The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle)

by Webb, Catherine

  When Tess spoke again, it was quietly.

  ‘We’re bein’ followed.’

  ‘Yes, Teresa.’ Lyle’s voice could have announced a funeral.

  ‘I think we was followed yesterday too. Man in a red scarf. Saw ’im at the docks.’

  ‘Yes, Teresa.’

  ‘He’s a good ’un, sly an’ all. Thought I saw ’im when I was gettin’ coals, even though it ain’t no job for no lady . . .’

  ‘In fairness, Miss Teresa, I did the carrying.’

  ‘. . . especially no lady what has to deal with people complai . . . makin’ a fuss all the time. Anyhow, I thought he was there then. Tate’s been all nervous. Been barkin’ lots, like he was upset. Yes you ’ave, ’aven’t you, little Tatey-watey, little doggywoggy, coo-coo . . .’

  ‘Yes, Teresa.’

  She glared at Lyle. ‘You ain’t listenin’ to a word I been sayin’, ’ave you, Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Whoever’s been following us, Teresa, gave Tate a biscuit to stop him barking.’

  ‘He what?’ Tess looked outraged. ‘Biscuits ain’t good for Tate!’

  Lyle stared absently into the distance, his voice a monotone. ‘There were a few crumbs in Tate’s coat - the man clearly broke off a bit of biscuit to give it to Tate, and that left crumbs everywhere. Ginger biscuit, to be exact.’

  Contemplative silence. ‘Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Yes, Teresa?’

  ‘We don’t mind how this biscuit person is followin’ us, do we?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he’s probably just one of Lord Lincoln’s spies sent to ensure that we’re doing our job. And if he’s not, then he might be useful in an emergency.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘He might know things we don’t.’

  ‘An’ that’s a good thing?’

  ‘It is if we can catch him.’

  ‘Oh.’ Tess thought about this. ‘So can we eat now, Mister Lyle?’

  An almost inaudible sigh. ‘Not now, Teresa.’

  And just a little bit later: ‘Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Yes, Teresa?’

  ‘Why you grinnin’ like that?’

  ‘I think I have an idea.’

  ‘Is it a good idea?’

  ‘It needs a few things. Thomas, do you wear anything in particular when you visit relatives?’

  ‘Well, naturally it is necessary to put on a certain polite aspect that I might not otherwise indulge in when -’

  ‘Good. We’ll get you something formal to wear, and I’ll get my gloves and coat, and Teresa . . .’

  ‘I ain’t likin’ your grin, Mister Lyle. Please stop.’

  ‘Teresa, we’re getting you a dress.’ The evil relish with which Lyle made this announcement was matched only by Tess’s cry of dismay.

  The hansom cab stopped in front of Lyle’s house. At the door Lyle reached into his pocket, pulled out a key, slipped it into the lock - and stopped. He leant in towards the door, squinting at the frame, and the wood around the keyhole. Then sighed ever so slightly, unlocked the door and stepped cautiously inside.

  A man was hanging, suspended upside-down by his ankles in the hallway, face bright red. Lyle peered up at his features and said brightly, ‘Good morning, sir. May I be of assistance?’

  The man gulped. ‘Jolly decent of you.’

  ‘Now, it seems to me that you’ve been caught in a thoroughly traditional fowl trap of the kind laid down by people who don’t like their homes being broken into . . .’ His face fell, and his voice became laced with a theatrical sadness. ‘Oh dear. You didn’t . . . I mean, surely a decent man like yourself wouldn’t try to break into this house, would you? I’m sure there’s been a terrible misunderstanding. I mean, you could have been killed by the acid in the lock or the bear trap in the cupboard or the steps that fold up beneath you if you haven’t reset the gears, or the deadly falling spikes that I’ve always considered installing in order to test the relationship between downward velocity, changing force over time, a very little time, and pressure on a point. Tell me,’ Lyle’s face radiated concern, ‘how do you feel about voltage?’

  Below, a long way below, Tess bounced up and down excitedly. ‘Poke him with a stick, Mister Lyle, poke him with a stick!’

  ‘Shall I inform the police?’ hazarded Thomas.

  ‘That,’ said an icy, calm voice, ‘will not be necessary.’

  Lord Lincoln detached himself from the shadows. Lyle’s face slipped almost unnoticeably into an uninterested expression, and his voice became dead and cold as, without taking his eyes off Lord Lincoln, he murmured, ‘Teresa, take a couple of shillings, take Thomas, and go and find something to eat. Thomas, make sure it’s something reasonably healthy. We could be here a while.’

  CHAPTER 10

  Honesty

  Lord Lincoln deposited himself in Lyle’s armchair by the fire without saying a word or glancing at Lyle. He set his hat on top of a pile of books, put his feet up on a table laden with springs and cogs, leaned his head back and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. Lyle stood in front of him and tried not to let his anger show.

  ‘You broke into my house,’ he said finally.

  ‘You were out. I had hoped to find you earlier, but there have been incidents.’

  ‘What sort of incidents?’

  ‘A stonemason has been murdered, a quantity of stone stolen.’

  ‘This is an incident to you?’

  ‘Is it not to you?’

  ‘Of course it is! But I . . .’

  ‘You what, Mister Lyle? You have sentiments regarding murder that I do not, perhaps? Or you know things that I should? Or some other thing that separates who you are from who I am, maybe?’

  Lyle scowled and said nothing. The room seemed like a place that was very much lived in and possibly loved, not as an ordinary room fit for dinner or receiving guests, but as somewhere to find another book, or to put another design that went wrong, and tinker with it late at night by the fireside. Much of Lyle’s house had that feel. But the firelight did nothing to warm the look in Lincoln’s eye.

  The two men waited in silence, each daring the other to speak first. Sounds outside grew louder. The grandfather clock ticking in the hall. A cab rattling far off. Snow sliding down the roof where a pigeon stirred. The clop of horses’ hooves. The click, click of iron heavy with icicles, trying to work out whether it wants to contract in the snow and the ice and the rising fog. The rattle of the dust cart, cough of the coalman. The bark of a dog somewhere behind the houses.

  For a second, Lyle was reminded of a rhythm, a chant he’d heard a long time in his youth, a little rhythm, dum, dum, de-dum, dum, dum.

  ‘Mister Lyle.’

  He hardly heard Lincoln speak. Hark, hark, the dogs do bark . . .

  ‘Lyle!’

  His attention snapped back. ‘Yes? . . . My lord?’ he added through gritted teeth.

  ‘I await your report on the progress of the investigation.’

  ‘Do you want the hard facts or the blind assumptions?’

  ‘I know the facts, Mister Lyle. Even the police know the facts; those are hardly what concern me. What have you deduced?’

  ‘That Fabrio and Stanlaw were murdered by a man kept imprisoned in a stone coffin, the same man Fabrio was paid by a Roman Catholic priest to collect from an Italian monastery, a giant man. And that someone associated with this man, this passenger, this murderer, has now killed a potential witness.’

  ‘Not the same person?’

  ‘No. The murderer whom Fabrio was transporting was right-handed. The person who killed Mrs Milner was left-handed.’

  ‘And the other witness? Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps you should find out? Could this be a clever way of misdirecting our attentions?’

  ‘I doubt it. Why are you so hopeful that it is?’

  The brief flash on Lincoln’s face disappeared. ‘Merely hypothesizing. I’m surprised that you h
ave to enquire.’

  Lyle scowled. ‘Listen, I’m going to say this just once, because I might not be angry enough to say it again, so I don’t want to miss the opportunity. You are a scheming, manipulative liar, who recklessly uses lives for a cause you won’t reveal and that you may have killed for. Now people are dying and I don’t trust you far enough to want to set a foot out of this house until I know whatever it is you’re not telling me, now. Because last time I trusted you, people died, I nearly died, the children were put through things that no child should ever have to experience, so if you don’t tell me this instant what you’re hiding, I swear I will never help you again. And I will do everything in my power to see you exposed as the bucket of effluence that you are.’

  Lord Lincoln thought about it, staring up at the ceiling. ‘Yes,’ he said finally.

  ‘And don’t try to threaten me,’ added Lyle, ‘because - what?’

  ‘I said, yes.’

  Astonishment blazed on Lyle’s face. ‘Really?’

  ‘I have been unwise in keeping you from the truth of the matter.’

  Lyle thought about this, then, just to make sure he heard right, ‘Really? ’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Then . . . ?’

  ‘The truth,’ said Lincoln, stretching easily, ‘is that I was informed that a dangerous murderer had been freed from a prison in Italy and was on the way to London, under lock and key in the hold of the Pegasus, with the intention of wreaking havoc in the city. I did not know how he had been freed, but I assume an inside source must have helped him for their own malign purpose, and I had no intention of letting him loose on this city. Sadly, my agent, Stanlaw, was murdered before he could prevent the killer’s release.’

  Lyle sat down heavily. In a suspicious voice he said, ‘Did I ... just call you a bucket of effluence, my lord?’

  ‘I believe that was the phrase.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lyle thought about it. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Truth, honesty, effluence, full and frank disclosure, that kind of thing?’ Lord Lincoln’s glare could have frozen salt water. Lyle shifted uncomfortably. ‘Tell me about Isalia.’

  Lincoln sat forward, smiling so widely that Lyle almost jumped out of his seat again. ‘How much do you know?’

  ‘Oh nonononono! We’re not playing the game where I tell you the extent of my ignorance so that you can give me as little information as possible! Let’s assume I know everything there is possibly to know, and this is merely a test of your new-found openness.’

  To his surprise, Lord Lincoln smiled. It was like having a skeletal hand dance across Lyle’s spine. ‘Isalia was, I believe, where the Pope used to hold his most sacred Masses, so that no one could steal their divine music, in the days when the Church felt strongly about such things. A place of arts and culture. Since then, of course, it has declined with the times. We are no longer a world of hidden Masses, we are a world of thick smoke hiding the future, of a past shrunk by the sheer volume of events of today. In the past, kings going to war would have to wait three months for the messenger to cross the mountains before they could raise their army, then more months to march the troops across continents, then more months again for the next assignment of arrows and then more months for the engineers to find a way to break the city walls, and only then would they realize that the shot didn’t fit the cannon . . . and so on. Today, the world is a busy place - even for someone like you, I imagine. Isalia is a place of the past. Where the past is locked up and kept from the sight of people, in case they remember it.’

  ‘As cryptic as it is unhelpful.’

  ‘Simply? It’s where the things are stored which some people call legend and which we want eventually to become nothing more than a myth, so that their reality cannot taint the future. It’s where the murderer was kept. He was too dangerous to be held anywhere else. And now he is out.’

  ‘Why is he so dangerous?’

  ‘You have seen his passage already.’

  ‘I’ve seen signs of a strong, large man who kills without qualm; not a world-shattering threat to peace and prosperity, just another waste.’

  Lincoln shook his head, smiling ever so slightly. ‘Lyle, you have seen the coffin that held him. And I see from your face that you observed the most obvious feature.’

  Lyle nodded, the colour draining from his face. ‘There were nail marks inside, new, not oxidized; someone had been trapped in there during the journey. And . . .’ He didn’t finish the sentence. He looked away from Lincoln’s bright, cold eyes. And there weren’t any air holes.

  ‘Who is he?’ Lyle’s voice was low and tight.

  ‘He is a marquis, although he wasn’t always. His name is Lucan Sasso. He used to roam Europe in search of drink, gambling and women. He has left illegitimate heirs across the continent. Rumour, though usually not trustworthy, has it that he fell in love one day with a woman he could not have; a lady called Selene. We don’t know anything more about her. She taught him blood lust and vengeance. She encouraged him, and then on a winter’s night in London, rejected him and disappeared for ever. In his anger, he swore revenge, went on a casual killing spree, and finally stabbed himself by the river with the first thing she’d gifted to him: a peculiar stone blade of unknown origin.’

  ‘He stabbed himself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I take it he recovered.’

  ‘In a manner. The Church took him in, and has kept him ever since. Consequently, he hates it, and he hates this city, and has sworn revenge on it and on its people.’

  ‘And Selene?’

  ‘Disappeared.’

  ‘I see.’ Lyle shifted uncomfortably. ‘Stone blades of unknown origin . . . it’d be too much to hope that this was one of those stone blades that did nothing of any interest whatsoever, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’

  ‘And this lady . . . Selene . . . she’s not . . .’ Lyle flapped his hands uselessly around his head. ‘You know . . . one of ... of them, is she?’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘You know. Them. They. Them with the Plan. Them who do things that only they could do with . . . things.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lyle found himself feeling embarrassed, and looked away. ‘Right.’

  Lord Lincoln cleared his throat meaningfully. ‘Now . . . the fruits of your investigation?’

  Lyle sighed, and answered in a matter-of-fact voice: ‘Ignatius Caryway. Catholic priest, American, which seems somehow inevitable really, got Sasso off Isalia in the ship of Captain Fabrio.’

  ‘That makes sense. The abbot wouldn’t have suspected one of his own. What more?’

  ‘This Ignatius had paid Fabrio richly to accompany the Marquis from Isalia, and transport him safely. On arrival, Ignatius was supposed to collect the coffin unopened from Fabrio, but on seeing Stanlaw with the Captain, went instead to the ship and freed the Marquis then and there. This Lucan Sasso killed the Captain and Stanlaw and left with Ignatius. At least, that’s how it looks. There’s not a shred of evidence that would hold up in any decent court, but thankfully,’ Lyle grinned a wicked grin, ‘you want neither a court nor decency, do you, Lord Lincoln?’

  ‘What about the witnesses? Milner? The beggar?’

  ‘Murdered by someone of the same immense strength and ruthlessness as possessed by Sasso, but left-handed, not right-handed. I don’t know where Edgar is.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where Sasso or Caryway are now?’

  ‘First . . . tell me about this.’ Lyle pulled Stanlaw’s small iron ring out of his pocket. ‘What’s the significance of the cogs, the clock face?’

  Lincoln hardly glanced at it. ‘Nothing. I’ve never seen it before.’

  Lyle grinned. ‘That, my lord, was as big a lie as Napoleon’s declaration in favour of republicanism.’

  ‘Do you know where Sasso is?’

  Lyle scratched his chin, rubbed his nose, tickled his forehead, then nodded. ‘
Yes. I think so.’

  Lincoln sat back, face set in ice. ‘But you are refusing to tell me.’

  ‘Uh . . . yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think the answer would be more polite from the man in the burgundy scarf who is following me.’ For a second, there was a flicker on Lincoln’s face, a moment of doubt. Lyle frowned, seeing something there he hadn’t expected. ‘Good grief,’ he murmured. ‘It’s not you, is it?’

  ‘I do not know to what you are referring, Mister Lyle.’

  ‘There’s . . . something . . . you’re not telling me, and . . .’ Lyle scowled. ‘Why are you so afraid of a murderer? There are . . . parts . . . the blade, that’s . . . part . . .’ He frowned. His fingers had started tapping idly on the table next to him, a little sharp rhythm, that had just slipped in, as if it had been floating through the air, Hark, hark ...

  ‘You said . . . he recovered “in a manner”. What does that mean?’

  When Lincoln didn’t answer, Lyle looked up, and found himself the object of the other man’s steely, unblinking gaze.

  ‘That, Mister Lyle, is something you must answer for yourself. ’

  CHAPTER 11

  Diane

  ‘Where’s the evil bigwig?’

  ‘Gone, Teresa.’

  ‘You want cake?’

  ‘You got cake? I thought I said to get something healthy . . .’

  ‘Thomas wanted to, but when he went and looked in his pocket it seemed how he’d lost all his money . . .’

  ‘Mister Lyle, I think that Miss Teresa actually might have pickpock—’

  ‘It’s got treacle in it, Mister Lyle.’

  ‘Treacle? Really?’

  ‘But Mister Lyle, Miss Teresa stole -’

  ‘Not now, Thomas.’ There was a strange slurping noise. It was the sound made by a proud man trying to eat hot treacle cake in a dignified manner, and failing. It required a respectful silence.

  When the last traces of treacle had been mopped away, Tess said, ‘What we doin’ now?’

  ‘Looking for Lady Diane Lumire, companion to Ignatius Caryway and quite possibly conspirator to protect a murderer from the course of justice. At least, that’s what you’re doing. I’m going to find Edgar.’