The Detective and the Devil

by Lloyd Shepherd

  ‘That must have been extraordinary.’

  ‘It was. I believed I saw the universe as it truly was. I was obsessed with that Monad. Dee believed it held the entirety of the cosmos in its design.’

  ‘You must explain that to me.’

  ‘One day, Abigail. When you and I are embarked on our project.’

  ‘Our project?’

  The secret your husband came here to uncover, he had said.

  ‘I must speak to your husband first. It is only right.’

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Enlightenment happened to me, Abigail. Or, to be more accurate, the Enlightenment happened to me. In one singular year, I read Galileo, and Halley, and Kepler, and Herschel, and every edition of the Philosophical Transactions since the Royal Society’s first meeting. I saw the cosmos for what it was. A vast predictable mechanism. I turned away from magic, and I embraced the Machine. I put away childish things, and I drowned my books.’

  ‘Yet you read your Shakespeare.’

  ‘My dear woman,’ he said, as the silhouette of the fort rose above them and he climbed down from the horse. ‘I read everything.’

  And with that, he pulled her from the horse and carried her down into the tunnels below. She imagined his cloven feet as they made their way down and within, her shoulder lashing its pain through her whole body.

  Eventually they came to a deep fissure at the bottom of which she could hear the sea. He lashed her to one of six massive cauldrons which lined the fissure, and by carefully positioning herself as he did so she managed to line her arm and shoulder up in such a way that Burroughs’s rope held her shoulder in place. An accidental sling, which did nothing but turn knives of pain into needles, but it was better than nothing.

  And then, the worst thing of all. Then he stood to leave.

  ‘Leave me a light,’ she said, desperately.

  ‘You have no need of one,’ he replied. ‘What do you expect to do? Read?’

  He laughed, again, and he left. With the light. His laughter resounded off the rock walls, and the glow of his torch receded, and then she was in darkness. Complete, solid darkness, of the kind that seems to fill your nostrils and slither down your throat. The only sound that of her breathing and the breathing of the ocean, below.

  As Mina Baxter told her tale Horton remembered himself back into the Drury Lane Theatre, to where this strange story had began, watching Prospero cast his spells over another island. Mina Baxter was a mesmerising storyteller – as mesmerising, to a man of Horton’s deliberate mind, as Shakespeare himself.

  He looked up, despite himself, to the roof of the library in which they were sitting, and he half expected to see a hole up there. On the other side of that hole, he would catch a glimpse of the candles of the Drury Lane Theatre swaying in their chandeliers. He would see Prospero peeking over the edge of the hole to look down at him, his staff in his hand and his magical eyes blazing. He might even see himself high up in the gallery, enchanted.

  And what would Prospero make of this?

  He did not know when Shakespeare wrote his play. But he imagined it might have been from the same glittering decades that had witnessed the life of John Dee. Had Shakespeare met Dee? Was Prospero a homage to a Mortlake reality?

  And what on earth could be called ‘reality’ in a world where this story could unfold?

  The library of an Elizabethan magus, hidden on a lump of rock in the South Atlantic, on an island nobody even considered. A forgotten magic.

  His mind had been prepared for what Mina Baxter had told him. It had been softened to these mysteries by the puzzles he had already seen these past four years. It was as if John Dee himself had appeared to him, the old wizard of Mortlake, the natural philosopher who wanted to be something more, who wanted to consort with the celestial. The man who did not drown his books.

  But this was not the story he had voyaged here to tell. This was a tale of Ratcliffe Highway murders and slaughtered Company treasurers. On the face of it, a simple murder mystery. One for which he had still not been able to locate a motive.

  Mina Baxter had finished her tale – or rather, she had stopped it, and was looking at him expectantly. He had expected a confession. It was not apparently forthcoming.

  ‘But none of this really happened like that, did it?’ he said. Mina frowned. ‘This is the story you made up. The Opera contained the essential secret, did it not? Dee’s secret. The way to become one with God. The route to eternal life. Your name is Koeman, not Baxter. You are more than two hundred years old. Your husband Jacobus – what happened to him? An accident? Does the potion not work in such cases?’

  She opened her mouth, and closed it again. She looked almost amused. Then she turned and picked up a small wooden box, and walked over to him. She put it on his lap, and stood over him.

  ‘I think, sir, that you are labouring under a misapprehension,’ she said.

  He turned the key on the box, and its lid popped open. He gazed at the lump of gold within. He took it out. It was about the size of a duck egg, but had none of an egg’s graceful design. It would have been ugly if its warm yellow gleam did not speak so immediately of wealth and artifice, of immense mirrored rooms and imperial crowns and clustered burial chambers. Of a world built upon its unreactive beauty.

  Gold. Enough gold to buy a ship, probably. Held in his hand.

  She may have lost consciousness for a while, but it was nearly impossible to tell in this dark cave with only the ocean to speak to her. She had little sense of how long she’d been there. But after an unknown time, she heard a different sound, other than the ocean’s breath and her own.

  Another breath. Somewhere out there in the darkness, a ragged breath, and the sound of something scratching on the wall. The click of boot nails on rock. And then the sense that whatever was making the noise had emerged into the same cavern as her.

  A sniffing sound.

  A grunt that could perhaps be a growl.

  She took a chance, then.

  ‘Fernando?’

  She had not used the name before. She remembered it only from what Seale had told her. But the name brought another grunt, and the shuffling started again. And the sniffing. And it came closer.

  ‘Fernando? I am here.’

  The agony in her shoulder was so enormous that the terror she felt was a little thing, a side-issue, one to be barely concerned about. Even when the creature in the dark – Fernando, please, let it be Fernando – leaned in to her and sniffed and then ran one dry finger over her skin, her terror remained less than her pain.

  ‘Fernando, I need to get out of here. My shoulder is injured.’

  Another grunt, and then the thing spoke.

  ‘He killed me,’ it said.

  ‘But you are alive. Can you help me?’

  ‘Alive. Yes. Always alive. Always.’

  She felt its hand sense its way along the line of the rope to where the knots where. Then the feeling of the hand went away, and within seconds the hard coldness of a knife was slicing through the rope. The support for her shoulder fell away suddenly, and she cried out, and the creature in the dark moaned.

  ‘He went down the other tunnel,’ she said. ‘Not the one we came down.’

  Fernando’s remaining hand took hers, and he pulled her to her feet. Then he held her hand.

  ‘Don’t let go,’ he said. ‘I know the way, even in darkness.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.

  ‘Make a big noise,’ he said.

  ‘You made this?’ he asked her, holding the gold in his hand. It was heavy and it was cold.

  ‘Of course I didn’t make it. I am not God.’

  ‘Then where does it come from?’

  ‘It comes from the same place all gold comes from.’ And she looked around her. ‘It comes from the rock within the Earth. She hides it as best she can, but some of us may find it, if we have the tools to look.’

  ‘There is gold in this rock?’

  ‘There
is. A good deal of it. But it is almost impossible to extract using traditional means. Gold runs through the veins of the Earth, but in most places the veins are so thin as to be unreachable. Therein, and therein alone, lies the alchemy, constable. A process Geber discovered in Persia, a thousand years ago, transported to this island.’

  ‘And what does this process involve?’

  ‘Constable, have you not been paying attention? It is my secret. It is the secret that keeps me alive and this place – this island – protected. I have memorised Geber’s process, and I will not pass it on.’

  ‘But you have no children,’ said Horton. ‘The sequence will end with you.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Mina, flatly. ‘That it will.’

  ‘So it ends here?’

  ‘That is my wish, yes.’

  ‘And what do you plan to do?’

  She looked up at the ceiling, and smiled. An oddly young smile, as if she were remembering a pleasant childhood dream.

  ‘I will leave this island,’ she said, still looking up. ‘I will fly away.’

  ‘The Company may not permit it.’

  She looked at him then, the warm smile replaced with something firmer, and he saw the steel in her.

  ‘I have my own means of transport.’

  ‘Miss Baxter, your secret here on St Helena has come at a price. The price of a number of lives. I believe those lives were taken by the man who now watches over you, here on the island. This Edgar Burroughs.’

  ‘Ah yes. Edgar.’

  Something about the way she said the name arrested him.

  ‘What is your relationship with Burroughs?’

  She turned away.

  ‘He represents my employer.’

  It was only a half-answer, but she gave him no time to ponder it.

  ‘Were they poisoned, these people in England?’ she asked.

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘There is a . . . substance that is part of the Opera process. Its Latin name would be something like Aqua interitus – the water of destruction.’

  ‘If I am correct, a French chemist has isolated it. He calls it hydro-cyanic acid.’

  ‘I have not kept up with such developments.’

  ‘It smells of almonds, I take it? And must be preserved in cold conditions?’

  ‘It does smell of almonds. Yes. And we make it and store it deep in the caverns underground, where a chamber is kept cold for the purpose. Some have died over the years, if they have not been careful.’

  ‘Edgar Burroughs left London soon after the last killings. And he lived on an estate with an icehouse. I believe he killed people with this poison, and masked his involvement. But he also marked the bodies with a sigil.’

  ‘A sigil?’

  ‘Yes. John Dee’s Monad.’

  She spun round, and seemed inexplicably angry and upset.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘That Burroughs killed people to keep your secret, on behalf of the Company.’

  ‘That is . . . no. That is impossible.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because she is my mother,’ said Burroughs, stepping into the library. ‘And does a mother not defend her son?’

  The ogre carried her along a tunnel in the dark. Abigail had no conception as to how he knew his way. He carried no lamp. But his steps were sure, and when her head faintly grazed a rock and she cried out the ogre stopped.

  ‘Sorry! Sorry!’ it breathed – he breathed, his name is Fernando – he breathed, and she felt the stump of his wrist touch her face. ‘Did I hurt you?’

  ‘No, Fernando, no. I thought I would hurt my head. On the wall.’

  ‘Ah.’ He began walking again, more slowly this time.

  The pain in her shoulder had turned into an ugly ache with the occasional pierce of a knife under her skin, and she thought of childbirth again. Why so many thoughts of that? Was that pain really worse than this?

  Eventually, the tunnel began to rise, and soon they reached some wooden steps, ones she thought she recognised from when Burroughs had brought her down here. Fernando carried her up the steps.

  ‘Down. Must put you down for a moment.’

  ‘All right.’

  He placed her gently on the step, but even that soft change in movement caused her to cry out.

  ‘Sorry! Sorry!’

  He moved in the dark, and she heard the sound of iron on wood, the grating of some internal mechanism, and the door she could not see opened wide and the warm St Helena air blew through it. She saw stars and the glint of a near-full moon.

  ‘Pick you up. Last time.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She gritted her teeth and he put his arms around her and lifted, ever so gently, but the pain was so enormous that she shrieked. He didn’t say anything. He began to run, out through the door and into the night.

  Once more, she was running across St Helena, carried this time not by a horse but by an ogre, a relic of some past whose existence she could not account for. He ran for several minutes, until they came to a barn which sat next to a house. She could see lights in the house. Was Charles inside?

  Fernando opened the barn door, and carried her in. He placed her down gently against a pile of some stiff fibrous material. She whimpered gently, but then managed to move herself into a position where her shoulder became acutely uncomfortable rather than agonising. Fernando moved away, then returned with a lit oil lamp. She saw his face emerge from the gloom, a sad gargoyle walking out of her childhood nightmares to save her from the present.

  ‘I will go now.’

  ‘You are leaving me?’

  ‘Someone will come for you.’

  ‘Charles? Where is Charles?’

  ‘There will be a bang. Soon.’

  He placed the oil lamp down beside her, and she sat in a warm sphere of light. He stood at its edge.

  ‘Fernando. What are you?’

  His ugly face turned into the dark.

  ‘I am a coward.’

  He walked away.

  ‘You should know, Horton, that your wife is in considerable pain,’ said Burroughs. He carried no weapon, not even a sword, and Horton considered rushing at him, but Burroughs looked at him and said: ‘Do as you are told and I may tell you where she is.’

  Burroughs walked over to his mother and hugged her. Mina Baxter’s eyes widened in surprise and her arms stiffened at her shoulders. Burroughs placed his nose into the side of her neck and inhaled deeply, then let her go.

  ‘You smell like a dried-out tree stump,’ he said, stepping away. Then he turned and sat in the chair opposite Horton.

  ‘So,’ said Burroughs. ‘Waterman-Constable Charles Horton. I have waited a good while to speak to you. We were sorely interrupted by my mother’s beast when we first met.’

  ‘My wife is safe?’

  ‘She is, within constrained limits. She has a badly injured shoulder, and is in great quantities of pain. She wept when I carried her, and begged for her life. We talked of the cosmos. She has no access to food or water where I have left her, but I’m sure she can survive a day or two, though in considerable distress, certainly. Her prospects rest entirely on this conversation.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I shall answer a question with a question. What do you know?’

  ‘I know that somebody – probably you – has killed the most recent assistant treasurers to St Helena. The last two men to be killed were called Suttle and Campbell, and I believe you killed them, probably with poison derived from whatever process is being used to take gold from the rocks of this island, a process this woman here has only just told me of. You then took them to the icehouse in the grounds of Robert Burroughs, alderman of the City of London and Proprietor of the East India Company. Robert Burroughs is, I believe, a relative of yours.’

  ‘He is. My father was his brother. He died soon after we returned to England, and I was made a ward of my uncle.’

  ‘So, I assume these former assistant treasurers wer
e killed to keep St Helena’s secret, though the circumstances were somewhat different to the earlier murders. Captain Thomas Jenkins was the first man you killed, some fifteen years ago; he was with a whore, and was a noted attendant at London’s gaming tables. I assume he endangered the Company’s secret in some way, and had to be got rid of. His killer left a strange mark on a dead whore – a mark I believe to be the Monad of John Dee.’

  ‘Good, yes. Very good.’

  ‘Two years later, Captain Robert Fox was pulled dead from the Thames. He was the subject of some scandal involving impropriety with small boys. And thus, he must have presented a problem for those keeping all this secret.’

  ‘Yes. Fox was an inveterate interferer with small boys. He was no loss.’

  ‘But there was no Monad on his body.’

  ‘Well, there might have been, of course. The river could have washed it away. But no, I had moved on from such arcane plodding by then. I was growing up. John Dee’s cosmology held no more appeal for me.’

  ‘And yet, you returned to the Monads.’

  ‘We shall come to that. Pray continue, Constable Horton.’

  ‘Nothing happened for more than a decade. But Benjamin Johnson discovered St Helena’s secret. He told his wife, and his wife began to send blackmail letters to Captain Suttle, a man she had known previously. Suttle spoke about this to the Company, and it was agreed he too was a great risk to the secret. By extension, the other surviving assistant treasurer, Captain Campbell, was a risk. They needed to be got rid of. So did the Johnsons.’

  ‘Excellent, yes. There was panic at East India House. But not entirely because of the Suttle situation. There was much talk, you see, of St Helena being removed from Company control; of its becoming a Crown territory, for a great purpose. Even if it remained a Company holding, the role of the island would change.’

  ‘Change? To what?’

  ‘It matters little. The Company needs to address this situation. This little operation is coming to an end. The activities of my mother need to be relocated, as they should have been done decades ago. To another Company location, perhaps India. It needs to pass the operation of the facility over to a trusted individual, one with no ties to England – indeed, one with no prospects at all of advancement in England. And at the same time it needs to ensure that any knowledge of this secret which falls outside the very small circle of initiates within the Company is wiped from the map. Which brings us to you, Constable Horton.’