The Eyre Affair

  Jack Schitt couldn’t think of an answer to this. Müller turned to me.

  “And if SO-9 are so shit hot, why does this young lady have the best luck cornering Hades?”

  “I got lucky,” I replied, adding: “Why hasn’t Martin Chuzzlewit been killed? It’s not like Acheron to make idle threats.”

  “No indeed,” replied Müller. “No indeed.”

  “Answer the question, Müller,” said Schitt pointedly. “I can make things very uncomfortable for you.”

  Müller smiled at him.

  “Not half as uncomfortable as Acheron could. He lists slow murder, torture and flower arranging as his hobbies in Which Criminal.”

  “So you want to do some serious time?” asked Hicks, who wasn’t going to be left out of the interview. “The way I see it you’re looking at quintuple life. Or you could walk free in a couple of minutes. What’s it to be?”

  “Do as you will, officers. You’ll get nothing out of me. No matter what, Hades will get me out.”

  Müller folded his arms and leaned back in the chair. There was a pause. Schitt bent forward and switched off the tape recorder. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and draped it across the video camera in the corner of the interview room. Hicks and I looked at one another nervously. Müller watched the proceedings but didn’t seem unduly alarmed.

  “Let’s try it again,” said Schitt, pulling out his automatic and pointing it at Müller’s shoulder. “Where is Hades?”

  Müller looked at him.

  “You can kill me now or Hades kills me later when he finds I’ve talked. I’m dead either way and your death is probably a great deal less painful than Acheron’s. I’ve seen him at work. You wouldn’t believe what he is capable of.”

  “I would,” I said slowly.

  Schitt released the safety on his automatic. “I’ll count to three.”

  “I can’t tell you!—”

  “One.”

  “He’d kill me.”

  “Two.”

  I took my cue. “We can offer you protective custody.”

  “From him?” demanded Müller. “Are you completely nuts?”

  “Three!”

  Müller closed his eyes and started to shake. Schitt put the gun down. This wasn’t going to work. Suddenly, I had a thought.

  “He doesn’t have the manuscript anymore, does he?”

  Müller opened an eye and looked at me. It was the sign I’d been looking for.

  “Mycroft destroyed it, didn’t he?” I continued, reasoning as my uncle might have—and did.

  “Is that what happened?” asked Jack Schitt. Müller said nothing.

  “He’ll be wanting to find an alternative,” observed Hicks.

  “There must be thousands of original manuscripts out there,” murmured Schitt. “We can’t cover them all. Which one is he after?”

  “I can’t tell you,” stuttered Müller, his resolve beginning to leave him. “He’d kill me.”

  “He’ll kill you when he finds out you told us that Mycroft destroyed the Chuzzlewit manuscript,” I responded evenly.

  “But I didn’t!—”

  “He’s not to know. We can protect you, Müller, but we need to capture Hades. Where is he?”

  Müller looked at us one by one.

  “Protective custody?” he stammered. “It’ll need a small army.”

  “I can supply that,” asserted Schitt, using the truth with an economy for which he had become famous. “The Goliath Corporation is prepared to be generous in this matter.”

  “Okay . . . I’ll tell you.”

  He looked at us all and wiped his brow, which had suddenly started to glisten.

  “Isn’t it a bit hot in here?” he asked.

  “No,” replied Schitt. “Where’s Hades?”

  “Well, he’s at . . . the—”

  He suddenly stopped talking. His face contorted with fear as a violent spasm of pain hit his lower back and he cried out in agony.

  “Tell us quick!” shouted Schitt, leaping to his feet and grabbing the stricken man’s lapels.

  “Pen-deryn!—” he screamed. “He’s at!—”

  “Tell us more!” roared Schitt. “There must be a thousand Penderyns!”

  “Guess!” screamed Müller. “G-weuess . . . ahhh!”

  “I’ll not play your games!” yelled Schitt, shaking the man vigorously. “Tell me or I’ll kill you with my bare hands right now!”

  But Müller was now beyond rational thought or Schitt’s threats. He squirmed and fell to the floor, writhing in agony.

  “Medic!” I screamed, dropping to the floor next to the convulsing Müller, whose open mouth screamed a silent scream as his eyes rolled up into his head. The smell of scorched clothes reached my nostrils. I leaped back as a bright orange flame shot out of Müller’s back. It ignited the rest of him and we all had to beat a hasty retreat as the intense heat reduced Müller to ash in under ten minutes.

  “Damn!” muttered Schitt when the acrid smoke had cleared. Müller was a heap of cinders on the floor. There wouldn’t even be enough to identify him.

  “Hades,” I murmured. “Some sort of built-in safety device. As soon as Müller starts to blab . . . up he goes. Very neat.”

  “You sound as if you almost respect him, Miss Next,” observed Schitt.

  “I can’t help it.” I shrugged. “Like the shark, Acheron has evolved into the almost perfect predator. I’ve never hunted big game and never would, but I can understand the appeal. The first thing,” I went on, ignoring the smoking pile of ash that had recently been Müller, “is to treble the guards on any places where original manuscripts are held. After that we want to start looking at anywhere called Penderyn.”

  “I’ll get onto it,” said Hicks, who had been looking for a reason to go for some time.

  Schitt and I were left looking at one another.

  “Looks like we’re on the same side, Miss Next.”

  “Sadly,” I replied disdainfully. “You want the Prose Portal. I want my uncle back. Acheron has to be destroyed before either of us gets what we want. Until then we’ll work together.”

  “A useful and happy union,” replied Schitt with anything but happiness on his mind.

  I pressed a finger to his tie.

  “Understand this, Mr. Schitt. You may have might in your back pocket but I have right in mine. Believe me when I say I will do anything to protect my family. Do you understand?”

  Schitt looked at me coldly.

  “Don’t try to threaten me, Miss Next. I could have you posted to the Lerwick Litera Tec office quicker than you can say ‘Swift.’ Remember that. You’re here because you’re good at what you do. Same reason as me. We are more alike than you think. Good-day, Miss Next.”

  A quick search revealed eighty-four towns and villages in Wales named Penderyn. There were twice as many streets and the same number again of pubs, clubs and associations. It wasn’t surprising there were so many; Dic Penderyn had been executed in 1831 for wounding a soldier during the Merthyr riots—he was innocent and so became the first martyr of the Welsh rising and something of a figurehead for the republican struggle. Even if Goliath could infiltrate Wales, they wouldn’t know which Pen-deryn to start with. Clearly, this was going to take some time.

  Tired, I left to go home. I picked up my car from the garage, where they had managed to replace the front axle, shoehorn in a new engine and repair the bullet holes, some of which had come perilously close. I rolled up at the Finis Hotel as a clipper-class airship droned slowly overhead. Dusk was just settling and the navigation lights on either side of the huge airship blinked languidly in the evening sky. It was an elegant sight, the ten propellers beating the air with a rhythmic hum; during the day an airship could eclipse the sun. I stepped inside the hotel. The Milton conference was over and Liz welcomed me now as a friend rather than as a guest.

  “Good evening, Miss Next. All well?”

  “Not really.” I smiled. “But thanks for asking.”

/>   “Your dodo arrived this evening,” announced Liz. “He’s in kennel five. News travels fast; the Swindon Dodo Fanciers have been up already. They said he was a very rare Version one or something—they want you to call them.”

  “He’s a 1.2,” I murmured absently. Dodos weren’t high on my list of priorities right now. I paused for a moment. Liz sensed my indecision.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “Has, er, Mr. Parke-Laine called?”

  “No. Were you expecting him to?”

  “No—not really. If he calls, I’m in the Cheshire Cat if not my room. If you can’t find me, can you ask him to call again in half an hour?”

  “Why don’t I just send a car to fetch him?”

  “Oh God, is it that obvious?”

  Liz nodded her head.

  “He’s getting married.”

  “But not to you?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Me too. Has anyone ever asked you to marry them?”

  “Sure.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said: ‘Ask me again when you get out.’ ”

  “Did he?”

  “No.”

  I checked in with Pickwick, who seemed to have settled in well. He made excited plock plock noises when he saw me. Contradicting the theories of experts, dodos had turned out to be surprisingly intelligent and quite agile—the ungainly bird of common legend was quite wrong. I gave him some peanuts and smuggled him up to my room under a coat. It wasn’t that the kennels were dirty or anything; I just didn’t want him to be alone. I put his favorite rug in the bath to give him somewhere to roost and laid out some paper. I told him I’d move him to my mother’s the following day, then left him staring out of the window at the cars in the car park.

  “Good evening, miss,” said the barman in the Cheshire Cat. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

  “Because there is a ‘B’ in ‘both’?”

  “Very good. Half of Vorpal’s special, was it?”

  “You must be kidding. Gin and tonic. A double.”

  He smiled and turned to the optics.

  “Police?”

  “SpecOps.”

  “Litera Tec?”

  “Yup.”

  I took my drink.

  “I trained to be a LiteraTec,” he said wistfully. “Made it to cadetship.”

  “What happened?”

  “My girlfriend was a militant Marlovian. She converted some Will-Speak machines to quote from Tamburlaine and I was implicated when she was nabbed. And that was that. Not even the military would take me.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Chris.”

  “Thursday.”

  We shook hands.

  “I can only speak from experience, Chris, but I’ve been in the military and SpecOps and you should be thanking your girlfriend.”

  “I do,” hastened Chris. “Every day. We’re married now and have two kids. I do this bar job in the evenings and run the Swindon branch of the Kit Marlowe Society during the day. We have almost four thousand members. Not bad for an Elizabethan forger, murderer, gambler and atheist.”

  “There are some who say he might have written the plays usually attributed to Shakespeare.”

  Chris was taken aback. He was suspicious too.

  “I’m not sure I should be discussing this with a Litera Tec.”

  “There’s no law against discussion, Chris. Who do you think we are, the thought police?”

  “No, that’s SO-2 isn’t it?”

  “But about Marlowe—?”

  Chris lowered his voice.

  “Okay. I think Marlowe might have written the plays. He was undoubtedly a brilliant playwright, as Faust, Tamburlaine and Edward II would attest. He was the only person of his age who could have actually done it. Forget Bacon and Oxford; Marlowe has to be the odds-on favorite.”

  “But Marlowe was murdered in 1593,” I replied slowly. “Most of the plays were written after that.”

  Chris looked at me and lowered his voice.

  “Sure. If he died in the bar fight that day.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It’s possible his death was faked.”

  “Why?”

  Chris took a deep breath. This was a subject he knew something about.

  “Remember that Elizabeth was a Protestant queen. Anything like atheism or papism would deny the authority of the Protestant Church and the queen as the head.”

  “Treason,” I murmured. “A capital offense.”

  “Exactly. In April 1593 the Privy Council arrested one Thomas Kyd in connection with some antigovernment pamphleteering. When his rooms were searched they revealed some atheistic writings.”

  “So?”

  “Kyd fingered Marlowe. Said Marlowe had written them two years ago when they were rooming together. Marlowe was arrested and questioned on May 18, 1593; he was freed on bail so presumably there wasn’t enough evidence to commit him for trial.”

  “What about his friendship with Walsingham?” I asked.

  “I was coming to that. Walsingham had an influential position within the secret service; they had known each other for a number of years. With more evidence arriving daily against Marlowe, his arrest seemed inevitable. But on the morning of May 30, Marlowe is killed in a bar brawl, apparently over an unpaid bill.”

  “Very convenient.”

  “Very. It’s my belief that Walsingham faked his friend’s death. The three men in the tavern were all in his pay. He bribed the coroner and Marlowe set up Shakespeare as the front man. Will, an impoverished actor who knew Marlowe from his days at the Shoreditch Theater, probably leaped at the chance to make some money; his career seems to have taken off as Marlowe’s ended.”

  “It’s an interesting theory. But wasn’t Venus and Adonis published a couple of months before Marlowe’s death? Earlier even than Kyd’s arrest?”

  Chris coughed.

  “Good point. All I can say is that the plot must have been hatched somewhat ahead of time, or that records have been muddled.”

  He paused for a moment, looked about and lowered his voice further.

  “Don’t tell the other Marlovians, but there is something else that points away from a faked death.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Marlowe was killed within the jurisdiction of the queen’s coroner. There were sixteen jurors to view the supposedly switched body, and it is unlikely that the coroner could have been bribed. If I had been Walsingham I would have had Marlowe’s death faked in the boonies where coroners were more easily bought. He could have gone farther and had the body disfigured in some way to make identification impossible.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That an equally probable theory is that Walsingham himself had Marlowe killed to stop him talking. Men say anything when tortured, and it’s likely that Marlowe had all kinds of dirt on Walsingham.”

  “What then?” I asked. “How would you account for the lack of any firm evidence regarding Shakespeare’s life, his curious double existence, the fact that no one seemed to know about his literary work in Stratford?”

  Chris shrugged.

  “I don’t know, Thursday. Without Marlowe there is no one else in Elizabethan London even able to write the plays.”

  “Any theories?”

  “None at all. But the Elizabethans were a funny bunch. Court intrigue, the secret service . . .”

  “The more things change—”

  “My point entirely. Cheers.”

  We clinked glasses and Chris wandered off to serve another customer. I played the piano for half an hour before retiring to bed. I checked with Liz but Landen hadn’t called.

  27.

  Hades Finds Another Manuscript

  I had hoped that I would find a manuscript by Austen or Trollope, Thackeray, Fielding or Swift. Maybe Johnson, Wells or Conan Doyle. Defoe would have been fun. Imagine my delight when I discovered that
Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece Jane Eyre was on show at her old home. How can fate be more fortuitous? . . .

  ACHERON HADES

  —Degeneracy for Pleasure and Profit

  OUR SAFETY recommendations had been passed to the Brontë museum and there were five armed security guards on duty that night. They were all burly Yorkshiremen, specially chosen for this most august of duties because of their strong sense of literary pride. One stayed in the room with the manuscript, another was on guard within the building, two patrolled outside, and the fifth was in a little room with six TV screens. The guard in front of the monitors ate an egg-and-onion sandwich and kept a diligent eye on the screens. He didn’t see anything remiss on the monitors, but then Acheron’s curious powers had never been declassified below SO-9.

  It was easy for Hades to gain entry; he just slipped in through the kitchen door after forcing the lock with a crowbar. The guard patrolling inside didn’t hear Acheron approach. His lifeless body was later found wedged beneath the Belfast sink. Acheron carefully mounted the stairs, trying not to make any noise. In reality he could have made as much noise as he liked. He knew the guards’ .38s couldn’t harm him, but what was the fun of just walking in and helping himself? He padded slowly up the corridor to the room where the manuscript was displayed and peered in. The room was empty. For some reason the guard was not in attendance. He walked up to the armored glass case and placed his hand just above the book. The glass beneath his flattened palm started to ripple and soften; pretty soon it was pliable enough for Hades to push his fingers through and grasp the manuscript. The destabilized glass twisted and stretched like rubber as the book was pulled clear and then rapidly reformed itself back into solid glass; the only evidence that its molecules had been rearranged was a slight mottling on the surface. Hades smiled triumphantly as he read the front page:

  Jane Eyre

  An autobiography byCURRER BELL

  October 1847

  Acheron meant to take the book straight away, but he had always liked the story. Succumbing to temptation, he started to read.

  It was open at the section where Jane Eyre is in bed and hears a low cackle of demonic laughter outside her room. Glad that the laughter is not coming from within her room, she arises and throws the bolt on the door, crying out: