A Study in Silks tba-1 Read online

  Tobias unfolded the paper, checking the other pages. “He doesn’t appear to have done so yet. There’s no mention of it in the press.”

  “That is the one boon of that buffoonery at the opera. It has made an admirable distraction in everyone’s minds. Utterly ridiculous.”

  It’s not ridiculous. “Don’t you find that it was an inventive sort of prank?”

  His father’s glare quelled his enthusiasm. “I find nothing admirable in that degree of pointless destruction. And there are more important considerations at hand.”

  Tobias lowered the paper. “Such as?”

  His father narrowed his eyes. “Murder. Ruin.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Do try to concentrate.” He father leaned forward, his face intent. “If news of a murder under our roof gets abroad, the chances of Imogen making a good match this Season will wither on the vine. And that would just be the first of our troubles. Once Society scents blood, they turn like rabid dogs. If you love your mother and sisters, your life and this house—if you love me, my son—it is imperative that the death of that damned scullery girl never reaches the papers.”

  Tobias fell silent, thinking about Grace. Her beautiful eyes, when she looked up at him last night, asking for help. Then her dead eyes, staring up from the floor as Evelina searched the corpse. The alteration had been horrific. It had happened in—what?—mere minutes? Less time than it took him to achieve a perfect knot in his tie.

  As for loving his father … He’d always wanted to, more than anything, but his pater didn’t make it easy. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

  “There is a potential problem I have tried to anticipate. I want you to take care of it.”

  Tobias narrowed his eyes. As always, whenever he stopped resenting his father and began listening, he felt adrift between conflicting tides. Family loyalty. Justice. Honor. Pride. The desire for approval. They should all be pulling the same way, but they never were.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  Lord Bancroft rose and paced to the window. “That Cooper girl was examining the body last night. You know who her uncle is, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.” Then the breath stopped in Tobias’s chest. “Oh.”

  “See to it that there is no investigation. I don’t need to know how you accomplish it.”

  “She has no reason to interfere, much less invite her uncle to do so.”

  “She was curious.” Lord Bancroft tapped his foot, a sign of nervousness that told more than anything else. “I would appreciate it if you distracted her. I assume you know how to hold the attention of a young woman?”

  Tobias’s gut began to knot. “What do you mean?” He rose from his chair, suddenly uneasy. He knew very well what his father wanted, and it made his stomach fold itself inside out. Evelina was innocent. Socially beneath him, certainly, but she was educated, pretty, and respectable—deserving of all the protection her status as guest commanded. And he wanted her in a way that kept him staring at the ceiling all night, which made this conversation all the more confusing.

  Lord Bancroft said nothing, continuing to stare out the window.

  “You want me to seduce her.”

  His father’s tall, straight form didn’t move. The clock ticked heavily, beating out the minutes of Tobias’s life. Lord Bancroft reached for the decanter on his desk, poured himself a measure. He didn’t offer any to his son.

  I want to seduce her. You want me to seduce her. Do I give in and please us both, or do I refuse because you asked me to? Or am I really more honorable than you? That would be a lark, wouldn’t it? His father made even basic rebellion a convoluted, steaming mess.

  When it became apparent that Lord Bancroft wouldn’t say anything more, Tobias left the room.

  Bancroft watched his son exit, and then turned back to the window. The April wind tossed the branches of the old oak tree, plucking a few of the pale green leaves and scattering them to the lawn. So what will happen if Tobias fails, and the girl or her uncle uncovers the wrong secret? Do I lose all this?

  Hilliard House had once been a large estate, but before Bancroft’s time, it had been whittled down piece by piece over the years, one street or square at a time. Now only the core of the place remained, a green and gracious oasis in the middle of the West End where terraced homes, one cheek-by-jowl to the next, were the norm. Bancroft had bought the house and its extended garden on his return from Austria, a showplace to go with his new title and fresh ambitions. The previous owner had been a different viscount, one who had been ruined by the Gold King and forced to sell. Whenever Bancroft ran into the steam baron, the jumped-up mushroom always managed to remind him of that detail.

  Bancroft began to pace slowly, moving from the window to the desk and back again. The tiger’s head above his desk watched, unimpressed by the restless human.

  The years as ambassador to Austria had ended gradually. Tobias had gone to England first to attend school, then, sometime later, Bancroft’s wife and daughters. Just two years ago, Bancroft had come home to find the Empire he’d left a quarter century before had been taken over by the steam barons and their greed.

  Right at that moment, his life had taken a sharp turn. No man of good conscience—and considerable political ambition—could stand by and watch upstarts take the reins of power, bit by bit, from the peers of the realm. And the Empire’s leaders had all but lost the struggle for political supremacy. They might not sit in Parliament or the House of Lords, but they could buy almost everyone who did. In short, the barons were meaner, smarter, and richer than any duke in the land.

  And, oh, how grateful those dukes would be if someone came along and put the barons in their place! So, with an eye on making an even greater fortune, Bancroft had put his talent for back-room deals to use. Harter’s was only his most public scheme. There were others, buried deeper—the rebellion Tobias had alluded to was more than just talk—but the success of those depended on gold and secrecy. And both were difficult to get.

  “And the very last thing I need is Sherlock Holmes or his niece investigating my affairs,” he said to the tiger. The yellow eyes glared back.

  He’s dismissed Evelina Cooper as his daughter’s hanger-on. What he knew about her could be written on a calling card. The mother’s elopement, of course. The harridan grandmother. The famous uncles. That was all. He didn’t concern himself with schoolgirls. But it seemed that he was going to have to pay more attention—she’d been all over the corpse like a bitch on a scent. Cool as ice. Obviously, she had investigative ambitions of her own.

  Bancroft’s lip curled in distaste. Well, Tobias could keep the Cooper girl busy. She played coy, but anyone could see she fancied him. As if such a mismatch would ever be acceptable. The question was whether his son had the sense to understand that. It would be like him to get caught up in the game.

  When he looked at Tobias, he saw far too much of himself. Is it wrong to hate my son for being the same fool I used to be? Is it even worse to wish I had his soul, clean and unblemished by all my sins? Well, perhaps the plan wasn’t fair, but there was too much at stake to quibble over a maiden’s virtue.

  Bancroft had made exactly the same judgment when it came to Grace. The corpse.

  His glass was empty, so he refilled it and drained it again, letting the harsh, sweet burn flame down his throat. Think of her as the corpse, because that’s all that’s left. But once his mind turned that way, there was no way to stem the tide.

  It had seemed the easiest thing in the world, looking into her beautiful face, to convince himself that he had to seduce her. He had needed a messenger, someone anonymous. She had needed money. That was all very straightforward, but he had experience with spies and informants. She might sell his secrets for more money, but that kind of girl never betrayed the man she loved.

  So he betrayed her instead, making her love him and then sending her into danger. That was what men like him—the deal-makers and throne-shakers—did.

&nb
sp; Bancroft felt a harsh sting at the back of his eyes. He had felt oddly calm, looking at her body and hearing the news she was with child—possibly—probably—his. If he’d ever needed proof that his soul was dead after a career spent in intrigue, that was it.

  The pity of it was, dead or alive, she would have been useless. Women with babies were too preoccupied for his kind of work—unless you took the child from them to focus their concentration. And, while by-blows were inconvenient for a man like him, servant girls with bastard babies were ruined for anything at all. At the very least, he would have had to pension her off, another millstone around his financial neck. He should be thankful to be spared that much.

  But he didn’t feel spared. Shadows were gathering around him, dank and dark sins rising up from their carefully concealed graves.

  He poured himself another whisky. He would make this one last, because he must stay alert. Not like last night, after he had come home from the theater. He remembered breaking into a cold sweat when he saw Magnus there, sinister as a demon with one cloven foot outside the conjurer’s circle. He remembered sending the grooms to move his trunks from the attic, praying that Magnus would have forgotten their existence. He remembered his first drink, and his third. But there was a blank period, before Bigelow woke him in the library. If he’d indulged less—well, Grace wouldn’t have been waiting for him to come and get the envelope when someone had killed her for it. He couldn’t even recall how he got to the library, or if he’d spoken to anyone along the way.

  Could he have … no. I’ve never killed an innocent. He’d simply killed innocence along the way.

  I’m sorry, Grace. Bancroft turned away from the window, unable to bear the sight of the fresh, green spring. Somehow, I miscalculated. That’s how he would have to think of her death, to shrink it to something he could manage. A miscalculation.

  He tossed the whisky down his throat.

  Where had the sums and averages of risk and probability failed? Where had he gone wrong? He’d told Tobias there was no danger to the family. If he’d had to place a bet, he’d say that had been a lie. But he knew better than to run. Enemies hid everywhere, waiting for weaklings to lose their nerve. Then they pounced, their teeth in your neck.

  Bancroft lifted his glass to the tiger’s head, giving it a facetious salute. He kept the snarling thing as a reminder to show no fear.

  When you ran, that’s when the predators got you.

  Chapter Eight

  NELLIE REYNOLDS ARRESTED FOR WITCHCRAFT

  The celebrated actress Eleanor “Nellie” Reynolds, aged two and thirty, was taken into custody last night on charges of practicing magic. Scotland Yard arrested Mrs. Reynolds at her home in Hampstead, where detectives seized a wealth of magical implements. When questioned, the actress claimed they were props for the stage, but neighbors report unseemly “doings” under the light of the full moon. Formal charges are expected to be laid after a brief investigation. Reliable sources report that wagering on the outcome of the trial is split between a burning and remanding the prisoner for observation at Her Majesty’s laboratories. Mrs. Reynolds was last seen on stage in The Merchant of Venice, playing the role of Portia.

  —The Bugle

  London, April 4,1888

  BAKER STREET

  9 a.m. Wednesday

  The day of the murder

  Jasper Keating, the steam baron known to many as the Gold King, snapped the newspaper shut. He was not a betting man, but long ago the Steam Council had agreed that given their considerable influence, it would be unseemly for them to wager on trials of magic users. That might be seen as a coercion of justice. Nevertheless, it was irritating, because whoever bet against the actress was on to a sure thing.

  There wasn’t a pulpit, a judge’s bench, an editorial column, or a respectable dinner table where the voice of authority would not deplore the use of supernatural powers. Through careful cultivation and steady pressure, the industrial machine had seen to that. The only power in the land came from their fires. So why, when he was one of the handful of men who ruled the Empire, did he feel so uncertain?

  Keating tossed the paper onto the seat beside him. He was not a man who suffered from nerves. Yet, rolling across Marylebone Road toward Baker Street in his very expensive carriage, he experienced a flutter in his stomach that had nothing to do with the breakfast he had just eaten. No, Keating was an abstemious man untroubled by such mundane foes as sausages. There were two things bothering him.

  First was the prospect of having to ask assistance from that consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes—an individual well known for his independence. Being one’s own man was a trait unwelcome in this day and age of allegiances and bargaining. But what could Keating do? Holmes was uniquely qualified to solve an urgent difficulty. And that was the second thing upsetting his stomach—the task itself. Just the fact that Keating was going to the Baker Street address rather than commanding Holmes to come to him said much about how profoundly Keating needed that brilliance at his beck and call. He hoped that a little condescension would be worth his while in the end.

  The equipage slowed, the steady clop-clop of hooves breaking rhythm to shuffle to a halt. Bits jangled; horses blew. Keating could have had one of the new steam-powered vehicles for getting about, but he preferred flaunting the hallmarks of gentility his forefathers would have understood—and hopefully choked on, given that the sententious old bastards expected him to come to nothing. Therefore, in Keating’s eyes, anything less than his matched bays would be unforgivably short on elegance.

  The carriage door opened and the footman folded down the steps. Keating gathered his hat and walking stick and emerged into the slightly misty April day. He gave a nod to the servant, who stepped smartly forward to knock at the door. Keating’s informants said Holmes lived in the first-floor rooms with the bay window overlooking the street. A landlady lived at street level. A fairly typical arrangement.

  He took a moment to look around. A steam cycle whirred by, kicking up dust. A Disconnected house stood a few doors down, a sign on the gate advertising it for sale. Some rough boys had stopped to gawk at the carriage, but the groom was shooing them off. Uninterested, Keating kept a cool gaze moving over the street and its inhabitants.

  Ah, this was more pleasing. Workmen from Keating Utilities were changing the globes of the streetlamps from red to gold. He’d just recently pushed the boundaries of his territory north, taking this street, among others, from the Scarlet King.

  The mechanics of such a takeover were simple: central power plants had been adopted in London, and individual homes and businesses were now hooked up to their lines. Gaslight and steam heat were supplied by one or another of the utility companies, depending on which company served that street or square. Unhooking the pipes from one trunk line and reconnecting them to another was just a matter of valves and couplings and perhaps some excavation. And so, where Baker Street had once run off the Scarlet lines, now it ran off the Gold.

  But the politics that made it happen were fierce—a matter of bribes, threats, and backroom deals. There would, no doubt, be repercussions for this maneuver, but that was a difficulty for another day. One didn’t wrest possession of an empire from one’s rivals with nothing but gentle persuasion.

  The thought acted like a switch in his mind, and suddenly he was irked anew by his role of supplicant. What was he doing, standing in the street like a beggar? A wave of pique rushed through him, flushing his skin until the fine wool of his coat itched abominably. Keating wrestled with his top button, setting his jaw. The footman had sent his card up to the Great Detective, so what was Keating waiting for? Word that the man was receiving visitors? He was the Gold King. No one dared to turn him from the door.

  But that unthinkable event might happen. A middle-aged woman—no doubt the landlady—was standing at the threshold talking to the footman and shaking her head regretfully. Bitter bile caught in the back of Keating’s throat. This was insufferable.

  With a barely pol
ite nod, he marched up the walk and pushed past her into 221B Baker Street. Without pausing, he spotted the staircase and mounted the steps to the rooms above.

  “Sir!” the woman bustled after him with a rustle of heavily starched petticoats. “Sir, Mr. Holmes is still at his breakfast!”

  Keating was already at the top of the stairs, his impatience mounting with her every word. “I’m sure the man can eat his toast and listen at the same time.”

  “But Mr. Holmes …”

  “Do you know who I am?” he thundered.

  That took her aback, a glisten of fear filling her eyes. “But sir!”

  Silly, twittering creature. He relented. “I’ll be sure to tell Mr. Holmes you’re not to blame for my intrusion.” And Keating pushed open the door to Holmes’s room.

  His first impression was one of chaos. He looked from left to right, quickly cataloguing what he saw. In one corner stood a table littered with scientific equipment of some kind, racks of glass bottles hinting at research of a chemical nature. Next to that was a desk where no paper had ever been neatly squared. It looked more like a badger had been at the stack of papers, books, and empty plates piled there. Keating could not repress a shudder at the mess.

  Straight ahead was a fireplace with a large bear skin before it. The skin was flanked by a settee and pipe rack on one side and a basket chair on the other. On the Baker Street side of the room was a table and chairs. The table was set with a breakfast redolent of kippers. One chair was occupied by a tall, angular man with an ascetic air and lean face.

  “Holmes, I presume?” Keating said. “I am Jasper Keating.”

  “Indeed you are,” said Holmes absently. “Might I offer you tea? Breakfast? Mrs. Hudson’s scones are quite delightful.” The man barely looked up from the copy of the newspaper he was perusing, instead awarding Keating an indifferent glance.

  Stung, Keating narrowed his eyes. “I come in the character of a client, not a breakfast guest.”