Cold Stone and Ivy (30 page)

He could barely hear her. The spinning was calling, locking, binding.

“Sebastien, your eyes are changing colour . . .”

“Voces,”
he whispered, engrossed.
“Voces angelorum . . .
the voice of angels . . .”

In the sitting room, the air began to thicken like mist or fog and the casings of the doors and windows had grown inexplicably white.

He turned now toward the middle of the room, where the air was so frosty that it seemed to be taking shape. He followed it, moving stiffly and leaving her standing in the foyer. For its part, the locket merely continued to whir and hum.

“Here?” He glanced around as ice began to crawl up the walls, creating a plume with every breath.
“Hic? Ostendite mihi . . .”

He looked around at the writing desks and bookshelves and settees. He began to open drawers and dressers, ran his hands along the surfaces of the desks. He felt Ivy watching him.

“Why are you speaking in Latin, sir? And what in the name of heaven is going on with this locket?”

It was still spinning at the end of its chain, now hovering parallel to the floor. Her eyes were wide and they darted from him to the locket and then back again.

“What sort of detective are you?”

“Servio ab arbitrio maiestatis eius.”

“English?”

He blinked, trying to reenter the conversation.

“I slouží u potěšení z jejího majestátu.”

“What?”

Damn.
He shook his head.
The locket was throwing him off.

“I serve at the pleasure of Her Majesty.”

“Her Majesty?” She stepped into the room. “You mean Queen Victoria?”

“The very one. Listen, we both have far too many questions. Right now, we need to find that henbane and get this done.”

“But I don’t understand!”

The frost had not moved, and he began lifting cushions from the settees, running his fingers between the seats. “I will explain what I can later. Please, either help me find the accursed stash or go back to the corner where you left your horse. One or the other.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her chin rise, just a little.

“Very well. What sort of henbane?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, what form? Liquid, powder, leaf, roll? It would help to know.”

He frowned. It was a good question. “I don’t have an inkling, Miss Savage.”

“Well then, I—I would think the kitchens, unless . . .”

She put her hands on her hips and in the locket’s glowing light, he noticed that the breeches fit her rather well. In fact, he thought he had never seen a woman look so very good.

He swallowed.

“Unless . . .” She bit her lip, thinking.

“Unless? Unless what?”
Damn her
. She and her accursed locket were a distraction.

“Wait!” she exclaimed and stomped into the room toward him, taking great pains to make as much noise with her boots as she could.

“Hush,” he hissed. “You’ll wake the dead.”

“I thought that was your job. Ah
ha!”
And she beamed at him. “Did you hear that?”

“In fact I did. Do it again.”

She stomped back. Over one area of the floor, the thump of her boots produced a rather hollow sound. She turned and smiled again, and the locket flashed light across her face.

“Well done, Miss Savage!”

“Sometimes I forget that I am the daughter of a Metropolitan Police crimes investigator!”

He began to shoulder the settees out of the way. The carpet next, and he grabbed one end and rolled. It was stiff and bristly under his fingers, and he wrinkled his nose at the cheapness of the fibre. “Turkish” carpets made in Birmingham, most likely. Or Italy.

She hovered over him as he dropped to hands and knees. He could feel the locket purring now as though it were a part of him—his heart, maybe, or his soul, and he wondered how Christien could have come into possession of such a thing. He ran his fingers along the floorboards. Old wood, worn smooth by time. He could feel the knots, the nails, and finally, one loose board. He pried it up and the cold hit him like a fist.

“Oh,” she yelped. “Snowflakes! Sebastien, this locket is making snowflakes!”

Sure enough, it was snowing in the sitting room of Easterton Frederick Crumb.

He flattened now onto his belly, reached his arm down into the crevasse between the boards. His fingers brushed tins and boxes, letters and papers. He worried that this might be a simple hiding place for family treasures, but he was committed now so he pulled up a frosty tin and passed it over to Ivy.

“Oh my,” she gasped. She tossed it from hand to hand, the locket flashing light like a beacon. “What on earth is going on?”

“On earth as it is in heaven,” he said. “Open it, please. Open it.”

She did, smelled the contents. “Mm hm. Henbane.”

He waited.

He looked about the room, waited.

He sighed, frowned, shook his head. “
Non est completum . . .”

“English, please.”

“Ah, it’s not finished. We’re not done here . . .” It was like the holding of a breath and he lay back down on the floor, stretched his arm under the boards once again. He closed his eyes.

“Adiuvate me,”
he whispered.
“Auxiliate me cum hoc . . .”

One of the boxes crackled under his fingertips, so he pulled it up to sit cross-legged on the floor. He could feel her lean over his shoulder, felt both the cold of the locket and the warmth of her breath on his neck. It was an unusual experience for him and a distracting one.

“What’s in there?” she breathed.

“Proof . . .”

He blew his own warm breath across the latch, saw it thaw and crack as he lifted the lid. A pearl necklace and a cameo brooch. His breath frosted in front of him as he released it.

“Sebastien, what does that mean?”

“Guilty.”

Suddenly, there was the rattle of a key in the lock, and the loud creak of a front door opening as Easterton Frederick Crumb and his wife returned home for the night.

Of Murder, Mayhem, and a Revisiting of the
Four-Wheel/Six-Wheel Controversy

IVY’S HEART LEAPT
into her throat.

The front door of 1011-A West Pinchon Street swung open, and she could hear two sets of boots stomp into the hall. She dared not budge while Sebastien remained crosslegged on the floor beneath her. She felt his shoulder move, an arm draw back, but the movement was so smooth, so quiet, that she wondered if in fact, she imagined it.

“Oy, Celia, what’s this, then? You stupid haybag! D’you leave a window ’jar?”

“’Ere, Eastie. I didn’t leave no window ’jar! What’s all this ice?”

And the large shape of Easterton Frederick Crumb reached to turn up the gas.

Ivy had never been so afraid in her life.

Gaslight hissed, and Crumb and his wife literally leapt back at the sight of two strange people in their disassembled sitting room. First, they leapt, then they slipped on the slicks of ice across the floor. And before she knew it, Sebastien was on his feet, tucking her behind him with a sweep of his arm.

Finally, she could see the man whose estate they had just jumped. He was in his late thirties, with dark hair and a pockmarked face, and it was clear Crumb was trying for a handlebar moustache but seemed to have purchased the incorrect wax. He was very swift in regaining his balance, however, and with one hand on the frame of the doorway, he brought a pistol to bear with the other.

“’Oo the bloody ’ell are you?” he growled, and cocked the hammer. His wife, a small, wiry creature, peered out from behind his back.

Around Ivy’s neck, the locket was spinning, and bit by bit, snowflakes were being replaced by sparks.

Sebastien had grown very still now, and the cold began to crackle in the sitting room.

“Easterton Frederick Crumb?”

“Answer me question, mate. Or I’ll pop ya between yer eyes. You first, then yer missus.”

“I have a message for you from Clarissa Agatha Polkey and Sarah Ann Polkey.”

His left hand moved slowly, dangling the pearls and cameo from his fingers.

Mrs. Crumb let out a wail. Mr. Crumb’s face crunched up in fury. “You got no right being in my ’ouse. You got no right goin’ through my gear.” He wagged his piece. “Drop ’em and get out now, or I’ll pop you, I swear!”

“Ivy,” said Sebastien in a very low voice. “Look away now.”

Unfortunately, she was unable to comply. The locket had begun spinning in the opposite direction.

The room had grown desperately cold, and Ivy watched Sebastien slowly throw a look over his shoulder. And just as slowly, he looked back at the man, holding the pistol.

“You are forgiven and the Crown has been served. May God have mercy on your soul.”

And in one swift motion, he swung his right arm up and pistol fire shattered the frost like ice on a lake. It had happened so quickly, and Ivy ducked instinctively, almost deafened by the blast, but she could have sworn there had been two shots not one. There was the sound of iron clattering to the floor and Celia Crumb began to scream.

Hands over her ears, Ivy looked up. There was a very large, elaborate pistol in de Lacey’s outstretched hand, smoke curling from it like a serpent. Standing in the eerie gaslight of the foyer, Crumb wavered a bit as he stood, a small dark hole in the centre of his forehead. He wavered some more and crumpled to the planks.

Ivy could not breathe. She could not move. She could not think.

“Murder!” cried Celia.

The gears rotated the chamber and the pistol angled several degrees towards her.

“Hush, woman. You may yet live to see the morning.”

Her cries faded to whimpers and she dropped to her knees.

“Sebastien, what are you doing?” Ivy whispered. It was as if she had no voice, as if it had frozen inside like her blood.

“I said, look away.” He was fixated on the woman. “What is your involvement in the murder of your mother and your sister?”

“I don’t know nothing about that! I don’t know nothing of what he does, my Eastie. He’s a hard man. He has wants. He has needs. I’m just his woman, and he does what he pleases! Don’t kill me, good sir! Please don’t kill me.”

He looked over his shoulder again.

He sees things no one else sees. He hears things no one else hears.

There was nothing over his shoulder. There was no one else in the room.

A splitting of the mind.

He looked back to Celia Crumb, his expression as dead as her late husband.

Whom he had just murdered.

The Mad Lord de Lacey.

And the locket was spinning merrily.

“Sebastien, stop.”

“Celia Bess Polkey Crumb?”

The woman wailed loudly, shrank back into the stairs.

“Sebastien,
no.”

“You are forgiven and the Crown is served. May God have mercy on your so—”

“No!” And Ivy leapt forward, grabbing the pistol as it fired, and Celia screamed once again. A sudden wind picked up, throwing ice around the room like daggers. There was a sound as well—the wail of a hundred voices—and Ivy clapped her hands over her ears once again. The wind was whipping her hair and clothing, buffeting them all as if in a storm, and arcs of electricity leapt from the locket to every metallic surface in the room. Celia saw her chance and bolted across the slick floor for the door.

“Damnation, Ivy!” Sebastien shouted over the gale. “You’ve left me with only one shot!”

Hair and coat whipping around him, he scrambled after her and out into the night with Ivy at his heels. Celia was already onto the street with her screams of “Murder” and waving at a set of approaching headlights. It was a steamcab, ferrying drunken passengers to their homes on affluent Pinchon Street.

“Don’t shoot her,” Ivy begged, her voice raised to be heard over the wailing of the winds. “Please, Sebastien. Please, don’t shoot her!”

He stared at her for a long moment, the locket flashing eerie lights across his face, before he raised the pistol and took aim across the street.

He pulled the trigger.

There was the roar of the pistol, the pop of a tire, and squeal of brakes as the cab began to fishtail over the cobbled road. Celia had time to shriek one last time before the cab struck her and the impact sent her tumbling onto the stone. Screams could be heard from within when, like a leaf on the wind, the steamcab flipped over onto its side and continued down the road before slowing spinning to a halt.

Four wheels, thought Ivy with a strange detached sort of thought. Much more tippy than six.

The gale within the house died as suddenly as it had come and Sebastien released a deep breath, lowered the pistol to his side. He stood as still as stone, face pale in the gaslight, watching it all from the steps.