Horatio Lyle

by Webb, Catherine

‘Where is the Plate, Mister Lyle?’

  Silence.

  ‘Mister Lyle?’

  ‘It’s in the hands of justice, Lord Lincoln.’

  Silence.

  ‘I do not need to tell you more, Mister Lyle. You know enough. I know that you will do your duty. You may not believe what you are doing, but you are a rational man. You cannot explain away what you have seen by science, and therefore will take the only logical option available to you. I am sure I can count on your willing support.’

  Silence.

  ‘Good day, Mister Lyle. I look forward to hearing from you soon.’

  Lyle didn’t say a word as Lincoln turned and swept out.

  CHAPTER 15

  Justice

  After lunch, the rain hammered down in dark sheets that poured angrily from the sky, as if in revenge for some forgotten sin. Tess sat by the fire, her feet up on a table, idly stroking Tate, who had learnt to recognize a soft touch when he saw one, and said, ‘I ain’t surprised. I thought it were magic all along.’

  Upstairs, Thomas helped Milly wash out a dusty set of glass tubes and arrange them neatly on a table. ‘Haven’t you got a home to go to, dear?’ she asked.

  Thomas thought about this. ‘No, ma’am. Not really.’

  And by the light of a bright, burning lantern, Lyle leafed through page after page of an illustrated book entitled Images in London, Heart of Empire, while on the table beside him the single vial of white blood from an alien heart lay waiting.

  And as he worked, he thought, The Tseiqin can’t touch the Plate any more - they had to hire Carwell and his brother, the arrogant fool. And Carwell wanted more. He gives the Plate to Bray, Bray hides it. The Tseiqin find Bray, and we find the Tseiqin. The Plate is still somewhere out there, wherever Bray hid it. In the hands of justice, he said. It’s in the hands of justice, but he wouldn’t have given it to the police, he was talking about a different justice entirely.

  And Horatio Lyle thought: I wonder if the Tseiqin are going to kill me after all? Murdered by a magical species that I don’t believe can actually exist, for a plate that I don’t honestly believe has any kind of special properties, by people who shout ‘Don’t look at the eyes’ and run around with brass knives and scream at the touch of magnetic metal. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

  Scream at the touch of magnets.

  Or when the people who fear the green eyes, those incredible green eyes, start writhing and screaming at the discharging of a parallel-plate electric tube.

  Like Thomas.

  And Horatio Lyle thought: Magnetism makes electricity, electricity makes magnetism - you can’t have one without the other.

  And the passage of an electric current is magnetic, isn’t it?

  Even when it passes through an iron box during a thunderstorm.

  Horatio Lyle looked down at the book open on the table in front of him, and frowned at a passage. He ran his finger along it, lips pursed, eyebrows knitted together. Then he looked at the picture of the statue next to it. And Horatio Lyle thought: It’s in the hands of justice.

  What can you do, Mister Lyle? What can you possibly threaten to do?

  As the rain fell on the grimy streets of London and the factories belched and the iron cogs in the textile mills whirred and the iron wires in the Royal Institution hummed and the iron shovels dug down into the dirt and the iron pickaxes chipped away at the rock, Horatio Lyle started to smile.

  ‘Children, get your shoes on!’

  ‘Going, dear?’

  ‘Yes, Ma. Thank you for looking after us.’

  ‘Worked it out, have you, dear?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘So are you going to the old or the new?’

  Lyle hesitated.

  ‘Give your ma a hug, dear. And look after those children. And that dog of yours. I don’t want to hear any bad report.’

  ‘Yes, m’m.’

  ‘And pay Teresa her sovereign.’

  ‘Yes, m’m.’

  ‘Have you got everything?’

  ‘I think so . . .’

  ‘Been to the privy?’

  ‘Ma . . .’

  ‘I have to ask, dear, it’s a mother’s prerogative. Have you got your dynamo?’

  ‘Yes, m’m.’

  ‘And you’ve had enough to eat?’

  ‘Yes, m’m.’

  ‘And you’ve got the spare bottle of magnesium sulphate?’

  ‘Yes, m’m.’

  ‘Right. Well, then. Off you go, dear. Don’t do anything foolish. ’

  ‘No, Ma, I won’t. I promise.’

  She patted Lyle on the shoulder. ‘Good lad.’ Then she turned a stern look on Tess. ‘I’m relying on you to make sure the lads don’t do anything foolish.’

  Thomas, Tate and Lyle all contrived to look sheepish. Tess put on a very serious expression. ‘Yes, m’m. I’ll keep ’em in order, m’m, don’t you worry. But . . . m’m? If they don’t come back with all the bits in the usual places, you ain’t gonna blame me, are you?’

  Milly examined Lyle and Thomas thoughtfully, then smiled a distinctly malign smile. ‘No, dear. Not at all.’

  They went back via Lyle’s house, but Lyle didn’t let the children leave the hansom cab. Followed by Tate, he darted towards the house.

  When he put the key into the lock, it jammed and he had to struggle with it. After a few seconds it clicked, and he opened the door, slipping inside with a little frown on his face. It was cold in the house, feeling unlived in after only a day. He looked slowly around, frowning at the floor and at each door handle he passed. He took more time than he’d first meant to, drifting quietly and slowly downstairs to the kitchen, listening to the sound of the floorboards under his feet. He stopped on one, and swivelled his weight this way and that, listening to the creak. He sighed very faintly under his breath and pulled out from his pocket the long, slim clay tube with the wires at the end. Holding this like a knife, he wandered carefully into the kitchen. The wardrobe door was half-open. He kicked it gently back and looked into the second half-open panel behind it. A man was lying there, one leg trapped firmly in a metal vice. He whimpered as Lyle approached and squatted very quietly down in front of him.

  ‘I dunno nothin’!’ he whined.

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ said Lyle politely. ‘Believe me, I know exactly how you feel in that sense. Who sent you? Was it Moncorvo?’

  ‘I dunno nothin’!’

  ‘Do you know what gangrene is?’ A flicker of doubt and fear passed across the man’s face. Lyle grinned. ‘See, that reaction was the reaction of a man who does know. I’m so glad to meet someone with an education at last. Do you know that when the books say green, they actually mean green?’

  ‘He was . . . a chink.’

  ‘Chinese?’

  ‘That’s right!’

  ‘Crooked top hat, red scarf, taste for ginger biscuits, singular bulge in his left coat pocket where he’s failed to hide the gun? That him?’

  ‘Eh . . . yes, that’s ’im!’

  ‘What’d he ask you to find?’

  ‘A plate, a stone plate!’

  ‘And bring it to him?’ Frantic nodding. Lyle sighed. ‘All right. I’ll send someone round to get you out, Mr . . . ?’

  ‘Erm . . . Smith.’

  ‘Mr Smith. Well, I suppose I can’t complain. Thank you for your time, Mr Smith.’

  Lyle slipped down into the basement, and by faint lamplight went round his shelves. He found a small bag of plain metal lumps and dragged them apart from each other with some difficulty, putting them carefully in separate pockets. Armed with the magnets, he also filled his pockets with a large handful of mixed test tubes, a few spheres of white, light glass, a spare box of matches and, after a little more consideration, a small handful of carefully capped needles in a brown paper bag. You never knew when you might need such things, he told himself. He filled Tate’s water bowl, put out a fresh plate of food, pointed an accusing finger, said ‘Stay’ and was ignored as Tate lay down in his
basket and rolled over. Lyle sighed, made a small bag of ham sandwiches in the kitchen, wrapped them in brown paper and went out to find answers.

  Early evening in London, and though the rain still fell over the heart of the city, out to the west the black clouds had retreated to allow radiant pink and orange sunshine to burn through in a narrow thread across the horizon. In the east the tiny peep of light on the horizon was of a blackened blue variety, promising a colder, deeper night. The hansom cab rattled through the streets slowly, trapped in traffic. At Smithfield, the cab stopped entirely. There was the sound of bleating. Tess lowered the window and peered out. ‘Sheep,’ she said in a disinterested voice.

  ‘Sheep?’ Thomas craned to see. The street was boiling with trapped, terrified sheep, struggling to move.

  Lyle hissed in frustration, leant out of the window of the cab, and called up at the cabby, ‘It’s all right, we can walk from here.’

  The cabby looked surprised. ‘You ain’t goin’ to get through those sheep!’

  Lyle glanced inside the cab. ‘Tess?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘See that lady selling the onions?’

  She grinned. ‘No problem, Mister Lyle.’

  Ten minutes later, Inspector Vellum, Metropolitan Police, emerged from the large wooden doors of the Old Bailey, a building almost cathedral-like in Gothic extravagance, into a horde of panic-stricken sheep galloping through the cobbled streets, nearly mewing in distress, to the despair of their master. Some of them, Vellum noticed with interest, almost seemed to be crying. And there were bits of onion in some of their fleeces. He thought how remarkably chaotic the city was, and how good it was for the well-being of mankind that he was there to help remedy the defect. Feeling satisfied at this worthwhile conclusion, he turned, and looked straight into the humourless, smiling face of Horatio Lyle.

  His joy faded. ‘Constable Lyle,’ he managed in a voice tinged with false politeness and bursting with undisguised contempt. ‘I’ve been hearing all about your exploits. I hope you are satisfied? ’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘And why are you only “almost satisfied”, Constable Lyle? It is not, I trust, because you have given credit to the scandalous rumours implying that your conduct has been a degradation to the honour of the police force - not that I would credit them for a moment, Constable Lyle?’

  Lyle drew himself up a little straighter. Behind him, Tess muttered, ‘Hit him!’ Thomas chewed his lip uneasily.

  ‘Well, Constable Lyle? You are not, I trust, being troubled by any premonitions of failure? I implore you, banish them to the back of your mind; a man in your position should not be concerned by the prospect of disgrace and dissolution.’

  There was a long silence. ‘Inspector Vellum,’ said Lyle, his voice cautious and edgy, ‘I assure you that I will take all your advice to heart and let no such disturbances trouble my sleep. I will endeavour - again, thanks to your kind advice - to consider what few achievements I already have at my back. Although rumours of my success in a matter that had baffled the Metropolitan Police are doubtlessly hugely exaggerated by my many supporters and spiritual acolytes, I will nevertheless attempt to dwell on what little credit there is in having essentially solved a case that baffled some of the most remarkable minds in this majestic city. I thank you for your kindness and support, and now if you’ll excuse us, we have the Queen’s business to attend to.’

  Lyle pushed past Vellum without another word, keeping as straight a face as he could manage, and into the Old Bailey, followed by Thomas and lastly Tess, who bumped her shoulder against Vellum as she went. Vellum stood in the street for a while longer, seething with all the inner axe murderers he didn’t have the self-perception to release, before mustering courage and spinning on his heel to follow Lyle, hoping to give him the punch he’d always wanted to.

  He looked into a pair of intense green eyes, and smelt a wave of breath tainted with foreign fruits. The mouth that owned the breath smiled, revealing small, pointed teeth. Almost like fish. ‘Inspector Vellum,’ said a soft, cruel voice. ‘I am Mr Dew.’

  CHAPTER 16

  Bailey

  Tess was unhappy. The Old Bailey was full of bobbies, and even worse, full of people in cuffs who might recognize her and wonder why she wasn’t among their number. She walked quickly, trying to hide between Lyle and Thomas, and hoped no one would notice her. The place had once been plush and grand, she decided, but now had a slightly run-down look. There were rumours that the Government was planning to demolish it and replace it with a more functional building, it being, after all, the Central Criminal Court, and thus something that ought to be central to justice, rather than a slightly wobbly limb. She thought that it would be a pity to get rid of all those dark wood banisters in the shape of pineapples, and those big padded leather chairs with the spring in them, and even the judges in their big wigs and long robes, which gave the place, to her mind, a more relaxed feeling - almost like the fairground.

  ‘Teresa?’ Lyle was walking fast and not looking at her, but she immediately knew what he was going to say.

  ‘Yes, Mister Lyle?’ she said, putting on her sweetest, most innocent face that prompted Thomas to shoot her a suspicious look.

  ‘Teresa, I don’t want you to think that I approve in any way . . .’

  ‘Yes, Mister Lyle?’

  ‘. . . and if you ever steal my fob watch, purse or monocle from out of my pocket, I will be very, very annoyed . . .’

  ‘You don’t have a monocle in your pocket, Mister Lyle. An’ your purse ain’t heavy enough to warrant the attention of a professional like myself.’

  Silence. ‘Teresa?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  She coughed politely. ‘You were sayin’ something about not approvin’?’

  Lyle fixed his eyes very firmly on the middle distance, and said in a slightly-too-confident voice, ‘Yes. Erm . . . yes. I was going to say, that I would far rather you had waited until I could see Vellum’s face when he found out.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What the h . . . what are we doin’ here?’ Tess’s voice was barely above a squeak. She affected innocence.

  Thomas tried to look as if he knew the answer, while watching Lyle out of the corner of his eye. Lyle glanced up the stairs leading into the higher balconies of the Bailey, and muttered distantly, ‘Looking for justice.’

  When they were climbing the stairs, Thomas leant in close to him and murmured, ‘Sir, you’re not turning Miss Teresa in, are you?’

  Lyle looked shocked. ‘Me? I’m a copper! Of course not!’

  Thomas felt relieved by this, but didn’t know why. He smiled, nodded in what he hoped was a manly and mature manner, and tried to turn his resultant expression into one of determined profundity promising insight yet to come. Lyle saw it, and tried not to smile, as they shuffled upstairs.

  It took them ten minutes to find the man Lyle was looking for, a man with ginger hair, freckles and a default expression of general goodwill towards humanity. He saw Lyle, unfolded himself from the plain chair at the far end of the corridor where he’d been lounging, and stood up with a slow nonchalance. ‘Horatio,’ he said in a distinct Welsh accent, shaking his hand, ‘still not in an asylum?’

  ‘You would not believe.’

  ‘Never can anyway, Horatio. Who’re the friends?’

  ‘Thomas, Teresa, this is Charles.’

  ‘Very pleased to meet you,’ said Thomas stiffly, shaking his hand.

  Charles waggled his eyebrows and said in almost perfect mimicry, ‘And you, kind sir, and you.’

  Tess glared at him. ‘You’re a bobby, ain’t you?’ The poison in her voice could have burnt through stones.

  Charles put a hand melodramatically to his forehead. ‘Only when I’m not on holiday, dearest.’ He glanced at Lyle. ‘Be careful of that one, Horatio. She’ll have your purse before you can blink.’

/>   ‘It’s not worthy of the attention of a professional like herself,’ sighed Lyle. ‘Charles, I need your help.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Suspicion fixed itself very firmly on Charles’s face.

  ‘I need to get on to the roof.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘You wha’?’ echoed Tess.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ hazarded Thomas, thinking that he should contribute somehow to the debate.

  Lyle rolled his eyes. ‘Ignore the ignorant. Can you get me on to the roof?’

  ‘Will I get sacked for it?’ asked Charles, a suggestion of concern creeping into his eyes.

  ‘Why should you?’

  ‘’Cos last time you wanted to go up anywhere high it was to measure how hot a lightning strike could get a flagpole.’

  Lyle started turning red. ‘Well, yes . . . but no. This is far more restrained.’

  ‘What you doin’ up there, Mister Lyle?’ demanded Tess.

  ‘Can we help?’ hazarded Thomas. ‘I have a good head for heights.’ He wasn’t sure if this was true - he’d never had any real occasion to find out, but he felt he ought to offer anyway.

  For a second Lyle looked tempted, then changed his mind. ‘Thank you, no. I’d better go up there. Charles?’

  Charles rolled his eyes. ‘Jesus Christ. You people.’

  The roof of the Old Bailey was a triangular slant, the tiles damp with the earlier drizzle and rain. There was still enough dusk light to see by, however, as Charles opened the attic hatch in the roof, peered up and said, ‘Where’d I meet you, Horatio?’

  ‘In a small pond, Charles.’

  Charles’s grin was a flash of whiteness in the dimming grey evening. ‘Heh. That brings back memories.’

  Lyle peered up the roof. Standing at the very end of it was a statue, looking down on the street far, far below, its back turned to him, arms held out as if crucified, bearing in one hand a large pair of scales, in the other a sword, a folded robe of stone drifting down to its ankles. He hesitated. The sounds of the city seemed a very long way off. A pigeon sat defiantly on the peak of the roof and glared at him first out of one eye, then out of the other, turning its head this way and that to see if either eye could muster a better opinion of him than the other. Clearly no eye liked him, because the pigeon started hopping back and forward agitatedly.