Chapter Seven

'Inchbold!'

The voice was accusing. The door, which had opened to expose the dour mask of Phineas Greenleaf, now began to shut as the dull eyes flickered after the departing chariot. I stepped hastily forward and fumbled for the brass knob.

'Wait…'

'What is it?' he demanded in the same stern tone. 'What brings you here?'

This was not the reception I expected, even from Phineas. I thrust my club foot into the shrinking aperture. 'Urgent business,' I replied. 'Allow me inside, if you please. I come to pay my respects to your mistress.'

'In that case, Mr. Inchbold, you come too late,' he hissed through his gapped teeth. 'I regret to say that Lady Marchamont is not at home.'

'Oh? And is her ladyship at Wembish Park, then, may I ask?' I gave the knob an impatient twiddle. 'Shall I find her there, perhaps?'

'Wembish Park?'

His expression had turned innocent, even confused. Was it that he played his part so well, or did Alethea not make him privy to her secrets?

'Allow me inside,' I repeated as my thorn-stick insinuated its way against the stone jamb. 'Or shall I knock down the door?'

This was an idle threat for someone of my stature, but one I found myself obliged to make good when the door suddenly swung shut in my face. I applied a shoulder to the solid oak, bellowing curses, before trying a boot to no better effect. I would probably have broken my toe or collarbone had I not thought to try the brass doorknob. As the catch clicked I heard a muffled curse from within, then the door flew wide and again I found myself confronted by Phineas. This time he was even less cordial. He came at me with his teeth bared, threatening to cast me out of the door like the insolent cur I was. I advanced across the threshold and struck him on the haunch with my stick, then after several more physical discourtesies the two of us found ourselves grappling together on the tiled floor.

And so began my final visit to Pontifex Hall. What a scene it must have made, shameful and comic, two grotesques feebly wrestling in the deep chasm of the atrium, elbows and curses flying. I am by no means a brawler. I abhor violence and have always taken pains to avoid it. But put a coward to his mettle (as the saying goes) and he will fight like the devil. So as I engaged my geriatric opponent I found that the bites and punches-the whole brutal dockside repertoire-came all too readily. The toe of my club foot found its mark in the middle of his belly and my teeth in his thumb when he tried to throttle me. The ignominious proceedings concluded when I put him 'in chancery', choking him in a headlock and pummelling his nose with my fist. Not until I saw the bright spurt of blood did I allow him to slither away, moaning like a bull calf and dabbing at his horror-struck face with the back of his hand. Yes, yes, it was a shameful scene, but I regretted it not a whit. Or not, at least, until I heard a voice call my name from somewhere high above. I rolled over with a groan-Phineas had landed a few solid blows of his own-and peered upwards up to see Alethea leaning over a banister at the top of the staircase.

'Mr. Inchbold! Phineas! Stop this at once!' Her voice came echoing down the stairwell. 'Please-gentlemen!'

I staggered to my feet, panting and scuffling, flinging droplets of rain like an ill-mannered hound clambering from a duck pond. A gust of wind through the yawning doorway swung the glass chandelier, which belatedly announced my arrival with a series of dissonant chimes. My stockings made a squishing noise as I awkwardly shifted my stance, and so fogged were my spectacles that I could barely see through them. I was aware of having lost a certain advantage. Wiping at my beard, I felt a righteous fury at my predicament. I must have looked both a ruffian and a fool.

But Alethea seemed not at all surprised either by my appearance or my conduct, or even by the fact of my sudden arrival. Nor did she seem angry as she descended, merely puzzled or distracted, as if awaiting something further, the true climax that had yet to happen. For a second I wondered if she had somehow been expecting my arrival on her doorstep. Was even this wild gambit, my flight into Dorsetshire, part of her mysterious design?

'Please,' she said as her eyes returned to me, 'can we not be civil?'

I gaped at her, a spasm of laughter rising in my gut, bitter as wormwood. I could hardly believe my ears. Civil? All at once my anger, along with my well-rehearsed speeches, returned in a flash. I lunged a step forward and, waving the stick like a pike, demanded to know what she called 'civil'. All of the lies and games, were they civil? Or having my every step dogged? Or my shop ransacked? Or Nat Crump murdered? Was all of that, I demanded with furious hauteur, was all of that what she dared call civil?

I believe I continued for some time in this vein, venting spleen like a wronged lover, accusing Alethea of everything I could think of, my voice rising to a shriek as I punctuated each misdeed with another rap of my stick. How I bellowed and roared! My bravura delivery impressed me; I had not thought myself capable of mustering so fiery and commanding a tone. Through the corner of my eye I could glimpse Phineas crawling across the tiles, leaving asterisks of blood in his wake. Halfway down the stairs Alethea had frozen in mid-step, clutching the banister, her eyes wide with alarm.

Slowly my tirade petered out. Ira furor brevis est, as Horace writes. I was panting with exhaustion, fighting back sobs and tears. I had caught my reflection in an oval looking-glass propped against the wall: a tottering Cavalier, starved and tattered, his chops hollow and his eyes feverish. I had quite forgotten the transformation, the work of the ague in tandem with Foskett's concoctions. I looked like the frantic spectre of someone returned from the dead to wreak unholy vengeance-a likeness that was not, perhaps, so far from the truth.

Alethea allowed a moment to pass, as if gathering her thoughts. Then to my surprise she denied none of the charges-none except for the murder of Nat Crump. She even seemed disturbed by the news of the coachman's death. It was true, she said, that she engaged him to pick me up outside the Postman's Horn and drive me past the Golden Horn. But of his murder in Cambridge she knew nothing.

'You must believe me.' Her features worked themselves into an agitated smile of reassurance. 'No one was to be killed. Quite the contrary.'

'I don't believe you,' I murmured peevishly, as my fury lapsed into a sulk. 'I no longer believe a word you say. Not about Nat Crump or anything else.'

She was silent for a moment, twisting a strand of hair and thinking. 'He must have been murdered,' she said at last, more to herself than anyone else, 'by the same men who killed Lord Marchamont. By the men who followed you to Cambridge.'

'The agents of Henry Monboddo,' I snorted.

'No.' She was shaking her head. 'Nor were they the agents of Cardinal Mazarin. Those were also lies, I regret to say. You are right-so much of what I told you was a lie. But not everything. The men who killed Lord Marchamont are real enough. But they are agents of someone else.'

'Oh?' I was hoping to sound scornful. 'And who might that be?'

She had reached the bottom of the stairs by now, and I caught another whiff of Virginia tobacco. And of something else as well. At first I took the pungent scent wafting from her clothes for bonemeal and thought she had been tending the knot garden. But a second later I knew it for what it was: chemicals. Not the garden, then, but the laboratory.

'Mr. Inchbold,' she said at last, as though delivering a prepared speech, 'you have learned much. I am most impressed. You have done your job well, as I knew you would. Almost too well. But there is much left to learn.' As she extended a hand, I blinked in alarm at the fingertips, which looked strangely discoloured. 'Please-won't you come upstairs?'