Red Dragon – White Dragon

by Gary Dolman

  “Well, it’s a great pity that we haven’t yet found the sword,” Atticus replied. “Mrs Fox is an expert in comparing fingertip prints. We could have compared any prints she found on the sword with those of our suspects, including Britton of course.”

  Lowther looked up and fixed an enquiring stare onto Atticus.

  “Fingertip prints? I don’t understand you, Fox.”

  “Then allow me to explain.” Atticus purred like a cat as he warmed to the subject. “Mrs Fox uses a technique, which she first read about almost ten years ago in a scientific journal called Nature. It was by the learned Dr Henry Faulds, who suggested that the close examination of fingertip prints, which incidentally are entirely unique to each person, may be used to prove beyond doubt who precisely has recently touched or handled an object.”

  Sir Hugh smiled in what must surely have been wonderment.

  “What an age we live in these days, eh, Fox, where everything is governed by science. And how very ingenious of Lucie and Dr Faulds; it will soon be impossible to commit a crime at all.”

  He chuckled, briefly and stared at the cast.

  “Tell me; would it be useful for you if I were to summon Britton’s doctor to speak with you about his condition? You could satisfy yourselves at first-hand about his propensity for murder.”

  Atticus glanced at Lucie who said, “It would be very useful indeed, Sir Hugh, but only on the strict condition that you first obtain Mr Britton’s full and free permission for the doctor to do so.”

  Sir Hugh frowned. “But Britton is mad. What would be the point of obtaining his permission?” He shrugged and before she could reply said, “But very well, very well, I’ll ride over to speak with Britton directly we finish this tea. I need to warn him about Elliott’s brothers anyway and advise him to be on his guard for a while. Now, Dr Hickson is already due to attend on my daughter tomorrow morning as she’s still sickly. I’ll prevail on him to stay for luncheon and after that, we can all discuss Britton’s state of mind.”

  It was Lucie’s turn to frown.

  “I’m sorry to hear that your daughter is still ill, Sir Hugh. It seems strange; she looked very well, radiant even, when we first met her yesterday afternoon, but then by dinner she had sickened. She must have declined very quickly during the course of the day.”

  “Thank you, Lucie. Your concern for her is very welcome. It does seem that her illness comes and goes. She won’t have the doctor examine her; why, I cannot imagine. Probably the Lowther streak of stubbornness running true in her, but it’s gone on for far too long now and I’ve insisted that he does.”

  “What are her symptoms? You know I have been a nurse.”

  Sir Hugh shrugged. “Let me see; what did Bessie tell me? Oh yes, she’s been having frequent bouts of sickness – quite spewing her guts actually, and she’s been very tired too, and rather tearful. Not at all what one would expect from a Lowther. We’re usually made of much sterner stuff than that. It’s probably from spending too much time with Artie.”

  “We had intended to put questions to both Master Artie and Miss Jennifer tomorrow,” Atticus remarked. “I do hope she’s well enough for that.”

  Sir Hugh flushed.

  “Put questions to them; what the devil for, Fox?” he growled. “You can’t think them responsible for the murders, surely? My father was their own grandfather, don’t forget. They doted on him.”

  “My husband and I think it almost unimaginable that they had anything to do with the murders, Sir Hugh.” Lucie’s smile was reassurance itself. “But as always, we need to follow a strict methodology in our investigation. As well as the identification of the guilty, that involves the vindication of the innocent. It is also quite possible that they might be able to add something, even the tiniest particle of information that could lead us more surely and swiftly to the real culprit.”

  “To Michael-bloody-Britton,” Sir Hugh roared but then he nodded curtly.

  “Very well, you have my permission to ask them.”

  Chapter 23

  The next day again promised to be a hot and cloudless one. The sun had long since simmered the night mists from the face of the moors when Atticus and Lucie left on their bicycles shortly after breakfast to visit the site of Sewingshields Castle. They intended to return to Shields Tower after the doctor had had a chance to attend on Jennifer Lowther but certainly in good time for luncheon. Lucie in particular had a number of questions she was anxious to put to him.

  Sir Hugh had returned late the previous night, triumphantly brandishing a sheet of paper footed by Uther Pendragon’s elegant signature. This gave his full and free permission for Dr Hickson to discuss his mental condition with Sir Hugh, the Foxes, or indeed with the Devil, himself, should he wish to.

  It was against a wide, broken section of Hadrian’s Wall that Atticus and Lucie Fox left their bicycles, pausing for a while to gaze out over the silver pool of the Broomlee Lough before making their way with mounting excitement to the edge of the cliffs and the moors and bogs of Sewingshields beyond.

  The setting of wild fells, rocky crags and glistening silver-blue lakes was nothing short of breathtaking. The castle, legendary fortress of the Knights of the Round Table, must surely be even more so. They stood and searched the vista. It would be a ruin, they knew, but surely there could be no more romantic ruin in all of England.

  James the footman had obligingly sketched them a pencil map of the area and Atticus held it up against the landscape.

  Yes, there were the Sewingshields Crags behind them. The loughs were accurately plotted, each in its allotted place. There was the Fogy Moss and even its island of firm ground on which a vast, fairy-tale castle should be standing. But no, nothing whatever remained of Sewingshields Castle, bar a stagnant pond, an echo of the earthworks and an overgrown smattering of rubble. Sheep now grazed where once proud walls must have stood, their strength long since smashed by the Scots and Sir Hugh Lowther, and their stones parasitised by generations of farmers and villagers for cottages, laithes and dry stone walls.

  Lucie confided her disappointment to Atticus.

  “If you recollect, Sir Hugh did tell us that he’d demolished what was left of the ruins,” he reminded her gently.

  “I know, Atty, but it seems such an enormous shame that the last resting place of our greatest ever king should be so… so ordinary and hidden under rough moorland, unmarked and anonymous.”

  “If it really is his last resting place,” Atticus replied.

  When his wife’s expression turned to puzzlement, he added, “Perhaps that is precisely what makes him such a big part of our folklore. There is no marked grave, so therefore, perhaps there is no body. If there is no body, perhaps in turn, there was no death. And if there was no death, then maybe, just maybe, we could believe that King Arthur and Queen Guinevere will indeed return at the ‘End of Days’ to defeat the White Dragon, as legend promised they would.”

  Lucie squeezed his arm and smiled.

  “Atticus Fox, I do declare you’re sounding almost romantic.”

  She looked around and her smile withered.

  “There is a feeling about the place though, Atty; something a little… eerie and discomforting, as if we’re being watched by something malevolent.”

  She shuddered.

  “I don’t like it here. You really don’t want to go searching for this vault, do you?”

  Atticus smiled. “So we can awaken King Arthur and ask him directly if he committed the murders? No, I don’t think so, Lucie.”

  “Then do you mind if we leave? Maybe we could go back early to Shields Tower? At least we can talk to King Arthur’s namesake, even if his sister is still with her doctor.”

  “Guinevere’s namesake might still be with her doctor, don’t you mean?” Atticus replied.

  Seeing his wife’s renewed puzzlement, he explained: “The name ‘Artie,’ as you already know, is a pet form of ‘Arthur.’”

  Lucie nodded.

  “‘Jennifer,’” Atti
cus continued, “is the modern form of the old Celtic name ‘Guinevere.’”

  Lucie’s eyes widened in surprise. “Is it really?” she exclaimed, “How very interesting. Then, as you say, we can question Lady Guinevere’s namesake afterwards.”

  She glanced again at the loose lines of rubble littering the turf.

  “Do you think there might be a link; Artie masquerading as the returned King Arthur and Jennifer as Lady Guinevere? After all, Jennifer did say, and she said it in deadly earnest, that the resurrected King Arthur was the killer.”

  Atticus shrugged and the question was left hanging and unanswered as they picked their way back across the rough bogland to the towering escarpment, to their bicycles and the narrow road that was their route back to Shields Tower.

  He watches the figures weaving their way along the footpaths of the Fogy Moss as he stands, silent and perfectly still, atop the high crags of Sewingshields. That is his place – his own sacred place and they have no business defiling it with their presence.

  “My Ladies?” he asks of the air around him. He speaks just loud enough to summon the spirits from their dark places but not so loud that his voice might carry down to the marshes below. And he bows his head in obeisance. It is always well to be respectful.

  Fittingly it is Skuld who answers him and in her wisdom she has anticipated his question.

  “You ask what is to be done with Atticus Fox once his wife is given to you. It is quite simple, Lowther. He must die. He will be the seventh and final part of your gift to us.”

  He is confused now. “But the seven have been already chosen. They are—”

  “No!” Urth’s harsh shriek scythes through his mind. “Lancelot’s death was your will, not ours. You slew him yourself for seducing your woman.”

  “And we allowed it.” Another voice growls from the ancient stones around him. It is Verthandi’s. “To punish you for doing nothing – NOTHING – as your mother stepped from these cliffs.”

  “Do I kill him now, my Lady Verthandi,” he asks, swallowing the rebuke. “It would be fitting to kill him here, at Sewingshields.”

  “Not YET: You already have your orders,” Verthandi screams and he cowers from her rage.

  “Two have fallen,” said Urth after a moment.

  “Four must fall this day,” Verthandi adds, calmer now.

  “And one will fall in days to come.” Skuld finishes the pronouncement. “And Atticus Fox will be that seventh and final part of the wergild.”

  He bows his head lower yet. They are the Sisters of the Wyrd, the Norns, who carve the fate of every man, and every god.

  Quo Fata Vocant.

  The Sisters know the soul of every man, alive or dead, but they honour him by speaking to him alone.

  Sometimes when he hears their voices, so clear and so commanding, speaking from nowhere, speaking from everywhere, he marvels at how those around him cannot hear them too. It is a privilege above words to be called by the Fates, but sometimes, even he is compelled to admit, it is a privilege too great for mortal man to carry.

  His father once told him that he too served the Fates and that he too was bound to go wherever they called him.

  Quo Fata Vocant.

  But when he proudly told his father one day that the Fates spoke to him in voices of flesh and blood, he had laughed. He had laughed just as Urth laughed.

  His father had said that the voices were false, that he was perhaps overtired or that he must have fallen to opium or liquor. But he knew better. They did speak to him. They did. How could they be false when they knew so much, when they could read even his thoughts?

  His father had laughed, but not for long. He had taken him to Fenham, to the regimental barracks where a holy man discretely sprinkled him with water and muttered strange words over him.

  But Fenham is in Northumberland too and the Norns in their turn had laughed as the blessed drops splashed onto his skin. They had mocked the Chaplain trying to cast them forth in the name of Jesus such that they made him giggle and his father had been obliged to take him behind the barrack huts and thrash him with his cane.

  He smiles again at what they told him the Chaplain did each night on Newcastle’s Town Moor but the memory is fleeting and he turns his mind again to the present.

  Before him, the silver ribbon of the Grindon Lough draws his gaze across to the land beyond the Vallum, that vast Roman earthwork which shadows the Wall, to a road. There, in the far distance, a pony gig turns off it, just as he knew it would, towards a second, more ancient road running parallel to the first. This is the old Stanegate, the ‘stone road,’ built by Agricola. It had doubtless witnessed countless deaths over the centuries it had lain straddling the country. What would be one more?

  He thinks again of his true love, beautiful in repose in her grotto over the Wall, and feels black hatred for the driver of that gig.

  ‘Four must fall this day.’

  His horse is waiting, impatiently pawing the ground. Perhaps it too can hear the call of the Norns. He gives it its head and like Sleipnir, itself, it carries him swiftly over the ground.

  And then in the time it takes for love to be betrayed he is there, at the cottage, with its dragon of blood on the door.

  It opens before him and he beholds his enemy, he beholds Hickson, smiling the secret smile of a serpent.

  Hickson holds out his hand, his treacherous mouth is speaking.

  No, Pendragon is not here, he hides on the moors like the coward he is. But the doctor must not know that.

  He steps through the door and smiles his own warm smile of greeting. He invites the doctor to sit, to wait, to have perhaps a goblet, a chalice, a Grail of wine.

  And he smiles once more as he pours it.

  Whither the Fates Call.

  The wine is poison. It is Atropos’. Atropos the Inflexible, the Inevitable, the Bringer of Death, as Skuld also is the Bringer of Death and as too is he. The grape is not grape, but poison berries.

  The doctor drinks and drinks again.

  It is done. Skuld has called for the debt of his life to be repaid and it is fitting that the doctor should know it.

  With a snarl of triumph, he holds out the berries and he says their name: “Belladonna.”

  Chapter 24

  “Mr Collier, has the doctor finished with Miss Jennifer yet, do you know?” Atticus asked the butler as they passed him in the Great Hall.

  Collier’s normally starched expression eased a fraction. It was rare above stairs for anyone to address him as ‘Mister.’

  “No, sir, I fear he hasn’t even arrived yet, which is rather strange because he is usually very punctual, very punctual indeed.”

  He nodded towards a large grandfather clock standing sentinel against the wall. “I once set that clock by Dr Hickson’s visit, Mr Fox, and that is God’s truth.”

  Atticus hesitated. “In that case, do you think it possible that Miss Jennifer might be well enough to answer some informal questions while she waits for him?”

  “She is, Mr Fox, quite well enough.”

  Atticus and Lucie turned sharply towards the direction of the voice and saw Jennifer Lowther smiling bleakly at them from half way up the stairway. She was holding onto the arm of a harassed-looking Artie.

  “I am just a little tired, that’s all,” she continued, “what with poor Grandpapa and Elliott and all. Shall we go into the garden room?”

  She led them wearily through into the orangery and once they were all comfortably seated, Atticus said, “You must of course break off directly the doctor arrives or if you begin to feel unwell again. We are so sorry to have to ask you both these questions but this is a double murder enquiry and we are obliged to be as brutal as we must.

  “Now, let’s begin with the case of Samson Elliott: Are you both fully acquainted with the circumstances and nature of his death?”

  They both nodded and Artie said, “Of course, Mr Fox.”

  He reached across the arm of Jennifer’s wicker chair and took her
hand in his own.

  Atticus glanced down at the movement. “Splendid, then please tell me to the best of your recollection where you both were on that morning of Saturday last.”

  Jennifer answered, “That is very easy, Mr Fox. We both rose early, around six o’clock, breakfasted and then we set off up to the moors. We intended to spend the day collecting various herbs and wild plants up around the Sewingshields Crags and the Roman Wall. Bessie packed us a picnic luncheon in my wicker basket.”

  Lucie frowned. “But wasn’t it rather foggy and drizzly that day? Surely it wasn’t the sort of day to think of venturing onto the moors at all, never mind with a picnic.”

  Jennifer shrugged, looking suddenly weary and Artie took over the tale.

  “We’ve both spent our entire lives in these parts, Mrs Fox. We know the fells and the Sill quite intimately and we’re quite safe there, even in the thickest of fogs.”

  He smiled.

  “Besides, if you know Northumberland, you’ll know that the weather can change in an instant. As like as not, the fog will quickly lift once the sun rises very far. That is exactly what happened that day.”

  Atticus asked, “Did you by any chance happen to see the… the recluse that morning, by whom I mean Michael Britton, or Uther Pendragon, as I believe he prefers to be known?”

  “Uther? No unfortunately we didn’t see him.”

  “I wish we could say that we had,” Jennifer added ruefully. “Then perhaps my father would stop trying to blame him for these murders.”

  Artie nodded. He squeezed her hand and smiled at her. “He might be quite as mad as a March hare, Mr and Mrs Fox, but he is no man-killer.”

  Atticus looked from one to the other.

  “How can you be so sure of that?” he asked at last.

  Jennifer answered and she seemed a little breathless.

  “Because, Mr Fox, as I said to you when we were first introduced, it was King Arthur – the awakened and returned King Arthur – who killed Samson Elliott and my grandfather, not Mr Pendragon.”