The Great Game (Royal Sorceress)

by Nuttall, Christopher

  She glanced over at Lestrade and asked a question. “There was only one maid?”

  “I don’t think they could have afforded to keep others,” Lestrade said.

  Gwen blinked in surprise. Sir Travis’s family had been poorer than she realised, if only because house help was cheap. Gwen’s mother had never had any difficulty hiring servants, even though they’d heard rumours about Gwen herself. A regular aristocratic family would have a small army of servants, ranging from cooks to coachmen. You weren’t anyone in society unless you had a horse and carriage of your very own.

  She scowled as Lestrade led her into the kitchen. It was smaller than she’d expected, smaller than the one she remembered from back home – and clearly not designed for feeding more than a handful of guests. A gas stove sat in the middle of the room, flanked by two tables and a free-standing set of shelves loaded with cooking tools. Gwen had never really cooked anything in her life – her mother had been outraged, the sole time she’d asked if she could learn to cook – and she didn’t recognise half of the tools. At the far end of the room, there was a giant fireplace that looked large enough to roast a whole cow. It was so barren that she realised that it hadn’t been used for years.

  The maid was seated in the middle of the room, her hands cuffed behind her back. She was a tiny thing, wearing a white dress that had clearly seen better days – and contrasted oddly with her dark skin. Gwen had seen coloured men before, but the maid was the blackest person she had ever seen. The whites of her eyes stood out against her face, which appeared to be bruised where someone had hit her, perhaps more than once. And she couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old.

  Gwen met her eyes... and saw nothing, but outright terror. She found it impossible to believe that this frail girl could be a murderer, or that she could have got the better of Sir Travis, who had been a strong man as well as a Sensitive. And yet... what was she doing here? There had been a craze, some years ago, for black butlers, but the girl was clearly no butler...

  “She was taken off a slaver when she was a child by the Royal Navy,” Lestrade said. “The Captain was one of Lord Nelson’s former officers – and you know Lord Nelson’s position on slavery. She was taken back to Britain, trained as a domestic and eventually sent to work for Lady Mortimer. It was the best they could have done for her.”

  “Right,” Gwen said. She couldn’t help noticing the girl staring at her when she heard Gwen’s unmistakably feminine voice. “Take your men out of here and leave us alone.”

  Lestrade gave her an odd look, but nodded and started to bark orders to his men. One of them seemed concerned about leaving Gwen with a potential murderess; the other pointed out that the girl was cuffed – and besides, Gwen had powerful magic to defend herself. Gwen watched them go, then knelt down beside the girl and studied her face. Up close, it was clear that the policemen had been beating her to try to force a confession. And, because of the colour of her skin, no one would complain.

  Lord Nelson had beaten the Barbary Pirates, who’d raided British shipping and sold British citizens into slavery, by personally leading the invasion of Tripoli. Afterwards, he’d joined the antislavery campaign, pointing out that slavery was the lifeblood of Britain’s North African enemies – and anything that hampered slavery worked in Britain’s favour. The slaveholders in the British Empire did not agree... and even a man as famous as Lord Nelson could only get so far. If the Royal Navy hadn’t been so stubborn about the right of a Captain to do whatever he pleased on his ship, the Captain who’d liberated the maid might have been in serious trouble.

  “Hello,” Gwen said, as lightly as she could. “My name is Gwen. What’s your name?”

  “Polly,” the maid said. Her voice was surprisingly upper-class, which surprised Gwen until she realised that the only person Polly would have talked to for years was Lady Mortimer. “I didn’t kill him!”

  “I didn’t say you did,” Gwen said. She hated watching women cry, even though Polly had more reason than most. “Take a deep breath and calm down.”

  A powerful Sensitive wouldn’t have needed to compel anything. He would have known if someone was trying to lie to him. But Gwen didn’t have anything like the skill Sir Travis must have shown. Carefully, hating herself, she laced her voice with Charm.

  “I need you to tell me the truth,” she said, softly. It was always difficult to tell just how much effect Charm had on its intended target, but Polly – who would have been trained to follow orders – should be vulnerable to the magic. “Did you kill Sir Travis?”

  “No,” Polly snapped. She pulled at the handcuffs, futilely. “I didn’t kill him!”

  “I believe you,” Gwen said. There was no hint that Polly was resisting the Charm, let alone that she was aware of its existence. Shaking her head, Gwen stood up, walked around the chair and used magic to unlock the handcuffs. “I need you to answer some questions.”

  Polly stood up and started to rub at her wrists. The handcuffs had been on so tightly, Gwen realised, that her wrists had started to swell. Making a mental note to ensure that the two policemen were disciplined, she helped Polly to another – more comfortable – chair and found her a glass of water. The maid didn’t seem inclined to run, but then she had nowhere to go. She probably knew next to nothing about London, let alone where she could hide if slave-hunters came after her.

  “All right,” Gwen said, squatting next to her, “what happened last night?”

  Polly looked at her, through tear-filled eyes, and began to explain.

  “The Master – Sir Travis – often had late-night meetings with some of his friends,” she said, softly. “Some of them were secret; I wasn’t supposed to know about them. I didn’t know why he was so worried about me...”

  Gwen could guess. In Turkey, or any other foreign country, the servants were not always trustworthy. The host country often used them to spy, even though it was technically illegal and could be relied upon to cause a diplomatic incident if they were caught at it. David had grumbled about diplomats who forget that simple fact when he’d moved from business to government service. English servants could be trusted; foreign servants tended to have two sets of masters.

  “He was very apologetic about it,” she added, “but he’d lock me in my room whenever he had such visitors. I didn’t really mind that much; there was always something to do in the house, but if I was locked up I couldn’t actually do it... last night, he had several visitors coming to see him. He locked me up as soon as the sun started to set.”

  She gave Gwen a half-shy, half-amused grin. “I still knew who had come to see him,” she added. “He didn’t keep that much from me.”

  Gwen resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. Servants saw so much more than their masters and mistresses ever realised. And to think that Lady Mary had wondered how rumours of her devil-child kept getting out into Polite Society.

  “But he normally came to unlock the door after he’d finished,” Polly continued. “Instead, when I fell asleep, the door was still locked. I woke up in the morning and discovered that he hadn’t unlocked the door. And I had to make him his breakfast. I picked the lock and sneaked upstairs to see if he was still awake. Instead, I found his body and... and I called the Police. And they blamed me.”

  “He would have known that you picked the lock,” Gwen pointed out, mildly. “Why didn’t you just stay there?”

  “The Master was always demanding a very early breakfast,” Polly explained. “I was supposed to bring it to him in bed, every day.”

  “My brother was much the same,” Gwen admitted. She wondered if Laura had cured David of demanding his breakfast in bed, before deciding that it wasn’t something she wanted to think about. “The Police came and then...?”

  “The rat-like man ordered me arrested,” Polly said. She rubbed the bruise on her cheek. “And they just kept shouting at me...”

  “They won’t shout at you any longer,” Gwen assured her. The rat-like man was Lestrade, she guessed; there had a
lways been something a little ratty about his face. “How did you stay in the house after Lady Mortimer died?”

  “Her Ladyship insisted that I dedicate myself to the house,” Polly said. “She taught me how to read and write and do figures – and made me promise that I would keep the house as clean as possible for the next generation. And her son just kept me here.”

  Gwen felt a flicker of sympathy for the young girl. She’d been a child when she’d been enslaved, then liberated, and then moved to a different kind of slavery. Her wages wouldn’t have been very high, if they’d existed at all. And one person, no matter how experienced, couldn’t hope to keep the entire house clean indefinitely. Mortimer Hall needed a small army of servants just to keep it free of dust. No wonder so many rooms were locked up. Polly had had no time to clean them at all.

  And she’d been alone for at least five months. Gwen could understand that.

  “I think you should get something to eat,” she said, finally. Polly had to be starving; Lestrade probably wouldn’t have allowed her anything to eat or drink while she’d been under arrest. “And then I need to have a few words with the Inspector.”

  “Thank you, Milady,” Polly said. “Do you want anything to eat? Should I make food for the policemen?”

  “Maybe later,” Gwen said. The nasty part of her mind was tempted just to say no, but the police would have to guard the house for several days. “Eat whatever you need to eat, then we can talk about what your master was doing before he died.”

  She left Polly in the kitchen – after satisfying herself that there was no way out of the room that wasn’t guarded by a policeman – and found Lestrade studying some documents he’d found in a room on the ground floor. One of them was Lady Mortimer’s will, which noted that Mortimer Hall and its remaining contents were to be passed down to her son, but her jewellery collection was to be given to Polly. Judging from the descriptions, Polly should have found herself a few thousand pounds richer once they were sold, enough to convince London to overlook the colour of her skin. Assuming she’d ever received them...

  “A motive for murder,” Lestrade said, in a tone that suggested that he found the case closed. “She would have inherited the jewels...”

  “She would have inherited them without having to kill Sir Travis,” Gwen pointed out, coldly. Her mother had gone over writing a will with her, pointing out that it was a skill young ladies desperately needed. “There’s nothing written here to suggest that Polly would have to wait until after Lady Mortimer’s son was dead.”

  She scowled down at the Inspector, allowing some of her anger to leak into her voice. “I Charmed her,” she added. “She wasn’t the murderer, Inspector.”

  “Maybe Sir Travis insisted on keeping the jewels,” Lestrade insisted, stubbornly. “Wouldn’t that have provided a motive for murder?”

  “She isn’t the murderer,” Gwen repeated, feeling her patience starting to snap. Lestrade might have had a point, but she doubted that Polly had it in her to be a killer. “Besides, we don’t even know if she knew she was going to get the jewels. She would hardly be the legal custodian of the estate.”

  Lestrade grimaced at her for a long moment, then bowed his head. “Someone would have to serve as custodian while Sir Travis was in India,” he said. “I shall have him located and then we can ask about how the will was handled. But if the jewels went elsewhere...”

  “I can pay for a lawyer, if necessary,” Gwen said, tartly.

  Her mother’s lessons had been very clear. There were certain circumstances in which a particular bequest in a will could be overturned, but if the jewels in question had been Lady Mortimer’s, there should have been no grounds for refusing to pass them to Polly. Polite Society might want to balk at passing anyone to a black girl, particularly one of such questionable origins, yet they wouldn’t want to create a precedent that could be used to overturn other wills.

  She smiled, remembering one of the stories her mother told. A will had gone missing and the property had been divided up according to law – and then the will had been rediscovered, several years later. Much of the property had gone to the wrong person. It had taken nearly a decade of legal wrangling before the property had been divided up again – and, in the meantime, two great families had practically been torn apart.

  “But if not her,” Lestrade said, “then who?”

  “A very good question,” Gwen agreed. “I plan to spend several hours speaking to Polly and learning everything she knew about her master’s business. Hopefully, that will give us some clues to follow. Meanwhile, I’d like you to have a few words with the constables who... interrogated her. They’re both fined one month’s salary.”

  Lestrade stared at her. She rarely asserted herself so bluntly.

  “Ah... one of them has a family,” he protested, finally. “Losing so much salary would be a grievous blow.”

  “And yet he tortured a young girl in the hope he would learn something useful,” Gwen reminded him. “Would anything she said have been useful, if she said it just to make the pain stop? And the real killer would have made his escape while you were busy putting Polly in front of a judge, who would sentence her to be hanged.”

  She frowned, then relented – slightly. “Half of his salary for the month,” she said. “And made it quite clear that I gave him that as a mercy, because of his family.”

  “Thank you, Milady,” Lestrade said.

  Gwen skimmed through the rest of the will. Most of it was legalese, but it seemed fairly straightforward. Sir Travis would inherit everything passed down from his father – Lady Mortimer would have been the custodian, rather than the owner – and most of his mother’s personal possessions. There were no charitable bequests or donations to the King, unsurprisingly; Lady Mortimer hadn’t had the financial resources to give much away on her deathbed.

  She looked up at Lestrade. “Did Sir Travis leave a will?”

  “We have yet to find one,” Lestrade admitted. “He had a locked safe in his bedroom, but we have been unable to open it. We think it has a magical lock.”

  “I’ll deal with it,” Gwen promised. That was going to be tricky. Magical locks could be incredibly difficult to pick, even for a Master Magician. But there was no choice. No mundane safecracker could break into a safe that had been sealed with magic. “Once Polly is ready to attend, we’ll start going through his papers.”

  “He may have left a will with a lawyer,” Lestrade added. “We’ve started some enquiries...”

  “You might want to ask Lord Mycroft,” Gwen suggested. “If Sir Travis was working for him, it’s quite possible that any papers of his were stored in the government’s vaults.”

  “He would probably give them to you,” Lestrade reminded her. “But I don’t think he would allow me to see the papers.”

  Gwen had been told – by Mycroft’s brother – that in any crime scene it was important to look for three things; means, motive and opportunity. Put together, they always pointed to the most likely suspect. But right now, all she really had was the opportunity. Polly had been locked in her room, unable to interfere as the murderer entered the hall...

  ... And yet, how had he managed to prevent Sir Travis from noticing him until it had been far too late?

  “Have the body moved to the hospital and ask Lucy to take a look at it,” Gwen ordered, as she passed the will back to Lestrade. “And then we’ll see what we can dig up.”

  Chapter Ten

  Sir Travis’s suite was the cleanest part of the hall, Gwen decided after the body had been removed, leaving behind a chalk outline to signify where it had been. The bedroom was definitely intended to be regal, complete with a four-poster bed, while the bathroom was surprisingly modern for such an old house. It even had hot running water, something that she suspected that Polly would have found a mercy. The only alternative would have been to boil the water in the kitchen and then carry it up three flights of stairs to the bathroom.

  The bedroom reminded her a little of David’
s bedroom, back at Crichton Hall. Gwen had spent enough time sneaking in and out of her brother’s room – mainly to borrow books that her mother felt were unladylike – to know what a boy’s bedroom was like – apart from fewer books and more toys, there was little difference between this one and her brother’s room. Sir Travis had left his model soldiers on a table, even if he hadn’t played with them in years. Perhaps the adult had found it comforting to sit and contemplate the time when all that mattered was playing with toys.

  She picked up one of the model soldiers and frowned. One of her detractors had sent her – anonymously, although she suspected Colonel Sebastian – a set of expensive dolls, handmade by craftsmen in Surrey. It had been intended as a mocking reminder that she’d spent most of her childhood playing with dolls, like any other well-bred young lady... but men spent time playing with dolls too. Only they called them toy soldiers, not dolls. The difference escaped her, unless the adults thought that they taught valuable life skills. Given how poorly Gwen had treated her dolls, it was easy to believe that she would make a very poor mother.

  The wardrobes were almost empty, apart from a number of trousers and jackets so outdated that they had to have belonged to Sir Travis’s father. There was very little that seemed to belong to Sir Travis, which struck Gwen as odd. Most upper-class men had considerable wardrobes, even the ones who professed to disdain fashion; one never knew when one might have to change suddenly. Even if Sir Travis had only had his salary from Mycroft, he should have been able to buy more suitable clothes. Perhaps he just didn’t care enough to bother.

  Or maybe he didn’t want to be lumbered, she thought. She’d had to attend the departure ceremony for Lord St. Simon, the new Viceroy of India, and he’d taken seven trunks of clothing with him. But Sir Travis might have been smart enough not to want to drag so much gear with him, wherever he went.