The Cogspeare Conspiracy (The Cogspeare Chronicles Book 1) (9 page)

“Then why keep all of this useless information?” he asked, sharply jerking Glyndwr out of his reverie.

“Information is power, Mr. Cogspeare, and our editor-in-chief, Mr. Thaddeus Frisket, lives and breathes it.”

After a quiet moment, Magnus asked,

“Mr. Glyn…um, Glwn…well-”

“Just call me Twym,” he offered. Struggling since that name wasn’t much better, Magnus continued,

“Do you think I could borrow these for a few days, just to read up on the subject?” Twym frowned.

“I don’t know, Mr. Cogspeare. You see, this is the last of the information we have on the SWSMC and I wouldn’t like the office to be without anything. But tell you what I’ll do; I’ll go over to Talliburn’s and see what he’s been up to with the rest of the files. Hopefully he’s done with a couple of them at the very least. Blazes, he’s probably on a bender and forgot about life outside the bottom of a bottle.” The suddenly friendly Welshman made to jovially slap Magnus’s shoulder, but the barrister quickly sidestepped him and nervously straightened his impeccable cravat, then fiddled with his hair.

“That would be most kind, Mr...um, Twym. Yes, if you’ll just send a messenger or a pulse to my offices, I’ll send my assistant to pick up whatever you find. Yes, most kind- thank you.” And with that, he quickly replaced his hat and strode out of the dank room in a whirl of fine leather.

As Twym Glyndwr re-rolled and replaced the cylindrical file, he shook his head, muttering,

“I knew that that one was odd, but…blazes!”

Chapter 17:

It was a few seconds before Twym was going to pat his shoulder that Magnus felt an episode coming on. That’s why he knew he had to get out of that room, fast, and find somewhere small, quiet, calm, and preferably dark. Somewhere where he could lose himself, and then collect himself quickly.

He frantically raced down the subterranean corridor, looking right and left, pulling at doors, all locked. Finally he found one that was unlocked, but when he poked his head in, it was filled with a row of headless automatons fixing broken printing parts.

He choked down a scream and backed out and almost hysterically went down a side corridor until he found another unlocked door and, regardless of the dim interior, plunged in.

The door swung shut behind him, and he was in totally darkness.

It was always a source of confusion to most people- or rather, all of the nine people who knew of his ‘affliction’- that he would find the darkness comforting instead of terrifying. But here in the dark, it was still. He didn’t have to see or be seen. He could focus on his wildly thumping heart, and could gasp and sob and cry if needed, unheeded.

He sank down onto his haunches and rocked himself slowly.

Almost a year ago, a little after Jim Addison had come to work for him and after a day in court that most would consider merely mediocre but which he had thought devastating, Magnus had curled up like this under his desk. Addison had come in to have him sign some files, and had found him thus. Magnus didn’t think that he could ever come out from underneath that desk after that.

But instead, Addison had merely thumped the files on the desk, declared he was going out for lunch at four o’clock in the afternoon, and Magnus could crawl out at his leisure. Since that day, there had been, if not a friendliness exactly, then a cordiality that was lacking in all his other relationships, save perhaps with Sebastian.

It was certainly lacking in every encounter, let alone relationship, that he had with women, he mused as his thoughts began to clear again. Take, just for example, that McFlynt woman, who would push and push and push. How could any man possibly like a woman like that?

Granted, she was intelligent, which was a point in her favour. But she was utterly insufferable, and grated on his nerves.

Magnus shook his head, and took out a handkerchief from his breast pocket, moping his wet face. He finally pushed himself off the ground and timidly opened the door, first poking his head out to see if anyone was about.

The hall way was clear, and he fully emerged…to find that his pristine suit, leather cloak and hat and hands were all covered with a black, sticky, oily residue. He opened the door he had just closed, and realized that he had been hid- um, meditating in the ink room, dark so as to preserve the blackness of the ink. He could only imagine how bad his face looked.

Pulling his hat low over his now truly dishevelled hair, he realized that returning to the office in his state was not an option. At this point, other men might go to the pub, but all the people would upset him further, and he didn’t belong to a club, and his apartment was ruined. He had no choice but to return to the Cogspeare mansion.

Chapter 18:

The door to the research room had barely shut behind Magnus, when Twym Glyndwr jumped up and raced back into the shelving, heading for the ‘C’ section. Sectioned between the pigeon holes entitled ‘Cog-reliant Felspuring wheel’ and ‘
Cohabitus gentilitus
’ was one labelled ‘Cogspeare’. He grabbed the surprisingly heavy tube and brought it back to his desk.

The papers revealed little that Glyndwr, and the whole of London for that matter, didn’t already know. The Cosgpeares were an eccentric bunch, not least because all evidence pointed to Cornelius being utterly devoted to his wife, and vice versa. They had six boys, all of whom were as brilliant as the last. The four middle boys were all currently at Oxford, and the youngest was at St. George’s College, a prestigious day school in Kensington. There may have been questions as to why the boys were never sent away to school, but that was quickly answered by a piece of correspondence, intercepted by a past reporter via nefarious means, stating that boys with such a propensity for trouble could never be allowed to stay overnight, let alone a full term, at a boarding school.

By all accounts, an eccentric but essentially harmless family. What was less clear were their origins. For instance, all that was known about Edwina Cogspeare was that her father had been a landowning Englishman in Ireland and had disappeared almost thirty years ago. Her mother had died shortly before, and the last known whereabouts of her brother were in the East Indies, where it was said he had a failing sugar plantation.

Glyndwr continued to browse through the papers and found even less on Cornelius. All that was known about him was that he had attended Steele College at Oxford University. However, sometime during his final year he had suddenly left without explanation. The next that was heard of him, he turned up in London a year later with a wife and a chemical discovery that would change the world. That had been 1846.

Sighing with his rather fruitless effort, Glyndwr pinched the bridge of his nose and idly wondered if Alis, his fiancé, was right that he needed spectacles.

Thinking of Alis, he realized that if he wanted to get to the jewellers and visit Talliburn, he would have to leave a bit early. He glanced around his dim, dusty and frankly, boring, domain- then jumped up, grabbed his short leather jacket and quickly locked the door behind him. He didn’t think he would be missed. He was right.

Out in the cesspool of the streets, the sun made a valiant but failed attempt to shine through the misty red cloud cover. Hawkers and traffic battled each other to be heard, creating a general din that never quieted, but merely moved around to different parts of the city according to the time of day. Glyndwr sidestepped an eel stew cart and stepped in something noxious. He smiled. He was in heaven, or at least as far away from Wales, as he could get.

The jeweller’s was his first stop, though he didn’t go in the posh front door. Instead, he headed to the back, where the workshop was housed in a makeshift lean-to. There, among the whir of the engraving drills and the puff of the spesium-coal burners, he met a massive, beefy man, who surprisingly had the gentlest touch in London. At least when it came to precious metals, and his mother.

Silently, Myrrh Jones handed over a black box. Glyndwr opened it, and saw a small silver ring imbedded with an oval onyx carved with his and Alis’s initials. It wasn’t all that he had hoped for her, but he also knew that she would like it. Her three younger sisters had certainly given him enough ‘suggestions’. He could hardly wait to see it on her finger!

Snapping the box shut, he nodded at Jones. The jeweller merely grunted in reply, obviously in a good mood. Smiling, Twym left, tucking his precious box into his inner jacket pocket, and reflecting at the good deal he got for it, in exchange for slipping a small advertisement for Jones into the back page of the
Pulse.
After working three years at the newspaper, Glyndwr well knew the value of a favour. Now he was off to do one for the eldest son of one of the most famous families in the city. He couldn’t help but grin.

Talliburn lived on the second floor of a lodging house in Cheapside. Glyndwr decided that it was easier to walk there than to bother with a bus, especially since they had a tendency of late to overheat. Instead, he walked eastwards, towards St. Paul’s Cathedral, and then turned north, into the awning-filled streets of the neighbourhood.

It had been a few years since Glyndwr had last visited Talliburn’s home. If he remembered correctly, which he really couldn’t be sure of, they had stumbled back to Talliburn’s rooms after a drunken night and slept well into the day. Ah, those days before he had responsibilities to Alis and her siblings. Those sad, lonely, drunken days. The day after their night out had been the only time when Twym was glad of working in the quiet and dim research rooms, while his drinking companion had been subjected to the auditory atrocities of the reporter’s pen upstairs.

Glyndwr grimaced at the memory, just as he finally found the building.

No one stopped him as he made his way into the building and up the stairway. Though George Talliburn was a reporter and may have wielded considerable power with his pen, that didn’t often translate well into common tender. He lived in a simple, single room that included a single bed, a couple of mismatched chairs, a rickety table and a closet.

“Hey, Talliburn!” he knocked on the door of number 22, “You’ve been playing long enough out of the office. Come and do some real work!” More knocking, this time slightly louder, in case he was in a deep sleep. “I just met Magnus Cogspeare, and he wants-”

Glyndwr had pounded a bit harder and the poorly made door just sagged in, giving way half-heartedly. He swallowed, suddenly on edge.

He had a thought of just turning around and going home to Alis, but then remembered that Talliburn was his friend. He pushed in and went through the doorway, looking for him.

He didn’t have far to look.

George Talliburn, still in his soiled, working clothes, was sprawled out on his bed, his dazed, dead eyes staring towards his closet in defeat.

Glyndwr squeezed his eyes shut, but his nose reinforced what his brain already knew: Talliburn was dead.

He was filled with sadness for a lost friend and talented colleague, but as he opened his eyes, they were drawn to the odd way Talliburn lay on his back.

Checking over his shoulder for no reason in particular, Twym went over and gingerly rolled the body onto its side. There, a large, thick blade protruded nastily, a knife such as the thugs in the worst part of London used. The body had flopped on top of the large pool of blood coagulated on the threadbare blanket.

Glyndwr quickly backed away from the body, but just as he was about to leave and run back to the office, he had a feeling that he was missing something. Or rather, that some
things
were missing. He took a breath, scrubbed his face with his hand, and absently followed his friend’s last look towards the closet.

The cheap wooden doors had been flung open, and his spare shirts, pants and undergarments had been thrown to the bare floor. Otherwise, the room was clear.

Clear, even, of the dozens of notebooks Twym knew he had kept throughout his decade-long career. The notebooks had been filled with observations from interviews, notes from events, ideas for stories. He had never left them in the office for fear of his ideas being poached by the other reporters, a not unrealistic concern.

He looked about the sparse room, furnished with only a brass tap for water hovering over a cracked basin, and one flickering luminescence tube. On the table, which had served as his dining table and desk, there was still his blotter. It was a bit of a shock seeing the entire piece of fake leather, since it was usually covered in papers. The cleanliness was eerie.

He picked it up, perhaps looking for some paper or mess underneath that would tell him the scene in the room wasn’t real. If there was a bit of clutter, there might be a bit of life.

A small piece of yellowed paper slid out of a side pocket. Twym grabbed it. It was a stub from a third class STEAMer train to the South West, dated two days ago. It indicated that he got off at the Port Prudence stop, that small hamlet where the mining accident of the decade had taken place. 

Suddenly, Twym was very concerned about what his friend had been into. As Alis would say, he felt his ancestors airing out their family tomb for a new arrival.