Horatio Lyle

by Webb, Catherine

  ‘Well, actually, she was in the process of . . .’

  To everyone ’s surprise, including possibly the girl herself, she exploded. ‘Please, miss,’ the girl started yelling, ‘please, I’m just an innocent child tor . . . torme . . . havin’ a really hard time seein’ as how I’ve been on the street tryin’ to make an honest livin’ in a harsh world . . .’

  ‘I beg your pardon?!’ squeaked Lyle.

  The girl was unstoppable. ‘Please don’t let this horrid man hurt me, I never done nothin’ but he just don’t listen to me and he chased me an’ I said how I was lovely really and, please, miss . . .’

  In the gloom of the window, Lyle’s mouth dropped open. In the street the woman with the meat cleaver hesitated. She looked far too slim and pale to be holding such a large weapon, and indeed now that the excitement was cooling a little, its presence in her hand made her uncomfortable, and she tried to hide it behind her voluminous white nightrobe. Ladies of more decorum might have worn a shawl, and indeed she had considered one when exiting the house. But then, she ’d realized who the incident involved, and changed her mind. The shawl, she believed, wasn’t her most flattering colour.

  Turning a pair of severe almond eyes on Lyle, a useful inheritance from her father and a match for her freckles, she said in a voice like glaciers rolling over a particularly difficult hillside, ‘Horatio, is this true?’

  For a second, his indignation almost overwhelmed all power of speech. ‘Do you really believe that . . .’

  ‘Please, miss,’ sobbed the girl, ‘please, miss, don’t let him hurt me. I’m so hungry and cold and scared and he’s such a brutish man, he hasn’t heard of Christian charity, miss, please . . .’

  ‘Horatio!’ The woman flushed. ‘I demand that you come down here at once and assist me with this unfortunate waif!’

  ‘Waif?’ exclaimed Lyle. ‘Miss Chaste . . .’

  ‘Horatio, I shall summon the police!’

  Pigeons were startled out of their roosts at the indignant squeak in her voice. Lyle flinched, sighed and said humbly, ‘Yes, Miss Chaste.’

  Mercy Chaste knew her duty. As the local vicar’s daughter, she took an immense pride in her Christian heritage, and had an evangelistic streak in her which had led to a new and interesting reinterpretation of the verb ‘chastened’.

  A minute later the front door opened and Lyle appeared, dragging a large metal box as if it was very heavy, and after it a tube connected to a large pile of what looked like leather sacking. This he spread out under Miss Chaste ’s furious eye to a rough square beneath the pipe and kicked the box moodily. There was a hissing sound and the leather square expanded slowly into a small inflated mattress. The girl craned her neck to see the mattress and squeaked, ‘I’m not falling on to that!’

  Lyle’s eyes flashed. ‘It ’s that,’ he snapped, ‘or the pavement.’

  She thought about it, even as Miss Chaste barked, ‘Horatio!’ Lyle’s expression was unshakable.

  Sullenly the girl muttered, twisting to see her destination more clearly, ‘I think I’ll let go now.’

  ‘Why not?’ he sighed.

  The girl closed her eyes and let go. She fell, and bounced up from the mattress several times. It was almost fun, she thought, and wondered if she could bounce some more. Then she saw the two adults’ faces peering down and hastily she crawled off the mattress and picked herself up, putting on her most endearing expression of innocence. Lyle scowled. Seeing this, the girl launched into emergency procedure. She threw herself at Miss Chaste, wrapping her arms around the woman’s waist and bursting into tears. ‘Please, miss, don’t let him hurt me. Miss, please, I’ll do anything . . .’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ Lyle pulled a plug in the mattress, which slowly started to deflate. As the girl sobbed into Miss Chaste’s nightgown, Lyle stalked up to his half-open door, disappeared inside, reappearing a second later. With a whirring sound, the section of dangling pipe started to wind back against the wall, locking itself in place, as if it had never moved.

  ‘Horatio.’ Miss Chaste’s voice had a tone of determined finality.

  He wished he could simper as well as the girl was doing. ‘Yes, Miss Chaste?’ he sighed.

  ‘What do you have to say for yourself, Horatio?’

  He thought about it.

  ‘Erm . . .’

  The girl chose this hesitation as a chance for prolonged sobbing.

  ‘You realize I can’t possibly permit the child to go home in a state like this?’

  Something of the Lyle family spirit flared up in Horatio. Though he prided himself on being able to deal in a rational manner with any crisis from chemical fires to electrical overloads, some things were beyond reasonable expectations, and he snapped. ‘This child damn well broke into my hou—’

  ‘Language, Horatio!’

  ‘Please, miss, I never, I never, miss, I . . .’

  ‘Horatio,’ snapped Miss Chaste, ‘I think you owe this young lady an apology.’

  Lyle realized the girl, between sobs, was slyly watching him through her fingers. She grinned slightly behind her hands. His scowl deepened. ‘Miss Chaste, I have reason to believe this young lady may be a thief.’

  ‘No, miss, t ’isn’t true, miss, I swear! T’isn’t true!’ And then, fulfilling a plan which had been brewing from the moment she ’d labelled Miss Chaste a busy-body, and better still, a rich busy-body of total gullibility, Teresa Hatch, pickpocket and burglar by trade and notorious up and down Shadwell, fainted.

  And in that part of the city where the fate of continents is decided over a glass of port and a game of bridge, in a room with a ceiling appreciable only by giraffes and a width that would certainly appeal to a small blue whale, if it ever had occasion to see it, a room hung with pictures of fine old men with large moustaches, a man sits at the end of a long, polished table topped with black leather, and says, ‘Well?’

  ‘We’ve just had confirmation of the break-in.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And . . . we can’t say how it happened, sir.’

  Silence.

  ‘What do you wish done, sir?’

  ‘I wish to know where they have taken it, and what they are planning.’

  ‘Would Her Majesty approve, sir?’

  ‘Her Majesty,’ the man replies quietly, ‘need never know.’

  CHAPTER 1

  Thief

  The sun rose on the city, and the city rose with the sun.

  And someone was shouting, ‘What do you mean, it wasn’t there?’

  ‘I mean the object was not in the vicinity.’

  ‘You have failed?’

  ‘We will find it. Investigations are already underway.’

  ‘Meanwhile, we’ll have lost precious time. They will be looking for it as well. By this time we could be in the streets, we could be drowning in the power and dragging this city out of the smoke and metal back into the clean, pure light rather than this black abyss . . . and you . . .’

  ‘I appreciate that, my lady.’

  ‘See that you do, my lord.’

  And in the house of Lord and Lady Elwick, young Master Thomas woke in a large soft bed to the sound of heavy footsteps in the corridor outside. The door burst open and his governess rushed in and said from behind the bed curtains, before he’d even hauled himself up on his elbows, ‘Master says you’re to be downstairs immediately.’

  ‘What?’ he asked, swinging himself out of bed a little bit too fast for his groggy head. ‘Why does Father want me now?’

  ‘The whole house is mustering, Master Thomas. Everyone says it’s because of the bank. I’ve never seen the master so angry.’

  ‘The bank? Which bank?’

  ‘The bank, Master Thomas! Your parents are going down there immediately to check the vault. You must be up quickly, they’ll want to say goodbye!’

  Thomas didn’t hesitate. No Elwick ever hesitated. He stood up and made for the giant mahogany wardrobe on the other side of his large room. ‘If they�
�re going,’ he said determinedly, ‘then I’m going too!’

  His governess rolled her eyes when he wasn’t looking, but didn’t ask what a fifteen-year-old boy thought he could do. He ’d just say what he always did. ‘If I don’t try, I’ll never know.’

  Which wasn’t an answer at all.

  The sunlight spread from east to west and crawled through high windows and low windows alike, trickled across floors and ceilings, and brushed the eyes of the sleeping.

  Tess Hatch woke, and was instantly alert. I know it’s early in the morning, and I’m pretty sure the house must be asleep, so . . .

  She tried to work out her moves, piece by piece. She was lying on her side, staring at a tall window through which faint sunlight crept, as if embarrassed to call itself morning.

  She was in a bed. This caused her sudden alarm, and she sat up, feeling the unusual softness. A bed. Not just any bed, but a big bed, with sheets and blankets and . . . feather pillows and . . . She looked round the room. Miss Chaste must have been more of a fool than even she had suspected. She slipped, utterly silent, out of the bed.

  The room wasn’t particularly big, the only features in it, apart from the bed, being the large window, a stool in one corner, a shelf laden with books, and a small desk with a mirror above it whose centre had an unlikely and slightly alarming, perfectly rounded scorch mark. Tess was wearing what she always wore - the only clothes she owned: a pair of worn trousers that were starting to give way at the knees and a shirt several sizes too large. Looking around, she saw her padded jacket with holes at the elbows, lying on the stool, neatly folded. She scampered across the room, snatched the jacket up, and for a second saw her face in the mirror above the desk. She hesitated. Her dark brown hair stuck out around her face in every direction, and her dirty pale face, long and knowing, stared back with a surprised expression, unused to seeing itself.

  She crept to the door. It was unlocked, which was a surprise. She pushed it open and stepped out into the cold corridor beyond. Floorboards covered with a red carpet, a candle burnt down on a table, thin curtains open across the window at the end to let in more light. She padded in what she thought was perfect silence to the end of the corridor and pushed open a door that led to a flight of stairs. Slowly, she took them one at a time, testing each to avoid creaks. Halfway down, she became aware of a distant rumbling and speeded up, anxious to find the imagined loot and get out. She went past two landings and into the cold of the basement, where she crept along a corridor, listening for any sounds of life. She heard a fire burning behind a nearby plain white door to her right, hesitated, then pushed it open a little. There was a large stove, open to receive more wood, and a figure in shirt sleeves, black trousers and bare feet, bent over to toss on a log. Without looking up he said, ‘Good morning’ in a tone of polite disinterest.

  For a second she thought about running, but then . . . He was cooking breakfast.

  Tess stepped carefully inside. The man straightened up, pushing the stove door shut, turned to her and grinned. She saw a pair of grey eyes and sandy hair, reddish in places. He looked terribly, terribly familiar, but she knew, knew that this couldn’t be, well, him, because that wasn’t what was in her plan, that wasn’t how it worked, not her plans, especially not with the bigwig who had paid, not if she was . . .

  Tess heard the cracking of eggs and the hissing of oil. She took in a row of neatly tidied desks, a low wooden kitchen table, and a dog bowl marked ‘Tate’ in large letters.

  ‘Sit down, lass, make yourself comfortable.’ His voice was unusual. If she ’d been back on the streets with her friends she would have said it belonged to a bigwig, except there was a familiar stop on the ‘d’s and the ‘t’s, something that was common in the slums of Shadwell and the rookeries of Soho.

  She sat down cautiously. ‘Are you Miss Chaste’s butler?’

  ‘Me?’ He looked slightly alarmed. ‘Goodness, no.’

  This was possibly a good thing. She drew herself up to her full, and less-than-impressive height. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  He smiled brightly, and said in a conversational, light-hearted tone, flipping a slice of bacon, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am . . .’ her mind raced and her voice changed slightly, rising a little in pitch and slurring the vowels, ‘Lady Teresa of France. I am a guest of your mistress. She ’s given you instructions as to how I should be looked after an’ all?’

  To her surprise, the man started grinning, as if in on some secret. He broke another egg into a frying pan. ‘Well, I hope you’re hungry.’

  She folded her hands in her lap and tried to look ladylike, saying primly, ‘Tol . . . toler . . . yes.’

  ‘Tell me, Lady Teresa,’ he continued in the same jovial tone, pulling a couple of plates out of the cupboard, ‘do you always break into the houses of the people you’re going to visit?’

  Tess hesitated. Then, ‘How dare you say that!’

  He scraped the eggs off the bottom of the pan and tossed them onto her plate. To this he added a couple of slices of bread, two rashers of bacon, a glass of orange juice and a knob of butter, setting the whole lot in front of her on the low kitchen table. Pulling up a chair he sat down and stared thoughtfully across at her. Finally he said, ‘Your fainting was very good last night. Well, you fell . . . went the wrong way - gravity was clearly not the only force at work - but still, the sigh was very effective, the rolling of the eyes, the little theatrical gasp. Have you ever considered giving up a life of larceny for an age of acting?’

  She hesitated only a fraction of a second. ‘I was all overcome, see?’

  ‘Miss Chaste was very insistent that you were brought into her house for good treatment and a decent meal. But it would have been wrong to let her be taken in by that trick.’

  ‘If you—’ she began.

  He ignored her. ‘I was impressed, though. More than I’ve been in a long while by any thief.’ He held out his hand. ‘Horatio Lyle.’

  She was off the seat and had her back to the wall in a second, terror buzzing in her skull.

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Please don’t be like that. Have breakfast.’

  Very, very carefully, never taking her eyes off him, she sat.

  Lyle sighed. ‘I’ll keep this simple. I don’t like my home being broken into. But when you get a reputation for inventing things, people keep thinking, “Yes, I’ll have that”, and there ’s only so much you can do about it.’

  ‘You seem to have done summat, sir.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Probably got too much time on your hands. In fact, if I can say . . .’

  ‘Thank you,’ he repeated. Tess was aware of Lyle ’s eyes upon her, thoughtful. Finally he said, ‘This is going to sound unusual.’

  ‘Is it unusual for things to sound unusual in your house, sir?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘That ’s incredible. Abject terror to insolence in less than thirty seconds. I have a proposition for you.’

  She sprang back indignantly. ‘That’s horrid!’

  ‘Believe it or not,’ he pointed out mildly, ‘I’m offering you a chance not to go to prison.’

  Her shoulders hunched slowly and suspiciously. ‘What kind of chance?’

  ‘I was thinking about this after you fainted. That really was impressive, you do know that? I mean, the way you managed to fall at just the right angle to sustain minimum bruising. I wish I’d been less distracted . . . an almost perfect example of moments around a pivot. But then, I suppose, no one really considers the medical consequences of the centre of gravity in—’

  ‘You havin’ that bacon?’

  ‘What? Erm, no, I suppose not.’

  ‘Okay. Keep goin’.’

  ‘Erm . . . yes, what was I talking about?’

  ‘How you was not sendin’ me to prison.’

  ‘How I was hypothetically not sending you to prison.’

  ‘Oh. Like that.’

  ‘You don’t know what hypothetically means, do you?’


  ‘You havin’ that toast?’

  ‘What? Yes, I am!’

  ‘Oh.’ Tess pushed it back on to his plate with a guilty expression.

  ‘The truth is,’ continued Lyle, looking slightly flummoxed, ‘I could use an assistant.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Lass, I think you’re missing the point and don’t even consider going for my egg, understand?’

  ‘You sure? Only it ’ll get cold.’

  ‘I need to keep my belongings safe. I’m also running a series of experiments that could require the assistance of someone with a very dexterous touch. The problem is,’ said Lyle, warming to his theme, ‘that in order to measure resistivity in proportion to surface area and density - not together, obviously, because,’ he laughed, ‘that would just be absurd - but the problem is how small you have to get the wires for comparison and the delicate nature of the equipment . . .’

  ‘It really is gettin’ cold.’

  ‘And since you proved last night that you are very good at dealing with delicate things - I can see you watching that egg - I thought I wouldn’t send you to prison and make you for the rest of your life an embittered professional thief with a reputation and long-term grudge against the laws of society . . .’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘. . . I’d make you my assistant for the week.’

  The words settled over the table like a blanket. Tess sat, fork laden with bacon, and thought about it. ‘Uh . . .’

  ‘Lass, I could have turned you over last night. I could still.’

  Tess broke into a strained, bright grin. She knew that, in situations like this, you didn’t think. You didn’t worry about what you were getting into, you didn’t agonize over possible repercussions, you just took the easiest way out that you were being offered. ‘You’ve made the right choice, sir. I’m the best in the business, I am.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘An’ at the end of the week?’

  ‘You can go. And I’ll give you back your very fine collection of lock picks.’