Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder

by T. A. Willberg

  Marion felt a twinge of warmth for the woman, imagining how it must have been to have someone like her to speak to, someone who knew the agency’s secrets and yet was unhindered by the weight of it herself. Helena would have been an outlet for the apprentices, no doubt.

  “They were all very different, that first group,” she went on. “There was young Edgar—the leader of the pack, I s’pose you could say. He was brilliant. Really, he was. But also...” She thought about it for a moment. “Superior, I think’s the right word. He thought he was smarter than everyone. Which was probably true, he just liked to make sure you knew it. Then there was Barbara Simpkins.” She smiled. “I liked her. Yeah, I liked her a lot, almost as much as she liked her wine.” She chuckled to herself. “There was also—” She seemed to check herself.

  Marion waited, but when Helena did not continue, she prompted. “Also?”

  “Well, his name was Ned Asbrey, very good friend of Edgar’s. Two of them thick as thieves. Came to a bad end, though, the poor lad.” She looked up. “You heard of him?”

  Marion’s stomach churned. “Only rumors.”

  Helena nodded but said nothing further on the matter. “And finally, there was Michelle—dull as a plank and bitter. The odd one out, you might say. She never did well on her assessment reports, maybe because no one liked her, maybe because she botched up everything. Either way, by the end of her first year, Nancy told her she was never going to make it as an Inquirer. She gave her a choice—either she had to leave, get the sack or she could stay on as night duty filing assistant. Michelle chose the latter, of course. It was that or unemployment and in those days...well, you took what work you could get. Then, couple months later, that old man Gillroth suggested another role for Michelle on top of filing assistant. I can’t remember exactly what he called it...”

  “Border Guard?” Marion provided.

  Helena raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s it. Border Guard.” She grimaced. “But even so, seeing all her friends training to be Inquirers while she filed papers ate away at her. And I think she wanted to even out the field, if you know what I mean. She made it her life’s work to get her colleagues in trouble, to point out where they’d gone wrong. No one could deny she was good at that at least. Somehow, she always managed to be in the right place at the right time. Or wrong place, wrong time, you could say. She knew the layout of the agency better than anyone. She...” Helena paused, distracted. The vein in her forehead pulsated madly. She rubbed it absently. Marion wondered if she knew about the map White had once owned.

  “Anyway, you said you wanted to know about the safe?” Helena went on, her face now relaxed a fraction. “I sold one to Edgar seven years ago, yes. But that’s all I can say. Anything more goes against the—”

  “Safe Keepers’ oath?” Marion supplied. “I know. I also know you’ve already broken that oath.” She tensed her shoulders as she waited for the reaction.

  Helena surveyed her, studied her. “Bal told you that, eh?” Her face reddened but at last she appeared to reach a decision and nodded to herself. “Clockwork safes are something only a certain type of person would buy. Spies, governments, lawyers. People with secrets they don’t trust even themselves to keep. I liked Edgar, I did. But I always knew there was something not quite right about him. There was a sickness in there.” She jabbed a knobbly, arthritic finger at the left side of her chest.

  “The day he came to me and asked for the safe, he was in a rush,” Helena recalled, “and very nervous. He wasn’t worried about the price, said his parents had died a while back and left him a bit of money. Hardly anything but enough to pay for the safe. I explained to him how it worked and that he’d have to make sure he was around to open it at the exact right time. I asked if he had a secure location for it—you can’t just leave a clockwork safe lying on your dining room table, you see. He said of course, what safer place is there than the agency lock room.” She raised an eyebrow. “I then asked him how long he wanted it set for.” She paused and turned around. Marion wondered if there was someone else in the back of the shop. The thought unsettled her.

  Helena turned back to Marion and continued, apparently satisfied they were alone. “He wanted it set for seven years. I’d set safes for longer, so it wasn’t a shock. But I did wonder, what did he have that he’d only need in seven years? I said to him again, just to make sure he understood, ‘If I set it for seven years, you can only open it in seven years or whatever’s inside will be destroyed.’ He nodded, said he knew, then he pulled it from his pocket. A little glass tube of black liquid.”

  At that moment and all at once, every single clock in the shop—one hundred at least—began to chime. The chorus reverberated through the tiny shop like an earthquake. Though Helena appeared completely unconcerned by the blaring racket, Marion scrunched up her shoulders and covered her ears. The jewel-colored windows rattled, the glass cabinet looked ready to shatter and Marion’s eardrums felt ready to burst. Eventually it came to a stop. Helena cast her eyes around the shop, as if waiting for something. And then it came. One last blast as the oldest and loudest grandfather clock joined in, a minute later than the others.

  Marion shook her head in an attempt to regain her senses. She pulled herself upright and took a breath before trying to remember where their conversation had left off.

  “Thing is,” Helena said, resuscitating the conversation, “I thought the vial was made of glass, but it wasn’t.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “When he handed it to me to put in the safe, I’d never felt nothing like it before. Soft like rubber, cold like ice. It burned my skin, nearly right off.” She took a stifled breath. “Edgar laughed, I remember that very well. He laughed at how shocked I was. Then he said not to worry, said it couldn’t do much harm yet.”

  “Yet?” Marion said, thinking out loud. “Did he explain what he meant by that?”

  “Well, no. Not exactly, but he did say something about it being a formula, something that had been attempted during the war, something Miss Brickett’s had been keeping a secret. I didn’t really know what he meant by that but the whole thing gave me the chills. Not just what he said, but the way he said it. Was almost as if he was trying to scare me.” She moved off across to the other side of the shop, opened the glass cabinet and removed one particularly decrepit-looking wristwatch. She sat down at her workbench and proceeded to mend the wristwatch as if Marion were no longer there.

  But Marion herself had slipped into a state of thoughtful absence. She had dared to assume that the awful substance she’d seen Swindlehurst remove from the safe had been the missing component of the clockwork bomb, the one piece of the puzzle she hadn’t found—the alchemic explosive. Fifteen times more powerful than dynamite, an acid that burns, singes, destroys.

  “Like I said, I don’t know what it was,” Helena said. “If that’s what you’re here for, I can’t help you.”

  “But you must have known. You sent a letter to Michelle White the night the safe was to be opened, didn’t you?”

  Helena looked up. “Who says I did?”

  “Michelle is dead. She was murdered the night you sent that letter.”

  Helena went pale. She did not, however, look surprised. “You think Edgar did it?”

  “I know he did. The stuff he locked in that safe, I think it’s part of a bomb that was designed for a covert chemical weaponry project in 1943. Do you know anything about it? Did Swindlehurst mention anything like that?”

  Helena hesitated, but only for a moment. She shook her head. “No, of course not. I didn’t know what it was. But that’s why it frightened me. I’d never seen nothing like it before, maybe that’s why I knew it was dangerous.” She sighed. “It seems obvious now, looking back, but at the time I didn’t realize.”

  Marion waited as the old woman rearranged her thoughts, her memories.

  “It was just a few weeks ago when Michelle
came to me. She said she needed some advice, that I was the only one who listened, the only one who took her seriously.” She chuckled menacingly. “I didn’t, but I s’pose it only mattered that she believed it. Anyway, she said she’d lost something. Actually, she said it had been stolen. A very special map. She said she knew who’d taken it, but she didn’t give a name.”

  Marion tensed. She tried to relax her features, to not give anything away.

  Helena continued without encouragement. “Michelle said she was concerned because if this person—the one who’d taken the map—found the monocle needed to read it, which she kept hidden in her office, then they’d be able to find it, was how she put it. She didn’t tell me exactly what she was afraid this person would find, just said it was dangerous. An agency secret she was supposed to protect. But the more I thought about it, the more sure I became that I already knew what it was. I’d seen it myself, seven years ago—”

  “The stuff in Swindlehurst’s vial?” So the secret Michelle White had been tasked with protecting had already been discovered seven years earlier. Marion wondered, of course, why Swindlehurst had gone to all the trouble of finding the laboratory and reproducing the alchemic explosive, just to hide a sample of it in the agency for seven years.

  Marion refocused when Helena spoke again. “Anyway, as soon as Michelle left I put two and two together and realized what I had to do. I had to tell her about Edgar and the clockwork safe. I made a note in my diary and decided I’d send her a letter explaining everything right before the safe was to be opened.” She drew a small hammer from her tool kit and began to tap some tiny metal part with just the corner of it. “’Course, when the day came, I had second thoughts. I knew what I was about to do might cause trouble at the agency.” She slammed the hammer onto the table and slouched back in her chair.

  “But I made up my mind at last,” she went on. “I wrote a letter addressed to Michelle. It was short but I knew it would get my point across. I said Edgar was going to open a clockwork safe that night in the lock room at exactly midnight. I said I didn’t know what was inside, but said I suspected it might have to do with that secret she told me about, the one she was supposed to protect. I then asked that the letter be destroyed as soon as she’d read it. I didn’t want no one coming around asking questions after the fact.” She glowered at Marion. “Didn’t work, obviously. I knew Michelle worked night duties in the Filing Department and that she’d get the letter. It seemed like a good plan, at the time.” Her hand began to tremble. She slipped them into her apron pocket and looked up. “I thought there was a chance it would put her in danger, but...I...didn’t know what else to do.”

  There was a short and sharp silence. Interrupted only by the ticking of unsynchronized clocks.

  “Edgar has taken the vial and disappeared,” Marion went on. “We really need to find him. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

  Helena picked up the hammer once more. It almost seemed as if she were doing so in defense. An anxious look came over her. It was as if she’d just realized she’d said too much. “I don’t know nothing about that.”

  The lights in the shop appeared to have darkened, the air cooled. It had become claustrophobic. Marion heard something outside in the street, like footsteps. Suddenly she wished she hadn’t come to the shop alone, or at least she wished she’d told someone where she was going. She looked up at one of the clocks on the wall. It was already seven-thirty. “Please, Helena. I need your help.”

  Helena moved over to the shop door and slid three large bolts into place. “It’s no good being afraid now,” she said, “it’s too late.” She turned her back to the shop door. There was a single knock.

  Marion jumped about a foot in the air. But Helena did not move an inch. The person outside the door then moved off and, across the window, their figure formed a silhouette behind the jeweled glass. Helena turned off the shop light. “There’s a way out the back,” she said. “Come on.”

  Marion could only just make out the movement of Helena’s plump figure through the darkness. “What did you mean?” she asked anxiously as she followed the shadow toward the back of the shop. “Too late for what?”

  They reached a second door, made of steel and secured with five large padlocks. Helena produced a flashlight from her apron pocket and then a ring of keys. Desperately slowly, she began to unlock each padlock in turn. “You shouldn’t have got involved, you shouldn’t have come here.” The third lock clicked open, the fourth, then the fifth. Helena turned the handle and pushed the door open into the street that ran behind the shop. She all but kicked Marion outside. “Do not come back here. Not ever.”

  “Wait, p-please—” Marion stammered, but was cut short as Helena slammed the door shut in her face.

  The small alleyway behind the shop was littered with rubbish bins and smelled of urine. The night had brought with it an icy breeze that did not quite suit the time of year. She turned to where the alleyway wound around the left wall of the shop. She was certain someone was standing on the verge, just beyond the light of the nearest streetlamp. There was a crunch of gravel, the swoosh of a coat and then...

  “Lane!” Kenny said, stepping quickly into the light of the streetlamp. “Thank the blazes it’s you.”

  “For goodness’ sake. Why were you creeping around like that?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he said, looking left and right over his shoulders.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Kenny shoved his hand inside his coat pocket and removed a small brass compass. He flipped it open.

  In the darkness of the quiet street, the compass’s green light glowed more brightly than ever.

  “He’s here,” Kenny whispered.

  21

  HOUSE OF HORROR

  Agleam in the starless night, the compass light burned with certainty—Swindlehurst was close.

  When aligned, the needle pointed northeast: back up the street from where Kenny had come.

  “He must be right around the corner,” Kenny breathed.

  Marion turned to the lamp that stood on the street corner. It was useless and dim, spilling a pool of faint yellow light that extended less than a yard from its base. Even though the street was quiet and few cars or pedestrians traversed it, the low drum of city noise was everywhere.

  Marion and Kenny edged forward.

  “Have anything on you to restrain him?” she asked urgently as they approached the lamp.

  “Didn’t have time to fetch anything. I was in the bookshop when the indicator switched and didn’t want to risk going down to Gadgetry, in case he stepped out of range again.”

  They’d arrived at the lamp. Marion peered around the corner and into the street that ran past the front of Helena’s shop. All was still beyond the glistening jewel windows. She considered whether Swindlehurst was under the disguise of the strange mist, or if instead he’d make do with the cover of night.

  A cool breeze touched her skin. She felt herself becoming lethargic, unbalanced, unfocused. Or was it just her imagination?

  “Shit,” Kenny said, showing Marion the compass. She blinked, drawing her attention to the device. The green light flickered, then dimmed, and just a few yards from where they were standing a faint shadow drifted down the street, sometimes obviously a human being, sometimes more like a cloud of smog. Swindlehurst was under the disguise of the Gray Eagle. And he was moving.

  They followed him nearly three miles across town, finally coming to a stop in Turnchapel Mews, Clapham. Along the way, Marion tried to explain what Helena had told her. Kenny’s reaction was one of growing unease, fueled by the realization that what had started out as a murder investigation was now so much more.

  “I think he’s going to sell it,” she said, airing a theory she’d recently formulated.

  “The stuff in the vial?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was sharp
and heavy.

  Kenny appeared lost in thought for a time. “I bet it’s the Russians. I’d damn well put money on it.”

  “It doesn’t really matter, though, does it?” she said, breathing hard, her lungs feeling heavy. “The fact that it exists, that he’s managed to produce it, is bad enough.” She stopped as a rush of terror, not just for Frank and his future but for something deeper, evil, malignant, swelled inside her. “Swindlehurst produced the explosive and reconstructed the bomb right under the agency’s watch.” She was thinking out loud, saying the words as they were formulating in her mind. And she did not attempt to soften any of it.

  Kenny’s breathing ceased for just a moment. His eyes focused on her. He understood, too. This was no longer just about clearing Frank’s name, or bringing Michelle White’s murderer to justice. The weapon had been produced within the walls of Miss Brickett’s. Everyone who worked at the agency would be partially responsible—morally, if not legally—for whatever awful plan Swindlehurst was about to implement.

  “We have to apprehend him. Either he’s about to skip the country or hand the vial over to someone,” Marion said in conclusion as they arrived outside an old two-story manor house. Swindlehurst’s disguise had long since worn off—they’d been able to watch him closely as he disappeared through the front door of the fourth house on Turnchapel Mews. He, they hoped, had not seen them.

  The house in question was older than any of its neighbors with a dilapidated roof and crumbling walls. It was now well into the evening and perfectly dark as the three-quarter moon crept behind a thick blanket of clouds. The air was cold, and through the manor’s many windows, a single lamp blazed.

  Kenny removed a drawstring bag from under his coat. He untied it and peered inside. “This is all I have, besides the compass.” He pulled out a Skeleton Key and handed it to Marion. She slipped it into her coat pocket. “As I said, I didn’t get a chance to grab much. We should go back to the agency and get some—”