(A Charm of Magpies 1)The Magpie Lord (5 page)

He had opened an envelope and found in it his father’s long-lost reputation. And he had cried, then, kneeling in the hallway, for the first time in years.

“How did you get Griffin to admit all that, Lord Crane?” he asked now, leaning forward. “It’s an admission of perjury as well as utterly disgraceful conduct. Why did he agree to write it?”

“I am in the process of nailing Mr. Humphrey Griffin to the wall so thoroughly that future generations will mistake him for a tapestry,” said Crane. “Currently, he is under the impression that his cooperation may incline me not to press for a lengthy prison sentence for embezzlement, malpractice, extortion and perjury.”

“Will it?”

Crane smiled, not pleasantly. “No. But it scarcely matters. When I have finished with him, Mr. Griffin will be begging for an extra ten years in gaol, just to have walls between himself and me.”

“Oh,” said Stephen. “Good.”

Crane frowned. “I hope you’re not here because of that. You owe me nothing.”

“No. I know.”

“So I ask again, Mr. Day, why are you here?”

“I’m here because I should be,” Stephen said. “It was rather childish of me to walk away in the first place. I dealt with the jack, so I have a feeling for the maker, and I know the Lychdale area. It’s obvious I should handle this.”

Crane was looking at him with a raised brow. “It must have become obvious fairly recently, since Mr. Fairley introduced himself as your replacement yesterday.”

“Ah.” Stephen cursed internally. “You met him.”

“I did, yes. I can’t honestly say he inspired me with confidence in the matter of murder, although I’m sure that if I wanted a practitioner that I could take to all the best society parties and be sure of his many close acquaintances…”

Stephen shut his eyes. “Yes, he does, um, feel the importance of birth and breeding quite strongly.”

“Frankly, I thought he was an oleaginous prick. I assume he has hidden talents.”

“I’m sure he does,” Stephen said, without conviction.

Even after the miraculous letter had arrived, he had not wanted to do this. If Hector and Quentin Vaudrey had been murdered, they should have justice, but it could be at someone else’s hands. Then he had learned that the hands would be Fairley’s, a soft self-indulgent parlour magician whose only qualification was his social connection, and Stephen’s vow had stuck in his throat like a mouthful of brambles.

It had nothing to do with the mental image of Crane’s long-fingered hands and lean, muscular, tattooed body, or the laugh lines around those lazy, perceptive grey eyes. Those irritatingly persistent memories gave him the strongest possible reason to stay away. No, it was as simple as it always was: justice had to be done. And since he had no authority to select the practitioner to do it, he had to do the job himself or stay out of the whole business.

Crane was looking at him curiously. “So why did you send that obsequious twit in the first place?”

“I didn’t,” said Stephen, slightly too honestly. “He, ah, he proposed himself. Feeling an earl would require a practitioner of birth and breeding.” Stephen’s talents outstripped Fairley’s to an almost embarrassing degree, but he was the son of a provincial nobody who had died destitute; Fairley was the son of a baronet. Taking the job back had led to a heated exchange. He quoted, woodenly, “Nobility has a certain
je ne sais quoi
that demands the presence of a gentleman, not a hireling.”

The eighth Earl Crane lifted an aristocratic brow. “In my case, the
je ne sais quoi
includes four years as a smuggler, two death sentences, and a decade as a Shanghai Joe, a dockfront trader. I hope you feel suitably elevated.”

Stephen tried to confront all of this at once. “Two death sentences? Really? I mean, you look very well, considering.”

Crane grinned at him. “One was in absentia. One wasn’t, and I spent three days in a condemned cell. I can’t recommend the experience.”

“And—did you say a
smuggler
?”

“That was what the death sentences were for.”

“What did you smuggle?” Stephen demanded, then caught himself. “Sorry, it’s none of my business.”

“Not at all,” Crane said politely. “Silks and tea, mostly. Medicines, on occasion. And we ran the guns for an uprising against a particularly noxious tax farmer, but that was a favour to a friend, really.”

“That’s very…” Stephen couldn’t think what it was. It occurred to him that if the man didn’t wear such staggeringly expensive suits, the tanned, mocking face and tattoos would make him look exactly like someone’s overheated fantasy of a smuggler in the exotic East. “Did your father know?”

“No idea.” Crane didn’t sound concerned. “He put me on a boat to China when I was seventeen, expressing the hope I’d die out there, and that was the last I ever heard from him. We didn’t get on, you know.”

“Yes,” said Stephen. “I heard.”

Crane shrugged. “He always disliked me, and I gave him plenty to dislike. He sent me off with no post, no acquaintances, no Chinese and no money, and I would undoubtedly have been dead within a year without Merrick, but as it happened, nothing could have suited me so well as Shanghai. It was five thousand miles away from Hector. So to answer your question as far as possible, I lived under my own name in China, I didn’t do so with any subtlety, and while I never communicated with him again, someone else doubtless did. In all honesty, I stopped caring a very long time ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Stephen said involuntarily.

“What for?”

That your father was a swine. That my father’s dead. That you’re a Vaudrey.
He grabbed for something that didn’t sound like pity. “I made the assumption you were like him. Them. That was unfair.”

“Understandable. A lot of people down in Lychdale make that assumption. Including, presumably, the jack’s maker.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Indeed. And I remain of the opinion that if this maker did remove my brother from the world, I’d rather shake his hand than press charges.”

“You might feel that,” Stephen said. “And if he had shot him, I might agree with you. But if it was the jack, your brother and father were tortured to death, slowly, over months. And that kind of cruelty tends to be…habit-forming.”

Crane’s eyebrows shot up. “You think the maker does this sort of thing regularly?”

Stephen chose his words carefully. “They did a very cruel thing very competently, which suggests that they may have done such things before, or that they may find it easy to do such things again. In any case, it is not acceptable to continue down this path unchecked.”

“I see. Well, you’re the expert. I’ll leave it to your judgement.”

Stephen gave a tired half smile. “Yes. People generally do.”

It was a slow train and a hot day, and Day fell asleep well before they reached Lychdale. Merrick returned to find his master contemplating the unconscious shaman.

He looked very young, sleep smoothing out the worry lines round his eyes. He also looked very small and very thin. He resembled a schoolboy, not a magician or a protector.

“That bloke needs a few square meals,” Merrick observed. “And a new suit. And about a week in bed.”

“I was thinking along those lines myself,” Crane said.

“I bet you were.”

“Shut up. I’ve no idea how he can be that poor. Twenty guineas for a night’s work, and another thirty for this excursion. But that suit’s threadbare.”

“Blood under his nails, as well, right in. Wasn’t just leaning on it.”

“Yes, I noticed that. What do you think?”

“Same as you, I reckon.”

“Ye-es. The question is, is he up to the job?”

Merrick made a face. “Don’t ask me. I got no idea what he can do, and no idea what the job is anyway. The last time I knew this much fuck all, we was on a boat to China.”

“And now we’re going back to Piper,” said Crane. “And on the whole, I’d rather be in Shanghai.”

Chapter Six

There was an extremely old carriage waiting for them at Lychdale station. It had a faded coat of arms on the side and half a dozen magpies perched on the roof. The coachman gave an unenthusiastic grunt as the three men emerged from the station and made a token effort to help with the bags before whipping up the horses.

Stephen grabbed the edge of the seat as the coach began to move. “Is this thing not sprung?”

“No. Absolutely nothing in this place is conducive to comfort,” said Crane. “The house is decaying, the furnishings are museum pieces, half the staff are consumed with loathing of me out of loyalty to my father, or because I remind them of my brother. In any case, they’re people who lived in the same house as Hector when there are perfectly good ditches to die in, which tells you as much as you need to know. Nobody within thirty miles of Piper can cook. And you can thank your lucky stars for the weather, I doubt we’ll need more than four or five fires to make the place tolerable of an evening.”

“Well, some cool would be a respite.” Stephen fiddled with the ancient catch in an attempt to pull down the window. “It’s very hot.”

“Piper will be damned cold,” said Crane. “If we find a witch, we should definitely burn her.”

It was a good half hour’s drive in the most uncomfortable carriage Stephen had ever encountered. Crane and Merrick both settled into a sort of traveller’s trance, eyes shut, minds inactive, getting through an unpleasant journey by reducing mental engagement to a minimum.

Stephen was hot and jolted, wearisomely tired after his nap on the train but without a chance of sleeping, and his hands were increasingly uncomfortable. The train journey had been unpleasant, naturally, but that was the iron of the carriages surrounding him. This was ambient, in the ether; it was old and awkward and dry like a scab, and it was getting stronger as they drove.

When they reached Piper, Stephen began to see what it was.

He stood in front of the house and stared at it. Piper was a substantial Jacobean building in grey stone, with small panelled windows sitting in the thick walls like deep-set eyes. The front was hung thickly with ivy, and the woods encroached too closely on what had once been elegant gardens. The gravelled drive was pierced by weeds. Magpies screeched and cawed in the trees, and a trio of the birds strutted in front of the three men.

“Three for a funeral,” he muttered. “This is a mausoleum.”

Crane glanced at him but didn’t ask for an explanation. Stephen wouldn’t have given one anyway. The etheric flow round the house was an abnormal trickle, the woods pounded in his consciousness far more than he’d expected, and there was a dreadful sense of something pent up, bottled for years, brooding.

“Dormant,” he said, mostly to himself. “Or dead. Too long asleep to wake. Coma.”

“You’re being a little unnerving,” said Crane. “Are you going to tell me there’s a beautiful princess sleeping in the tower room?”

“That wouldn’t be my first guess.” Stephen pushed his hands through his too-short hair. “Have you seen the mummies at the British Museum?”

“The Egyptian ones? No, not yet. But they have a similar thing in China.”

“Did you ever imagine if they started moving? Withered hands reaching towards you and sunken eyes staring?”

“I didn’t, but now I know what I’ll be dreaming about tonight.”

“It’s how this house feels.” Stephen was compulsively flexing and pulling at his fingers. “I suppose we should go in,” he added without enthusiasm.

Crane led the way. An elderly bald man was standing at the thick wood door, his heavy jowls conveying weary disgust. “Your lordship,” he mumbled.

“Graham. This is Mr. Day, who is attending to some legal matters for me. I’ll expect you and your staff to answer all his questions as fully as possible.”

The butler looked Stephen up and down. He didn’t roll his eyes and turn away in contempt, but it was evidently a close-run thing.

“Yes, my lord.” Graham bowed them in. “Mr. Skewton has left a number of papers for your lordship on your lordship’s desk in your lordship’s study. And Sir James and Lady Thwaite have left cards for your lordship, your lordship.”

Crane looked at him expressionlessly. Graham stared back.

“Very good,” said Crane finally. “Mr. Merrick is of course responsible while I’m in residence. Do take the opportunity to rest your feet, Graham.”

The old man’s bald head flushed a dark red. “
I
don’t neglect my duty, your lordship. Lord Crane would never have suggested such a thing. The maids have put your guest in the Blue Room, your lordship, but I dare say Merrick will have something to say about that on your lordship’s behalf. The Peony Room, perhaps.”

He stalked off through the hall towards the servants’ quarters. Merrick followed, soft footed. A door down a corridor slammed, almost certainly in Merrick’s face.

“Loyal family retainer?” asked Stephen.

“That’s right.”

“Couldn’t you pension him off?”

“Too much effort. If I got a decent butler, I’d have to import an entire competent household to support him, and since I’m going to sell this damned barrack as soon as I’ve unpicked the legal situation and clarified the accounts, I can’t summon up the energy.”