The Custodian of Marvels (25 page)

I sat up in time to see the door swinging open. Two agents stepped through and took the seats on the other side of the table. One was the Indian man who’d brought me to the room. The other was a tall and pale man with high cheekbones and clear grey eyes. He might have been handsome if he’d smiled.

“Elizabeth Barnabus,” he said, speaking my name as if it were a distasteful thing.

“Your name please?” I asked.

“You’re in a lot of trouble,” he said, ignoring my question. “How much trouble is up to you. So don’t play cocky. You don’t even know how bad this is going to get. What are you doing in London?”

“Sightseeing,” I said.

The Indian agent, shorter in stature and rounder of face, was leaning back in his chair, his eyes downcast as if embarrassed to look directly at what was happening.

“What are you doing in London?” Grey Eyes asked again.

I stared right back at him and repeated my answer: “Sightseeing.”

He moved so quickly that I wasn’t prepared for the impact. One moment he was sitting, bending forwards over the table. Then his hand shot out and slapped me. He was back in his place so quickly that, but for the stinging heat in my left cheek, I would hardly have believed it had happened.

“What are you doing in London?” he asked once more, a trace of a smile on his face, as if encouraging me to try my luck.

“Would you prefer me to lie?” I asked.

This time I was braced for the slap and my head did not flick around with the impact. I kept my gaze directly on him. He drew back his hand again, but this time the other agent touched his arm. The two men put their heads close together, the Indian man whispering. Grey Eyes nodded. He got to his feet, letting the chair legs scrape over the tiles. He knocked once on the door and it was opened from outside.

“May I apologise for my colleague?” said the other, when we were alone. “He’s within his rights. But that was uncalled for, in my opinion. If you say you’re sightseeing, then I’m sure that must be part of the truth. There’s more, of course. No one does anything for just one reason. For example, from the ledger at the sign-in desk, we know that your friend was observing a case at the International Patent Court this morning. Miss Julia Swain. It would seem an impossible coincidence that you just happened to be sightseeing in the same place as her.

“Now, my colleague is of the opinion that Miss Swain should be brought in for questioning also. I imagine he would ask her if she’d seen you recently. She would naturally deny it – since you’re wanted by the law of the Kingdom… I’m sure you can imagine how he would behave.”

The impact of these words was greater than the physical assault had been. I found myself answering, though I’d intended to keep my mouth closed. “Please don’t.”

“Believe me, I don’t want her brought in. What purpose would it serve? But you must give me something or it’ll be out of my hands.”

“I did meet her.”

“And what did you talk about?”

“Her law studies. The other students. Her hopes for the future.”

“Old friends catching up? That’s nice. And what does she think of the other students?”

“She thinks they aren’t all really studying,” I said.

He chuckled. “And her?”

“She’ll confound every expectation.”

“You’re proud of her. She’s lucky to have such a loyal friend. What other friends do you have here in the capital?”

Though I understood what the two agents had been doing – one playing rough, the other gentle – the effect was hard to resist. I found myself wanting to tell this man the answers to his questions. “There are some,” I said. “But you’ll understand, I don’t want to say their names.”

“Of course,” he said. “You’re loyal. I understand. I wouldn’t expect anything less from you. But this is nothing to do with the law of the Kingdom. These friends may be harbouring you, a fugitive. But that’s nothing to do with our investigation.”

“What is your investigation?” I asked.

He spread his hands, palms raised. “Alas, I cannot tell you.”

“Then it seems you’ll have to bring your colleague back.”

“But he may hit you again.”

“I’m expecting it.” I sat back in my chair and folded my arms.

“I’m very sorry,” he said, then got up and left the room.

When Grey Eyes didn’t immediately return, I tried again to picture my boat. This time I imagined her as she had been when I first lived on her. She’d been called
Bessie
then. There had been two cabins and a galley, but no cargo hold. This was before she’d been disguised as a working craft. But, however hard I tried, I couldn’t bring the detail to my mind.

The lights in the room seemed brighter than ever, the whiteness of the walls giving me no relief. The mirror reflected the white of the ceiling.

I stared at it.

Some of my father’s tricks had employed half-silvered glass that would either be transparent or throw back a reflection, depending on the lighting and the angle. The thought came to me that perhaps this mirror could be a window – that an observer might be standing on the other side, watching me. I was just about to get up and investigate when the door opened again.

Grey Eyes entered and sat facing me.

“Who are your accomplices?”

I remained silent, braced ready for violence.

“Have you been in contact with any circus folk whilst in London?”

“No.”

“When did you last see the dwarf known as Fabulo?”

My mind twisted at the mention of the name. I couldn’t deny knowledge. I’d seen the court record that linked us. “Last winter,” I said.

He must have picked up my slight hesitation, because that cruel smile curled the corners of his mouth again.

“You’re lying. When did you see him?”

“Why do you want to know?”

His hand moved faster than I could react. The slap sounded loud in the bare room. The shock of the pain made me gasp.

“When did you last see the dwarf?”

“Last winter.”

The second slap hit me further back on the side of my face, leaving a high-pitched whistle in my ear. I looked past my interrogator to the mirror and found myself imagining a man standing in darkness behind the glass.

“Tell me the truth!”

“Hit me again,” I said.

He did. And I welcomed the sting of it. We were performers. I understood that now. And with this knowledge, I could take the punishment he was going to give.

“When did you see the dwarf?”

“I’ve told you already.”

“Then tell me about the locksmith Jeremiah Cavendish. When did you last see him?”

I hadn’t been prepared for the change of question. The surprise must have shown on my face. The uncertainty.

“I don’t know anything,” I said.

Grey Eyes swung his arm. I watched it coming, registering too late that it was a fist, not the flat of his hand. The blow connected with the side of my head. I saw lights flashing. I didn’t even know that I was falling until my shoulder hit the tiles.

He was on his feet and around the table. I saw his mouth moving, but could hear nothing beyond the steamsaw cutting wood inside my head. His mouth moved again. He clenched his fist and drew it back, but something stopped him.

He turned to look back over his shoulder, though there was no one else in the room. He straightened himself. He looked directly at the mirror. There was a pause. Then he marched away.

At first, I couldn’t get up. I lay on my side, concentrating on breathing in and out. As my hearing began to return, I clambered onto hands and knees, and then to my feet. I swayed, staring at the mirror, as Grey Eyes had done.

I sensed the presence of someone watching. I lurched towards it. There was a sound behind the wall – the opening of a door. I put my face close to the glass and cupped my hands to blank out the light. And there it was – ghostly on the other side, a hidden room, small, blank and dark, but for the crack of light streaming in through a door that was slowly swinging closed.

The attic room smelled of roasted meat and garlic. As I crawled through the hole in the end wall, Ellie, Jeremiah and Fabulo looked up from their meal of sausages wrapped in slices of bread.

“What happened to your face?”

The question had been voiced by Ellie, but they were all asking it with their eyes. I hadn’t yet seen myself in a mirror, but I’d known it must be bad from the look on the face of the agent who’d come to escort me from the cell.

“Would you believe I walked into a lamp post?”

“Who did it?” demanded Fabulo.

I told them, in a roundabout way, omitting my visit to Julia and Richard da Silva. Stepping into the Patent Court would have seemed like reckless stupidity to Fabulo. I couldn’t explain my reason for taking the risk without admitting I hadn’t trusted him. So I said I’d been walking along Cable Street when John Farthing spotted me.

“He must have been searching for you!”

“No,” I said. “He was as surprised as I.”

“Look what he did to your beautiful mouth,” said Ellie, dabbing a wet cloth against my swollen lip. Each time she dipped it in the bucket, I saw threads of my blood spreading through the water.

“That Farthing’s a bastard like the rest of them!” said Fabulo.

“What did you tell him?” asked Jeremiah.

Ellie rounded on him. “She wouldn’t say nothing! Just look at her face.”

“Then why did they let her go?”

“’Coz she wouldn’t talk!”

“If she hadn’t talked, she’d still be there!”

“No, she wouldn’t!”

“That’s enough,” snapped Fabulo. “Tell them, Elizabeth.”

“I didn’t give them anything! But they gave me something – though they didn’t mean to. They asked about you, Fabulo. Wanted to know when I’d seen you last.”

“What stupid thing have you gone and done, little man?” growled Jeremiah.

“I’ve done nothing!”

“You must have. The Patent Office are after you!”

“I have not!”

“That wasn’t all,” I cut in, before their tempers could heat up further. “You should let me finish. They also wanted to know about a man called Jeremiah Cavendish. That
is
you, I suppose?”

The locksmith sat down on the tea chest with a bump.

“But you’re right in what you said. If they’d been after me, I’d still be locked in that cell. They grabbed me because they have court records connecting me to Fabulo. But what do they know that connects Fabulo to Jeremiah?”

“Nothing.”

There was a silence. Then the locksmith cleared his throat. “There is something,” he said. “When you took me to see Harry Timpson in prison, there was a register. We had to give our names. It was a Kingdom prison. But Timpson’s case was mixed up with the Patent Office. We were both on that visitor list together.”

Fabulo put aside his bread and sausage, as if it had lost its flavour. “Connection or no, why are the bastards after finding us?”

I looked to Jeremiah, who was staring fixedly at a weevil crawling across the floorboards between his boots.

“I think you’d better explain about your duties to the Guild of Locksmiths,” I said.

A deep frown was growing on Fabulo’s forehead. “What has he gone and done?”

“It’s more what he hasn’t done. He can’t face his old colleagues. He’s dropped out of circulation. I think perhaps they’ve noticed.”

Ellie had finished tending my face. She dropped the cloth into the bucket and sat back on her heels. “Why would they be bothered that he’s missing?”

“Jeremiah,” I said. “How many people know what you know about the locks of the International Patent Court? “

He looked up and met my eye. “Five,” he said. “Including me.”

Fabulo groaned. “That looks like a good enough reason.”

CHAPTER 22

October 10th

Regard the lie of the liar as the shadow of a truth. Study a shadow and the position of the sun will be revealed.

The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

From his title, I’d assumed the Grand Master of the Guild of Locksmiths would have a larger and more palatial residence. It turned out to be a half-timbered structure, the upper storey of which overhung the road.

An entranceway wide enough for a small coach to pass gave access to a brick courtyard. Standing inside, hidden by a stack of barrels, I could see the red evening sky reflected in the leaded glass of the upper windows. Below them was a door that seemed to access the residence. A low range of workshops faced it from the opposite side of the courtyard.

“I can’t do it,” whispered Jeremiah.

“You can and you will.”

“I can’t lie,” he said, slurring the words.

“Then keep your mouth closed. I shall do enough lying for us both.”

Before we’d set out, Ellie had prepared a pipe for him to smoke. “To calm him,” she’d said. The smoke had been cloying and sweet. At first he complained. But, after a couple of breaths, he relaxed into his task. And, after a few more, he’d been reluctant to let her take the pipe from his hand. “That’s enough,” she’d said.

But now, standing in the Grand Master’s courtyard, the danger had grown more real.

I took his hand and led him to the door of the residence. “Trust me,” I said.

I pulled the cord and a bell rang somewhere inside, followed by voices calling within and then approaching footsteps.

It was an elderly woman who opened the door.

“It’s guild business,” I said. “My uncle needs to see the Grand Master.”

She curtsied towards Jeremiah, who I could see she recognised. But then she dithered on the threshold, caught by indecision.

“May we come in?” I asked, putting my foot on the doorstep.

This tipped the balance. She beckoned us inside, escorting us along a crooked wood-panelled passage to an equally crooked drawing room. Here she lighted the lamps and told us to wait.

The house gave the impression of having been in a state of gradual collapse and remedial maintenance since some time in the middle ages. I perused the spines of a row of leather bound volumes. None were on the subject of locks. The shelves leaned at such an angle, it was a wonder that any of the books stayed upright.