My Beautiful Enemy

by Thomas, Sherry

  She had not sat around for Mrs. Reynolds to find her copy of the guide to the British Museum’s exhibits. As soon as she was sure Leighton Atwood had truly left, she had gone to the museum to buy her own copy. The fog had been an unpleasant medium for moving through, but not an impossible one, and, to her at least, preferable to a Peking dust storm.

  The guide, purchased at a cost of sixpence, produced the address of a house on Victoria Street that held a significant store of oriental artifacts. Now if she could only persuade this stubborn lock to cooperate.

  She gritted her teeth. It wasn’t the lock, it was her: She was too agitated for the delicate and precise work of lock picking. For eight years she’d been filled with remorse, certain in the belief that she had killed the man she loved. But now, with her initial and overwhelming relief behind her, anger surged again in her heart.

  He had taken everything, everything she’d had to give, and left her to face all the consequences alone.

  When the lock yielded at last, she listened at the door for a full minute before slipping inside. It had been dark outside, but there had still been a stray particle or two of light from the street lamps. Inside the house, with the shutters drawn, the blackness was almost absolute.

  She gave her eyes some time to adjust as she listened for the night guard. The latter seemed content to remain in the basement. She moved about slowly and quietly, mapping out the room in her head. Thankfully, the furnishings were sparse: a desk with a chair behind it, an additional trio of chairs by the windows, and a plant stand in a corner.

  An antechamber of some sort, then. Two doors led out from the antechamber, both locked. One seemed to have no particular features; the other bore a plaque. Her fingers, tracing over the letters of the plaque, told her that it was the office of a keeper of the British Museum by the name of G. Baker.

  It seemed reasonable to assume that the accession catalogues would be found inside the keeper’s office. This lock gave much faster, and when she had closed herself inside the office, she finally dared to light the tiny lantern she had brought.

  Mr. Baker’s shelves were indeed full of records. She pulled out one marked Victoria Street Accession Catalogue 1877. That year marked the last time she had seen the jade tablet in Master Gordon’s possession and the earliest it could have made its way to the museum.

  Each entry in the catalogue recorded the date an object was received at the Victoria Street storage site, the catalogue number of the object, its description, the name of the donor, the person responsible for its reception, its current location, and, if applicable, the date it left Victoria Street for either some other off-site location or the British Museum itself.

  Tonight itself she could find out the jade tablet’s exact whereabouts. Tonight itself she could look upon it and be transported back to the sweetest hours of her childhood.

  The 1877 volume did not yield what she sought. She moved on to that for 1878. In the middle of a seemingly endless run of records on Japanese sword guards, she heard the night guard’s footsteps. She extinguished the lantern and slid behind the table. But he did not come into the antechamber or the keeper’s office, presumably since they didn’t have anything worth stealing.

  When he retreated back to the basement, she went on with her task. 1879. 1880. And there it was, an entry in 1881, the transfer to Victoria Street of an item that had been accessioned into the British Museum in 1880. Dancing Devi, read the description, white jade bas-relief carving, circa 900 A.D. Buddhist motifs with quotes in Chinese from the Heart Sutra.

  The donor was none other than one Mrs. Robert Delany of San Francisco.

  Catherine didn’t know how she managed to go through all the remaining entries in all the remaining catalogues. But she did, methodically—she would feel terrifically stupid if both the jade tablets she sought were here and she missed that fact by being too impatient.

  Alas, the other jade tablet did not seem to have been donated to the British Museum. Nor were there any other items attributed to the generosity of Mrs. Robert Delany. Catherine set all the catalogues back in their original places, extinguished her lantern, and left Mr. Baker’s office.

  The lock of the other door leading out of the antechamber did not prove difficult to pick. She entered the dark corridor beyond and immediately located the door at the far end that led down to the basement, by the light coming from beneath. The other doors had small plaques beside them on the wall, and it was easy enough for her fingers to run over the letters and inform her that only rooms A–F were on this floor.

  Up a flight of stairs and she immediately encountered room H. Unfortunately its lock proved stubborn. She was still on the last, elusive pin when the night guard began making his next round. She grimaced, trying to concentrate, trying not to let his footsteps distract her from her task.

  The pin tumbled into place only as the guard started up the stairs. She hurried inside and locked the door behind herself. The room was full of dark, hulking outlines of laden shelves. She could discern no ceiling beam for her to get up on, and the door was too close to the wall to stand behind. But the shelves did start ten inches from the floor—to protect the artifacts on the lowest shelves from water damage, perhaps?

  The guard, humming to himself, had his key in the door. She slid under a shelf and made herself as small as possible. The key turned; the door opened. The guard, still humming tunelessly, shone the light of his lantern into the space between the shelves.

  He approached the shelf Catherine was hiding under. She grimaced. It would be easy enough for her to temporarily overpower him. But at some point he would still come to and still have things to report to the police.

  The man’s feet were now directly before her. She forced herself to breath slowly and with no sounds whatsoever. Now his knees were on the ground. She flexed her fingers. As soon as his head leaned down to look . . .

  But he rose and left. Catherine clamped a hand over her heart, straining her ears to make sure that his footsteps receded all the way downstairs before slipping out and lighting her lantern.

  A note had been left on the shelf she had been hiding under—the reason the bored guard had come close for a look: Contents of Shelf J, Rung 5 to be delivered to Bloomsbury on Thursday.

  The jade tablet was on Shelf J, Rung 5. It was Tuesday; she was just in time.

  She was almost afraid to open the box that contained item 1880.18.06.05. But when she did, when she had pulled aside the protective tissue paper, nestled inside was the exact object she sought. At its center was a goddess, her eyes half closed in joy, her pliant back arched, and the ribbons on her flowing robe dancing all about her, as if lifted by a gentle breath. To her left and right were the famous words of the Heart Sutra. Form is no other than emptiness; emptiness is no other than form. Form is exactly emptiness; emptiness exactly form.

  Tears welled in Catherine’s eyes.

  At long, long last.

  Leighton was half convinced that he still reeked of gin, though he’d bathed twice and changed into new clothes. But clerk at the Victoria Street house, the one that held a large portion of the British Museum’s oriental collection, did not seem to find anything amiss with him. “May I help you, sir?”

  “I would like to see an item in your keeping,” said Leighton, handing over his calling card and a slip of paper with the jade tablet’s accession number.

  The clerk rose. “One moment, if you would, sir.”

  He disappeared into the museum keeper’s office, and a minute later, Mr. Baker, a slight, balding man, emerged. He took a look at Leighton and handed the slip of paper back to the clerk. “Have Mr. Broadbent retrieve the item, Mr. Harris.”

  The clerk named Harris nodded and left.

  “May I inquire as to your specific interest in this piece, sir?” asked Mr. Baker.

  “It belonged to a friend of mine. I promised him I would keep an eye on it.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Was Leighton imagining things or could he still dete
ct the faintest trace of Miss Blade’s incense in the air? The scent of incense that clung to her was how he had known, despite the fog that obscured everything, that it had been her standing outside the house last night.

  The location housed thousands and thousands of interesting and beautiful objects. He had no evidence that it was the jade tablet she wanted. But they had spoken of it in Chinese Turkestan, and she had known that it was rumored to be a clue to the whereabouts of a legendary treasure.

  Leighton and Mr. Baker had barely made a dent in their discussion on the weather when Harris returned with a box. Mr. Baker checked the accession number against the one marked on the box, set the box down on the clerk’s table, opened it, and gestured for Leighton to take a look.

  With gloved hands, Leighton lifted the jade tablet out of its container. The carving of the goddess was familiar enough; the weight and texture of the white jade was also correct.

  For a moment he could not tell whether the prickly sensation in his rib cage was relief or disappointment. But of course it was a crushing disappointment, because he wanted to see the hand of fate at work. He wanted to know that even if she had not met Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Chase in Bombay, what she sought on this trip would still have eventually led her to him.

  As he turned the jade tablet in his hand, however, the markings on the edges came into view, and they were nothing of what he remembered.

  The tablet was a substitute; she had taken the original.

  The hand of fate was at work after all.

  Rain fell steadily on Leighton’s umbrella. He barely noticed, his mind far away.

  A cave. Firelight flickering on the walls. A beautiful girl standing with her back to him, admiring the details of an ancient Buddha mural.

  The night they had spoken of the jade tablets.

  The night he had promised her that he would look after her, for as long as they both lived—the only promise he had ever broken in his life.

  Was that why he still wanted to look after her?

  There had been no other reason for him to bring up the topic of Mrs. Chase’s assailant: He’d wanted to know whether the man she had sent overboard had been her old nemesis and whether he ought to worry about her injury. But her reaction—he could still feel the impossible speed of his walking stick, hurtling past an inch from his face, still hear the angry clamor as the stick landed in the umbrella stand.

  Her fury had stayed with him as he stood guard outside the house on Victoria Street last night. It simmered in him even now, fueling an almost unbearable frustration.

  He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, prompting a mild exclamation from the man behind him.

  Mrs. Chase’s assailant had a name. And according to Mrs. Reynolds, Monsieur Dubois had business in England. Leighton was inclined to believe that—Mrs. Chase was not an ugly woman, but not exactly one a man would get on a steamer for, if he wasn’t already headed in the same direction.

  Which meant he probably had luggage with him, luggage that was sitting in Southampton unclaimed, because its owner had fallen into the Atlantic.

  Leighton raised his hand and hailed the nearest hansom cab.

  The Maria Augusta’s passenger manifest indeed showed a man by the name of Dubois. With that information, Leighton, pretending to act on behalf of Dubois’s estate, managed to retrieve the latter’s luggage from a warehouse in Southampton with little hassle.

  From there he proceeded to Starling Manor, his estate in Sussex. To the lavender house, specifically, which hadn’t been used in years. With all the windows open, a clear, bright afternoon light flooded in—Sussex was a much sunnier place than the rest of England. Leighton put on a fencing mask and a pair of falconer’s gloves and set to work on the portmanteau’s lock.

  The Centipede’s reputation as a master of poison and hidden weapons preceded him. If Monsieur Dubois was indeed the Centipede, then Leighton had no reason to suppose he would be careless with his possessions. The thick gloves made it more difficult to maneuver, but Leighton would rather lose a few hours than a few fingers.

  Twenty minutes later, he was beginning to feel that his precautions had been ridiculously excessive, when the locking mechanism disengaged and two tiny, barbed balls shot out from the keyhole and embedded themselves in his gloves. He dropped the balls into a glass of water; the water immediately turned black.

  Leighton exhaled. The fencing mask and the falconer’s gloves now felt insufficient as protective measures. But this was why he had chosen the lavender house in the first place.

  He closed all the windows except one and went outside. After making sure that his person was shielded by the wall, he inserted a pole that had been fitted with a hook at the end through the remaining open window and pried apart the portmanteau. The sound the portmanteau made as it opened was that of a minor battlefield, the air hissing with flying objects that struck windows and walls.

  When he peeked into the lavender house to inspect the damage, a dozen small, black-tipped arrows littered the floor. In all directions. So even if he had been standing behind the trunk, or to the side, he would still have been hit.

  One would expect such a highly secured portmanteau to contain state secrets. But one side of the portmanteau was given over entirely to the Centipede’s wardrobe. Half of the other side was also taken up by clothes and haberdashery. And then items that firmly marked the Centipede as human, rather than a well-dressed ghost: packages of tea, candied plums, and slender, hard-cured sausages.

  The last and most interesting item was also one that required the most careful handling: a box. But it was unlocked and no projectile or noxious fume met Leighton. The inside of the box was thickly padded, the items the padding protected shrouded in additional layers of batting and cloth. Under all the wrapping he discovered half a dozen small porcelain jars, each filled with a paste of a different color and odor.

  The jars reminded him of the ones the girl from Chinese Turkestan had used for her ointments—the woman who lived in a parlor flat in Kensington he thought of as Miss Blade, but he could not attach that name to his lover from another life.

  He put the jars back into the box and turned to the satchel. It was nowhere as dangerous as the trunk, since it was meant to be carried by Monsieur Dubois on his own person, rather than entrusted to strangers. Unfortunately it contained only some toiletries, a scarf, a map of London, and a few calling cards.

  Leighton was unsatisfied. He wanted answers. Did Miss Blade know Monsieur Dubois? Was he her old nemesis? And why had she been so furious when he had inquired into the matter?

  And that was when he saw the envelope peeking out from underneath the packages of candied plums. When he opened the envelope, he held a stack of precisely trimmed papers, each bearing a brush-and-ink painting of a centipede.

  Well, here was one answer, at least.

  There were several safes at Starling Manor, one in the study, another in Leighton’s bedroom, and a third in the mistress’s dressing room.

  The safe in the mistress’s dressing room seemed empty, until one removed the false bottom to reveal yet another locked compartment. Inside the compartment was a steel case. And inside the steel case was everything Leighton had of the girl from Chinese Turkestan.

  The black tassel with a bead of jade that she had cut from the handle of her sword. The few heads of dried chrysanthemum blossoms, quietly crumbling into powder in a tightly sealed glass jar. The small, white porcelain pot that she had given him upon their parting, which still contained a bit of the once rose-colored salve, now dried into several brown, brittle clumps.

  Under the porcelain pot was a letter, from the man in charge of the best chemical analysis laboratory in all of England. As soon as Leighton had safely returned to Rawalpindi, he had sent in a sample of the salve for testing. But the report that should have been posted at the beginning of 1884 had come to him only this past December, when an ownership change at the laboratory had brought about a thorough examination of all the accumulated paperwork.
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  He could recite the relevant paragraph word for word. The laboratory has not been able to determine the chemical structure of all the substances found in the salve. But after consulting with several eminent botanists and biologists at Cambridge University, I am confident in the conclusion that the salve as a whole is indeed highly toxic. Fatally so in sufficient quantities.

  Leighton had strongly suspected it, of course, or he wouldn’t have arranged for the analysis in the first place. But during the intervening years, he had managed to convince himself that it didn’t matter whether she had poisoned him: He was still alive and that was enough.

  Yet when the long-lost report had at last arrived, ten days before Christmas, his first at Starling Manor in many, many years, he had been fragmented by the blow.

  It had been, objectively speaking, a perfect day, snow falling softly outside the windows, a fire roaring in the grate, the garlands of fir and spruce draped over the mantel smelling green and resinous, a lovely fragrance that recalled some of his earliest memories of Christmas.

  And then the bitter, scientific summary of her murderous intentions.

  Two days later he had forced himself to attend a house party in the next county. Annabel had also been invited. She had proposed to him at the end of the Season, the previous August, and he had turned her down as gently as he could—she deserved better than a man who still dreamed of another.

  But when she brought up the subject again during the house party, an hour after the agony in his limb had returned, he had answered in the affirmative. That bridge had been burned long ago; it was past time for him to stop standing on the bank, wishing that the girl from Chinese Turkestan would somehow punt, row, or swim her way across.

  At the very corner of the steel case from the safe’s secret compartment was the pouch of gems in the rough that he had carried with him on each trip to Chinese Turkestan. The gems that she had briefly stolen. The ones that she had refused, in the end, because she had wanted nothing more to do with him. Because she had already decided that he must die.