Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder

by T. A. Willberg

  Marion nodded.

  “Anyway, only one envelope came through the receivers while she was away and it was when I was filling in the letter’s details in the register that I found something on her desk. I never intended to keep it, really. I just wanted to see what it was because it looked so odd. But I had it in my hand when she returned and it was just too awkward for me to give it back to her then so I slipped it into my bag.”

  “What was it?” Marion asked, though she was certain she knew. The parchment.

  He got his backpack from the floor and pulled out what appeared to be a plain roll of parchment. He handed it to Marion. She unfolded it, noting its frayed edges, its surface mottled and yellowed with age. She held it to the light, tilting it at various angles. Although it did indeed appear to be plain, nearly imperceptible furrows of silvery thread crisscrossed its surface. Some were thicker than others, some appeared to connect to their neighbors and others to run in circles. Depending on how the light caught them, the furrows shifted position. Some even disappeared altogether.

  She put it on her lap. Though the parchment and its silvery furrows was certainly unusual, she’d seen something similar once before. And so had Bill. So had everyone who worked at Miss Brickett’s. “Gray Ink?”

  “Invisible ink. Yes. Similar to the stuff our recruitment letters were written in.”

  Marion recalled the bizarre and seemingly plain letter Frank had presented her with the day of her recruitment. As she’d done then, she now held the parchment under the coffee table lamp, right against the bulb, until the paper was so hot it could burst into flame. But unlike with her recruitment letter, nothing happened.

  “It won’t work,” Bill said. “It’s definitely Gray Ink, just a different kind.” Again he opened his backpack, and this time he removed a rather peculiar contraption: a copper eyeglass fitted with four lenses of varying size and thickness. “This is a Gray Ink Monocle and the only way you can read that particular type of invisible ink.” He handed Marion the monocle and nodded at the parchment. “Try it.”

  Marion placed the parchment on Bill’s lap and brought the first of the four lenses to her eye. Immediately it was as if she was looking into a pool of murky water. She tried the next lens. In an instant, the parchment was transformed. Hundreds of lines of grayish-blue ink emerged from their papery graves, some long and narrow, some thick and circular, an intricate mass of contorted pathways at last illuminated.

  “My God...” She traced her finger across the center of the page, then down to the left-hand corner. It was a complete map of the agency, every passageway, every room, every slipway. Including, it seemed, the tunnels beyond the Border—all far too complex and detailed to take in at once. And then something peculiar happened. The line, or tunnel, she had been staring at—one on the bottom edge of the map, beyond Miss White’s office and the Border—disappeared. When it reappeared seconds later, it had halved in length, intersecting with another that hadn’t been there before. “They move!” she added, a little too loudly. “There, it happened again...”

  “Right. And that’s what happened to David. The walls down there...they shift, blocking off corridors, forcing you into alternative passages. I think they’re on tracks or something, but one minute you think you know where you’re going, next there’s a wall blocking you in.” He breathed deeply as if recalling the ordeal. “David and I, we were trying to find our way through a door that had just appeared in the wall in front of us. He was almost through it when it closed again. Right on his leg.”

  The air in the common room was stuffy and hot. She laid the map and monocle on the coffee table and for a while said nothing. It wasn’t that she didn’t have anything to say, quite the contrary. Her head was heavy, overfilled and swelling with questions. She just wasn’t sure which to ask first. “But I don’t understand. What were the two of you doing down there in the first place?”

  He inhaled again, as if filling himself with the courage to continue. “Ever heard of Ned Asbrey?”

  Marion frowned, recalling the rumor she’d heard countless times. “The apprentice who got lost in the tunnels eight years ago? I thought that was just a story.”

  “Well, it’s not. Ned was an apprentice with a drinking problem, just as the rumor goes, and one day he wandered into the tunnels. Thing is, Asbrey didn’t quit the agency after coming back like everyone believes, because he never made it out of the tunnels. And Asbrey is David’s stepbrother. He was quite a lot older than David, thirty-two when he disappeared. At the time, he and David lived together without any other family. When Ned was recruited, David didn’t know anything about the agency. He just thought his stepbrother worked ridiculously long hours at a bookshop somewhere in London.

  “But eight years ago, Ned didn’t come home from work for five days. So David went to the bookshop for answers. I think he encountered Nicholas there but nothing much came of it. David went back the next day and tried again. This time he threatened to get the police involved if he wasn’t provided with an explanation as to where his stepbrother had disappeared to. Problem was, Nancy couldn’t allow the police to get involved, as you know. So she decided she had to tell him something. She said Ned had stayed at the bookshop later than usual the day of his disappearance. He’d been drinking and possibly wandered into the street and that was the last anyone saw of him. But David wasn’t satisfied, or maybe he was and he just sensed an opportunity. However it played out, in the end Nancy had no choice but to pay him off.”

  “To keep quiet?”

  “That’s what he told me. And apparently it worked for seven years. The agency paid David’s rent—it wasn’t much but he got to live an easier life than he’d ever been able to before Ned’s disappearance. And that was that. For a while at least.”

  “Nancy paid him off for seven years?” Marion felt sick at the thought. Both because David had accepted the money and because Nancy had offered it.

  “After a while, though, David got greedy. I’m sure you’re not surprised by that...”

  “Not at all.” David was exactly the type she’d imagine would strive to make a living off a family member’s misfortune.

  “Right. Neither was I when he told me. Anyway, he started asking for more money, more benefits,” Bill went on, “but eventually Nancy had enough. She decided to change her approach. She probably realized she needed leverage, something that would prevent him from going to the police, which would in turn put an end to the bribes. So she offered him a job.”

  Marion nodded. Finally, the reason behind David’s recruitment made sense. Of course he hadn’t been hired because of some hidden talent only Frank and Nancy had been aware of. He’d been hired because Nancy had been backed into a corner. She had no other choice.

  Bill went on to elaborate. “Nancy probably knew she could convince him to join the agency quite easily, since the prospect was a lot more interesting than life at a metalworks factory, and he didn’t tell me this, but I’m pretty sure he was offered a much better salary and benefits than the rest of us.” He seethed as he said this. Marion felt similarly. “Anyway, once he joined, he had to sign those nondisclosure, culpability and consent documents we all had to sign upon recruitment. And then Nancy had him trapped, didn’t she? He couldn’t really go to the police after that, nor could he demand any more money. Not after he’d put his name on a piece of paper stating he knew everything he did at the agency was technically in breach of about fifty privacy laws.”

  A constricting sensation was building around Marion’s chest, a vice that tightened with every breath. She knew the documents Bill was referring to. The ones Nancy and Nicholas had made her sign upon recruitment—papers that listed her full name, her home address, stapled together with copies of her birth certificate and statements of consent and culpability. At the time, she’d been so overwhelmed with delight at being selected she’d paid little attention to the fine print. But yes, she knew that if law enfo
rcement were to discover the agency, it wouldn’t just be Nancy or the High Council who’d be held accountable for Miss Brickett’s covert operations—their illegal use of lockpicks, tracking devices, spy cameras—it would be everyone who’d signed those documents.

  Someone opened and closed a door in the corridor outside. Marion and Bill both twitched.

  “You still haven’t explained what any of this has to do with that thing—” she gestured at the map “—or what the two of you were doing across the Border.”

  Bill took a while to answer. “When David started at the agency this year, I think some part of him realized he’d been manipulated and maybe he decided he did actually want to know what happened to his stepbrother, after all. By then he must have heard the rumors, that Ned had entered the tunnels beyond the Border and disappeared. He became convinced there was more to the story. He started investigating, asking people questions—when was the last time they’d seen Ned, had he been acting oddly the day he’d disappeared. After all, it didn’t really make sense that someone would go down there for no reason. Even if they were drunk. What had he been looking for?

  “Not many people had anything to say, but those who did all seemed to agree that Ned’s disappearance probably had something to do with a strange piece of parchment that had been floating around the agency since the beginning, changing hands over the years.”

  “The map?”

  Bill nodded. “The only map of the agency that shows everything. First it was said to belong to someone on the High Council. Then it passed to Ned, and after his disappearance it was seen in Michelle White’s possession. People weren’t sure how White got the thing, but it was generally assumed that Ned had seen something on it that had prompted him to go across the Border the night he disappeared. A few days later, Ned’s backpack was discovered in the tunnels outside White’s office. White handed the backpack to Nancy and that’s how the rumor about him disappearing started.”

  “So White stole the map and monocle from Ned’s bag before she handed it over to Nancy?” Marion guessed.

  Bill shrugged. “David seems pretty certain that White would have had a rummage through Ned’s things before she handed them over, and that the map and monocle were just too interesting not to keep. Anyway, when David was asking around, no one seemed completely certain what the parchment was, but most assumed it was a classified agency document of some sort—otherwise why would everyone have been so interested in it? And so I guess David decided he had to find the thing and see for himself. Sometime in February, he attempted to break into White’s office to look for it, unsuccessfully, I’m told. White caught him hanging around her office and reported him to Nancy and Nicholas. Which is really how this whole mess started. You see, the day I took the map from White’s desk, I was working alone in Filing, but David was just next door in Intelligence. White didn’t realize the map was missing until the following morning, but as soon as she did, she confronted David.”

  Marion nodded. “Of course. Because of the incident in February. She must have known, even then, that he was looking for the map, since Ned was his stepbrother and the map’s previous owner. Which explains what Professor Bal said yesterday, about his last meeting with White. Someone was looking for it.” She repeated the phrase the professor had used. “I suppose, if she assumed David already had the map, she must have been talking about the monocle?”

  “Yes, I think so.” Bill wrung his hands together. “She knew he couldn’t really use the map without the monocle, which she always kept in a separate location, but I suppose it worried her because she suspected he’d come looking for the monocle, too. David denied everything, of course. And while White didn’t want to let him off the hook, she couldn’t really go to Nancy or Nicholas with the suspicion because then she’d have to tell them what he’d taken. Something she was never supposed to have in the first place.”

  “Does Nancy know about the map?” Marion asked.

  “I’m not sure. Seems likely, though. Nancy knows everything. Anyway, the point is that David knew if he hadn’t taken the map and it had gone missing when I was in Filing, then I was the only viable suspect. He confronted me. I should have just handed the bloody thing over right then but the truth was...the longer I had it, the more interested in it I became. I wanted to know what it was and how to read it, almost as much as David did. But then he began to threaten me. Every time we passed each other in a corridor or were stationed together for a shift, he’d say how he was going to expose me for stealing the thing from White.”

  Marion then realized that this, at last, was the answer to the question that had been on her mind for weeks—the cause of Bill and David’s ever-deepening disdain for one another. She was relieved to have an answer. Mostly, however, she was frustrated with Bill for causing so much unnecessary tension between them.

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this at the time?”

  “I considered it, really. But then I wondered if it was fair for me to involve you. Technically, I’d stolen something from a senior employee. If I told you, you’d be partially responsible for the fact yourself.” He paused to refill his water glass. “Obviously I realize now you’d rather have known,” he added when Marion shook her head. He sighed, then continued. “Things came to a head on Monday morning after Nancy announced White’s death. Somehow, David knew about it before the rest of us did and he followed me to the men’s room before the meeting in the auditorium. Somewhere along the line he stole the map from my bag, though I only realized it was missing on our way to Gadgetry.

  “I knew it was David who’d taken it. It was the only thing that made sense. But when I confronted him, he told me that he’d figured out the parchment can only be read with a Gray Ink Monocle and if White had the parchment, she must have had the monocle, too. He said that now that White was dead and her office empty, we had a proper chance to go looking for it. Of course I told him I wanted nothing to do with any of that, but—”

  “But in the end you agreed to help him?”

  “Not so much agreed as was forced. He said that if I didn’t help him get into White’s office the next day, he’d expose what I’d done. And considering I’d stolen the parchment from a woman who’d just been murdered...well, let’s just say it wouldn’t have cast me in a great light.”

  The tremor in his hand was growing more rapid now, and the frustration Marion had felt toward him earlier was swiftly transforming into compassion. She could sense his agitation as if it were her own. She felt his guilt and annoyance. David had a knack for getting his way and she doubted whether Bill, with his timid disposition, ever stood a chance against him.

  “That’s when I sent you the note,” he added. “I wanted advice. I hoped you’d have some clever idea of how I could separate myself from the mess, from David...but when you didn’t show in the common room, I had no choice.” He inhaled with difficulty. “We found the monocle easily, lying in White’s desk drawer. But when we tried to go back the way we’d come, a wall blocked our path and we were forced to cross the Border to find an alternative exit. I tried to use the map, but it was so dark down there, and since the walls move so often, it wasn’t much use, anyway...” He trailed off, casting his eyes to the floor.

  Marion was silent as she attempted to process everything Bill had told her. She glanced at the map on the coffee table.

  “I’m sorry you’re involved in all this,” Bill said. “But we need to be careful. If Nancy finds out David and I broke into White’s office or that any of us were across the Border, we’ll be fired at the very best. That’s why I told you to lie about David falling down the stairs. No one can know about the map, or what we were doing down there. No one.”

  “David knows, about the map, I mean. You think he’s just going to forget you have it?”

  “I’ll tell him I lost it in the tunnels or something. We don’t have to worry about him for a while, anyway, not until he comes back from the
hospital.”

  “Do you think he did it, though? Do you think David killed White?”

  Bill tensed. “I don’t know. He had motive, I suppose. To get White out of the way so he could find the monocle or maybe White decided to go to Nancy, after all, about him stealing the map.”

  For a long while, Marion and Bill just sat there. Neither said anything, nor even moved. Eventually Bill got to his feet and strolled closer to the fireplace. He crouched down and warmed his hands by the flames, which were beginning to die. Marion was weary, exhausted and overwhelmed. At some point she was going to have to make her way back to Willow Street and get some sleep, though the idea seemed incredibly unlikely now.

  “I suppose David still doesn’t know what his stepbrother went looking for in those tunnels?” she asked, staring again at the map. She picked it up and brought the monocle to her eye.

  Bill shrugged. “Maybe he just saw the shifting lines on the map and wanted to see what they were. Bad idea, obviously.”

  Marion didn’t say so, but that seemed highly unlikely. Everyone who’d ever owned the parchment seemed to have been obsessed with it, willing to risk life and career to hold on to it. Why? What secrets did it reveal? She inspected it once more, noting rooms and passageways she hadn’t known existed. Among the lines and passageways before her, she noticed something that chilled her blood—a line of labeled squares somewhere near the eastern edge of the agency. She removed the monocle and looked at Bill. “What are the Holding Chambers?”

  Bill said nothing. He looked at the common room door, as if waiting to ensure no one was crossing the corridor outside.

  “I’ve heard of them,” he said eventually, lowering his voice. “Just a rumor but—” He hesitated for a moment, then went on. “Have you ever wondered what the agency does with Inquirers gone rogue? Or staff members who’ve committed a crime worthy of a jail sentence?”