The Devil in Amber

by Mark Gatiss

  ‘Why not?’ I cried.

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Look—’

  I lifted up the Prayer fragment and, producing my cigarette lighter, struck my thumb off its stiff wheel. A neat yellow flame jumped into life only inches from the ragged cloth.

  ‘No!’ cried Reiss-Mueller. ‘It’s priceless!’ His hands danced about in the air in agitation.

  I waved the flame closer. ‘Wouldn’t you destroy the Mona Lisa if it meant saving the world?’

  ‘No! I mean, of course, yes, but there’s no need. Mr Box, please! There’s another way!’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Relenting, I let the silk flop back onto the arm of the chair.

  The Professor sighed with relief and ran his palm over his suddenly sweaty brow. ‘What you’ve told me changes things somewhat. I’m minded to follow the course of one of your illustrious predecessors. That hunchbacked fellow who gave the Gunpowder plotters enough rope to hang themselves? Or so they say. Why don’t we let Mons’s plans mature then grab him red-handed? If he’s taken in flagrante trying to summon the Devil then we’ll get him and all his crazy followers at the same time. We can pump him for everything he’s got on the Anglo-American fascist network, and with the world situation brewing up the way it is, that’ll be pretty hot information. After that, we’ll nail him with something commonplace. The IRS are trying a similar dodge with Capone. Tax evasion, would you believe?’

  Armed with one of my few scoops, I decided to show off a bit. ‘You could try this. Mons makes his moolah from smuggling cocaine into New York.’

  Reiss-Mueller gave a low whistle. ‘You don’t say?’

  ‘In the form of Communion wafers.’

  ‘How very enterprising. That’s sure good to know. You see, my dear sir, this partnership’s going to go splendidly! Now, tell me what you’ve learned about Mons’s plans—’

  I yawned expansively. ‘Details later. Are we to be fed and watered?’

  ‘So Hi am hassured, sah,’ put in Delilah, pushing aside the two pork-pie-hatted chaps and stooping to open the door. Cold, crisp air and sunshine immediately flooded the cabin.

  I got up, hooked my arm through Aggie’s and popped my head through the hatch.

  We’d landed on a private airstrip, bordered on all sides by dense green forest with snow-bright peaks bobbing above the treeline. I froze on the steps, not because of the temperature but because, as I’d suspected from the view above, I had been there before.

  I recalled Christopher Miracle’s warning and a kind of numb misery washed over me. ‘What did you say this place was called?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Reiss-Mueller, appearing behind us and popping his homburg onto his neatly parted hair. ‘Little village called—’

  ‘Lit-de-Diable?’

  Reiss-Mueller looked surprised. ‘How did you know that?’

  I gazed around at the airstrip. It was much changed but I knew every inch of the wretched place. ‘I’ve been here once before. A long time ago. Lit-de-Diable.’ I laughed mirthlessly. ‘“The Devil’s Bed”. Never realized its significance at the time.’

  ‘When was that?’ asked Aggie, gently.

  I closed my eyes as though against the glare of the sun but, for a moment, that still and beautiful morning dissolved into a shrieking nightmare of remembrance, the air red as Hell, rain pounding like a hail of bullets in the mud, dying men strewn over the barbed wire, screaming and screaming…

  I snapped open my eyes, shook my head. ‘It’s not important.’

  Looking above the tree-line, I oriented myself. ‘Mons has taken over the castle, then?’ I said at length.

  ‘See for yourself,’ said Reiss-Mueller, producing a pair of brass binoculars and pointing towards the snowy peaks.

  Above the forest loomed a familiar mountain, its surface dotted all over with searchlight housings. It was, of course, identical to the image sewn into the silken fragment of the Jerusalem Prayer.

  At the mountain’s peak, like something from Hans Andersen, stood a huge fortress, two of its smooth-faced stone walls towards us, a massive tiled keep projecting from the centre.

  I’d known it under different circumstances and, clapping the binoculars to my eyes, strained to make out a new addition. For a moment, the view swam about, like trying to focus on a distant star through a cheap telescope. Then I caught one of the castle’s absurdly spindly turrets and suddenly made out the strong lines of steel cables heading from it towards the ground. Seconds later, the gondola of a cable car trundled into view. I watched its progress downwards with keen attention, noting that, at several points, the vehicle came close to touching the rock face.

  ‘Suits his dreams of grandeur, I guess,’ said Reiss-Mueller, giving a short wave to the pilot, who was just a blur of goggles and flying coat behind the glass of the cockpit. ‘Pilot’ll stay ready till we need him again. Now, if you and the young lady are okay, Mr Box, it’s only a short walk.’

  I shrugged, knocked somewhat for six by the strange co-incidence of finding myself once more in the quaint Franco-Swiss town of infamous memory. For the moment I was content to give myself over to the Yank’s plans, and draped an arm around Aggie’s waist, taking care to avoid her be-slinged arm, as the four of us walked slowly off the airstrip towards the woodland.

  I tried to banish the memories and enjoy the sunshine on my face. After a time, I began to feel a little more chipper. Reiss-Mueller’s chloroform may have been an unorthodox sleeping draught, but at least I’d had some rest.

  A short walk off the tarmacadam over snow peppered with pine needles and Reiss-Mueller came to a halt. Delilah, Aggie and I pulled up too, gazing in unconcealed delight at the sight before us. It was a cottage so idyllic that it could have been the castle’s fairy-tale twin. Its weathered blue door was bordered by hoar-bush, berries sparkling as the frost that rimed them melted in the sun. Mullioned windows were set deep in the thick old stonework and the high, tiled roof could have been made of gingerbread and icing.

  Fiddling with a key, Reiss-Mueller swung open the door and ushered us over a doorstep worn with a deep groove by the passage of centuries.

  Inside, it was every bit as cosy and delightful as we could’ve wished for. I received a hurried impression of pale yellow walls, flagstones and rustic furnishings. A huge stove dominated one corner. Hugging herself with happiness, Aggie scurried over to a plump armchair and threw herself into its downy embrace.

  ‘Hi shall hattend to lunch at once, sir,’ said Delilah, clicking her heels together like a maître d’. ‘There’ll shortly be ’ot water and food has well.’

  As the Professor and I seated ourselves, Delilah got the stove blazing and soon after began filling the tub upstairs with buckets of steaming water. There were plenty of togs in storage and, after a brief, heavenly soak, I changed into canvas trousers, soft-collared shirt and pullover. Immensely comforted, I settled down for Reiss-Mueller’s questioning. Aggie, meanwhile, prepared herself for the next bath.

  The Professor steepled his fingers as he relaxed into the chair. ‘So Mons has the rest of the prayer,’ he mused. ‘How’d he come to lose the most important piece?’

  ‘Mustn’t ever have had it, surely? Otherwise he’d know the location of the…um…Devil’s tomb and wouldn’t be digging up half his estate.’ I smoothed back my still-damp hair. ‘No, it seems a chap called Hubbard was trying to extort millions from Mons for that last piece. He must’ve known how much it was worth, but Hubbard reckoned without an agent called Flarge.’

  ‘Flarge?’

  ‘Percy Flarge. A swine of the first order of merit. He’s the one out to frame me up. Whether it’s just him or the whole of the Royal Academy, I simply don’t know. All that’s clear is that I got the drop on the brute. Found the one thing they’d been searching for just tucked into Hubbard’s breast pocket.’

  Reiss-Mueller contemplated his nails and gave his double cough. ‘But all this is academic, anyway, unless Mons has found the Pe
rfect Victim.’

  ‘Well, she was hiding in plain sight just like the relic. That cocaine-smuggling business I told you about? Leaky old crate called the Stiffkey, operating out of Norfolk. Among its crew members was a girl brought up in the Convent of St Bede. A girl descended from an unbroken line of such victims, all waiting for the appointed hour.’

  Reiss-Mueller looked at me steadily over the top of his spectacles. ‘You know where she is?’

  ‘She’s taking a tub upstairs right at this moment.’

  At this, the little chap positively exploded in staccato coughing. I told him everything about Aggie’s identity, how Sal Volatile had discovered her location and then attempted to prise himself away from Mons’s clutches and frustrate his schemes.

  Finally, after Delilah had served us with a deliciously simple lunch of hot rolls and ham, we fell to examining the Prayer again. I peered at the embroidered mountain and at the lamb burning on the spit. Then I remembered our previous conversation and turned my attention to the dense, crabbed text.

  ‘These other specialists,’ I said to Reiss-Mueller. ‘Did they have any clue about the words? How did they go again?’

  The Professor tilted back his head and contemplated the low ceiling. ‘That there will come one who is spoken of. All unknowing will he come. And only he who makes himself alone in the world can defeat the Beast.’

  My eyebrows rose interrogatively.

  ‘Not a clue, I’m afraid,’ sighed the Professor.

  I straightened up, stretched and popped the relic into the pocket of my new trousers. ‘Well, Devil or no Devil, I need a kip. If you’d excuse me.’

  Reiss-Mueller bobbed his head. ‘Of course. I’ll leave my boys on guard so you’ve no need to worry. Get some shut-eye and I’ll join you later. I need to speak to the Met as to how to proceed.’

  We rose to our feet simultaneously and briefly banged into one another, the Professor’s glasses dislodging. He mumbled apologies and went out. Once upstairs, I looked in on Aggie and found her sound asleep, still wrapped in a huge rough towel. I carefully unwound it from her and she murmured something, one slender coffee-coloured arm flopping carelessly behind her head. The other was still in its sling, the bandage wet from the tub.

  Then, languorously, Aggie opened one eye. ‘Can I help you?’

  I gazed down at her frankly wonderful form and smiled as a droplet of water slid from my hair and splashed onto her exposed tummy.

  ‘I’d better dry that off,’ I murmured. ‘You’ll catch your death.’

  Pressing my fingers to her smooth skin, I wiped away the moisture. Aggie reached out and gently grasped my hand, moving it to touch her lips, her throat and then to cup her breast. Her wet hair was plastered to her forehead and, for once, her curiously serious expression was mingled with something altogether more naughty.

  I slunk in beside her, the rough towel strangely comforting as I stripped off my clothes and nuzzled my freshly shaven face over her firm nipples. She clasped her free hand behind my head and pulled me closer, tighter as I thrust forward, the terrors and privations of the last weeks melting away into a glow of pleasure.

  She fell to biting my ears and murmuring in a low, low fashion that prickled the hairs on my neck.

  ‘Keep me safe,’ she sighed. ‘Promise me you’ll keep me safe.’

  I promised. I promised many things as we plunged wonderfully on. It seemed of suddenly vital import that I celebrate my existence, my life force, there in Lit-de-Diable, that place of dead and dread remembrance. And, as the girl and I conjoined in bliss, I decided there was some unfinished business I had to attend to.

  Afterwards came the glorious lull of lovers’ sleep until, with the winter day fast waning, I crept from Aggie’s room and sought out my own. I was just lacing up my boots when the door opened and Delilah entered.

  ‘The Prof’s not back yet, sir,’ she announced. ‘So hi was wondering, hif we is not likely to storm Mr Mons’s barricades any time soon, sah, what you and the young lady might want for your tea, sah.’

  ‘Miss Daye is sleeping,’ I said. ‘And I have to go out.’

  ‘Go out, sah?’

  I nodded. ‘There’s something I have to do, Delilah. I’ll be back before nightfall.’

  The drudge looked worried. ‘You sure, sir?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ I gave her a warm smile. ‘Don’t fret, I know this place like the back of my hand. Look after the girl, won’t you?’

  I found a long leather flying coat hanging on the back of the door, slipped it on and headed out of the cottage, straight into the path of one of the Professor’s horribly healthy, pork-pie hatted friends.

  He seemed in no mood to let me pass.

  ‘Just going for a stroll,’ I said airily.

  The po-faced fellow shook his head. ‘I don’t think the Professor would like that, sir.’ His accent was as regulation as his regulation American suit. ‘We have your welfare at heart.’

  ‘My welfare? Look here, you’re supposed to be our guards not our gaolers.’

  ‘Of course, sir. And that’s why it wouldn’t be wise to let you go wandering off. Surely you see that?’ He flashed me his dazzling pearly whites.

  I looked him up and down. Definitely not the type to be won over by friendly persuasion, I decided. Instead I nipped back through the doorway. ‘My dear chap, of course! Quite understand. Night night.’

  Closing the door behind me, I leaned back against the woodwork and frowned. No doubt Reiss-Mueller had the best of intentions but I’ve never liked being fenced in, as you may have noticed, and instantly made the decision to break free of my friendly confinement. Unfinished business, as I said.

  Creeping softly back up the stairs I emerged onto the landing and made my way to a small sash window. Peering out, I saw Delilah in the snow-blanketed garden, chopping wood for the stove. A short distance away, arms neatly folded, sat the second of the Professor’s Metropolitan Museum pals, his hat pulled down over his no doubt frost-nipped ears. I moved swiftly to the other end of the landing, where there was an identical window. This one looked out onto a neglected-looking roadway, and scrambling at the insecure lock, I heaved it open and slipped through onto the slippery drainpipe.

  In moments, I had shinned down and landed with a crump in a thick drift. Keeping low, I crept along a hedgerow bordering that side of the cottage and was soon out onto the roadway and free.

  The village of Lit-de-Diable was only marginally Swiss–as I knew to my cost–and had been fought over by various factions for centuries. It was little more than a couple of streets of quaintly cramped houses, inns and a pretty, onion-spired church. As a result, it took me only minutes to move through it towards the airstrip and across the un-patrolled border into France. I could have walked the way blindfolded.

  Just past the airstrip where our plane was still parked, an area of woodland turned into a neat avenue of poplars. This in turn led, after some five hundred yards, to a small stone memorial that was quite lovely and glowing like coral in the pinkish light of evening.

  My boots crunched through the drifts as I made my way towards it, then I paused, gaze averted, letting the memories wash over me.

  I circled the memorial, the names standing out clearly.

  PTE JOHN ROPER (small, keen, delightful), PTE SAMUEL FORTUNE (gloomy, Welsh, loyal to a fault), SGT JEREMIAH FORRESTER (good man in a tight spot), PTE INNES COPELY (no, didn’t remember him)…

  The next face of the stonework ran on in the same fashion, the inscribed names picked out by the fading light of the setting sun. CAPTAIN WILLIAM BUNSEN…PTE DAVID HENDRIX

  In all those years, I’d somehow never managed to make the short journey. I could have come at any time but now, in the teeth of this strange adventure, fate had conspired to return me to that little place on the Franco-Swiss border.

  LT HAROLD LATIMER (ill-tempered, drank), SGT GABRIEL BOOTHE (Yorkshireman, prim, humourless), PTE PETER HOLLIS (a real smasher. Made good grub)…

  The names beg
an to blur as I moved round the snow-covered stone. And then I saw it. The last simple inscription amongst all the others.

  PTE CHARLES JACKPOT

  I plunged my hands into the deep pockets of the flying coat and wished I had a cigarette. Charlie was always good for a gasper. I would’ve liked to have smoked one for him at that moment.

  There was no body under the French turf, of course. Like so many others, the young man’s corpse had never been recovered. He was listed as missing. Forever. And we’d been so close to the Swiss border and freedom…

  There’d been many an adventure since we’d first met in that bizarre brothel in old Naples but, perhaps, none so bold and terrifying as the mission in ’17 that finally parted us.

  ‘A neat avenue of poplars led to a small stone memorial.’

  I briefly touched my fingers to the cold stone, then turned on my heel.

  Plunging my numbed hands into my trouser pockets, I suddenly panicked. The Prayer was gone! Oh Lor!

  Taking to my heels, I pelted towards the airstrip. As Reiss-Mueller had promised, the pilot of our ’plane was sitting on a low wall, awaiting our instruction. He held up a hand in greeting, then slid the same hand into his jacket and pulled out a pistol.

  I stopped dead.

  The pilot reached up and hauled off his goggles and flying helmet in one smooth movement, revealing a shock of blond hair and a very bruised and broken nose.

  ‘Don’t say a word,’ said Percy Flarge, between gritted teeth. ‘Just come with me.’

  21

  Devil’s Bargain

  I followed meekly but my mind was afire. It was imperative I get away from Flarge and retrieve the fragment of the Jerusalem Prayer! Everything else–my life, Aggie’s safety–was mere beer and skittles in comparison. And I would destroy the cursed thing if it meant saving the world from eternal darkness.

  I crossed without fuss towards the aeroplane, which was now shining like a toy in the last beams of the purple sun. The cabin door was open and Flarge prodded at my side until I clambered inside.