Her face went still, her expression deadly. “That’s not something I sell.”
“I’m quite aware. It’s part of your reputation, after all. You are untraceable, unrecognizable, and you never betray your paymasters. The Secret Gardener, they call you. Morbid, but poetic.”
Claribelle Houndston sighed. “If you know all that, then why are you bothering to ask me?”
“Because I hope I can persuade you otherwise. And you are leaving town, after all. Our conversation will remain strictly confidential, with neither the police nor criminals knowing about it. I’m not asking you to provide evidence, madam—merely data for my own use.”
“I might be able to work with that,” she mused. “But what sort of payment are we discussing here?”
“Come now,” Vale chided her, pausing a safe distance away from any unexpected knife thrust. “I’ve made you aware that I and my sister know where to find you. Surely that’s payment enough?”
She looked unconvinced but didn’t argue the point—probably already planning her departure. Somewhere where he and his sister wouldn’t be able to find her. “You’re not making any new friends tonight, Mr. Vale.”
“A fact of little or no significance to me,” Vale informed her. “Let us be brief. My information suggests that you may have been hired for a contract on myself, and certain of my friends, rather than simply cultivating your garden.” He glanced across the range of flowers and herbs, identifying half a dozen as lethal and most of the rest as extremely dangerous. He spotted datura with its pale trumpet-flowers, black lotus in the tiny artificial pond, aconites and foxgloves along its banks, and nightshade twining with the wisteria in an elegant purple backdrop. “Is that correct?”
After a moment’s consideration, she reluctantly nodded. “I’ll admit that a contract along those lines is currently under discussion. Not actually signed yet, though, so you needn’t threaten to trample my flowers.”
“Thank you for confirming my suspicions. As it’s not signed—yet—can you give me the details?”
She blinked. “You’re really taking this rather well. Are you sure you haven’t been sampling my garden already?”
“Madam,” Vale said, “I have grown used to attempts to murder me. I no longer view them with the concern that I once did. In some respects, I consider them a badge of honour—especially when undertaken by people such as yourself, or commissioned by the person I believe is behind this.”
“And who do you think that is?” she asked. She’d relaxed and now employed the playful tone of someone trying to coax an indiscretion out of an indulgent uncle.
“Are you acquainted with the Professor?”
The winsomeness faded like a passing summer’s day, and her mouth snapped shut. This time, she made no attempt to disguise her reaction. “Right,” she said. “Out. Now.”
“Thank you for confirming my hypothesis,” Vale needled her.
She glared at him as though he were an unexploded bomb just discovered on her premises. “Why did you bother coming and asking me, if you already knew my employer?”
“Suspicion is one thing; confirmation is quite another. Such a beautiful specimen of oleander.” Vale put out a hand as if to touch it, before having second thoughts. “I haven’t seen that shade of crimson before. I don’t suppose you would consider selling cuttings? No, perhaps not. Now, why are you so averse to the Professor?”
She folded her arms and appeared to be counting silently to ten, or praying for patience. He often inspired this reaction in women—Vale had even seen it in Winters once or twice, however much she denied it. “Having a criminal mastermind taking over the local underworld is bad news for independent specialists,” she said. “Sooner or later one is faced with a choice between permanent employment or permanent relocation—either out of the country or into a grave. I was prepared to consider taking a contract or two before leaving, so as not to end things on bad terms with the Professor. But I’m not in the habit of wasting my breath—and you seem to know all about these developments already.”
“The flattery is appreciated but unnecessary.” Vale stepped closer. “What else do you know about him?”
She rolled her eyes. “I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, I suppose . . . He’s new to London, and he’s very secretive. He’s been taking over other organisations from the top down and keeping his own name out of it. Not that I know what his real name is, anyhow. Why bother with a name when you have an alias as good as the Professor?” She shrugged. “And from what I’ve heard, he’s Fae. I’m not interested in working for someone who thinks I should be able to achieve the impossible because it makes for a better story. Sometimes summer plants aren’t supposed to flower in winter.”
Vale gestured to the many out-of-season flowers that crowded her attic greenhouse. “But you do make summer flowers grow in winter.”
“That’s down to good gardening,” Claribelle Houndston said firmly. “Not supernatural powers.”
“Have you met him in person?”
She shook her head. “All our communication’s been through the post. And I burned the letters after reading.”
Vale would expect no less from someone with her reputation. “The details of the contract, please.”
She pursed her lips, and he could tell she was rethinking her decision to cooperate. “Miss Houndston, bear in mind you are already heavily compromised. If the Professor finds out that I was here . . .”
“I could present him with your corpse,” she said speculatively. “That might go a long way towards convincing him of my good faith.”
“You could certainly try,” Vale said.
For a moment she weighed up her options, and then accepted defeat. “Very well. I was given two targets—you and a man named Kai Strongrock, a frequent visitor to your lodgings. That’s all.”
Vale frowned. “Nobody else?”
“No, just the two of you. In fact, there was a clause in the contract that nobody else in your vicinity—or amongst either of your friends—was to be injured or damaged in any way.”
“Is that sort of clause unusual?”
“Not really—it can be relevant when an inheritance is at stake, for instance, and a precise order of deaths is necessary. But I admit I couldn’t see the point of it in this case. The Professor doesn’t have a reputation for sparing the innocent.”
“Indeed.” Vale kept his guard up, but inwardly he found himself confused. This made little sense. Why hadn’t this woman been ordered to murder Winters as well? More precisely, why were her orders almost specifically designed to ensure Winters remained safe and unharmed? “You will be abandoning the contract, I trust?”
“Yes. It seems rather pointless, now I’ve alerted the primary target. And I wasn’t seriously planning to go up against you in any case. I’m abandoning the contract and London for the foreseeable future. And to be frank, you and the Professor are welcome to kill one another.” She glided past him, indicating the open window, steps confident as she wove between the rows of deadly flowers. “Now, get out of here, before you end up dying in my attic and I turn you into compost.”
“No doubt I’ll see you again at some point,” he said affably.
For a moment, her expression was as lethal as her favourite poisons.
* * *
* * *
A couple of hours later—following two changes of clothing, an attempted mugging, and some inconveniently persistent followers—Vale was sitting in a corner booth of a pub near the docks, nursing a pint of dubious beer. The fog outside lapped against the windows in a dank grey mass, as though the taproom had sunk beneath the Thames. Its ominous presence seemed to quiet conversation. So although the pub was busy, no one laughed, shouted, or argued, and the customers hunched over their drinks, their voices muted to a background murmur.
The door creaked open and a man in battered sailor’s gear
shouldered in, his dark hair and beard glistening with raindrops. Singh’s disguise wasn’t on Vale’s level, of course, but it was adequate—no one would recognize the Scotland Yard inspector. He glanced across the room, and Vale raised his tankard as a signal. Singh collected a beer of his own and joined him. As a practicing Sikh he wouldn’t actually drink the stuff. But a man ordering a non-alcoholic beverage here would’ve been more noticeable than a policeman in full uniform.
Singh and Vale sipped their drinks—or feigned to—until any casual interest had died away. Then Vale opened a cheap newspaper to the racing pages, and the two men bent their heads over it.
“Bad news, I’m afraid,” Singh said quietly. “We’re being pressured to find the culprit behind the arson attack as fast as possible. Madame Sterrington’s being put forward as one of the possible suspects. Not the only one, of course—my superiors aren’t that obvious—but her name’s on the list.”
“Inconvenient, though also informative. I learn as much from what you’re ordered to hush up as I do from what you’re allowed to pass on to me.”
“And as long as they believe I am hushing it up, it keeps them trusting me,” Singh agreed. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have been given a sniff at the records you wanted today.”
Vale nodded. He understood that the police force, like any large institution, had ways of ensuring that certain information was kept secret. Sometimes word came down that a matter had to be “solved”—by whatever means necessary—to keep it out of the papers. That was when the powers that be found people like him useful.
Of course, word didn’t always come down from above. Sometimes it came from a distinctly lateral route. If he’d had more leisure, he would have investigated how pressure was being applied to Singh’s superiors. But time was of the essence here. “And did you get to see those records?” he asked.
“I had one of my runners pull them—together with a set of others to confuse the issue.” Singh feigned a swallow of beer. “You were right that all the crimes in question show signs of a protection racket in operation, or blackmail. And all these cases were reported by concerned family members. The actual victims denied that any crime had occurred at all when the police came round to enquire. Denied it very vehemently, in some cases.”
Vale nodded. He would expect the Professor to be thorough when it came to controlling rumours of his activities. “Was there any police follow-up?”
“Only in one case, and that only because the fellow committed suicide. Belson, the painter—the one who was implicated in the Flemish Primitives forgeries case, remember?” Singh waited for Vale’s nod. “He’d already lost all his money and a fair amount more at cards, so when he blew his brains out, nobody was surprised. But his lady friend had gone to the police earlier, claiming that he was being blackmailed. It made his death look suspicious. But she apparently left town the day after.”
“And I suspect that—conveniently—she hasn’t been heard from since.”
“Not a word. So what do you have in mind?”
“I’ve told you I believe a new spider has entered London’s web,” Vale said, allowing himself just a touch of metaphor. “Previously, he’s been acting through agents and cat’s-paws. But his empire has now extended far enough that even the police begin to perceive it.”
“Miss Winters would tell you that such a spider can be female just as well as male,” Singh noted, tankard raised to conceal a smile.
Vale snorted. “Very well. I concede the gender is unconfirmed until we have further information. But I am certain of this mastermind’s presence—and I’m now sure that they’re linked to the recent assassination attempts.”
Singh turned his tankard in his hand, watching the sway of liquid rather than meeting Vale’s eyes. “We’ve known each other for a while now. May I speak without prejudice?”
“Always,” Vale answered. He was not the sort of man to talk of “friends,” but he had known Singh for years—nearly a decade, all in all—and he trusted the man absolutely.
“I’m playing devil’s advocate here,” Singh started cautiously. As ever, he was being tactful rather than refuting Vale’s theory outright. “But I ask you, what are the odds of someone taking control of London’s underworld without the police hearing a single rumour of the fact? A smaller city, perhaps—but London?”
“I don’t think this person controls all of London yet,” Vale replied. “All the more reason for us to stop them before they take it entirely. And the police may not have heard these rumours, but the criminal underworld certainly has. Earlier this afternoon I spoke with Claribelle Houndston. She confirmed that ‘the Professor’ was negotiating a contract with her—to assassinate myself and Strongrock. Before that I was visiting ‘friends’ in the London Underground, and I found letters signed by the Professor in Mr. Dawkins’s own private desk.”
Singh pursed his lips in a whistle. “If he’s got Dawkins in his pocket, then he has the rest of the werewolves too. They follow orders down there, or they get their throats ripped out.”
“Quite. As for the high-finance sector, Wilkinson the banker—who’s behind half the touts in Surrey—has been emptying his own bank accounts for two weeks now. He’s been paying out to an unknown creditor, and he’s not the only one. The Stepney counterfeiting ring, led by the Parr sisters, has recently doubled its output. Need I go on? Must I draw a diagram of all the threads which lead to this central antagonist?” The very thought invigorated him. A challenge at this level, a mind of his own quality to duel against, an enemy worthy of his steel . . .
“And you kept all these theories a secret until yesterday,” Singh said flatly.
“I wasn’t certain,” Vale excused himself. “The separate pieces were in my hands, but I lacked definite connections and proof. These last few weeks I have been gathering the strands of a veritable cobweb, and they have either broken under my fingers or melted into the morning dew. I prefer to spin my web and then let you take all the flies at once, if you’ll excuse the metaphor. Besides, once we begin to move against our adversary, he or she will respond. For the moment our enemy thinks you are ignorant—and so you remain relatively safe.” Singh hadn’t been included in Claribelle Houndston’s contract. Yet if their foe realized how useful Singh was to Vale, or even that he was Vale’s friend, then his life would be at risk.
Singh made a noise indicating his understanding, but also frustration. “By not telling me or anyone else, you’ve put us all at risk. And we still know nothing about this Professor—this person’s identity, hiding places, strengths and weaknesses . . .”
“Or there could be yet another person behind them,” Vale said softly. He recalled what Winters had said about her meeting with Lord Guantes. He’d mentioned “the man behind the Professor . . .”
“One criminal mastermind at a time would be quite enough for me, thank you,” Singh said. “Any thoughts about how we should take this forward?”
“From my investigations among the werewolves, I found a total lack of personal communication with the Professor. All orders came through the post, or via newspaper agony columns.”
Singh understood. “Yes . . . any criminal might hide their identity in this way. But it could also mean he’s someone they already know, whom they could identify in person.” Lord Guantes and his wife had been involved with London’s werewolves before, using them as minions.
Maintaining their cover, Vale plucked out a coin and slid it across the table to Singh—as if he were settling a bet on the horses. “Winters has gone to ground, together with her apprentice. Strongrock is absent. I intend to spend the rest of the night pursuing my investigations. I hope to have more information for you tomorrow. The more this Professor attempts to mobilize London against us, the more likely it is that a minion will become careless and can be arrested—and used against our antagonist.”
“You’ve yet to explain why the Professor wants you and Strongrock
dead,” Singh said. “If you alone were a target, then I’d understand it as part of controlling London. If Strongrock alone were the target, it could be down to some private dispute between Fae and dragons. Or perhaps connected to this treaty of theirs. And if you, Strongrock, and Irene Winters were named on Claribelle’s contract, I could understand that too. It would make sense to dispose of all of you, for fear that surviving members of your group would come after the killer. But for it to be just you and Strongrock . . .”
“Yes. Most curious.” Winters had almost been caught in the submarine-base attack with him—but she hadn’t been expected to be there. Yet leaving her alive made no sense to him. “Another loose end. I need more data. I have my sister looking into cerebral controllers and political intrigues, while you investigate the arson case—though be careful, Singh. If the Professor suspects that we know of our foe’s existence, we can expect no mercy.”
“What I can give you is limited,” Singh said. “If I were back home in Hyderabad—well, I have acquaintances there who could be of more assistance. But here—no. Your sister’s likely to be more use than I am when it comes to the inner circles of power.”
Vale nodded. Singh was one of the few people who knew that Columbine, Vale’s sister, was more than just a clerk in the Ministry offices. “She dislikes involving herself in active investigations, but given the circumstances . . .”
“If this criminal mastermind of yours didn’t want her attention, then he shouldn’t have gone to these extremes.”
Vale frowned at the newspaper. For various reasons, he’d avoided bringing his sister into the side of his life that included Winters and Strongrock. His sister’s primary concern was the safety of the British Empire. And although she preferred not to exert herself too much, or miss any meals, she still took her duties seriously. If Fae, dragons, and the Library interfered with her Empire, London being its capital, she wouldn’t spare any of them. Also, he couldn’t protect her. She was well aware of these issues, as was Vale. So without either of them saying a single word, he’d known he should refrain from drawing his sister into certain exploits for both of their sakes.
The Dark Archive (The Invisible Library Novel) Page 14
