Cold Stone and Ivy

by H. Leighton Dickson

  Down Coggins Road and a left at Dorchester. These were fine houses now, with even finer farther along, and the road had become one of cobbles, not dirt. Hooves made a clopping sound on the stone. There were many steamcars puffing along the streets, but there were a few horse-drawn coaches as well, so a man on horseback was not a sore thumb. There were no pubs in this neighbourhood; coffee shops were all the rage, where good British gentlemen went to read the news, argue politics, discuss rumours of wars, and smoke. He spied one on a corner, where steamcars and carriages were parked alongside hitched horses. It was perfect.

  He dismounted, led Gus up to a post, and raised a finger.

  “Stay.”

  He pulled the address from his coat pocket.

  1011-A West Pinchon Street.

  Quietly, he moved to the window, cast a quick glance inside. Men, smoke, cards, coffee. Stacks of newspapers and broadsheets and bulletins. These gentlemen loved their issues. He was about to leave when he did a double-take—Easterton Fredrick Crumb. The villain in question, dressed entirely in black, drinking coffee and being consoled by a veritable stable of gents.

  Such a normal sight. Such an abominable man.

  The glass at the window began to frost.

  “No,” he growled. “Not yet.”

  And he set off down the walk on Dorchester. He had only gone three blocks and had not met another soul on the street. Of course he wouldn’t. At this hour, all respectable folk were settled down for the night. With Crumb in the coffee house, it would serve him well, but his wife presented another matter entirely. He hated frightening women. They were by far the fairer sex but they killed too, as often and savagely as men.

  He was being followed.

  He had known it for a while. The rider on the dark horse had not known to keep to the grass to muffle the sound of the hooves. He did not know to follow at inconsistent distances or to remove the bowler and exchange it for another hat by way of disguise. And when he’d dismounted, he’d tied his nag at the same shop. No, this was an inexperienced thief, most likely hoping to roll him for his coin or his coat.

  He could see the turn for Pinchon Street and the grove of trees that served as a boulevard. It cast very dark shadows across the already dark street. Perfect for cover. He continued to walk straight into that blackness, then ducked into the mews between the houses and pulled the pistol to wait.

  Step, step, step, step.

  A light step. Not a big man by any means. Step, step, step, step. He could hear it grow louder and just as the fellow was about to pass by, he lunged out of the mews, snagged the man’s arm, and forced it up between the shoulder blades. Without slowing, he swung the man face-first into the brick of the wall and brought the pistol up to the back of the head.

  Cocked the hammer and leaned in close.

  “Why are you following me, sir? Answer me true, or I’ll shoot your head off.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. So, so sorry . . .”

  It was a woman’s voice. Most unexpected.

  “Miss Savage?”

  “Yes, sir. Please don’t shoot my head off!”

  He stepped back, lowered the pistol, utterly confounded.

  “Miss Savage, what? Why?”

  “May I turn around, sir?”

  “Of course, woman! Turn, turn.”

  Slowly, she did and he could make out her face in the darkness, strands of her dark hair escaping from under the bowler. He stepped back again, and yet again. Peacoat, breeches, riding boots, derby. She had entirely passed for a young man.

  Except for the fact that her breasts were glowing.

  “I . . . I saw you riding,” she moaned. “I was so very curious. Everything has been so strange, with you and Seventh and the sisters Helmsly-Wimpoll. And I know it was wrong . . .”

  She looked about to cry.

  “Wrong?” he snapped. “It was bloody dangerous! I could have shot you just now!”

  “I know,” she wailed. “I’m so sorry . . .”

  And suddenly, the tears began to spill. She bit her lip and turned away, hugging her ribs. He waited a moment, confounded even more. Her glowing breasts were a puzzle, but now, a strange voice was beginning to whisper in his ear. He didn’t understand any of it. It was like something he should know, a scrap of memory from childhood, but he needed to push it from his mind. He had one thing and one thing alone to do tonight.

  “Listen,” he said. “Things are about to get a little sketchy. I need you to stay here. Do you understand, Miss Savage? Ivy? Please, will you stay here?”

  She sniffed some more before turning around. Her eyes were wet and shining like an ocean, and she tried to smile. Dash it all if his knees didn’t suddenly feel weak.

  “No, sir,” she sniffed. “I’ll not stay here. I’m coming with you.”

  “No, Miss Savage, you most certainly are not.”

  “Yes, I am. And if you refuse, I’ll . . .” She looked around the mews. Sniffed. “I’ll . . .” She looked back at him, raised her chin. “I’ll scream.”

  She was serious, he could tell, but it was difficult to look anywhere but her breasts. The whispers were becoming a voice inside his head. It was a puzzle.

  He held up one finger. “If you come, you will say nothing. You will do nothing. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I most certainly do.”

  “And when I say, ‘look away,’ you will look away. Understood?”

  “I will most certainly look away.”

  “Right.” And without any further discussion, he grabbed her wrist and dragged her out of the mews and back out into the street.

  “ALEXANDER DUNN, I apprehend you, sir, in the name of the Crown!”

  She pulled the mask from the rogue’s face and let out a startled yelp.

  It was none other than Alexandre Gavriel St. Jacques Lord Durand. They were one and the same man.

  “That is a lovely pearl necklace you are wearing, Penny,” he said.

  He smiled, raised his pistol, and that was the last Penny remembered for some time.

  THEY STARED UP the steps of 1011-A West Pinchon Street.

  A gaslight lit the front door and stair. He had released her wrist earlier when she had complained that his grip was causing her discomfort, and he cursed his weakness. Rupert had been right. Women were a complicated, messy business. Better to stay disentangled. This one was like a bloody thornbush, always catching on things and drawing blood.

  And the damned voices were singing a very old song in his head.

  “What are we waiting for?” she whispered. She smelled good, like rose hips and fine leather. A most unusual mix.

  “The frost,” he whispered back.

  “Ah,” she said and thankfully said nothing more.

  There was no frost. There was no cold. It was confounding. Perhaps the woman had thrown them off. Perhaps the singing was a problem. Perhaps there was more that he needed to do.

  He turned to her and raised a finger.

  “Stay,” he said and proceeded up the steps to rap on the doorknocker. He could feel her warmth on his back. Disobedient she was. Like Tag. Disobedient and needy.

  There was no cold, only the singing of a very old song. He rapped again. Nothing. No answer. No cold. He reached for the knob. Locked. Turned back to the woman.

  “Look away.”

  To her credit, she did. He fished from his pocket a file and pick, bent low, and set to work.

  “Oh look! The Mad Lord de Lacey is a regular screwsman!”

  “Louder please,” he muttered. “I don’t think they heard you back in Milling.”

  “You are truly Alexander Dunn, sir, Penny’s favourite jewel thief. Do you have a clockwork heart?”

  “Please shut up.”

  There was a click and he straightened, turned the knob with his hand. The door opened with a very loud creak, and he cursed the bane of rusty hinges.

  She leaned into him.

  “Louder please,” she purred. “I don’t think they heard you back in Milli
ng.”

  He began revisiting his decision not to shoot her.

  The house was empty. It was well-furnished and comfortable, and he thanked God once again that there were no automatons. It was an older home, with low ceilings and plank floors. Imitation Turkish rugs were everywhere.

  “What are we looking for?” she asked in a whisper that could not hide her grin. Damned creature thought this was a game.

  “Henbane,” he answered. “He’s poisoned his mother- and sister-in-law. I need to prove it.”

  “Are you a police detective, sir?

  “If I were, I wouldn’t need to be skulking around in the dark, now would I? Hush, I need to ask.”

  “Ask who? There’s no one home.”

  Yes, seriously revisiting his decision not to shoot her.

  He closed his eyes, turned his palms to the ceiling, and the cold descended like a blanket over the room.

  He could feel them, their voices like whispers in the night, needed to sift them out to find the ones who wanted him here. But the singing was a distraction. It was most definitely coming from the woman, but not from her and it didn’t belong here on this street in Milnethorpe. It was the same voice that had summoned him from the chapel on the day the airships had arrived. It was like an echo of something he should know, something from a lifetime ago, from a lifetime, from his childhood . . .

  The voice of angels . . .

  “Oh,” he heard Ivy say and slowly he turned to look at her.

  For the first time since he’d met her, there was a shadow flickering in and around Miss Ivy Savage.

  “What the devil . . .?”

  She frowned, reached under her collar, and pulled it out to dangle it from her fingers. It was spinning quietly, flashing light in all directions.

  He approached her. “Where in heaven or on earth did you get that?”

  “Christien gave it to me . . .”

  He raised his hands toward the locket. It began to move at the end of the chain as if pulled by some great magnet, whirring and humming like clockwork. He cupped it in his palms, not touching it but keeping it taut at the end of its chain by some unseen force.

  “What are you doing, sir?”

  The voice of angels . . .

  He could barely hear her. The spinning was calling, locking, binding.

  “Sebastien, your eyes are changing colour . . .”

  “Voces,” he whispered, engrossed. “Voces angelorum . . . the voice of angels . . .”

  In the sitting room, the air began to thicken like mist or fog and the casings of the doors and windows had grown inexplicably white.

  He turned now toward the middle of the room, where the air was so frosty that it seemed to be taking shape. He followed it, moving stiffly and leaving her standing in the foyer. For its part, the locket merely continued to whir and hum.

  “Here?” He glanced around as ice began to crawl up the walls, creating a plume with every breath. “Hic? Ostendite mihi . . .”

  He looked around at the writing desks and bookshelves and settees. He began to open drawers and dressers, ran his hands along the surfaces of the desks. He felt Ivy watching him.

  “Why are you speaking in Latin, sir? And what in the name of heaven is going on with this locket?”

  It was still spinning at the end of its chain, now hovering parallel to the floor. Her eyes were wide and they darted from him to the locket and then back again.

  “What sort of detective are you?”

  “Servio ab arbitrio maiestatis eius.”

  “English?”

  He blinked, trying to reenter the conversation.

  “I slouží u potěšení z jejího majestátu.”

  “What?”

  Damn. He shook his head. The locket was throwing him off.

  “I serve at the pleasure of Her Majesty.”

  “Her Majesty?” She stepped into the room. “You mean Queen Victoria?”

  “The very one. Listen, we both have far too many questions. Right now, we need to find that henbane and get this done.”

  “But I don’t understand!”

  The frost had not moved, and he began lifting cushions from the settees, running his fingers between the seats. “I will explain what I can later. Please, either help me find the accursed stash or go back to the corner where you left your horse. One or the other.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her chin rise, just a little.

  “Very well. What sort of henbane?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what form? Liquid, powder, leaf, roll? It would help to know.”

  He frowned. It was a good question. “I don’t have an inkling, Miss Savage.”

  “Well then, I—I would think the kitchens, unless . . .”

  She put her hands on her hips and in the locket’s glowing light, he noticed that the breeches fit her rather well. In fact, he thought he had never seen a woman look so very good.

  He swallowed.

  “Unless . . .” She bit her lip, thinking.

  “Unless? Unless what?” Damn her. She and her accursed locket were a distraction.

  “Wait!” she exclaimed and stomped into the room toward him, taking great pains to make as much noise with her boots as she could.

  “Hush,” he hissed. “You’ll wake the dead.”

  “I thought that was your job. Ah ha!” And she beamed at him. “Did you hear that?”

  “In fact I did. Do it again.”

  She stomped back. Over one area of the floor, the thump of her boots produced a rather hollow sound. She turned and smiled again, and the locket flashed light across her face.

  “Well done, Miss Savage!”

  “Sometimes I forget that I am the daughter of a Metropolitan Police crimes investigator!”

  He began to shoulder the settees out of the way. The carpet next, and he grabbed one end and rolled. It was stiff and bristly under his fingers, and he wrinkled his nose at the cheapness of the fibre. “Turkish” carpets made in Birmingham, most likely. Or Italy.

  She hovered over him as he dropped to hands and knees. He could feel the locket purring now as though it were a part of him—his heart, maybe, or his soul, and he wondered how Christien could have come into possession of such a thing. He ran his fingers along the floorboards. Old wood, worn smooth by time. He could feel the knots, the nails, and finally, one loose board. He pried it up and the cold hit him like a fist.

  “Oh,” she yelped. “Snowflakes! Sebastien, this locket is making snowflakes!”

  Sure enough, it was snowing in the sitting room of Easterton Frederick Crumb.

  He flattened now onto his belly, reached his arm down into the crevasse between the boards. His fingers brushed tins and boxes, letters and papers. He worried that this might be a simple hiding place for family treasures, but he was committed now so he pulled up a frosty tin and passed it over to Ivy.

  “Oh my,” she gasped. She tossed it from hand to hand, the locket flashing light like a beacon. “What on earth is going on?”

  “On earth as it is in heaven,” he said. “Open it, please. Open it.”

  She did, smelled the contents. “Mm hm. Henbane.”

  He waited.

  He looked about the room, waited.

  He sighed, frowned, shook his head. “Non est completum . . .”

  “English, please.”

  “Ah, it’s not finished. We’re not done here . . .” It was like the holding of a breath and he lay back down on the floor, stretched his arm under the boards once again. He closed his eyes.

  “Adiuvate me,” he whispered. “Auxiliate me cum hoc . . .”

  One of the boxes crackled under his fingertips, so he pulled it up to sit cross-legged on the floor. He could feel her lean over his shoulder, felt both the cold of the locket and the warmth of her breath on his neck. It was an unusual experience for him and a distracting one.

  “What’s in there?” she breathed.

  “Proof . . .”

  He
blew his own warm breath across the latch, saw it thaw and crack as he lifted the lid. A pearl necklace and a cameo brooch. His breath frosted in front of him as he released it.

  “Sebastien, what does that mean?”

  “Guilty.”

  Suddenly, there was the rattle of a key in the lock, and the loud creak of a front door opening as Easterton Frederick Crumb and his wife returned home for the night.

  Chapter 22

  Of Murder, Mayhem, and a Revisiting of the

  Four-Wheel/Six-Wheel Controversy

  IVY’S HEART LEAPT into her throat.

  The front door of 1011-A West Pinchon Street swung open, and she could hear two sets of boots stomp into the hall. She dared not budge while Sebastien remained crosslegged on the floor beneath her. She felt his shoulder move, an arm draw back, but the movement was so smooth, so quiet, that she wondered if in fact, she imagined it.

  “Oy, Celia, what’s this, then? You stupid haybag! D’you leave a window ’jar?”

  “’Ere, Eastie. I didn’t leave no window ’jar! What’s all this ice?”

  And the large shape of Easterton Frederick Crumb reached to turn up the gas.

  Ivy had never been so afraid in her life.

  Gaslight hissed, and Crumb and his wife literally leapt back at the sight of two strange people in their disassembled sitting room. First, they leapt, then they slipped on the slicks of ice across the floor. And before she knew it, Sebastien was on his feet, tucking her behind him with a sweep of his arm.

  Finally, she could see the man whose estate they had just jumped. He was in his late thirties, with dark hair and a pockmarked face, and it was clear Crumb was trying for a handlebar moustache but seemed to have purchased the incorrect wax. He was very swift in regaining his balance, however, and with one hand on the frame of the doorway, he brought a pistol to bear with the other.

  “’Oo the bloody ’ell are you?” he growled, and cocked the hammer. His wife, a small, wiry creature, peered out from behind his back.