Pax Britannia: Human Nature (40 page)

With a feral wail of its own the red-cloaked figure moved in again with the gutting blades, and the jingling of Christmas bells accompanied the chorus of savage howls and agonised screams that suddenly filled the winter's night.

And all the time the snow fell.

III - THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY

"Not another one," Chief Inspector Thaw muttered grumpily.

"I'm afraid so, sir," his loyal sidekick Detective Sergeant Whately replied, holding the door for his superior to enter the archive ahead of him.

There, between the rows and rows of shelves lay the crumpled body of the Chief Librarian. From his posture and the rigour-set expression on his face, the Chief Inspector could have believed that Everett Willoughby was only sleeping, if it hadn't been for the blood-sodden mass of papers and irreplaceable archive documents on which he was lying.

The air of the archive was redolent with the smell of old books, mildew and the bitter-iron aroma of blood, and there was lots of it.

"Dear God," Thaw uttered in dismay.

"Ah, you're here at last, Chief Inspector," a young woman wearing blood-stained white coveralls said, rising from where she had been crouched beside the corpse.

"And good morning to you too, Doctor Lavish," Thaw replied, absentmindedly combing a hand through the swirls of white-grey hair on his head, in the presence of the attractive younger woman. "You're looking radiant as ever, if I might be permitted to say so?"

"Well compared to our friend the Chief Librarian here, I suppose I am," she smirked, looking down at the dead man's puffy, fish-white face. His eyes were sunken within blotchy purpling hollows.

"Is it our killer?" Thaw asked, returning to the matter in hand.

"That's for you to find out, isn't it Chief Inspector?" Doctor Lavish said, a twinkle in her eyes.

"Well, yes. Of course, but —"

"But if you mean, is it the same M.O., then yes. Knifed in the stomach with what looks like a fistful of kitchen knives. He was stabbed multiple times. Position and pattern of the wounds suggest that the victim was struck repeatedly with an instrument made up of several long blades."

"You're sure, doctor?"

"Either that, or our killer took the time to meticulously measure the space between each stab wound before administering the next."

The Chief Inspector expressed his irritation by breathing out loudly through his nose. "Point taken."

He turned to his Detective Sergeant. "First it was Higgins, wealthy banker, out for a walk with his dog along Brewer Street, two nights ago. And now this poor bugger."

"Yes, sir," Whately confirmed.

"Two men, two murders, two nights. But what was it that connected the victims? Why were they the targets that our killer chose?"

There was the creak and bang of a door opening and closing, accompanied by the
tap-tap-tap
of footsteps on the polished archive floor.

"And what have we here?" came a cheery voice from behind the Chief Inspector. Thaw turned and came face-to-face with a smartly-dressed man, in his mid-to-late thirties judging by the streaks of grey present at the temples of his thick head of hair. He was handsome, with a well-defined jaw-line, and tall, and the Chief Inspector could see that beneath his long coat and tweed suit he had the physique of an athlete. Behind him, at his shoulder, stood an older man, dressed in the traditional attire of a butler. He was tall like his master and broad across the shoulders, his grey hair swept back from a clearly-defined widow's peak

"Who the bloody hell are you?" Chief Inspector Thaw demanded.

The interloper fixed the policeman with sparkling brown eyes and grinned. "Ulysses Quicksilver, at your service," he said, holding out a black-gloved hand. "You might have heard of me."

"Might I?" the Chief Inspector returned. "Should I have heard of him, Whately?"

"Oh yes, sir," the Detective Sergeant blurted excitedly. "Mr Quicksilver saved her Majesty's life, sir, during the Wormwood Debacle. Don't you remember?"

The Chief Inspector muttered something as undoubtedly unflattering as it was unintelligible.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, sir," the Detective Sergeant said, with all the enthusiasm of an over-excited puppy, taking the proffered handshake where his superior had not.

"Thank you...?"

"Whately. Detective Sergeant Whately."

"Sergeant Whately. A pleasure!"

"Who let you in here anyway?" Thaw snapped.

"Does that matter? I'm here now, and I'm here to help."

"What brings you to Oxford, Mr Quicksilver?" Whately asked, patently awestruck finding himself in the presence of a genuine Hero of the Empire.

"Looking up an old friend," Quicksilver replied. "Or at least I will be when we're done here. Saw all the commotion in the street as we were driving over to Boriel."

"Well, you'll be pleased to hear that we are all done here," the Chief Inspector declared. "Isn't that right, doctor?"

"Yes, Chief Inspector. It's over to you now."

"So thank you for the offer of your help, but we won't need to keep you from renewing your old acquaintance after all."

"What happened to the poor fellow?" Quicksilver pressed, craning to peer past the Chief Inspector at the body lying between the stacks. "Stabbed was he?"

"Yes," Whately replied helpfully, "several times. Just like the other one."

"The other one?"

"Whately!" the irascible Thaw growled.

"Sorry, sir." The Detective Sergeant turned an embarrassed shade of beetroot.

"So, Mr Quicksilver, as we like to say in the Force, there really is nothing to see here. We have everything under control."

"Oh, I'm sure you do, Inspector."

"That's
Chief
Inspector."

"Oh, I
do
beg your pardon,
Chief
Inspector. We wouldn't want to be getting in your way now would we, Nimrod?"

"Indeed not, sir," the dandy's manservant replied in a tone that matched the severity of his expression of aloof disdain as he regarded the two policemen with a stony, sapphire gaze.

"But if you would like my help at all, I'll be in Oxford for the rest of the day, so don't hesitate to get in touch."

He pulled a leather wallet from a jacket pocket and from that extracted a printed calling card, passing it to the still-grinning Sergeant.

"Thank you for your time,
Chief
Inspector. Merry Christmas."

And with that he turned, and left the library.

"Nimrod, I do believe we have tarried here long enough," Ulysses Quicksilver announced as he and his manservant left the crime scene that the Bodleian Library had become. "I rather feel we've kept old Monty waiting far too long already."

"Very good, sir," Nimrod replied matter-of-factly. "Would you like to take the car, sir?"

The two of them ducked under the police line at the arched entrance to the Bodleian Square and turned left, making for where Nimrod had parked the Mark IV Silver Phantom at the entrance to Catte Street.

"Let's leave the car," Ulysses said, buttoning his coat against the cold. "A walk in this bracing air will help clear the remains of last night's excesses from my head, I hope."

"Very good, sir."

A young woman, wearing a woollen beret and full-length coat against the cold, emerged from the throng of curious onlookers collected outside the Bodleian and hurried to intercept them.

"Mr Quicksilver?" she called.

"Who wants to know?" was Ulysses' sharp rebuttal.

"Lucy Gudrun,
Oxford Echo
. What is that brings you to Oxford on Christmas Eve, when only last night you were seen gallivanting at Lord and Lady Rothschild's Christmas Ball?" The young woman suddenly seemed very confident as to Ulysses' identity.

"Personal business."

"And would that same personal business include the investigation of the Christmas Killings?"

Ulysses' carefully-composed grimace of passive indifference slipped and he turned to look at the girl directly. "Killings plural, you say?"

He was caught by her obvious attractiveness, which she seemed at pains to cover up. But even without the application of any obvious make-up, her cheeks still had an appealing rosy glow and her rosebud lips were none the less appealing.

"Everett Willoughby's death is the second in as many days that match the same M.O. within the city."

"How do you know...?" Ulysses broke off. He wasn't that naive. His comment had been a knee jerk reaction. He knew how the press worked. They always 'had their sources'.

"I have my sources," the young woman said with a mixture of smugness and pride.

"I knew you were going to say that," Ulysses said raising a wry eyebrow. She was young and eager, barely into her twenties, if he was any judge, and he was. "Look, Miss Gudrun, I have tarried too long already and have places I need to be, as I'm sure do you. Now if you'll excuse me."

"Just one comment for the
Oxford Echo
?" the plucky reporter pressed, tireless in her efforts.

Ulysses stopped. "Alright, here's a comment for you.
No comment!
" With that he turned on his heel and strode on his way.

"Can I have a comment from you, sir?" the young woman asked, thrusting the hand-held recorder under Nimrod's nose before he even had a chance to follow his master. The young woman almost wilted under his withering sapphire stare.

"Good day, Miss Gudrun," he intoned sonorously, but the look in his eyes said so much more, and none of it pleasant.

She watched them leave.

Lucy Gudrun knew a good story when she stumbled on one, like a chalk-outlined body on the floor of the Bodleian library, but she also knew when she was pushing her luck and when to admit defeat. Besides, she might have lost this particular battle, but she hadn't lost the war. Not yet.

She turned back to the Great Gate that led from Catte Street into the School's quadrangle and from there into the Bodleian itself. She was just in time to see the curmudgeonly Chief Inspector Thaw and his sidekick Sergeant Whately emerge from beneath the stone gateway and cross the police line.

Ensuring that her hand-held recorder was still running, she trotted towards the pair of policemen. "Chief Inspector!" she shouted. "A word for the
Oxford Echo
?"

IV - THE DAMOCLES CLUB

He knew that something was wrong before the porter even opened the door to the old man's rooms. It was the smell. The iron-rich tang of blood at the back of his throat again, the rancid ammonia smell of voided bowels, the unpleasant and wholly unmistakeable smell of death.

"Bloody 'ell!" the porter swore, his hand slipping from the doorknob as he stood there dumbfounded, the door swinging open to reveal the scene of devastation and death beyond.

"Monty!" Ulysses Quicksilver gasped, pushing past the porter - his bowler hat held tight in his shaking hands now - and into the room.

It had obviously been a mess to begin with. A proliferation of books and manuscripts, along with empty tea cups, half-eaten plates of food, and the skull of an Australopithecus, were scattered over desks and bookcases. The half-expected scholarly clutter of an absent-minded professor even littered the tops of glass-fronted cabinets containing stuffed animals and Neolithic tools, cracked leather chairs, and the Persian rugs on the floor as well. The attack on Professor Montgomery Summerson, had obviously left the study in an even greater state of chaos and confusion.

Ulysses stood there, amidst the disorder and disarray, staring down at the cold carcass of his old tutor. Honeyed sunlight pierced the leadlights of the room's windows, revealing the full horror of the scene in intense, sun-washed colours, predominantly red.

Summerson had called him at home only the evening before, but Ulysses had been out on the town, enjoying the company of tipsy and compliant young socialites at the Rothschild's Christmas Ball, held at his Lordship' Gunnersbury Park estate, west of the capital. Ulysses had missed the call then and hadn't even been aware of it until Nimrod woke him that morning, having checked the calls logged to the house the night before.

"I should have come sooner," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper of regret.

"You were out, sir," Nimrod replied. "You weren't to know that Professor Summerson would call. After all, you have not heard from him in some time."

"I know, but if hadn't been out gallivanting about the place, like the self-indulgent idiot I was in my youth, I wouldn't have missed his call."

"You've had a lot on your mind, sir."

Ulysses swore under his breath. "He was onto something, Nimrod," he said, nudging a pile of papers at his foot. "He wanted my help and because I wasn't there for him he's dead."

Ulysses looked at the body again. It was a mess. He didn't need to be a coroner to pronounce the cause of death. He had been knifed like Willoughby the librarian. His face had been carved up by four slashing knife strokes, while his shirt had been turned wholly red by his own blood.