Fatal Enquiry (19 page)

I wasn’t contemplating matrimony, of course, but I had to admit she had a face to look at over the breakfast table every morning. Ivory skin, moonlit hair, and golden eyes lined in black velvet. She’d be worth sweeping the front steps for, or whatever it is that husbands did for their wives these days. But I stopped myself right there, because she was the daughter of Sebastian Nightwine, the most treacherous man in London.

I alighted at Browns’ and even paying the cabman was a delight after having scrimped money for several days. In my clean suit I easily passed inspection by the desk clerk, and after notifying him to ring Mrs. Ashleigh’s room, I buried myself behind the latest edition of
The Times.
While Barker and I had been occupied, apparently the world continued revolving. There had been a fire in Hammersmith and a rise in the price of corn on the exchange. However, there was no notice that a desperate enquiry agent had just been loosed on unsuspecting London.

“Thomas!” Philippa Ashleigh asked at my elbow. “Have you eaten?”

“Not since last night, ma’am.”

“I think we can dispense with the formalities now. We’ve known each other over a year.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t believe the Guv would approve. You know he is old-fashioned.”

“Old-fashioned,” she repeated, placing the emphasis on the first word rather than the second. Fashioned—forged—if you prefer, in the old ways, with the old tools. I thought it captured his essence very well.

“Where is he, Thomas?”

“I don’t know. He sent me off to the Foreign Office, and then called in an anonymous tip to have me arrested.”

“You must be exhausted and starved. Let’s go in and have tea.”

She led me into the dining room and we were seated. In just a few minutes the waiter had brought us sandwiches of cold tongue, pâté, and cucumber with watercress. He returned with cheese, pickles, and deviled eggs, with a pot of tea. As soon as food was present, my stomach had a kind of spasm from going on so little for so long, and I had to stop myself from cramming all the food in front of me into my mouth at once. Mrs. Ashleigh picked at her food and drank lots of tea and did not make me feel bad for acting gluttonous. The desserts came next: puddings and sweets, and treacle tarts. At some point I stopped myself and gave a relieved sigh.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Certainly. Now, please tell me, coherently and in full sentences, what you and Cyrus have been doing since you ran out of your offices last week.”

It was a challenge, but I rose to it. After I had given her a full summary of our exploits, I couldn’t remember a word I’d actually said, but I knew I had acquitted myself well enough.

“So he is out there somewhere without a penny to his name.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“He sent a message to warn me that Sebastian Nightwine is in London, but actually, I knew that already. He came calling yesterday afternoon.”

“Nightwine came here?”

“No, he came down to Sussex. I knew exactly what he was doing. He was showing Cyrus he could get to me if he wanted to.”

“He didn’t threaten or harm you in any way?”

“We talked for about an hour, that’s all. I have always been able to see through his intrigues. The man hasn’t changed a hair.”

“You mean you know him?”

“Oh, years now. He proposed marriage to me once, but I think it was merely to get at Cyrus. You cannot fathom how deeply the two of them despise each other.”

I shook my head in disbelief. It did make sense, however; they had all known each other in China.

“May I ask how Sebastian Nightwine came to propose to you or would that be impertinent of me?”

“I suppose I should tell you about Colin, my late husband,” she began. “He was an engineer, mostly concerned with bridges and dams. It’s the kind of occupation that will make a fortune in the East. We’d been married five years when he was hired by the government to work in southern China. We bought a house in Canton in the foreign settlement on Shameen Island. It was like a little bit of England; the husbands would go off in the mornings and we wives would pay visits or plan parties or try to stay cool in the unmerciful heat. We were not encouraged to explore the city or encounter the native population, but there was one fellow whom Colin brought home now and again, a Chinese boat captain who carried freight for him on occasion.”

“Shi Shi Ji,” I said, using Barker’s Chinese name. “But I still can’t believe you couldn’t tell he was European.”

“His forehead was shaved up to the crown, a queue hung down his back, and the bottom of his mustache was long and braided. With his dark spectacles, I defy you to have recognized him as a Scotsman, either. He came once a month or so for almost a year, though we rarely spoke. I did not know how well he could speak or understand English, and we really didn’t speak until Colin died.”

“May I ask how your husband was killed?”

“A rock gave way above an area he was surveying. It was dangerous work. That was why they had called on his expertise.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured.

She looked momentarily brittle and tight, but it passed quickly. Underneath that gentle elegance there was a rod of iron.

“That was a long time ago. Cyrus came to the funeral and stood at the outer edge of the party, dressed in a white tunic as is the Chinese custom. Then he started to come by the estate to do little things, or to make improvements. He was monosyllabic and gruff but I came to rely on him. He took over our garden and grounds but he would never step in the house, not for nearly a year.”

“Why did you stay in China after your husband died?”

“I did not relish returning home and becoming an object of concern to my family and friends. I did not want their pity. Also, I wanted to see that Colin’s work was completed. If I could see that the improvements he had designed actually made a difference to the people there, then he had not died in vain.”

“Of course.”

“Eventually I began to attend social functions again. I was at a gymkhana with some neighbors when I was introduced to Sebastian. I knew right off he was the kind of man who would use a widow as his own personal bank account until she had not twopence to rub together. However, he was attentive. You cannot possibly understand what it is like to live in social seclusion for a year. It felt good to be noticed by a handsome man and for once to be the object of interest in my community.”

“What was Nightwine doing then?” I asked.

“Not much of anything, I believe. He had been stationed in Hong Kong, but had gotten in trouble enough there to move to the mainland. He called one day to see me, and apparently, Cyrus saw him leave.”

I sat forward quickly. “What did the Guv do?”

“He burst in the door and started barking at me in voluble Cantonese. My grasp is not good and I only caught every tenth word, but enough to know I didn’t like what he said. Who was he to come into my house and make insinuations about my friends? What was he to me but a glorified gardener, after all? I argued back. And you won’t guess what he said.”

“What?” I demanded. “What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Haud yer wiest, woman!’”

We both suddenly smiled. I could imagine this huge, agitated Chinaman telling her to hold her tongue in broad Scots, as if I were there myself.

“Well, of course, he had to come clean about being a Scotsman and then to admit that his interests extended beyond my garden. At the moment, he was in a spot, because he had come to Canton to study Chinese boxing, which is not taught to foreigners, but by the same token, I could not exactly be seen in polite society on the arm of a Chinaman, now could I? Our growing relationship had to remain a secret. Then there was Sebastian, whom once attracted is more difficult to get rid of than blight.”

“I see a fight coming on,” I commented.

She frowned. “Are you going to tell the story or shall I, Thomas?”

“You tell it in your own way, Mrs. Ashleigh, but please don’t drag it out. It’s killing me. I do not think I can stand the suspense.”

“One Saturday afternoon Sebastian came calling with flowers and chocolate and, as I suspected, a ring. I don’t believe he really wanted to marry me, but there was no other way for him to legally get to my money without it. Once my name was on a document he could systematically drain everything Colin had left me. Sebastian wouldn’t be denied his attempt at man’s most grand gesture. He went down on one knee in front of me.

“‘Get your foul knee up off that clean floor,’ a voice bellowed in the hall. Cyrus stood there in the sleeveless tunic he wore when he worked in the garden.

“Sebastian did not seem that surprised to meet his old adversary in my parlor. That’s when I realized that as much as it was about the money I had, it was more about doing Cyrus out of what he wanted.

“The next I knew the two of them were destroying my house in an attempt to defeat each other. They knocked over tables and upset chairs. I tried yelling over the din but it made little difference. Paintings were knocked from walls, pots overturned, and bric-a-brac shattered. An old suit of armor that Colin had purchased in his university days fell to pieces on the marble floor with an appalling din. I stepped outside and asked a neighbor to send for the police.

“The fight ended when they ran out of things to break, and both of them were bloody and disreputable. By that time several sparrows escaped from a broken cage were flying about the room and the only piece of furniture that was not damaged was the grand piano, though they had given it a valiant effort. I gave them both the thorough tongue-lashing they deserved.

“The next I knew, the police entered the room, or rather, the English army officers who guarded our island. They seemed to disapprove of everyone, even me, as if I had engaged them to start a fracas, and began to question us individually. Then a Chinese magistrate in a tasseled hat entered and pointed to Cyrus. He questioned nobody at all but barked an order and a squad of Chinese soldiers entered and took him away. Not to be outdone, the British soldiers promptly took Sebastian in for questioning.”

“My word,” I exclaimed. “So, what happened then?”

“Sebastian came two days later, showing a scratch on the cheek and a split lip. He had been to his tailor and barber, who had done their best for him. We had a long chat and I told him I was not the fool he evidently thought me to be. I sent him off with a flea in his ear. He was a rascal and a charming one, but a woman who marries a rascal deserves the misery that she gets.”

“And Mr. Barker?” I prompted.

“He disappeared for several days. I hired a solicitor and even spoke with a few officials but one cannot circumvent the imperial court system. One morning I received a message and called a palanquin to the magistrate’s house in the middle of Canton. Cyrus was seated in the dust, chained to a
cangue
.”

“What is a
cangue
?”

“It is a heavy wooden structure built like a door that is locked about a prisoner’s neck. He cannot feed himself or sleep or even drink while he is locked in it. Cyrus had been beaten, as well. One eye was enormously swelled and bleeding.”

“Didn’t they realize he was a British citizen?” I asked.

“Apparently there had been no precedent for a Westerner to break the law while dressed as a Chinaman. The magistrate declared that he was in fact a peasant who just happened to look rather foreign. It allowed them to save face and execute justice swiftly.”

“But how could the magistrate rule without a trial with witnesses and barristers?”

“You have to understand Chinese law. Cyrus, declared Chinese, was guilty of breaching the peace. Order was restored and the guilty punished. The English were responsible for punishing foreign prisoners and the Chinese their own. That was the end of it.”

“How long was he in the
cangue
?”

“Three days. By the third day, he had passed out completely. It was summer and very hot. He was finally released into my care. I had him carried back to Shameen in a litter. He was bedridden for two weeks, but you know, he has told me he never regretted it. He stopped Sebastian from proposing to me. And I got what I wanted, as well.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“We cut off his pigtail and made a Scotsman of him again. It was like a rebirth.”

“Did Nightwine finally leave Canton when he realized he couldn’t marry you?”

“He took an assignment in Peking and began intriguing there. Sebastian can thrive just about anywhere. He always sinks to the lowest spot and puts down roots. In this case he learned how to bribe the imperial eunuchs within the Forbidden City to get what he wanted.”

“Which was?”

“Which was Cyrus’s head upon a platter.”

“Literally?” I demanded.

“Literally enough. Six months later we received an announcement from Peking ordering Shi Shi Ji to the palace. You recall, he had been declared Chinese, and was therefore under the jurisdiction of the Ching government.”

“The Dowager Empress! But that’s who gave him Harm. How did that come about?” I demanded. I had been trying to get the story from Barker for two years.

“I’m afraid I cannot tell you,” she said. “It is his story to tell. And frankly, it is no story for a woman.”

I thought about what she said and retreated from the questions I wanted to ask. Instead, I brought the matter back to the present situation.

“This feud between Mr. Barker and Nightwine isn’t all about his brother, then.”

“No, it isn’t. Every time they meet something happens between them to add tension to the spring, so to speak. It’s going to break sooner or later.”

“Not sooner or later, ma’am. This time. Mr. Barker said it himself. McClain’s death: it’s like his brother died all over again. I don’t need a gift for prophecy to see that disaster is in the air.”

She set her cup down delicately. “You’re supposed to reassure me that everything is all right, Thomas, not to rattle my nerves even further.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Do your best to be there,” she said, her eyes boring into mine. “I don’t believe you can stop either one of them, but at least be there. At his elbow, if you can. He’ll need a friend beside him.”