Peter coughed. “Well, yes, actually. The man had a habit of making a nuisance of himself around her hospital.”
Alderscroft helped himself to mutton, chewed thoughtfully, then replied, “I don’t suppose the doctor-gel could be mixed up in this…” But then to Peter’s relief, he shook his head, and answered his own question. “No, not likely. We know her, we’ve had our eyes on her, and not only has she no connection whatsoever to the men who were murdered—well, bar the rotter—but there’s been nothing from her quarter but the shields and defenses and a trifling bit of healing magic.”
“I am a bit concerned that she might be a target of this—” he ventured. “My lord, I really do think we ought to invite her into the White Lodge, not only because she is becoming a formidable Earth Master, but for her protection. As long as she must function alone, she will be in danger, if not from this menace, than from others who will wish to gather her into their fold.”
Alderscroft’s brows contracted together in a frown, and he stabbed at an inoffensive piece of mutton savagely. “A woman? And a foreigner to boot? Out of the question! East is East and West is West, my boy—we don’t mix our magic with Eastern magic, that only brings trouble. Well, look at the messes that Blavatsky woman got herself into, and the Besant girl is no better nor saner!”
“Yes, but—” Peter began just as stubbornly.
“But me no buts. There never has been a woman in the Exeter Club, nor a foreigner, and there never will be.” Alderscroft stared at Peter as though daring him to attempt a contradiction, but Peter was not about to fight a battle against a windmill, and changed the subject.
“How many victims were there last night?” he asked.
“Eh?” Alderscroft said, surprised. Clearly he’d expected an argument, and when Peter had declined to give him one, was taken a little aback. “Ah—seven, I believe. At least that’s the count this morning. All of ‘em, bar the missing one, retired Army. None mages. All smothered, the breath squeezed out of ‘em.” He shook his head. “Can’t link the missing man in with that set, but Owlswick swears he’s getting the same sort of taint on the fellow when he tries to scry out what’s happened to him, and I suppose he could be linked into Hindus in some other way—” his gaze sharpened, “—if he offered some insult to that Hindu doctor of yours. Did he?”
“I gather that he made some improper advances, yes,” Peter said reluctantly. When Alderscroft pinned a person with that direct gaze, it was damnably hard not to give him what he wanted out of you.
“Huh. So that would be where your information came from. No reason for the girl to lie, I suppose. No, of course not, she’s a doctor, she’d have more reason to cover it up to preserve her reputation. What happened, exactly?” Alderscroft’s glacial gaze pried every last detail out of Peter, including the little plot that he and Almsley had made up to free Maya from the unwanted attentions.
“Ha!” the old man barked, amused, when Peter was finished. “Clever enough, all of you! Good trick of hers, callin’ what she did to the fellow ‘heatstroke.’ Ha!” He pondered the tale, stabbing bites of his luncheon and chewing them with deliberation while he did so.
At least I’ve managed to restore his appetite.
“Well played,” he said at last. “Nothing to connect us, or magic in general, with what went on. Managing to hush the fellow up. Perfectly allowable use of magic in self-defense, especially considering the situation. Though—someone should have noticed when she struck him.”
“It was a very transitory phenomenon, my lord,” Peter said cautiously. “It didn’t take place at night, nor in one of the venues we’ve been watching. Under such circumstances, I can see how it would not be caught by a watcher.”
“True, true. But still.” Alderscroft frowned. “Someone should have noticed, use of power like that, and unshielded. I’ll have a word with Owlswick. He’s supposed to be watching by daylight, whether or not anyone else is, and he’s supposed to report things like that to me.”
Aha—so that’s why Lord Owlswick never leaves the club! “She is a doctor, my lord. It might not have been as great a use of power as you are assuming. A doctor would know better than anyone else how and where to strike to incapacitate someone.” Peter had more in mind than merely helping Lord Owlswick out of a reprimand by pointing that out. He hoped that—after later consideration at least—giving evidence of Maya’s multiple talents might yet pave the way for her entry into the Club and Lodge, if only Lord Alderscroft could be made to see past his Old School Tie prejudices.
“Hmm. A point. Well, there’s the link from the missing man to the killer—the cad laid hands on a Hindu wench, and with intentions, to boot.” Alderscroft nodded. “Don’t matter if she never told anyone but you and her servants, or even if she didn’t tell the servants. Servants overhear everything, and they gossip. Wouldn’t be long before it was all over, at least with the Hindu population.” He brooded over his potatoes. “Wish we had some sort of hook into the ranks of Hindu servants in London. If anyone knows anything that might lead us to the killer, it’ll be with them.”
“You surely don’t suspect them of helping the killer?” Peter exclaimed, appalled. He hadn’t thought Alderscroft to be that insular!
But Alderscroft shook his head. “No, no, not a bit of it. For one thing, there wasn’t a victim that still had Indian servants. No, I’m just thinking that there may be rumors in the bazaar, so to speak, rumors that would be damned useful to us, and of no use to the police, and I wish we were in a position to hear ‘em.”
Peter thought of Gupta and Gopal, and wondered just how open they would be with him. Well, what could it hurt to ask? And that might be yet one more reason for Club and Lodge to feel obligated to Maya. The more obligations that piled up, the less resistance there would be to bringing her into the fold.
After all, that was one reason why they brought me in.
“Doctor Witherspoon’s servants might be willing to talk to me,” he said cautiously. “Especially if she asked them to. She treats them less as servants and more as family, from what I’ve seen.”
Alderscroft cleared his throat, and looked a little embarrassed. “It’s not my place to criticize how a woman runs her own household,” he said, “But in most cases, that’s a mistake—”
“But not in all—and anyway, this just means they’re more likely to talk to me to oblige her,” Peter said firmly. “I take it you’d like me to have a word, then?”
Alderscroft nodded. “I’d be obliged to the doctor,” he responded, much to Peter’s pleasure. “Especially if they can tell us anything interesting.”
“Then I’ll see to it immediately,” Peter promised. “I’ll be happy to.”
And if ever there was an understatement, that was surely a mammoth.
Chapter Nineteen
IN the end, Peter decided to approach Gupta privately, rather than going through Maya first. If Maya’s chief servant and oldest friend did know something regarding Maya’s safety, he might be more willing, rather than less, to talk to Peter about it without Maya present. If this ploy didn’t work, he could always backtrack and go through Maya anyway.
As a consequence, he shut up his shop during the early afternoon when he knew that Maya would be at the Fleet clinic, and took a ‘bus to her home. There had been a dramatic change in the weather at long last, with much lower temperatures and frequent rains. It was now a normal, ordinary English summer in all respects but one. The heat wave had broken, but now thanks to the rains and coolness, fogs marched through the streets at night, and with the fog, came more of the mysterious deaths. Simon Parkening was still missing, and although Peter would have been perfectly pleased if he never appeared again, his continued absence boded little good. And at any rate, although the man was a bounder and a cad, even Peter wouldn’t wish him dead.