by Stephen Hunt
‘Then how would you explain what is happening in the back room, Jethro softbody?’ Boxiron asked.
‘Let’s start with the rational and work our way out from there,’ said Daunt. He looked at Charlotte. ‘It will be easier to show you, Damson Shades. If you would be so good as to accompany us to the infirmary.’
Charlotte followed the vicar and the consulting detective through a narrow brick-lined corridor, Boxiron’s weight thumping behind them. Daunt talked as he went. ‘I used to be a parson, Damson Shades. In fact, I studied at the seminary with Fidelia here. Knowing my esoteric interests, she asked me to help with a little problem she’s having with a family here in the parish. Her problem seems to coincide with a case I am currently engaged upon.’
Charlotte’s heart jumped. Damn my luck. Not only a consulting detective, but an ex-churchman. And would your case have anything to do with the Lords Commercial I’ve been working this year, notorious Mister Daunt? She had to be careful around the man. He would have been well-trained in synthetic morality by the church, equipped with a mind like a steel trap. The atheist church of Circlism venerated science and learning. Its parsons, priests and vicars were trained as scientists and philosophers, as doctors of the flesh, mind and spirit. It was said a Circlist priest could read the soul of a person as if it was a map. Healing minds wracked by faith in false gods as proficiently as they healed sick flesh. Their insights could be preternatural, almost telepathic. And mine is one soul that I don’t want read by any consulting detective. How many cases has he taken where my dirty mitts were the real hands behind the job?
‘A problem?’ Charlotte said it nervously, as if just speaking would be enough for the man to pounce on her, pronounce her body language that of a criminal, and drag her to the nearest police station.
‘The unknown, Damson Shades. The uncomfortably unexplainable, a walk through the darkness.’ He dragged a paper bag out of his jacket pocket, rustled it and proffered it in Charlotte’s direction. ‘Would you care for a Bunter and Benger’s aniseed drop, my dear?’
‘Put those filthy opiate-riddled things back in your pocket,’ complained the vicar. ‘You are standing on rational grounds.’
‘Scurrilous scare stories manufactured by their competitors, my precious Fidelia,’ said Daunt. ‘Weights and Measures would have banned the sweets long ago, if there was any truth to that title tattle. Besides, they help my mind come to clarity.’
‘They have been banned,’ the vicar muttered as the private investigator rustled the bag back out of sight. They started to climb up, an enclosed spiral staircase twisting around to the church’s upper level.
‘Your case, Mister Daunt?’
‘The mayor and the city elders have engaged my services. The current plenitude of bodies being discovered around the capital with an absence of bodily fluids is not good for trade, and it is all about trade these days, isn’t it?’
Thank the Circle for that! So you’re not onto me after all. Charlotte breathed a silent sigh of relief, confusion about her role in his affairs replacing the blade of fear that had been sliding into her side. ‘You don’t believe in that nonsense the newssheets are printing do you? Vampires stalking the Kingdom?’
‘I have little choice but to believe in the corpses being found,’ said Daunt. ‘Boxiron and I have become quite the regular visitors at the public mortuary, have we not? As to the cause of the deaths, well, we shall see.’
Charlotte stepped into the church’s infirmary, a number of clean white-sheeted beds lying empty apart from three occupied cots at the end of the hall, a little cluster of old but functional-looking medical equipment arranged in an arc around the bunks. As she got closer, Charlotte saw each bed held an identical-seeming girl a couple of years younger than Charlotte herself, their pretty brows soaked with sweat under long flaming red curls of hair.
Triplets?
She noticed they were tied to the bedposts, hands and legs restrained by leather straps, and they seemed to be mumbling in a unison so synchronized it was uncanny.
‘Who are they? What is it that they’re saying?’
Daunt bent forward and wiped the sheen off the nearest girl’s forehead. ‘Meet the sisters Lammeter, daughters of this parish’s undertaker. When they got sick, a doctor was consulted who was left quite baffled by their condition. Supernatural forces were suspected, religious infection, so their girls’ parents brought them to the church to see if it could help. And as to what it is they are saying, that is rather the nub of the issue.’
‘They are possessed,’ said Boxiron, his metal bulk swaying slightly at rest. ‘They are talking in tongues. It is as if Radius Patternkeeper is riding them, Lord of the Ravenous Fire himself.’
‘Watch your words, steamman,’ snapped the vicar. ‘As a believer, I’m tolerating your presence here on sufferance.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Daunt, raising his hands placatingly. He turned back to Charlotte. ‘Where we can even identify their ramblings, the dialects and languages being spoken are very old. I’ve been recording the words phonetically in the hope of having them translated.’
‘And what does this have to do with me?’ Charlotte demanded. ‘Do I look like a professor of ancient languages?’
‘In truth, you’re barely old enough to have matriculated, Damson Shades. But there are certain words that we do recognize. People’s names being shrieked out in the dark of the night. Your name, as a matter of fact. As well as Nancy Martense’s. Andrew Dunsey’s. Emma Osgood’s.’
Those names sounded familiar. Charlotte raised an eyebrow inquiringly.
‘You’ll find them all laid out on the mortuary slab, Damson Shades. All very pale, as you would expect for a body totally drained of blood. Little more than empty sacks of flesh.’
The newssheets. I’ve read those names in the Illustrated.
‘You’re the only name we’ve managed to trace who is still alive.’
As he stopped talking, the three girls started shaking uncontrollably, and as one they began chanting: ‘Shades. Shades. Shades. Charlotte Shades. Mistress — of — Mesmerism. Mesmerism. Mesmerism. Shades. Shades. Shades.’ Charlotte recoiled physically at the unholy wailing, her name passing across the lips of these three restrained banshees. As quickly as it started, the noise fell away to be replaced by a guttural alien chanting, unknown words hanging in the air like intruders in the calm sanctuary of the Circlist church.
Beneath Charlotte’s dress, the gem around her neck was burning cold again, just like it had been when she had met the mysterious Mister Twist and his pet thug, Mister Cloake.
‘That demon song,’ said Boxiron, ‘told us where we could locate you.’
‘I don’t suppose their rants have given you the name of the lunatic running around Middlesteel with a taste for human blood?’
‘I’m working on translating it,’ said Daunt, tapping an open notebook on a bedside table, full of shorthand scribbles of the girl’s mad ramblings, ‘with high hopes. In the meantime, I would like you to accept the protection of Boxiron. I would not be here if it was not for my friend’s rather direct methods, and I would like to offer his talents for your service also.’
A copper’s bloody nark following me around while I housebreak into Parliament? I don’t think so.
‘That would not currently be convenient, Mister Daunt. I have professional obligations to keep. After I have fulfilled them, your metal friend may burn his coal outside my bedroom door if it suits you to do so.’
‘Please,’ Daunt pleaded, pressing his card into her hand. ‘Reconsider. The murderer — or murderers — behind this wave of slayings may be privy to your engagements. They could well be counting on you fulfilling them.’
‘I’ve been looking after myself for a lot longer than the Illustrated has been scaring the city with vampire tales.’
Besides, there are plenty of thugs in the pay of the flash mob who can match any madman in town with their taste for blood, butchery and fancy knife work. Charlotte had to resist the ur
ge to skip happily out of the room like a little girl, suppressing a sneer at the much-overestimated abilities of these church-trained meddlers. Read me like a book, indeed. Please. My body language couldn’t have been guiltier when I was hauled in here by that iron brute, and those three buffoons have nary a clue.
Boxiron watched the young girl leave the church, his neck joins juddering intermittently as if he was inflicted by palsy. ‘She is only a child — she failed to take your warnings seriously.’
‘Oh, I think she took them seriously enough, old friend,’ said Daunt. ‘But not as seriously as she takes her living. Driven to it, wouldn’t you say?’
‘You read her body’s cues, didn’t you?’ said the vicar. ‘There wasn’t much she said that was true.’
Daunt shrugged. ‘Yes indeed, I did read her. Still, she is old enough to decide to put her living before her life, whatever that living may be.’
‘You’d know all about that, Jethro.’
‘That’s hardly fair, Fidelia. I’ve been putting my mind to the best use I can, since the Inquisition revoked my parsonage and tossed me out of the rational orders.’
‘Do you still hear the old gods?’
‘Actually, not for some time now.’ Daunt glanced back to the three sisters, their synchronized ranting rising and falling with an almost hymn-like quality. At least, not directly. And not until I came back here.
‘Why didn’t you tell her what you’ve already discovered, you and that filthy book of yours?’
‘It’s the Inquisition’s bestiary,’ said Daunt. ‘Not mine. It’s merely on loan to me.’
‘Semantics won’t help the sisters recover.’
Sadly, not much will. ‘One thing is true, however. Damson Shades certainly believes she can handle herself. Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Fidelia.’
‘I am sorry?’ said the vicar.
‘And that is not something the Mistress of Mesmerism learned while being groped in music hall dressing rooms by over-eager stage managers,’ Daunt continued, half talking to himself. He popped a sweet from the bag hidden in his pocket and rolled it around his mouth. ‘It is a curious thing, but many of the grand houses that young lady has entertained have exhibited an unfortunate tendency to fall victim to housebreakers. Either during or shortly after her performances at them. Who would suspect such a young flower, eh? But then, perhaps that is the point.’
‘Is it possible she’s connected to the killings?’ Boxiron asked.
‘In this instance, I think not. Damson Shades is guilty only of being reckless and impulsive. Youth personified. Were we ever that guileless at the seminary, Fidelia?’
‘Not you. You always were a queer fish,’ said the vicar. ‘Even before the gods sent you insane with their mad whisperings.’
‘I’m recovered now,’ said Daunt.
‘They are sulking,’ Boxiron explained to the vicar. ‘Your people’s ancient deities. Jethro softbody upset them.’
‘I know how they feel,’ sighed the vicar.
‘Look after the sisters, Fidelia. No more sedatives. Tonics and herbs won’t suppress what these poor girls are channelling. The Mistress of Mesmerism is my problem now.’
The vicar jerked her head towards the infirmary door. ‘If Charlotte Shades is murdered, will the sisters get better?’
Jethro Daunt shook his head. ‘Goodness, no. The sisters will, I suspect, only recover when we find and defeat the dark force their possession is attempting to warn us of. And as far as deaths go, I fear we haven’t even begun taking a true tally yet.’
Dick removed his hand from the bell pull, the peels still echoing on the other side of the tower-like building’s front door. After a minute there was a slow, heavy shuffling on the other side and the door swung open to reveal Jared Black, the bear-like man in the unbuttoned jacket of a civilian u-boat captain.
‘Blacky,’ said Dick. ‘Answering the door yourself these days are you? Hard times is it? Where’ve all your metal servants got to?’
The submariner scratched at his unkempt forked beard and eyed his unexpected visitor with a mixture of suspicion and contempt. ‘Dick Tull come visiting. Is the board out to disturb an old man’s rest again? Can you not let me have any peace? I’m done with the great game and all your lies and your schemes.’
‘That, we can talk about,’ said Dick, entering the grand hall of the tower. Iron drones stood like sentries around the sweeping walls of the oak-panelled staircase, powered down. Warm in here. Decadently warm. Your boiler chewing its way through a couple of normal men’s salaries. Not shivering like me, are you? What have you ever done that I haven’t, to end up here in this bloody grand palace of yours? ‘Your steamman friend is out of the house, then? And the writer girl who lives here? They finally got tired of your whining and complaining?’
‘Coppertracks and Molly are away in the colonies. Off on an archaeological dig accompanying an old friend of mine.’
‘Looking for old bones,’ grinned Dick, ‘while your old bones rest here. But you’ve been keeping busy, Blacky, haven’t you? And not just on keeping the town’s vintners solvent. Give me a spot of the good stuff, then. Let me drink just a little of your unexplained wealth.’
The commodore reluctantly led Dick through to the kitchen and pantry, coughing and complaining all the way.
That cough. I have heard that kind of sodding chest before. Yes, indeed.
Sitting down at a long oak table, its surface a battlefield of chopping knife scars, Dick watched the commodore’s chubby fingers pouring a measure of wine into a clear crystal glass, and Dick kept his fingers raised until the glass was sloshing with the thick, ruby liquid.
‘Drink up,’ said the commodore. ‘And I’ll tell you what I told Algo Monoshaft last time I saw the old steamer. I’m done with the blessed board. I’ve put my carcass in the way of assassin’s blades and foreign powers’ bullets for the last time for you and yours. I have lied and fought and spied in foreign fields from Cassarabia and Pericur through to the black shores of Jago and I am too mortal old for the great game anymore.’
Dick sloshed the wine about the glass, watching the liquid run slowly down the sides of the crystal. Good legs on it. Expensive. ‘You don’t need a board pension, Blacky. Not sitting in this pile. And we don’t give them out to royalist turncoats anyway. Here’s the thing, I think you’re still in the great game, but playing for whom, that is the question?’
The commodore started to cough, slugging a measure of wine to still his hacking. ‘I’m out of it.’
‘Is that what you told Symons when he came visiting?’
Watch his face closely now. See how he reacts to me knowing about his late night royalist visitor.
‘Did you catch him, then? Poor old Rufus. How many of his fingernails did you have to remove before he blew on me?’
He’s already dead, you old pirate. Did you kill him? Let’s see how much you spill when you’re on the defensive and shook up. Let’s press my advantage. ‘No more than he deserved. But you know how it is. I need your story to match Symons’. Come on, I need to know you’re still on Parliament’s side.’
The old man’s face flushed redder still with anger. ‘I’ve never been on Parliament’s side. Your people winkled me out of hiding and strong-armed my poor carcass into your service. Anything I did, I did for the people of Jackals, not your parliament of shopkeepers and mill owners. The Lords Commercial have paid for your wicked soul, not mine.’
‘What did Rufus Symons say to you last night?’
The commodore folded back into his chair, toying wistfully with a plate of cold sliced beef sitting between them. ‘There’s been a split in the cause. A dividing of the ways over how the rebels should seize the Kingdom back from Parliament.’
‘That we knew,’ Dick lied. ‘Why did Symons come to you?’
‘To ask for help. And I told him the same thing I told you. I’m out of it.’
‘Why would you want to help him and not the rival royalist faction?’
Sweet Circle. The underwater nation, the Advocacy. It was true then. The head’s paranoid rantings. But which side had Symons been serving?
Dick felt the lines of his greying moustache. ‘And how do you feel about that?’
‘Well, there’s a blessed good question. It makes no sense to me. The gill-necks had no time for us surface-dwellers when I skippered for the cause. The Advocacy called us pirates too, hunted our u-boats as keenly as Parliament’s fleet ever did. As for helping the cause overthrow Parliament, why should we trust the gill-necks? Why should they trust us? Symons felt the same way. So did a lot of rebels. Helping the Advocacy fight the Kingdom felt a might too close to treachery to him. My sister and her new allies purged the royalist dissenters, and now they’re on the run from her, you, and the gill-necks both!’
‘What about your sister? Why would you-’
‘Didn’t they let you read my file, Tull? Gemma’s a hardliner. When Parliament broke the back of the fleet-in-exile at Porto Principe, I fled for my life. As far as my sister’s concerned, I’m a traitor and a coward. And that was before I got her son killed on some fool adventure and the board started blackmailing me. I’m never going to be on the same side as Gemma again. Not unless it’s planted in a grave four feet beneath her boots.’
Dick supped greedily at the rich wine. ‘That’s quite a story.’
‘It’s the blessed truth.’
‘I know it is,’ said Dick.
‘Ah, poor little Rufus. I remember him as a lad on Porto Principe, always running around the corridors of the u-boat pens, always firing a thousand questions at us. How long did he last with the interrogation section?’
‘I know it’s the truth,’ continued Dick, ‘because you’ve got nothing left to lie for. You’re dying, aren’t you?’
Commodore Black coughed and refilled his glass, a tired expression crossing his face. ‘Rufus didn’t tell you that… I never told the lad I was sick.’