The Cogspeare Conspiracy (The Cogspeare Chronicles Book 1)

by Valentina S. Grub

“Lord Clinton and the rest of the board. I sent them so many reports about the unsoundness of the m-mine. And when I saw th-that storm coming I went to them in p-person. But they dismissed my concerns, and said I would be sacked if I mentioned any of this.”

  Edwina exchanged glances with her son and Twym.

  “And did you? Did you discuss this with anyone else?” Jepsum hung his head and nodded, mopping his face.

  “Yes. A reporter came by a week or two ago and was asking me these same questions, just like you. I told him all this as well.”

  “Was his name George Talliburn?” asked Twym. Jepsum nodded miserably.

  “And would you be willing to testify on all of this?” Edwina gave him a hard stare.

  “Yes!” he finally exclaimed after no more than a minute under her gaze. “I can’t take it anymore; Mother says the stress is killing me. I’ve already lost two stone in as many weeks. Just do what you will, and let me be.”

  The three visitors came together.

  “What does this mean?” Twym asked, a quill stub flying across a small scroll as fast as he could scribble.

  “It means that we know Clinton and his cronies knew about the dangers of the mine, and still continued with the operation. And that they tried to cover up their part in it afterwards. Dolt, idiot that he is, now has a witness that will corroborate it.”

  “And it means that we should get home now before the house blows up or dissolves.”

  “Can it do that?” wondered Twym as they took their leave.

  Chapter 66:

  Since he caught her on the pneumatic tube plotting, as he insisted on calling it, with his mother, Magnus and Minerva had been fighting, on and off, for three hours. When Erasmus’s tests had come to surprising conclusions, he and his father and brother had made their way downstairs. They had sat down in the drawing room and watched the barristers with extreme interest.

  “Did I miss anything?” asked Erasmus, returning from tubing the mews and giving the staff and his family the all-clear to return. He handed his father some more nuts.

  “Not much,” answered his twin, “though they’ve now begun quoting some obscure law book or some such. Why do they think that would help their argument?”

  “It’s quite obvious, my boy, that they’re in love, and the only way that they can adequately express their conflicted emotions is through the medium with which they feel most comfortable and eloquent.”

  The boys looked aghast at their father.

  “Well, I do listen to your mother occasionally.” They shrugged and turned back to the combatants, who were rather hoarse by this point.

  “And you co-opted my mother, my mother, my mother, into your scheme!”

  “You’ve already said that, Magnus, four times already. And I said I was sorry.”

  “Not for going behind the backs of the family that took you in-”

  “No, but for your stubbornness in continuing to represent Clinton.”

  “I am a barrister. He is my client. That’s what we do, though you could only conceive of that if you were a barrister.”

  “And so I would be if men like you didn’t hinder me at every turn!”

  “They wouldn’t hinder you if you could be objective and think, instead of just feel your way through a case.” She blinked as though he had slapped her. So she slapped right back.

  “And be like you, who feels nothing and acts like an automaton!”

  They were both breathing hard when Edwina, Sebastian, Declan and Twym burst in.

  “What is going on?” she exclaimed, “I heard raised voices. Is something wrong?” She looked at the couple and then slowly smiled. “Oh.”

  After a few beats, Erasmus rose and stated, “Now, if the matinee is over, or at least in intermission, I believe that we need to discuss our experiments.”

  “What is there to discuss?” asked Declan, sitting down gratefully after the mad dash across London on a day of supposed rest. “You sent us the all-clear that it’s safe.”

  “It is…more or less. You see,” he began, strolling over to the still-glaring couple and pushed them into opposite chairs, “since we didn’t have a pure sample of the spesium Craggs Junior or Senior were exposed to, we had to use the next best thing; a tissue sample.”

  “Tissue sample?” wondered Edwina.

  “His finger, Mother,” Amadeus translated. “We cut off his finger and ran some tests on it.”

  “Oh. And how did they do?” she asked of Cornelius, as though asking how her sons did on an exam.

  “Fine, dear, fine. I may have done it a bit differently, but then again, I’m a chemical physicist and Erasmus is a medical man, so I suppose differing methodologies can be permitted.”

  “Anyway,” Erasmus interrupted pointedly, “we did find that a subject must be exposed to the alternate spesium- which we’re calling spesium2 – first hand. It can’t be passed from person to person.”

  “Thank God,” breathed Declan.

  “We also found that spesium2 must be activated in very close proximity to the subject for the negative effects to be felt.”

  “So..?” Sebastian wondered, stroking L.B on the floor.

  “That means, Seb, that Craggs Senior must have had particles of spesium2 on him when he came to London, probably got them from the dirty gear his son brought home. As death occurred so quickly, he must have been in generally poor health. He inhaled the particles, which were probably activated by the wet mist, and that caused his death. Now that the particles have reacted, they’re relatively benign.” They all took a moment to digest the sad, if relieving news.

  “But you said you found surprising conclusions. Was that it?”

  “Well…” Erasmus began, “This is going to sound very…odd, but as we were conducting tests on the specimen-”

  “-the finger,” Amadeus clarified.

  “Indeed. As we were doing that…the finger moved.” There was silence.

  “You insist on over-dramatizing everything, Erasmus.”

  “Everything in this house is over-dramatized,” grunted Magnus at his second brother. “Just what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Just what I said,” Erasmus replied sharply. “The finger moved in the dish. It began to twitch. It was obviously just the water in the cells reacting to the spesium, but-”

  “But it gave us one hell of a shock, didn’t it, boys? Not ashamed to say that I almost lost control of myself.” Erasmus rolled his eyes but continued.

  “We quickly went to the body, and though the spesium mist had since stopped oozing from it, it began to show signs of…movement.”

  “Movement!” exclaimed Declan, horrified, “Do you mean that it, he, was alive again?!”

  “Absolutely not. We checked for signs of life, both physical and mental, but both were nil. We were afraid of how much further it would go, and since we knew that we were safe, we disposed of the body with acid. Steamins should be arranging for what’s left of it to be transported back to Cornwall.”

  “Nothing can be simple in this house, can it?” Magnus said. “The case that was going to make my career is actually going to end it. Assassinated at the hands of mother and my…Minerva.”

  “It always has to be about you, doesn’t it?” Minerva shot back. They were both back on their feet. Edwina leaned over and grabbed a handful of nuts, saying quietly, “It must be love if we just told them about a resurrected body and all they can do if fight.”

  “Reminds me of that time…” Cornelius began, but he was cut off when Magnus suddenly rounded on his mother.

  “Et tu, mater?”

  “I’m so sorry, dear, I do know how you value it, but it’s being repaired as we speak.”

  “You were helping her to help opposing counsel and- wait, what?”

  “Nothing, dear, do continue.”

  “No, tell me, what do I value so highly?” Edwina had the grace to look utterly abashed but confessed.

  “After I met Minerva in jail I just knew that you two s
hould get better acquainted. But how could you possibly do that when you’re always working or alone in your rooms? I knew that you were about to lose your valet, so I gave him a little extra coin to flood your flat so that you would have to move back here, if only temporarily.”

  Magnus closed his eyes and hoped that this was a nightmare. But alas, everyone was still in the drawing room when he opened them again.

  “Mother,” he sighed, exasperated but not surprised except at how much less he felt betrayed at her subterfuge than at Minerva’s. “Well, you have me here now, and Minerva and I certainly know each other very well.” He said the latter so harshly that Edwina had to hold back her tears. But Minerva was made of much sterner stuff, and simply said, with icy aplomb,

  “I think it’s time that I go and speak with Mr. Dolt.”

  Chapter 68:

  As much as Sebastian and Cornelius tried to enliven the group, dinner was an exercise in stony and awkward silence. It was a silence so palpable, even below stairs, that Bongout didn’t make the effort to cook his usual five-course meal, and instead gave them salad and trilobite terrine, and then he was mortified when they didn’t even bother to complain.

  Quintus had insisted on coming down, fully dressed in evening kit and looking little worse for being cut open by his brother. But it didn’t take much to convince him to lay down on the settee for a digestive.

  “Well Magnus, I hate to say it, but you really botched that up,” said the invalid as he sipped a very full snifter of fine cognac.

  “What are you talking about?” came the tired reply from the depths of an overstuffed chair. Quintus rolled his eyes.

  “Minerva, of course. Really, the first woman to show any interest in you, and you have to ruin it by being so…ethical” he ended as though spitting out something slimy.

  “She was the one who started it!”

  “Oh, very mature. So, what are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing! I have to prepare for the case tomorrow.” But he made no move to get out of his chair, instead taking another swallow of the amber liquid. “Besides, what can I do?”

  “For one thing, you shouldn’t be here wallowing like some love-struck calf!” exclaimed Erasmus as he helped himself to his third, or was it a fourth, drink. “You’re an embarrassment to the Cogspeare men. You should be out there, breaking more hearts,” he looked over at his elder brother, “or at least, trying to.”

  “Erasmus is right,” nodded Quintus, “you should both go out together.” Erasmus and Magnus looked at each other, and then both said,

  “No!”

  “Why not? It’s a capital idea. Erasmus, you can go out and have some of your horrible gin, and show Magnus what to do when a woman throws him over because of his lack of sensitivity. You must have plenty of experience with that.”

  “There is absolutely no chance of my going out with him. He can take Amadeus, or Declan, or Sebastian!” Quintus smiled, and said in a hushed tone,

  “Amadeus is at church, Seb is too young, and Declan refuses to do any more outings with the family until further notice; he said the outing with Mother this morning was traumatizing.”

  “There is no chance in hell that we will go out together,” Magnus said finally.

  And that was when his invalid brother pulled out the modified dart gun and aimed it at them.

  “What the hell?” exclaimed Erasmus. “What are you going to do, shoot us if we don’t go out?” he guffawed. Quintus smiled a sinister grin and pulled the trigger. The dart struck the chair Erasmus was perched on and quivered.

  “These are my favourite trousers!” he cried, yanking out the dark from where it pinned him to the chair.

  “And that was a warning. Now, go out and frolic, have some fun for me, and I’ll be here, waiting, until you get home. And I don’t want to see you before midnight at the earliest.”

  As the brothers quickly left the room to get their coats, Magnus asked, “Are you sure that you didn’t knock something loose in his brain during the surgery?”

  “Not entirely.”

  It was a soft night that they wandered into, and though they didn’t speak, it was silently agreed that Erasmus would lead the way.

  As they approached the East End, Magnus noticed that his brother’s demeanour changed; he became stealthier, stronger, and even darker.

  “You seem to know this place better than Mayfair.” Erasmus shrugged. “How is that even possible?”

  “One night a couple of years ago, I saw a toff- that’s what they call the aristocrats here- get ambushed. I realized that if I continued coming here I would either have to blend in or be killed. Watch your shoes there,” he sidestepped a noxious black pool that Magnus didn’t even want to think about.

  “So, why do you keep coming here?” But he never got a reply, as Erasmus pulled him to the side and began to undress him. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “You’re overdressed, brother, and you’ll get us noticed. Now,” he undid Magnus’s waistcoat buttons, pulled off his tie and mussed his hair, “that’s better. Now, just follow me and don’t say a word. You’d probably antagonize someone.”

  Erasmus led the way around the corner and after a few more turns they stopped in front of his favourite haunt, the Brass Balls. The visible fumes that assaulted them as he opened the door made Magnus stagger back, but he yanked his brother back inside.

  “Is this hell?” he asked with a mixture of wonder and terror.

  “Close enough. Come on,” he pulled him forward. They wove their way between the low-lying couches, where men and barely-dressed women were lounging, limbs entangled, drinking from old jars filled with neon liquids and puffing on glass pipes that let loose plumes of blue smoke.

  “Jesus, Erasmus,” Magnus grabbed his arm, “this is a rose garden, for God’s sake. How much do you smoke?”

  Magnus wasn’t referring to an English garden in the outdoors. A ‘rose garden’ was a den where patrons could smoke Azure Rose, a species of blue, psychedelic and hallucinogenic rose found only in rural parts of China.

  “I don’t smoke Azure Rose, Magnus. That’s rather beyond the bubble, even for me” he replied, shaking his head at how little his brother knew him. Instead, he led him to the bar where Mr. Mister came up and smiled his silvery grin.

  “This is Mr. Mister, Magnus, and don’t say a damn word.”

  “You do realize that his name is redundant, right?”

  “And this bein’ one o’yo bros, eh mon?” Magnus stared, then said under his breath,

  “Translation, please?” Erasmus elbowed him hard, and instead said,

  “Aye, mon, ‘tis. Lookee, him nil with the birds, so donay us a couple and we’ll parlay no mo’.” Again, that toothy grin, and Mr. Mister fixed them two jars filled to a slopping brim with tangerine liquid.

  “Ah, thank you,” nodded Magnus as he took a tentative sip. Suddenly, Erasmus’s hand was on the back of his throat, making him convulsively swallow.

  “Swallow it or we won’t live to regret it.” Magnus convulsively swallowed, and then spat out, “I have to wonder why I’m here with you.” Erasmus took a full swallow, then smacking his lips, replied,

  “Because you’re defending an immoral bastard for filthy lucre, you lost the love- and traitor- of your life, and, lest we forget, your brother held us at dart-point.”

  “He’s your brother too.”

  “Not when he shoots my favourite pair of trousers.” They then meditatively sipped the beverage that tasted vaguely of copper and was 96.7% alcohol.

  “So, you got a taste for this up North? This is made from the Copper Heather, isn’t it?” Erasmus merely nodded, finished off his drink, and then slapped Magnus on his back- making him spray out the tiny sip in his mouth. Mr. Mister glared at them for dirtying his perfectly grimy bar.

  “Come on, old chap, time to get you over that Minerva-woman.”

  “Oh, and how would you suggest I do that?” Erasmus began dragging him towards the back of the room,
towards a tiny staircase.

  “Like any other man with a pulse; have at another woman.”

  “What?!”

  “I told Mr. Mister that you haven’t had experience, so you’d like to have some…quality time with the ladies upstairs.”

  “You’re giving me to a whore?!” Erasmus smiled grimly.

  “It’s not like I’m using you as a human sacrifice. I thought this would make you feel better.”

  “Oh? And you pay for it as well?”

  “It’s always on the house for me,” he grinned. They had reached the top of the stairs and faced a long, narrow corridor, with terribly thin walls.”

  “I think I may be ill.”

  “I thought the same thing when I…No, no, wait a minute, that wasn’t it. I had had a bad batch of Heasky” he named the heather-based drink. “Now, get in there and have some fun.” He thrust Magnus forward, and the only options for the now inebriated Magnus were to either slam into the door or open it. He opened it and screamed.

  “What? Do I have to show you every-…oh, shit.” Erasmus and Magnus stood woodenly for a second, taking in the horrific sight. A young woman with curly blond hair was sprawled on the floor, a pool of blood spreading out from her head.

  Erasmus broke from his daze first, dashing over and gathering her up to place her on the bed. He gave her a cursory examination and then began pulling bits of medical equipment out of his pockets.

  “Will she live?” asked Magnus hesitantly.

  “Yes, should do, though she’ll have a bad bump on her head. Jesus, Mr. Mister,” he addressed the barkeep who had silently appeared behind Magnus, “what the hell kind of place are you running?”

  “I didn’t hear nufink. And me patrons aren’t paticler.”

  “By the amount of blood, I’d say was attacked and left to bleed out here. Did you see anyone carry her in?” he began bandaging her head with remarkably clean gauze.

  “Noam, but a feller comin wit his poorly sis,” he raised his eyebrows, showing what he thought of that tale.

  “Did-” began Magnus, “Did you know him?” Mr. Mister shook his head. And since he didn’t want to leave the bar for too long, he simply slipped back into the corridor shadows again.