The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree: Stoker & Bash, #2

by Selina Kray

  Tim kept a watchful eye on Hiero as the same elderly Daughter that had escorted him in that morning supervised his search of the remaining rooms on Castleside’s main floor. Though he repeatedly attempted to overwhelm the Daughter with his usual flood of chatter, Tim noticed the deep undercurrent of upset that broke the flow of his conversation at telltale moments. At first Tim had thought the constrictions and sobriety of his chosen character frustrated Hiero. But their interview with Sister Zanna had confirmed that, for all his protests he had seen it all during the mysterious life he had led, the circumstances of this case struck Hiero to the core.

  The why of it nagged at Tim, poking his resentment. He could shield Hiero from the worst if he but knew the details. But since these tragic events, and much of the man himself, were as closely guarded as Rebecca Northcote’s box, Tim could only rely on his instincts as a detective and as a lover, the latter of which were lacking, if Hiero’s trust in him was any indication. Thus the vicious circle of Tim’s concern and Hiero’s evasion played out through the morning.

  Midafternoon found them stationed in the corridor outside Sister Nora’s office, Tim staging something of a protest by insisting he would not move until the Daughters’ bookkeeper made herself available for questioning. Busy as a flock of courier pigeons, a series of messengers flew back and forth between the office door and wherever Sister Nora cooped herself up until their escort, in a fit of exasperation, left to seek her out.

  Alone for the first time in too long, Tim lured Hiero into a convenient alcove, all too aware of how time sped away from them, only to find his mouth stopped by needful lips, his body caught between cold stone and a craven form, arms clutched around him as if they might never let go. Hiero broke their kiss to bury his face in Tim’s neck, sucking in breaths that did nothing to steady the wild pound of his heart.

  Tim pressed both hands into the small of Hiero’s back, widened his embrace in an attempt to envelop him. Tried to make up in comfort what he lacked in size.

  “How are you faring?” Tim whispered.

  Hiero only hugged in tighter. Tim opened himself to him, rendered speechless by the force of Hiero’s need for affection. Then as swiftly as he had come on, Hiero retreated, pausing only to straighten Tim’s shirt. And jacket. And collar. And sleeves. Wipe a bit of powder from his cheek. Correct the part in his hair with deft fingers. Tim halted him before he knelt to polish his boots.

  “You need not be present for this interview, if you’d prefer—”

  “Oh, Sister Nora has no intention of presenting herself.” Hiero waved this off as if disappearing it in a puff of air. “The reel dance of Daughters we witnessed was a cunning bit of theater. But make no mistake, they will wait you out until the end times. Patience is a virtue, or so they maintain. I’ve never seen the point of it, myself.”

  As usual, Tim struggled to navigate the labyrinth of Hiero’s thoughts. “But I spoke with her just yesterday.”

  “Amidst the chaos, yes. But now that order has been restored...” He shrugged this off with the last traces of his upset. “She is the keeper of the final gate. She will hold the door or fall on her sword, but she will not grant you passage to Sister Juliet. Unless...”

  “We find a chink in her armor?”

  “Wonderful use of metaphor, my dear. But no.”

  “Dig a tunnel under her?”

  Hiero made a moue of distaste.

  “Apply the right pressure?”

  This earned him the wily smirk he missed.

  “We must make war on this unholy house,” Hiero said. “Arm ourselves with knowledge. With secrets.”

  “The time is out of joint here.”

  “Your second Shakespeare reference today,” Hiero purred. “My, but you know how to woo a man.”

  When Hiero closed the distance between them anew, Tim caught his face, dove deep into the black pools of his eyes.

  “What is it about this case that troubles you so?”

  For the first time in Tim’s memory, Hiero averted his gaze.

  “Echoes.” A soft growl escaped him. “Injustice. To seduce a grown adult with myths and ideals, more fool they. To cripple a child before the hour of its birth...”

  Tim kissed him then, a hard, ardent clash of lips and teeth and high emotion. And in that moment Tim took up the mantle of Hiero’s last guard. He would keep his final gate, hold the door, fall on his sword rather than see him heartbroken.

  Even if he never learned a thing about the mystery behind the man.

  From her perch on the windowsill, Callie watched Miss Kala pace back and forth, back and forth, her heels shredding small holes in the carpet at the foot of the bed.. She longed, absurdly, for a cigarette, if only to have something to preoccupy her hands. With one clenched in her skirts, with the other she traced the outline of her MAS revolver against the inside of her thigh. Every time her annoyance threatened a rash action, she would count down the next minute backward. She could not lose her focus, especially with Miss Kala churning like the engine of a runaway locomotive.

  What had Hiero always taught her? Find the advantage.

  They had yet to be let out of their room. Various Daughters had visited throughout the morning and into the late afternoon with trays of food, pots of tea, holy texts for study, or quick examinations. Each time a phalanx of subordinates guarded the outer side of the door, charged with the keys; each time Miss Kala grew more desperate. Callie had talked her down by reminding her their absence would not go unnoticed. And while she was not well pleased to be spending a day enclosed instead of learning all she could about her captors, especially with a partner as unseasoned as Miss Kala, she clung to Hiero’s other adage: never break character.

  She too could wait them out. Callie kept the carriage outside in her periphery, a hand on her revolver, and her raptor’s gaze fixed on the line of light under that door. Once a cold supper had been served, the sun had set, and the occasional twitter of conversation in the corridor beyond had quieted, she struck.

  Miss Kala, curled at the foot of the bed and pulling feathers out of a threadbare pillow, leapt up at the first sign of movement.

  “Have they come for us?”

  Callie scoffed. “We aren’t in any danger. What do you think the Daughters’ plans are, to sacrifice us at the full moon?”

  “Wouldn’t put it past them, would I?”

  “If they come fetch us with no explanation or clear destination, then we worry. For now...” She hoisted open her chest of clothes, rummaged around.

  “Let me.” Miss Kala shooed her off. “What you after?”

  Callie shoved her away. “I’m perfectly capable.”

  “Forgive my doubts, but you’ve been sitting on your Lady Godiva all day, begging them to collar you.”

  “Put this on.” Callie threw a pair of black trousers and a black tunic in her direction.

  “You’re joking.”

  “White doesn’t lend itself to concealment.”

  Once she’d dressed, Callie applied a slick of pomade to her hair. Fortunately Hiero had as many slippers as he did smoking jackets. Miss Kala’s pair dwarfed her tiny doll’s feet, but Callie appreciated their snug silence against the cold floor. A hidden panel in the bottom of the chest gave up her snoop’s wallet, which she tucked into the back of her trousers. Except for the pair of surgical instruments she used to defeat the lock.

  “What!” Miss Kala exclaimed in a stage whisper. “All this time...”

  “We need an advantage,” Callie explained. “If they believe us content to obey them, they’ll be less inclined...” She eased the door open an inch, peering into the corridor. “Empty.” She shut it again, turning to confront Miss Kala with her sternest stare. “If you’re to be a hindrance, I’ve no objection to exploring alone. We chance it either way. Here you might convince them I snuck off while you were asleep. Out there you risk as much as me. What do you say?”

  “Wait.” Miss Kala dug into the small section of the chest where she kept her spare
uniforms and extricated a leather pouch she tied around her waist. Callie didn’t miss the glint of her knife hilt as she tucked it under her tunic. “Ready. What’s your plan?”

  “Back stairs to the first floor. Map what parts we can. Find the cellar.”

  “Free Lil. Sound.”

  After bolstering the covers and extinguishing the bedroom lights, they crept into the black maw of the corridor. Perhaps to discourage such nocturnal excursions, not a lamp glowed or a twinkle of moonlight gleamed. A moan from the room they snuck past—Sister Juliet’s, if she wasn’t mistaken—forced them against the wall, hoping to meld into the gloom. Two voices, one keening, one cajoling, murmured within. Shahida muffled a giggle with her fist; Callie did not bother to quiet her huff of annoyance. She counted out a minute before moving to the stairwell.

  Callie felt her way down with one hand on the banister and the other crushed by Miss Kala’s surprisingly firm grip. The tunnels beneath 23 Berkeley Square had accustomed her to the soundless dark. If the occasional skitter or snore startled her, she breathed her way through it—slow, even draughts that steadied her heartbeat and her mind.

  Measured as a barge through a canal, they navigated a series of locks: at the top and the bottom of the stairs, in and out of the kitchen—where they found a storage room but no access to the cellar—from the rear living quarters to the business end of the first floor. Miss Kala’s only question involved the logic of locking the doors behind them, but Callie saw no other option. They would be discovered certain sure if they left anything askew. Standing in the shadows beyond Mother Rebecca’s illuminated portrait in the main hall, the only light they’d encountered in their whole journey through Castleside’s upperworld, Callie punched the wall. The burst of pain across her knuckles in no way quelled her mounting frustration.

  While Miss Kala drew a quick map of their route in the dust on the wood paneling, Callie channeled, of all things, the clockwork logic of DI Tim Stoker.

  “What have we learned?” she whispered.

  Miss Kala stopped to consider this. “No one can sneak.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Locks, locks everywhere. How many sets of keys, do you think?”

  Callie nodded, encouraged by this line of thought. “No sense in that kind of security if every Daughter has a set.”

  “I’d limit it to three, at most. And not every set the same.”

  “Restricting access, yes. But also distributing responsibility. Easier to identify the one to blame.”

  “So... who do you reckon?”

  “Sister Juliet,” Callie suggested. “They pretend she needs to be contained, but she wields the most control. Sister Nora looks to be in charge of security.”

  Shahida snickered. “If that’s what you like to call it.”

  “And perhaps Sister Zanna, with certain restrictions? I can’t see her waking the other sisters if one of the novitiates goes into sudden labor.”

  “Her room’s off the medical ward. Spied it yesterday.”

  “So perhaps only two. Or someone we’ve yet to meet.” She huffed with dragonlike intensity. “Tim has the right of it. There are too many variables.”

  Miss Kala returned to her map. “Here’s a thought. How do they get a message out?”

  “They quite obviously don’t.”

  “No one ever takes ill in the night? Needs a cup of water? Plays the two-finger pokey?” Her gesture confused rather than offended Callie. “They’re jailed till dawn and nobody ever says a peep? Don’t believe it.”

  Following her logic, Callie added, “They wouldn’t disturb Sister Juliet from her prayers or Sister Nora from her myriad chores for such trivialities. Anyone tasked with such a job would need be awake all night...” For the first time in two days, Callie found her smile. “There’s someone important, someone vital, to whom we haven’t been introduced. A night owl.”

  “A night guardian, you mean.”

  “Yes. A Daughter free to roam the halls, bar whichever doors she sees fit, and alert whomever she pleases to whatever’s going on. Or not.”

  A satisfied quiet hung between them as they pondered the possibilities. Until Miss Kala let out a groan and sank against the wall.

  “We’re going back,” she griped.

  “We’ve work to do.” Callie leaned beside her. “We must find and befriend this night guardian. She may be the key to both our mysteries.”

  “You think she’s keeping Lil?”

  “Possibly. Or in league with the murderer. At the very least, someone who can be bought.”

  Miss Kala nodded. “Places like this are rife with secret economies. Only way to survive.” She contemplated the cave mouth of the nearby corridor, shivered.

  “You speak from experience?”

  “My pops has got this idea I need to be tamed. Forgets that guests come to our inn just for my conversation, not his ales or mum’s fish pie. Better to be lively and forget your troubles, no matter the circumstances, is my motto. Can’t blame me for wanting a good time, to see something of the world, can you? Only took this post with Mr. Bash after his name was in the papers and remembering he’s an old friend of Pop’s. Figured I’d be in for some fun here. Wasn’t wrong.”

  “Even... saddled with my mother as you are?”

  “What, Lil? She’s the best of you. We have some right old adventures... Too many of late—you’re not wrong there—but she needs the distraction. Your dad done her a right turn.” Miss Kala flicked her gaze in Callie’s direction. “To you too, I reckon.”

  Callie balled her hand into a fist, letting her nails tear at her skin.

  “We’d best inform Han of our discoveries before he storms the barricades.” She broke away, diving into the darkness until it enveloped her. “Come.”

  “Where we going?”

  “For a breath of fresh air.”

  They retraced their path to the conservatory. Relieved to wade into the murky fathoms of moonlight that grayed the windows and ghosted around the hanging plants, Callie weaved her way to the far edge of the back of the building. Miss Kala held a rocking chair still while she stood on the seat. From this vantage, she was just able to make out the road beyond the brick wall that lined the compound.

  Sliding her hand mirror out of her belt, its refracted shine finally reached Han. Callie bit her tongue to keep from squealing at his response, the flame of his lantern bright with concern to her overactive mind. She lingered perhaps too long after conveying her message, wishing herself brave enough to say things that could never be said, even in code.

  The crack of the chair beneath spooked them. They scurried back to their cell, quiet as dormice, before the night guardian could discover them.

  Chapter 11

  Hiero exited the farmhouse in a sweep of robes as black as his mood. Another night of terror dreams had killed any sense of balance he felt after the previous day’s investigations with Kip. He’d hoped that hearty meal with Merry, whose jollity and good sense lived up to her name, would have quieted the echoes of a hard-forgotten past that plagued him since this infernal case began. But the creepers—rodents or squirrels, he suspected—had been at their creepiest, wrenching him from whatever tortured sleep he’d fallen into.

  He descended on the lush garden like a storm cloud, scowling at the novitiates elbow deep in mulch and glaring at the Daughters who watered the rows of fresh cress. He couldn’t even muster a smile for Amos, who chattered nonsense at his chicken friends as he fed them. Irritation and fatigue and, worst of all, sobriety roiled in him such that the gate opened as if by its own accord. Hiero hissed at the Daughter who scurried past him, cowering like one of the creepers made real.

  When he spied the crow of a Daughter on the conservatory steps, his keeper for the second day in a row, a blast of curses in a tongue Hiero had not spoken since his wee years burned up his throat. Only the last binds of his civility saved him from unleashing them. He had not felt so restless, so provoked by everything and everyone around him since..
.

  A very dark time, indeed.

  Slowing his progress across the lawn, he remembered his circumstances had improved; he had a professional standard to maintain; he had remade himself from nothing into a demigod of misrule. The wretched Daughters had imposed their self-mythology on him long enough. Time for a spot of mischief.

  “Blessed morning to you.” He folded his hands in prayer and performed a little bow. “Please inform Mrs. Sandringham I would care for an audience with her as soon as possible.”

  “I’m afraid, Father, she’s communing with the Mother and cannot be disturbed.”

  “Then at her earliest convenience.”

  “I’ll convey your message to her nurse.”

  When hell freezes over, Hiero noted she failed to add. “And our intrepid detective inspector? Where might he be found?”

  She made a face as if she’d swallowed a sea urchin.

  “DI Stoker sends his regrets. He’s been called out with his man on an errand.” A twitch of the old bird’s beak told Hiero what she thought of Han.

  Hiero clasped his hands behind his back to keep from worrying them. Little could have made his morning worse; Kip’s client must have a special talent for soul crushing. But then Kip had again run off without scribbling Hiero so much as a coded note at a time when just a word from him would have made all the difference. Hiero wished he could chalk up Kip’s repeated abandonment to trust in his abilities. Instead he felt like an afterthought.

  Something had to be done.

  With a melodramatic sigh, Hiero grabbed the dour Daughter by her arms à la Sister Juliet. She braced her shoulders and grit her teeth but did not recoil.

  “Tell you true, that is the most glorious news. These many weeks of travel have robbed me of time to reflect, to sing the praises of our great Mother in my humble fashion. Please, Daughter, is there somewhere, anywhere, a quiet spot where I might read and pray?”

  Wrong-footed by his fervor, she backed away. Hiero could see her mind working. She’d expected protest, not gratitude. She struggled to reformulate the little speech she’d been fed by her superiors, her jaw canted at an awkward angle. He pressed his advantage.