The Ulysses Quicksilver Short Story Collection (Pax Britannia)

by Jonathan Green

  Sergeant Sheldon simply looked at him, opened mouthed.

  "You might well be dumbfounded, Sergeant. This station managed to miss two potentially crucial pieces of evidence."

  "T-two, sir?"

  "Firstly, the letter from Auberon Chase, and secondly," - he now used the tweezers to separate the matted locks of the man's hair behind what had formerly been his right ear, revealing angular ruddy petals caught between the fibres - "this seemingly innocuous scarlet flower."

  V

  A Rose By Any Other Name

  The Rolls Royce pulled up outside the Suffolk country house, practically the only noise made by the car's arrival being the crunch of the gravel drive under its tyres.

  The Old Vicarage was all steeply-pitched roofs, arched stained glass windows, black iron guttering and faux battlements. The extensive gardens were shielded behind high hedges and a red brick wall. Several acres of beech woodland held all within its arboreal embrace.

  "So this is the home of the eminent, not to say curmudgeonly, botanist and orchidologist Auberon Chase?" Ulysses said, looking out of the window at the imposing gothic residence.

  "Is that a rhetorical question, sir?" his ever-faithful manservant enquired, his voice a cut-glass emotionless monotone at odds with Ulysses' excitedly upbeat attitude.

  "Of course it is, Nimrod," Ulysses replied flashing his retainer a wicked grin. Nimrod responded with a condescendingly arching eyebrow. "And as we're here, I think it would be rude not to pay our respects."

  Having exited the car, the two men approached the front door, the ostentatiously dressed dandy leading the way, his immaculately turned out manservant a pace behind. When the third ring of the doorbell still produced no response Ulysses decided to investigate.

  Passing through a gate into a walled flower garden, with ornamental lawns, carefully clipped topiary bushes and the rhododendrons of an arboretum beyond, Ulysses and Nimrod found their way to the extensive conservatory attached to the back of the house.

  Cautiously pushing open the unlocked door, Ulysses paused on entering.

  "Someone's been here before us," he said darkly, "and I don't mean our errant botanist." He pointed out the broken pane of glass in line with the door handle, the shards lying on the tiled floor inside.

  "So I see, sir," Nimrod assented.

  "We should proceed with caution."

  "Understood, sir," Nimrod said, taking a pistol from its hidden holster inside his tailcoat, as Ulysses took out his own gun.

  Plants filled the conservatory. Some were in the middle of being re-potted into larger terracotta containers. A half-open bag of spilled potting compost and a trowel lay as if they had only just been put down, as if whoever had been at work here had just stepped away for a moment. There was everything from tall-reaching bamboo and primeval cycads to a magnificent aspidistra and creeping grape vines. Along one glass-panelled wall was Chase's prized collection of rare and exotic orchids: everything from the magnolia-painted petals of the Butterfly Orchid to the Devil's Tongue.

  But the orchids were not the only rare plants that had a home here; there were a number of specimens that would not have been out of place within the newly completed Amaranth House at Kew. These included a Patagonian Mantrap, a six-foot tall specimen residing in a massive ornamental Grecian urn.

  It was this plant that Nimrod was examining when he made the pronouncement: "Sir, I think you should take a look at this."

  "Ah, Auberon Chase, I presume," Ulysses said with macabre humour as he approached the mantrap himself.

  All that Ulysses could see were a pair of trouser clad legs and two feet, one missing a shoe, protruding from the thorn-fanged maw of the mantrap amidst the spiny leaf-pseudopods of the plant.

  Ulysses turned before the woman spoke, his uncanny sixth sense giving him prior knowledge almost akin to prescience, pistol held level at waist height.

  "Don't move!" Despite having the bravura to challenge the two of them, she could not hide the undertone of nervous anxiety. "And put your hands up, where I can see them."

  "Which is it to be? Don't move, or put our hands up?"

  The young woman - in her mid to late twenties - stood at the entrance to the glazed plant house. She was holding a garden fork firmly in both hands, prongs pointed towards the dandy and his manservant. The look on her face suggested that she was prepared to make good use of it if needs be.

  She looked like she would have been more at home trekking through the jungles of Borneo than stalking Ulysses in the Suffolk countryside. Her petite, lithe, and richly-tanned body was contained within long cargo shorts and a positively disgraceful, tight-fitting brown vest top, under a sleeveless khaki jacket. Her choice of wardrobe was too daring and modern, even for the more progressive and increasingly permissive attitudes prevalent across the Victorian empire of Magna Britannia at the end of the twentieth century. Her dark, shoulder-length hair was tied back in a stubby ponytail.

  Her outfit obviously favoured the practical but to Ulysses' mind it merely served to accentuate the pert curve of her buttocks, the hollow at the small of her back, the subtle swell of her bosom, her small breasts pushing against the tight material.

  "Well, hell-o," Ulysses smarmed. "And who are you?" He ignored Nimrod's tut of disapproval, drinking in the vision of loveliness before him.

  "Never mind that! Who are you and what are you doing in my uncle's house?" she snapped, glancing at the bloated bulb of the Patagonian Mantrap, a film of moisture covering her eyes. "What was it that caused you return to the scene of your crime?"

  "Madame," Ulysses said, his most endearing smile shaping the chiselled features of his face, "you are mistaken. We are not murderers returning to the scene of what would appear to be some heinous crime. We have only just now stumbled upon this unfortunate scene. But, I might ask the same questions of you. Who are you and what brings you here?"

  "I asked first," the young woman said stepping boldly into the conservatory, adding emphasis with a thrust of the fork.

  Ulysses reached into his jacket and pulled out his leather cardholder, flipping it open with a flick of the wrist. "I am Ulysses Quicksilver, Madame, agent of adventure, agent of justice, and agent of the throne of Magna Britannia, recognised for my valorous actions by Her Majesty Queen Victoria herself. I find myself here in my capacity as an investigator into two particularly unpleasant deaths." Ulysses returned his ID to his pocket. "Now, Madame, if you would be so kind as to return the favour."

  The young woman remained tight-lipped before relenting. "I am Petunia Chase, and Auberon Chase is... was... my uncle." Ulysses glanced at Nimrod, that one look full of meaning for the two of them. They had become embroiled with supposedly grieving female relatives before, and didn't want to be duped again. He had used to think himself a good judge of character - now his confidence in his own abilities had been shaken by the events of not so long ago.

  "And what brings you here at this inauspicious time, Miss Chase?" Ulysses asked, his tone measured.

  "It's Doctor, actually," the woman said, interrupting.

  "Really?"

  "Yes, I possess a doctorate in botany. I'll have you know that I am very well qualified."

  "I'm sure you are. Very well endowed," Ulysses added, smiling despite himself. "Academically speaking, of course."

  Cheeks reddening and nostrils flaring in annoyance, the woman persisted in her explanation regardless. "I have returned, only this morning, from my latest expedition to Java, collecting and cataloguing new and rare plant species. But when I arrived there was no reply to my rings. So I came around the back, found the conservatory open and..." Tears subsumed Petunia's words as her overwrought emotions overcame her at last.

  After the accusations, the recriminations, the confessions, the explanations, the sudden emotional empathy and the change from cold indifference to sympathetic understanding, Ulysses found himself sitting on the step to the conservatory, with one arm around the girl, the floodgates of emotion having failed before the tid
al wave of grief that finally overwhelmed her.

  "Now - and I know this is hard - but I have a question for you. How can you be certain that your uncle's death wasn't an accident?" Ulysses made sure that he kept his eyes fixed on the young woman as he asked the question, and that he most definitely did not look towards the broken pane of glass.

  "A world-renowned botanist, who worked with plants all his life, eaten by his own Patagonian Mantrap - a plant that, I might add, he raised from a cutting? Do give me some credit, Mr Quicksilver. He had tended that plant for the last fourteen years without coming to harm. Don't try and tell me that this was an accident. And if you didn't break that pane of glass to get in, who did?"

  "Very good, Petunia - I can call you Petunia, can't I? - very good," Ulysses said, a winning smile on his lips. "I have to say, I am impressed. And, as a result, I want to help you."

  "You do? But we've only just met."

  "And yet I have already taken your plight to heart. I want to find the one responsible for your uncle's death just as much as you do. And, finding myself a little short of leads, it strikes me that you could be my best bet when it comes to unravelling the knots of this mystery. There may be something you know, the import of which you are, as yet, unaware. Failing that, I could do with someone of your background and expert knowledge on my side."

  "What can I do?" Petunia asked, a look of earnest intent in her wide brown eyes.

  "Come with me," Ulysses said, dramatically seizing her hand in his. "Come with me to Southwark."

  VI

  A Gruesome Discovery

  The party stood at the edge of the Thames - the dandy, his manservant, the police sergeant and the grieving niece. Ulysses Quicksilver watched the swirling current of the churning brown water, listening as the water lapped at the tarry mud of the shoreline, considering the case in hand.

  "You're certain this was the spot?" Ulysses quizzed Sergeant Sheldon for a second time.

  "Like I said, sir, this was where Old Samson found the body."

  Ulysses had hoped that if he could visit the place where the first body had been washed up for himself, he might uncover something that had so far been missed. But there had been no such obvious revelation. With a sigh, he turned from the river.

  "Nimrod, any thoughts, old chap?" he asked.

  "Well, sir, I was just considering how the body must have been carried here from much further upstream."

  "How much further?"

  "A body could be carried from as far away as Hammersmith or Chiswick. Perhaps even Brentford and beyond."

  "Is that right?"

  The high-pitched yapping of a dog abruptly interrupted their discussion.

  Ulysses led the party towards the barking and into the shadow of Southwark Bridge. There before them was a ramshackle hut cobbled together from rusted corrugated iron plate, and reclaimed pier supports. A terrier, its fur coloured brown and filthy white, stood before a sackcloth-draped entrance, Ulysses unsure whether the dog was warning them away from its territory or trying to attract their attention.

  "Hello, fella," Ulysses said, crouching down and scratching the dog behind the ears. The terrier gave its own unintelligible greeting, tail wagging. "What are you doing down here all by yourself? What is it you're protecting so very well?"

  Stepping past the dog, moving aside the sackcloth curtain, Ulysses entered the shack. The smell was the first thing that hit him - the stink of fungal decay and something much worse. Then his eyesight adjusted to the gloom.

  Ulysses staggered from the shack, face pale, trying hard not to gag. "Sergeant Sheldon," he managed, "who did you say found the first body?"

  "Old Samson the beachcomber," the police officer replied.

  "And he was one of Nancy's regulars?"

  "I believe so, sir."

  "And he's not been seen since Nancy's death."

  "No."

  "Well we've found him now, Sergeant."

  His curiosity piqued, Sheldon bustled past Ulysses and into the tumbledown hut, the terrier growling at him as he did so. "God save us!" he gasped as he too caught sight of the mouldering, fungus-eaten corpse. "Just like the first one. Like Nancy."

  "I think it's time we followed this trail of corpses back upriver to find its source," Ulysses stated with cold finality.

  The pensive silence that followed his words was broken by a yapping bark that was sounding more and more like a canine cough.

  Petunia looked at Ulysses, her own face paling. "What's wrong with the dog?"

  Later that same day, at the station, Sergeant Sheldon was completing the unfortunately necessary incident report relating to the discovery of Old Samson, a lukewarm mug of tea on the desk in front of him. The vagabond's body was now resting in the morgue alongside the other fungus-riddled corpse, having been brought back by the robo-Peelers still on secondment from Scotland Yard. But for the time being Sergeant Sheldon was alone with his paperwork.

  The first inkling he had that anything was wrong was when smoke began to seep under his door. He was on his feet in seconds, the report and his tea forgotten, yanking the office door open to make his escape and raise the alarm. As he stumbled down the passageway to the front of the station house, covering his mouth with a handkerchief against the choking smoke, he could see shapes through the frosted glass of the main door, even as the flames licked higher, cracking the glass.

  Blinking back tears brought on by smoke and heat, he could make out a... What was it...? An engine, yes, a fire engine, already there, the heat-distorted silhouettes of firemen dousing the burning police station with the hoses held in their heavy gloved hands. And yet, it seemed to Sergeant Sheldon that as the firemen swept their hoses back and forth across the front of the burning building, the higher the flames rose and the quicker the fire took hold.

  Wracking coughs seized his body and he fell to his knees. He reached out and grasped the handle of the door with one hand, immediately and instinctively pulling it back as the hot metal took the skin from his fingers.

  The smoke was overcoming him, he knew it. But, even as his vision blurred, he couldn't help wondering why the liquid pumping out of the firemen's hoses looked like fire.

  VII

  Three 'Men' In A Boat

  The steam launch chugged onwards casting a bow-wave of ripples in its wake, as it steamed its way upriver, towards the setting sun. The purple orange cloudscape of the evening sky stained the tireless Thames, the water this far from the centre of the capital noticeably less discoloured and polluted. The sun appeared to be dropping closer and closer towards the tree-dotted distance with every mile the party travelled.

  Ulysses Quicksilver sat at the bow of the boat, his steely gaze focused on the horizon, while Nimrod sat at the back, keeping the launch on course. Petunia's sharp eyes scoured the banks for the one vital clue that might tell them they had found the source of the dread devouring fungus.

  Dusk was drawing on, bringing moonrise in its wake. The trio had set out on their endeavour late in the day, partly thanks to Nimrod having to make a stop at the residence of Dr Methuselah to collect a package which he had then dutifully delivered to Ulysses before they boarded the hired launch at Putney.

  It was becoming increasingly difficult for Petunia to make out anything very much within the shadows of the riverbank. If she didn't find what Ulysses had asked her to look out for soon, their journey might prove to have been a hopeless venture. And then there it was, a flash of scarlet beneath the drooping boughs of a willow at the water's edge.

  "Ulysses!" she called. "We must be near."

  "You're sure?" he queried, not taking his eyes off the darkening horizon.

  "Absolutely. It couldn't be anything else."

  "So the first fungally finished fellow ended up in the river somewhere around here?" Only now did Ulysses turn to face Petunia.

  "It's only circumstantial evidence I know, but it's as good as we're going to get. Considering our situation it's got to be as good a place to start as any."

/>   "But where is here?" Ulysses mused.

  "To our right, sir, is Syon House," Nimrod spoke up from the back of the boat.

  "Of course. Spent an absolutely awful evening there once at a masked ball."

  "Which means that to our left are -"

  "The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew."

  "Precisely, sir."

  "Then take us into the bank, please Nimrod."

  Cutting the engine, the ever-capable Nimrod steered the launch in towards the bank, the hull of the vessel bumping against the muddy slope.

  The three of them alighted in the dusky darkness, Nimrod pausing only to make sure the boat was secured. Cautious as a cat burglar Ulysses approached the perimeter fence of the ornamental gardens, visible beyond the railings as shadowy shapes against the velvet blue of burgeoning night, cane in hand. His footsteps crushed the fiery red flowers growing there amongst the lush grass, the same species Ulysses had found caught in the first victim's hair.

  "So, here we are again," Ulysses said.

  "It would appear so," Nimrod agreed, joining Ulysses at his side. Neither of them looked like they were really dressed for a night's reconnaissance.

  "I knew there was something fishy about Professor Hargreaves."

  "You've been here recently?" Petunia asked.

  "Yes, and I knew then there was something funny about the Director's attitude, although at the time I naively put it down to the stress of the opening..." Ulysses' words trailed off as the veracity of what he was saying sank in. "Of course!" he hissed. "Whatever he's got planned, it all hinges around the opening of the Amaranth House tomorrow."

  "So what do we do now?" Petunia asked. "Contact the police?"

  "We haven't got time for that. Besides we don't want the likes of Inspector Allardyce generally cluttering up the place and getting in our way," Ulysses stated firmly, then flashed Petunia a grin, the sparkle of thrill-seeking excitement in his eyes. "I rather suspect we have to act quickly and decisively before things get out of hand. Nimrod," he addressed his manservant, "please help Dr Chase over the fence and then stay close. We don't know what we might find in there." He glanced at the dark silhouettes of the glasshouses again.