She got up, took a sheet of paper from the desk and handed it to him along with a pocket calendar. “I expect you’ll want to jot down the dates.”
“Yes indeed. It’s the details of a case that pin down the guilty,” he said, scribbling. “I’ve worked out how you played the trick. Juno isn’t the smartest of witnesses and gave away rather more than she realised when I talked to her on her hospital bed. Oh, by the way, I have at home in safekeeping a gem of a tiny French vase I shall pass back to her at the first opportunity. The flowers I rescued from the ward died of the cold on the back seat of the Riley, I’m afraid, though I managed to salvage your English roses and they’re doing as well as can be expected. But could you confirm what Louise Lawrence’s part was in all this?”
“Right-oh. She brought in a curtain tie that we checked was long enough to bridge the stairwell. It was Louise who lured away the front of hall man who was supposed to light the stairs. She took him across the road to the pub until it was all over. Juno smuggled the tie upstairs in her trumpet case, and when she was ready to come down again, she twisted it round her arm. No tying up was necessary. You weren’t supposed to go scrounging around, peering into corners.”
“I did notice there were no modifications to the carpentry.”
“We calculated that if Juno came clattering down, banging on the stairs with her trumpet case as she went and screaming, it would be very dramatic. If she just took a nosedive for the last few steps on her front—like a doing a front roll in the gym—it would be very convincing. No one in his right mind was likely to go looking for extra hooks or screws.”
“It was certainly convincing,” he said simply. “Even to one in the forefront of the action. And her performance, the spell of unconsciousness, was utterly persuasive.”
“That’s because it was very nearly a real unconsciousness!” Earwig smiled. “Silly girl misjudged the distances in the dark, tripped over her case and tumbled down far more steps than we had ever intended. Whew! It could have been all too real an accident!”
“Earwig,” he said gently. “Juno narrowly escaped death that night from quite another cause. It was you who inadvertently saved her from a very painful death. Do you remember the silver smelling-salts inhaler?”
She had not known. She listened, growing increasingly pale, horrified and angry as he explained. Finally, in a quiet voice, she asked simply: “Are you saying that the son of this Miss CR, as she was before marriage on the engraving, the presumed inheritor of this deadly bit of equipment, is here tonight? Under my roof?”
He nodded. “Waving his wine glass and joining in the chorus of ‘I’m off to Chez Maxim’s’ by now.”
“Where would anyone come by this mercury cyanide stuff?”
“You could get it from a pharmacy to kill your household rats, but you’d have to sign for it, and the transaction would be traceable. You could buy it at any pharmacy in France, six ampoules to the pack, without declaring your name. In that case, we are unlikely ever to come up with an identity. The net is simply too wide. The third—and for us the most productive—line of enquiry is that you could even, in very special circumstances, have it prescribed by your own doctor.”
“What circumstances?”
“A very tiny, very specific dose, I’ve discovered is actually being administered to two select groups of patients, one in London and one here in Cambridge.”
“Why Cambridge? Is this significant?”
“Yes, when you understand that the supplier of this new experimental ‘cure’ is based here in the city. Louise’s own father and his sidekick, Benson. Working hand in glove with the medical profession. And, believe me, I wish them the best of luck in their endeavours. I haven’t yet got the proof that Louise discovered how her father was involved, but it’s likely that with her nose for sensation she had snuffled up information of the sort and was proposing to make some sort of illicit use of it. If a list of sufferers were to be made public, reputations, marriages, lives would be ruined. I wondered if she had confided in you?”
“She hated her father and disliked her boss, and I think wouldn’t have hesitated to hand either one of them in, but no—she left me no cryptic messages, no delayed letters in the post revealing all. She was a girl who chose to bank her secrets. Sorry. Are you ever going to tell me what these patients are suffering from and what this supposed cure is?”
Once again, Redfyre knew that the interviewing rules had been turned on their head.
“Syphilis,” he said simply.
He watched closely for her reaction as he continued. She’d been a nurse in the war; she must have encountered cases and understood the horrors.
“The scourge of the century. In every country of Europe. There is no known cure for a disease that lingers painfully, that comes and just as mysteriously disappears for months on end. That makes a man decay from his vital parts outwards and upwards until, last of all, it reaches the brain. A brain that is telling the sufferer that the disease has been passed on to him by a female prostitute. Female. Eve. Jezebel. The source of all turpitude. The fact that the unfortunate woman caught it herself from a dastardly man doesn’t enter many men’s heads.”
Earwig was trembling with shock and rage. “You’re telling me that this creature tried to kill Juno and did kill Louise and Venus?”
“That’s what I have to fear.”
“Then I hope you find him before I do. John, who are those monsters who used to terrorise the ancient Greeks?”
“The Furies?” he suggested. “Very old deities with snakes for hair, bats’ wings, bloodshot eyes. They used to carry brass-tipped scourges and whip their victims until they died in torment. Female, of course. Three of them.”
“If he encounters me, he’ll wish it was all three Furies he was confronting instead,” she said, and he believed her.
Chapter 24
“The music’s stopped. Hasn’t it?”
They dashed to the door and opened it to be greeted by the happy sounds of fading applause, laughter and chatter. Back in the banqueting hall, the performance seemed to be halfway through, and the crowd was stirring about, refilling glasses, munching on canapés circulating on silver salvers. Guests were shaking their limbs and finding a more comfortable perch before Flora let rip on the promised Merry Widow selection.
Clarissa seized Redfyre’s arm. “There you are! Where on earth have you been, John? Look, we have a problem. Wulfie and Juno should be here doing their duty by now. They should have been here at least half an hour ago, but we can’t find them. Someone’s dressed my husband and given him a shot of whisky, and he’ll be produced the moment Flora finishes her last song. We thought ‘A Dutiful Wife’ would hit just the right note before the couple are given the family’s blessing. Earwig’s missing too; even Suzannah’s drifted off.”
“Suzannah!” Redfyre raked the hall. “Where’s she gone? When?”
“Oh, ten minutes ago . . . fifteen? Such a thoughtful woman! She told me her escort—that impressive chap Henningham—was a little the worse for wear and she thought it would be better to drive him home while he could still stand. Luckily, Suzannah is able to drive motorcars and was perfectly ready to have a go at the Daimler . . . John! Eadwig!”
Redfyre was racing for the door, Earwig scampering behind.
Once outside on the steps, they stopped to listen to a sound that filled Redfyre’s heart with despair and temporarily made his limbs feel as heavy as lead. The wail of a five-note lament ending with a soaring screech he recognised at once. The “Hejnal Mariacki.” The last desperate call of a medieval trumpeter sounding the alarm. Too late.
Redfyre gathered himself and made a swift calculation. To run or not to run? It was a very long drive. The trumpet call had barely reached them. He dashed down the steps to the Riley, knowing that if it failed to start, he’d gambled badly. Earwig forced the passenger door open and swore as the awkward beast co
ughed and spluttered when he swung the handle. On the second try the engine caught, and the car surged forward down the drive under Redfyre’s urging.
He drove it within an inch of the gatehouse wall, Earwig sounding the hooter all the way. They both jumped out, staring up at a distraught Juno in evening gown, trumpet in hand, leaning dangerously out of the window high above their heads.
“I’ve put the door bar up, but he’s beating it down,” she managed.
A loud splintering crash from inside made her scream again in terror.
Redfyre climbed onto the bonnet of the Riley and flung his arms wide. “Jump!” he ordered. “I’ll break your fall. We’ve done this before! Now!”
A second later, he was rolling about on the frosty ground, trying to keep the weight of a squeaking, sobbing Juno away from the hard surface. He was winded, but all his limbs seemed to be in working order. He assumed the same condition for Juno as he helped her to her feet and opened the car door.
“Get in and keep your head down! I’m going into the tower.”
He reached over to the glove locker and found it hanging open. “Shit! Bloody girl!”
The Browning had disappeared, along with Earwig. Fumbling and cursing, he extracted the Beretta and checked it over. He slipped it into Juno’s hand. “Use it. Point and shoot at anyone you don’t like the look of. Back in a sec.”
The indecently loud boom of a Browning going off in a small space had him charging inside the gatehouse. He’d no idea what the layout could be—he’d successfully managed to avoid any acquaintance with the interior in his youth, but a building with a footprint so small was hardly offering him an entrance to the labyrinth. Not wired for electricity, evidently, but there was an oil lamp struggling against the shadows in a wall socket and the remains of a fire in the hearth that took up the whole of the far wall.
Slumped in front of the hearth, facedown on the Afghan rug, was a body. Redfyre turned it over.
“Wulfie!” He shook him. A groan was all the indication he needed of life still flowing, though sluggishly, through the large form. Bleeding from his mouth, incapable of speech, he managed to open his eyes and stare in horror at the stairs. A ridiculously out-of-proportion staircase but this was a folly, a flight of the architect’s imagination, a harking back to medieval times. Redfyre guessed that up there would be a landing spacious enough to accommodate a pair of duelling swordsmen in front of the upper living room. A landing where someone was attempting to gain entrance by battering down the thick oak door.
Until he had fallen silent a minute ago.
Stairs to the upper floor would of course take a twist to the right to inconvenience a climbing attacker who would find his right arm and any weapon he held in it obstructed and useless. Would Earwig have known that? He couldn’t remember whether she was right- or left-handed. Could she even manage the weight and heavy trigger of that old blunderbuss of a pistol?
Redfyre had no weapon, but his left fist was quite useful. Against what, he had no idea.
Clinging to the wall as closely as he could, his back to the central stone spine, he eased his way upwards.
“John? Is Juno all right?” whispered Earwig’s voice from somewhere above his head. “Has he killed Wulfie?” And, with sick humour, “Where are the Furies when you need them?”
Three more steps and he reached the landing. And a scene of horror. He reacted as he had done when seeing Rubens’s Massacre of the Innocents for the first time. The sight of the dark red of blood against pale flesh, the contorted shapes in the shadows, the atmosphere of uncontrolled violence, were all there and given an extrasensory dimension by the stench of gunfire and freshly spilled blood. It stopped his breath.
Nothing was where it was supposed to be. Disoriented and dizzy, he shook his head and took in the scene again. A long, low oak bench—used, he presumed as a battering ram—lay askew and barring his way, legs sticking upwards. It had been thrown, he calculated, at Earwig when she emerged onto the landing, gun in hand. The girl was on the floor facing him, barely recognisable. Two wide eyes in a blood-smeared face stared up at him. Her silvery dress was mottled with dark matter.
She was sitting across the shins of what Redfyre feared was a corpse. Earwig’s left hand still clutched the Browning, which was trained with rock-solid steadiness on the throat of the man she’d just shot. Blood pooled from his chest. A huge area of whitewashed wall next to the door was splattered in blood.
“He’s still breathing,” she went on. “But not for long, I think. Just in case, I thought I’d better immobilise him. Sit on their legs or neck, I was always taught.” She glanced at the red-soaked upper torso and shuddered. “I’m not hurt. Just very messy. He sort of . . . exploded. I suppose I was too close. Can I get up now, John?”
He helped her to her feet and told her to go down and tend to her brother, explained that Juno was safe and sound but armed in the Riley. “Be sure to identify yourself before approaching,” he said unnecessarily, obeying his safety routine. “Please—give me the gun, will you?”
She handed it over and he switched on its safety before stowing it away in his pocket.
As soon as she’d embarked on the staircase, he gave his attention to her victim. She’d aimed a little high for the heart, one shot, and there was a slight chance that he would survive, though Redfyre wouldn’t have put money on the outcome. At such close quarters, the Browning delivered a blast that could stop a rhinoceros in its tracks.
The victim shared his doubt, apparently. The eyes opened and smiled at him sardonically. “Can’t imagine why I’m still alive! Shot by a woman! I’d rather counted on it being your cool eye and steady trigger finger that did for me, Redfyre. Soldier to soldier. Funny, isn’t it? I survived a war with the mighty Germans, but the one against the weaker sex has done for me.” He paused to catch his breath, then expelled it at once in a single vituperous word: “Harridans! They attack you through your weaknesses and fill you full of poison. They want to have everything you hold dear for their own use.” He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as a wave of pain shook him. “I say, I suppose an explanation is owed . . . Can you bear it? I won’t keep you long. They were trying to dismantle Barnabas, you know. Using blackmail, slander, lies, flattery and bribery—all the evil arts they possessed. For the trivial reason that I’d denied them access to the music school. Or any of the other schools, for that matter. They have their own female colleges, why can’t they keep their acquisitive fingers off what has never been theirs? Was never intended to be opened up to them?”
“Henningham, you’re ill. I mean, apart from the hole in your chest. I am aware of—”
“You know about that?” The master smiled again. “No excuses! Because you’re a terrible old softie, you’re about to put the blame on the nasty little spirochetes, the invasive, killer bacteria that have taken over my body and are now laying siege to my brain. In this clear moment, before they storm in through a sallyport and I have to surrender, I’ll say—nonsense! I declare: Spirochetes, not guilty! I have always despised the female sex and loathed their impurities.”
He coughed and spat out a gout of blood. “You just don’t see the reality of what’s happening, do you? Sir Bloody Lancelot! Titupping about on your white charger with your plumed helmet. You’re a traitor to your sex, man! It’s they who are the spirochetes! The women! Deadly as any bacterium, every last one of them, and they’re on the move. Their march is unstoppable. They’re climbing inexorably up to the brain. The only thing that slows them down, ironically, is their own tenderness for men! And their own gullibility. Even the most intelligent of them is so easily deceived. Suzannah . . .”
Was that a sob, a gasp or a laugh that followed?
“I’m leaving you here to die alone with your evil thoughts,” Redfyre said. “I’m going to find Suzannah, the hem of whose gown you are not fit to touch. Oh, my God! Suzannah!”
And he slippe
d away, shaking with disgust and fear.
Chapter 25
“Shame about the party!”
Aunt Henrietta’s declaration startled Redfyre. She enlarged on her frivolous thought. “I don’t know when I’ve been so engrossed in a gathering for ages. Though it took on quite a different character once the bodies started to be carted inside. The police were very discreet, Johnny, I must say, but everyone quite lost their appetite for roast pig and haunch of venison. Clarissa tells me they were glad of the leftovers the next day, however, when so many called to pay their respects and enquire after Wulfie and Juno.”
She was unhappy with his continued silence. Henrietta had never quite believed in the virtues of a stiff upper lip. She’d insisted that he come out on his bike to spend Christmas Eve with her and his uncle in their own warm little home in the country in Madingley village, deliberately to make him open up.
“Have you seen Suzannah? How is she taking it all?” she persisted, handing him a cup of tea and a plate of mince pies. “Does she realise how very lucky she was? Dancing a tango with a cobra would have been a rather safer activity than keeping company with that man!”
Redfyre smiled. “She’s fine. Like me, she’s gone very quiet. Licking wounds. Not all of them visible.”
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