“Well, Bal’s not here, is he? He left last night for Edinburgh to visit his family. Coming back tomorrow.”
“You’re sure?”
“Definitely,” Jessica said.
The knot in Marion’s stomach tightened.
Maud, who had been observing the disjointed conversation with a look of mild interest, spoke. “I feel like I’m missing something here?”
Marion picked up her handbag and slung it over her shoulder.
“Where are you going?” Maud asked.
“I need to find them.”
“Who?”
“Bill and David!”
“Right...” Maud said. “And why’s that?”
She hesitated. Maud, Preston and Jessica were looking at her—Jessica anxiously, Maud curiously, Preston casually. Amanda, however, avoided her eye. “It’s a long story,” she said quickly, leaving the bar without elaborating.
8
SPY IN THE CORRIDOR
There were several things Marion now understood.
David had been called into Nicholas’s office that Friday afternoon in February for something he’d been attempting to steal—the same thing Bill had lost yesterday morning on his way to the Gadgetry Department, a roll of parchment tied with a purple ribbon. And now David and Bill had inexplicably disappeared, one in possession of the parchment in question, the other perhaps hoping to get it back.
But more disturbingly, Marion feared the parchment was also linked to Michelle White, and to her murder.
She came to a halt at the top of the stone staircase. In the dim flicker of the tunnel lights and in the cool, thin air, Marion could hardly breathe. She ran her fingers through her sweat-damp hair, trying to decide whether to trust her assumptions. She’d already searched the common room, although she’d been sure Bill wouldn’t still be there. He was surely with David now, but if David’s Workshop meeting with Bal had been a ruse, where had they gone?
“You’re right to be worried,” said a voice from behind her, as if in reply. Amanda was standing in the corridor, a thick scarf around her neck. “About Bill, I mean. He looked pale when he ran off, afraid. David was hovering around, too.” She came farther into the light.
Marion’s heart rapped against her chest, but Amanda seemed in no rush to elaborate. “Do you know where they are?”
Amanda took a step closer. It was only then that Marion noticed how tense and weary she looked. Her face was stiff and cold at the best of times—her pale eyes piercing, her thin lips tight and emotionless. Today she looked more distant and removed than ever. “They were staring at this blank piece of parchment,” she said, not answering the question Marion had asked. “Looked very old, strange. When they saw me coming, David shoved it into his pocket.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“Of course not.” Amanda put her hands in her pockets. “Funny Bill hadn’t told you already. I thought you two were friends.”
Marion took a breath, in place of saying something she might regret. She turned to the staircase to think.
Amanda watched her as an entomologist might observe an interesting new species of insect. “I think they’ve gone down there.” She pointed to the foot of the staircase.
“The Workshop?”
“No,” Amanda hesitated. “White’s office.”
Marion’s breath quickened. “What?”
“I told you. I saw them together after Bill handed Jessica the note. I tried to ask David where they were going because I was so fed up with Bill’s excuse for leaving. I followed them for a bit, but only heard them say something about White having one...” She paused, then: “I don’t know what they meant by that.”
Marion looked again to the foot of the staircase and the narrow path that threaded off into the grayness, beyond the Gadgetry Department, beyond the fringe of the agency, over the Border and into the unknown. If she traveled that way looking for Bill, she might get lost and never return. And if she did return, she might wish she hadn’t—being fired from the agency was a fate as awful as nearly any she could imagine. But if Bill truly was in danger, then could she forgive herself for doing nothing?
She turned back to Amanda with the vague hope that maybe she’d know what to do. She’d always seemed so sure of herself, so frustratingly knowledgeable. But Amanda had already disappeared. Marion checked her watch—1:15—then pulled her coat tighter about her shoulders and made her way down the staircase.
* * *
At first the path toward Michelle White’s office seemed brighter and wider than it’d looked from the staircase, lit by a number of softly glowing lamps. But the farther on she traveled, the darker, danker and narrower it became. She trod carefully and noiselessly, fearful of whom she might bump into along the way. With every step toward the Border she questioned herself. Would Bill and David really have come down here? Had Amanda been lying? Was she about to be apprehended by Nicholas? Nancy? Michelle White’s killer?
A few yards farther on, she rounded a gentle bend and allowed herself a moment of relief as what must have been White’s office came into view. A sign hung over the door, which stood ajar. Miss M. White, Border Guard.
She hesitated as she reread the sign—Border Guard—and regarded the dark tunnel that wound past White’s office. It sent a chill down her spine as she was reminded of the old rumors, of what Miss Brickett’s had been before—air raid bunker, command center, a refuge for defamed alchemists. Was any of it true?
“Hello?” she called, placing her hand on the doorknob. “Bill? David?”
No one answered.
The office was bare, cleaned out, packed away. It smelled of must, the air tasted like chalk. What Bill and David had come here for, she couldn’t understand.
She stepped back into the corridor and glanced to the right. The corridor beyond was completely black, no lamps, no light—the path that led over the Border. No part of her wanted to carry on that way. She was already far too deep below the streets and sunshine than any human should be.
A voice. A groan, echoing off the walls, impossible to pinpoint.
“Bill?” Her voice was high and strained. Panic rose inside her, slow at first but gaining ground until every breath was weak and shallow.
Another groan, more urgent this time.
She followed it into the blackness, over the Border. Onward she went, following the groans and the sound of an underground stream that was probably a minor tributary of the Thames as it flowed through the tunnel gutter, deeper and farther into the earth. She had no idea where she was going, or even if the tunnel would lead her toward Bill or something else.
She took her time and counted her turns, pausing after each to listen for signs of movement, of life. But the silence was disturbed only by a low babble of water and the odd scuttle of tiny legs—cockroaches, rats or some other creature of the dark and cold.
She must have traveled less than half a mile (though it felt like more) by the time she came to the tunnel’s first fork. The stream, now three times as wide and overflowing its gutter with murky, foul water, curved to the left. To the right was a dry but narrower tunnel.
“Bill? Where are you? Please answer me.” She hesitated. The babble of the stream almost deafening now in the relative silence of the labyrinth.
Something moved behind her.
She turned, catching sight of a low shadow that darted across the tunnel floor. She took a shallow breath, shoved her hands farther into her coat pockets and took another a step forward.
Then it came.
Muffled, breathless voices drifted up from the dark to her right. Or had she imagined them? The walls here appeared to be of a different kind of stone, ancient and brittle limestone, so porous that even her footsteps might be heard for miles.
She waited. Nothing.
Footsteps. Coming from the corridor before her; in fact, they soun
ded almost as if they were coming from inside the limestone wall. She unclipped a small latch on the side of her light orb, then pulled out the long cord attached. With the entirety of the cord slung over her forearm and the end wound tightly through her fingers, she tossed the orb a good distance down the tunnel.
Whatever she’d expected to see as the burning orb bumped its way along the uneven stone floor, it was not what she found herself looking at: two bright orange eyes attached to a long, thick and scaled metal creature.
Her body was dancing with adrenaline as the eyes grew brighter, bigger. She attempted to reel in the orb, but the cord slipped through her sweaty fingers and fell to the floor.
A bizarre sound threaded through the silence. It was coming from the floor, from the thing with the orange eyes.
Clink—schlik, schlik—clink—schlik, schlik.
Long and thin, hardly visible save the glint from its metal scales—a six-foot-long metal snake slithered toward her. Of all the brilliant and bizarre gadgets she’d seen in the Workshop, never had she come across something so real. Its movement was frictionless, effortless, as if each scale was a slip of perfectly polished steel, oiled twice over. More flesh and bone than metal and screws, it seemed to have a will of its own.
It slithered closer.
Though every part of her was twitching to move, Marion found herself unable to do anything but stare. The snake slithered over her feet. Even through the leather of her boots she felt the chill of frictionless steel, the pull and twist of its clockwork muscle. Blood drained from her head; the ground began to sway. The last inch of tapered tail finally slipped over her. The tension in her limbs receded, the hot breath in her lungs released.
Clink—schlik, schlik—clink.
The creature slid into the darkness and was gone.
She bent over her knees and caught her breath. She heard the snake stop up ahead. The faded yellow light of a faraway tunnel lamp caught the edge of the snake’s head. It had turned around. She lifted herself upright, which seemed to excite the dreadful creature. Much faster than it had moved before, it raced toward her. Its arrow-shaped head turned to face her. The creature reared into the air so that the top half of its shiny body was now just inches from her face.
Marion wished to close her eyes, but dared not risk it. The creature opened its mouth; a dark gray metal tongue tasted the air, rotating left and right, up and down. It hissed. For a moment that felt like a decade, the serpent hovered in front of Marion’s face. Its long tongue slid in and out of its mouth as if trying to detect a flicker of movement, a wisp of air. But Marion held utterly still. Then, just as the snake’s split tongue looked as if it might actually touch Marion’s cheek, she heard the sound of someone running down the corridor. The snake immediately lowered its head to the ground and shot off after the noise like some bloodthirsty beast.
It was at that moment that Marion realized the end of the orb light’s cord was moving away from her. Someone was pulling it forward, but because the orb itself now lay around a bend and out of sight, she could not see by whom. Or what.
Against all her better judgment, she followed the cord as it slid erratically, slowly, away from her. It was only once she’d rounded the bend and was again cast into the orb’s brilliant white illumination that she was able to see the body splayed out in the center of the tunnel, one hand gripping the orb, the other looking mangled and unnaturally thin.
Her heart thumped uncontrollably. She strained her eyes, pausing for just a moment, fear and cowardice threatening to take over.
“David?” She held the orb light over his body. Her stomach turned. His left leg was so blood-soaked and mangled it was hard to make out in what direction it lay. His knee seemed to be turned nearly ninety degrees and his ankle was turned the other way.
“Oh God! What happened?”
Her hands came to somewhere near the top of one of his legs. The skin was wet and sticky, just warm enough to be blood.
He pointed behind him. She turned the orb light to the wall.
In all the confusion and fear, Marion hadn’t even noticed the gaping round hole in the limestone. It was like some odd door and appeared to lead into a tunnel so narrow it would’ve had to be entered on all fours. Marion crawled over and stuck her head into the hole.
David pulled her back. “No, don’t. It closes...whenever it likes.” He pointed at his leg and then she knew. “Please, just get me out of here.”
Footsteps again. This time coming straight down the center of the tunnel, and at a run.
A flashlight was switched on and its beam blazed in her eyes. The carrier galloped toward her.
“Marion. Jesus!” Bill lowered his flashlight and crouched down beside her. He then directed the beam at David. “Did you see the snake?”
David groaned and tried to move.
“David!” Bill repeated more viciously. “Did the snake come past here? Did you see it?”
“No...” David eventually moaned.
“You saw it, too?” Marion asked Bill.
He nodded. “It belongs to Nicholas, I think. It’s a spy, patrolling the tunnels.”
“What?” Marion said stupidly, her mouth so arid it came out as just a croak.
“Its eyes are motion-detecting cameras. They switch on only when they detect movement.”
Marion had a million questions—Where did the tunnel in the wall lead to, why was David crawling around inside it, where had Bill come from, where had the snake come from and why did Bill care whether David had seen it?—but instead she looked down at David, his chest now barely rising. They had a more pressing problem.
She and Bill lifted David to his feet, a monumental effort with the bulky dead weight of his large frame. They carried him along the corridor, past White’s office and onward for what felt like miles until they reached the bottom of the long stone staircase.
“There’s no way we’ll get him to the top without doing more damage to that leg,” Bill panted. “Wait here with him. I’ll go find us some help.”
Marion’s nerves felt as if they were on fire. She opened her mouth, yet nothing came out.
Bill gazed at her, his eyes were wide and terror-filled, his cheeks bruised, his bottom lip sliced open. “He fell down the stairs.”
“Excuse me?”
“We have to tell everyone that David fell down the stairs. No mention that we were across the Border. No mention of the snake.”
“Bill...”
“I’ll explain everything later. Just trust me, Marion. Please.”
9
BILL’S SECRET
It was five minutes to ten, Tuesday night. Marion stood inside the common room by the fire waiting for Bill, her legs a little weaker than they’d been all day, which was surprising in itself.
Several hours earlier, Bill had returned to the bottom of the stone staircase with Nancy and Professor Gillroth—the agency’s oldest employee, head of Human Resources and High Council member. Marion flinched at Gillroth’s arrival, simply because she knew his presence at the scene meant that Nancy suspected the accident required investigation. It was fortuitous, then, that by the time Nancy and Gillroth arrived, David had slipped into shock and had to be rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. There was no time for a thorough inquisition. And as planned, Bill told Nancy and Gillroth the bare minimum—David had slipped down the stairs and broken his leg. Admittedly, this was quite believable—the staircase and its forty-four smooth stone steps was just about as treacherous as anything else in the agency. Just about.
Marion was far too anxious to notice whether Nancy believed the lie, or to think about whether the snake, the spy, had recorded their presence in the tunnels. But Bill shot her a few meaningful glances, blatant warnings to keep her mouth shut. He promised he’d explain everything to her later that evening when they planned to meet in the common room, late enough to ensure
they’d be alone.
The door edged open. Bill stepped inside and joined her on the couch by the fireplace.
The apprentices’ common room, located in the southwest wing of the agency, was a circular space fitted with mismatched chairs and couches, two fireplaces and a central oak table. Occasionally an overworked or intoxicated apprentice would spend the night curled up on one of the couches, though this seemed less desirous of late, considering a murderer was on the loose.
Bill poured them each a glass of water and lit himself a cigarette. It was only the second time Marion had seen him smoke. “David’s going to be fine. He did break his leg but it looked worse than it was. He’ll stay in the hospital for about a week, then spend the rest of his recovery here in the infirmary.” A trail of smoke wafted up to the ceiling and disappeared.
“And what about that snake? Did it see us?”
Bill looked uncertain. “I think if it did, Nancy or Nicholas would have fired us by now.”
A suffocating tension filled the room. Marion was on edge, her nerves jittery. The four months she and Bill had been friends felt like a lifetime before the start of the week. But now it seemed like an impossibly short fraction in time. She trusted him, though probably more than she should. She hoped whatever he’d been doing in the tunnels beyond the Border was innocent and dismissible. More than anything, she hoped her trust in him hadn’t been misplaced.
She picked her nails under the cover of her coat pocket and waited.
Bill put out his cigarette and finished his water. “I take it you didn’t get my letter, then?”
“I did. Two hours late. If I hadn’t, I would never have found you.”
Bill nodded. He looked off into the distance. Marion didn’t rush him. She looked at his hand; the subtle tremor was back and now accompanied by a new tic, one she’d never seen before. “A few weeks ago, I stole something,” he began, tapping his thumb against his middle finger. “I’d been on duty in Filing for nearly five hours. Perry was away and White had been asked to fill in for him. She was in a horrible mood, I suppose because she’d been on duty the whole of the previous night, as well. Anyway, there wasn’t much to do, so White asked if I’d mind watching the receivers while she went up to the library bar for a drink. I agreed, not that I had a choice. You remember how she was?”
Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder Page 9