“That’s settled then,” Emilia said.
“You’re sure you’ll be all right making your own way back to the hotel by yourself?”
“Ulysses,” the young woman said, giving him that oh-so familiar knowing look of hers. “I’ve coped fairly well without you for the last few years. I think I can look after myself now, don’t you? I’m a big girl after all.”
“Of course. Sorry.”
“I’ll see you later!” Emilia called back over her shoulder as she skipped away along the pavement, the foyer of the Nebuchadnezzar less than a hundred yards away. “Eight o’clock sharp!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be there. On the dot.”
“And give my regards to Barty.”
Ulysses watched her go, his stomach doing somersaults. He hadn’t felt like this since... since the last time she had kissed him, he thought. What was it about Emilia Oddfellow that had him acting like a love struck teenager enduring his first crush?
Certain that she would be perfectly capable of making the rest of the way by herself, Ulysses turned to face the oncoming traffic and hailed himself another cab.
“Where to, guv’nor?” the driver asked as Ulysses boarded the smoke-belching hansom.
“Milton Mansions, my good man.”
ON THE WAY to Barty’s apartment building on Kepler Street, over in the Rockwell District, Ulysses once again found himself pondering the possible reasons for his brother’s sudden exodus to the Moon. But he always came back to the same conclusion, that it must have had something to do with his brother’s inveterate gambling.
The cab pulled up outside Milton Mansions twenty minutes later. As the hansom rattled to a halt, its engine idling, Ulysses checked his watch. Six o’clock, on the dot. That gave him plenty of time to drop in on Barty, give him the shock of his life, share a few pleasantries, arrange to meet again another day, take another cab back to the hotel in time to wash and change before dinner at eight, having probably already picked up a bouquet of moon daises from a street corner flower stall for Emilia on the way.
But what was this?
Ulysses got out of the cab, a queer, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that was soon filling every part of him, right to the tips of his fingers. Several emergency vehicles were pulled up at the kerbside, an ambulance amongst the police cars.
The apartment block was built around a central square which opened onto the road on one side. A police cordon had been set up at this point, a tape bearing the warning ‘Police line – do not cross’ stretched across the iron gated entrance to the private square. Beyond this Ulysses could see half a dozen uniformed officers of the Luna Prime Police Force bustling around what he took to be the scene of the crime – whatever that crime might be.
Ignoring the authority of the police line altogether, Ulysses lifted the tape and ducked underneath.
A woman wearing the masculine uniform of the Luna Prime Police, her dark hair cut into a short bob, saw him and stepped forward to deal with his intrusion. The circle of people at the centre of the square was broken for a moment, and Ulysses was able to see, for the first time, the body around which they were clustered.
It was a man, lying on the ground, his limbs in disarray, looking precisely like a puppet that had had its strings cut. Ulysses saw the blood – so dark it was almost black – pooling around the man’s head.
He pushed forwards further.
He saw the staring eyes, as cold as glass, and the terrified look on the man’s rigour-locked face – on his brother’s face.
Bartholomew Quicksilver was dead.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ill Met By Moonlight
T MINUS 2 DAYS, 17 HOURS, 3 MINUTES, 59 SECONDS
“I’M SORRY, SIR, but you can’t come in here,” the police officer said, approaching Ulysses, her hand out to hold him back. “This is a restricted area.”
Shock and disbelief changed to frustration and anger and Ulysses fumbled in his jacket pocket, searching for his ID. Finally his probing fingers brushed the leather of the card holder and he pulled it out, brandishing it before the surprised woman.
“Sir, I must insist –”
“Look at it!” Ulysses hissed, thrusting his wallet under her nose. She glanced down and read what she found there.
“Oh. Oh, I see.” The woman looked from Ulysses’ ID back to his face.
A pair of jodhpurs and a close-fitting, buckled leather jacket accentuated her toned, athletic figure. Her eyes were of the darkest russet, appearing even darker given the near-white complexion of her skin. There was little discernable emotion in the hard stare she was giving him.
“I am sorry, Mr Quicksilver. I had heard a rumour that you were here in Luna Prime, but I’m afraid I didn’t recognise you.”
Ulysses grunted, pushing past her, unable to take his eyes from his brother’s body.
Barty stared back at him, a frozen rictus of horror etched forever on his face. The blood that had leaked from his skull looked like a dark halo around his head.
Ulysses stared at his dead brother, his mouth slack with shock. The last time he had seen Barty had been before he had set off for Europe with his new ward Miranda Gallowglass and her governess, the traitorous Lilith Wishart. It was on his return from gallivanting around Asia, Russia and the Czech Republic that he had come across his brother’s letter.
And now, here they were, reunited for the first time in three months, mere hours after his brother’s death.
Lab-coated forensic scientists and a police photographer continued to go about their business around him.
“What happened?” he asked, suddenly sounding weary beyond belief.
“Suicide,” the woman said bluntly. “Must have thrown himself from the balcony of his thirteenth floor apartment.”
“No,” Ulysses gasped.
“Certainly looks that way.”
“No. I mean, no, he didn’t kill himself,” Ulysses stated firmly.
“I’m sorry, sir. Do you know something about what happened here that you’re not telling me?”
“He wouldn’t do that. Not Barty. I mean, why come all the way to the Moon to start again only to end it all?”
“Was the deceased known to you, Mr Quicksilver?”
“Yes. He was my brother.”
The officer fixed him with a steely stare. “Then do you think you should get involved?”
“Damn right I should. In fact I should have got a lot more involved long ago.” Ulysses redirected his appalled gaze back at his brother’s body. “I want to see the scene of the crime.”
“The scene of the crime?”
“Yes. I want to see his apartment.”
“Very well, but there’s no crime here, sir,” the police officer persisted.
“I think I’ll be the judge of that,” he snarled, turning on her. “And if you continue in this manner, assuming that this case is all sewn up, just like that, then there will have been more than one crime committed in relation to this death and I’ll have you for gross negligence!”
“Now, now, Mr Quicksilver, there’s no need to be like that.” The look in the woman’s eyes was one of wary warning, rather than embarrassed guilt.
“And who are you, precisely, that you know so much about what my brother did or didn’t do?” Ulysses snapped, his rage bubbling over.
The woman stood smartly to attention. “Inspector Artemis of the Luna Prime Police Force.”
“Very well then, Inspector Artemis, the scene of the crime, if you would be so kind.”
“HERE YOU ARE,” Artemis said, lifting the tape criss-crossing the doorway. Ulysses ducked underneath and entered his late brother’s apartment.
Milton Mansions was nice enough, built in the Neo-Rococo style, but Barty’s apartment was what an estate agent would have called ‘compact’ or ‘bijou’. Ulysses would have called it small. There was the main living area – with adjacent kitchenette – bedroom, with barely space for a double bed, and a tiny bathroom. It was certainly a far cry from
the space and luxury Barty had been used to back in London, sharing his brother’s six-bedroom townhouse in Mayfair.
On the opposite side of the living space, French doors opened out onto a narrow balcony that overlooked the central concourse below. Ulysses made his way slowly across the room, taking in the glasses on the coffee table. There was little else in the way of furniture, other than for a settee and a single armchair. Papers lay strewn across the table, a copy of The Times (Late Lunar Edition) obscuring much of them.
Ulysses stepped through the French doors and out onto the balcony. He wasn’t far from the inner skin of Luna Prime’s habitation dome here; it lay only fifty feet above him. Resting an arm on the wrought iron railing he peered over the edge.
From thirteen floors up he had a bird’s eye view of the enclosed square. The shape Barty’s body made on the cold paving slabs made it look as if he was running from something.
Had he been running from something? And if so, what?
But then, when Ulysses came to think about it, Barty had been running from something ever since the two brothers had been reunited, after the elder had returned from the depths of Nepal, having been missing, presumed dead, for some eighteen months. He had certainly been running from something when he left London for the Moon. Ulysses only wished he knew what it was.
Whatever had driven him to leave the planet, Ulysses was certain that it had caught up with him at last, and that that was why his brother was now lying dead on the concourse below. What had he got himself mixed up in?
No matter what might have once passed between he and Barty, at that moment, Ulysses resolved that he would not rest until he had found out and laid that particular mystery to rest. For his brother’s sake.
He turned from the balcony and re-entered the living room where the Inspector was waiting for him, standing smartly, arms crossed behind her back, rocking back and forth on the heels of her black leather jackboots.
She fixed him with an appraising look. “Like I said, a simple case of suicide.”
Ulysses met her stern gaze. “You think so, do you?”
“And you don’t.”
“Then it looks like I’m going to have to prove to you that my brother was murdered and did not commit suicide. Barty was many things, I’d admit that – a philanderer, a gambler, a liar – but he was never suicidal.”
“But all the signs indicate that he was alone when he died.”
“Really? Explain.”
“Very well,” Artemis said. “The door to the apartment was locked when we began to investigate the scene, and there was no one else inside. There were no signs of the door having been forced. Initial signs are that there are no marks on the deceased’s body, that might have indicated there had been a struggle.”
“Were there any witnesses?”
“We’re still looking into that, but it would appear that the suici... death,” the Inspector corrected herself, “occurred between six and eight yesterday evening.”
“And nobody found him until today?” Ulysses asked in amazement.
“People here keep themselves to themselves apparently. According to one old woman we interviewed downstairs they don’t go out much. And apparently they don’t have many visitors either.”
Ulysses scanned the room again, making a point of covering every corner with his piercing gaze. “And you’ve found a suicide note, have you?”
“No. Not yet. But not all suicides leave a note.”
“True. And, in my experience, neither do many murderers.”
“I am sorry for your loss, Mr Quicksilver, really I am, but until I find evidence – or someone else provides me with evidence – to the contrary, I’m going to write this one up as a suicide.”
“So I’ve got my work cut out then, haven’t I?” A righteous resolve was burning away inside him now, reducing all other concerns to ash.
Inspector Artemis fixed Ulysses with the same needling stare as when he had first arrived.
“Go on then.”
“Let’s start with the door. You say it was locked when you arrived and that there was no sign of a forced entry.”
“That’s right.”
“So, chances are, Barty knew his killer and let him – or her – in himself. Have you found a key?”
Artemis hesitated. “Not yet, but then we have yet to empty the pockets of the deceased. And just because we have not come across a key yet does not mean that we won’t.”
“True. But it could also mean that the killer took the key with them and locked the door on their way out. And what about those?”
Artemis followed Ulysses’ gaze to the pair of brandy glasses on the table. One was half full. The other remained untouched. “What about them?”
“There are two of them, Inspector. It looks very much to me as though Barty entertained someone here before he died. I’ll warrant that if you dust them for prints you’ll find Barty’s on both along with another set on the other as well.”
“So who was this mystery visitor then?” Artemis asked, intrigued.
He had her now.
Ulysses studied the table again. Besides the two brandy glasses there was the broadsheet and, partially obscured by the pages of The Times, Ulysses could make out the corner of what appeared to be a card folder.
Before the woman could stop him, Ulysses stepped forward and removed the newspaper from the table, tossing it carelessly onto the settee and exposing the pile of folders haphazardly strewing the glass tabletop beneath.
Gathering them up, he began flicking through the folders to see what they contained.
“Here, careful,” Inspector Artemis said in alarm, moving to stop him. “That might be evidence you’re tampering with.”
Ulysses gave her a dark look from beneath his knotted brows. “Evidence of what? I thought you said there hadn’t been a crime committed here.”
She hesitated and then took a step back again.
“Just be careful,” she warned.
There were three folders, each containing a variety of handwritten notes, photographs and Babbage engine print-outs.
Ulysses arranged them into a tidy pile and then took the one from the top. Opening it he read the name printed at the top of the first sheet and studied the photographic portrait attached to it with a paper clip. He quickly scanned the information he was presented with and committed the image of the man presented in the sepia tint to memory.
The file concerned one Jared Shurin, owner and chief executive of Syzygy Industries, a company with – according to the document Ulysses was reading – interests in alternative energy sources, satellites, spaceships and cavorite production back on Earth. And of course it was Syzygy Industries that owned the space-liner Apollo XIII.
Ulysses had heard of Shurin just as he had heard of his company, simply from his perusal of the business pages of The Times, and the occasional news reel presented by the Magna Britannia Broadcasting Corporation, via the city-wide broadcast screens back in London.
Shurin was a patrician-looking gentleman, with a mane of luxurious black hair, combed back from a high forehead. Ulysses and Shurin were roughly the same age, Shurin possibly even slightly younger, although he was infinitely richer than even the well-heeled Ulysses. Shurin had built on the foundations laid by his father to create one of the most powerful businesses on the Moon, if not throughout the whole of the British Empire.
Despite maintaining various factories and production plants back on Earth – including the cavorite works at Greenwich – Syzygy Industries’ true base of operations was right here in Luna Prime.
There was more to the contents of the file than merely newspaper clippings and press reports, and much of it was in his late brother’s untidy hand.
Ulysses closed the file on Shurin and placed it back on the table. Working systemically, he then took up the next, this one concerning another leading lunar industrialist,Dominic Rossum – founder and owner of Rossum’s Universal Robots.
Rossum looked as though he had
a good twenty years on the younger Shurin, at least, appearing to be closer to sixty than forty, judging by the photograph of a jowly man with a luxurious mane of white hair and impressive silvery handlebar moustache. In the orbit of his right eye was screwed a silver-edged monocle.
Rossum was one of those early pioneers who had recognised the true market potential of robots at the dawn of the automaton age and, as a result, had made a killing in the years since. His business was also based on the Moon, with most of the droids produced at his self-contained construction plants destined to remain on the Moon; the state of the art Jeeves models destined for the condominiums of the rich, while the massive Titan construction droids went to work on one of the many building projects that were forever increasing the number of acres of lunar surface covered by human habitations.
Rossum’s Universal Robots were known back on Earth as well. However, over the last decade, R. U. R. had suffered as a result of the rise of competition from China.
The last of the document bundles related to Wilberforce Bainbridge, the oxygen magnate. It was his air mills that produced fifty per cent of all the air used to maintain the ever-growing populace of the lunar cities, and, in the case of Serenity City, his company was the sole supplier.
Bainbridge still faced competition from Charles Humboldt and the Arterton Foundation but, from what Ulysses could discern from the papers in front of him, his position was secure for now.
The accompanying photograph was that of a man sporting a neatly-trimmed goatee beard, brown hair thinning at the crown and greying at the temples, and wearing a pair of glasses with various coloured-filter attachments.
Bainbridge was a self-made multi-millionaire, a rare beast indeed, practically unheard of within the rest of the empire of Magna Britannia; but then his business was one that was unnecessary back on Earth. Even the undersea cities of Atlantis City and Pacifica made use of air collected from the surface, transported to the seabed metropolises in tanks, or extracted oxygen from the very waters of the oceans themselves when necessary.
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