor wife.”
All I could do was nod and try to radiate sympathy. His poor wife, indeed. I sought for a diversion. “He lived in Finchley? An odd choice for a gentleman.”
“Oh, he isn’t a… I mean, he wasn’t English. Mrs. Ellis is, I believe, but Ellis is… was an American. He was an engineer and got into flying through working with an aerial exhibition team traveling the country, putting on shows of their skills. Trick flying and the like. Ellis apparently took some of his pay in flying lessons.”
Ah. Not the sort of background I’d expect for a pilot born here, of course, where flying is a niche career for the rich and wellborn. No one else could afford it. Almost every pilot I knew was someone like me: a lower-level scion of one of the Houses, but still a gentleman born and bred, for whom Her Majesty’s service by air, land, or sea was a traditional career. The Americans were more egalitarian in their approach, but still it was rather impressive that a mechanic could work his way up like that. Commendable.
Ned’s mouth twisted. “Ellis is dead, and I’m sitting here worrying that this is a House move and my father will stop me from going to Aegypt this season. I’m rather ashamed of myself as a result, but I can’t stop worrying about it, sorry as I am for Mrs. Ellis.”
The worst of inculcating principles in the impressionable young is that they’re damned inconvenient things to live with later. Witness Ned’s feeling of guilt. I took my hand from his shoulder and grasped his hand instead.
Hugh brought a tray of coffee and cakes just then.
Sam’s pacing brought him to Hugh’s side. “Do me a favor, Hugh, and tell Rosens and Matthews to watch the doors downstairs. I’m not expecting trouble, but all the same….”
Hugh gave me an anguished, oh-my-Lord-sir look but agreed instantly. He went off, patting the pocket where he kept his hideaway gun and looking grimmer than when he’d arrived.
I released Ned’s hand to pour the coffee and pressed him to take a cup. He sipped it, but he glanced at the cup, surprise evident in his frowning stare and the way he tilted his head as if he hadn’t even realized he’d picked it up in the first place.
“Has Mrs. Ellis been told?” he asked.
Sam put one hand to his Marconi earpiece and asked, relaying the answer a moment later. “Mr. Brennan’s taking care of it. He’s going himself to talk to her. Ellis lived just off Ballards Lane, he says. The Elephant must have been his local.”
I’d met Brennan the night we broke into the Britannic Museum in June to rescue Ned. He stands in relation to the Gallowglass the way Sam does to Ned: his chief guard and, I’d venture to say, friend. A big bluff Irishman I’d find hard to see in a consolatory role, he was as solid as they came.
“Tell him to talk to the finance office first. He must reassure her that she’ll be taken care of.”
“Ellis barely worked for us for a year, Ned.”
“He died in our service.” Ned had picked up his coffee again but put down the cup, untasted, with a precision that betrayed him. In his place too, I’d opt for fine control over inconsequential things when I was being squashed flat by the wheels of Juggernaut’s car. “We’ll pension her at full rate. She’ll need it. There are children, Sam. Younger than Harry.”
Sam nodded and turned away again to speak quietly into the Marconi. Ned leaned back against the sofa cushions, breathing out another long, wavering sigh.
Something in me ached to see him so despondent. “Can I do anything?”
“There isn’t anything we can do until we know more.”
Sam turned to us then, as if he’d heard. “Mr. Brennan’s been in touch with the police inspector at the local station, Ned. The first reports from the investigating detective are confusing. Looks like Ellis got into a brawl in the pub last night. No one knows who the other man was, and there isn’t much of a description since no two witnesses can agree on what it was they saw. One says a tall man, bald. Another says neither short nor tall, and dark-haired. Well-dressed with a bowler hat says one lot; or ordinary street clothes and a cap, nothing out of the way or noticeable, says the other.”
Well, that should be a doddle for Scotland Yard’s finest. They’d have the tall short dark-haired bald man in custody by sundown. With or without his hat.
Ned asked the burning question. “How did he die?”
“Knifed, Mr. Brennan says.”
Bizarrely welcome news. Sad as it was, the “brawl in the pub” theory might be correct. A local tough objecting to Ellis flirting with his ladylove or spilling his beer wasn’t at all likely to have easy access to an aether pistol, since they were strictly controlled through a mix of pricing and licensing. The average working-class louts looking for trouble were more apt to use fists, and knuckle-dusters, cudgels, and knives were far easier to get hold of than guns if they wanted weapons.
So maybe not House business after all. And therein lay the relief that swept over me.
Ned visibly relaxed. “Just a stupid fight, then. Nothing more.”
Sam, though, had not relaxed at all. “Maybe. And maybe it’s like everything else these days that’s House-related and disguised as an accident or a common fight in the pub.”
Oh damn him! I’d just persuaded myself I didn’t have to worry. “But they used a knife.”
“So what?” Sam stooped to pull something from the side of his knee-high boot. He flourished the knife at me. “Did you think we were only armed with pistols and harquebuses, Captain? Big knife here and a couple of others hidden about my person in case I need them. Just because the poor bastard was stabbed doesn’t mean it wasn’t House business.”
Ned’s sigh would have broken the hardest heart. “Any word from my father?”
“Not yet.” Sam replaced the knife in the discreet holster in his boot. “It isn’t likely to be a direct threat, Ned, but still needs to be looked into. Mr. Brennan said to be careful, that’s all.”
Ned kneaded his brow with the fingers of his free hand. “When am I not careful? When am I ever allowed to be anything else?” He let his hand drop and glanced at me. “I begin to have sympathy for your more iconoclastic views on the Houses, Rafe.”
“Good. Maybe we can be anarchists together and foment revolution.” But I’d be fighting Ned’s sense of duty more than I would the established Houses, and I knew it. There was nothing to be done but grin and bear it. “There are always experienced pilots at the aerodromes, looking for jobs. Friary Park will be no exception. The aerodrome managers will be able to suggest some names.”
“That won’t do.” Sam dropped into one of the armchairs set near the hearth. He didn’t do sprawling at his ease, however. He was the very paradigm of “guard on high alert,” taking as much comfort from the cushions as if sitting on an iron chair set with sharp spikes. “Mr. Brennan and the House intelligencers spent months checking Ellis’s background and references to be sure he was who he said he was. They watched him for weeks before they concluded he was a lily-white innocent. In House terms, I mean. He was no more than he looked—a pilot in search of a regular job and one who had no affiliation with the Houses.”
And yet someone had murdered him.
“Finding a new pilot will take months. Time I don’t have. We’re leaving in a couple of weeks.” And if ever there was a man protesting loudly to avert disaster, Ned was he.
Sam picked up a cup of lukewarm coffee with his left hand. “Better plan for a delay, at least.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“There may be no choice. We don’t have a pilot. We won’t be able to pick one up off the streets—” Sam slammed the coffee cup down so hard it rocked on its sauc
er. “Damn it, Ned! Ellis was killed. I don’t care if it wasn’t with a House pistol, he was killed. How could we trust a pilot we pull off the street? How can we be sure that the Pannifex or the Archiator, someone like them, didn’t get rid of Ellis in the hope they can put one of their own chaps in? We can’t take the risk.”
Ned wrenched his hand away from mine, pushing himself up onto his feet. He kicked the table leg as he steamed past it, sending the coffeepot tumbling. Inadvertently, I’m sure. He fetched up near the windows, but he was too canny, too well trained, to stand directly in front of one. He stood with his head bowed for a moment or two. “I have to think about the dig first and foremost.”
I stopped the flood of coffee with a napkin before it could drip over the edge of the low table and onto my shoes. “I’m more worried this is a House move against you.”
He lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. “That, I’m used to. Besides, it doesn’t make much sense. All killing Ellis does is potentially stop me from going to Aegypt. What’s the point of that?” Ned’s laugh had the thin, cold quality of bitterness. “If they want to get rid of me, it will be easier there than here. They’ll have far more opportunity.”
“Aegypt is under our control, isn’t it? Part of the Imperium,” I said. “I mean, the Khedive nods when the Queen’s ministers tell him to.” I grimaced. Not a convincing argument for Ned’s safety, since the Houses weren’t above trying here at home, where arguably they had less scope. The “accident” that had killed Ned’s wife was silent witness to that.
“It’s wilder there. Looser. It’s harder for the Queen’s writ banning the Houses’ internecine warfare to hold true when you’re out in the desert somewhere, miles from civilization. Far easier to get me there than here. Why do you think Sam frets so much as each digging season starts?”