The Guild Chronicles Books 1-3

by J M Bannon

  * * *

  Outside in the seating area, a well-dressed oriental man lingered. “Mr. Lin, I am Oscar Owens, the managing partner. Please join me in our boardroom.”

  Jimmy Lin stood up, putting his gloves in his hat, and shook Owens’ hand. “A pleasure, Mr. Owens. You have an impressive office, I must say.”

  The two men settled down at the end of the boardroom table. “I went over the documents, and there are a few items I would like to clear up.”

  While Owens talked, Jimmy set his leather attaché on the table and unlatched the leather clasps, removing similar documents. Jimmy beamed.

  “Mr. Lin, Chilton, Owens and Strathmore is one of a select few merchant banks that a monarch calls upon in times of financial strain. We have been fortunate because of our reputation and the work we take on.”

  Jimmy stared at him.

  “What I mean to say is that in the city there are many fine financial institutions that handle trusts, and while we are pleased that you desire to work with us, I don’t believe we have the right trustee for your situation.”

  “Was there something wrong with the documents? I had them drawn up by Davis and Yorke.” Jimmy knew where this was going. He would have fun with the fat man along the way. “Oh no. They are fine solicitors. In fact, Elton Davis started here in our council office,” retorted Owens.

  “That is what he told me,” said Jimmy. “Then is it that I’m a chink?”

  “Mr. Lin, Chilton has been banking in Asia for decades, with one of the first and now largest offices in Hong Kong,” consoled Owens.

  “That is good because I do a lot of business over there, and you can help.” Jimmy pulled out a Mahogany box and set it in front of Owens and opened the lid. Nestled inside the velvet lining was a loaf of gold made up of ten 100-gram gold ingots slices. “I have a truck arriving in twenty minutes to deliver seventeen-hundred-sixty-seven 100-gram ingots to be stored in your vault and to fund these three trusts. So, you don’t have a problem because I'm Chinese, the paperwork has been completed by the best solicitor in London and the funding will be here any moment.” Jimmy continued, “That leaves only one issue I can think of. You may have heard a rumor, idle gossip of the ignorant, that my partners and I are involved in unscrupulous business. The word you may even be thinking of is gangster, and what if this were true? Now you might think I am a liability to your precious Chilton House, but no, on the contrary, I would be an asset. Once the streets of London know you are Master Lo’s banker, no one would be foolish enough to steal from your vaults again. You could leave the door wide open and not one criminal would think to touch a shilling.” He paused, ”That’s if the rumors were true.”

  Owen sat for several moments, looking at the gold. “Let me get a clerk in here to witness the documents and inform the doorman to expect the truck.” Owens stuck out his hand to shake Jimmy’s. “I want you to know how important your business is to Chilton House. Your bullion will be under my personal attention and stored in the partner vault. Only our top clients have this honor, and only partners have the combination. Be sure to let your associates know that is how much we value your business.”

  Jimmy shook his hand “You have lived up to your reputation, Mr. Owens. There is the matter of this one trust.” Jimmy slid the documents across the table.

  “Yes, the White Angel trust. I found that one interesting, and might I suggest that I personally take the role of trustee?”

  “I couldn’t think of a better person, Mr. Owens. As to the first matter of business, once the bullion is in your possession, I want you to liquidate enough of the gold to pounds’ sterling then fund your investment strategy, leaving some cash liquid for the purchase of an appropriate residence.”

  “Consider it done,” Owens replied.

  “Excellent, and one final instruction. The beneficiary is never to learn that I am the source of these funds. If she does, and I hear it came from your lips then...well, I’m sure you understand that would be unpalatable for me.” Jimmy just stared at the old man for a moment before continuing. “Can you put the gold in this box into the vault with the rest of the boxes? For your accounts, that will make it one thousand-seven-hundred and seventy-seven ingots.”

  The clerk knocked at the door. “Mr. Owens, I am here to witness and certify signatures.”

  “Come in, come in,” replied Owens.

  The clerk opened the box he carried and set out an inkwell, several pens and stamps. The clerk turned to Jimmy Lin. “You can begin signing documents at any time. Do you have a pen?”

  * * *

  3:00 PM, Necronist Guild House, Ile de la Cité, Paris, France

  Guild Master Hume entered Gerard’s office. Gerard lay on a chaise lounge with a migraine and arthritic pains in his hands and knees. “How did the Emperor’s treatment go?” inquired Gerard.

  “Too well. I would say we stripped off fifteen years of aging. Doctor Philas suggested that the Emperor take a sabbatical to Versailles and limit his exposure to the public. I agreed,” advised Hume.

  “It will be interesting to see how long the effects are sustained.” commented Gerard. His eyes closed as the light intensified the migraine.

  “We have readied the chamber for you, brother,” informed Hume.

  “Can you help me up?” Gerard began lifting himself up but was lacking energy and strength to move.

  “Yes, brother.” Hume helped Gerard to his feet. His breathing became labored from the exertion.

  As they walked through the mechanical room, Gerard stopped.

  “Are you alright? We are almost to the chamber,” said Hume. “I would like to check something. I will meet you inside.” Hume continued down the walkway towards the stairs that led to the tub room.

  Saint-Yves made his way towards the transfer chamber but ran out of energy. He looked around for someone to help that would not question what he planned to do. “You, technician, give me a hand.”

  With the assistance of the technician, Gerard made his way back to where he watched Hume transfer the spirits from the orb. The system was switched back to the traditional transfer chamber. The guild master opened the transfer chamber that held an ampule. Removing and slipping it into his pocket, he reached inside his jacket and held out the ampule that contained Angelica’s essence. He gazed through it then placed the article between the electrodes in the chamber.

  The technician watched as he changed the vials.

  “What is your name, Acolyte?”

  “Bertan,” the young Acolyte replied.

  Gerard closed the chamber. “Please help me into the inner chamber, Acolyte.”

  “But I am not permitted inside the sacred chamber,” he replied.

  “I need your assistance. Let me rest my weary body on your shoulder. It will be alright. Acolyte, you have no reason to mention what you think you might have seen,” warned Gerard.

  When they stepped through the inner door, Hume bellowed, “Bertran, what are you doing?”

  “Hume, I asked him to assist me. It is not his doing,” Gerard explained.

  Hume moved to help Gerard. “Thank you, Acolyte. I will aid the guild master from here.” Hume whispered to Gerrard, “We must get you treatment quickly. Your judgment has been affected.”

  “I have suffered from poor judgment prior to the attack. I was just able to cover better when I had energy,” muttered Gerard.

  Hume assisted Saint-Yves in disrobing, placing the garments of the guild master on the hanger of the portable valet. While hanging Gerard’s jacket, Hume felt the ampule. He reached into the pocket, recognized the object and the number noted on it while looking back at Saint-Yves to see if he witnessed him discover the ampule. He had not. Gerard was occupied with steadying himself while removing his clothes. He slid it back into the pocket where he found it.

  Hume assisted Gerard into the tub. The guild master already seemed to be receiving some relief just floating in the ichor.

  Hume secured the tub, assuring that the vessel was sealed. T
he chamber master pushed the stand with Saint-Yves’ clothes as he walked out of the inner chamber and sealed the door. He then removed the ampule from Gerard’s clothes and walked to the conversion chamber to initiate the process. The vial in the chamber had no number. It had never been entered into inventory. He switched the unrecorded ampule for the numbered selected for the treatment. Safeties were released, cogs engaged and current applied with the push of a button.

  Gerard would be rejuvenated from the life essence of another, but not the one he had planned on.

  Hume slipped the unnumbered ampule into his jacket pocket.

  21

  Wednesday, the 30th of June

  10:13 AM, Scotland Yard

  Three days had passed since Keane’s funeral and four had gone by since Dolly and Burton resolved the Chilton case. Dolly's face was almost completely healed. He sat outside Commissioner Mayne’s office, waiting to prepare for an appointment at 10 Downing Street.

  The door opened. and Dolly shot to his feet.

  “You ready, Detective?”

  “Yes, ready as I’ll ever be, sir,” Dolly said, tapping the back of his case journal that he held against his chest and wondering why he was called to the Prime Minister.

  “Alright, then. I have a carriage out front waiting for us,” advised Mayne.

  Once in the privacy of the carriage, the commissioner was prepared to share more with Dolly. “Apparently, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have requested an audience directly from you regarding the Chilton Case,” informed Mayne.

  “The bleeding Prime Minister? Do you know specifically why? Is it an interest in the case, the victim or my performance?” queried Dolly.

  “You did shoot a man who had diplomatic privileges in the country, who was assisting you in the capture of a murderer,” replied Commissioner Mayne.

  Dolly wondered if Mayne was coaching him on an inquiry regarding his behavior and not the case.

  “Well, better you shot a silver seer than a guild master. That could have turned into a full-blown international incident," assured Mayne.

  "Yes, sir," Dolly replied, staring at the floor of the carriage and searching for an answer to where this could go. There was the issue of how the Chilton murder case so gruesomely ended, loose ends like the missing gold, or it could easily be his treatment of diplomats.

  The newspapers had had a field day printing stories of reports of spirits invading Lambeth.

  “Tell them straight, Dolly, and we will get through this.” Mayne explained.

  Welch at the Guardian had been hounding Dolly for an interview on his phantom killer, the columnist’s name for the murderer of Chilton and Moya. Maybe it could be just a talk about managing the press. “Thank you, sir.” Dolly was worried. He was just the right level of authority to be made an example of between the governments. This had to be about the shooting.

  The meeting was held in a drawing room, an informal atmosphere. It was just the four men in attendance: Dolly, the current Prime Minister, Edward Smith-Stanley, the 14th Earl of Derby, Mayne and his boss, the Home Secretary, Horatio Walpole.

  “I asked you and Commissioner Mayne to brief the Prime Minister on the particulars of the Chilton case,” said the Home Secretary, addressing Dolly.

  “Before Detective Williamson gets into the case, I would just like to get on the record—” started Mayne.

  “There’ll be no record of this meeting, Commissioner,” interrupted the Earl of Derby.

  “Yes, sir.” Mayne was on his back foot. “What I mean to say, sir, is the detective is one of our best men when it comes to sousing out the facts of a case and has always shown high character and tact when on a case.”

  “This tact and discipline includes conducting investigations with occultists and shooting French dignitaries,” inserted Derby.

  There it is.

  “From what the Home Secretary has told me, we have a situation that has our national interest at stake, and I want to hear your side of this, Detective. Everything you know,” Derby continued, ignoring Mayne’s appeal.

  “I was called on to investigate the death of Sir Francis Chilton, the financier. His body was found at his London home. He had not told his family why he was returning to London and no one knew of his whereabouts for nearly two days. The condition of the body was unlike anything I had seen before, and I requested the assistance of Rose Caldwell, a local occultist.”

  “Why did you call on her, may I ask? This city is full of fortune tellers,” the PM queried.

  “We have a history—”

  “The Milton murders,” Walpole interjected, looking at the Prime Minister in a way that left Dolly with the impression they had discussed them at some point.

  “—and I trust her assessments,” Dolly finished his sentence.

  “Go on,” prodded the PM.

  “Over the following fortnight, the body of Señor Emilio Moyo was found at the Carlton in the same condition as Chilton—excuse me, Sir Chilton. Then two bodies were found in the vault at the Chilton House. In the case of the two guards, they had been shot.

  “The Home Secretary requested a meeting where I was introduced to guild master Saint-Yves, a French diplomat and guild master. He shared that a similar murder had occurred in the colony of Haiti to Emilio’s brother, Hernando, and that they suspected a Voodoo priestess named Angelica du Haiti. Sister Rose—sorry, Rose Caldwell—had an invention capable of detecting and imprinting spectral incidents on photographic plates. She showed me an image of an African woman in the room with Moya at the Carlton. I now had two independent sources pointing at Ms. Du Haiti, so while I had some certainty as to the identity of the suspect, I did not have a motive or an idea as to where to find her.

  “I received a document from Sir Lester that his father had in his possession It was Don Ernesto’s last will and testament. In the pages, Don Ernesto Moya declared he had an affair with a Haitian slave on his plantation after the death of his wife. He had his will changed to acknowledge the mother and his daughter and provide them an inheritance. There lay the motive of Angelica. Cheated of her inheritance by the Moya brothers in collusion with the elder Chilton, she sought vengeance.

  “It appears Sir Chilton conspired with the sons to make Don Ernesto’s will disappear and then Hernando ran the mother and daughter off the plantation. What they had not planned on was their half-sister becoming a practitioner of Voodoo.”

  “Voodoo, Detective?” asked Walpole, clarifying what he just heard.

  The PM sat in silence, taking in Dolly’s story.

  “A practicing Voodoo witch, she used arcane methods to kill the Moyas and Sir Chilton. Her tactics were quite wicked. She did not just kill the men. She damned their souls to an eternal limbo. I suspect that she was stealing Chilton's gold to make up for what she was swindled out of by him and the Moyas.”

  “And that’s when the guards were shot, not Voodoo’d?” asked the PM.

  “There is that loose end. I surmise they were shot when they discovered the robbery. Given her abilities to enthrall victims, either it was by Chilton himself under her control or accomplices. What was taken was of a substantial weight. So, I suspect she or Chilton had help moving the gold.”

  "Have you retrieved the gold? We are receiving pressure from the younger Chilton to its whereabouts," voiced Derby.

  “Actually the murder of the two guards and the theft of the gold is not my case. That happened in the city of London and is under their jurisdiction,” replied Dolly.

  “Tell us about the night of the Twenty-fourth at 412 Pilton Road,” requested Walpole. “Before you proceed, I want to revisit your comment that this woman was a Voodoo witch.”

  Dolly followed up. “To be specific, my understanding is that Ms. du Haiti was the high priestess of the Voodooists and a very powerful enchantress. Therefore, the necronists were intent on her capture.”

  “Or death,” added Mayne.

  “Yes, there’s the matter of her death,” said Derby.

&n
bsp; “Very messy,” interjected Walpole.

  Dolly opened his journal and looked over his notes on the night of the 24th.

  “On the night of the 24th, Detective Burton and I were surveying the address in question. We observed Ms. Rose Caldwell enter the residence. Shortly after her arrival, the necronists and Lord Oswald entered the home.”

  “Oswald, what a thunder there has been regarding his demise. His Lodge cronies are looking for justice on his part,” accounted the PM.

  “When I entered the residence, he was already dead. Might I say in a most gruesome way. She had mashed him into the wall,” replied Dolly.

  “So, it was Ms. du Haiti who killed him?” asked Derby.

  “That is what Guild Master Gerard and Ms. Caldwell reported.”

  Derby pressed. “When do we get to the point where you shoot this Seer Thomas?”

  “When I entered the room, I made it clear that I was with the Metropolitan Police Service investigating a crime in the process. I was gaining control of the scene. I observed that both Guild Master Saint-Yves and Seer Thomas were chanting an incantation. Earlier in the week, Miss Caldwell had given me an amulet to protect me against the magic of Ms. du Haiti.

  “This amulet alerted me to the danger to myself and the safety of my fellow officer. I told the men to cease and desist so that I could ascertain if it was them or another source that was engaging the ward Rose gave me. They did not comply, so I could only assume that it was them who meant to do harm unto me and Burton. That is when I fired my pistol,” recounted the detective.

  “Do you have this amulet with you?

  “I do.”

  May I examine it?” requested the Prime Minister.

  Dolly removed the metal disk from his watch chain and passed it across the table to the Prime Minister, who regarded it thoughtfully, then handed it to the Home Secretary.

  “We may all need one of these. What of its maker, this Rose Caldwell?” asked Derby.