Horatio Lyle

by Webb, Catherine

  Tess stared up at Milly with her mouth open. ‘Are you . . . are you . . .’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Milly nicely, patting Tess on the shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t think about it too much. It tends to upset people. Come on, dear. Let’s see if he wants lunch.’

  Lyle was indeed sitting in a very old padded armchair, feet up on a table, face covered with his travelling hat, a vial of white liquid sitting on the table in front of him, an anatomical dictionary lying discarded at his feet. Milly strode into the room on surprisingly silent feet, put a tray down on the table by his side, pulled the hat off his head and promptly hit him with it. ‘Stop brooding, Horatio! Have you eaten any fish recently?’

  He stared up at her with a wan, almost embarrassed expression, and started disentangling himself from the armchair. ‘No, not . . .’

  ‘Shellfish? I remember when Pa, rest his soul, ate that plate of oysters and the mess was just incredible. I never thought I’d ever find enough charcoal.’

  ‘No, no shellfish either.’

  ‘Hm.’ She pursed her lips and peered at his face. ‘You missed a bit.’ Then to Tess’s surprise and Lyle’s too, she pulled out a handkerchief from her apron pocket, spat on it and started rubbing busily at an almost imperceptible dirty mark on Lyle’s cheek. When she was satisfied she nodded once briskly and said, ‘Right. Now stop brooding and eat your greens.’

  ‘Actually, I . . .’

  ‘Horatio, are you arguing with me?’

  ‘No, I just—’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Yes, m’m,’ he muttered, picking up the tray with a muted expression. Tess gaped. It was something she was getting quite good at.

  As Lyle ate dutifully, Milly picked up the test tube of white liquid and held it up to the light. ‘What is it?’ she asked finally.

  ‘Blood,’ said Lyle.

  Milly sighed. ‘Oh dear, you haven’t been playing with that centrifuge of yours again, have you?’

  ‘No, this leaked from a dead person in the ordinary way.’

  ‘Poisoned? Prussic acid, perhaps, maybe with some kind of salt compound in it to react with the pigmentation?’

  ‘Shot.’

  ‘With anything special?’

  ‘With a fairly standard bullet. Three fairly standard bullets.’

  Milly’s lips drew a little tighter. ‘Is there something, dear, that you want to tell me?’

  When Lyle didn’t immediately answer, Tess bounded forward. ‘I can tell, if he ain’t goin’ to!’

  ‘Teresa . . .’

  ‘Thank you, dear. That would be very helpful.’

  Tess grinned smugly at Lyle, then turned and met Milly’s kindly gaze and slightly too-pale smile. ‘Well, see, first Mister Lyle got attacked by this mad lady what had a knife and were screaming, “Don’t look at the eyes” - it were that, weren’t it, Mister Lyle? Anyway, then he got attacked by the bigwig . . .’

  ‘The bigwig?’

  ‘Thomas,’ sighed Tess impatiently. ‘What also had a big knife. Mister Lyle, ’ave you ever considered gettin’ a suit of armour, by the way? An’ he also said this thing ’bout the eyes, and then - an’ I thought this was really a bit silly of Mister Lyle, but you know what he’s like, m’m, don’t know what’s good for ’im - anyway, he followed this man what’s a Chinese man what had the gun what shot the man with the blood and the green eyes. Oh, an’ there’s this plate thing what’s supposed to make these people called the Ts . . . Tse . . . anyway, these angel-demon people become all powerful and it’s all really magical an’ I told ’im, but would he listen? No, because he don’t appreciate me, m’m, an’ he owes me a whole sovereign.’

  Silence. Milly turned slowly to Lyle. ‘Do you really owe the lass a sovereign?’

  ‘I might have agreed, in a moment of weakness . . .’

  ‘I thought I told you not to get into debt!’

  ‘Teresa has failed to mention how we met.’

  Tess put her hands on her hips. ‘What? I showed just how wonderfully good at my job I was, an’ now you resent it?’

  ‘You got caught, Teresa. I caught you.’

  ‘Ah - but you had to admit I was good to get that far, right?’

  Milly put her hands on her hips. Standing next to Tess, the two made a surprisingly intimidating pair of annoyed women. ‘Horatio, are you paying a clearly highly qualified thief only a sovereign?’ Tess grinned happily, and tried to stand up a little taller.

  It was Lyle’s turn to gape. ‘You don’t mean to say that you actually think I should pay someone who broke into my own house?’

  ‘Dearest, you were not raised to be morally presumptuous. I think it might be wise if you tell me everything. From the beginning. ’

  Lyle told it from beginning to end. Halfway through Thomas came in, looking sleepy, and hearing Lyle speaking retreated into a chair without a word, without a look, and sat with his hands folded formally in his lap, and didn’t move an inch, eyes fixed on nothing. Tess sat with her knees huddled up to her chin, and idly scratched behind Tate’s ears.

  Lyle started and Lyle finished.

  Silence settled.

  ‘“In the hands of justice”?’ repeated Milly quietly. ‘The Plate is in the hands of justice?’

  ‘That’s all he said.’

  ‘Was that justice with a capital “J” or not?’

  Lyle looked up quickly into Milly’s grey eyes, the exact same shade of steel as his, and frowned briefly, eyes flickering away again as he thought. ‘Oh, goodness . . .’ he began.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Milly answered, looked at the man standing on the doorstep and said, ‘Hm. By the manner in which your clothes are of a particularly fine cut, by the inkstains on your right hand, a ring bearing the royal seal on your left hand, the manner in which your shoes are worn down hard at the heel, though not the toe, the pair of reading glasses in your right-hand pocket and the series of slight abrasions on your jacket, indicative of frequently wearing medals, by the fact that you are here, I’m going to offer an inspired guess that you are Lord Lincoln.’

  Lord Lincoln smiled thinly, leaning on his cane, and nodded just once. ‘And by your syntax, appearance and insight, ma’am, would you be the lady of this house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And is Horatio Lyle in residence at the moment? I sent a messenger to his home, but he appeared to be absent.’

  ‘I think he might be in residence for you, Lord Lincoln. And if he’s not now, he will be by the time I’ve finished talking to him.’

  ‘Mrs Lyle, you are a paragon of virtue.’

  ‘My lord, you don’t know the half of the matter.’

  CHAPTER 14

  Tseiqin

  Lord Lincoln asked to see Lyle alone. Lyle said not a word, and Milly, wife and widow of Harry Lyle, hurried the children out.

  Lincoln pulled off a pair of silken gloves, folded them neatly across the top of his stiff silk hat, looked around for a chair, liked nothing he saw, and stood by the window instead, shoulder turned slightly towards the glass, so that he could watch the street without running the danger of being seen. Lyle stood as far from Lincoln as he politely could, and tried to think of polite things to say. He couldn’t.

  Lord Lincoln broke the silence. ‘You are well, I trust?’

  ‘As can be expected, considering.’

  ‘You are very difficult to find when you don’t want to be found, Mister Lyle. I did not think you would come back here.’

  ‘Yes, well, the happy hearth seemed to be calling.’

  Lincoln smiled at the knife-edge in Lyle’s voice. ‘I suspect you have something you wish to say.’

  ‘Nothing that can pass in polite society.’

  ‘You wish to discuss the Plate?’

  ‘The Plate.’ Lyle almost spat the word. ‘You lied to me, Lord Lincoln.’

  ‘Indeed? How did I so?’

  ‘By omitting the truth!’

  ‘That is not a lie. That is merely a failure to achieve a sati
sfactory level of communication. It could happen to any man.’

  ‘Tell me the truth! Tell me why I have got a vial of blood in my pocket that isn’t human; why people with bright green eyes curse humanity and seem to be able to control minds; why people are dead for a stone bowl of “cultural significance”!’

  ‘And if I do not tell you? What can you do, Mister Lyle? One of their number is dead, now. And they will think you have the Plate. What can you possibly threaten to do, Mister Lyle?’

  Lyle seethed, but couldn’t think of an answer. He said nothing, hating himself, hating Lord Lincoln, hating the man’s cold, almost mocking stare that knew too much.

  Lincoln waited for the silence to stretch, before smiling politely and detaching himself from the window. ‘Mister Lyle, I do not believe I have ever seen you so animated. Do you have the Fuyun Plate?’

  Silence.

  ‘Mister Lyle?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you think you are likely to find it shortly?’

  Silence.

  ‘Mister Lyle, I am not a patient man. I can easily find someone else to investigate the matter.’

  ‘Can you? Someone else who carries magnets in their pockets and understands the principles of forces and fields radiating out from a polarized centre? I saw their faces, I saw them recoil. Can you? ’

  Lincoln’s face darkened. ‘Do not overestimate your importance, Mister Lyle. Are you likely to recover the Plate?’

  ‘There’s a chance.’

  ‘What “chance”?’

  ‘Before Bray died he said something that may lead to the Plate. I cannot say more.’

  Lincoln studied Lyle’s face for a long while, then sighed and half-turned away to look out at the street. Grey clouds were mustering overhead: more rain seemed to be in the offing, cold and dank. Watching the street Lincoln said in a dull, uninterested voice, ‘The Tseiqin are very old and very powerful. I have reason to believe a number of them have infiltrated Her Majesty’s Court, the civil service, the inner sanctums of power. They are a great threat to this nation and Her Majesty’s Empire.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me at any particular point about them not being human, or do I have to brood over the white blood for myself ?’

  ‘They are not human, Mister Lyle.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me that. What are they?’

  ‘They are . . . old. As I said.’

  ‘That doesn’t help me.’

  Lincoln sighed, almost imperceptibly, like an impatient teacher. ‘The Tseiqin come from the forests and the grasslands, live and thrive where nature does. Jungles and marshes are to them things of beauty. They hate us. Especially people like you and your father.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You deal in iron, Mister Lyle. You and your family have made a life out of clicking iron wheels. Being near iron upsets them.’

  ‘Then how can they go near the cities?’

  ‘I said it upset them, not that it harmed them. It . . . limits them. They want that limitation away.’

  ‘The magnet seemed to harm them.’

  Lincoln looked quickly up at Lyle’s face. ‘A magnet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘The magnet hurt them. He screamed when he touched it.’

  ‘I see. I was aware that iron harmed them, limited them . . . maybe even caused them pain, turned them into weak beings, less even than the beggars on the street, fragile, their beauty gone. But magnetic iron - this is a new concept. Electricity is still very little understood, I gather. There is a link, is there not? Electricity and magnetism, one causes the other, electric induction by magnetic fields, magnetic induction by the passing of electricity? Is this not so? Perhaps one day you can explain it clearly.’

  Lyle’s voice was distant, his eyes focused somewhere else as his mind raced. ‘Thomas screamed when he was shocked,’ he murmured, almost inaudibly.

  ‘How so?’

  Lyle snapped back to reality. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You spoke of someone being shocked.’

  ‘Yes. Thomas. He came at me with a knife, screaming about eyes.’

  Lincoln’s only reaction was a single, brisk nod. ‘The Tseiqin are said to be able to impose their wills on weaker minds. They are very beautiful, almost overpoweringly so. No one can disobey a Tseiqin’s command, once under their spell.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me this now,’ muttered Lyle sourly. ‘Your sense of timing is just impeccable.’

  ‘I was not sure how far this would go.’

  ‘It’s already gone too far.’

  ‘I am sorry you feel that way.’

  ‘What’s so important about the Plate?’

  This time, Lincoln’s sigh had more of regret about it than it had before. ‘The Fuyun Plate is largely what legend claims it to be: an object of power. The Tseiqin, when they drink from the Plate, are changed. Iron will not stop them. Iron no longer harms them; that single element has been our greatest protection against the true strength of the Tseiqin for centuries, a strength you cannot begin to imagine. If they can overcome their terror of this element, the pain it causes them, I think it is no exaggeration to say that they can rule the world.’

  ‘That must have Her Majesty’s Empire upset,’ sighed Lyle.

  ‘It is not a laughing matter.’

  ‘I know. Believe me. I know.’ Lyle frowned, an idea slipping into his mind. ‘The Bank of England has iron doors, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘If only I’d been told about the occult, supernatural, semi-apocalyptic aspect of this investigation first, it would have saved me a lot of effort. Why didn’t they just drink from the Plate before it ended up behind the doors, and save themselves the trouble?’

  ‘It was damaged.’

  ‘Damaged?’

  ‘Many centuries ago, it was taken by priests who feared the Tseiqin, and locked in an iron box. The Tseiqin attacked the priests to reclaim the Plate. In the course of the attack, blood was spilt on it. There was a thunderstorm. Lighting hit the metal box in which the blood-soaked Plate lay. It was unscathed, but when the Tseiqin tried to touch it, it burnt their hands. The lightning strike had done something to the Plate.’

  Lyle rubbed the bridge of his nose, and muttered distantly, ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Tibet.’

  ‘Tibet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You heard of a man named Feng Darin?’

  ‘Are you referring to one of the spies the Chinese doubtlessly have trailing you with orders to recover the Plate regardless of cost to human life?’

  ‘Yes, that sounds about right.’

  ‘Then yes, I have heard of Feng Darin. It is pleasing to have a name to put to the face. I presume you appreciate how willing he will be to kill you, to achieve his ends.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I took that for granted. Why are the Tseiqin looking for the Plate now?’

  ‘They believe they can repair it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Perhaps because now we have machines which can simulate the lightning strike that first damaged the Plate?’

  Lyle shook his head. ‘This is immensely upsetting.’

  ‘For a scientist?’

  ‘Yes, for a scientist!’

  ‘Do you think it is plausible, though?’

  ‘People who have a fear of iron and magnets wanting to play around with something that got damaged in an iron box which itself was blasted with a huge, incredible electric charge like nothing we have the capacity to simulate? Well, I’ll grant it has a certain poetic symmetry about it.’

  Lincoln looked at him almost sadly, and said in a low, precise voice that gave nothing away, ‘Mister Lyle, can you find the Plate?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘If the Tseiqin find it, they will kill everything that has ever touched iron.’

  ‘I’m almost on the verge of believing you. If you knew the Plate was so valuable, why didn’t you destroy it?’

  ‘D
estroy something of that value? No. Besides, fire, flood and a very large drop and very short stop have so far failed even to chip it.’

  ‘But being contained inside an iron box with a huge electric current running through it does damage it?’

  ‘Mister Lyle, can you find the Plate?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do you know about Lord Moncorvo?’

  ‘Moncorvo?’

  ‘Yes. He’s involved.’

  ‘I know of him. He has a good deal of influence at the House of Lords. A prominent statesman.’

  ‘I think he’s . . .’ Lyle seemed to flinch, and hastily said, ‘one of them.’

  ‘Tseiqin?’

  ‘Don’t push my credulity so far as to actually start talking about this in an easy, everyday voice, my lord.’

  ‘Special Constable Lyle, can you find the Plate?’

  Outside, in the grey dull street, rain started to fall, thick fat droplets bouncing up between the cobbles and pooling in the dirty gutters, washing down the soot-encrusted walls. Lyle stared at Lincoln with a slowly growing expression of understanding, and Lincoln stared back at Lyle defiantly.

  Lyle said, ‘If you knew the Tseiqin were after the Plate, why did you give it to the Elwick family to safeguard? Because you knew the Tseiqin would go after it? Because you wanted them to go after it? Why did you immediately come to me? Because you must have known the Tseiqin had tried to steal the Plate, that it was them. But you didn’t know about Moncorvo. Why? Because you didn’t know who the Tseiqin were, who the individuals were within your system, how deep they’d dug their claws into government, how many, how strong, how powerful, how ambitious - the strength of your enemy. You didn’t know about Moncorvo. You wanted someone to try and steal the Plate, so you could see who they were. You baited them, and hoped that I’d find out who they were. And now people are dead and I’ve nearly been killed, and the children have nearly been killed and have just seen things that I wouldn’t wish on a mad, opium-high, hashish-smoking, deranged axe murderer!’

  Silence. Then, very quietly, ‘Once again, Mister Lyle, you have shown yourself to be a wise choice of detective.’

  Silence.