Death by Silver

by Melissa Scott

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Julian said.

  Hatton grinned at him. “There I agree with you, Mr Lynes. And I don’t have the time to wait, either, which is why I’ve brought a…certain object…for Mathey to examine.”

  Julian smiled back, and Ned cracked his knuckles. “And I suppose that means it’s time I earned my supper,” he said.

  They trailed him back through the Commons courtyard, past the Specimen Garden where a pale flower was opening, its leaves rustling with more than wind. Something skittered past the base of the fountain, and Julian hoped it was only a mouse and not one of the more aggressive plants. They passed the statue of Cornelius Agrippa and climbed the stairs to the single narrow room that was Ned’s chambers. His clerk was gone, her desk bare, and Ned wormed his way around it to fling the one window open wide, letting in the evening breeze. He pulled a bottle of brandy from the cupboard, along with a trio of glasses, and set them on Miss Frost’s desk. Hatton lifted the carpet bag that had sat at his feet all evening, and set it on Ned’s desk. It landed with a distinctly metallic thump, and Ned smiled.

  “I do appreciate this, Hatton. I know I didn’t miss anything, but – I’m curious.”

  “And I’d like a reliable answer,” Hatton said. He opened the bag, and pulled out a bundle wrapped in coarse silk. Ned nodded approval – the silk would insulate it from any outside influences – and carefully unwound the wrapping. The candlestick was enormous, over a foot tall, and designed to look as though it had come from a medieval cathedral. It wasn’t that old, though, Julian thought, peering over Hatton’s shoulder. The design was one that had been popular ten years ago, the sort of thing that his great-uncle had grumbled about as muddying the waters for true antiquarians, all overdone crosses and a frieze of praying figures around the lower part of the shaft. The square foot was carved in acanthus leaves, and one corner was dulled and dirty. Ned picked it up, still using the silk, and grimaced as he took a closer look.

  “It’s certainly heavy enough,” he said.

  Hatton nodded. “If you were looking to bludgeon a man to death – well, it’s what I’d pick.”

  “Right.” Ned reached into the drawer of his desk, drew out his silver-tipped wand. “Might as well get on with it.”

  Julian took a few steps back, perched on the edge of Miss Frost’s desk. Hatton settled into the visitor’s chair, stretching out unexpectedly long legs, and Ned frowned thoughtfully at the candlestick. This was what Ned was really good at, Julian thought, this kind of analytical metaphysics. He himself was good at patterns, at the grammar of enchantment, but Ned had a gift for finding his way into the shape of an enchantment, without harming its structure or causing anything to blow up in his face. His wand moved, tracing sigils – no trails of fire, nothing to show off what he was doing, just solid brilliant work. Julian could guess at a couple of the symbols, the first a test to determine the verb, and then another seeking correspondences, but most moved past too quickly for him to follow. Once the metal chimed, a high sweet note, and once there was a flash like a spark, and finally Ned laid his wand aside and carefully pulled the silk back over the candlestick.

  “That’s very interesting,” he said, and Hatton straightened himself.

  “Definitely magic, then?”

  Ned nodded. “And rather neatly done.”

  Julian pushed himself off the desk and came to peer at Ned’s notes.

  “The curse compels the candlestick to strike someone – presumably Edgar Nevett – seated below it once the sun is down. I’m guessing this usually stood on a shelf above Nevett’s desk? Or his usual chair?”

  “His desk,” Hatton said. “Though it’s off to one side a bit. Not a natural way to fall.”

  “How is ‘strike’ signified?” Julian asked.

  “ ‘Go to’ with ‘forcefully,’ ” Ned answered.

  Julian nodded, unsurprised. It was a formulation common to both Universities, but then, it would have been too much to hope for some archaic signifier that would point straight to the murderer.

  “And, no, it wouldn’t be a natural trajectory,” Ned went on. “I don’t think it was meant to be, actually. I think it was meant to suggest murder all along.”

  “Interesting,” Hatton said.

  “I imagine Victor would have demanded some kind of investigation if a candlestick just happened to fall on his father,” Julian said.

  “I didn’t know you knew the family, Mr Lynes,” Hatton said.

  Julian swallowed a curse, kept his expression open and innocent. “I was at school with the sons.”

  “We both were,” Ned said. “It’s how I got the job in the first place. Sorry, Hatton, I thought I’d told you.”

  Hatton waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter. You said ‘presumably’ it was meant for Nevett?”

  Ned nodded. “The cursework is structured to point at someone, though technically it could function without that closing sign. I’d be willing to bet that there was one, though, and that it pointed to Nevett. But I couldn’t swear to it.”

  Hatton raised his eyebrows. “Because – ?”

  “Most identification is sealed with blood or hair.” Ned pointed to the stained base. “Unfortunately, there’s too much of both on it now to tell if that was done.”

  “Pity,” Hatton said. “So can I assume you’d have seen a spell like this if it had been there when you examined the silver?”

  “Oh, yes,” Ned said. “That I will swear to. Nevett had every piece of silver he owned out and on display, this one included. If there’d been this sort of curse on anything, I’d have found it. I picked up a number of commercial enchantments. And this – would have been noticeable.”

  “That narrows it down considerably, then,” Hatton said. “Whoever did this has to have created the curse between when you left on Tuesday, and Thursday night. That’s useful.”

  “I hope so,” Ned said, but he was looking pleased with himself. As well he might, Julian thought. That narrow window should make the police’s job easier.

  “Oh, it will be,” Hatton answered, and tucked the silk-wrapped bundle back into his bag. “I appreciate your time, Mathey. And a pleasure meeting you, Mr Lynes.”

  Julian murmured a suitable answer, hung back as Ned showed Hatton to the door, resting his hips on Miss Frost’s desk again. The light had faded since they’d arrived, and Ned turned up the gas, blinking a little in the new light.

  “That was neatly done,” Julian said. Ned blinked again, this time from surprise, and gave an almost shy smile.

  “Thanks. I’m glad Hatton gave me the chance, I’d hate to think I’d missed something.”

  “You’d have had to be blind and deaf to miss that,” Julian answered. He didn’t really want to talk about Hatton – he wanted, in fact, to take Ned home with him, and that would be foolish beyond permission –

  “Well, yes. I know that now.” He came over to the desk, reaching for the bottle of brandy. Julian shifted slightly, so that he was far too close.

  “I have a better bottle at home,” he said.

  Ned gave him a wary look, but didn’t step away. Julian put his hand on Ned’s shoulder, feeling the curve of the muscle beneath the light padding. He was making a mistake, he knew, but it was probably better to force this to its natural conclusion, end it before he became too attached again. And right now he wanted it more than he was able to resist.

  “We could share,” he said, and stepped closer still, so that they were almost touching. He heard Ned’s breath catch, and put his hand up to pull him into a kiss.

  “Not here,” Ned said, and shook himself hard. “Wait –”

  Julian took a step back, waiting while Ned returned bottle and glasses to their place, and turned down the gas. “The omnibus –”

  Ned gave him a reproachful look, and Julian couldn’t help a grin.

  “All right. We’ll take a cab.”

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  CHAPTER THREE

  Ned came up the stairs to his cha
mbers with two sizable books from the Commons library balanced in the crook of his arm, having endured the usual lecture from the librarian about not removing them from the Commons grounds. He intended to find some permanent solution to the problem of Mr Clark’s garden gate, and had unearthed both a manual on the care of all manner of doors and a more general treatise with a section on untangling enchantments muddled by too many previous hands.

  Both were out of date, but he felt it was time to consider something other than current best practices, since those were apparently failing. He opened the door about to say as much to Miss Frost, and checked on the threshold.

  Victor Nevett was sitting in the visitor’s chair, leaning back in the chair with his arms crossed in exactly the same attitude of impatience that he’d habitually displayed in classes and chapel. He looked up as Ned came in, and Ned was struck by how little he’d changed; he was a bit heavier than he had been in school, and he sported a neatly trimmed beard, but otherwise he could have stepped out of one of Ned’s more uneasy dreams about school.

  “I told Mr Nevett you’d be back directly, and he said he’d wait,” Miss Frost said, which broke the spell enough for Ned to step in and close the door.

  Victor pushed back his chair and stood, offering his hand. “Mathey,” he said, with the crushing handshake of the sort of man who would consider it womanish not to leave the other party’s fingers numb.

  It was surprisingly difficult not to answer yes, sir. “Mr Nevett,” Ned said pleasantly instead. “Please accept my condolences on your family’s great misfortune.” He set down the books on the corner of his desk, and sat down behind it, trying not to feel that he was putting it between the two of them as a shield.

  Victor nodded brusquely, and then said, “Actually, that’s what I came to see you about. We’ve had the police tramping through the house ever since it happened. They don’t think it was a simple case of burglary.”

  “I’m afraid they may be right,” Ned said. He hoped this wasn’t going where it seemed to be going. If Victor thought Ned could be induced in any way to keep quiet about the results of his tests on the murder weapon, he was in for an unpleasant surprise, and one that had been a long time coming. He wasn’t fourteen anymore.

  “I’m afraid so, too,” Victor said. “I want to retain you to sort it out.”

  “Sort it out?” He was going to make him say it, and he expected to take an unreasonable amount of pleasure in refusing.

  “Find out who really killed my father.”

  Ned hesitated for a moment as he tried to change gears abruptly. “That’s not generally part of a metaphysician’s work,” he said.

  “You sorted out that business about the cursed necklace, though,” Nevett said. “Read about it in the papers. Not bad, figuring out it was one of those heathen curses. Bought from some Thuggee strangler, I suppose.”

  Ned restrained the urge to point out that the necklace in question had been bought from Hunt & Roskell in Bond Street, and enchanted using a perfectly respectable system of metaphysics used by thousands of people in India who weren’t habitual stranglers. “I was glad to be of assistance to the police,” he said.

  “And besides, we were in Beckett’s together, back at Toms’.”

  “Good old Martyr’s.”

  “That’s right. You don’t know what it’s like, having the police in the house and the newspapers speculating about which one of us might have done it. The last thing I need is someone who’s going to dig up whatever dirt there is to dig and then sell the story to the picture papers.”

  “You can’t imagine I’d do that.”

  “Of course not, not a Sts Thomas’s man. There’s such a thing as the honor of the school. And I like to think I set you a good example.”

  “I’m sure you did,” Ned said, although he found it unexpectedly hard to say.

  “Well, then. I’d like to hire you to represent the family interests, and do whatever you can with metaphysics to find out the truth.”

  Ned hesitated for a moment. “I suppose you’re aware the two may not be entirely compatible?”

  “If there’s a murderer in the family, I think it’s in the family’s interests to find out about it,” Victor said. “I hate to be so frank about it, but there it is. You can’t just go around killing people, no matter how much you may want to.”

  “Did people want to?” Ned found himself asking. He hadn’t absolutely made up his mind to accept the offer, but it couldn’t hurt to ask the obvious question.

  “I wouldn’t have said so,” Victor said. “The old man wasn’t exactly on good terms with most of the family, but that’s not a reason to kill a man, is it?”

  “When you say he wasn’t on good terms with them…” Ned prompted.

  “He and my mother used to quarrel, but that’s life with a woman, isn’t it? And my little brother Freddie bedeviled him when he was up at Oxford. Wouldn’t apply himself, and fancies himself artistic. I understand he writes verses.”

  “I’ve heard of worse.”

  “He’s the youngest and spoiled, you know how that is. Should have been taught more manners as a pup.” Ned wondered if Victor actually recalled that Ned was the youngest of five himself. He expected not. “I suppose he’ll grow out of it.”

  “Most likely.”

  “And then you remember Reggie.”

  “Of course,” Ned said, although he had to admit that mostly what he remembered was a plump boy saying “yes” and “no” at the appropriate moments and rarely venturing any opinion of his own. Reggie hadn’t played cricket, and as a Senior Man Ned hadn’t paid much attention to anyone but the First Eleven and the boys who aspired to it, with Julian the perpetual exception.

  “Not much of a sportsman, but not a bad sort.” Victor hesitated for the first time. “But he didn’t get on with the old man. And before you ask, I don’t know why, only that Reggie’s barely set foot in the house all year. But it could be anything, really. The old man had a temper, let me tell you.”

  “And the servants?”

  “I don’t know much about them. The mater did all the hiring. I know the old man complained not long ago that the charity cases she let be foisted off on her couldn’t do the simplest things right, but that might just have been temper. It’s hard to know what’s important, when a thing like this has happened. But it’s got to be sorted out. It’s no good for the mater, and no good for my wife, and truth be told, it’s no good for me. There’s starting to be talk.” He said that last as though that were of more concern than the possible presence of a killer in the household, although Ned supposed from Victor’s point of view it might be.

  “I can’t make any promises,” Ned said. “But I can look into it.” He hesitated. If the client had been anyone else, he would have said immediately that Julian had to be brought into it, but he had the idea that Julian wasn’t going to like the idea of working with this particular client. For that matter, he wasn’t at all sure he liked it himself. There was some unexpected part of him that blindly rebelled at the thought.

  But murder was murder, and as much as he hated to put it that way, a client was a client. Ned didn’t have so many that he could afford to turn away a wealthy one who wanted to hire him to deal with what was likely to be a lengthy matter. He’d have taken it on whether Julian was interested or not, but best to lay the groundwork for involving Julian if he could persuade him to take it on.

  “I’ve a colleague I’d like to bring in on the case,” Ned said. “Another Old Toms’ man. Mr Julian Lynes.”

  He could see that it took Victor a moment to place Julian, but eventually recognition dawned. “Not little Lynes?”

  “The same.”

  Victor snorted. “It’s odd meeting old schoolmates, isn’t it? I remember him a mewling little brat, but I expect he’s entirely presentable now.”

  “I’ve always found him entirely reliable,” Ned said after only a brief pause. “He specializes in cases requiring delicate handling. Detective work, you un
derstand, but not the common sort.”

  Victor shrugged. “If you think it’ll help. I suppose it’ll mean an extra fee. Never mind, though, it’s worth it if you can sort this out. Whatever the usual rates are, and of course your expenses to be paid.”

  “I’m going to have to bill by the hour,” Ned said. “I’m afraid I haven’t a set fee for murder investigations.”

  “I don’t suppose you would.” Victor stood, offered his hand again for another bone-crushing handshake, and handed over one of his cards. “I imagine you’ll want to come round and see the house.”

  “And talk to the household. I’m afraid so.”

  “The lesser of two evils,” Victor said. “You’re better than the police. Not that I expect we’ll get rid of them soon. Can you come this afternoon?”

  “It’s a bit short notice,” Ned said, although he knew full well there was nothing on his schedule.

  “We may be living with a murderer,” Victor said, and Ned had to admit that provided a certain sense of urgency. If nothing else, the longer he delayed, the less chance there was of anyone being able to tell him their story of the night of Nevett’s death without it being colored by long hours of gossip and speculation.

  “I’ll find out what I can for you,” Ned said, and Victor reclaimed his hat with an admiring glance at Miss Frost and went out.

  Ned turned the card over in his fingers, trying to settle his nerves. Miss Frost frowned at him. “Mr Mathey, are you feeling quite well?”

  “Perfectly,” he said, even more unsettled by the idea that he might not look completely at ease. “Why ever not?”

  “You just look a bit green,” she said. “And so many things are going off, in this weather. I bought a ham pie the other day that turned out not to be fit to eat. Even the cat wouldn’t touch it.”

  “I haven’t been eating ham pie, so I think I’m safe,” Ned said. “Mrs Clewett hasn’t poisoned me yet, although she will keep talking about fattening me up, as if I’m a sheep too scrawny to be turned into mutton.”