“Evers reading off Walter Courcey’s script,” said Violet.
“Walt wasn’t exactly hesitating to speak for himself,” said Edwin. “A darkness hovering on the horizon. He’s sure there is something coming—he said it when we were at Sutton last year. Billy Byatt said it too.”
“Crisis,” said Jack, “is an excellent justification for the seizure of power.”
Edwin shook his head. He had the twitchy expression that meant he was connecting ideas and was about to show you a pattern. “It was in the Grimm’s letter. The dark that’s coming. That’s more than false justification, surely? Robin, have you…”
“You know what I’ve seen,” said Robin. There was a terribly naked fear in the way he looked at Edwin now. Edwin flinched.
“Yes. No,” he said. “All right. That’s—that’s hardly relevant to British magic as a whole. But I wish I knew what the Grimm meant. About that, and about the Last Contract itself. And how Dufay’s song ties into it.”
“Add them to the list,” said Violet irritably. “Shall I recite it? We still don’t know how to get hold of Lady Enid’s knife, or if it’ll be snatched out of our grasp by the Assembly once we do. We don’t know what kind of spell or ritual Bastoke’s people are planning once they have the whole contract. We haven’t even decided how to hide these items, or otherwise prevent them from being misused if we get our hands on all three.”
A depressed silence followed this, delivered as it was in Violet’s most Shakespearean tones.
Jack cleared his throat. It was as a good a time as any to explain his suspicions about the equinox gala at Cheetham Hall and George’s plan to use the gathering of magicians to steal power with the contract—so he did so.
“And if you were hoping to call upon official help at any point in this,” Jack finished, “then today’s been a good illustration of how that’s likely to go. Now we’re all liars and troublemakers, and probably thieves as well.”
More silence. It was broken by Robin.
“Cheers ever so, Hawthorn. You can always be relied upon to lighten the mood.”
9
It was two days later when Alan made it to Spinet House again. He turned up in the early afternoon, having told the sub-editor that he was going out chasing details for a story that would appear in the Saturday edition.
In fact, the story was done. He’d ground his way by candlelight towards the small, dark hours for the past two nights, and only partly made up for it by napping at his desk in the Post’s office instead of going home for dinner in the middle of the day. Hunger he could ignore, but his temper became a sullen cat of a thing when his sleep was snatched away. And while lighting his second candle the previous night it had struck him that magicians didn’t have to pay for candles or gas or lamp oil at all, what with their glowing balls of light, and he’d been so furious at that injustice that he’d broken the nib of a pen. Nibs also cost money.
All in all, Alan was not feeling well disposed to anyone who lived in a magical Bayswater mansion and had nothing but leisure time on their hands.
Luckily for both of them, Maud Blyth was difficult to be angry at.
“It’s just me today,” she said, flitting into the drawing room to greet Alan. “Edwin and Robin are at the Home Office. Violet had a last-minute invitation to a luncheon with Lord and Lady Albert—I suspect they want her to be eccentric at people and talk up the opera company. And Hawthorn is at his club.”
“Which club?” Alan inquired out of journalistic habit. The Post’s readers were extremely interested in details like a gentleman’s club memberships.
“The Reform,” said Maud, excellent source that she was.
The most progressive club that was still full of aristocrats. Of course. Alan’s annoyance gave an enjoyable lash of its tail.
“If Edwin and Violet aren’t here, I suppose there’s no point me staying to play canary. When should I return?”
“No, stay!” Maud waved him back down onto the settee. Her eyes gleamed with her military-general look. “I should catch you up on what happened at the Barrel when Violet went to her hearing.”
She did so. Alan felt his eyebrows climbing his face.
“So, Edwin’s written back to this Grimm person, whoever they are, and in the meantime he and Robin are combing the office for previous Grimm letters—though, er, it sounds like everyone who had the job before Robin and Addy threw most of them in the bin—in case there have been other useful clues about the Last Contract. And nobody’s tried to break into the house in days,” she added, “which Edwin and Hawthorn are grim about, because they think it means Bastoke’s people are going to go ahead and legally challenge anyone holding a contract piece, so they don’t need to keep trying to get into the house and find it before us.” A gulp of breath. Occasionally Maud’s mind wrote cheques that her lungs couldn’t honour.
“I hear this house isn’t a shabby fighter on its own accord,” said Alan.
“No, indeed.” Maud turned her martial gleam onto him. “So it’ll be perfectly fine if you and I go for a little expedition, won’t it?”
Visions of menageries danced warningly through Alan’s mind. “What sort of expedition?”
“Edwin was digging up what he could find about Alfred Dufay himself—the magician who wrote the orrery song—and it’s said his ghost haunts his own grave.” Maud-the-medium gave Alan no time to react to this. “And I’m no use twiddling my thumbs here in the house, and after all, Robin had a vision of me standing at a grave, and I won’t let it be any of ours.”
“You want to go and ask the ghost of this dead magician about the Last Contract.”
“Yes! Or at least find out if he’s there at all, so that Edwin can come and ask better questions.”
“And if Bastoke’s people are watching the house and decide to corner you for information on the cup when you leave? I can hold my own in a back-alley fight, but not against magicians.”
“I don’t know where the cup is hidden.” Maud grinned proudly at him. “None of us do except Violet. We agreed. Spinet’s more protective of her than anyone, and she has the most magic anyway. And she’s a wonder with her illusion disguises. All she has to do is use the tunnel to the Underground, and she can step onto a train looking like someone else entirely. So, you see! If one of Bastoke’s people got their hands on me, I couldn’t tell them. Even under a truth-spell.”