Horatio Lyle

by Webb, Catherine

  ‘Three thousand one hundred pounds.’

  ‘That ’s . . . that ’s . . .’

  ‘Enough money possibly to justify a break-in. The Fuyun Plate is an anomaly - an item of apparently no value.’

  ‘Well, that ’s good, though, ain’t it?’

  ‘Then why did Lord Lincoln ask us to find it?’ Lyle looked worriedly out of the window at the dirty streets.

  Tess said in the silence, ‘Actually, sir, he asked you. That’s probably a bad thing, right?’

  ‘Thank you for reminding me.’

  ‘Any time, sir. Are we goin’ to the Bank, now?’

  ‘Yes. But first we ’ll pick up Tate.’

  As Tess and Lyle rattled through the streets of London towards the Bank, the Honourable Thomas Edward Elwick stepped out of the family carriage into the grey, filtered daylight of the City. Dressed in a dark morning suit precisely tailored, complete with deep green waistcoat and black leather shoes, he felt ready to take whatever the world could throw at him. He had combed his thin, straight blond hair back from his face, stared into the mirror and wondered how much longer before he ’d have to start worrying about shaving, and hoped it was soon. They’d all said how well he was growing, what a fine young man he was, how proud the family would be. They said it a lot.

  Behind him his father got out of the carriage and stared up at the Bank with a grim expression. It towered over the street, all dirty white stone, decked with statues of strange ladies holding spears with slightly odd expressions on their faces, as if wondering exactly what they were doing and why. It was a huge raised slab of stone that dominated the road. The body of the bank, far too large to be meant for ordinary humans, was a mix of stone pillars, iron cages and giant black iron doors. It looked as though it could accommodate an angry mammoth, and in the maze of corridors and halls inside, it might well and no one would ever know.

  ‘You see this, boy?’ demanded Lord Elwick sharply.

  ‘Yes, Father?’

  ‘It’s supposed to be the most secure vault on the planet, a symbol of Britain’s greatness. You know why we’ve been robbed?’

  ‘No, Father?’

  ‘Because the people of this day and age don’t give a damn about their fellow Christians!’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  And only a few hundred yards away, the tide turned by Blackfriars Bridge, and as it did it dragged something up from the depths of the slop-black Thames. It bumped against a bridge support and stayed, too heavy to be dragged further round, too buoyant to sink.

  It would take a bored, slightly depressive sempstress several minutes of staring out across the waters to identify the corpse for what it was. By then, of course, it would be far too late.

  Lyle had said that Tate needed his daily walk. Tate looked no more excited to clamber dutifully into the carriage than he would have been to stay at home. He sat on one of the seats with his nose between his front paws and looked, to Tess’s mind, far too disinterested to be real.

  Arriving at the Bank of England, they climbed the stone steps up to the concourse and walked through two giant green-black iron gates to a hall buzzing with confusion. Policemen in their peaked helmets, blue uniforms and capes were looking uncomfortable and hoping no one would ask them for opinions, investigators in long overcoats were trying to radiate authority and the Bank’s clerks were in various stages of panic-induced breakdown.

  One man was a picture of calm. He stood in front of a group of clerks, brandishing a pair of callipers, a ruler and a little notebook. To one cowering woman he said, ‘Are you aware that you have the skull of an adulteress?’

  Lyle saw him and scowled. Before Tess could protest he grabbed her arm and dragged her behind a large white marble statue of some Greek warrior. Tess peered out between its legs across the room. The man, a precise gentleman, had an unhealthily sweaty white face, topped with greasy thinning black hair running to a pink bald spot. When he spoke, every syllable was pronounced sharply through his nose, as if he felt the listener was too slow to understand his words in any other way.

  ‘Who is it?’ she hissed.

  ‘Inspector Vellum,’ Lyle answered bleakly. ‘Satan’s answer to scientific advance.’

  ‘What ’s he doin’?’

  ‘Measuring people’s skulls.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he believes in phrenology.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  He looked at her crookedly. ‘For a thief, you don’t know much about the police, do you?’

  ‘And that ’s surprisin’?’

  He sighed. ‘Phrenology is where the size and shape of your skull determines whether you dunnit or not.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Her reaction didn’t seem nearly as outraged as Lyle felt it should be. He said, in a slightly strained voice, ‘Teresa, the size of your skull is not proof of murderous tendencies.’ He thought about this statement, and then added, almost to himself, ‘Especially not if it’s been sat on.’

  An indignant voice said, ‘Will you move on, please?’

  The speaker was a flustered man with a huge gold fob watch suspended from his waistcoat, a scarlet face, a beetroot nose and thin grey hair. He looked like someone with an itch in the small of his back that he couldn’t scratch, and had a constant pained twitching in his eyes. Waving a sheet of paper at them, he exclaimed, ‘Unless you have business here, please move on!’

  Lyle and Tess exchanged looks. Tate, as if sensing that here was someone who developed allergies, snuffled busily at his feet. The man paled. ‘It’s a dog!’

  ‘Well, actually, if you kinda look at him out of the corner of your eye . . .’ began Tess.

  ‘Teresa,’ said Lyle in a low, warning voice. He turned to the clerk and put on his best smile, which wasn’t very good. Horatio Lyle was not a very sociable person, and lacked practice. ‘Sir, I am Special Constable Horatio Lyle and this lady is . . .’

  ‘Her Ladyship Teresa of . . .’ began Tess brightly.

  ‘She ’s my assistant. And the canine in question is my loyal bloodhound . . .’ he hesitated, ‘. . . “Smells McNasty”, famed throughout the known world for his ability to track a thief through flood, storm and fire, responsible for the capture of Daniel “Devil” Derbish, notorious murderer of the axe school of psychopathy.’

  The clerk just stared. Tate rolled on to his back, legs in the air, tongue lolling slightly in expectation. Not knowing what she did, Tess bent down and scratched his stomach. Lyle’s smile stretched just a little bit further, wrinkling his eyes from the strain. ‘We ’re on special commission from the Palace. Might we inspect the vault, please?’

  They were led down a flight of stairs into a corridor which grew ever narrower as it wound through the building. Within a few turns Tess had lost all sense of direction and her attempts to count steps from place to place, doors and turns, had failed. The first door to the vault was a square iron thing, black and solidly constructed, which the clerk unlocked with a fat iron key. Lyle glanced at Tess, who shrugged and said, ‘Might be able to do something with it.’

  Beyond this door there were no lights except for a few orange lanterns burning in a cold, dead air, at intermittent points along the corridor. A door led off halfway down, to a small room divided in two by a large iron cage. On one side crates were piled up wall-to-wall, and on the other a single stall and rickety wooden table sat, a guard standing just behind it looking like a man trying to impress. They passed to a large, circular room, against which a half dozen large, circular doors were butted, five of them locked tight. The sixth, directly at the end of the corridor, stood slightly open, and above it a wooden placard declared that this was ‘V18E’. Outside it a constable stood, looking uneasy. Lyle put his head on one side and looked very long and hard at the door. On the front was a large central wheel, with two keyholes on either side of it. Inside, three heavy round bolts ran across the door, hinged together on the same iron arms, which, when the wheel turned, locked them into grooves in the wall.
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  Lyle said briskly, ‘Who has the keys?’

  ‘There are only three copies . . .’

  ‘Who has them?’

  ‘I have one, the manager has another and the duty manager on shift has the third for the primary lock . . .’

  ‘Can you account for your movements last night?’

  The clerk flushed indignantly. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘And the manager?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘What about the secondary lock? I assume you need both keys to open the door.’

  ‘Well, quite.’

  ‘Who has both keys?’

  ‘The duty manager on shift - the guard, if you like, although personally I feel it is such an imprecise definition of the many complexities of—’

  ‘Who was the guard last night?’

  ‘Bray.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to him.’

  ‘Constable Lyle,’ he said indignantly, ‘if you are in doubt as to the loyalty of my—’

  ‘I’m not doubting it, sir, I’m just a little . . . curious. How was the crime discovered?’

  The clerk, feathers ruffled, muttered, ‘V18E is shared by the Elwick family, representatives of Her Majesty’s Government, and the Molyneux family, both of upright repute and . . .’

  ‘Yes, but how was the crime discovered?’

  ‘Lord Molyneux arrived this morning to retrieve an item of personal value from the vault. On examining the door, we discovered that it was unlocked and that several items of immense value were missing.’

  ‘Including the Fuyun Plate.’

  ‘Uh . . .’

  Lyle raised his eyebrows. ‘The Fuyun Plate? Stone bowl, cultural significance?’

  ‘Quite possibly, the item was never of principal concern in this matter.’

  ‘Really? Why not?’

  ‘Sheer financial considerations, Constable Lyle,’ the clerk said, managing to imply that such matters were probably above the understanding of the uninitiated. ‘The Plate is not valued to nearly such an extent as many items which were . . .’

  ‘You never received any special instructions regarding it?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Who put it in the vault? Is it Elwick or Molyneux property?’

  ‘I believe the object was placed on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government by Lord Elwick.’

  ‘I would like to speak to Lord Elwick.’

  ‘I’m not sure if . . .’

  At the clerk’s feet, Tate sneezed violently. Tess hid her smile. Lyle’s expression could have frozen a small volcano. Seeing it, the clerk tried to hide in his own shoulders. ‘I’ll see if his lordship is available.’

  He scurried away.

  Lyle and Tess stood looking thoughtfully at the door. Finally Lyle said, ‘Teresa, I’m perplexed.’

  ‘Oh dear, Mister Lyle. Sit down and see if it goes away.’

  ‘Teresa . . .’ He shook his head slightly. ‘No. Maybe not.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have you ever read a book called . . .’

  She scowled, cutting him off before he could finish. ‘A book?’

  Silence. Lyle had frozen, a man whose world has just been shaken. ‘Teresa?’ he murmured dully after a long, long while. ‘Can you even . . . ?’

  ‘What?’

  Silence. He half-turned away. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  She opened her mouth to answer rudely, but Tate, having grown bored with this conversation, had pushed his way through the small, half-open space between door and wall and padded into the darkness of the vault. A sudden barking erupted from inside it and Lyle rolled his eyes. ‘Nag, nag, nag,’ he muttered. He pulled the heavy door back a little further and stepped into the gloom, unhitching a lantern from the wall. The dull orange light fell in a little pool around his feet, and the shadows peeled back to reveal, gleaming very faintly, gold.

  Tess’s eyes widened, her mouth dropped. ‘There ’s . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I mean, no one could possibly . . .’

  ‘They could.’

  ‘But it ain’t fair! We could just . . .’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But it ’s so shiny.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But no one would ever guess.’

  ‘Teresa,’ he said reproachfully, ‘we are here on a matter of law.’

  She pulled herself together. ‘Yes, Mister Lyle.’

  They picked their way along shelves lined with countless treasures, the majority of them doubtless stolen in the first place and locked away for posterity. The light bent and split inside jewels, shimmered off bronze, flashed off gold, slithered off silver, to all of which Lyle seemed oblivious. At the end of the shelves stood delicately painted giant vases from China or heavily adorned ones from India, and along the far wall stood huge statues of people with too many arms to be comfortably thought on or too few clothes to be practically viable in the English climate. Lyle and Tess wove their way back and forth through these shelves until Lyle muttered, ‘It’s a little vulgar, really.’ Tess said nothing, and stared.

  They found Tate barking indignantly at what looked to Tess like a large stone box. He gave them a look that said, ‘What took so long?’ Lyle raised the lamplight a little higher to let it fall on the old yellow stonework, and Tess saw symbols carved all around it, strange eyes and birds and people who looked as if they didn’t know which way they were going. On the top the box curved to form a crude face and a pair of crossed arms, the blue, red, gold and brown paint chipped and peeled by ages. She whispered, feeling that it would be wrong to talk loudly in front of something this strange, ‘What is it?’

  ‘A sarcophagus,’ replied Lyle.

  She nodded sagely. ‘Oh.’

  He looked sideways at her and added, ‘From Egypt.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It’s a box where people a very long time ago put other dead people.’

  Her face split into an expression of delighted disgust. ‘That ’s horrid!’

  He brightened at seeing something nearing enthusiasm. ‘What they did was remove all the internal organs and put them in canopic jars for preservation, including the brain which was removed through the . . .’

  Her face wrinkled up, but her eyes glowed. ‘Why did they do that?’

  Delight lit up Lyle ’s eyes, as an opportunity to enlighten the ignorant on a favourite topic presented itself. ‘Well, they believed in the afterlife, and thought that if you weren’t properly prepared you couldn’t get into paradise. At the gates of heaven, Anubis would weigh your heart against a feather and . . .’ He stopped, his expression frozen. He put his head on one side and stared at the sarcophagus. He said quietly, ‘Oh.’

  She hopped in irritation as Lyle’s voice trailed off. ‘What is it, what is it?’

  ‘Uh . . . would you hold this?’ He handed her the lantern. She took it uncertainly and tried to hold it up to her full, unimpressive height as Lyle squatted down by the side of the sarcophagus and rummaged in his pockets. From the depths of his large grey coat he pulled out a roll of blue cloth, opening it carefully on the floor in front of him. Strange tools, the use of which Tess could-n’t even begin to guess at, rested in little sewn compartments inside the cloth. Lyle twiddled his fingers expectantly in the air and, like a falcon diving for its prey, picked out a long, thin blade. Turning it so it was parallel with the slit between the top of the sarcophagus and the main body, he ran it very carefully through the gap. The tip of the blade came out stained with a very thin, bright red dust. Lyle rubbed it between his fingers and started to grin.

  Tess squeaked, trying to hide her excitement, ‘Mister Lyle, what is it?’

  ‘Wood rot.’ He straightened up, prodding the sarcophagus with his toe. ‘This bit’s stone.’ Then, to Tess’s astonishment and dismay, he slammed the palm of his hand down on the top of the sarcophagus. It boomed emptily. ‘This is light, hollow wood.’

  He tried to get his fingers under the lid and pull it up. Something inside gentl
y clicked. Tess brightened. ‘It ’s locked on the inside, ain’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well . . .’ She chewed her lip. ‘There ain’t no hinges, so it ’s probably got two locks on either side what click in place when the lid comes down - the release would be on the inside . . . uh . . . have you got acid?’

  He stared at her. ‘You . . . want me to give you acid?’

  ‘What? You ain’t never burnt your way through a difficult lock?’

  ‘Erm . . .’ He patted his pockets with a dazed expression, as if only just beginning to remember who he kept company with, and only just beginning to wonder why. Things clinked inside them. Then he unbuttoned his coat and patted two inside pockets. He sighed. ‘Nothing that I could easily administer.’

  ‘You got another knife?’

  He blinked, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘You want me to trust you with a sharp object?’

  ‘Yes.’ She made it sound as though he was asking a stupid question.

  Lyle hesitated. Then he raised his hands in defeat. ‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘I’m probably aiding and abetting as it is.’ He handed her his blade and, after searching through his pockets, pulled out another, wrapped in greasy leather and slightly chipped. Wordlessly Tess walked round to the other side of the sarcophagus and ran her blade between lid and body. Lyle did the same on his side and, glancing at each other for confirmation, they slowly started sliding their blades along the sides until, almost together and directly opposite, they hit something solid inside the lid which prevented their passing. Tess grinned. Lyle rummaged in his bag until he found a slim hook.

  Tess said, ‘Why do you carry that kinda thing, Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Oh, you never know when you might need a bent bit of metal or a piece of string or a pair of scissors or a spring or a spare bottle of ammonia nitrate,’ he replied easily.

  ‘Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you go out ever?’

  ‘It’s been known.’

  ‘With Miss Chaste?’ she asked, grinning slyly.

  ‘Miss Chaste is a vicar’s daughter,’ he said with a scowl. ‘What more can I say?’