The Janus Affair: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel (32 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

In Which Our Dashing Archivist Finds Himself Cut of a Different Cloth

T
he pain ebbed and flowed over Wellington like a great tide—but it was not that which brought him back to the world of the living. Not even the queer vertigo he was struggling against could do that. Nor even the nausea, migraine, or the ringing in his ears caused him to stir.

What brought Wellington Thornhill Books, Esquire, back into the waking world was the smell. He knew it right away—he was all too familiar with this particular stench.

Anyone passing alongside a slaughterhouse during the summer becomes familiar with the smell of rotting meat. Wellington had different experiences. He knew that under the heat of an African sun, the human body can produce exactly the same stench. Now it was assailing him.

What made this horror even worse was he didn’t even have a clue where he was. His eyes were open, but still he saw nothing. The darkness was thick, absolute, and worse—deathly quiet. Wellington knew he wasn’t alone. Judging by the smell, there had to be at least three corpses lying nearby.

Rather than take a deep breath, as he might have wanted to, he instead had to take short gasps through his mouth. Feeling around with his hands, he recognised that he was sitting upright, and his back was against something like a wall. Wellington slowly extended his legs into the darkness. Even when he wiggled his feet he felt open space, so there had to be some depth to this darkness. He then raised his arms up along the wall behind him, flat and flush against . . .

His head inclined to one side—the wall was curved. He felt, most definitely, the slightest of curvatures.

“
Bene
. . .” The voice spoke softly, paused, and then gave a delightful bell-like laugh. “Well, that is a question. Do I bid you a good evening or a good morning? ’Tis all the same here.”

Good Lord,
Wellington prayed,
please tell me my mind is playing tricks.

“Shade your eyes,
Signore
Books, as the light may be a bit blinding at first.”

Something rapped against stone, and slowly the darkness peeled away to an eerie green glow. The exotic beauty shook the vial in her hand, which made the glow brighter. As it did, the deeper Wellington’s heart sank.

“I must say,
Signorina del Morte
,” he began, trying desperately to ignore the thudding in his chest, “I am feeling quite torn right now in finding myself here with you.”

Sophia gave a soft sigh. “I would have thought you would be happy to see such a resourceful girl as myself here with you.” A wicked smile flickered over her lips. “Would you be more grateful if you knew that I used one of my last three illuminati for your benefit?”

“Are you going to tell me that in the darkness you knew who had just arrived?”

She winked. “So then call me lucky as well as resourceful.” Sophia then turned back to the darkness behind her and called to it as if there were a lost kitten hiding in the shadows. “Come along. This is a friend. No need to be bashful.”

The woman sliding up alongside Sophia looked exhausted, hungry, and in the late stages of dehydration; but Wellington could still see determination in her eyes. Willpower could only take a person so far, and she was nearing the limit.

“Lena Munroe?” Wellington whispered. “Is that you?”

The suffragist blinked. “Do I know—” And then her eyes widened. “You were on the hypersteam express!”

“Wellington Thornhill Books, Esquire, ma’am,” Wellington said, pulling himself up to his feet, “of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences.”

Lena’s brow furrowed. “Ministry of . . . what?”

That evoked a laugh from Sophia. “Sometimes, it is difficult to be in our chosen professions, seeing as we must exist in shadow.”

“You’re not going to tell me you feel at home here?” he quipped.

The assassin merely smiled as a reply.

Wellington crossed his arms and lifted an eyebrow. “Now here’s a thought—are you familiar with our captors?”

Sophia gave a very unladylike snort. “She is an associate of my current employer. Chandi Culpepper is her name.” Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t seem surprised. You are acquainted with her, yes?”

“One of them anyway.”

Sophia’s head tilted as her eyes widened. “One of them?” Wellington waited, watching with some delight the realisation dawn across her lovely face. “No . . . that cannot be . . .”

“And now you see how Miss Culpepper—or at least Chandi Culpepper—got the drop on us, as those in your profession would put it.”

“That abomination,” spat Lena. Her voice trembled, growing colder and harder with each word. “I saw them together when in Scotland. I wasn’t supposed to see them, of course. She was supposed to protect our officers, our future; but I discovered their secret.”

“And that was why you were taken,” Wellington said. “It was to preserve the secret.”

“Chandi had told us her sister died in India with her mother,” she muttered.

“Just a moment,” Sophia interjected, grabbing Lena by the arm, “you knew that bitch had an identical twin?” She released her with a shove. “Why did you not mention this to me earlier?”

“I thought you knew, seeing as you are here.” The laugh she gave chilled Wellington. She was not only teetering on the edge of starvation. She was also teetering near madness.

Sophia, however, was hardly moved by the woman’s odd behaviour. “Lena, dear, I suggest you gather your wits once more. Remember what happened to your lovely Protector when she tested my patience?”

The suffragist nodded quickly, taking in a deep breath. That simple feat amazed Wellington as, even with his small, shallow breaths, he could barely tolerate the smell.

Wait a moment. Lena’s Protector? “Is there someone else in here?” he asked.

Sophia looked over her shoulder, and when she turned back to Wellington her face seemed almost as sallow and sickly as Lena’s. “Yes. A rather imposing figure of a woman.”

Wellington felt his stomach sink. “Charlotte Lawrence?”

Lena gave a short nod, but her eyes were cast downward, not looking at Wellington, and not daring to look at Sophia.

“I suppose, but she’s back there.” Sophia tried her best to sound offhanded, but even the Archivist could tell the difference. “With the others.”

“Others?” Then he looked around him. The stone wall extended into the darkness. No signs of light. The smell. The smell that seemed to grow stronger the more he deduced. “How many?”

“It is hard to tell,” Sophia said.

“Five,” Lena spoke. “I counted.”

“My God,” he whispered, looking around him, his face twisting in shock and revulsion. “An oubliette?”

“Yes,” Sophia sneered. “Charming, isn’t it?”

His eyes immediately jumped back to Sophia. “And you added Charlotte to this madness?”

“Sadly, the aggressive
Signorina
Charlotte fell to my darker talents. I appeared here, lit an illuminati, and that was when she attacked me. She thought me the enemy, the thick bitch. As if the enemy would trap themselves in the same dungeon as her! I warned her to unhand me. She only tightened her hold.” Sophia gave a sigh and a small shrug. “I had to defend myself.”

“So you killed her?”

She clicked her tongue once. “Regrettably, yes.”

Wellington straightened his jacket as best he could and then looked up at the wall. “Sophia, might I see this illuminati of yours?”

“Certainly,” she said, handing Wellington the glowing stick.

He turned the brilliant emerald device in his hand, noting the way the fluid flowed back and forth, bending the shadows around him. “Phosphorus?”

“It remains dormant inside the glass until it is given a hard rap against something. The outside glass keeps the vial intact.” Sophia chuckled as she motioned to the device. “I would love to chat with you about craftsmanship, but our light is already beginning to dim. I have two remaining. We should make them last.” She then looked to her right and fixed the nearly imperceptible form of Lena with a stare. “Lena dear, do stay close please.”

“Yes, miss.”

Wellington pushed aside his disgust at Sophia’s opportunistic nature, and looked up, holding the illuminati in his hand as high as he could. He hoped to catch a glimpse of the top of the oubliette, but the bricks simply continued into a void.

“Along with these illuminati, did you happen to come armed with any other quaint devices?”

“If you must know,” Sophia said, opening her coat, “I was working late when I was . . .” and she pursed her lips, shaking her head.

“Caught off your impenetrable guard?”

“No need to mock a lady,” she lightly scolded.

A lady was the last thing Wellington would have called Sophia del Morte, but he decided discretion would be better than valour in this predicament. “Perchance you wouldn’t have a grappling gun conveniently strapped upon your person?”

“A grappling gun?” She gave a little laugh. “For what I do?”

Wellington looked back up to the darkness overhead. “Yes, I suppose that would have been a bit too
deus ex machina
, now wouldn’t it?” He glanced at the illuminati in his hand. “We need to know how much height we have to compensate for. Judging by the echo, I am guessing well over thirty feet.”

“Wellington, dear, do you not think I have considered every avenue of escape?”

He turned around to face her. “Perhaps you have. I am choosing a more . . .” He gave a small chuckle as he said, “ . . . opportunistic approach. You are going to have to trust me.”

“Am I?”

“If you don’t, we all die down here. We both know that.” He glanced behind her towards the frail Lena Munroe.

Sophia considered a moment, and then nodded. “What do you need from me?”

“A knife.”

From behind her back, Sophia produced a menacing weapon, curved, smooth and clean. In the emerald glow of the illuminati it was impressive and terrifying.

After a moment she extended it, handle first, to him.

Wellington cleared his throat. “Have those other sticks ready. We will need the light to work by.” He motioned for Sophia to join Lena. “Stay here. I shan’t be a moment.”

Wellington proceeded forward into the darkness. He did not take long steps as the actual depth of this oubliette was still a mystery, and considering Chandi Culpepper’s use of it, there could be a number of macabre surprises waiting for them. It felt as though the oubliette stretched forward for far too long. He looked to either side of him, but there was nothing but void. The illuminati’s light could not even reach the opposite wall.

Then, ahead of him, a shape began to resolve itself. If he hadn’t known better, Wellington would have thought it was a pile of laundry or perhaps some seasonal gardening equipment set aside for the winter and then concealed from view by a tarp.

Sadly, Wellington knew better.

The body slumped over the five decaying corpses could not have been more than a day or two old. She had been haphazardly tossed on the rotting remains of the others. Charlotte Lawrence’s neck was quite broken.

Wellington did not pay the stench any mind now. The Archivist had acclimated himself to this familiar smell, and even thought to himself, it could have been worse. Far worse. He recalled, as he rolled Charlotte free from the others, how the African sun tended to speed up infection in the wounded, and decay in the dead.

The blade slid cleanly through the dress. He tried not to think of the body within it. In the African bush he’d been forced to use the dead as camouflage. Another time they’d used their slaughtered friends to stand watch while he and the survivors of a failed push safely made it back to base camp.

His task was made more difficult as the light dimmed, casting more and more shadow around his grim works. Wellington paused cutting and shook the illuminati, the phosphorus glugging quickly as he worked the glass light back and forth. The glow flared, but not by much. Time was running short, and so he grimly kept cutting. He promised himself to head back once the light began to dim again. Another long strip fell at his feet. Then another, and another.

This was about survival.

He needed as much as he could carry, but this served him no comfort as he cut the dress free of the second corpse. If their supply started to dwindle, he would have to come back here and gather more. He preferred not to. His willpower was not that strong.

The light began to dim. It was time to go.

Wellington gathered up the long strands of fabric that once made an impressive overskirt, the underskirt, and the dress in his arms. He was about to leave when he paused on catching in the dim light the curves of Charlotte Lawrence, the sturdy corset still wrapped snug around her. A quick swipe of Sophia’s knife later, and the corset rested spread over top the mass of fabric within his arms. The light of the illuminati was far from its original brilliance, but all Wellington needed to do was place himself before the macabre tableau, turn his back upon it, and walk straight forward. As it had before, the darkness seemed to swallow him. This time, his light seemed much dimmer, while the oubliette consumed sound and life. The gooseflesh along his arms tingled. Had the ladies moved from where he had left them?