They were halfway back into the city before he finally told them the truth. “You remember Dunbar?” he began as the coach lurched with fearless rapidity in and out of the jostling ranks of traffic. “The Fly’s other victim?”
“Of course.”
“Seems his mother disappeared around about the same time as Mrs. Honeyman.”
Moon sounded almost disappointed. “I see.”
“Wait for it, Mr. Moon. Wait for it. This is the really interesting part.”
“Let me guess,” the detective interrupted swiftly. “She was also a member of this gang of philanthropists — the Church of the Summer Kingdom?”
Merryweather clapped his hands together in delight. “Precisely so.”
“Well, then. It seems at long last that we have a new lead in the murder of Cyril Honeyman.”
The Directorate.
Skimpole had never liked the name. He thought it was ostentatious, pompous and unnecessarily melodramatic. It originated from the founding of the agency in more theatrical times, days of blood and thunder. Since the death of the Queen, Skimpole had harbored hopes that the excesses of the past would not continue into the new century. He felt that a secret organization (if it were to have a name at all) ought to take pains to make itself sound as commonplace and as unworthy of notice as possible — certainly not revel in a title like “the Directorate,” which sounded as though it had been torn from the pages of popular fiction and seemed to him to reek of showmanship and cheap sensation. Dedlock, however, had always heartily approved of the name and, as it happened, considered himself a man who positively thrived upon showmanship and cheap sensation.
It was late in the working day and they sat in their usual places at the round table, Dedlock doggedly working his way through a bottle of wine, Skimpole struggling with a set of dense and tiresomely exhaustive surveillance reports.
“This is quite like old times,” Dedlock said, all of a sudden gregarious.
“How so?”
“You hard at your studies, me bunking off for a drink.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Like being back at school, isn’t it?”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Sorry I spoke.”
The albino went back to his work, only to be interrupted again. “Don’t sulk, Skimpole, for God’s sake. You never talk about the old days.” After the consumption of the best part of three-quarters of a bottle, he seemed in a ruminative mood.
Skimpole slammed down his reports on the table. “What news of Madame Innocenti?” he asked, pointedly ignoring Dedlock’s overtures of nostalgia.
“She was last seen in New York. After that — poof! — disappeared.”
“Damn.”
“You’re convinced she was the real thing?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. But if there’s the slightest chance she was genuine — and frankly, I can’t believe that all the information she gave us was entirely a string of lucky guesses — then the very last place we want her is New York. Power like that in the hands of the Americans is unthinkable.”
Mackenzie-Cooper emerged from the shadows, dressed in his usual unconvincing guise of a Chinese butcher. “Drink, sah?” he asked, speaking in that risible accent. Irritated, the albino waved him away.
“You should join me,” Dedlock said. “It’s surprisingly good.”
“Far too early for me.” Skimpole turned to Mackenzie-Cooper. “I’ll have a cup of tea.”
The man bowed and disappeared to the back of the room. Although neither of his superiors noticed it at the time, he seemed oddly nervous. Dedlock was later to claim that he saw the man’s hands tremble and shake as though palsied, but this particular detail was one he was only able to recall a number of months after the incident and — suspiciously — during a dinner party at that.
“What’s Mr. Moon up to?” Dedlock asked.
“Following a lead on the Honeyman case. He’s still convinced it’s connected.”
“Do you agree?”
“I’ve learnt by now to trust his instincts.”
Dedlock scratched idly at his scar. “He’s your agent,” he said.
“I shan’t try to interfere. But if Madame Innocenti was correct, then we’ve only got four days left.”
“I hardly need to be reminded.”
“I’m thinking of moving my family out of the city. You know, before it happens. Have you made any arrangements?”
Before he could reply, Mackenzie-Cooper returned with a large pot of tea. He poured Skimpole a cup and, offering the same to Dedlock, stressed in rather more forceful tones than really behooves an underling the efficacy of the drink in combatting insobriety. Dedlock grudgingly accepted and a cup of the rehabilitative brew was set beside his wine.
As Mackenzie-Cooper was pouring, Skimpole swigged from his own cup and frowned. Far too much sugar. Still, he drank again, a bigger sip this time, taking a guilty pleasure in the saccharine rush.
Dedlock leant across to the phoney Chinaman. “You all right, old boy? You don’t seem quite yourself.”
Startled, Mackenzie-Cooper snatched the pot away, clumsily spilling a good deal of its contents in the process.
“Velly sorry, sah,” he muttered, frantically searching his pockets for something to mop up the mess. “Velly sorry.”
“No need to get yourself the up about it. It was an accident.”
At last Mackenzie-Cooper produced a dishcloth, but as he reached across to clean up the tea, he succeeded in toppling his superior’s wineglass. Dedlock cursed as rivulets of tea and wine ran across the table and Niagaraed onto the floor.
“Sorry, sah. Sorry, sah.” Beneath his greasepaint and disguise, Mackenzie-Cooper had begun to sweat.
Dedlock started to clear away the spillage, but barely had he begun before he observed a most curious effect. As the wine and tea combined and intermingled on the table before him, the liquids seemed first to bubble, then to steam and stew in some unnatural reaction.
Mackenzie-Cooper saw it, too. For an instant, they stared open-mouthed at each other, the one astonished that he had been found out by so petty an accident, the other trying desperately to understand the precise nature of what had occurred.
With a Greek-wedding clatter, Mackenzie-Cooper threw the teapot to the floor, its china splintering expensively, and ran at full pelt for the exit. Dedlock bounded to his feet (with surprising athleticism for a man of his age) and raced after him, an unexpected blur of motion. Mackenzie-Cooper yelped in fear. Just before he reached the door, the older man rugby-tackled him, hurling his quarry to the ground, pinning the interloper to the floor.
“Why?” he snarled. Mackenzie-Cooper said nothing, his eyes darting about him in fear. Dedlock slapped his face hard. “Why?” he asked again, and the man looked as though he might be about to cry. Another slap. “Why?”
At this, Mackenzie-Cooper began to contort his face, gurgling, dribbling like a teething infant. Dedlock looked on. “What now?”
By the time he realized what was happening it was too late. Mackenzie-Cooper screwed up his face again, swallowed something, then shuddered and convulsed, his face turning a mottled purple, white foam bubbling at his mouth. Seconds later, his body seemed to crumple in upon itself and he spasmed a few times before falling still. Dedlock screamed his frustration. Flinging the corpse aside, he staggered to his feet.
“Cyanide capsule,” he explained (superfluously, in Skimpole’s opinion). He reached across to the spilt tea, dabbed a finger in the pool and smelt it carefully. “There was enough poison in that pot to kill us both. How much did you drink?”
Skimpole lied. “Nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course,” the albino said, too quickly. “I drank nothing.”
Dedlock nodded vaguely.
Skimpole gazed down at the twisted body on the floor. “Thought you told me he went to Oxford.”
Dedlock bent over the body and rugged away the man’s disguise to reveal not the callow Oriel alumnus they had expected, but a bald, middle-aged stranger, lugubrious-looking, ill and wasted. “Somehow I doubt he’s an Eton man,” he said.