“Of course he was—” Alexander’s voice whelmed with conviction.
“So much so that he felt compelled to eliminate all his rivals for her attention—”
“That’s right—”
“And there was finally only one way to accomplish that, wasn’t there?”
“Yes—”
“That’s why you set the fire—”
“Yes!”
Doyle stopped. Alexander caught himself almost before the word had left his mouth. A reptilian coldness instantly sculpted his face into a mask of brutal contempt.
“So you do believe that Jonathan killed your parents,” said Doyle, boldly attempting to maintain the guilelessness of his inquisition.
“Yes,” said Alexander flatly. His upper lip curled in an involuntary sneer, his nostrils flared, and the lids of his eyes drooped ominously low. He appeared bestial. This is what he looks like, thought Doyle; this is his real face.
“I see,” said Doyle, nodding again. “This is all so very interesting, Mr. Sparks. I shall be sure to give your analysis the most serious consideration.”
“Will you now?” Alexander’s voice was harsh and raspy, that ominous underlying tone moving closer to the surface.
“Indeed,” said Doyle, swallowing his fear. “If what you say is true, and I have little reason to doubt that it is, your brother may be more than a danger to just himself. In all honesty, I must tell you I believe he almost certainly poses just as great a danger to you.”
Doyle gave a self-satisfied smile, leaned back in the seat, and pretended to ponder the intangibles. Please God let him think me a harmless pedant, thought Doyle. He dared not look at Alexander again, but he could feel the heat of the man’s eyes boring in on him. Had he gone too far? Too early to determine. The man had not leapt for his throat, although Doyle had given his adequate provocation. The fact remained that Alexander had for the moment been outwitted; if anything was more likely to prod him into a murderous rage, it would be difficult to name. And if his thickheaded performance had held up under scrutiny, Doyle had not even given the man the satisfaction of knowing he’d been consciously outwitted, in which case Alexander’s wrath would more likely be directed inward, toward himself. Pride. That was Lucifer’s failing, too. Every man has a weakness, simply human nature, but even if he had succeeded in stumbling onto that of Alexander Sparks, Doyle now had no doubt he was in the company of a man every bit as dangerous as Jack had described. He and Eileen were still alive only because of their enemy’s uncertainty in how much Jack had told them and whomever else they might have told in turn.
Granted, there were untold questions to be answered on the subject of Jack Sparks, but at the least Alexander’s inadvertent confession to the deaths of their parents exonerated Jack in those unnatural crimes once and for all. The anguished music he had heard Jack making was born of sorrow, not guilt. And if Alexander was responsible, as Jack had asserted, the rest of his account became that much easier to credit.
Doyle parted the curtains. The road they traversed ran high on a bluff, paralleling the treeless, windswept shore. The eastern sky lightened over the distant sea. Dawn was only minutes away.
Eileen moved again; her respiration deepened. The drug was wearing off. Was there any way to remove her from harm? Doyle was forced to admit that whatever could be done now he would in all likelihood have to do alone: The brothers’ fate was in grave doubt; for all he knew, Jack may have been lost as well. But mourning was an unaffordable indulgence. The weight of responsibility for the life in his arms provided a surge of stamina and resolution. Doyle glanced at Alexander and felt the pressure of the syringes in his boot. Not yet, he thought. Not with Eileen so close.
The carriage slowed to a walk as the wheels encountered paved stone. Moments later they clattered through a horseshoed arch, flanked by twin granite statues of immense birds of prey.
“Ravenscar,” said Alexander. His face had once again assumed its mask of polite formality.
Doyle nodded. He heard the gates shut behind them as the carriage came to a stop. The change in motion brought Eileen out of her languor. She saw Doyle’s face, found herself in his arms, made a small sound of contentment, and moved closer to him. He held her tight and stroked her hair. At the sound of the door, Doyle looked up and saw that Alexander Sparks was gone.
A liveried servant opened the door on their side of the carriage, and in it appeared a broad, ruddy, smiling face adorned with two conical tufts of fleecy white hair floating on either side of a shiny pate. Thick spectacles magnified the man’s hazy blue eyes to the size of robin’s eggs.
“Is it Dr. Doyle then?”
“Yes?”
“A-hoot, you’ve come to Ravenscar, and a pleasure it is to welcome you to us,” said the man, in an agreeably reedy Scots Highland brogue.
Reacting to the intrusion of another voice, Eileen tried to rouse herself. Doyle leaned forward and shook the man’s energetically offered hand.
“Bishop Pillphrock,” surmised Doyle, spying the man’s collar and frock.
“A-hoot, the very same, Doctor, and how-do.”
“Miss Eileen Temple,” said Doyle, holding her shoulders, balancing her upright.
“Well, yes, and am I most pleased to meet you, Miss Temple,” said the Bishop with an expansive show of bad teeth, covering her hand with both of his dainty little mitts.
Eileen experienced no little difficulty focusing her eyes, but as social instincts engaged, she carried the moment.
“Enchantée,” she said, with a heart-stopping smile.
“Charmed, I’m sure! A-hoot, please, come in, come in,” said the Bishop, backing away from the door and gesturing graciously. “We’ve hot baths awaiting to repair the effects of the journey, warm beds for rest if you desire, hearty breakfasts to fortify your spirits. This way.”
Doyle helped Eileen from the carriage. She leaned heavily against him, unsteady on her feet. Doyle assessed their position: a circular cobblestoned courtyard surrounded by high, thick walls. Early dawn washed everything in a dense gloom of iron gray. The gate through which they had passed was hewn from marbleized black wood, banded with steel. Two rows of formally attired servants, many holding lanterns, formed a gauntlet to the entrance of the house before them, more properly a medieval fortress: wings, flying buttresses, massive round towers topped with banners disappearing in the haze. In the scrimy light, Doyle could see cannon lining the battlements.
“A warm welcome. A very warm welcome indeed. Right this way with you, Doctor, Miss Temple,” said the Bishop with a beatific smile. He started ahead of them, short and swag-bellied, with a splayfooted bounce characteristic of a much younger man. Doyle supported Eileen with one hand in hers, the other around her waist, as they followed.
As they passed between them, Doyle studied the footmen on either side. All men of impressive size and solidity. Faces cold and hard, impassive. Faces that might have been concealed behind hoods while hunting them down through the snow only hours before.
“Where are we, Arthur?” whispered Eileen.
“A very bad place,” said Doyle.
“What are we doing here?”
“That’s not altogether clear.”
“Well then…if I can’t say that I’m happy to be here, I am so very glad that you’re with me.”
He held her closer. A few men peeled off to follow them through the vast double doors to which the Bishop led them. The interior expounded on the grand themes established by the castle’s facade. A welter of heraldic oriflammes enlivened the walls and ceiling. This expansive central hall was crowded with suits of armor, posed in warlike postures. A long, narrow table of burnished wood consumed the length of the room’s middle. At its far end a fireplace as wide and as deep as Doyle’s old bedroom burned a load of timber the size of a whaling boat.
“I’m afraid it’s a wee trice early for our guests to be up and about,” said the Bishop, leading them to an epic stone staircase, “but I can assure you they are most anxi
ous to make your acquaintance.”
“The gentleman we shared the carriage with…” said Doyle.
“Yes,” said the Bishop brightly.
“Mr. Graves? Mr. Maximilian Graves?”
“Yes?” The Bishop smiled helpfully as they started up the stairs.
“Your colleague. On the board of Rathborne and Sons.”
“Yes, yes. Rathborne and Sons, yes.”
“So that was the gentleman?”
“Who did he say he was?”
“He didn’t.”
“Ah. Yes,” said the Bishop with another grin.
Doyle couldn’t tell if the man was being deliberately obscure or was simply an idiot.
“No, I’m attempting to determine,” persisted Doyle, “if that was in fact Mr. Maximilian Graves.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t wish to speak for Mr. Graves.”
“So that was Mr. Graves.”
“Is that what he told you?”
Eileen and Doyle looked at each other, wide-eyed; the Bishop’s moronic cheerfulness was cutting through even her foggy state.
“He said his name was Alexander Sparks.”
“Well then,” said the Bishop, “he would be in a position to know, wouldn’t he? A-hoot, and here we are.”
A brawy servant standing outside a door in the hall opened it as they approached, and the Bishop extravagantly waved them inside. The room’s furnishings and appointments were opulent, vivid contrast to the Spartan militarism throughout what they’d seen of the rest of the house. Plush Persian carpets lay underfoot. Gossamer canopies draped twin beds. Chairs and plump divans exuded overstuffed pulchritude. Tapestries covered the walls but couldn’t conceal their curves, suggesting the room sat snugly in one of Ravenscar’s many towers. A single narrow window faced northwest, the sky growing light with the dawn.
“The bath is through here,” said the Bishop. He opened an adjoining door to reveal a black-and-white-tiled chamber, where servants poured buckets of steaming hot water into an elevated brass tub.
“Please don’t hesitate to rest and refresh yourselves before joining us. Our guests here are all royalty to us. And if you require anything else, anything at all,” said the Bishop, taking hold of a velvet rope suspended from the ceiling, “one ring will quickly bring someone running.”
Doyle and Eileen thanked him, and the Bishop backed out of the room on a steady stream of gracious inanities. The door closed solidly. Doyle held a finger to his lips, moved to the door, and tried the handle. Locked. He opened the clasp to peer through the door’s peephole and was greeted by the stony eyes of the servants stationed outside. Doyle shut the trap and moved to the window as Eileen plopped down on one of the chaises and tried to pull off her boots.
“I wholeheartedly approve of the bath,” she said, still reeling a little.
The window looked directly down on the courtyard. Traffic in and out of the heavy gates through which they’d entered ran regular and heavy, covered wagons primarily, but a fair number of men on foot—patrols armed with rifles, as were the numerous sentinels parading the ramparts.
“If they mean to kill us,” said Eileen, fumbling woozily with the buttons of her skirt, “they must want clean, well-rested corpses.”
Doyle looked farther left as the first morning sunlight flooded the flat plain that lay to the west—the leading edge of the North Yorkshire moors, if Doyle had his geography in order. Somewhere therein sat the property General Marcus McCauley Drummond extorted from Lord Nicholson. Not much innate value aside from the peat bogs. Perhaps its worth had to do with its proximity to Ravenscar, reasoned Doyle. As the mist lifted, in the distance he could dimly make out shapes jutting from the fresh snow on the moors: low, man-made structures, perhaps storage sheds for the peat.
“I’m going first, Arthur, if you have no objection,” said Eileen, peeling off the shirt, trousers falling around her ankles as she hobbled to the bath.
“Yes. Fine,” said Doyle, almost but not quite engrossed enough to be distracted by her flesh before she disappeared. Moments later, he heard a healthy splash, followed in short order by an exclamation, a giggle, and then a contented sigh.
Resuming his survey, Doyle saw that the sprawl of Ravenscar proper filled the southern reaches of what was visible from the window. Outside the walls in that direction stood a high, rambling structure, serviced by a rail spur running to the west. Figures moved in and out of its cavernous doors. Boxcars waited in the switching yard. Black smoke poured from two towering stacks that rose from the building’s core. Beneath the chimneys, an ornate and sentimentally rendered scene of a mother standing in a kitchen, handing a biscuit to a little boy, covered a large expanse of wall. Lettering above it inscribed: MOTHER’S OWN.
“Arthur?” He could hear the slip and burble of languidly moving water.
“Yes, Eileen.”
“Could you come in here a moment, please?”
“Yes, Eileen.”
Doyle removed his coat, took the vials of medicine concealed in the lining and the syringes from his boots, and stuffed them beneath the cushions of a davenport. Then he moved to the bath.
Arms folded across her breasts, eyes closed, Eileen lay back against the angled wall of the tub, which simulated the form of a brass dragon down to its four taloned claws. Her skin looked like alabaster. There was a fine glisten of moisture on her lip. Her hair was loosely piled on top of her head, but a few delicious strands dangled delicately down to the waterline. Doyle was instantly thrown into a reverie: the enduring fascination of a woman’s hair. How did they know just exactly what to do with it in every conceivable situation? How did they move it around their heads in such graceful, effortless defiance of gravity?
“I’m in a kind of heaven,” she said dreamily.
“Are you?”
“I assume I was given a drug of some kind.”
“Yes, dear.”
“It’s difficult for me to think very clearly.” She was taking great care to enunciate clearly. “My physical responses to things seem to be a bit…overwhelming.”
“Which we can attribute to the drug as well I think.”
“So this feeling is going to go away soon.”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. Pity. I’m sorry, I’m not being very much help to you.”
“You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
She rested an inviting hand on the edge of the tub. He took it, watching the water run off their entwined fingers.
“Mr. Jack Sparks did not come back?” she asked.
“No.”
“That’s very troubling.”
“Yes.”
“We’re in quite a serious muggins, you and I.”
“Yes, dear, I’m afraid we are.”
“Then after I’ve had a few more minutes to soak,” she said softly, “I would like you to take me to bed. Would that be all right with you, Arthur?”
“Yes, dear. Yes, it would.”
She smiled and held his hand. He sat on the edge of the tub and waited.
Familiarity breeds a few feelings other than contempt, thought Doyle as he lay on the enveloping feather bed and by measured steps gave in to the round, full weight of his fatigue. Passion, for one. Whether as a result of the drug in her system or need inspired by the precariousness of their position, the urgency and abandon with which she had submitted herself to him fell significantly further outside his limited experience than their lovemaking of the night before. She lay curled in his arms now, smooth and soft, sound asleep, her jet hair an exotic stain fanning the milky linen. To his surprise, he had no difficulty reconciling these more tender feelings with the urgent, animalistic coupling they had shared only minutes before. No single act in his life had ever seemed more genuine. As he fell asleep, he remembered thinking he had never been as grateful to his mother for anything more than her failure to warn him against actresses.
Doyle woke with a start, his dreams fleeing like burglars. The light in the room was low, a shade of burnt o
range, filtering at a sharp, perpendicular angle through the window. Someone’s been in here while we slept, his instincts informed him. He sat up. His clothes gone from the floor where he had hastily discarded them, nowhere to be seen. Laid out on the opposite bed were a set of gentleman’s evening wear and a woman’s black velvet dress. Eileen lay asleep beside him. A sharp pang in his gut told him he was gnawingly, ravenously hungry.
Doyle found his watch lying neatly on the pocket of the dinner jacket and snapped it open: four o’clock. The day was almost gone! He pulled on the trousers, a perfect fit, and slipped the braces over his shoulders as he padded to the window. The sun was fast approaching the western horizon. Activity in the courtyard continued, armed patrols on the walls still in force. Work had apparently ceased at the adjacent factory, the stacks quiescent. But a thin line of smoke issued from one of the smaller buildings farther out on the moors.
Feeling under the cushions of the sofa, Doyle determined the vials and syringes were in place where he’d stashed them, then he moved into the bath to attend to the body’s necessities. A pitcher of hot water, a shaving mug, and razor sat beside a ceramic basin before the mirror, along with a shaker of astringent bay rum.
Freshly abluted, five minutes later Doyle reentered the bedroom. Eileen slumped on the edge of the bed, a sheet draped around her, the heel of a hand pressed to her forehead.
“Did you kick me in the head or just beat me with a truncheon?”
“You’ll feel better once you’re up and moving. They’ve left clothes for us, formal wear: Apparently, we’re dressing for dinner.”
“Food.” The idea struck her as revelatory and seemed to ameliorate her discomfort. She looked up at him, to share the incredible thought. “Food.”
“Not without its appeal,” said Doyle, kissing her before moving to the other bed.
“I don’t think I’ve eaten in months.”
“Take your time. I’m going to have a look about,” said Doyle, as he quickly donned the rest of the clothes.
“I have vague memories of food,” said Eileen, as she traipsed to the bath, trailing the sheet, “but I can’t seem to recall ever having tasted any before.”