A Perilous Undertaking

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  He rolled off of me and landed lightly on his feet, pulling me with him. I straightened my trailing garments and squared my shoulders, setting a polite smile upon my lips. “Mr. Pettifer, Mr. Padgett. How delightful to make your acquaintance.”

  Mr. Padgett was having none of it. He fixed me with a glowering look and jerked his chin. “My private office, if you please.”

  I looked to Stoker who merely shrugged one broad shoulder and gestured for me to follow Mr. Padgett. With Mr. Pettifer bringing up the rear, we were not precisely guarded and could have made a dash for the door, but I translated Stoker’s shrug to mean we might as well see what information we could glean while we were there.

  Mr. Padgett led us to the office next door to Mr. Pettifer’s. Clearly he was the senior partner, for his domain was far more spacious. It was furnished with the sort of fussiness indicative of too much money and too little taste. All of the wood was ebony and the upholstery was black or grey, but the rug was too thick, the draperies too full, and the furniture too plush. It was an exercise in suffocation, and I made a point of perching on the edge of the chair Mr. Padgett indicated.

  But as I glanced around the room, I saw one redeeming feature—butterflies. They were subtly woven into the black silk of the chairs, and a cluster of tiny Common Sootywings—Pholisora catullus—hung under a glass dome on a sideboard. But the most arresting, and the thing that drove me to jump up with an exclamation of delight, was a single perfect exemplar of an enormous black butterfly framed behind the desk.

  “Papilio deiphobus!” I cried, going to examine it more closely. It had been mounted with its body facing out so that the inky depth of its underside would be displayed, unrelieved in its velvety blackness save for the slender brushstrokes of grey feathering each wing between the ribs.

  Mr. Padgett came to stand next to me. He was a portly man of some six and a half feet tall, and his expression suddenly changed to one of unexpected geniality. “You like my Giant Swallowtail, do you? He is a beauty, if I say it myself.”

  “I netted one years ago, in the Philippines,” I told him. “I let him go for far too little. He was a trifle larger than this one.”

  “Larger!” He puffed his cheeks a little. “You are having me on,” he said, narrowing his gaze.

  “I am not. I was on a tour of the Asian Pacific with an eye to acquiring as many Swallowtails as I could find. My Giant was large enough to pay my passage home, although I realized later I ought to have asked double.”

  “You are an Aurelian,” he said with some admiration, recognizing a kindred spirit at last.

  “I am, sir, and I must commend you. The little Sootywings are so predictable as to be almost a cliché, but this fellow . . .” I turned again to the Swallowtail, admiring the slim, graceful arcs of his antennae and his tidy feet, gathered protectively against his body.

  Mr. Padgett gave a start. “I say! Are you a connection to the V. Speedwell who wrote the most diverting piece for the Sussex and Kent Butterfly Observer last month? On the subject of Chalkwings?”

  “I have the honor of having penned the piece myself,” I told him.

  He grasped my hand and pumped it hard. “This is a pleasure,” he told me, beaming his approval. Stoker and Mr. Pettifer were excluded from the ensuing conversation on Lepidoptera. I hoped that by engaging him in his favorite interest, I might encourage Mr. Padgett to think kindly of us and overlook our unorthodox method of entry. After some spirited discussion on the difficulties of finding good specimens in a decidedly urban environment—the invariable complaint of every London butterfly collector—Mr. Padgett fixed us with an inquiring eye.

  “So, you must be wondering how I perceived your true identities,” he said, clearly relishing the moment.

  “I can only presume Sir Hugo anticipated us,” I replied.

  He blinked, a little put out at having his thunder stolen, I surmised. “Well, yes. He sent word that we might receive a visit from the pair of you,” he told us, gathering Stoker into the conversation with a stern eye. Stoker yawned and scrutinized his fingernails. After a moment, he drew his knife from under his trouser leg and began to clean one of them. Mr. Pettifer, standing in the shadows in the corner, shied like a frightened rabbit.

  “Stoker, do stop brandishing that blade. You have alarmed Mr. Pettifer, and that is very unkind. Do forgive him, Mr. Pettifer. He spent too many years on a navy ship. His manners have suffered.”

  “You don’t know that,” Stoker remarked in a lazy drawl. “I might have been worse before the navy got their hands on me.”

  I conceded the point. But his attempts to intimidate the undertakers were unworthy of a gentleman, and I glared at him until he replaced his knife with a sigh.

  Mr. Padgett took a deep breath and blew it out, visibly relaxing, while Mr. Pettifer pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. I turned to Mr. Padgett with a smile.

  “I am sorry Sir Hugo thought to trouble you with so inconsequential a matter,” I said in my most winsome tone. “Really, we only want the answer to a single question, and it hardly seemed worth troubling Sir Hugo. I am certain you know what a bore policemen can be.”

  I smiled and fluttered my lashes a little, but Mr. Padgett was having none of it. “I do indeed know, and I’ve no inclination to get on the wrong side of Sir Hugo Montgomerie. There is nothing Mr. Pettifer or I can tell you,” he said, giving his colleague a meaningful look.

  Mr. Pettifer rolled his eyes like a frightened horse, and I smiled at him.

  “Miss Speedwell,” Mr. Padgett said sharply, redirecting my attention. “I must be quite firm upon the point. Padgett and Pettifer are given a great deal of work through our connections with the Metropolitan Police and through Sir Hugo’s good offices. I cannot jeopardize that. We cannot,” he said with another firm glance at his partner.

  “Certainly not,” Mr. Pettifer said quietly, not meeting my eyes.

  I rose gracefully. “I quite understand. Perhaps, though, in the interest of helping a fellow Aurelian, you might not mention this visit to Sir Hugo? We learned nothing,” I hurried on, “so you would not even be withholding information from him.”

  Mr. Padgett, who had courteously risen to his feet when I did, gave me a slow, measured look. “I have an extensive collection at home, but my very first specimen, and my favorite—a Camberwell Beauty—is fading,” he said. “He was once the prettiest shade of purple you ever saw, like spring violets. But he was badly fixed and is losing his luster, and I need him to complete my grouping of purple butterflies. If he were to be replaced . . .” He let his voice trail off suggestively.

  “Why, Mr. Padgett,” I said with wide-eyed eagerness, “you must permit me to find you another imago! It would be my pleasure to accommodate such a sympathetic gentleman.”

  “I understand the going rate is somewhere in the vicinity of three pounds,” he said blandly.

  I waved an airy hand. “How ridiculous to speak of money between friends. It would be a gift, of course,” I insisted.

  He came to shake my hand. “How very generous of you, Miss Speedwell. And one is so often inclined to repay generosity where one has first encountered it.”

  I gave him a thin smile. “I see we understand one another perfectly, Mr. Padgett.”

  Stoker and I went to leave, nodding towards Mr. Pettifer as we went. Just as we reached the door, Mr. Padgett called after us.

  “Miss Speedwell? When you come to bring me my Beauty, perhaps you will be good enough to leave your watchdog at home,” he said, giving Stoker a look of pure distaste.

  By way of reply, Stoker snapped his jaws and slammed the door behind us.

  • • •

  After delivering our rented weeds to the funeral warehouse, we returned to the Folly so that I might apply myself to the capture of Mr. Padgett’s quarry. The afternoon had turned unseasonably hot—summer’s last flirtation before making her d
eparture—and I had observed that in the lower part of the garden, past the crumbling glasshouse and the pond thick with duckweed and lily pads, a superb Camberwell Beauty had been cavorting amongst the shrubberies. Naturally, I said nothing to Mr. Padgett of the proximity of the Beauties. No butterfly hunter worth her salt shared her hunting grounds.

  “Completing his collection of purples,” I muttered to myself. “I have never heard anything so daft. Imagine, reducing Nymphalis antiopa to a pretty color.”

  Still, I reminded myself, netting the specimen would be a balm to my nerves, unsettled as they were by the constant demands of city life. I collected my net and slipped a few minuten—the headless pins of the lepidopterist—through the flat of my cuff. It was a neat trick, designed to hold my equipment in proximity. On my foreign travels, it also helped keep the wandering hands of importunate suitors at bay. I did not bother with a killing jar. A quick pinch to the thorax was all that was required to administer a swift, clean death. Stoker walked out with me, going as far as the pond.

  “Stopping here?” I asked, checking the fastness of my pins.

  He stripped off his coat. “Aye. Now turn away. I’ll not have you looking upon my maidenly blushes.”

  Before I could remove myself, he had slipped out of his shirt and boots, pausing with his hands upon the buttons of his trousers. “Either leave or stay and help,” he said, batting his lashes at me like a bashful doe.

  “Ass,” I said, turning away quickly. He was still laughing as I pushed my way through the foliage. A moment later I heard a hearty splash as he flung himself into the green water of the pond. I went about my business, making straight for the little copse where I had seen several Beauties at play over the course of the past few months. It was hot work. It seemed as if summer, before she gave herself up entirely to the cooler charms of autumn, was determined to have one last hectic dance. I blotted my temples as I searched, looking low upon the branches of a plum tree for the flash of purple wings.

  At last, success! A flutter of languid violet told me I had found my quarry. I crept near, my ring net clutched in practiced hands. There, beneath a plum leaf, I spied him. This fellow was fresh from his chrysalis, for his wings were damp and heavy, dragged down with his dewy liquors. He spread them slowly, flapping them open and closed to dry them in the warm air. He was a new creation, I reflected, exploring the possibility of his wings for the first time. But he had not yet felt their power. He did not realize what they could do, how they could bear him aloft on the wind, carrying him far and wide over moor and meadow, hedgerow and heath. The whole of England lay within the span of those slender wings, and he had no knowledge of it.

  It was not my custom to capture the newly emerged, but the convenience was tempting. A quick flick of the wrist and my net was upon him. He was too startled to resist, I think, for he gave only a token flutter then fell still. I reached into the net and cupped him in my hand. His wings whispered against my palm—in protest? In acquiescence? I could not say. I opened my left hand to find him sheltered there in the curve of it. My right thumb and index finger formed a pincer as I eyed the spot, just below his head, where the coup de grâce would be administered.

  Just then, he stirred, spreading his wings in one last flamboyant gesture of defiance. The sun touched them properly for the first time, sending warmth and life through veins no bigger than a spider’s silk. He was magnificent, a perfect being, innocent and yet full of possibility. My fingertip touched the edge of his wing, and he trembled, fluttering his wings almost invitingly.

  “Go now,” I whispered. “Before I change my mind.”

  He hesitated, fanning those exquisite jeweled wings a moment more, then suddenly, with a great heave, he lurched from my palm, as graceless as a newborn colt. But then he was flying, climbing and dropping and lifting again until he rose above the plum tree, his little feet barely clearing the tips of the leaves.

  “No more of that,” I told myself firmly as I swallowed past the catch in my throat. “There is no place for sentimentality in science.”

  Thoroughly out of sorts, I strode back to the pond to find Stoker returning after having swum the length of it—several times, no doubt. His shoulders broke the water as he surged up, raising both arms and pulling himself forward in a powerful stroke. I sat upon the grassy verge and removed my boots and stockings, dabbling my toes in the green water. It was bracingly cool and smelt of duckweed and water hyacinths. Stoker turned over, floating upon his back, his black hair as dark and sleek as the pelt of a seal. He grinned when he saw me and reached a lazy hand for a convenient clump of duckweed which he dropped over his hips.

  “Coming to peer at an innocent fellow while he baths—have you no shame, Veronica?” he asked lightly.

  “I am disturbed—very disturbed indeed,” I told him.

  “That could hurt a fellow’s feelings,” he pointed out. “I am not that hideous to look upon.”

  “Not disturbed by you,” I retorted. “And do not fish for compliments. It is beneath you. I found a Beauty.”

  “It’s been a long time since anyone called me such, but I suppose it will do.”

  “The butterfly, you fool.”

  “Well done,” he said, moving his arms languidly in the green water. The ripples he made touched my feet.

  “I don’t have it now. I let it go because I could not bring myself to kill it,” I told him.

  “And that disturbs you?” He closed his eyes, letting the sun warm his exposed flesh. The duckweed slipped a little on his flank, but I did not bother to tell him.

  “I am a scientist,” I reminded him. “What sort of professional lepidopterist cannot bring herself to kill a butterfly?” I asked in some disgust. “I might as well become a vegetarian and start eating nut cutlets and legumes,” I said darkly.

  He smiled but did not open his eyes. “You promised Mr. Padgett a specimen. What will you do?”

  “Lord Rosemorran has several dozen in his collection. We haven’t room for more than a few pairs of each, male and female. I will choose a perfectly lovely imago and send it to Mr. Padgett. I will reimburse his lordship the value out of my wages.”

  Stoker shrugged one shoulder, sending more ripples over my feet. This time the water washed up to my shins, sending delicious chills up my legs. “It sounds as if you have solved the problem rather neatly. You’ve got rid of some of his lordship’s excess collection and cleared a debt. Why are you so nettled?”

  “What if I have lost my nerve?” I asked in a small voice.

  He opened one eye. “Not bloody likely. You have all the nerve of a bad tooth.”

  I flapped my hand, sending a spray of pond water onto his face. “I mean it. What if I start thinking of all of them as creatures with feelings? What if I cannot bring myself to regard them as specimens?”

  He raised his head. “I no longer hunt. It has not changed me as a scientist.”

  “What do you mean you don’t hunt? Of course you hunt. His lordship expected you to collect specimens on our expedition in the South Pacific.”

  “And I would have found a way not to,” he said reasonably. “I prefer to study animals, to preserve them.”

  “But you cannot study them if you do not first take specimens from the wild,” I argued.

  “There are always animals for whom it is a mercy to be killed,” he pointed out. “The old, the sick, the ones that have begun to prey upon people. Besides, his lordship is so forgetful, I could easily tell him I’d shot something and he’d have forgot halfway home.”

  “That is diabolical.”

  “It is practical,” he retorted.

  I looked him over from head to toe, scrutinizing everything save the bit the duckweed still managed to conceal, albeit imperfectly. He still bore the scars from his last expedition, and I wondered if it had changed him. I nodded towards the long slender line that marked him from eyebrow to jaw. “Is th
at when you stopped? Is that why?”

  He drew in a deep breath, plunging his head underwater. He stayed down for almost two minutes, finally emerging in a great plume of water, blowing out air as he rose like a magnificent son of Poseidon. “All right then. Yes,” he admitted. “I didn’t much like having to dispatch that jaguar, even if it was bent upon destroying me. It is one thing to slay an animal at a distance. One doesn’t feel a part of it. This was entirely too personal for me. I haven’t killed anything since. And I doubt I could, not something healthy and vital with a life yet to live.”

  I thought of the tremble of those damp wings against my palm and I understood him perfectly. “I need to get out of this city,” I said finally. “I need adventure again.”

  He stared at me in open-mouthed astonishment. “Veronica, we are hunting a murderer. What more adventure do you require?”

  “I cannot say,” I told him peevishly. “I only know I am ossifying. One morning I shan’t show up to work and you will come to find I have turned entirely to fossil.”

  “You are simply annoyed because you wanted to throw the solution to this murder in Louise’s face and you have not done it yet. You are afraid Miles Ramsforth is going to hang, and it will not be the miscarriage of justice that bothers you, it will be the fact that you did not win.”

  “That is a vile thing to say,” I told him as I collected my stockings and boots. “You think you are terribly clever, but you are not, you know. In fact, you have neglected your duckweed. You seem to have lost it entirely.”

  Stoker’s streak of profanity lasted until we reached the Belvedere.

  CHAPTER

  21

  By the time evening fell, we had patched up the quarrel or at least agreed not to discuss it. We had thrown ourselves into our work for the rest of the afternoon, stopping only to eat fish and chips from a shop for our supper. Afterwards, we sat in the snuggery to smoke and drink in companionable silence. We had lit no lamps in the Belvedere; the only illumination came from the low fire burning in the stove and the glowing tips of our cigarillos. Stoker’s face was thrown deeply into shadow, highlighting the strong planes of his profile. His left side was averted from me, so that I could not see his scars or his eye patch—only the splendor of the gifts nature had bestowed upon him. “‘Ozymandias,’” I murmured.