Kiss in the Mist by Elizabeth Brady (21)

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They were in a crypt. The stone shelves she had felt to each side of the room were sarcophagi. There was nothing else, no adornment, except for the staircase.

A man stood upon the stairs, a flicker of flame between his fingers. It was not Darvel.

“And God saw the light, that it was good.” Yet the smile flickering across Mr. Abercrombie’s lips was decidedly sinister. The pistol in his hand, even more wicked. “And God divided the light from the darkness.” There was a snap, and they were cast again into the abyss.

Geoffrey made a movement behind her, but Amanda held him firmly in place.

Mr. Abercrombie laughed. There was another snick and light filled the air. “So beautiful, isn’t it? The flame. There is so much we take for granted, but light? Light has let man conquer the globe. We aren’t constricted by the sun when we’ve mastered its rays. Though we haven’t, you know. We’re still flicking rocks together to make sparks like troglodytes in a cave! I think we can do better, don’t you, Miss Pruett?”

What was he saying?

This wasn’t about phosphorus. Not directly.

It was about the flame.

“Not who you expected, eh? Of course not. Of course you’d discount me. Just another grasping mister. Oh, you had most of it right. But you believed what I wanted you to. It wasn’t Darvel’s idea, the old sop! It was mine. Just like all of the ideas they steal from me. No matter. I will be known for producing light for the masses!”

“Light? We have flint!” Geoffrey shouted.

“Flint. Young Master Pruett, do you know the cost of lives on a battlefield because the steel won’t spark?” He rattled the gun in his hand, knocking loose powder from the pan. Amanda flinched. “In two hundred years that’s the most we’ve progressed from lighting a rifle with a slow fuse? A sharp rock. In your home, precious flame is transferred from fireplace to spill to candle to chandelier rather than start it from scratch. Men carry acid in their pockets in order to light a cigar. Acid! It does little but sputter and burn a prized waistcoat. But this…” snap, snick, “…this is a flintlock without the uncertainty. It produces spark instantly! Reliably! A pocket match! History will name me the modern Prometheus!”

“It’s not your invention,” Amanda said. “It’s the work of Pierre Vincent Rudin. The student you killed.”

Mr. Abercrombie looked distressed, incredibly sad. From the knowledge that it was not his creation or that he’d taken a life to claim another’s work, Amanda didn’t know.

“I do feel sorry for that. He wasn’t always going to die, you see. The moment he accepted my invitation to speak before investors, he could have been a rich man. I already had Darvel in my pocket, you see. Even if he hadn’t gladly handed over his bone ash—which he did!—I’d have had the title to Garton’s burned timbers in one game of hazard. But Rudin refused my patronage. I’d offered to support all of his research indefinitely and lend my name to the project! Was my money and name not good enough? But he was just like all the rest of you.

“My theories have always been dismissed! My mind ignored, my person ridiculed. You’re just the same. Cooing over Sir Robert. Flirting with Baron Darvel. Throwing yourself at Viscount Denbigh, why? For the title? You never gave me a passing thought!”

With his lusty eyes and murderous soul? Amanda shuddered.

“I could have had a title. My cousin was always a sickly child. He was supposed to die. But he persisted. He clung to life just so that he could inherit what should have been mine. I still had a chance. But he shook every last grain of sand from his life’s hourglass until he produced a son. And then he finally had the grace to perish.

“I should have killed the boy.” Mr. Abercrombie sighed. “Everything would have been so much easier that way. I don’t even like Charles. Such a whiny five-year-old brat who shares my name and stole my title. But then I ran into Darvel, weeping into his cups about pottery sherds. A mass of powder and ash and debt. It struck me all at once. A brilliant plan, something befitting me, to prove my genius. A chance correspondence with L’École du Paris, a chance meeting with a drunken gambler, and a chance for me to get my due. They knighted Davy, you know, for his silly efforts. What would they bestow upon the man who brings them everlasting flame?”

Sir Davy had spent a lifetime of work on scientific pursuits. Calcium, magnesium, potassium, iodine, sodium—he’d discovered all these and more! What he hadn’t done was stab a brilliant mind to steal his work in some misguided delusion of grandeur and entitlement.

“No one dismisses your work because you lack a title. They dismiss it because your theories are misguided and wrong.”

Mr. Abercrombie laughed. “What an unimaginative mind you have. Like Rudin. He was brilliant. But unimaginative. It’s quite a shame, really.”

It was the second time he’d shown some remorse. Perhaps she could reason with him. Prey upon what little guilt his conscience may possess.

“If Rudin wasn’t supposed to die, why did you kill him?”

Mr. Abercrombie snap, snicked the device in his hand, eerie shadows flickering across his face as the light plunged and grew.

“The rain.” He sighed. “If it hadn’t rained, I wouldn’t have offered him a dry carriage ride home. I tried to convince him, but I may have come across too… persistent. He actually jumped out! So I followed him. I tried, I did. I even found his watch on the side of the trail, but he wouldn’t take it from me. He wouldn’t even take his watch from my hands. I shoved it in his pocket and that’s when my fingers felt this.” Snap, snick. “Oh, we fought over that. All he had to do was give me the prototype. Still, he refused. At that point, I knew, there was nothing else for it. He was already a dead man to me. So, I took my little dagger and gave him a coup de grâce. A quick stab, an honorable death, like the knights of old would grant a dying man on the battlefield. All for nothing, now. I have the device, but he hid the plans.”

Mr. Abercrombie’s eyes focused for the first time. He raised the pistol. “When I kill you, will it be for nothing, too?” His brow furrowed, seriously contemplating the issue. “Or should I start with the boy and give you incentive to bring Rudin’s plans to me?”

“No!” Amanda shouted. Geoffrey tried to move from behind her, but she held him tight. “You will not touch him!”

“Amanda don—”

“Excellent! Then we have a deal! We leave the boy here. You will lead me to Rudin’s notes and once I have them, my dear Miss Pruett, I will be out of your life forever!”

Amanda swallowed. She had a fairly good idea of what his definition of forever meant.

She swallowed. Her brain working furiously. “Alright. They’re in the library of Number Sixteen.”

Mr. Abercrombie smiled. “Of course, Miss Pruett. I know. That’s why we’re here. Ladies first,” he gestured up the staircase.

Amanda turned and hugged her brother. “Geoffrey, if you can get out, get out. Do not try and follow us, go and get help. I love you.” She kissed his head and turned, quickly.

“Very touching, Miss Pruett, but I am growing rather impatient to leave.”

She stumbled out of the doorway and into the mist-covered green of the Enthurst cemetery, just behind Number Sixteen.

The huge wooden door of the crypt was secured by a massive levered handle held into place via a counterweight. There was no way Geoffrey could open the door without breaking it. She must think of something.

No one would realize that they were gone until morning which, judging from the color of the sky, was not for hours yet. As soon as they got to the library, then what? She could show him the empty cubbyhole and pray that he wouldn’t kill her. She could climb the shelves and try to dump the giant atlas on his head.

Those were her options.

She did not like her options.

A mist had grown, seeping from the ground. It wrapped around her ankles as she walked.

The only thing she could do was distract him with conversation. She might find an opening for escape. Then she could get Geoffrey and run. And pray he wasn’t a good shot. “I had thought this might have been all about revenge. Something to do with Uncle. That you killed a man and left him in our house for some sort of retribution.”

Mr. Abercrombie laughed. “Of all the self-important—!” Rather ironic, coming from him. “There wasn’t anything special about you! Nor your family, ha! That you had connections to that gambling fool Darvel was irrelevant. Half the ton knows him and more than half the moneylenders. But the one damnable coincidence, my dear, is that the man had lived in your house. Of all the hovels in London, he’d lived at Number Sixteen! So where did he go to die? Number Sixteen, of all the luck!”

Amanda sniffed. Number Sixteen was not a hovel. A bit under-furnished and on the squeaky side, but it was far from a hovel. The garden was lovely.

She nearly tripped on an overgrown root from an ancient tree. She’d almost done the same thing earlier today. Now she knew exactly where they were.

“We should take the mews,” she said, pointing through the cemetery towards the two trees Geoffrey had seen from his window that night.

“Whatever gets us there all the faster. I’m certain it can’t be comfortable for your brother in that crypt all alone.”

Amanda shuddered. She had only one chance—she would trip him into the ditch where Pierre had fallen. That might give her enough time to sprint to the gate and, hopefully, call for Mrs. Bertram’s giant nephew and his equally giant pistol.

It was a horrible plan, but it was the only one she had.

She shivered as the temperature dropped and the mist swirled in. The air had become thick as soup in mere moments. If she didn’t pay attention she would be the one caught in Pierre’s ditch. The clouds broke and she caught a sliver of moon.

A wolf howled.

Amanda stopped, suddenly.

“Don’t try and tell me you’re more afraid of a dog’s muzzle than you are the one pointed at your back. Move!”

There was a low, thundering sound from further along the trail. It was muted and indistinct, but Amanda knew what to do. She could feel the earth beneath her feet begin to slant. With all the force she could muster, Amanda kicked backwards. She glanced off Mr. Abercrombie’s leg. He cursed, aimed the gun. Amanda tucked her body and rolled into Pierre’s ditch. She landed just in time to see a blur of snarling, snapping fur leap through the mist.

Abercrombie screamed. Remus snarled. The gun dropped, flint connected with frizzen, sparks lit the pan, and a shot hit the wall.

“Amanda!” It was Julian’s voice. “Amanda!”

“Here! I’m here!” she called. “I’m safe!”

She scrambled up from the ditch, as Julian’s form materialized from the mist. Swoops and swirls of cloud whipped around him as he ran. She had never seen a more welcome sight.

“Amanda!”

There was a sharp whine. The snarling behind her stopped. And suddenly her scalp was on fire. Her hands flew to her head. Abercrombie had grabbed her by the hair and was pulling her backwards, out of the ditch. He had a knife pressed to her throat.

“Back, Denbigh! Back, I say!” he pulled Amanda back, dragging his leg alongside him. He screamed at each step. Amanda could smell the tart tang of blood. Remus had cracked the man’s bone.

“Where will you go, Abercrombie? They don’t have titles in America. The French just got done killing off all theirs. There is no place for you. Let her go and the courts might show you mercy.”

“Ha!” His grip tugged harder, twisting her hair and head into an agony she couldn’t describe. The knot behind her ear pulsed. Her hands did nothing to ease the strain. “They won’t allow me to live, Denbigh! No such privilege for the likes of me!”

Finally, she could see Julian. He had a gun pointed at Abercrombie’s head. Mr. Lowe stood behind him with its twin.

“Let her go, Abercrombie. And I might let you live.”

The clarity in that growled command struck cold fear in Amanda’s heart.

Such blissful relief, her hair was released. He pushed her forward into Denbigh’s arms—well, one of them. His other still pointed a gun at Abercrombie’s black heart.

Somehow, despite his lame leg, Abercrombie scrambled up onto the dividing wall. He ignored the weapons aimed at him, hobbling along the edge before addressing her. “I’m a gambler, and a man of few scruples, my dear Miss Pruett. I gambled, I lost. But you know what they say, next round lucky.” He leaned sickeningly close to the edge of the wall. “You think I could make the jump? Shall we make a little wager?”

Then he was gone.

Amanda’s knees collapsed beneath her, but there was a steady pair of arms to lift her up. She stayed cradled against Julian’s chest until she felt steady again. Then she stayed a while longer. Officer Lowe ran to the edge and shook his head, slowly. He made his way to the end of the wall and climbed down to what remained of Mr. Charles Abercrombie.

“Remus,” she whispered into Julian’s chest. “How is Remus?”

As answer, a cold nose nuzzled her upper lower-limb. Amanda bent down to scratch at his favorite spot behind his ears. Julian inspected a streak of dried blood matting his right haunch.

“Superficial, it’s not deep. He should recover quickly. He stopped his attack over this scratch?”

“Oh what a brave wolf!” Amanda hugged his furry neck. “My hero!”

Julian sniffed.

“Well, I didn’t see you leap out of the mist and over a ditch to attack the madman with a gun.”

“Perhaps not, but when it became a knife fight, I brought a gun.”

Once she was certain Remus had milked his fill of sympathy, Amanda stood, casting her eyes over the cemetery. “Abercrombie locked Geoffrey in a crypt. There shouldn’t be too many of them here. I hope he didn’t hear the gunshot.”

“Wait… listen,” Julian said, tilting his head to the side.

“—nda! Amanda! Where are you?” The call fell flat in the thick mist, but there was no denying Geoffrey’s voice.

She ran through the bushes, undergrowth snagging at her skirts, until she held her brother in a tight embrace.

“It’s alright, I’m alright, it’s all over.”

“It’s over?”

Amanda nodded.

“I heard a shot.”

“It hit the wall.”

Geoffrey gasped. “Are you injured? There is blood on your gown!”

Amanda shook her head, and smiled, gently stroking his hair from his face. “I am perfectly well.” She blinked. “But, Geoffrey, how did you escape? I saw the crypt’s lever—it was impossible to move from the inside!”

Geoffrey stared at his toes. Then he looked Amanda straight in the eye. “I tried to open it. Nothing worked. Then I called for help. The door… the door just opened. I cannot explain it.”

 

The morning dawned with The Inquest.

Mr. Lowe, Shelby, Rory, Julian, Geoffrey, Amanda, and Mr. Turner all appeared to give evidence.

The event which for days had been a hovering menace proved to be straightforward and uneventful, largely due to intervention from Principal Officer John Lowe. Before the proceedings, he spoke directly with the coroner. Julian provided his corroborating account. They agreed it was in no one’s interest to muddy the waters with irrelevant details. After a brief review of the facts, the jury returned with a verdict: Willful Murder against Charles Abercrombie by stabbing with knife or stiletto in the Enthurst Cemetery.

Not one of the Pruett household was called to give evidence. She had Mr. Lowe and Julian to thank for that.

 

“There can’t be anything missing, I checked it myself,” Julian was lying flat on his stomach, sixpence in hand.

“I am telling you, Julian, if I followed this like a recipe for onion soup, we would have a nice, steaming bowl of mashed radishes in front of us.” Andrew Turner smacked the papers for emphasis. “The man was brilliant, but either there’s something missing, or he made the assumption that everyone was as brilliant as he. There are leaps of logic that I can’t make.”

The secret cubby sprang open, Julian’s arm stretched halfway inside. Besides a half-full bottle of gin tucked away in the corner, he came up empty.

He sat on the floor and pouted like a little boy. “Then Rudin’s match is lost.”

M. Rudin had made his prototype out of glass in order to show the internal mechanisms to Abercrombie’s investors. His notes detailed basic components, but not its operation. Besides a few springs, gears, and sherds of glass Officer Lowe had discovered, nothing remained of the device.

Amanda put a hand upon Julian’s shoulder. “M. Rudin never knew how long it would take, or even if his papers would be found. He preferred them lost than in Abercrombie’s hands. So, I don’t think he would mind us having to pound rocks together for a few more years until some other brilliant man comes along. Though I wouldn’t have called it a match,” she said, thinking about the snick and snap of light. “It had no splint, no wick. It made and maintained a light of its own. It was active. More like a verb… a Lighter.”

“Whatever it was, it’s gone.”

“As we should be,” Great-Aunt Celia clapped her hands as she swept into the library. “We’re late. By twenty-three minutes.” She gasped when she saw Julian sitting on the floor. “My word! What do you think you’re doing? Get up this instant!” (He did.) “Your trousers will be filthy! Look at this! Cat hair, dog hair, wolf hair, dust,” she stressed each word with a brush against the offending area. “Are those crumbs?!”

(Never-you-mind that he was a gentleman of high stature and unrelated to her.)

“Why did I agree to this diversion? Mr. Turner could be called upon at any time to view the man’s scribblings. Now that we’ve dragged him all the way out here merely to show him that there’s nothing left to see, he can go back to puttering with his powders and we’ll be on our way. Twenty¬-five minutes!” Great-Aunt Celia tapped her cane impatiently. It was a substitute blackthorn cane. Her man Jenson had not satisfactorily finished doing whatever thing he did to Great-Aunt Celia’s swordstick. All she said was: “It rattles.”

Andrew Turner gave her a handsome bow. She hadn’t batted an eye at the man’s scars any more than he had given notice to her limp. “I can assure you, ma’am, any trip outside my little shop is a worthy excursion.”

“He means his babe has a toothache and will not cease crying,” Julian said.

Great-Aunt Celia nodded. “Rub brandy on his gums,” she suggested, wisely.

“That works?” Mr. Turner’s interest piqued.

“Well, if it doesn’t work on his, run the brandy over yours,” she quipped. “Now, everyone, out the door!”

Julian made to close the cubbyhole but, before it was shut, a blur of brown and white fur shot into the dark space. It hissed as Julian tried to bat it away.

“Devilish cat!”

After long years and faithful attempts, Lawrence had finally achieved his goal. He sniffed every nook and bumped his head upon every cranny, rubbing cheeks and whiskers into the corners before he rolled this way and that on his back and stretched (completely ignoring Julian’s efforts to oust him).

“Oh, come now,” Amanda said, leaning down to pet the mouser, now curled up inside the cabinet. He responded with a loud, rumbling purr. “We wouldn’t have found Rudin’s notes without him. He helped solve part of the mystery. Let him be!”

No sooner had she said the words than Larry’s ears perked and he shot back out the door and into the garden.

Julian shut the cubby with a satisfied clack.

“He’s after a bird,” Mr. Turner said.

“A ladybird, more like.” A sleek orange tabby sat upon the garden fence. Lawrence pawed his way closer. “Our Tom has found his Molly.”

Great-Aunt Celia stared at the amorous felines with a expression of mixed bemusement and exasperation. “For Lord and Lady Cat, I shall have the banns read and celebrate their eternal bliss if we could please leave presently?”

Mr. Turner laughed. “I expect an engraved invitation and first-row seat at the wedding. I am only sorry I couldn’t be of more help. A pleasure as always, Miss Pruett. Mrs. Lidgate. You know where to find me,” he said leaving with a jaunty wave.

“Finally, someone with sense. Now, without further—”

“Forgive me, Mrs. Lidgate,” Julian interrupted (bravely), “there is one more matter I wish to address.”

Great-Aunt Celia barely kept herself from throwing her hands into the air. (Or, very possibly, beating someone with her cane.) Whatever words formed on her lips never made it past them as Julian charged relentlessly onwards.

“When Lord Edgbaston arrives, I should like to have a word with him about this staff.”

Amanda’s head jerked in surprise. She’d expected him to have a word with Father about her not the staff! From the open door to the hall, she could see Shelby’s skirts and the fringe of auburn hair peeking around the doorframe. The maid had obviously overheard (and attempted more overhearing). What on Earth would he want to discuss about the servants?

Great-Aunt Celia puffed out her chest and raised her chin to stare at him down her nose. “If one of them has been delinquent, I shall address it immediately, though I assure you they come with the highest recommendations—” they didn’t “—and anything other than—”

Julian took his life in his hands by interrupting her again. “Rest assured, madam, there’s been no trouble. Quite the contrary. It might take time for Lord Edgbaston to settle in a permanent residence, but when he does I know how staff often changes. If that happens, I have a country estate left vacant for far too long in need of permanent caretakers. Cook, butler, maid, footman. It might take some work to bring it back to life, but it was always a lovely spot, and I’d like to see it lively again. Would you pass that along to Lord Edgbaston for me?”

Skirts swished in the hallway in what sounded like someone jumping up and down. He’d just offered Shelby’s entire family a home and steady, respectable occupation together.

Great-Aunt Celia sniffed, her eyes suspiciously glassy. “Of course I shall tell him.” She cleared her throat. “Now, unless we’ve forgotten the cure for consumption hidden somewhere between the floorboards of the drawing room, into the carriage with you! No more delays! For pity’s sake, late to their own betrothal.”