Horatio Lyle (12 page)

‘I really do feel that fear of a Chartist revival at this stage is absurd, although if Disraeli continues with
. . .
Charles!’

Thomas rarely saw his father so animated, and more rarely still did he hear him address anyone by their first name. Everyone in the drawing room rose to their feet, including Thomas, who had been attempting to cultivate a taste for port, and failing. The man who entered was tall, elegant, with fine features carved on a white, bony face above a bony, handsome body clad in black silk. As he came in, he pulled off a long white glove, and Thomas noticed keenly the tiny pinprick of blood on one of the fingers. For some reason he felt his stomach turn.

‘My lord,’ said the man with the white gloves, and his voice was like black leather, and his eyes were emerald green and
. . .

‘Lord Moncorvo,’ said Thomas’s father, recovering himself, ‘welcome.’

Lord Moncorvo glided towards where Thomas stood and draped himself into an armchair. Though the man had given him just a glance Thomas felt his green eyes boring into him.

‘You had some discomfiture today, my lord.’

‘A robbery, no less!’ Elwick’s face hardened as he looked at Thomas. ‘My son can probably enlighten you. Today he went gallivanting by himself without a word to me. Children today have
. . .
’

‘Gallivanting?’ Moncorvo stared straight at Thomas, who couldn’t look away from those green eyes.

Elwick seemed to take no offence at being interrupted. ‘With the son of Harry Lyle, no less.’

Moncorvo’s eyes filled Thomas’s world. ‘Is that so?’

Something turned in Thomas’s stomach, something old and dry like leaves rustling across the forest floor. He could feel the coldness of the iron door into the Bank, he could see the green eyes filling his own, burning down on him as if they read his mind, and he heard a distant voice, almost in a dream, saying, ‘And how much does Constable Horatio Lyle know, boy?’

And he’s speaking, he ’s
speaking
, and his father just sits there, his mouth slightly open, eyes fixed on some vacant point, spittle slowly accumulating in one corner of his lips, like a madman in an asylum staring at something else, and there’s just green eyes and
. . .
and a feeling like
. . .
or rather a sound like
. . .
or a smell like
. . .
black leather leaves rustling over an emerald forest floor and
. . .

‘What did he ask you to do, boy?’

‘Sir, he wants to know how someone could get my family seal and my father’s signature in order to put the sarcophagus into the vault.’

‘Does he indeed?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Does he know what the Fuyun Plate is?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

. . .
and he felt like sinking, drowning, falling and
. . .

‘Boy, perhaps it is time we discussed Horatio Lyle in more detail.’

 

He ’s sitting with his father, reading about the fall of the Roman Empire, and his father is saying, ‘
. . .
this absurd reform nonsense then I fear the Party will decay into a Gladstonian state!’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Thomas? Are you paying attention?’

‘Yes, Father.’ And there’s something he needs to remember. ‘Father?’

‘Yes, boy?’

‘Did
. . .
did Moncorvo
. . .
’

‘A damn good fellow. What of him?’

‘Where is he?’

‘Where is he? What do you mean, boy, where is he? How is this relevant?’

‘I
. . .
where is he?’

‘Do you mean is he voting for Disraeli?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

. . .
and there were eyes and
. . .
nothing else
. . .
except, perhaps, just on the edge of smelling, the faintest scent of decaying leaves falling in an autumnal forest, that blows out with the wind.

 

The night settles on the city, and somewhere a man with a black leather voice and a white glove pricked with old blood that is not his own says, ‘The boy is a fool, my lady, and so is his father.’

‘That does not concern me, my lord. What of the Plate?’

‘Lyle does not have it. Even if he does, he cannot use it.’

‘If blood is spilt in it before it is repaired
. . .
’

‘It will make no difference! Mr Dew has almost found Bray,
Bray
has the Plate and he will give it to us, and we will repair it, and we will be restored. We will bring back the power, my lady. Lyle cannot stop us.’

‘Can he hinder us? I know Lord Lincoln is watching, and we cannot afford mistakes now.’

‘Lincoln is a fool too! They are all fools, they are just
human
!’ The echoes die away.

‘My lord?’

‘Forgive me, my lady. I
. . .
have lived in iron too long.’

‘It is understandable. I think, if Lyle gets too close, we should have him killed. Just to be sure.’

A shrug. ‘I see no reason why not.’

‘Very good, my lord.’

 

And the night settles, and the city sleeps, a deep, cold, dozy sleep as the furnaces idle in their halls of steel and the day’s dirt slowly rains out of the black sky on to the black roofs. And the carriages fall silent and the horses start to snore in their stables and the dirty clothes flap in the dirty wind and the fires slowly start to burn out. And somewhere, a boy dreams of emerald eyes and running through a forest of dead black leaves, falling from a dead black sky, and wakes in a cold sweat, not knowing why.

CHAPTER 7

Tess woke with the sun. It was her habit: in winter she could sleep sixteen whole hours just waiting for daylight, in summer she could get by with barely six hours’ sleep. For a second she had difficulty remembering where she was, but when recollection slowly settled like feathers on her mind, she was surprised to realize that she felt almost pleased at the thought. Her stomach was full, her feet were warm and the room was all hers.

Having got up, she drifted around the house, trying door handles, a lot of which were locked, before wandering down to the kitchen. No one there. She peered into a few cupboards looking for anything that wasn’t in mysteriously unlabelled jars, before finally pulling open a large wardrobe door. The wardrobe itself was empty, but her eyes fell on its back wall, which seemed to protrude at a very slight angle. She ran her hands thoughtfully over it, wondering. Something clicked. She pulled gently at the wardrobe door and behind her a voice said, ‘Erm, you ought to know about the mantrap inside.’

She very slowly let go of the detachable door. ‘You ought to disguise it with coats, Mister Lyle,’ she said, backing away.

‘No, no, no! That ’s not the point at all! If I disguised it with coats, people wouldn’t start looking inside it for a hidden compartment. ’

She frowned up at him. ‘But, an’ this might seem slow, but ain’t the point of a hidden compartment to be
. . . hidden
?’

‘And if anyone opens that up, they’ll not be able to look for another compartment for a very long time, will they?’

She scowled. ‘You’re horrid, Mister Lyle.’

He looked almost embarrassed. ‘Yes,’ he muttered. Then he brightened. ‘More positively, I think I’ve found something.’

 

‘Miss Laskell?’

‘Yes, Master Thomas?’ Miss Laskell, Thomas’s governess, waited patiently.

‘If
. . .
have you ever seen my father write a letter?’

‘Of course I have, Master Thomas!’

‘I mean
. . .
on the paper with the family crest, with the family seal?’

‘Yes. When he wrote references for Violet he wrote it on the family paper.’

‘And signed it?’

‘How strange of you to ask, Master Thomas!’

‘It ’s important.’

A sigh. ‘Yes, of course he signed it, Master Thomas.’

‘Where does he keep the paper?’

‘Now why would you be
. . .
’

‘It ’s important. Please?’

Another sigh. ‘Locked in his desk. Only he has the key to it. And only he ever uses the family seal for special documents, things from the Palace, you know.’

‘None of the servants could get to it?’

Her voice darkened. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been thinking, young Master Thomas, but
no
one except your father gets into that desk.’

‘Oh. I see.’

‘Is that all, Master Thomas? If so, I’ll just—’

‘No. Wait! I
. . .
I need your help.’

 

Lyle put his elbows on the desk in the dark basement and said, ‘It’s boiled.’

‘What?’

‘The orange was boiled before it was sold, to make it look bigger and juicer.’

‘Oh.’ She saw his expression. ‘
Oh
.’

He looked back down at the two pieces of fruit on the table and said in a slightly less enthusiastic voice, ‘There were also traces of formaldehyde on the orange peel, a drop of rabbit’s blood and some salt, so I’m assuming it came from somewhere near the meat markets. And I found out what the fruit is.’ From a shelf near a giant wardrobe that looked, to Tess’s eyes, even more suspicious than the one upstairs, he pulled down a large encyclopaedia, and opened it on the desk. ‘It’s something called a “lychee”. An incredible delicacy. I think there must be about two men in the whole city who’d be able to sell something like this, and to a very specialist clientele. The tooth marks on the stone are remarkable - razor-sharp teeth, very pointed, one of those sets of teeth you’d recognize
anywhere
.’

‘Anywhere?’

‘Have you ever seen a stuffed predatory fish, a freshwater trout, perhaps?’

‘Uh
. . .
’

He scowled. ‘A dead fish with big teeth?’

‘Urgh.’

‘So you’d better get your shoes on.’

‘What?’

‘You’re going to find the people who sold these pieces of fruit.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they were found too close to the bloodstains in an area where no one eats that kind of food to be coincidence.’

‘Why
me
?’

‘Because of your charitable, helpful character?’

Now she scowled. ‘What are you goin’ to do?’

‘I’m going to take Tate for a walk.’

 

A man wearing a crooked top hat, who turned up his collar in all weathers and had a taste for ginger biscuits, still watched Lyle’s house, but now his narrow, alert eyes were tired in his face with its unusually almond-dark skin that was once yellow but had been baked and lined by exposure to all elements, including the worst of humanity. He had been standing and waiting too long, relieved on his endless watch for but a few hours by a colleague, who long ago left him to his task. He stretched, tight shoulders bunching under the thick coat, and yawned.

The door opened on the other side of the road, and the girl, who he knew was called Teresa but about whom he knew nothing else, slipped out, looking furtively around. She didn’t see him as he drew back into the shadows, and he smiled. For a moment yesterday, he ’d worried that she had.

He didn’t follow her. He watched the house expectantly.

It took Lyle fifteen minutes more to emerge, with Tate padding at his feet, then look around thoughtfully, eyes flickering over where the man stood but not focusing on him, before turning and marching in completely the opposite direction from Teresa. Lyle today was wearing an anonymous grey overcoat and a broad-brimmed traveller’s hat that was very distinct indeed. In the shadows, the man almost smiled.

He followed Lyle.

He followed him up to the Strand, through the throngs of people and carriages, up the bustling, shoulder-to-shoulder wide streets of yellow Regency houses nestling against each other, through Covent Garden where the stall holders called out, ‘Pineapples, ha’penny a slice’; ‘Penny a bunch turnips’; ‘Oranges, two a penny’; ‘Cherry ripe, two pence a plate’; ‘Wild Hampshire rabbits, two a shilling’; ‘Fine ripe plums, penny a pint’. And then on, elbowing past the hawkers and the buyers and the penny-gaff clown with his penny gaffs and the Silly Billy chanting ‘Eh, higgety, eh ho! Billy let the water go!
. . .
Nicky nickey nite, I’ll strike a light!’ - and on, up Long Acre.

He followed Lyle as he skirted the St Giles rookery, a maze of dark alleys and dens that huddled round the church of St Giles and the brothels of Seven Dials. Avoiding the looks and eyes of the blackcaps and garrotters hiding in the shadows of the cheap boarding houses, twelve to a room, seven rooms a house, five houses a privy, he followed Lyle around St Martin’s Lane, past the shut doors of the dancing halls and the music halls where each night the crowd pressed in on each other’s feet to hear the lady in the red rouge scream and the man with the fake nose howl. He followed Lyle into Trafalgar Square and then down towards Charing Cross Station, where steam billowed up in huge gusts that shrouded the seedy hotels around it and drove the men waiting with their hansom cabs to shout out loudly, ‘Cabby, cabby’ to draw attention to themselves. Briefly, in this mêlée of crushing human life, he lost sight of Lyle, but almost immediately saw that distinctive hat and, more telling yet, Tate ’s paws and ears contending for which could pick up more dirt from the cobbles.