Pax Britannia: Human Nature (6 page)

Wraith snorted irritably at Ulysses' continued and obviously unwanted presence. "Is there something I can help you with?" he asked icily, still refusing to actually face the interloper.

"So, any ideas?"

"I am considering a number of alternative hypotheses at the moment."

"Hmm, a mystery, isn't it?"

"No, not really. Not to someone with a logical mind."

"So you have an answer then?"

"There is always an answer, a logical answer, arrived at following careful consideration of the evidence. It just takes a disciplined mind to uncover it."

"So, you think you'll find the answer?" Ulysses pressed, with all the enthusiasm of an eager puppy, much to Wraith's obvious annoyance.

"I have no doubt that I shall solve this - as you put it - 'mystery', although there is nothing mysterious about it. And I certainly don't need your help." A cold smile suddenly appeared on Wraith's pinched lips. "I understand you had something to do with the fire at Kew," he said, brightly. "You're a walking liability, Quicksilver. First the Crystal Palace, then the loss of that cruise-liner and now Kew Gardens has felt the fell hand of the Quicksilver curse upon it. Why, wasn't your own home gutted by fire not so long ago?"

"That incident suffered from gross exaggeration by the press," Ulysses suddenly found himself at pains to point out.

"Yes, I remember the papers reported your death. Pity."

Hearing hurried footsteps tap-tapping their way across the parquet floor of the room, Ulysses turned to see a yet again red-faced Mycroft Cruickshank steaming his way over to where they were inspecting the cabinet together.

"Ah, Mr Cruickshank. Would you like to give us your considered opinion as to who broke in here and how they got away? Perhaps you could fill in a few gaps for me; clarify a few details," Ulysses began.

Cruickshank glared at him with those piggy black eyes of his from out of the doughy arrangement of his face. From the colour of the curator's face, Ulysses just knew that all this stress couldn't be doing his blood pressure any good.

"I'm sorry, Mr Wraith, is this gentlemen bothering you?"

"Yes he is, Mr Cruickshank."

"Mr Quicksilver, you are here thanks to my gracious goodwill, sir. Please don't abuse that generosity of spirit."

"Of course not. So the break-in was two nights ago now?" Ulysses deftly side-stepped the subject, just as he deftly ushered the curator of this weird and wonderful collection of the macabre and downright bizarre away from where Wraith was working, as if it was he who had interrupted the private detective's investigation of the crime scene.

"What? Yes," Cruickshank replied caught out by Ulysses' abrupt change of conversational direction.

"And you reported it to the police yesterday morning when you discovered that the mermaid was missing, is that right?"

"Er, yes."

Ulysses waited, eyeing Cruickshank expectantly, as if waiting for him to speak. The bewildered proprietor obliging took his cue and began to spill the beans.

"I came in to open up, as it were, as usual and was caught out by the chill draft that was sweeping the room."

"And where was this draft coming from?"

"A window in the one of the -
ahem
- conveniences had been left open."

"The door hadn't been tampered with?"

"No. It was locked, just as I had left it the night before."

"And who else has a key?"

"Only, Mr Gallowglass, the director of the museum. But the police have already questioned him and his alibi stands up to the closest scrutiny. Besides, he's a trustworthy sort of a fellow."

"And where are these -
ahem
- conveniences?"

"Over there," Cruickshank pointed to a door in the adjacent corner half hidden behind the sarcophagus of a ninth dynasty Egyptian king.

"And is there any other way of reaching them?"

"No, only from this room."

"Well then, if it wasn't Mr Gallowglass, and I have to say, why would a man of his standing be interested in stealing a forgery -"

"I'll have you know I have it on the best authority that it is -
was
- the genuine article!" Cruickshank blazed.

"- and unless it was you, planning some insurance scam -"

"What are you trying to say, sir?"

"- which I sincerely doubt, otherwise you'd have taken something of more obvious value that the mermaid. And talking of fakes," Ulysses said, "where did the Whitby Mermaid come from? And don't say 'Whitby'." Cruickshank looked like he was about to protest again but instead made a face like a goldfish gasping for air. "You don't honestly expect anyone to believe that it was the real deal, do you?"

Cruickshank's manner changed in an instant. He drew Ulysses to one side, an arm around his shoulders and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial hush.

"You're a man of the world, Mr Quicksilver, I can see that, so I won't try to fool you in this regard. If you ask me the thing's a fake. You can even see the stitching if you look closely enough - or at least the scars where the stitches would have been, they're not there now - but old Craven was adamant that when he caught the thing in his nets it was alive, gasping for air on the deck of his little boat as he looked on in disbelief. He swears on the Bible it's the truth, but it hardly seems credible, does it?"

Ulysses gave that thought some consideration for a moment. There were certainly many strange and downright weird things in this world, and he had seen a fair few of them, but mermaids? That just seemed one sea dog's tale too far.

"But nonetheless you saw fit to reveal this abomination, anomaly - call it what you will - to the world."

"Of course. I saw it as my duty, to let the viewing public decide for themselves," Cruickshank said, putting a showman's spin on the subject.

"And you cut Mr Craven in for a share of the proceeds raised from the viewing public?"

"Of course, sir."

"Well, I'm sure that whatever it was you offered him, it was a fair cut, once you take off your, no doubt, not inconsiderable running costs."

"That's right," Cruickshank said, warily. A confidence trickster was always going to be a hard man to play when he was already wise to the tricks played by others.

"Putting that aside for the moment," Ulysses went on, "the fact is that the mermaid was stolen and the only way the felon could have entered was through the open window in the conveniences?"

"But that's impossible. No-one could get in through there; it's hardly bigger than a letterbox!"

"Not impossible, Cruickshank, old boy, only highly improbable."

"What?"

"And once you have ruled out the impossible, what's left, no matter how improbable it might appear, holds the key to the truth!" Ulysses declared triumphantly. "And the cabinet wasn't forced either?"

"No." The cabinet of curiosities' curator was wearing an expression of confusion on his face now.

"Then I would say that the scoundrel we're after is a dab hand with lock picks as well," Ulysses mused, a thoughtful hand supporting his chin. "Good day to you, Mr Cruickshank."

"What? You're going?" Cruickshank exclaimed, as Ulysses strode off, making for the exit, wrong-footed once again. Strangely, he sounded, if not disappointed, then at least annoyed that Ulysses was ready to depart as quickly as he arrived.

"We have all the information we need, haven't we, Nimrod?"

"It would seem so, sir," Nimrod replied in that familiar disinterested tone of his.

"And we wouldn't want to trouble you or Mr Wraith any longer. You don't want us getting under your feet more than is necessary, I'm sure?"

"Well... No?"

"Then good day to you, sir, and I hope Mr Wraith comes up trumps for you, I really do."

And with that, Ulysses left Cruickshank's Cabinet of Curiosities.

As he and Nimrod descended the steps in front of the Holbrook Museum, his ever-faithful manservant asked: "You're not really leaving the matter in the hands of Mr Wraith, are you, sir?"

"You know me better than that, Nimrod," Ulysses replied, unable to hide the look of glee on his face. He was always the same when he was at the beginning of a new adventure. The hunt was all.

"The game is afoot, Nimrod. We have a mystery to solve. And I think it's about time you looked up some of your old acquaintances again."

Chapter Four

The Whitechapel Irregulars

"Why is it that your 'contacts' always want to meet in such charming places?" Ulysses asked, as he took in the black looming tombs and ivy-clad gravestones of Highgate Cemetery. The skeletal branches of the trees scratched at the night's sky with their talon-like tips, the twigs rattling like dry bones in the chill November wind.

Regardless of the fact that they were still within the bounds of the capital, right at this moment civilisation seemed a long way away. They might as well have been out in the desolate wilds in the middle of nowhere, with only the bodies of the dead for company.

"I understand that they are of the underworld, but do they really need to get so close to the real thing? Does it provide them with some sense of security or something?"

"It goes with the territory, sir, so to speak," Nimrod explained patiently. "No-one else comes to graveyards after dark."

"Indeed. Hardly surprising, is it?"

"The view from the other side, eh, sir?"

"I suppose you could call it that. Although the other side of what?"

Ulysses strained his eyes to peer uneasily between the crypts and iron-speared fences of guarded graves. His edginess didn't arise from a fear of such places, or from being reminded of one's mortality. Ulysses had witnessed the death of others and faced death himself more times than he would care to remember in his years as a dandy adventurer and agent of the throne of Magna Britannia.

No, his unease arose from a desire to get a move on with his latest case. If there was something Ulysses Quicksilver didn't like, it was pointlessly hanging around. What he enjoyed - what he craved - was the thrill of the chase, whether it was pursuing a mystery to its conclusion, battling enemies of the state, life or death struggles or, as it had once been, setting about capturing the heart - or at least the libido - of whichever lovely it was that currently caught his eye.

"You did say nine o'clock, didn't you, Nimrod?"

"I did, sir," Nimrod replied in the same indefatigably patient manner.

"Then where is he?"

And then he felt it, the hairs on the back of his neck rising, his skin goose-pimpling as that ever reliable sixth sense of his kicked in.

"Oh, don' chou worry," came a voice whose words were distorted by a broad cockney drawl, "I'm 'ere. 'Ave bin for the last ten minutes. 'Eard every word you said, din' I?"

Ulysses' head snapped round and his eyes locked on the empty space between a towering unkempt yew and a long forgotten family's house-sized tomb. Only it wasn't empty. There was a figure there, a silhouette darker still against the already oppressive blackness of another Smog-shrouded London night.

But now that Ulysses knew where the man was, he could see subtle signs of movement as Nimrod's contact approached.

"'Evenin', Mr Nimrod," he said, nodding to Ulysses' manservant.

"Good evening, Rat." Nimrod spoke to the shadow no differently to how he would address his master or even Her Majesty Queen Victoria herself. But it sounded strange to hear him pronounce a name such as Rat in the clipped syllables of that well-bred accent of his. "May I introduce my employer, Mr Quicksilver."

The man said nothing but merely regarded Ulysses with the kind of scowl that implied that he rated the dandy barely above something he might find on the bottom of his shoe. Ulysses put this down to the natural distrust of the criminal for any figure of authority or with a higher social status than himself.

Ulysses in turn regarded Nimrod's contact with a look of intense curiosity. He had a scruffy, worn appearance. Everything he wore from the crumpled cloth cap that barely kept an unruly grey thatch in check, to the scuffed hobnail boots on his feet, even if it hadn't started out as a uniform had nevertheless ended up that way.

The man himself appeared to have worn even less well than his clothes, his jutting, angular features marked with the tell-tale scars of smallpox and other scars acquired through misadventure rather than misfortune. He hadn't shaved for a number of days and he didn't appear to have washed either. But he did have most of his own teeth by the look of things.

As to how old he was, it was anyone's guess. The grey hair with its straw-like texture could put him at as old as fifty, but there was a certain youthful sparkle in his eye that could have made him prematurely grey at thirty.

Deciding that someone needed to do something to progress this meeting, Ulysses held out his hand to the wastrel. "Mr Rat. Delighted to meet you."

"It's just Rat," he said, leaving Ulysses' hand well alone.