“You do realise how much damage you do to my paintwork with that infernal stick of yours, don’t you, Charles?” said Newbury, peeling open his eyes once again. “It’s most inconsiderate. Poor Scarbright is forever complaining at having to touch up the dints in the wood.”
Bainbridge laughed half-heartedly. “Good morning, Newbury,” he replied, his voice strained.
Newbury noted that his friend was looking a little flustered and red about the face, and had not removed his coat in the hallway. “We’re going out, then?” he asked, nonchalantly.
Bainbridge frowned. “Yes,” he said, clearly refusing to be drawn. He crossed the drawing room, stepping over a heaped pile of papers covered in Newbury’s spidery scrawl, and perched on the arm of the chair opposite Newbury’s own. He leaned forward on his cane, then reached into his pocket and produced a small white notecard. He waved it at Newbury. “She’s sending them to me, now!”
“A summons?” asked Newbury, nodding towards the neat stack of identical cards on the sideboard. “Add it to the pile, Charles.”
Bainbridge shook his head. “No. This time she wants to see us both.”
Newbury coughed fitfully into his fist and leaned forward, taking the card from Bainbridge. The message, printed in Sandford’s neat copperplate, gave little away.
SIR CHARLES
YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUIRED AT THE PALACE FORTHWITH. BRING NEWBURY.
VR
“You’re not getting out of it this time, I’m afraid, old man.”
Newbury shrugged and handed the card back to Bainbridge. “I suppose it’s time I put in an appearance,” he said, smiling, although his heart wasn’t in it.
Bainbridge nodded. “You look dreadful,” he said.
“Thank you, Charles,” Newbury replied smartly.
“I’m only telling you what you already know, Newbury. God knows someone has to.” Bainbridge’s voice was full of disdain. “Have you seen the black rings beneath your eyes? And you’re as white as a sheet. Anyone would think you were anaemic.”
“Yes, yes, Charles,” said Newbury dismissively. “None of this is new. Besides, I came to the morgue. I’m helping you, aren’t I?”
“Yes, I suppose,” said Bainbridge, his moustache twitching. “So you’ll come, then? To the palace, I mean?”
“Yes,” said Newbury. “I’ll come.”
“Good man,” said Bainbridge, straightening his back. He was wearing a satisfied expression. Clearly, he’d been expecting a row. He lifted his cane and opened his mouth as if to continue, but then rocked back in sudden surprise as a large brass object came swooping down from a nearby bookcase, emitting a metallic squawk and eliciting a curse from the chief inspector. It landed neatly upon his shoulder, folded its wings with the clacking of metal plates, and cocked its head in mimicry of the barn owl it was modelled on.
“Good God!” said Bainbridge, loudly. “This ruddy … creature of yours just gave me the fright of my life!”
The owl chirruped noisily, as if giving a satisfied laugh at Bainbridge’s expense. He waved his hand at it in annoyance, attempting to shoo it away, but it simply shifted its position on his shoulder with an accompanying chirp, its tiny clawed feet gathering up little folds of his overcoat.
“I think he likes you,” Newbury said, laughing.
“I don’t know why I ever agreed to let you keep this damnable thing,” Bainbridge said, although Newbury could tell he wasn’t genuinely aggrieved. The clockwork owl was a trophy from a previous investigation, the former property of Lord Carruthers, who’d been poisoned by his estranged sibling at Christmas a couple of years earlier. The owl had been instrumental in helping to solve the case, and Bainbridge had allowed the “evidence”-with the permission of the family, of course-to be rehomed with Newbury. It had been a fixture of his drawing room ever since.
The bird trilled merrily, spread its gleaming wings, and hopped down from Bainbridge’s shoulder onto the arm of the chair. It stamped its feet a few times-puncturing the leather covering of the seat with its claws as it did so-then turned to regard Bainbridge, watching him intently. Its eyes blinked as Bainbridge held its gaze for a moment, before shaking his head and offering Newbury an exasperated look.
“I take it there have been no further developments in the case?” asked Newbury, changing the subject.
Bainbridge shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m damned if I can find a link between the suspects, let alone a motive for the killer. I keep coming back to this ritualistic nonsense, hoping that your friend Renwick is going to turn up something useful.”
Newbury sat forward, stifling a groan as his tired muscles pulled in protest, threatening to mire him there in his comfortable armchair before the fire. He placed his hands on the arms of the chair, planning to lever himself free. “If there’s anything to be found, Charles, Aldous will find it,” he said, hauling himself upright. “I sent word yesterday, and Miss Hobbes took charge of delivering the letter.” He stood there for a moment, a little unsteady on his feet. “Look,” he said, “I need to make myself presentable. Give me half an hour. Scarbright will make tea, if you ask him nicely.”
Bainbridge looked up at him, his expression softening. “It’s only because I couldn’t stand it if you killed yourself, Maurice. You realise that?”
“I do, Charles,” replied Newbury, quietly, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I wish you could understand.”
“As do I,” said Bainbridge, morosely.
Newbury sighed, leaving the chief inspector by the fire so he could make himself look a bit more respectable before heading out to see the monarch. It wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience-it rarely was, these days-but he’d been putting it off long enough. It was time to face his demons.
Or one of them, at the very least.
CHAPTER 8
The girl never knew her parents.
She had been told that her father had been trampled by a horse two months prior to her birth, and that her mother had died in the throes of bringing her into the world, in the dank, underground cell of an asylum somewhere on the outskirts of Paris.
She had erupted into the world in an orgy of agony and anguish-or so she’d been told by the crooked-backed old woman in the orphanage, who seemed to delight in describing the young girl’s misfortune, cackling mercilessly and exposing the blackened stumps of her teeth.
Later, she would understand this for what it was: the old woman’s attempt to rationalise the unfathomable ways of the world, and perhaps to remind herself that there existed people whose circumstances were far worse than her own. The old woman consoled herself in this manner, by averting her own face from the looking glass and turning its scrutiny upon the young orphan who had never known anything better. It allowed the woman to focus on something other than her own lowly lot in life, her pauper’s existence.
At the time, however, the old woman terrified her. She thought her a witch, an avatar of the devil himself. She cowered from that cavernous mouth and its spittle-flecked lips that spewed only poison and fear, trying to shut out the woman’s spiteful words. The onslaught was relentless, however, and by the age of seven she found herself believing what the woman said: that she had killed her own mother upon quitting the womb, that her very soul was inhabited by evil, and that she would never amount to anything in this life. All that awaited her was an eternity in the fiery pits of Hell.