A Scandal in Battersea Read online

  “I have a three-bedroom flat for the price of a miserable little bed-sitter elsewhere,” Alexandre said, concealing the irritation he felt when addressed as “Alex.” He took his own seat, and gave every evidence of being pleased to have the man’s company. “So, what would you like to hear?”

  “As you know, your father stipulated that you must be involved continuously in some form of useful occupation in order to keep receiving your stipend. When last we spoke, you were at work on a book of poetry. I should like a report on what you are engaged with.” The solicitor steepled his fingers in front of his chest, as if expecting to hear that Alexandre was involved in no such thing as a useful occupation. It had only been Alexandre’s pointing out that his father had allowed in his will that writing was a “useful occupation” as long as it resulted in a published book that had kept that quarter’s stipend in the bank last time.

  “I have gotten my hands on a most extraordinary book,” Alexandre replied, smiling. “It appears to be one-of-a-kind, and handwritten. I am transcribing it—was doing so even as you arrived. I think the transcription will add something significant to religious history when I have finished with it.” He pointedly did not mention which religion it would add to. Indeed, it was not likely to add to any religion with which the solicitor was familiar. It seemed to refer to a religion all its very own.

  The solicitor blinked in surprise, and a thin, but approving smile stretched his lips. “Well, that is an improvement over your book of poetry. Was that ever published?”

  “Not more than a month ago. It is too soon to tell how successful it will be,” Alexandre replied, making an effort not to bristle. “I think this is a much more solid and substantial task. Indeed—” he forced a laugh, “—I do believe this transcription represents a great deal more work than anything I did at University.”

  “Well, I know nothing of religious history, so I shall not trouble you to show me any of it,” the old man said, with a glance at the desk behind him and its stack of newly written pages. “But I can see you are certainly getting on with the work, and it is something of which I am certain your father would approve.”

  It was all that Alexandre could do to suppress a bark of laughter at that. If Father knew what I was doing, he would be spinning in his grave like a windmill in a tempest. He managed to turn his amusement into a fatuous smile. “Then I hope, aside from my frugal obstinacy in living here, I have satisfied you for this quarter.”

  “Oh, definitely.” The old man rose. “Not that I doubted you. Your expenses show no signs of . . .” he waved his hands in the air “. . . excessive spending. You do not gamble, you do not keep loose women, and you do not drink to excess. Your allowance will be deposited as scheduled.”

  “Just in time for Christmas!” Alexandre said with false joviality. “And speaking of Christmas . . . does Mother wish my presence?”

  “Your mother is still indisposed,” the solicitor said, truthfully. “The house has not been decorated, and no one has mentioned the season to her. Her doctors think that reminding her of the holiday would do her more harm than good.”

  “Ah. I shall send her a floral tribute then, just to let her know she is in my thoughts. There is no reason why a loving son cannot send his mother flowers regardless of whether there is an occasion or not.”

  “That would be better than a visit, I believe.” The solicitor moved toward the door. “Don’t trouble yourself, Alex. I shall show myself out.” And he suited his actions to his words.

  Alexandre managed to not grind his teeth as he moved to the window and stood where he could make certain that the old busybody had gotten into the firm’s carriage and actually left. The cheek of him! What is he doing now, paying for information about my movements? Looking for gambling debts or a mistress somewhere? He would not put it past the miserable old dotard. Fortunately, Alexandre’s tastes did not demand expensive women who required apartments, furs, and jewelry, not when he could get exactly the same services out of a young and disposable whore. And gambling was for fools—unless you had the secrets to winning. He did gamble, but not often; not so often that people would start to remark on his extraordinary luck. He didn’t need to cheat to win, after all. Not when he had magic. And he was very, very careful only to take money from those who could afford to lose it. Not out of any sense of pity—but because those who could afford to lose it generally took no notice of those who won it from them.

  As the solicitor’s coach pulled away, a small mob of boys pelted it with snowballs. Alexandre smiled, thinly, and sat down again to his task.

  Not, of course, that he was abstaining from expensive mistresses, luxurious apartments, and all the wonderful things that money could buy voluntarily . . . he’d have been perfectly happy to finally be in control of the family’s modest fortune. Without the need to conceal his gambling—and with the means to go to casinos on the Continent—he could build that modest fortune into an impressive one. As he had transcribed this book, dormant ambition had awakened in him. He would love to excite envy in the gazes of anyone who saw him. He could indulge all of his desires, and oh, he had a great many desires. But he was patient. Patience was, perhaps, his only virtue.

  Except, perhaps, for the moments following one of these detestable interviews.

  The old man had been a confidant of Father; if one of the other members of the firm had been put in charge of making sure the conditions of the will were followed, he doubted he’d ever see them. The business manager certainly did not care, and would not care, as long as Alexandre did not drain the principal and did not interfere with the management of the money. There would be no probing into his character, no quarterly interviews. As long as he kept his name out of the newspapers, the stipend would simply be deposited into his bank account.

  But Fensworth took his obligations seriously, and seemed to regard himself in loco parentis to someone who was fully adult and certainly capable of handling his own affairs.

  If only the old man would just die. Like Mother, he was a damned inconvenience. But not enough of one for Alexandre to undertake the kind of effort it would require to be rid of him. There were too many people around him who would prevent him from walking out into the middle of a winter storm to lie down and die—and Alexandre could not imagine how he would be able to get some personal item, like hair or blood, to set the spell in the first place. Victor had been easy; all Alexandre had needed to do was pay a visit to his brother’s rooms at King’s College on the pretext of borrowing something and stroll off with hair from his hairbrush. He had no such access to Fensworth’s belongings.

  Patience, he reminded himself. But he couldn’t help brooding about it as he continued to work on The Book. If only the old man would vanish. Life would be so much easier.

  Arthur Fensworth chided himself for the uncharitable thoughts that had crowded his mind on the way to pay his call on young Harcourt. Here he had been convinced the fellow was one of those idle fops, playing at being a poet, never really doing anything with his life—

  And perhaps, at first, without the guiding hands of tutors and his father, he had been. But clearly he had found worthwhile work to do. Translating obscure religious works! He never would have thought it, but the fellow had clearly been hard at it when Fensworth arrived, and looked anxious to get back to it. And he’d gotten that book of poetry published as well! Old Harcourt would have been proud, of the translations at least.

  He made his report to the head of the firm—who, as usual, seemed bored, and dismissed him with a wave of his hand. Fensworth was used to that. Old Abernathy would never have treated him and his report so flippantly, but Old Abernathy was dead and gone these three years, and his son didn’t understand the need to see that a client was still a client even when he was dead, nor that it was the firm’s obligation to make sure the client’s wishes were fulfilled in perpetuity. Fensworth intended to keep an eye on young Harcourt and keep making those quarter
ly reports for as long as he lived.

  With that dismissal, Fensworth returned to his tiny office, wrote out the release for the quarterly payment to young Harcourt’s account, and went back to his regular duties. But, unusually, he couldn’t quite keep his mind on them. Although he had a good fire going, the air was cold, and the light seemed dim no matter how much he turned up his lamps. He felt . . . drained. Dispirited. Finally, in mid-afternoon, he decided he must be sickening for something, and returned to Young Abernathy’s office.

  “Begging your pardon,” he said politely, when Young Abernathy looked up impatiently. “But I don’t entirely feel well. I was wondering if—”

  “Good God, Fensworth,” Young Abernathy said, his impatience turning to a sympathy that was entirely gratifying. “To my certain knowledge you haven’t taken an hour off since I’ve been head of the firm. You’re more than owed it. Go home. Bundle up. Get your housekeeper to make you a hot brandy or something. Don’t come back until you feel better, you hear me? That’s an order.”

  Young Abernathy’s response warmed the cockles of his old heart. “Thank you, sir,” he said with gratitude. “I appreciate it very much, sir.”

  “Appreciate it from the comfort of your bed,” Young Abernathy replied, and taking that as the dismissal that it was, Fensworth took his leave.

  But once he was bundled into a cab, that same oppression of spirits descended on him again, and he huddled inside his overcoat, feeling every one of his sixty years.

  The cab let him out in front of the building where his flat lay, and he trudged his way wearily through the snow, his thoughts as gray as the sky. He put his hand on the door, and opened it.

  And the darkness inside swallowed him.

  By the time Alexandre was ready to stop again, he discovered to his surprise that it was dinnertime. “Alf?” he called, massaging his cramped fingers. They were very informal; he didn’t bother with a bell, and he rather thought Alf might resent a bell anyway.

  “Been down t’the pub, guv,” Alf said. “Just settin’ out a lovely bit of a pie.”

  Right now a steak and kidney pie sounded much more appealing than anything on offer at the club. Once again, Alexandre stoppered the ink, cleaned the pen, secured the pages he had finished, made sure the next line was marked, and weighed everything down before he joined Alf in the dining room. “Wine or beer, guv’nor?” Alf asked, serving a generous portion of pie on Alexandre’s plate. “Lovely tinned peas, all hotted up, too.” Alf approved of tinned goods. “No b’iling ’em to bits,” he had commented when Alexandre asked why he liked them so much—which probably spoke volumes about Alf’s mother’s cooking, and why Alf himself had learned some basic cooking skills.

  A generous pat of butter on the peas, plenty of bread and butter on the table, and Alf considered his duties discharged, save the drink.

  “Red wine, Alf, and get a glass for yourself. Make it a red Number Seven.” One of Alf’s failings was that he never could be bothered to learn the care of wine, or indeed anything about it. He could distinguish between port and sherry, red wine and white, and that was his limit. So there was no use asking him for what was on the label; he’d scratch his head and take any old bottle of the right color. Alexandre had devised a system of simply pasting paper labels over the necks of the bottles when he bought them, and writing numbers on them before carefully racking them with the numbers facing up so Alf wouldn’t be tempted to turn them and disturb the sediment. It was, all things considered a minor inconvenience—far outweighed by Alf’s excellent taste in whores.

  “Don’t mind if Oi do,” Alf said agreeably, and went out and returned, carefully carrying the bottle as he’d been shown, with two glasses. Alexandre poured for both of them, and they settled in to eat.

  He caught a slightly unusual bit of movement out of the corner of his eye and looked up. Alf, contrary to his usual habits, looked as if he intended to make some conversation over dinner. Alexandre nodded to encourage him.

  “Thet book,” Alf said, with rare diffidence. “It’s somethin’ special?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Alexandre admitted. “I think it may be. I’m making a good copy of it before I try anything out of it.”

  Alf nodded sagely. “Tha’s all right, then. Was gonna warn ye, guv, t’do somet’in’ of thet nature. My old master nearly lost a arm, not bein’ careful in thet way.” He took a bite of pie after that astonishing statement, and chewed thoughtfully. “Did lose th’ book,” he added.

  Alexandre had known that Alf was in his master’s confidences, but until now, he had not realized how far. “I’d rather not lose any part of me, thank you,” he observed. “Have you any other advice?” After all, Alf had been with his previous master for more than a decade. And if he was that intimate with what the magician had been doing, it made sense to make use of his experience.

  “Well, Oi seed you got a bunch of other books; yer checkin’ names an’ suchlike?” At Alexandre’s nod his expression turned approving. “Can’t be too careful. Wust that happens if ye miscall a cratchur, is ’e turns up, an’ ye got no control on ’im.”

  They ate in silence for a little while longer. Then Alexandre spoke up. “The thing is . . . I don’t recognize most of the names.”

  “Reely? Blimey!” Alf actually stopped chewing to stare at him. “Ever’thin’ else tallies?”

  “It seems to. I’ll know better when I have a fair copy and I can look for humbugs.” Alexandre had been taken in by faux manuscripts before this; he’d learned how to tell something truly original from something that had been deliberately created to deceive. There were usually subtle mistakes; mistakes that had the potential to get the magician killed.

  “Huh.” Alf cleaned his plate. Alf always cleaned his plate—when he was done with a meal, it almost didn’t need to be washed. Alexandre refilled his glass, hoping to coax more out of him. “Might be you got yersel’ somethin’ special. Them thin’s . . . my old master said they was made to go lookin’ fer magicians.”

  “My first grimoire was that way,” Alexandre said. “It was how I first learned I was a magician.”

  “This un’ll be more . . . hidden, like. It won’t want to find just any old magician. It’ll want someone as can ac’chully use it.” Alf sat back in his chair with his wineglass in his hand, thinking, his brows creased. “That don’t mean it’s somethin’ you wanta use, though.”

  Alexandre looked at him quizzically. “How do you mean?”

  “Issa trap, guv.” Alf winked. “What do you figger would be the best way for a canny old magician to cut down on competition?”

  “Oh. . . .” For some reason, this had never occurred to him; perhaps because, aside from Alf’s master, the only other magicians he knew of were those ever-so-lofty Elemental Masters and Mages. But now that Alf had brought it up, it made sense. Spread grimoires around that looked as if they held secrets, let the unwary get hold of them, and when they invoked the wrong creature . . . no more competition.

  “An’ accordin’ to th’ old man, there was some as would make deals . . . on’y, the payment come when some poor fool ’ud pick up one of them grimoires they left about an’ used it. So they’d get rid of the competition an’ make payment on their deal at the same time.” Alf finished his wine and looked meaningfully at the bottle. Alexandre obliged him with the last of it.

  “So how do you tell if a book is one of those?” he asked.

  “By bein’ careful. Ye check over ev’ry word. Ye look inside the cover fer hidden spells meant t’make ye careless. Ye check on ev’ry ward an’ safeguard. No matter how temptin’ this all looks, if somethin’ don’t add up, ferget it.” Alf sipped the wine. “That’s what th’ old man said, anyway.”

  It all made sense. Perfect sense. “I get the feeling, Alf, you were a lot more to the old man than just his valet. . . .”

  Alf laughed. “Oi ain’t no magician, if thet’s wha
t ye mean. Oi jest paid attention. That stuff ain’t fer me.” He waved his hand, as if to shoo “that stuff” away from him, like an annoying fly. “But it wouldn’t do me no good if the master was t’get et up, so Oi learnt what Oi needed to so’s t’make sure he didn’. An’ speakin’ of et up, how’d the meetin’ with Lawyer Skellington go?”

  Alexandre snorted. “That’s a good name for him,” he replied, and his mood darkened. “Damned if I like being made to go through my paces like a schoolboy every quarter. But I told him I was working on transcribing obscure religious texts now, and that seemed to please the old sinner.”

  Alf barked a laugh. “Clever! Not a lie, neither.”

  “The best lies are always at least half truth. Care to join me by the fire for a brandy and a cigar?” His mood cleared again instantly at the thought of the way he’d bamboozled the old nosy parker.

  “Don’t mind if Oi do, guv. Jest let me clear all this away fer the char.” Alf collected the plates, and Alexandre made his way into his little sitting room, his mind wandering back to The Book. He poured out two generous brandies, refreshed the fire, and took his favorite chair. In a few moments Alf joined him.

  They sat, sipping the liquor, in silence for a while. We’re an odd pair, Alexandre thought. As far as clothing went, Alf didn’t look like the rough East Ender that he was; he dressed very properly, as any valet would, in a neat black suit, impeccably white shirt, tie, and immaculate waistcoat, although with his master’s tacit permission, he had unbuttoned his waistcoat, loosened his tie and draped his jacket over the back of the chair. Alexandre could see why the solicitor had muttered what he had about Alf terrifying him, though. It was clear once the jacket was off that Alf was a bruiser and could probably win just about any fight with anyone other than a bare-knuckle professional pugilist. From the scars on his face and hands, he’d probably seen his share of fights, too. His short hair was about the same color as faded leather, and it was liberally sprinkled with gray hairs. He had deep-set, shrewd gray eyes that missed nothing.