Death by Silver

by Melissa Scott

  “You do have an interesting practice,” she said as he refolded the letter and tucked it into his coat. He’d stop by and see Julian later, but he wasn’t about to let Sarah Doyle slip through his fingers if he could help it.

  “I don’t aspire to be a specialist in crime,” Ned said, although he couldn’t deny that he was beginning to feel like one.

  It was raining in earnest by the time Ned arrived at Harley’s oyster-house, which seemed crowded despite the weather, or possibly because of it. Ned lingered in the cab long enough to sketch a water-repelling glamor over his coat and hat, but still wished he’d had the foresight to bring an umbrella. By the time he’d taken a few steps, he wished he’d enchanted his shoes as well, but he splashed resolutely through the muck.

  He hoped the crowd at the oyster-house meant that Bill was occupied there for the moment and wouldn’t try to run him off out of brotherly protectiveness. He passed it by, ducking his head to shelter his face under the brim of his hat, and hunted for the house. Row after row of elderly houses loomed overhead, probably rented by the single room to the families that crowded into them.

  He nearly ran into the girl as she came down the steps of one of the houses, sheltered under a faded shawl. She drew it closer around her and shrank back from him as he recognized her.

  “Sarah Doyle,” he said. “Please, I need to talk to you.”

  “I don’t know nothing, sir,” she said breathlessly. “I didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

  “You must know it looks bad for you, running away like this. But you don’t have to be afraid. If you saw something that frightened you, or if someone’s threatening you…” He trailed off as a gust of wind drove rain against both of them. “May I come in, just for a minute?”

  “There’s nowhere for you to come in, sir,” she said. “There’s no parlor, only the one room, and it wouldn’t be right. I’m a good Christian girl, Mr Mathey.” Her voice nearly broke on the words, and he wished there were any way to avoid frightening her.

  “I know you are,” Ned said. “Believe me, I don’t have any intentions of that sort.” He stepped under the dubious shelter of the eaves, and after a moment she followed him, staying a cautious arm’s length away. The street was crowded, and a few passersby threw either hostile or wryly knowing glances in their direction; he supposed he must look like the worst sort of masher. “At least tell me why you left.”

  “I couldn’t stand to stay in that house a moment longer,” she said. “Not when there’d been a murder. I was too frightened to go on sleeping there another night.” The words managed to ring false even when she was obviously terrified; they seemed too clearly a lesson learned by rote.

  “So why didn’t you give your notice?”

  “I didn’t think, sir, I just…”

  “You ran. Because you saw something? Or know something?” She bit her lip, and he thought he might be close to the truth. “It doesn’t make you guilty if you were too afraid to tell what you know, not if you tell the truth now.”

  “I never would have killed anybody, sir, and I never thought –” She broke off abruptly, looking over Ned’s shoulder, and her eyes widened. “They’ll take me to prison,” she said, clutching her shawl under her chin as if it could save her.

  Ned looked round, and saw the bobby in his blue uniform. For a moment he thought it was simply coincidence, and then he saw Inspector Hatton beside the uniformed patrolman, both of them striding purposefully toward Sarah.

  “They aren’t here to hurt you. If you’ll only tell them the truth –”

  “You leave me be!” she cried, backing away, her eyes searching wildly for some avenue of escape. He hesitated to grab for her, afraid it would only frighten her more or inspire passersby to leap to her defense, and in his moment of hesitation, she darted away from him out into the street.

  A police whistle shrilled, but she only ran the faster, dodging between speeding carriages and carts. He saw it the moment her heel turned, saw her slip in the rushing mud and go down in the path of an oncoming trap. She had only managed to push herself up to hands and knees when the wheel struck her.

  The trap swerved, the horse shying in a panic, and there was an immediate tangle of traffic, with drivers swearing and trying to urge their horses out of the way. Ned shouldered between them, the rushing water soaking him to the ankles.

  Sarah was lying sprawled in the road like a rag doll left lying in the rain. Ned knelt beside her, dimly aware that Hatton was telling the bobby to sort out this traffic before someone else was killed. He touched her bloody forehead as if there were any hope it could be mended.

  “She’s gone,” Hatton said, not unkindly. “Get up, Mathey, you’re getting soaked. Someone get her out of the road,” he said to some of the men who’d crowded into to see what had happened. “It’s not like there’s any question how she died.”

  Ned let himself be drawn to his feet and steered firmly out of the street himself. “Now you can tell me what you’re doing here,” Hatton said, more sharply. “Or am I to believe this is one of your usual haunts?”

  “I was looking for Sarah Doyle,” he said, unable to think of anything better. He felt slow and stupid, and he knew he ought to gather his wits. “I wanted to get a statement from her on behalf of my client.”

  “You knew we were looking for her,” Hatton said. “And it never occurred to you to tell us where she might be found?”

  “You seem to have found her,” Ned said.

  “That’s not the point,” Hatton said. “The point is you’re interfering and covering up evidence. I brought you into this to help me, blast it. Now you’re down here having a private talk with a potential witness who then promptly dies.”

  “She saw your man coming. She thought you were here to arrest her.”

  “Well, so we were,” Hatton said, pressing his sodden hat more firmly down over his sodden hair. “Or at least bring her in to assist with our inquiries, and I expect she’d have said it was the same thing. I’m not saying it’s your fault what just happened, but it’s a damn bad business, and you must see that.”

  He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  “It’s going to be hard now to make a case that she didn’t do it.”

  “I tell you, she didn’t,” Ned said, finding his voice. “She may have seen who killed Edgar Nevett, but she didn’t do it herself.”

  “I don’t tend to think she did, but I’ve got little enough to go on. If you know something I don’t, I strongly suggest you speak up.”

  “Not much,” Ned said. “Reggie’s hiding something, whatever he quarreled with his father about. A girl, maybe. Mr Ellis warned me off trying to find Sarah, and said he thinks I’m persecuting the servants.”

  “That’s more than I knew five minutes ago,” Hatton said. He rubbed the back of his neck where rain was trickling down under his collar. “I know you’re trying to clear Victor Nevett, but you work with me, understand? Or I’ll have you down at the Yard for interfering with a police investigation.” He softened his tone a little. “Look, if you find out anything else, tell me, and I’ll tell you what I can that might bear. I can’t put much into the case, especially now that we’ve got a conveniently dead suspect. It’s not a bad thing to have another pair of hands working on it, but you can’t keep me in the dark.”

  “That’s fair enough,” Ned said.

  Hatton clapped him on the shoulder. “Get out of the rain and have a good stiff drink, then. We’ll clear up here.”

  He looked around for Sarah, but someone had apparently carried her into one of the houses nearby; at least she was out of the rain.

  Ned had to walk for a while to find a cab, and started to give the driver his address, but fishing in his pocket for cab fare revealed Julian’s letter, now very soggy but a reminder of Julian’s request. He couldn’t say he was enthusiastic about looking at another dead body that afternoon, but going back to his rooms alone didn’t sound much better. He gave the driver Julian’s address inste
ad, and folded the soggy letter back into his pocket as neatly as he could.

  Mrs Digby admitted him with visible skepticism at the state of his clothes, and knocked sharply on Julian’s door by way of announcing him.

  Julian at least looked pleased to see him. “You did get my note,” he said. “It’s getting late, but if we go now we can probably still – what’s the matter?” His expression sharpened abruptly.

  “Sarah Doyle is dead.”

  “Come in and tell me about it,” Julian said, sounding for some reason like he felt the need to be carefully gentle. “Here, give me your hat.”

  Ned let Julian take his hat out of his hands and sat down heavily on the sofa. The plant on the end-table extended curious tendrils toward him, and then apparently dismissed him as uninteresting.

  “The police arrived just after I did,” he said. “She ran out into the road and was run over. Nothing unnatural about it.”

  “Just gruesome, I imagine,” Julian said. He pressed a glass of brandy into Ned’s hand, and Ned downed it gratefully.

  “It was, a bit,” Ned admitted as Julian refilled his glass. “The worst of it is, I think she did know something, but we’ll never know what now. Hatton says he’ll be pressured to close the case.”

  “That’s idiotic. The girl didn’t do it.”

  “I know,” Ned said. “None of it’s fair.”

  “We’ll figure this out,” Julian said after a momentary pause. “I promise. Whether Hatton helps or not. And you don’t have to look at Makins for me, I’ll get someone else –”

  “No, I want to,” Ned said firmly. “At least it’s something I can do for someone.”

  “In the morning, though,” Julian said. “I’ll send out for some dinner, it’s not too early for that.”

  “It is, rather.”

  “Call it tea, then. Unless you’ve another engagement?” Ned wondered if he was imagining a note of uncertainty there.

  “None at all,” Ned said.

  “In fact, you’re welcome to stay. Although I suppose you ought to go home and change your wet clothes.”

  “I can run home in the morning,” Ned said. He wished he had a better sense of whether Julian wanted him to stay or go, especially since at the moment he very much wanted to stay. He’d rarely felt as strong a desire not to go to bed alone. “But if you’ve early business to attend to…”

  “Only the matter of Makins’s corpse.”

  “That’s the first thing on my agenda as well,” Ned said.

  “You may as well stay here, then,” Julian said, as if it were a matter of pure practicality.

  “As long as I can have a bath later.”

  “I’d highly recommend it. There’s a penny in there for the geyser. One’s all you’ll need, it’ll give it back afterwards.”

  “Do I really want to use a bathtub with a gas boiler you’ve enchanted?”

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Julian said. “It’s just more economical. Gas is supposed to be included in the rent anyway, so that really ought to include hot water.”

  “If you don’t mind having Mrs Digby think you never bathe.”

  “I leave enough pennies in that she doesn’t notice,” Julian said, which Ned wasn’t at all sure was true. He felt a sense of unreasonable fondness, despite knowing he really ought to disapprove of petty larceny, even if it was cleverly done. It still went some distance toward settling his nerves to have Julian being so typically himself. “What?”

  “Nothing to worry about,” Ned said, and unfolded his handkerchief to begin trying to wring his sodden trouser cuffs dry.

  Julian sprawled on his end of the sofa, regarding Ned with a wary eye. So far, he’d managed to get dinner into him, and half a pint of decent claret along with the brandy, and his color was looking better. That might be the bath, of course, and being warm, but at the moment, Ned looked almost normal, wrapped in Julian’s scarlet dressing gown over borrowed shirt and trousers. His own clothes were hung to dry over the backs of chairs, would probably be no more than damp in the morning, and Julian carefully stretched out one leg so that his foot was almost touching Ned’s thigh. Ned gave him a rather tired smile and Julian lifted his glass.

  “More brandy?”

  Ned pondered for a moment, then shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m almost asleep already.”

  Something plucked at Julian’s hair, and he brushed it away, only to receive a sharp nip from the Urtica mordax. He sat up, swearing, and stuck his finger in his mouth, sucking at the already reddening bite.

  Ned laughed. “Sorry. But why did you keep it?”

  Julian shrugged, examining the mark. “I’m not really sure. I suppose it seemed a shame to toss it out. Besides, who knows where it would have taken root? We don’t need another Highgate.”

  Less than a decade ago, someone had discarded a cane of Vepris durus, sleeping-beauty thorn, inside the fence at Highgate Cemetery, and the fast-growing bramble had taken root, overrunning almost a quarter of the area before a team of gardeners and metaphysicians had been able to beat it back. Stands still cropped up now and then, threatening mausoleums and slow-moving pets. Ned nodded. “Though at least biting thistle isn’t that – aggressive.”

  “Mercifully not,” Julian said. “Bed, then?”

  “Yes,” Ned said. “But – I’m dead on my feet –”

  “We can simply sleep,” Julian said, soothingly, and began turning down the gas.

  Once they were in bed, however, with the lights out and the window open to the night air, Ned reached for him with unexpected determination. Julian was happy to oblige, and afterward lay half across him, listening to their hearts slow. He was sure Ned would sleep then, but, though his breathing steadied, it did not ease toward sleep. Julian settled himself more comfortably, one arm still flung across Ned’s chest, and waited.

  “I should have stopped her,” Ned said at last, so softly that Julian almost didn’t hear.

  “How?”

  Ned shifted uneasily. “Grabbed her before she could run, I suppose. I don’t know.”

  “You said yourself that wouldn’t have worked,” Julian pointed out. “Someone would have stopped you, and she’d still have been killed.”

  “I should have tried.”

  “It wouldn’t have done any good,” Julian said. “If she hadn’t been killed, she’d have been arrested, and the best that could have happened then was that she’d spend weeks, months, maybe, in a cell. Even if she was released without being charged, she’d have the devil of a time finding a place. And you know and I know that she didn’t kill anyone, but we also know how simple it would make things if it was her.”

  “Hatton’s not like that,” Ned said.

  “No, but you know how much choice he’d have,” Julian answered.

  Ned turned his head away. “She wouldn’t let me inside,” he said, after a moment. “For her reputation’s sake. I frightened her, and if I hadn’t, she might still be alive.”

  Julian tightened his hold, but Ned said nothing more, his body taut and uneasy. You didn’t frighten her, Julian thought, or at least no more than any man would have. He propped himself on one elbow, wishing he could see more than Ned’s blurred shape in the darkness. “This is what’s wrong with respectability,” he said. “Sarah Doyle was willing to stand in a pelting rain rather let a strange gentleman into her room. It’s madness! What sensible person would rather die of pneumonia than be seen to be alone in a room with a man?”

  “Most young women,” Ned said, sounding sleepy again.

  “It’s foolish,” Julian said. “It’s utterly nonsensical. And how many of them suffer for it? That’s what killed poor Sarah, plain respectability, and I’ll wager it’s killed more women than her, and men, too. People who froze to death in a blizzard because they were too respectable to share body heat. Ladies who drowned because they wouldn’t shed their boots, never mind their petticoats and bustle. Or a coat and trousers, gentlemen aren’t blameless here, either. How many people have died of t
he heat, because they couldn’t bring themselves to work in their shirtsleeves, or to be seen in their shifts even in their own houses?”

  “Do you have an actual example of any of these?” Ned asked, shifting again so that they were facing each other, and Julian smiled in the dark.

  “It stands to reason,” he said, and Ned laughed softly.

  “Same old Lynes,” he said, and edged closer.

  Julian settled next to him, listening to Ned’s breathing lengthen, the wine and brandy and the events of the day finally overcoming him. They’d done this at school so many times, lain side by side in the dark when there was no other comfort to be had. At least now he had more than words to distract Ned, though in the end, the words still seemed to work best of all.

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  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next morning they were up and gone early enough to forestall any complaints from Mrs Digby. Ned insisted on buying them a quick breakfast at a coffeehouse on Goodge Street since they’d missed the chance to get breakfast at his rooms as well, and Julian accepted cheerfully. On their arrival at Ned’s rooms, however, Mrs Clewett was loud in her expressions of sympathy for the work that had kept him out all night, and insisted on serving them a second breakfast. “Just a bite,” she said, which turned out to include passable coffee and toast and slices of excellent ham, and Julian wolfed down a second meal while Ned changed clothes. He emerged from the bedroom looking almost unnaturally tidy, his hair sleeked back and his chin freshly shaven, and Julian repressed the desire to run his hand across the smooth planes. Instead, he pushed the coffee pot toward Ned, saying, “I don’t know how you managed to get this sort of coddling.”

  “Perhaps because I don’t scold?” Ned said, mildly, and picked up a piece of toast.

  “I don’t scold,” Julian said.

  “You do,” Ned answered. He poured cream into his coffee.

  “I may occasionally offer a justified reproof,” Julian said, with dignity. “But I do not scold.”

  Ned contented himself with a disbelieving grin, and ate another piece of toast.