A Little Knowledge (23 page)

“You can sit on that crate over there, if you need to,” Amesbury said, pointing to one partially buried by a pile of clothes. He went to stand near the fire, watching Max closely. “I haven’t told anyone this before. Not sure why I’m telling you, truth be told, but you don’t seem like the kind of man prone to flights of fancy.”

Max pushed off some of the clothes and perched on the tea crate.

“Years back, there was a girl at the university who played the piano. She was tipped to be the next big thing. She’d noticed someone following her around and reported it. No one did much about it. Then she just disappeared one day. She was due to play at a concert. Her parents travelled down from London to see her—they spoke to her that morning and she was excited—and then when the concert was about to start, the manager of the venue had to go out on the stage and tell everyone she hadn’t turned up. A couple of hours later I was called in.

“’Course it came out that she’d filed a complaint about someone stalking her, and it was suddenly number-one priority to find her. It was one of those disappearances that was bound to end up on the telly. Kids go missing every day, but the press like the pretty blondes. The fact that she had a musical career ahead of her was exactly the sort of thing those vultures like. So I gets to work and then my boss calls me in to the station. ‘Drop it,’ he says. ‘We know where she is, and she’s fine.’ I offered to call the parents, he said he’d do it himself. I thought nothing much of it.

“Less than a year later, another music student goes missing. I look into it. This lad was due to play a concert at the same place as the girl. Bit of a flimsy connection, seeing as there aren’t that many places to play in the city, but I took it to my boss as an avenue I was going to pursue. ‘Drop it,’ he tells me. ‘We know where he is, and he’s fine.’

“I went home that night, and I drank half a bottle of Jack Daniels.

“I told myself it was just a coincidence. I told myself all sorts of crap to make myself feel better. I had a wife then. She wanted me to get promoted. Then a complaint comes in from another student about someone following her back to campus from town. I could see it happening all over again. She was a cellist. I went and interviewed her without telling my boss. I found out the next time she was due to go into town, and I told her I would follow her and see if I could see this stalker.

“I more than saw him. I stopped him taking her.”

Amesbury stopped, staring at the floor for a while before jerking towards the pile of logs next to him and heaving another one onto the fire.

“Want me to carry on?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a good listener. I don’t know what that man said to her, but he was like a hypnotist or something. He just went over to her, said something, and she was in this trance. I hit him over the head with my truncheon. Not the way it’s supposed to be done, I know, but I didn’t want to take any chances.”

As Max listened, he recalled the case Amesbury was talking about. It was one of the biggest failures of his Chapter ever documented; they suspected a parasite was involved but never identified who it was.

“I took the bloke into custody. I delivered him to the station myself, where he was checked over by a doctor and put in a cell. I wrote up the paperwork, filed it, and went home.”

“That’s what you got the medal for?”

“No. That was for something else. No, the bloke I hit over the head disappeared from the cells overnight. No one knew anything about him when I went in the next day. My report was gone. The student decided to change university the very next day. All total bullshit. I wrote it all up and I went to my boss, just stormed in when he was having this meeting, and told him I was filing a complaint against him. Then this man…” Amesbury covered his face with a grimy hand. “Then this man said, ‘Is this the one you were telling me about?’ and then…then…everything went to shit.”

“You somehow forgot it all happened?”

“More than that. I forgot everything. Who I was. Where I lived. When people told me I thought they were lying. I was sectioned. They thought I’d had some sort of psychotic break caused by stress. Stress! I know what stress does to people. It isn’t that.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Going on for twenty-odd years now. Lost my wife. Lost my job. Lost my place at the home they put me in when they did all those cutbacks. ‘Care in the community,’ they called it. I was on the street for a while. Then about three winters back I found this place. It was snowing and I needed somewhere warm. I came inside, put that beam down to keep the door shut, and then…” He shrugged. “Then I got better. Instantly. Like I was my old self again. But I stank and I was older and I had nothing. Nothing except my mind back.”

Max nodded. He’d been Charmed and something about this place broke it. The iron on the building, perhaps? It was a working theory, especially given his suspicion about the landowner, one that would need further investigation. “And then what did you do?”

“I won’t lie. I cried. A lot. My wife had divorced me over ten years ago, and I didn’t even realise. I ‘lacked mental capacity.’ She lives in Spain now. With some bloke she met on holiday. I tried to persuade her to see me again but she won’t. She gave me some money but I don’t feel safe anywhere but here. I thought you might be Mr Ferran coming to kick me off his land.”

“No. Do you have any theories about what was done to you?”

“Hundreds, but they’re all ridiculous.” He glanced at the blanket behind him. “I decided to do my own investigation. My old boss is still in the force. Much higher up now. And the disappearances are still happening. I started to make connections and…I thought I might be going too far. I was scared the madness was coming back. I needed to talk it through with someone, someone not in the force. I couldn’t find anyone who’d listen. I went to the paper, presented it all like a case. That lady loved it. Said it was compelling and that she’d run it. Now you say she can’t remember. She won’t be writing the rest of it up, then. I’m the only one who knows what really goes on in this city. And it all goes back over a hundred years. Someone here, some organisation or hidden group or something, doesn’t like troublemakers. Those trade unionists were some of the first. Five men disappeared one night and no one ever found out why. Oh, people think they were killed, but no one investigated. Or maybe they tried and were done in like me.” Amesbury frowned at him. “You’re not giving me anything here. You’re a strange one, if you don’t mind me saying. I’ve no idea whether you think I’m mad or not.”

“You’re not mad. I believe you,” Max said. “I need to look into a couple of things that might give you some answers. Can I come back to see you in a couple of days?”

“Yes! You really believe me?” He suddenly looked ten years younger. “But don’t tell anyone I’m here. Please.”

“I won’t. Thank you for your time, Mr Amesbury. I appreciate it.”

They shook hands. The joy of being treated with any respect seemed to cancel out any of the usual discomfort caused by Max’s lack of expression. He left Amesbury’s squat, listened to the beam being dropped back into place behind the door, and then hobbled off. He needed to speak to Rupert about the possibility of recruiting Amesbury, to Petra about whether Mr Ekstrand had ever told her about a Mr Ferran, and to the gargoyle about the way he was wasting time resting his chin on Kay’s desk, gazing at her as she worked.

The next morning, once everyone in the house was awake and warned about the impending demolitions, Sam took a sledgehammer to the cob wall that Eleanor had shown him the night before. He’d expected her to wait nearby and see what was revealed, but instead she asked if she could use the car and driver for a day trip. Wherever she planned to go, she certainly dressed well for it.

For old mud and straw, the wall was surprisingly tough, but the hours he’d put in at the forge paid off and he was able to gouge a good chunk out of the wall without breaking a sweat. Eleanor’s estimate was fairly accurate; it was about a metre thick and there was a space behind it into which he could poke his fingers. After a couple more wallops with the sledgehammer to open the tiny hole up, he struck something metallic.

The strike sent reverberations through him and the house. It felt like he was still vibrating long after the din had stopped. The housekeeper came and asked if everything was all right, and he sent her away with brisk reassurances, his heart pounding with the thrill of discovery. The vague pull he’d felt the night before had strengthened into something stronger, reinvigorating his excavation until he’d made a hole big enough to fit his head and shoulders through.

He grabbed the torch and switched it on before pushing it through the hole ahead of him. Then he climbed in, the wall thick enough to support his torso as he pushed himself through to see what was on the other side.

There was a gap of only a few centimetres between the inner side of the cob and what looked like a slab of iron. When Sam brushed it with his fingertips he knew, on a level deeper than he could ever hope to express, that the first Lord Iron had placed it there, that it was pure iron with only an infinitesimal amount of carbon and something else…manganese, yes, that’s what it was. The smith who’d trained him to use the forge told him that iron that pure was made in modern arc furnaces. Sam knew the slab had been there for hundreds and hundreds of years.

He paused. How did he know that? No answer presented itself. He wished Cathy were there to talk it over with him, to spark ideas. Yet again, the pull to go and get her out of that house, away from that life, flared up within him. He pushed it aside as he examined the slab as best he could. It felt mostly smooth but with some imperfections. The torch did little to help; it seemed they were too small to be picked up by the light.

He shuffled back out and realised he was covered in filth. The wall would have to come down. He had to get some help to do it properly. Jim was at the forge today. Hopefully he wouldn’t mind helping out. He called Des and cancelled his meetings for the day. Nothing could be more important than this.

• • •

The tea rooms were pleasant enough, though they were past their best. Will had one of his men check the interior beforehand and had been assured that there were no Charms or anyone from the Great Families present, nor anything to suggest that the place was anything other than it appeared to be. Even though Eleanor was no longer Dame, he wanted to be careful. Unwilling to share the space with mundanes and their screaming children, he’d paid the owner a generous sum to rope off the conservatory section of the establishment, so they could take tea in peace.

He’d dropped Nathaniel off on the outskirts of Oxford, having elected to return him home via mundane means so they could talk about future plans. His brother was all smiles, now the Tulipa problem was resolved. Neither of them had been called back by Sir Iris, and neither had been informed of the outcome of the Patroon meeting. It irritated Will that he hadn’t been told—after all, he was the wronged party in their view of events—but Nathaniel seemed to revel in not having to attend to it any more. Of course, he had no affection for Margritte, nor a wife to upset with bad news about her friend and co-conspirator.

The lack of a wife was evidently on Nathaniel’s mind. They debated whether he could choose his own now that he was Chancellor and, unsurprisingly, Nathaniel thought he could. After Will waved him off at Oxford Castle, he read some of the letters that had arrived whilst he’d been tangled up in the Tulipa business. The only letter of any real interest was one from Bertrand Viola, telling him that a cousin who’d been abroad for many years had decided to return to Londinium and that he would like to sponsor the cousin into the city, with Will’s permission, with a view to him taking his late brother’s property. Will noted that the cousin, Harold Persificola-Viola, was unmarried. By the time he’d reached the outskirts of Worcester, he had a plan that could help secure both his and Nathaniel’s positions admirably. All he had to do was speak to Eleanor, get what he could from her, and then get back to Londinium via the Nether to make arrangements swiftly.

“William.” The voice made him jump. He’d been so caught up in his plans that he’d missed Eleanor’s arrival.

“Lady Eleanor,” he said, standing to kiss her gloved hand. At least he’d already met her and was expecting her elderly face. It helped that she had left Society before he was born, so he wasn’t shocked by her appearance. He had no earlier memories of her to form a comparison. He pulled back her chair for her and saw to her comfort before resuming his own place.

“A lot on your mind, I see,” she said, smoothing down her dress. “Only to be expected. Well, these tea rooms have seen better days, but they’ll do. Safer than my travelling back to Londinium, I felt.”

Will nodded and signalled to a waitress to bring the tea and cake selection he’d already ordered. “Not that we’ve seen much of the current Dame Iris since your last visit.”

Eleanor’s wrinkles deepened as she grinned wickedly. “I shall never forget the look on her face. Ah, Cathy dealt a master stroke that day. How is she?”

“Well, thank you. And I trust you are well also?”

“As well as can be expected. You have a fine wife there, William, but one that will cause you no end of problems.”

Will frowned. “Is it possible for her to be both?”

“Why, yes, of course! She’s loyal, passionate, strong, and sharp as a pin. You just have to find the right way to direct her energies. Like those fine stallions one sees at the races. The ones fast enough to win are the hardest to care for.”

“I’m not sure she would appreciate being compared to a horse.”

Eleanor laughed again. “I agree. I wish you could have seen her when she came to the asylum, William. She was quite remarkable. Nothing much to look at, but she spoke straight into the hearts of the people there. Not many in our world can do that. As impressive as it was, I imagine you were quite vexed by her actions.”

“Not all consequences of her actions that day have been vexing, Lady Eleanor—your freedom being the best example of that.”