Pax Britannia: Human Nature (15 page)

A young woman with ridiculously long straw-blond hair - so long, in fact, that it was tied like a belt at her waist to stop it dragging in the dirt - plaited with pink and purple ribbons, beads and even shells, was huddled nervously beside the master of ceremonies. Her dress might have once been the ball gown of a Versailles courtier, but was now a dusty and faded shadow of the glorious centrepiece costume it had once been. The embroidered bodice was loose upon her skinny frame and her slight chest could not hope to fill it. A knitted shawl about her shoulders added to the impression of the impoverished gypsy lifestyle.

A bald, near giant of a man, with the quizzical expression of a three-year old on his prominently-browed face, was led away docilely by the hand into the main tent, by a girl of no more than eleven or twelve, revealing the trio of policemen, deep in conversation, that his hulking frame had obscured from view.

"I don't bloody believe it!" Ulysses exclaimed, a broad grin spreading across his face.

"Ah," Nimrod said as he caught sight of the tuft of orange hair only a moment after his master.

"Ah, indeed, Nimrod! It's only Inspector sodding Allardyce," Ulysses laughed. "Here, in North Yorkshire!"

Casting his eyes heavenward and letting out a long breathy sigh, Nimrod followed as his master quickened his steps towards the unmistakeable ginger-haired figure of Inspector Allardyce of Scotland Yard, and Ulysses' regular sparring partner.

"Hello, Maurice." The inspector's eyes flashed with furious fire. Allardyce's venomous look came with an accompaniment of spluttering grunts and snorts as the other policemen attempted to suppress their sniggers. "And what brings you here?"

"I don't bloody believe it," the put-upon inspector grumbled. "Quicksilver! What the hell are
you
doing here?"

"Oh, you know, enjoying a little unseasonal sea air. I hear it's very good for one's constitution."

"You're joking, right? Air's as polluted in this godforsaken place as it is back in the Big Smoke. And what do you think you look like in that get up? Get dressed in the dark, did you?"

"And what brings you here?"

Inspector Maurice Allardyce pulled himself up to his full height - all five foot six inches of it - and tugged at the lapels of his grey trench coat. "I'll have you know that I am investigating a series of most foul and savage murders."

"Ah, that's funny, because I'd heard you were on holiday. Although, if that
is
the case, it looks more like a busman's holiday to me."

The policemen exchanged knowing glances at this. Allardyce's face reddened still further.

"Well, yes, I may happen to have been holidaying in the area, visiting the wife's sister."

"But as soon as we heard that Inspector Allardyce of Scotland Yard was staying here, in Whitby," said an enthusiastic young constable, coming to Allardyce's aid, something like hero-worship sparkling in his eyes, "we knew that we just had to get him on the case."

Allardyce smiled, looking half embarrassed and half delighted with the complement he had just been paid.

"Ah, so it
is
a busman's holiday then."

"You could say that," Allardyce conceded. "Now, Quicksilver, if you wouldn't mind being about your business, then I can be about mine."

Pushing past Ulysses, Allardyce approached the belligerent constable still questioning the increasingly irritated ringmaster.

The near-skeletal MC gave Ulysses the impression that he was an incredibly patient man - having developed his tolerant attitude in the face of society's mistrust and ostracising, coupled with its fascination, nonetheless, for the freaks that inhabited the otherworld of which he was the master - and yet who was now being pushed to his absolute limit.

Allardyce interrupted the constable's ongoing fruitless line of questioning with an abrupt: "Have you finished with this one?" pointing an accusing finger at the ghoulish ringmaster. To his mind, the man had already been tried and convicted, and now he was ready to see sentence passed.

Ulysses sidestepped past the inspector and extended a hand towards the suddenly startled master of the Circus of Wonders. "Ulysses Quicksilver, special investigator of rum goings-on and uncanny occurrences," he said. "And you are?"

Eyeing him like a hawk, the circus-master ignored Ulysses' proffered hand and instead doffed his hat - to expose a few straggly strings of lank grey shoulder-length hair - and took a bow, bending low at the waist.

"They call me Steerpike, and I am indeed master of ceremonies at this Circus of Wonders," he announced, unfolding his body again and returning the hat to his head. "I am also known as the Incredible Eating Man," he said.

With a flourish, he took an Edison bulb from a pocket of his tailcoat, a clockmaker's hammer from another, and then proceeded to break the bulb into a fingerless-mittened hand, and popped one of the larger pieces of glass into his mouth. There followed an uncomfortable crunching sound that set Ulysses' teeth on edge, which was followed by some moments of mastication, that sounded like the man was chewing a mouthful of grit, before Steerpike swallowed noisily and with an exaggerated dip and rise of his head. He opened his mouth wide, sticking out a long pink tongue, to show all assembled that his mouth was now completely empty, ever the showman to the last.

"Very impressive," Ulysses said, offering up a short burst of applause.

"Never mind all that," Inspector Allardyce butted in, his face locked in a grimace that made Ulysses think of a pit-bull chewing a wasp, and demanded of the man, "what have you found out?"

"Still claims 'e and 'is freaks are innocent," the constable sighed with frustration.

"Innocent?" Ulysses said, his ears pricking up at the merest hint of any miscarriage of justice taking place here.

"Oh, here we go," Allardyce complained.

"Innocent of what, exactly?" Ulysses asked, visions of local newspaper headlines cramming his head.

"Murder, of course! I thought you had to be clever to go to Eton," the inspector added, giving Ulysses a disparaging look.

"But not to be a policeman, eh? Just blinkered," Ulysses countered.

"Look, if you're not off my patch in the next thirty seconds, I'll have you up before the local magistrate for obstructing police business!" Allardyce snarled. "Or perhaps," he said, suddenly smiling darkly, "you know more than you're letting on, and I should take
you
in for questioning."

"Oh you know me, Inspector; nothing to hide here. In fact I would gladly offer myself up for interrogation, if you feel that it would help you bring this particularly nasty case to a satisfactory conclusion," Ulysses offered magnanimously.

"Not bloody likely," Allardyce snarled. "Now bugger off."

"Gladly, Inspector," Ulysses said, doffing his deerstalker to the red-faced policeman. "We wouldn't want to get in the way of justice now, would we, Nimrod?"

"No, sir. Good day, Inspector."

Without another word, Ulysses turned and began to stride away from the enticing Circus of Wonders and Inspector Allardyce's ham-fisted murder investigation.

He glanced back over his shoulder once and caught the eye of the enigmatic Steerpike, and the waif-like girl now hanging off his arm, as the labouring policeman attempted to wheedle anything that might amount to an admission of guilt from the circus folk. Such a thing would wrap up this case nicely and be a feather in the cap of the disgraced copper as he was no doubt still trying to live down the disaster that had been the Jubilee debacle.

Ulysses was certain that the mysterious master of ceremonies and his cronies had plenty of things to hide - secrets that they didn't want the rest of the world knowing about - but murder? Ulysses wasn't so sure. Why hang around in the wake of ten murders, when they could have packed up and been on their way by dawn the next day, if they were responsible? Travellers like those who made up the Circus of Wonders were good at avoiding unwanted attention by never staying in any one place for too long.

And besides, the paper had recorded that the killings appeared to have been carried out by a wild animal of some kind. Some of the circus performers might be a little wilder than was the norm, but unless the freakshow's star attraction was the Hound of the Baskervilles, Ulysses sincerely doubted that anyone from the circus had anything to do with the mysterious deaths.

"What did you make of that little lot, Nimrod?" he asked when they had left the Circus of Wonders well behind them.

"If you ask me, sir, they're queer coves the lot of them," Nimrod said, his impeccably cultured tones dismissively aloof.

"Hmm, I thought you'd say that," said Ulysses. "Anyway, we'd best not dally here any longer; we have an appointment to keep with our new friend Mr Rudge, do we not?"

From behind a grassy hummock, inquisitive eyes watched the man in the deerstalker and his servant leave the circus behind and continue on their way, along the path that would lead them to the blasted expanse of Ghestdale.

The sentience behind those eyes hoped that the men knew what they were letting themselves in for. Surely they had heard about the deaths. They had just been talking with the very policemen who were investigating the Barghest killings after all.

Those same eyes had observed the meeting between the man in the deerstalker and the ginger-haired inspector with interest. There was obviously a history between the two of them and a mutual lack of respect.

And yet still the man in the deerstalker and his companion were leaving to continue on alone to Ghestdale, that most damnable godforsaken place.

Keeping low, out of sight of both the policemen and the circus folk, the watcher left the cover of the hummock and, keeping to the shelter of an ancient ditch, set off after the dandy and his valet.

Chapter Eleven

A Damsel in Distress

Scuds of cloud raced across the leaden face of heaven, the greens, yellows and blues of sub-dermal hematomas bruising the corpse-grey epidermis of the sky.

Everything in this wilderness had been shaped by the elements - the wind most of all - from the few gale-bent trees, looking like dowager-stooped witches, and the storm-scoured slabs of sandstone, denuded of any living thing other than the ever tenacious lichen, to the hardy heather and prickly gorse. Springs bubbled up to gurgle their way between the roots of grassy mounds, reshaping the landscape with geological slowness.

With the rock-gnawing wind pricking the exposed skin of hands and faces, Ulysses took out his pocket watch for the umpteenth time since he and his manservant had begun their trek over the blasted heather and gorse-blanketed moors, between the wind-scoured tors of tumbled boulders and skirted the meandering streams and bogs of Ghestdale.

He
harrumphed
and, flicking the case of his father's watch shut again, returned it to his waistcoat pocket.

Nimrod looked at him, raising one expectant eyebrow.

"Three thirty. He's late."

Eyes straining, Ulysses peered at the horizon, where the grey, overcast sky met the blasted moors, seeking the big man's brick shithouse silhouette. If it hadn't been for his trusty pocket watch he wouldn't have had any idea as to what time it was; it could have been any time between dawn and dusk, the quality of the light hadn't changed once since sun-up.

Ulysses scanned the horizon again, as he had done every thirty minutes or so since they had come upon the tumbledown shepherd's hut. Rudge might only be half an hour late, but Ulysses had been waiting to meet with him again as soon as he and Nimrod had left the Black Swan three hours before.

"It looks like the mysterious Mr Rudge is going to prove himself to be as untrustworthy as you at first suspected, Nimrod," Ulysses said, with a bitter sigh.

"It would appear so, sir," Nimrod agreed. "If it helps to settle your mind at all, I do so hate it when I'm right."

"Thanks, Nimrod, but don't worry, old chap. We'll give him until four, shall we, before heading back?"

"As you wish, sir."

Ulysses felt irritable, a condition brought on not only by Rudge's failure to make their meeting. It was also exacerbated by the biting cold and the gurgling, churning hunger gnawing away at his belly. He realised now that he hadn't eaten anything since putting away the full English Nimrod had served up that morning back at the guest house. The only sustenance he had had since then were a couple of drinks back in Whitby and the revitalising effects of the alcohol had long since worn off.

It was already beginning to get dark, the texture of the sky becoming still more leaden as the sun sank steadily towards the horizon, behind the ever-present pall of cloud. It was as if North Yorkshire had its own inescapable pall, just like London had its ever-present Smog.

For want of anything better to do, considering the circumstances, and as a means of trying to keep the marrow-numbing cold at bay, Ulysses continued picking his way between the hummocks of knotty, yellowing grass and the peaty bog-holes that could so easily ensnare the unwary.

A hundred yards away he could see the start of a defile among the otherwise near-featureless rolling moorlands of Ghestdale; a stream-cut hollow between scrubby bushes, exposed sandstone stacks. The air was redolent with the peaty smell of standing water and no doubt buzzing with moorland midges. Ulysses turned his steps towards the moorland morass, watchful for rabbit holes and half-hidden sink-holes between the tufts of grass and tangle-stemmed bushes of gorse.