by Selina Kray
A hush fell over them as they each contemplated the Sisyphean task before them.
“Tim would bring clarity to all of this,” Han noted. “Perhaps we should fetch him.”
Hiero’s heart sank. Though he could not rid his mind of his final image of Kip, beet faced and wheezing, he had promised to leave no stone unturned. And he was trying to be a better man, to earn back Kip’s regard. As if his moss-green eyes encouraged him from afar, Hiero cleared his throat.
“Sister Merry also has a set of keys.”
Callie’s head bobbed up. “I know little of her. Is she a possibility?”
“As murderer or revelator?” Han asked.
“Either. Both.”
“There’s also her brother Amos. Could he have hurt a babe by accident while transporting them to the orphan asylum?”
Callie clicked her tongue. “Would a man of his size kill by strangulation? And there were signs of neglect.”
“Perhaps he forgot one of the babes in the wagon.”
Hiero shuddered, wishing he could un-hear that comment.
“Amos is a gentle soul, frightened by creepers in the night.”
He suddenly found himself the focus of two sharp stares.
“Creepers?” Han inquired.
“Mice and other vermin in the walls of the farmhouse,” Hiero explained. “‘Cree, cree, cree.’ The noise was incessant.”
“You heard them yourself?” Callie asked.
“For two interminable nights, yes.”
“And Sister Merry made no mention of them?”
“She dismissed Amos’s complaint as foolishness, but I assure you, they were quite real. Though she does not sleep in the farmhouse, so perhaps she thinks them fantasy. Little wonder she stays away, with the place so infested.”
They continued to stare at him until Hiero confronted them with a scowl.
“Sister Merry is the night guardian,” Han concluded aloud, possibly for Hiero’s benefit since Callie nodded in vigorous agreement.
“And I fear it is more vital than ever we explore the chamber beneath the farmhouse,” Callie said, a tremble in her voice belied her decisiveness. “Though it haunts me to think of what we might discover there.”
Han’s gaze reached across the table where his hand dared not.
“Leave it to me.”
Affronted, Callie scoffed. “Not for all the secrets in Lord Blackwood’s trove.”
“Elated for you both.” Hiero smirked. “Now can we get about rescuing my Kip?”
Callie poured herself a final shot of baijiu.
“There was never any question Tim would be retrieved. And since your aversion to underground spaces is well established, you’re tasked with creating a diversion that will permit us to sneak down into the tunnels. I trust such an undertaking is within your capabilities?”
Hiero found his smile. “One might say I was born to it.”
“One might unless they knew about the circumstances of your birth.” Callie chuckled to herself, visibly pleased to have caught Hiero out on his self-mythology.
“The side gate is our most logical entry point.” Han pointed it out on the map, eager to turn the conversation back to their investigation. “How did you manage it this afternoon?”
“More luck than logic, alas,” Hiero replied. “Amos Scaggs was put on guard. Not one of my more complex feats of persuasion.”
“You didn’t fare as well with Sister Merry,” Callie reminded him. To Han, she said, “We should be prepared to encounter them.”
“With Amos confined to the garden, I’d say it’s an inevitability.” Han sighed. “I’d prefer to do this without incapacitating anyone. Might your diversion draw him out?”
Hiero considered this, steepling his fingers under his chin. Visions of glorious chaos erupted within his nimble fire-starter mind. He allowed their smoke to dissipate before responding, reveling in their rapt attention.
“There may be a way,” he began, “but I don’t think you’ll care for it. Indeed, I know of a particular someone who will be deeply, perhaps unforgivably cross.”
Callie gasped. “By Jove, you don’t mean—”
“Yes.” Even Hiero couldn’t believe he was about to utter these next words. “Call in the Yard.”
They let the scene play out in their imaginations. Then, as one, hissed.
“He’ll break with you,” Han warned.
Hiero nodded. “So long as he’s alive.”
“No.” Callie slammed her fist on the table. “This risks all the women in the Daughters’ care. If the peelers don’t imprison them, they’ll force them out on the street. We cannot endanger them for the sake of one life.”
“I’ll see they are provided for,” Hiero insisted.
“With what means? We have a full house with only three!”
Aldridge, by the hearth, knocked on the arm of his chair.
“Perhaps I overstated my earlier aversion to incapacitation,” Han quipped. “We will deal with Amos, and Sister Merry if need be. Of greater concern is how you’ll infiltrate without ending up in the infirmary beside Tim. The Daughters have proven they are willing to use any means necessary to protect themselves.”
The knocking intensified; Hiero shushed him.
“The box.”
“Useless. Or perhaps a fake after all.” Callie looked surprised by their inquisitive glances. “It would have worked for Tim if it had any value.”
Aldridge planted his fist in the middle of the table, startling them all. He leaned over to scribble something on one of the blank edges of the map. Client.
“A capital notion,” Hiero complimented, already scheming. “If, of course, we knew who he was.”
He chose to ignore Aldridge’s exasperated expression, which spoke more volumes than any tongue could have uttered. Aldridge slapped one of his newspapers down on the table, planting a finger under a word in the headline.
Winterbourne.
Chapter 19
The sting of a cold compress on his brow lured Tim back into himself. He concentrated on following the drip trails down his burning cheeks and throbbing temples, the chill water pooling at the back of his scalp. The frigid bites to his eyelids soothed their ache, their edges puffy, as if stuffed with cotton. His entire face and most of his torso felt taxidermized, the skin unnaturally raw and distended. Except whomever had scraped out his insides had forgotten his brain and mulched his lungs.
The air was made of glass. Pinprick particles lacerated his windpipe with every inhalation. Tim panicked through his first few conscious breaths until a hand pressed to his chest.
“Slowly, slowly,” Sister Zanna whispered.
Fighting down his shock and his questions, Tim measured out his breathing, counting his inhales and exhales until the blaze in his throat died down to a scorch. When Sister Zanna curled her fingers around his wrist, Tim searched for the beat of his heart. Steady but sluggish for someone with senses at full alarm. He distanced himself from the memories that threatened to rush in, concentrated on the cool of the cloth, the soft of the bed, the brush of Sister Zanna’s hand over his hair. Despite being in enemy territory, sleep was likely the best remedy for...
A sharp scent woke him the second time. Candlelight. Breeze from an open window. A dirt feeling on his chest—no, a poultice: peppermint and lavender and paregoric. His eyes scratched and his breath wheezed and his leg sizzled with itch, but his face had settled back into itself. Tim tested the muscles, the firmness of the skin. Dared to look about the still, sombrous room.
Sister Nora knelt by his bedside, praying.
“Water,” Tim rasped.
“Oh, thank you, Mother.” Sister Nora lifted her head to the skies before summoning help in a harsh whisper.
While a Daughter he didn’t recognize helped him drink, Tim realized he probably shouldn’t consume anything from the very people who had poisoned him. Not that he could have crawled out of bed, let alone escaped their clutches, given the itchy scabs on his shins. Si
ster Zanna floated out of the shadows. Tim had never seen her smile, and she did not now. She took his pulse again, this time at his neck, and tested his brow for fever.
“Do you think you could manage some broth?” she asked. “The water is refreshing, but something hot would soothe your throat.”
Tim nodded, curiosity warring with exhaustion.
“I know the lure of sleep is strong.” Sister Zanna petted his head in a manner Tim was ashamed to admit he found comforting. The last time he’d been laid up was at Berkeley Square. He tried not to wonder if he would ever see the place again. “But you could do with some nourishment to help you heal.”
“What happened?” Tim did not expect the truth but hoped she would at least be honest about his prognosis. “Why am I here?”
Sister Zanna glanced at Sister Nora, who worried her hands in the way of the guilty since the first actor to play Lady Macbeth took the stage...
Hiero.
Where was Hiero? Why hadn’t they come for him? Were Callie and Miss Kala safe? Had they surrendered the box? Tim groaned through a wave of nausea, his stomach bilious and empty. The broth would temper his indigestion, less so his upset. He longed with irrational fervor for the brush of Hiero’s silk robes against his cheek, the caress of his magnificent hands. He knew his illness heightened his emotions, but he was too vulnerable to care. He let tears well in his eyes, his breaths quicken... and found himself anchored on both sides by firm yet giving grips.
“Steady now,” Sister Zanna commanded, as she must have done to hundreds of women in far worse straits than Tim. “Keep your breaths long and slow. There is still constriction in your lungs, and you burned your throat when you purged. Do not excite yourself. The agent that caused this reaction has worked its way through your system, but its effects will linger. Some for a few days, some perhaps for a few weeks.”
Tim took the time to let his whirlpool feelings still before asking, “Agent?”
Again a hard look Sister Nora’s way.
“If you care to receive her,” Sister Zanna explained, “Nora has been waiting for a word.”
Tim struggled to focus on the nuances playing out before him, his body heavy and his mind overtaxed. But he had been anticipating a crack in the Daughters’ wall of secrecy, and he could not help but peer through it. Even if Sister Nora’s evidence went with him to his grave, he had to hear it.
A fit of coughing startled him. Thick, suffocating barks that spun the room until they forced his jaw open to receive a rush of water. Sister Zanna held his head so he could better inhale the poultice fumes, tapping out the rhythm against his temple that his breaths should follow.
“His people must be summoned,” Sister Zanna insisted.
Sister Nora tightened her bone-breaking grip on his hand but shook her head.
“She will never agree.”
“Then we must defy her! With everything that’s happened, how can you—”
“If they come, we lose everything.” Sister Nora sniffled. “The Mother demands I make my confession, but I will not jeopardize Her coming by bringing the rule of men down upon us.”
“Do not fret,” Tim husked, fighting for calm himself. “I am listening.”
The moment upon her, Sister Nora lost her nerve. Shame sagged her sweet face; her jaw bobbed up and down as if it had forgotten how to form words. A grunt from Sister Zanna spurred her. She fixed her stare on the cross above the bed, and she relinquished his hand to twine hers as if in prayer.
“It was I who...” Her bottom lip trembled. “I only thought to make you ill. Or rather less ill than you are now. Just a bit of lords-and-ladies to make you itch. To keep you away.”
“Impossible to know it would bring on a fit,” Sister Zanna elaborated. “Normal reaction is a rash and a prickly tongue. Yours was particularly severe. A foolish act, but the intent was not to—”
“No. No!” Sister Nora fought to temper her breathing. “Ever since you came, we’ve been under constant attack! First with the discovery of that poor little boy, then your endless inquiries and insinuations, then that bedeviled priest and his charlatan wife who stole Mother Rebecca’s box...”
Tim’s train of thought hitched on that word, wife, and stowed it away for later consideration. He almost started another coughing fit out of pure astonishment at how her mind twisted the facts. He wondered how influenced by Sister Juliet’s opinions her recitation was.
“You must see, Inspector, something had to be done,” she finished.
“I imagine what DI Stoker believes should have been done was permit him to conclude his investigation in peace,” Sister Zanna remarked.
Tim nodded.
“I see that now,” Sister Nora admitted, sinking into herself. “I see... a great many things more clearly than before. Juliet has a way of making the smallest thing seem hugely important. The mere idea grows so enormous it overwhelms your thoughts, blocking out...”
“Your reason?”
“I only ever wanted to serve Her.” Sister Nora bowed her head over her clasped hands.
Tim waited. He may have been indisposed, but it would take more than poisoning to distract his instincts.
“I will suffer any consequences you see fit and will be of no further impediment to your investigation.”
“And,” Sister Zanna nudged.
“And.” Sister Nora extracted a small locked diary from the pocket of her apron. “I believe this is what you have been searching for.” She snuck the book under his pillow. “She wears the key on a chain around her neck. I cannot—”
“I forgive you.”
The relief that brightened her face alleviated some of Tim’s agony, if only for a brief moment. Then the broth arrived, and the shelter of sleep beckoned. A fog descended over his deductive mind, giving sway to practicality until his body mended.
The publican at the Wheatsheaf pub in Goldhawk Road cast a leery eye Hiero’s way when he unlocked the door to the dawn traveler. The red-rose aura of the sky, a war banner if ever there was one, reflected in his shiny bald pate as he bowed in deference to Hiero’s generous donation. He knew what he asked of this man—to rise mere hours after he lay down his head—and, worse, that it might be in service of a fool’s errand. Prepared to spend every cent in his billfold and then some to save his Kip, Hiero thanked the man in both official languages of such transactions: verbal and monetary.
Hiero strolled into the empty pub, searching for the perfect spot from which to enact his ambush. The mahogany panels and columns framing the dark-teal walls assured the atmosphere remained austere even on a sunny morning. Rows of booths flanked a tight cluster of wooden tables, leaving little space between. To assure no patron left unliquored, the edge of the bar skirted the doors, with only a slip of burgundy carpet between. Hiero selected a booth midway on the windowed side—small rectangles of stained glass that skirted the ceiling—so he wouldn’t be spotted from the outside. After ordering tea, toast, and a boiled egg, he hung Kip’s overcoat and hat on the hook at the join of two booths. Hiero checked that, when seated, his head didn’t poke over the join, then settled into the seat with his back to the door.
Patience is bitter but its fruit is sweet, he reminded himself as he counted the passing seconds. With nothing to preoccupy him but his carousel of thoughts spinning round and round on an endless loop to nowhere, he began to itch for company. He could not tempt the publican into conversation lest his visitor discover his identity and be scared off. He had forgotten his trusty pack of playing cards in his rush to depart. Not that there was anyone about to trick or tantalize or tell a fortune. For the first time since his last night at the Gaiety, Hiero was alone with himself. If there’d been a mirror, he’d have pulled a Gloucester and plucked out his eyes.
Three hours, seven cups of tea, four pieces of toast, and two eggs later, he heard the door crack open. Footsteps padded in, hesitated—scanning the pub, most like—then marched toward his booth. They paused again before a dashing figure swooped into view, only to
freeze midturn.
“Bash,” Sir Hugh hissed. “I might have known.”
“For a military man, I did expect a greater effort toward punctuality,” Hiero declared by way of introduction. Since he didn’t need one. “Three hours to corral yourself into a response to a perfectly straightforward early hours summons? What would your old captain say?”
“He’d likely demand to know how you forged DI Stoker’s handwriting.”
“Really? How pedestrian.”
He gestured to the seat opposite and snapped his fingers for a fresh pot of tea. Winterbourne stalled, shifting his weight from one foot to another as if he might bolt. Hiero, who’d been avoiding a full eye rake for fear of not measuring up, took him in. A wan complexion and a hollow stare somewhat wilted his lush Byronic beauty. Though his clothes were immaculate, his fingernails had been torn to nubs, and his slick, sculpted hair betrayed an overabundance of pomade. From under the assault of his cologne rose the fumes of indulgence. He was, quite possibly, still drunk.
This above all endeared him to Hiero. They were united in grief.
“Do sit,” Hiero said. “I went to an awful lot of bother to lure you here. The least you could do is hear me out.”
“You presume much.” He tapped his foot. “Where is DI Stoker?”
“The very matter of our conversation. If you accept to have it. Sit? I’ve sent for tea.”
“And I gave strict instructions, which appear to have been disregarded.”
“Your little codicil meant to keep the details of DI Stoker’s investigation quiet, you mean? I rather think it moot since you presented yourself at my home in full view of my staff, undisguised.”
Winterbourne huffed but sat.
“Emotion,” he growled. “If only we could cut it out like the tumor it is.”
“‘Put out the light, and then put out the light’?” Hiero queried. “Goodness. I see you’ve reached the third stage of bleak.”
“Have you ever lost a child, Mr. Bash?”
“A childhood, perhaps. Not lost so much as thieved. Which is, by sheer coincidence, adjacent to the matter we are here to discuss.”