To Hold the Bridge

  ‘If he had to wait in a line then he would be a queue Cumber,’ said Magnus.

  ‘What?’ asked McIntyre, who had opened the file again and allowed his thoughts to wander. ‘What?’

  ‘Hush,’ said Susan Shrike. ‘Why don’t we let the Inspector tell us about the matter in question.’

  ‘Queue,’ muttered Sir Magnus. ‘If he grew his hair long at the back, he could—’

  ‘Magnus,’ said Susan Shrike, quite softly.

  Magnus nodded.

  ‘Yes, yes, awfully sorry. Please do explicate the matter, Inspector.’

  McIntyre picked up the top paper from the file, gripping it as if he might hurl it to the ground and throw himself upon it in a wrestling check.

  ‘These are the salient points,’ he said. Clearing his throat, he began to read.

  ‘On the morning of the ninth instant, that is to say, yesterday, at twenty-one minutes past five o’clock in the morning, P.C. Whitstable was proceeding upon his usual beat and had reached the corner of Clarges Street and Piccadilly, when he heard a shout on the other side of the road, at the point where a path exits from The Green Park. Dawn was approaching, the gas lamps were still lit, and there was no fog. He clearly saw a man in a long coat and unusual wide-brimmed hat run out of the park and start to cross the road. But on seeing P.C. Whitstable approaching, this man turned to the left and increased his speed. P.C. Whitstable, blowing his whistle, set off in pursuit, and was joined by Park Keeper Moulincourt—’

  ‘Moulincourt?’ asked Sir Magnus. ‘I knew a fellow called Moulincourt. He wasn’t a park keeper though—’

  McIntyre shook his paper and resumed reading.

  ‘—Moulincourt, who had in fact raised the alarm by shouting. Though Moulincourt, who had already pursued the coat-wearing man for some distance, fell back, P.C. Whitstable, a keen footballer, soon caught the fellow. However—’

  ‘There’s always a however,’ said Sir Magnus. ‘Had to be. I was expecting it to come in before this. However.’

  ‘However!’ blasted McIntyre, shaking his paper in barely suppressed fury. ‘When Whitstable gripped the fellow’s arm, the coat and hat came off, and there was no one inside, only a great shower of daffodils that fell onto the road.’

  Sir Magnus tilted his head until it was completely sideways, and peered at McIntyre.

  ‘Daffodils,’ he repeated. ‘Stolen from the park?’

  ‘Yes,’ said McIntyre, through gritted teeth. ‘Stolen from the park, and a park keeper murdered in the process.’

  ‘Not Moulincourt, obviously,’ added Sir Magnus, whose head was slowly righting itself again. ‘Were they the first daffodils of the spring?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ protested McIntyre. ‘No one’s ever tried to steal flowers from the park before. There are daffodils all over the place. Why bother with those ones? And anyway, how did the bloke escape—’

  ‘First flowers of spring from a royal park, cut with a silver blade between dawn and moonset,’ said Sir Magnus. ‘Your park keeper had his throat cut?’

  ‘Yes, how on earth …’

  A look of suspicion crossed the Inspector’s face. Perhaps Sherlock Holmes was not playing a game with him, but sending him a suspect.

  ‘Where were you yesterday morning between five and six o’clock?’

  ‘Locked up,’ replied Sir Magnus. He looked across at Susan Shrike and gave her a cheery smile.

  ‘Yes, that’s true, Inspector,’ said Susan. ‘Sir Magnus is locked inside his rooms at the hospital from dusk to dawn. It is part of his treatment.’

  ‘Then how did you know about the throat cutting?’ asked McIntyre. ‘None of this has been in the papers. Did Sherlock tell you? He has his ways of finding out.’

  ‘No, Sherlock didn’t tell me,’ complained Sir Magnus. ‘Why does everyone always think Sherlock does my thinking for me? No, I deduced it, from my knowledge of folklore and ritual.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ demanded the Inspector.

  ‘It’s quite simple, really,’ drawled Sir Magnus. He slid his chair away and leaned backward for a moment, precipitating a mad grab at the edge of the desk as he almost tipped over. ‘There is a … belief … among certain quarters, that flowers from a royal park, if cut with a silver knife at a particular time, will enormously enhance their natural poison. Lycorine, as Sherlock would tell you. Nasty stuff in general, but a moondawn daffodil’s poison is far, far more dangerous.’

  ‘That can’t be true,’ protested McIntyre. ‘How could it make any difference?’

  Sir Magnus shrugged.

  ‘Whether it does or not, clearly someone believes they need moondawn daffodils to make a terrible poison. I wonder what they intend to use it for?’

  ‘And what about the empty coat?’ asked McIntyre. ‘The running man who was … was just daffodils?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said Magnus. ‘The Adept would have cut the keeper’s throat, and when the blood spilled on the earth he quickly fashioned a kind of simple golem from the resulting mud, using cut daffodils for the arms and legs, then threw his own coat and hat over it and sent it away to create a diversion.’

  ‘Magnus,’ warned Susan Shrike. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Or, far more likely,’ Magnus continued without pause, ‘in the relative darkness – he was between two gaslights, I expect, in a balletic movement as the constable took his arm, the murderer spun about, at the same time turning himself out of the coat and throwing the daffodils at the policeman’s face, blinding him for the few seconds required to drop to the ground and then crawl away along the shadow of the park railings.’

  ‘I prefer the second explanation,’ said McIntyre. He stared at Magnus for a few seconds, then stood up, casting an air of finality over the proceedings.

  ‘Thank you very much for your time and thought, Sir Magnus,’ he said, shaking hands over the desk. ‘You have given me something to think on, to be sure. A pleasure to meet you, likewise, Miss Shrike. Sergeant Cumber will show you out. Please pay my respects to Mr. Sherlock Holmes when next you see him.’

  ‘But the Adept … the murderer … you’ll need my help to find him and bring him to justice,’ protested Sir Magnus.

  ‘We’ll get our man,’ said McIntyre. ‘Thank you again, but this is pure police business now. Good day.’

  ‘Sherlock said that apart from Lestrade and … and Gudgeon or someone … you were—’

  ‘Sir Magnus! We really must be going,’ said Susan forcefully. ‘Thank you, Inspector.’

  Outside the Inspector’s office, Sir Magnus turned to Susan.

  ‘We didn’t even get our tea,’ he grumbled.

  ‘I expect there was a queue, after all,’ said Susan. She took Magnus by the arm and led him out into the corridor, hustling him along past the startled Sergeant Cumber and his silver tea tray.

  ‘You know we can’t let you out if you will insist on telling people the truth,’ she admonished him as they climbed into their hackney cab, which was not, despite its very ordinary appearance, one for hire by the general public.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ said Sir Magnus. ‘Krongeitz really knew what he was doing with a curse.’

  ‘It is fading, though,’ remarked Susan. ‘You’ll be right as rain in a few months.’

  ‘If the other fades as well,’ said Magnus.

  ‘My, you are cheerful today. Magister Dadd says it will go in time, with the treatment, and he should know.’

  ‘He also said it will get worse before it gets better,’ said Sir Magnus. He leaned over and took Susan’s hand. ‘Promise me that you’ll act at once if it seems to be … spreading into the daylight hours, of its own accord.’

  Susan gently withdrew her hand and rested it on her Gladstone bag.

  ‘You know I will do whatever is necessary, Magnus,’ she said. ‘But I am sure it won’t be necessary. Now tell me, do you have any thoughts about who might be behind this moondawn daffodil business?’

  ‘An Adept who can make a golem from blood,
mud, and flowers on the fly? And who wants moondawn daffodils to reap their poison? I’m not sure we should try to find whoever it is.’

  ‘Magnus. We can’t leave it to the police. Tell me about this moondawn poison business. Does it really make the flowers that much more dangerous?’

  Magnus chuckled grimly.

  ‘I didn’t even tell the Inspector the best part. If you transform the poison properly, you don’t even have to deliver it physically to the target. You can use the poison on something sympathetically attuned to a similar object the victim will use. A comb is quite popular, because it merely needs to touch.’

  ‘I see,’ mused Susan. ‘And is this process of transformation difficult to manage? Does it require any particular apparatus?’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ said Magnus. ‘And I see what you’re thinking. Interestingly, and I never realized it before, it also ties in with the popularity of a comb being the typical sympathetic object of moondawn daffodil poisoning.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the ritual partly involves the daffodils being cut up with a silver blade and placed in a retort with a scented oil. A silver razor, or scissors, would work a treat—’

  ‘And Macassar oil for the retort,’ added Susan. ‘What else?’

  ‘It needs to take place underground, with the usual harmonization requirement,’ mused Magnus. ‘Old Mithraeum, something like that. An Anglo-Saxon crypt would work, maybe a Norman one at a pinch.’

  ‘How long does the ritual take? How much time do we have?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure, never having undertaken the dastardly deed myself. But I seem to recall the daffs have to fester for several days in the oil, with lots of highly repetitive incantation …’

  ‘So we need to look for an underground barbershop on the site of an old temple or church.’

  ‘Yes … it will also be close to Green Park, as the daffodils have to be in oil before the sun is fully up. Even so, it could take a while to find somewhere that matches all that. Damned tedious as well.’

  ‘Unless you ask your cousin.’

  ‘Sherlock? He hates this kind of … oh … Mycroft. I suppose I could think about that.’

  ‘It might even be in his bailiwick, as it were,’ said Susan. ‘After all, who would our Adept be wanting to poison in this way? Someone difficult to reach by other means.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Magnus. ‘The Queen is the obvious target. Or perhaps the Prime Minister. Mycroft might even be polite.’

  He tapped the ceiling twice, and the small hatch behind the driver’s seat slid back.

  ‘Carstairs! The Diogenes Club, thank you.’

  Following his visit, Sir Magnus returned to the hackney in a bad mood and handed Susan a note on which an address was written in Mycroft’s distinctive copperplate.

  ‘It really is the most boorish place,’ complained the Baronet. ‘All I said was “Good morning, Mycroft.” I whispered, but you would have thought I was Marie Lloyd in full flight from the way they carried on. Mycroft wouldn’t even talk to me, I had to write everything down for him.’

  ‘You know their rules,’ said Susan. ‘I believe you talk just to annoy him. Anyway, you got an address.’

  ‘Gregory Cornet’s in Curzon Street is the only barbershop that fits all the criteria,’ said Sir Magnus. ‘Its lower cellar was a temple to Bast, once upon a time.’

  ‘The Egyptian goddess?’

  ‘Yes, the fiscal procurator for several successive Roman governors was Egyptian and had a thing for the old cat … I get my hair cut at Cornet’s by old Radziwill. I do hope he’s not involved. A good barber is hard to find.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Susan, pointedly staring at the not very successful Van Dyke which was a fairly recent addition to Magnus’s upper lip and chin.

  ‘Yes. It makes the whole thing so much more difficult. Maybe we should hand this over to Dadd.’

  ‘Because of your barber?’

  ‘No. Yes. I don’t know. I suppose I’ve lost confidence after the whole Krongeitz business.’

  ‘I think we should go to Cornet’s and you should get your beard shaved off,’ said Susan. ‘I will wait and observe, making caustic comments, in the role of your fiancée.’

  ‘I wish you would be my fiancée.’

  ‘You know we’re not going to talk about that until you’re completely recovered,’ said Susan. ‘As I was saying, this will allow us to get a feel for the place, and we may well sense any unusual vibrations that would confirm the location.’

  ‘So we walk into what is probably an enemy lair and I sit down and ask to have a razor put to my throat,’ said Magnus. ‘Besides, what do we do if it is the place?’

  ‘I doubt the barbershop, or your Radziwill, is actually involved,’ said Susan. ‘Think about it. They’ve been there too long, and it’s too public. I expect we’ll find they’ve a new odd-jobs man, who lurks in the cellar, or something like that.’

  ‘Maybe,’ replied Magnus. ‘But it could be they’re all in it, a secret society of barber-illuminati.’

  ‘Yes, it could,’ admitted Susan. ‘In which case, I will quickly give you the blue pill.’

  Magnus looked at her very seriously.

  ‘I think that’s why I don’t want to go. I really would prefer it didn’t come to that. Are you sure we shouldn’t hand this over to Dadd?’

  ‘No,’ replied Susan. ‘But here we are. Do we go in?’

  ‘You wish me to shave the beard?’ asked Radziwill. ‘It has barely had a chance to begin.’

  ‘Cut off in its youth,’ sighed Sir Magnus. He rolled his eyes to where Susan was sitting primly on a chair, apparently reading a copy of The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. ‘But it has to go.’

  ‘Interesting place you have here, Mr. Razorwell,’ said Susan, over the top of the magazine. ‘I’ve never seen anywhere like this.’

  ‘Ladies do not usually come inside,’ said Radziwill. He began to strop his razor, which both Magnus and Susan noted was silver-handled, and possibly the blade was silver too. ‘It is a gentleman’s establishment.’

  ‘Where does that charming little stair go?’ asked Susan. She pointed past the row of curtained booths to the end of the room, where a brass-railed stair curled down beside a wall of massive, ancient stones.

  ‘The cellar, ma’am, where we store our scents and oils,’ said Radziwill.

  ‘Oh, I should like to see that!’ exclaimed Susan. She got up and started to walk toward the stair. But she had hardly taken a step when the curtains of every booth on either side slid back, to reveal twelve other barbers, each holding a silver razor. Radziwill made the thirteenth, and there were no customers in sight.

  ‘Damn,’ exclaimed Magnus, delivering a savage kick to Radziwill’s groin at the same time as he leaped out of the chair. The barber grimaced and swung back with the razor, which Magnus countered by swirling around the sheet that had been over his shoulders a moment before.

  Susan sat back down and opened her bag with a click. Reaching quickly inside, she pulled out a large blue pill.

  ‘Magnus!’

  Magnus turned his head and opened his mouth. Susan threw the blue pill unerringly down his gullet and immediately reached into the bag to withdraw a necklace of shimmering blue stones, which she dropped over her head.

  ‘I really wish you weren’t involved in this, Radziwill,’ said Magnus, parrying another swipe. ‘You’re an excellent barber … Argh!’

  Radziwill looked at his razor in puzzlement. He had swung, but as far as he could tell had cut only the sheet, which Magnus had been employing as something between a baffle and main gauche.

  Magnus screamed again and raised his arm. Only it wasn’t an arm anymore, but a loathsome tentacle, lined with huge suckers that were ringed with glistening fangs.

  One of the barbers, presumably the Adept, apparently knew what Magnus was becoming. He shouted something and ran for the door, only to be shot in the back by Susan, who was standing on the chair with her back pressed to the
wall, the glowing necklace on her breast and a lady’s purse revolver in her hand, the barrel now smoking.

  Magnus’s screams quickly became no longer human, there were many tentacles, and within a minute at the most, there were no more living barber-illuminati. The thing that Magnus had become slid across the floor of the shop, squelching through blood and torn flesh toward the front door and the street.

  Susan put her revolver away, took a twisted paper packet from her bag, and stepped off the chair. The thing paid her no attention. One long tentacle began to caress the door, feeling for how it might be opened.

  Susan lifted off the necklace with her left hand. Instantly the monster swung about. Two tentacles shot toward her, sucker-rings protruding, all the teeth out. She calmly ducked aside and threw the contents of the paper across the tentacles, creating a cloud of blue dust that very slowly twisted and danced about on its slow way to the floor.

  It took a few minutes for Magnus to become human again. Susan spent the time preparing a slow match to the store of hair oil in the cellar, being careful not to disturb the daffodil brew that was bubbling on the Aga in one corner.

  When she came back up, Magnus had managed to get most of the blood and matter off himself, and was wearing a clean robe with a towel wrapped around his head. He had not managed to completely clean the vomit from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were wild.

  ‘He … the Adept … put a s-s-silence charm and interrupt-me-not on the d-d-door,’ he said, teeth chattering. ‘It will break when you pull it open. N-n-nice of them, don’t you think?’

  ‘Very handy,’ agreed Susan. She took him by the arm and pulled the door open, putting two fingers in her mouth to whistle for Carstairs. The cab was just down the street and it came smartly up, so that Susan and Magnus could jump inside and be away at least thirty seconds before smoke began to billow from the underparts of the barbershop.

  ‘What was I this time?’ asked Magnus as they sped away.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Susan. ‘Something with tentacles.’