Death by Silver

by Melissa Scott

  “Good morning, Mrs Clewett,” he said. She and the single maid both scrambled up and down stairs in the morning delivering breakfasts, but Mrs Clewett brought Ned’s up herself more often than not, and made it one of the first served, which he took as a mark of favor. He tried not to look woeful, to fend off a benevolent interrogation about whether he was suffering the debilitating effect of overwork or had been unlucky in the pursuit of some entirely nonexistent young lady. The last was too close to the truth for comfort, anyway

  “I’ve brought you a nice egg,” she said. “And some more of the ham. It wouldn’t do you any harm to have a bit more meat on your bones.”**************

  “So you always say,” Ned said. He took up the Chronicle that was propped on one side of the breakfast tray and poured the tea one-handed. It was still steaming, the spell on the pot keeping it warm but not hot enough for it to stew.

  “At least sit down and eat properly,” Mrs Clewett chided him, pulling out his chair and throwing open the windows, a stout figure in constant, brisk motion. Both sound and smell carried from the street outside, but it was going to be a warm enough day that the cool breeze was welcome. She shook her head at the sound of another lodger’s bell ringing a story below. “Always someone in a hurry, this time of morning, as if we weren’t all. Will you be in for supper?”

  “You needn’t bother,” Ned said. “I’ll stop at the Commons, or go to my club.”

  “You’ll ruin your good health that way, young man, mark my words,” Mrs Clewett said.

  “I think I’ll survive,” Ned said mildly as she bustled out. The Mercury Club laid a decent table, if tending toward chops and baked potatoes, but Mrs Clewett seemed to think it her mission to mother him until he could be safely delivered into the state of matrimony, at which point presumably his wife would see that he was properly fed and didn’t get run over by an omnibus by imprudently crossing the street.

  As Ned had no intention of matrimony at any time in the future, he appreciated Mrs Clewett for keeping a neat house and employing a reliable cook, and felt he didn’t entirely mind a certain amount of cosseting. Certainly his own mother had never been so inclined.

  He put that thought out of his mind as unprofitable, and unfolded the paper, propping it against the toast rack as he attacked his egg with the egg scissors. He’d ascertained early in his stay at Mrs Clewett’s that the toast racks were properly magicked to stay warm without burning fingers. And the eggs had been boiled in the kitchen, in the normal fashion, and wouldn’t explode without considerable outside assistance.

  If Julian didn’t bedevil his landlady to the point of providing sullen service and scanty provisions, he might not have to rely on camping out in his rooms as if he were still at Oxford, trying to find a way to roast eggs in a coal fire. Even then, there had been perfectly reasonable meals served in the dining room, requiring only the small effort of putting on a gown, but then it had seemed an adventure to try to cook in their rooms. Ned felt he’d reached an age where he didn’t need his domestic arrangements to be an adventure.

  It didn’t really make him feel better to remind himself of all Julian’s less desirable qualities, unfortunately. He’d known since they were twelve years old that Julian was relentlessly stubborn and uninterested in conventional domestic tranquility, and it had never made Ned a fraction less devoted. He’d believed in those days that his feelings were returned, but now…

  It had been different since Oxford, he thought unhappily, setting to his breakfast while he brooded over it. Julian had found friends of his own there for the first time, dramatic young men who were scathingly clever and made bantering references to poetry Ned hadn’t read and wore green carnations, or at least talked about wearing them. He made a few attempts to join them, but found himself more often the butt of their wit than in on the joke. They made it clear what they thought of men who were interested in sport rather than amateur theater – “dullards” was the best of it – and it had stung sharply when Julian didn’t speak up to the contrary.

  They’d never actually quarreled about it, but they’d seen less and less of each other in an effort not to quarrel, which Ned had tried to accept as for the best. It was one thing to indulge in schoolboy vices, but Ned hadn’t wanted to let that distract him from the business of finding a wife. There were a number of young ladies at Oxford, and he’d found that he thoroughly enjoyed squiring them about, going punting on the river in a party of friends and then picnicking on the banks, or playing cricket with a young lady in the stands to clap admiringly at the right moments.

  He’d been dismayed to discover that the young ladies in question were entertaining to talk to and generally pleasant company, but that the idea of undressing them or performing marital duties left him – and vital parts necessarily involved – entirely unmoved. He wasn’t even interested in stealing kisses, even when one or two of the young ladies took to tripping and falling so that he would have to catch them or swaying dramatically against him and complaining of a touch of the sun.

  Worse, he’d been unable to dismiss impure thoughts occasioned by seeing his cricket teammates undressed. He didn’t think any of them would be amenable to advances, but watching Harper pull his shirt off to change into cricket whites, the muscles of his shoulders working, Ned’s eye was drawn relentlessly down the plane of his back, and he had to turn abruptly away, his face heating.

  It wasn’t until his last year at Oxford that he took an omnibus to Piccadilly Circus for the first time, having heard rumors that he hadn’t been able to put out of his mind. It was late, and he walked aimlessly for a while, feeling silly and thinking that the best thing in the world would be to go home. Then a young man – not younger than some of the boys at Oxford, he told himself, his conscience prickling – leaned casually against a wall in front of him and smiled.

  “Would you fancy a drink with me?” Ned asked, surprised that he could find his voice at all.

  “Gladly, guv,” the boy said. “You look like the generous sort.”

  “I expect you know a place,” Ned said, and when the boy led the way with businesslike haste, Ned followed him with his heart pounding.

  Afterwards, back in his rooming-house and having endured a lecture from his landlady about students who came in at all hours smelling of drink, he had curled up on his bed in a tired and unhappy heap, wishing more than anything that he could talk to Julian about it. That was the last thing he could do, though, as he felt sure that whatever Julian was up to with his friends, he wouldn’t sink so low as to pay someone for what should surely be freely given. They’d talked a bit about the ancient Greeks and their erastai and erômenoi, and he’d never felt further from that ideal of heroic love.

  What he couldn’t deny he felt was physically satisfied, in a way that he hadn’t been since the last year they were in school. He hadn’t been aware of how intense his frustration was until it was slaked, and now the idea of returning to it seemed hard to bear. And that was what marriage would be, unless he broke his vows in the most unspeakable of ways.

  Besides, he was starting to suspect that despite the advice of the most reputable medical authorities, most young women of his acquaintance actually did have some expectations in the marriage bed. He hadn’t noticed a complete lack of passion on the part of Oxford women, and while perhaps their unusual intellectual development led to overdevelopment in that area as well, he wasn’t sure any of them would take well to celibacy in marriage.

  It was surprisingly painful to give up the idea of ever having a settled home of his own, but the idea of a marriage full of painful scenes or bitter coldness was far worse. No, better to put that firmly away, face a life as a confirmed bachelor, and find what compensations there might be. If he couldn’t marry, he might at least find someone of similar tastes for company.

  He couldn’t think of anyone he knew except Julian, but as Julian was the one he wanted most, that hadn’t seemed to be a problem. He’d set about trying to rekindle their friendship, and had bee
n rewarded gratifyingly soon by finding himself in Julian’s bed, being introduced to considerably more advanced vices than any they’d tried as schoolboys. Julian’s rooms smelled of dust and stale tea, and his bed smelled of him, and lying in it afterwards, sweaty and sated, felt like coming home.

  He liked the vices, too, and he found himself as passionately devoted to Julian as ever, and it all would have been ideal if he’d thought Julian felt the same way. He was beginning to suspect, though, that Julian found their relations convenient rather than important. Ned was nice-looking and willing and an old friend, but a rather dull one, who needed to be reminded sometimes that he wasn’t invited to spend the night, or to consider himself a lover rather than a friend with certain privileges casually extended.

  Ned tried not to let it make him miserable; it was the way it was, and casual encounters with an old friend were far better than extraordinarily dangerous encounters with a stranger. But being put off for two days, when he had no idea what he’d done wrong and no idea how he could make it up, was making him very close to miserable anyway. It would have been easy if Julian were a girl; he would have bought her flowers and taken her to tea and flattered her into a better mood. Flowers were out, and Julian was apparently avoiding all invitations to any meal, which left the flattery. He might work along those lines, possibly.

  The remains of his breakfast were stone cold, and he pushed them away in irritation, turning his attention to the newspaper. There wasn’t much of great interest, and he was about to fold it up again to tuck it in his pocket for his walk to the Commons when a small headline caught his eye: A Burglar’s Hand, or Silver’s Curse? Yard Baffled by Nevett Murder.

  He skimmed the story as quickly as he could. It was written with the paper’s usual mix of speculation and exaggeration where crime was concerned, but the facts seemed plain enough: two days after consulting a metaphysician with fears that the family silver carried a curse, Edgar Nevett was found dead in his study, felled by the heavy silver candlestick that lay bloody at his side.

  Miss Frost was already at her desk when Ned arrived at his chambers, her own newspaper folded neatly on one corner of her desk. “It was dreadful what happened to poor Mr Nevett,” she said as he took off his hat.

  “Terribly.” Ned folded himself into his chair behind his desk, angled at the moment to catch the breeze through the single window. He aspired one day to acquire chambers that boasted more than one window, and ideally room for their two desks to be more than eight feet apart.

  “And a new client, too.”

  “Yes, that’s also a bit unfortunate.” Ned wrestled with his sense of propriety. “I suppose under the circumstances it would be best to wait a decent interval before presenting any reminder of the tragic events…”

  “I’ve already sent the bill,” Miss Frost said.

  “Well, then.” He shook his head. “At least I’m not mentioned by name.”

  “Maybe not in the Chronicle,” she said. “The Times mentions you as ‘noted metaphysician Mr Mathey.’ ”

  The one disadvantage of having a female clerk was that he couldn’t give vent to his feelings in the first terms that came to mind. “This isn’t what I’d prefer to be noted for.”

  “It’s not your fault the poor man was murdered.”

  “No, I expect it was a burglary gone wrong, but you know how people are about curses. They’ll say it was a sign he was under some malevolent influence that attracted burglars.” Ned suspected Nevett had unwisely boasted about the quality of his “cursed” silver somewhere he could be overheard, but he didn’t think that was likely to satisfy the press. They already seemed determined to turn this into the sort of story that could be gruesomely illustrated in the picture papers.

  He tried to put the whole thing out of his mind, and not to take the lack of visitors that morning as a sign that scandal clung to him. His morning office hours were more optimistic than anything else, held in hopes that someone with a urgent problem would come in to hire him to deal with it, but most days were quiet until he began doing the rounds of his scheduled appointments after noon.

  He had nearly decided that he might as well knock off for lunch when there was a knock at the door. One of the Commons page-boys was waiting when he opened it, escorting a familiar but not – at least at the moment – entirely welcome visitor.

  “Inspector Hatton from the Yard,” the boy said, sounding sufficiently awed.

  “Thank you, Bob,” Ned said, and Hatton pressed a coin into the boy’s hand before he scrambled off. “Do come in,” Ned added to Hatton. “I suppose it’s about poor Nevett?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Hatton said, stepping in, hat in hand. Miss Frost relieved him of it and hung it up for him, looking to Ned for some hint as to whether he preferred that she stay or leave.

  “Miss Frost, why don’t you go ahead and have some lunch?”

  “Thank you, Mr Mathey,” she said, and gave him an encouraging little smile over her shoulder as she went out. He appreciated it, although he hoped he wasn’t about to need it.

  “Mr Mathey,” Hatton said cheerfully, prowling around the room as usual rather than sitting down at once. “Did I ever tell you we all appreciated your help with the Barton business? Well, except for old Carruthers in Yard metaphysics, but he’d have solved the case approximately never, so I can’t work up much regret about calling in an outsider.”

  “That was a simple enough matter,” Ned said, and it had been, once he’d identified the curse on the necklace worn by the unfortunate Mrs Barton the night she died. It had been an interesting little piece of work, but Ned had suspected it wasn’t entirely in an English system from the beginning, and had gotten one of the Indian students of metaphysics at Oxford to confirm that whoever had done the work had almost certainly lived in India. That had narrowed the investigation abruptly to Mrs Barton’s son, home on leave from the Army and – as was reported in the accounts of his trial – in desperate need of an immediate inheritance to settle gambling debts.

  “Simple once we got someone other than Carruthers into it.”

  “I don’t expect he’s had much experience with foreign enchantments,” Ned said diplomatically.

  “I don’t expect he has, but what good is that to us? We can’t do police work assuming that everyone’s English and has always lived in England.”

  “I take it you’re not here because you think I did away with Edgar Nevett?”

  Hatton stopped pacing and raised a bushy eyebrow. “Have any reason to?”

  “Every reason not to,” Ned said frankly. “I’d just acquired him as a client, or so I thought.”

  “Yes, tell me about that,” Hatton said, withdrawing a notebook from his coat and settling finally into the chair opposite Ned’s desk. “I take it he came to you about a curse?”

  “He complained of a curse on the family silver, with exceedingly vague effects,” Ned said. “I found nothing whatsoever wrong. In my professional opinion, he was making the whole business up.”

  “A nervous fancy?”

  “More deliberate than that, I’d say. More that all the best families have curses, and he intended to pay for the chance to say that his family had one, too. I expect he’d have been happier if I’d told him that a spectral beast would appear to stalk the footmen every full moon.”

  “And did you?”

  “I may not be above being paid to make a show of things, but I’m not a fraud,” Ned said. “I told him there was nothing wrong with his silver, which was the truth, but that I’d do a thorough cleansing of it to be sure. Which I did.”

  “You’d guarantee that the silver was free of any enchantment when you were finished?”

  “I would,” Ned said at once. “Nothing but a few domestic things. Lids magicked to shut themselves, that sort of thing.”

  “Not candlesticks cursed to fall on people’s heads.”

  “Certainly not. I saw nothing to suggest this isn’t a straightforward burglary.”

  “It’s a d
amn funny burglary if it’s that,” Hatton said. “Too little taken, and a professional would have wanted to get in and out without any fuss, not bash someone’s brains in and then throw down twenty pounds’ worth of silver at his feet.”

  “He was surprised in the act, I suppose.”

  “That’s the best line we’ve got at the moment,” Hatton said, but he sounded as if he weren’t entirely satisfied. “According to everyone we talked to, the body was found first thing in the morning by a parlormaid. Nevett sat up late in his study until after the servants went to bed, going over some papers. Not unusual for him, apparently. The girl went in to air the room before breakfast, found Nevett lying dead on the floor with his head bloodied, and screamed the house down. When everyone calmed down enough to take stock, they found silver missing from the butler’s pantry.”

  “You don’t look as if you like it.”

  “I don’t like it,” Hatton said. “It doesn’t feel right. For one thing, if the burglar surprised Nevett at his desk, would Nevett really have sat doing nothing while the man walked across the room and swung a candlestick at his head? Nevett wasn’t a young man, but he looked as if he could still put up a fair fight.”

  “He might have fallen asleep in his chair.”

  “He might have. Or he might have been the one to walk in on the burglar, and, whack, our burglar turns round and does for him before he has time to think. Only if the burglar was alone in the study to start with, you’d think there’d be more valuables missing, desk drawers turned out, all that kind of thing. Everything looked in order in there to me, except for the candlestick and the corpse.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Yes, isn’t it? But we’ve already got a simple explanation, and I can’t spend much more time looking for a complicated one without having something to go on.” Hatton closed his notebook. “I did want your statement about the silver being free of curses in your professional opinion, but mainly I’d like the murder weapon looked at by someone who knows what they’re about. We’ve got Carruthers puttering around with it right now, but I’d rather have you take a look.”