Pax Britannia: Human Nature

by Jonathan Green

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Four men from that list have been found dead since Monday morning."

  "Really?"

  "If you include old Noah. N. Hackett?"

  "Of course!" Ulysses exclaimed, flashing the girl a delighted smile. "The tramp! Oh how the mighty have fallen."

  He turned back to the photograph.

  "So, one dead by his own hand. Four dead by the hand of another in the last three nights. That just leaves two names on this list, neither of which mean anything to me. But we have to find them, that is most imperative."

  "You think they are in danger, sir?" Nimrod asked.

  "Indeed I do. One of them could even be our killer. Either way, we have to find them as quickly as possible. Which is where you come in, Miss Gudrun."

  "It is?" the young woman met Ulysses intense gaze.

  "Indeed it is! I want you to use the immense resources of that local rag you work for to find out who S. Fitzmaurice and V. Ashton-Griffiths are and where they might be found. I have a feeling that it will be somewhere not a million miles from here."

  "Very well, but what's in it for me?"

  Ulysses' look of childish excitement darkened to become one of bitter disdain. Reporters the world over; they were all the same.

  "Do this, for me," he said, "and I'll give you the exclusive of your career. I'll hand you Oxford's Christmas Killer on a platter."

  V - SLAY BELLS

  "Mr Fitzmaurice?" Ulysses tried, as he entered the fusty darkness of the glasshouse. "Saintjohn Fitzmaurice?" he called a little louder. Eyes straining to see anything through the failing twilight, his manservant cautiously followed him into the building.

  The place seemed to be entirely deserted - there wasn't a light on anywhere - but that didn't put pay to the uncomfortable feeling Ulysses' had, like a persistent itch on the inside of his skull, that something wasn't right. There was danger here.

  It had been several hours since they had made their hasty exit from the Professor's study, leaving as Chief Inspector Thaw and his attendant officers were making their way into Boriel College by the Longwall Street entrance.

  As the reporter returned to the Oxford Echo's newsroom and its difference engine database, Ulysses and Nimrod retired to the backroom of the Turf Tavern, Ulysses muttering something about the hair of the dog that had bitten him the night before.

  In time, Lucy's scouring of her Babbage engine's reader screen had come up trumps and she had contacted Ulysses, furnishing him with the current whereabouts of Saintjohn Fitzmaurice, formerly of the Damocles Club, now Director of Oxford's Botanic Gardens.

  "Mr Fitzmaurice!" Ulysses called again into the gathering gloom between the potted plants, louder this time.

  Still no reply.

  They had tried the man's home already, only to be told by his housekeeper that he had left earlier that evening in a state of high dudgeon, having taken a handwritten missive at the door, saying something about having to go back to the Gardens.

  Ulysses edged forwards slowly. The insistent subconscious scratching on the inside of his skull grew in intensity. Was Fitzmaurice waiting for them, just around the corner, garden fork in hand, ready to do them in? Or had the killer struck already, and the Director was, right now, lying dead, half buried in a compost heap somewhere?

  And then Ulysses heard the incongruous sound for the first time, the jingling of bells.

  "Come on, Nimrod!" he hissed. "This way!"

  And then the two of them were running through the glasshouse. Ahead of them the insistent jingle-jingle of the bells continued, leading them on.

  Ulysses reached a glazed divide and pushed through the unlatched door swinging on its hinges, almost tripping over the body lying in the darkness between the trestles of the potting shed.

  Ulysses guessed that the figure curled in an expanding pool of his own blood, that glistened black in the darkness, was Saintjohn Fitzmaurice, but there wasn't time to stop and check.

  The body groaned weakly.

  "Nimrod, stay with him," Ulysses instructed his manservant, hopping over the fatally wounded man and charging on his way in pursuit of the bells.

  There was a cacophonous crash of breaking glass and splintering glazing struts from the far end of the glasshouse. Ulysses ran on.

  He emerged from the end of the glasshouse through the wreck of another glazed door that it looked like his quarry had run straight through without bothering to open, into the oily darkness of the formal gardens.

  He ran on, between carefully-manicured black lawns, along gravel paths, always chasing the steady jingle of the Christmas bells. Sleigh bells.

  Shrubs and the dark skeletal shapes of trees loomed ahead of him. There was a change in the rhythm of the jingling, as if, Ulysses imagined, the killer had taken a running jump at the walled boundary of the Gardens. A moment later he heard the thud of someone landing heavily in the street on the other side.

  He reached the wall himself only a matter of moments later. Using his unnaturally muscled left arm in particular to help with his ascent, Ulysses pulled himself to the top of the wall that marked the western boundary of the Botanic Gardens.

  He peered down into the poorly-lit lane beyond. He couldn't see anybody, either running up or down the road, and, he now realised after his own desperate scramble up the wall, he couldn't hear anything in the way of pounding footfalls or jingling sleigh bells either.

  A hissed expletive escaped Ulysses' gritted teeth. They had been so close. If only they had got there sooner, he might have had the Christmas Killer in his clutches right at that very moment. Instead he was no closer to catching the murderer of his old friend and tutor, and all those other men. In fact his failure to act in time had led to another man's death. Not for the first time that day, Ulysses berated himself for not answering his tutor's plea sooner.

  It was at that moment that his personal communicator buzzed inside his pocket. Straddling the top of the wall, Ulysses took out the device and pressed the enamelled answer key.

  "Yes?" he snapped sharply into the mouthpiece.

  "It's Lucy," the woman's voice at the other end of the line said. "Did you get to Fitzmaurice in time?"

  "No. We were too late. The killer got here first and now he's got away. I lost him!" he snarled, the rancour evident in his voice.

  "Well I think I know where you might find him," Lucy said.

  "Really?"

  "I've identified the last man in the photograph. Get yourself back to Boriel, it's the Master. It's Virgil Ashton-Griffiths! Either he's the killer or he's the next victim!"

  VI - THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST

  "So, tell me about the Damocles Club, Master," Ulysses said, regarding the gargoyle-faced man opposite from over steepled, black-gloved fingers, "and, more specifically, why somebody would want every last member dead."

  Ulysses Quicksilver was impressed. The Master had maintained the same stony facade ever since they had invaded his private sanctuary.

  The porter - still shaken by his discovery of Montgomery Summerson's eviscerated body - had reluctantly led Ulysses, Nimrod and Lucy through the college buildings to the Master's apartments, as if he half expected to stumble upon another corpse. It had been with some obvious relief that he had opened the door, hearing the Master's voice command them to "Come!" Ulysses' 'by Appointment to Her Majesty' ID had done the rest.

  Ulysses and Virgil Ashton-Griffiths met each other's unblinking eyes, each regarding the other by the ruddy glow of the fire crackling in the hearth. For a moment, all that could be heard within the Master's study was the insistent ticking of a clock and the snap and crackle of the fire smouldering in the grate.

  And then the older man's expression of steely resolution slowly began to crumble, the hard lines of his hawkish face becoming sagging lines heavy with worry.

  "We were undergraduates at the time, here at Boriel College," the Master said quietly. "We were young, we were arrogant -"

  "I could see that for myself," Ulysse
s threw in.

  "And we were bored. The idle rich, if you like," Ashton-Griffiths went on.

  "So, apart from looking down on everyone else and your Daddies having more money than you had things to fill your days with, what did you do that would make someone wish you all dead?"

  "From what I remember of your own background, Mr Quicksilver, you were not left exactly destitute by your parents when they died." The Master's previous steel had started to return in the face of Ulysses' brusque manner.

  "But my name isn't the one that's at the bottom of a list of dead men," Ulysses pointed out darkly.

  The Master sighed. "To be honest, it will be a relief to be able to tell someone about it after all these years."

  "How many years, precisely?"

  "Thirty-seven."

  "So, around the time the photograph was taken, when the Damocles Club was at its height."

  The Master reached for his cup of tea and took a sip before continuing.

  "It was the product of the recklessness of youth, I suppose, a group of like-minded individuals, cast free of boarding school and our mothers' apron strings for the first time, with enough money and status to do pretty much as we pleased. Such youthful exuberance manifested itself at first in terms of ridiculous drinking games at various pubs around the town, but they didn't really appeal to our thrill-seeking natures. It was adrenalin that motivated us, the need to face impossible odds and triumph.

  "We began to partake in various gambling pursuits, but when money is no object, when you are not really risking anything in a real sense, it takes away the element of risk and saps the excitement from it. So we started gambling with things that were more precious to us than money. We took up some of the rather more extreme sports, rock-climbing, white-water rafting and the like."

  "But we've all done that sort of thing haven't we?" Ulysses said, recalling the time in his own life when he had frittered his life away in idle pursuits. He had held the Paris-Dakar rally record for eight years running, for a start. And it could be argued that his life now was even more dangerous, and satisfying as a result. Well, most of the time, he thought, rubbing at the shoulder joint of his left arm.

  "We fashioned ourselves into the Damocles Club, named after the infamous sword, of course," the Master went on, as if he hadn't heard a word Ulysses had said. "But, unlike Damocles, we liked that feeling of imminent danger, that everything about our position of privilege could be over-turned in an instant."

  He paused, returning the teacup and its saucer to the table.

  "And then we met Marley."

  "Go on."

  "Lacey brought him along, I think he had a bit of thing for him to be honest. Lockwood always did go for those rugger types, the old poof. But Marley wasn't one of us. He didn't fit in. He didn't come from the right background."

  "What do you mean?" Lucy asked.

  "His father was a churchman. They didn't have money." Ashton-Griffiths gave her a disparaging look. Something of the arrogant youth was still there, just beneath the veneer of social responsibility. "Anyway, it was Higgins who suggested the initiation. Hackett provided the gun. His family were of the huntin', shootin' and fishin' variety."

  "So you shot him?" Lucy asked, shocked.

  "Don't be ridiculous, my dear," Ulysses rebutted her. "I'm guessing that after a bout of heavy drinking the idea of the initiation was raised with this Marley - a game of Russian roulette was it, Master?"

  The older man nodded. He suddenly appeared to have aged ten years, the inconstant shadows cast by the fire giving him a haunted appearance.

  "And Marley lost."

  "I didn't know Higgins had actually loaded the damn thing! Marley's death shocked us all out of our youthful arrogance and taught us to value what we had more carefully. The Damocles Club was disbanded. We all went our separate ways."

  "And yet, almost all of you ended up back in Oxford thirty-seven years later," Ulysses pointed out. "I wonder why that was. A sense of guilt? Unable to completely leave the past behind? Having discovered that you couldn't run from yourselves you all decided to confront your past in some pathetic, subconscious way?"

  "So, what do we do now?" The Master raised his head and looked at Ulysses, his eyes glistening in the flickering firelight. "Are you going to have me arrested?"

  "Arrested?" Ulysses laughed humourlessly. "But you're not the murderer, are you?"

  "But..." Lucy suddenly put in, looking bewildered. "But he's the only one left on the list."

  "Yes, but Nimrod and I came straight here, having just chased the killer out of the Botanic Gardens. The Master here is some years older than me and, if you don't mind me saying so Master, he's carrying a few more pounds and he wasn't even out of breath when we arrived. If he had been the killer I wouldn't have expected him to be waiting in his rooms when we arrived and, if by some miracle he was, I would certainly have expected him to be out of breath!"

  "But I've just confessed our crime to you," the Master pressed. "I need to pay for the part I played, for being an accessory after the fact."

  "If I didn't know any better, I would have to say that I thought you wanted to be arrested, to be put into protective custody and save your own sorry skin."

  For a moment the Master was speechless.

  "So who's the Christmas Killer?" Lucy asked, completely confused.

  "That is, what I suspect, we will all discover before this night is through," Ulysses said, brimful of the sort of arrogant confidence that would have seen him fit quite well with the rest of the Damocles Club where the wretched Marley had not.

  "So, what are we going to do now?"

  "Now?" Ulysses said, a dark smile forming on his lips. "Now we wait."

  VII - SANTA CLAWS IS COMING TO TOWN

  The clock in the Master's study was just striking the tenth bell of eleven when Father Christmas paid a call. He broke down the door on the second attempt, but by that time Ulysses' prescient sixth sense had already alerted him to the assailant's approach.

  Lucy screamed as the doorjamb splintered and a hulking figure burst into the room. He was shrouded by a deep red cloak and hood, trimmed with white fur, and as he lurched into the study steel claws gleamed in the dying ember-glow emanating from the grate.

  With a startled grunt the hulk hesitated, surprised to discover that the Master had company. But his hesitation lasted only a moment. Dogged in his determination, and apparently unconcerned as to the presence of potential witnesses to the crime he was about to commit, the ogre lunged for the Master with a savage roar.

  But Ulysses and Nimrod were ready.

  The brute was almost as broad as he was tall, built from slabs of muscle, as Ulysses soon learnt to his cost, the man-mountain hurling him across the room by one swipe of his arm, sending the sleigh bells ringing again.

  The killer turned his attention back onto the Master who had backed away as far as he could behind his desk, until he was stopped from going any further by a wall of bookshelves.

  "Sir!" Nimrod shouted over the furious bellows of the brute, casting an anxious glance Ulysses' way.

  "Don't worry about me!" he shouted back, picking himself out of the remains of the side table on which he had landed. "Take him down!"

  Nimrod's pistol was in his hands in an instant. Ulysses looked from the muzzle of the gun to the ogre, batting Lucy aside, claws extended, as he tried to reach the mewling Master. Apart from the fact that there was a mad killer on the loose in the room with them, something wasn't right.

  "I want him alive!" Ulysses shouted.

  Nimrod's gun fired.

  With a howl the brute slumped against the Master's desk as his right leg gave way beneath him, his kneecap a bloody mess.

  Seizing the opportunity, Nimrod and Ulysses moved in together, Ulysses disarming the killer with a flick of his own rapier-blade. With the two of them pinning the thrashing attacker to the ground, Lucy pulled down one of the velvet drapes covering the windows with which to bind the captured killer, as the Master loo
ked on in amazement.

  "But I mean, Father Christmas?" Lucy repeated.

  "Who else were you expecting?" Ulysses said. "After all, it is Christmas Eve. And from the look of the gift he was bringing you, Master, it looks like you've most definitely been a bad boy this year."

  The Master said nothing, but continued to stare into the shadows beneath the obscuring hood of the cloak

  "But what kind of a disguise is that?" the reporter persisted.

  "One that's kept his identity a secret and allowed him to kill four - possibly five - men," Ulysses stated grimly. "So," he said, approaching the chair to which they had bound the moaning brute with the curtain, "shall we see who it is before we inform Chief Inspector Thaw that we've caught his Christmas Killer for him?"

  Taking hold of the hood in one black-gloved hand he threw it back.

  Lucy gasped in horror. As did the Master.

  "Marley!" was all he could say, his voice a strained whisper.

  Ulysses studied the face of the killer with clinical interest, as a lepidopterist might examine a moth pinned beneath a microscope.

  The brute appeared to be a similar age to the Master - in his late fifties - but that was where the similarity ended. His head was entirely hairless and where the Master's eyes sparkled with a ferocious intelligence, behind the killer's eyes there resided a brutal and imbecilic child.

  The reason for the former Oxford undergraduate's reversion to a state of moronic childishness was clear. It was as if his face had been sliced down the middle, from the top of his head to his cleft palette. A livid sunken scar had pulled the man's features into the middle of his face, pulling his eyes closer together, making him appear almost permanently cross-eyed. Saliva drooled continually from his gaping toothless mouth soaking the collar of the cloak with its stinking residue.

  "The gunshot wound," Ulysses said. "The one that you thought had killed him, Master, all those years ago did this to him."

  "I-I had n-no idea," Ashton-Griffiths stammered.

  "Looks like your 'victim' is not as dead as you thought he was. By the way," he added, "what time of year did this -" Ulysses indicated Marley's face with a waving finger "- happen?"