“Can I ask a favor of you?”
Agnes nodded. “Of course, m’lady.”
“If this happens again, or if Arundell does anything else that strikes you as odd, let me know immediately.”
For a second, Agnes was silent. Then she said, “I’ll come myself. No good sending Claire, not just now. They’ll know to get you right away if I come here?”
“They will.”
Thirteen
In the most immediate sense, William worked alone and had done so for the vast majority of his career. D Branch didn’t have so many agents that it could assign two to the same place. When the situation called for out-and-out force of arms, his superiors might make an exception, but they usually sent other men when possible, men who could shoot first and never ask questions. The vast majority of the time, William was on his own.
But he did have superiors, and they were never long from his thoughts nor long out of contact. Even in a place as remote as Loch Arach, William sent regular updates—ciphered, naturally—and received them as well, reading carefully even though most of what the central office told him was happening hundreds or thousands of miles away. Between the laws of magic, demonic power, and the occasional unnatural gifts people demonstrated, action at great distances had always been possible. In the world of the telegraph, the express train, and the steamship, it was all the more likely.
After the night of the demon, William therefore ciphered and sent as exact a description as he could manage, detailed what thoughts he’d been able to assemble about the matter without jumping to any conclusions, and posted an innocent-looking letter to his “man of business in London.”
He didn’t expect much of a response. The demon had no obvious ties to Germany, Russia, or France, and none of the more troublesome cults had been active in the region. None of them had been active in general, at least since he’d left London. The Consuasori, if not completely shattered, must still have been picking up the pieces of their run-in with him and Smythe a few months before, and the Brotherhood, if William’s sources were correct, was in the middle of an internecine conflict that made the Wars of the Roses look straightforward.
When the grocer handed him the usual lavender envelope, therefore, he wasn’t surprised. He did notice that it felt thicker than usual and wondered what was going on in the larger world. He hadn’t read anything alarming in the papers, but one never did read about the really alarming incidents.
William paid for the pound of flour Mrs. Simon had asked him to retrieve, picked up the letter, and turned away, only to have a substantial form collide with his injured arm. With an even more substantial effort of will, he kept his exclamation to a startled “Oooof!” rather than giving voice to the words and tone that would really express his feelings.
“Oh, terribly sorry,” said the man who’d run into him. “I do hope you’re all right.” He spoke with obvious worry, which mitigated the worst of William’s annoyance.
“Think nothing of it,” William said. “No harm done.”
He suppressed the urge to rub his arm. Unlike his coat and jacket, the cuts hadn’t turned out to need stitching and were healing without any obvious signs of infection, but he still wore a layer of bandages under his shirt, and the arm underneath them ached devilishly at any rough contact.
“If you’re sure—” said the other man.
He was thoroughly average-looking in height, build, and face, with brown hair and eyes. The only things notable about him were the quality of his clothing—sober dark wool that could have appeared in a London bank—and the tense, drawn look on his face.
At the back of his mind, William felt a tickle. He’d seen this man before.
Granted, this was Loch Arach. There weren’t many people around. He might even have encountered the fellow at the pub and forgotten about it.
“Of course I’m sure,” he said and offered a hand by way of being reassuring. “I don’t know if we’ve met, I’m afraid. William Arundell.”
The other man frowned, just for a moment. They had met, William thought—or the man had heard a few things about the English tourist with more money than sense. “Ross MacDougal.” His accent was subtler than most people’s in Loch Arach, less pronounced even than Judith’s.
“A pleasure to meet you,” said William.
Ross nodded, then glanced at the letter William still held. “Good news from home?”
“I doubt it,” said William. “My aunt hasn’t looked on the bright side of anything in her life. But she means well, and she never misses a letter. Family, you know.”
“I do indeed,” said Ross. “My mother and sister are great letter writers. Having me here with them may be a disappointment, at that—one less excuse to pick up the pen.”
William chuckled. “I would think there’d be compensations,” he said. “How long have you been staying with them?”
“Oh, a month or two,” said Ross. “And you? You’re Mrs. Simon’s guest, if I’m not mistaken.”
“For a little over a fortnight now, yes,” William said. “She keeps an excellent house.”
“Well, I hope we’ll have the pleasure of your company for a while yet,” said Ross. He hesitated a moment, then turned to the grocer. “Anything for me?”
“No,” the man behind the counter said without even needing to check. “Nothing today, Mr. MacDougal.”
Leaving them to their discussion, William pocketed his letter and headed off, thinking. Ross made a second recent arrival, though he’d been in the village a while before the first murder. So had Hamilton, granted—and Judith had been at the castle longer than that. And all that speculation assumed the killer had to be an outsider.
Usually, one learned to contact the Outer Darkness from books or from other similarly inclined blackguards. The world was wide, though, and the forests and mountains of Loch Arach were very old. William couldn’t say with any certainty that the killer hadn’t gotten the spells from a more knowledgeable ancestor, or gone out into the woods and made a dark pact with a Thing already living there.
There was so damned little he could say for certain. That was very often the case on his missions, but never more so than on this one.
He made his way back to his rented rooms, not seeing either his landlady or her daughter on the way, which didn’t surprise him. It was a pretty autumn afternoon, perfect for going visiting and completely imperfect for staying inside and doing chores. That was convenient for him—although he didn’t have the luxury of neglecting his.
A small oak desk stood in the corner of his room, complete with stationery, a scratchy fountain pen, and a chair with hard purple cushions. Purple was a general theme in the room. William had stayed in much worse, including places where a bed or even a clean patch of ground was a luxury, so he wasn’t inclined to complain, but he still sometimes felt as if he were sleeping on the inside of a giant sugarplum.
In that room, the lavender envelope only seemed appropriate, as did the looping copperplate script on the front and the overpowering fussy floral scent that rose from it. The element of surprise was an agent’s best advantage. Nobody would expect a scented letter on lavender paper to come from the central office.
Nor would the letter’s contents provide that hypothetical onlooker with any immediate grounds for suspicion.
My dear Willie, it opened. Despite his familiarity with the scheme, William still squirmed inwardly when he read that greeting, both for himself and for whoever at the central office had to write it. He wondered if “Watkins” did employ an actual maiden aunt.
I once again take up my pen to write, in the hopes that this finds you well and enjoying your holiday. We all miss you terribly, but that will hardly surprise you.
Everything was holding steady back in London. Good. A letter that didn’t mention missing him, somewhere in that first paragraph, would have meant that there was trouble and that he sho
uld make immediate arrangements to return.
I myself am keeping well, though the autumn has brought on my rheumatism, as it always does. Your cousin Earnest has, however, recommended a specialist in such things, who he says was quite helpful to his mother.
Earnest. The family member mentioned in the second paragraph was always the key to the cipher. William skimmed another paragraph of meaningless news, discussions of more fictional people’s health and the repairs being made to a nonexistent town house, and then found the line he was looking for.
I was privileged to attend a lecture on Saturday last, which contained a great deal of thoughtful and enlightening discourse. The topic was vegetarianism.
When the writer mentioned a new discovery or educational experience, he—or she, if it really was a maiden aunt—would skip one sentence, and then begin the ciphered material. William took out his own, more reliable pen, removed a sheet of paper from the stack so that the impression of his letters might not travel through to the sheets below it, and began to work the message out.
MacAlasdairs were Jacobites. Not many other details available to us right now. History gets patchy around then. Sorcerous power definite.
The history of the Risings, real or popular, had never been William’s specialty. In his briefing, D Branch had given him a few details: that both sides had used magic, often with massive casualties, and that forces on both sides had, on one occasion or another, dipped into the darker side of the occult. Blood sacrifice, and not of the willing, had been one example. Demonic pacts had been another.
William put down his pen and stretched out his fingers, looking at them and not at the message.
A hundred and fifty years was a long time. Nobody living then would be a problem for him now, but grudges were a more common inheritance than any ever laid out in a will.
And he was English—obviously so.
How carefully had Judith’s ancestors handed down their resentment? How much of it did she still carry around now? And what else might they have passed down along with it?
So far, he’d seen nothing to directly suggest that Judith was anything but what she appeared. He thought of her face, though—tight-lipped and narrow-eyed with suspicion on their first meeting—and then of the snarling creature that had tried to kill him in the woods.
He couldn’t jump to any conclusions. But he couldn’t overlook the evidence just because he still awoke breathless and hard from dreams of her body wrapped around his.
William picked up his pen again and began to translate further.
Will search old records. Family very reclusive since Culloden.
A new paragraph began, talking about young people today and the failures of modern etiquette. The “end message” code hadn’t appeared yet, so William went on deciphering.
The demon is lesser, minor pseudo-Goetic. We’ve encountered it before. You’re likely right about the sacrifice and feeding. Someone there is working from a grimoire or learned from one to begin with. This is not folk magic. We advise extreme caution.
That message, including the royal “we” and the unnecessary advice, was Watkins all the way, no matter how it might have been translated. The man was very fond of reminding his agents that he spoke not for himself but for an entire, if small, branch of Her Majesty’s government. In William’s more charitable moments, he thought Watkins was probably reminding himself of that too.
We’re looking through our files for likely cultists or solo magicians. We will update you when we know more. Meanwhile, make contact with Charles Baxter at the following address.
The letter named a street and number in Aberdeen. William sighed, wondering if his superiors realized just how large Scotland was or how infrequently the trains ran even up in Belholm.
He can explain more in person, and he has additional equipment for you. End cipher.
William skimmed over the last few paragraphs, saw no coded phrases, and tossed the letter into the fire. He felt considerably more satisfaction than usual in doing so, and immediately regretted it.
This was not a hardship assignment. He’d been on far worse. The raid on the Consuasori itself had been more dangerous. He wasn’t nearly old enough to gripe at an early morning and a train journey.
He certainly wasn’t angry at the central office for adding more evidence to support what he’d already half suspected about Judith. That would have been unreasonable.
Fourteen
“Mr. Arundell’s going away day after tomorrow,” said Agnes, keeping her voice on the low side of conversational, even though Janssen had departed and left her and Judith alone in the drawing room. “I dinna’ know that it’s odd exactly, but I thought you might as well know as not.”
“I’m glad you told me,” said Judith. “Going permanently?”
She should have been relieved at the prospect—she wasn’t at all—but she didn’t have time to think much about her reaction because Agnes shook her head.
“For the day. He told me that I shouldna’ be expecting him for meals. I asked what’d be keeping him out so long, and he said he’d be taking care of some business matters, so I can only think he’ll be gone to Aberdeen, if not farther away.”
“If he told you the truth, yes,” said Judith.
The train in Belholm went through on its way to Aberdeen early in the morning and came back late at night. If Arundell was leaving the village, that was the only schedule which would make him miss all three meals.
If he wasn’t, he likely wouldn’t have told Agnes a lie in which anyone might catch him. Folk in Loch Arach might be isolated, but they knew the trains, and it would only take one glimpse of Arundell in the village or Belholm to disprove his story.
Judith smoothed the velvet of the sofa with her fingertips, absently pushing the plush one way and then another. “Keep an eye open while he’s gone, will you? And an ear?”
“I always do,” Agnes said. “Will you be going into the city as well, then?”
“Yes,” said Judith, not at all surprised that the other woman had figured it out. “But nobody’s to know, aye?”
“Just hope the castle doesna’ catch fire in your absence.”
Judith did. She worried about it a little at two the next morning as she mounted Dawn—sidesaddle, as always when she had to ride outside Loch Arach—and pulled her coat tight around her. She worried about the wall that the new stoneworker was helping the elder Jack Shaw to mend, about the Finlays and their stock, and about Mrs. Murray, as well as the host of calamities she hadn’t thought of that would therefore occur as soon as she was gone.
Usually she didn’t mind, even when she left, but usually she didn’t sneak off in the middle of the night. The note she’d left for Janssen left him in charge as always, and he, like the rest of the servants, knew how to keep quiet. However, that wouldn’t help much in an emergency.
But she had to go.
On the road, she turned in her saddle as often as she could, looking back at the castle as she had the first time she’d left. Then it had been the middle of the day—a stormy day, granted, but still light. She’d been riding astride and looking for all the world like a stripling boy, and her elation had far overwhelmed any hint of nerves. The whole world had stretched out in front of her back then, filled with promise.
Now she went as a lady, in stealth, to do a job she hoped was a fool’s errand.
Arundell could honestly have business in Aberdeen and of a completely innocent sort, as far as Judith was concerned—anything from meeting with a solicitor to buying a new suit to visiting the sort of female “friend” he wouldn’t want to discuss with Agnes. That was the best possibility.
The second-worst possibility would be that he’d gone to the city because he needed to, because he had to give way to urges that a small town would notice. Judith had read about the Ripper killings almost ten years ago and more recently about a Mr. Dur
rant in the States, but that sort hadn’t been new to her. War brought brutality out in a few men, or gave them a way to vent what already existed. In peacetime, they would still be themselves, predators more vicious and less honest than her kind could ever be.
Brutality would be bad. Pragmatism could be worse. If Arundell was in Loch Arach for deeper reasons than those he’d mentioned to her—and Judith was almost certain that he was—he might not be working alone or on his own behalf. And if he was connected at all to the killings and was serving another, she might be in for a great deal of trouble.
His aura hadn’t shown any magical talent. That didn’t mean his masters didn’t have any.
As Judith rode, the sky over the mountains lightened, although the sun wouldn’t be up for some hours yet. By the time she reached Belholm, she could make out the silhouettes of trees and roofs against the starry sky. The town was almost completely asleep, but a few buildings near the train yard had lights in their windows.
Near sunrise, Judith boarded the appropriately named Dawn in the hotel stables, bought her ticket to Aberdeen, and concealed her face beneath an enormous green cartwheel hat, complete with pink silk roses. She blessed fashion, for once, for providing such things indirectly, and Colin for this particular specimen, even though she’d laughed at him when he’d given it to her. Taking no chances, she bought a newspaper at the station and buried her face in it, glancing occasionally over the top to watch the other passengers on the platform.
Two others were women: a tall, gawky girl of about fourteen in plain clothing, probably going to her first place as a maid, and an older woman with a fur wrap around her neck and a weary air. In addition, Judith marked two farm lads, a businessman in a very severe suit—and Arundell, coming into the station just before the train arrived. She held her breath as he boarded and didn’t let it out until she’d found her own seat in a compartment behind his.
The train lurched and shrieked into motion, sending up a cloud of smoke as it pulled out of the station and started on its way once more. Judith gave her ticket to the conductor, took off her hat and laid it on the seat next to her, and leaned her head against the window, studying the world in the cold, blue light of early morning.
Night of the Highland Dragon Page 9
