Pax Britannia: Human Nature (22 page)

"Mind that last step, sir," he said, turning to help the girl's father and then said nothing more as he realised the old man was no longer with them.

"Mr Haniver, sir!" Nimrod called back up the stairs as loudly as he dared.

"Daddy?" Miss Haniver called out, willing her worst fears to be confounded. "Daddy!"

"Miss Haniver," Nimrod said, his voice stern, his tone commanding, "lock yourself in the cellar and wait for me there. I will not be long."

Jennifer said nothing, the tears running freely now down her cheeks and splashing onto the dusty flags at her feet as she slumped awkwardly against the cold bricks of the wall.

What does the old man think he's doing?
Nimrod fretted, his long legs taking the cellar steps two at a time, he chased back up them after the old man.

Ulysses burst out of the bathroom and back onto the landing. He could hear the monster's claws scrabbling against the enamelled sides of the bathtub, punctuated by a guttural growling as it tried to extricate itself from the shower curtain.

And then he was at the top of the stairs, staring down the twin barrels of a rifle, held in the hands of a shaking Hannibal Haniver. Ulysses had to grab the roundel at the end of the banister to stop himself careering into the old man and, as a result, lost his footing, his legs sliding out from under him, slipping on the carpeted stair. Falling heavily, he bumped down the first turn of the stairs on his arse towards the gun-toting naturalist.

Feeling a rising sense of panic, Ulysses heard the crash of the bathroom door flying open, the angry shout of the old man and the throaty bellow of the beast.

Lying almost on his back, Ulysses saw the monstrous shape of the Barghest as it leapt over him. He heard the retort of the rifle firing and, ears ringing, closed his eyes against the shower of dust and plaster that fell from the ceiling where the shotgun shells had struck.

The Barghest struck the old man with such force that he bounced off the wall and smashed through the banisters, plunging to the hallway below.

Ulysses got to his feet, stumbling down the stairs in horror as he saw how the old man had landed, limp as a discarded doll, the hunched black form of the devil dog now astride the wretched man.

"Get off him! Leave him alone!" Ulysses screamed at the beast, descending the stairs at a run. Its huge, misshapen head jerked from side to side as it burrowed into the old man's meagre flesh.

Pulling a broken baluster from the ruined staircase, Ulysses hurled it at the animal.

"Bad dog!"

The splintered spar struck the monster's flank, finding an open wound there, and remained lodged in the creature's flesh. It was enough to turn the monster's attention back onto Ulysses.

Leaving the red ruin of the old man, the Barghest paced its way to the foot of the stairs and began to climb, Hannibal Haniver's blood spraying from its gore-drenched muzzle as it barked and snapped at the dandy hastily retreating back up the stairs.

And then, when it felt like there was nowhere left to run, Ulysses heard the shout, "Sir!" and glanced back down to the hallway in time to see Nimrod throw something up to him.

The bloodstone-tipped cane spun through the air and over the banisters. Ulysses reached out an arm and plucked it from the air. Grabbing the black wood shaft of the cane with his left hand, he pulled the rapier blade free of its scabbard as the monster leapt.

In the unnatural stillness that followed Ulysses heard an audible pop and blinked against the wet spray that spurted into his face. He felt the blade meet resistance but it held firm. The dead weight of the monster fell on top of him, outstretched claws raking the wood-panelling behind him, tearing great slivers of veneer from the wall.

Ulysses found himself sitting on the stairs, back pressed up against the wall, gasping for air, all two-hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and evil intent crushing his body below the waist.

And there the monster remained, the stink of its foulness strong in Ulysses' nostrils. It died not with a roar or a whimper but with a last gust of bloody breath and with Ulysses' blade sunk up to the hilt in its one remaining eye.

An awareness of his surroundings returned, as if someone had turned up the volume on a radio set and he heard Jennifer's great gulping sobs of shock and grief on seeing the savaged corpse of her father and Nimrod, unable to hide the emotion from his voice himself now, say: "Sir, are you all right?"

And then he felt tears of relief, hot and uncontrollable, welling up in his eyes and running down his cheeks, and when he could speak again he said simply: "Get me out from under here, would you? I'm a little stuck."

Chapter Fifteen

A Death in the Family

"I mean look at it, Nimrod," the dandy said, prodding at the flopping jaw of the dead beast, stretched out on the dining table, with the same silvered serving tongs his manservant had used to serve supper only an hour before. "Have you ever seen anything like it?"

"No, sir. Not since our sojourn at the Marianas Base."

"Precisely what I was thinking," Ulysses said, knocking back the rest of the brandy he held in his other hand, unable to take his eyes from the monstrosity in front of them.

It had taken no small effort to get the cooling carcass of the beast back into the dining room and up onto the table. First they had had to shift the thing from where it had collapsed on top of Ulysses. Between himself and Nimrod they had finally managed to roll the monster off Ulysses' legs and through the broken banisters, letting it fall, loose-limbed, onto the floor of the hallway below.

The thud of meat and muscle hitting the floor had startled the weeping girl, kneeling beside her father's lifeless body, his blood-soaked head in her lap, her freely-running tears splashing onto his gore-reddened face. From the expression on the old man's face, if it hadn't been for the torn out larynx and the opened ribcage, Ulysses could have almost believed that he was just sleeping.

Easing himself up from where he had lain squashed under the bulk of the beast, Ulysses descended the stairs to stand at Jennifer's side. Saying nothing he put a comforting hand on her shoulder. Welcoming contact with another human being, she grasped his hand tightly in hers and he was able to help her to her feet.

Guiding her away from the gutted carcass of her father he half-carried her up the stairs, despite feeling exhausted himself, and escorted her to her room. There were more gasps of horror when she saw first-hand the destruction the monster had wrought to her father's chambers in pursuit of Ulysses.

Leaving her sobbing quietly in her bed, the covers pulled up over her still clothed form, he returned to where he had left Nimrod to clear up the mess downstairs.

The ever-reliable Nimrod had already moved Hannibal Haniver's body to the scullery passageway, but not before wrapping it in one of the destroyed dining-room drapes, as much as to hold it together as to not cause any further distress to the dead man's already distraught daughter.

It took both of them to move the body of the dog-beast into the dining-room and onto the table, so that Ulysses might have a closer look at it, in the hope of finding some clues as to the beast's origins. Someone had been trying to kill one of them - but whether the intended victim had been himself or Jenny, or even the old man, he wasn't sure - and he needed to know, in case the killer tried again. Perhaps the beast's handler - and he was sure that it had a handler - had wanted all of them dead.

As Ulysses poured himself the first of several glasses of cognac, and prepared to make his cursory examination of the Barghest's corpse, Nimrod set about mopping the old man's blood from the floor and walls of the hall.

Ulysses refilled his glass sloppily from the bottle on the sideboard next to him and took another swig.

"Sure I can't get you one?" Ulysses asked, proffering the glass to his manservant.

"No thank you, sir. Not while I'm on duty."

Something of Nimrod's indefatigable demeanour had returned, despite the fact that for the last half an hour he had been clearing corpses and mopping up blood. It was just business as usual as far as his butler was concerned.

"On duty? You're never
off
duty," Ulysses said.

He found the alcohol helped; it was relaxing him after his frantic fight with the Barghest, and the fumes of the cognac swirling in the glass provided the added benefit of going some way to mask the excremental stench of the beast itself.

"So, this is a vivisect too," Nimrod said, "like the missing mermaid?"

"I think so," Ulysses replied, wiping splashes of brandy from his chin with the back of his hand. His broken fingers were just a dull ache now; for the time being residual adrenalin in his system and alcohol were having a pain-numbing effect. "I mean there's no way this thing's natural. So far I haven't found any obvious signs of suturing, where one body part has been grafted onto another, but then we have no idea how long ago it was that this thing left the operating table."

"And I suppose the body's rather badly damaged," Nimrod pointed out, looking down his nose at the thing on the table.

"There is that," Ulysses agreed. "But you only have to look at the thing to see that it wasn't born so much as made."

Those are never a dog's jaws. They're not even those of a wolf. They look like they should belong to something the size of a big cat, a tiger or a lion. Its skin doesn't even fit over the skeletal structure beneath. And then there are the claws."

"And the creature's musculature," Nimrod added as he ran an appraising eye over the dead brute. "It definitely looks like its been added to, particularly around the shoulders."

"To support the extra weight that's been added to its skull," Ulysses conjectured. "It would have helped the beast climb out of that mineshaft we dropped it into no doubt."

"And would go some way to explaining how it seemed to shrug off the damage caused by our shots." Nimrod mused.

"Yes, that and an enlarged medulla oblongata, no doubt. I bet if we cut it open we'd find its bones are thicker than they should be, perhaps even reinforced with metal rods.'"

Ulysses stared into the ruined eyes of the creature, one practically gouged out, the other popped by the tip of his own rapier blade. His gaze moved from the creature's ugly bifurcated face to the top of its thickened skull to the hunched, muscle-bound shoulders, slashed and grazed, and with pieces missing from the flesh there.

He gave the small metal box sunk into the thick flesh at the base of the creature's skull a tap with the serving tongs. "What do you make of that, Nimrod? Look familiar, does it?"

Before Nimrod could offer a reply, Ulysses turned to face the ruined doorway of the dining room, the unmistakeable sensation of someone watching him causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end.

Jennifer Haniver stood there, leaning against the ruptured wood, her grime-smeared face streaked with tears, her blouse red with her father's blood, the eyes of both Ulysses and his manservant heavy upon her.

"Jenny," Ulysses said, somewhat surprised to see the wretched girl again so soon. "You should be resting."

"No," she said firmly, in a voice that brooked no discussion. "I want to know what killed him - what killed my father. I need to... understand why he died." There were no tears, no wailing, no hysterical recriminations or shrieks of protest, just a resolute determination to discover some answers.

Ulysses saw the implacable look in her eyes as she kept them locked firmly on the creature in front of her. "So be it," he said, equally determined, equally resolute.

"What is it?" she demanded. "The Barghest, I mean. What is it really?"

"It's man-made, the work of a skilled vivisectionist," Ulysses explained.

"Where did it come from?" was her next straightforward question. "Who was responsible for its ungodly creation," she hissed, her voice replete with quiet rage.

"You mean, what leads do we have as to who set this thing on us?"

"I think you mean on
me
, Ulysses," Jennifer corrected him coldly.

"We can't be certain which of us the dog was after, but I'm convinced that it was set on us, to hunt one of us down and get us out of the way."

"But I was the one who was out on the moors searching for it and knowing what sort of reputation my father has..." - she broke off, catching herself - "my father
had
, I wouldn't be surprised if people in certain quarters would have known that too. He never made a secret of his quest to uncover the truth, even though it forced his retirement to this godforsaken place!"

"Well, let's just say that I had been making enquiries of my own, regarding the missing mermaid, that were probably just as poorly received in those same quarters."

"Then what of the Barghest's other victims, sir? The ones whose deaths were reported in the local press?" Nimrod asked, challenging Ulysses' hypothesis, as only one completely loyal to his master could. "Were they all hunted down as part of some nefarious master-plan?"

Ulysses was quiet for a moment, another swig of the honey-coloured alcohol helping lubricate the grinding gears relentlessly turning his thoughts over inside his head.