“Now look what you have done!” said Charismo, mildly irritated.
“You animal!” shouted Chevie, lurching from the chair; but she was well trussed and succeeded only in toppling herself onto the floor, cracking her head on a gryphon wing on the way down.
Charismo rolled his eyes. “Oh, now look, there is blood on Tibor’s special desk. I shall be exceedingly glad when you are dead, Miss Savano. I had hoped to interrogate you as I did the boy, perhaps learn how the world has turned since my day, but now I think I shall forgo that pleasure and proceed directly to the endgame.”
Chevie spat blood on the rug. “What about your queen? How would she feel about all these murders?”
“Old Vic?” said Charismo. “I do not care a fig for Her rheumatic Majesty, beyond the fact that her patronage secures my status. At any rate, she will die confused at the dawn of the new century, and her daughter the following year, which will ring the closing bell on the house of Hanover.”
“And what of your precious Duke of Westminster?”
Charismo laughed bitterly. “That old coot will be gone before Christmas. Would that he should survive another twenty years, as it is extremely convenient to have the ear of the richest man in Britain. But no, the outdoor life will sow the seeds of bronchitis, and that shall do the duffer in.”
Charismo knelt and tousled Chevie’s hair. “Do you know, I would have preferred to have kept you alive. We could have spoken of the future. I have so many plans. One, for example, is that I could change the course of wars. Imagine how different World War One would be if the Germans were warned not to torpedo the Lusitania. America would never enter the war, and by 1918 England would be a German colony, with Tibor Charismo very nicely placed in its court. That is just one of my many ideas.”
“You’re mad,” said Chevie, trying hard to keep Charismo’s attention on her.
“Mad, delusional, comatose. Who cares? I am happy, and I intend to remain happy for as long as possible.”
Charismo dinged a service bell on his desk and Barnum entered, still a little sulky from his recent dismissal.
“Oh, you wants me back in the room, does you, master?”
“Don’t be petulant, Barnum. Your boxer’s countenance does not suit the expression.”
“Very good, master. What’s the drill with these two? I was thinking a quick stab over the kitchen sink, for to catch the blood, then into a sack and roly-poly down the embankment.”
Charismo tick-tocked his letter opener, considering this. “No, Barnum. I want these two to disappear entirely. Not so much as a hair left.”
“Then there are two avenues we can advance along. One, I has an old army pal with a pig farm by Newport. Pigs will eat from crown to toe, brain and bone, makes no differ to a pig.”
“I think not,” said Charismo. “The last time you tramped pig dung all over my carpets. What is our second choice?”
“Burning,” said Barnum simply. “I chop ’em in the kitchen and feed ’em slow into the furnace. Takes a few days and is grisly labor, but once the job is done, all the king’s horses couldn’t put these two bad eggs together again.”
Charismo giggled. “Nicely put, Mr. Barnum. You do make me smile. The furnace it is, but do your stabbing business in the kitchen.”
“Very good, master,” said Barnum, and he slung Chevie over one shoulder. “Can you manage for an hour while I make a start on the butchering?”
“You go ahead,” said Charismo magnanimously. “I shall be perfectly fine. . . . Oh, perhaps you might bring some more cakes when you have finished cutting. Tibor is peckish.”
“More cakes. Of course, master.”
Charismo winked at Chevie. “Master. I get shivers, every time.”
To Tibor’s utter surprise, Chevie had enough spirit for one last comment. She looked the WARP witness directly in the eye and said, “You talk too much.”
A statement not just of opinion but of fact, as it would turn out.
Barnum swung Riley by the belt in an arc toward his other shoulder. However, as soon as the manservant’s hand was free, the poisoned boy somehow found the strength to roll off and land on Charismo’s chest.
“Murderer!” he slurred. “You killed my family.”
“Eeek!” said Charismo. “Get him off me, Barnum. He could have lice.”
Had Riley been more alert, he might have been able to land a painful or even fatal blow, but in his drugged state it was all he could do to squirm a little and pat Charismo’s chest like an infant.
“C’mere, boy,” said Barnum, and he reclaimed his prisoner with strong fingers, tossing him back onto his free shoulder.
“Take care, Barnum,” said a shaken Charismo, checking his mask. “Even a dying dog can be dangerous.”
“Sorry, master,” said Barnum, inserting the toe of his boot into a crack in the door and nudging it open. “I should have taken more care that you were not overpowered by the incapacitated child that you had just poisoned to death.”
Charismo glared after his manservant as he left, wondering if perhaps he should begin docking his wages for insolence.
Barnum bundled the condemned pair into the dumbwaiter in the adjoining room and winched them down toward the kitchen. As the elevator dropped into its shaft, Chevie heard Charismo’s voice drift through: “You are such a slacker, Barnum. The dumbwaiter, honestly.”
The small compartment creaked slowly toward the basement, and Riley moaned and tried to stretch, which was impossible in the confined space. The air was heated, the walls stank of meat, and the box seemed incapable of sustaining their weight. Though she could not see it, Chevie felt the shaft yawn below them, waiting for the box to pop its cord and drop down and down.
“Hey, Riley,” Chevie said, nudging the boy’s leg with her elbow. “Are you okay?”
Riley was not alert enough to reply.
I wonder, has the poison begun to do it work? No. Charismo said he had hours left. There is still time.
The dumbwaiter came to an abrupt halt, and the trapped pair could do nothing but breathe recycled air and wait until Barnum pulled them out. Chevie was first.
He tossed her on the wooden worktop like a side of beef, then tied on an apron and ran his fingers across a row of kitchen knives.
It’s funny, thought Chevie. I am not afraid. That is because I still believe we will get out of this alive, in spite of all t
he evidence.
Barnum selected the largest knife, with a stained bone handle and serrated blade.
“Ah, Julia,” he said to the knife. “You knew I would choose you.”
He talks to his knives, thought Chevie. I bet Garrick would love this guy.
Barnum froze suddenly, like a deer that has heard a sound not meant for the forest.
What does he hear?
Then Chevie heard it too: a trundle of carriages, but also the clatter of marching feet.
“What now?” said Barnum, then cocked his head, waiting for the commotion to rumble past. But it did not. Instead, the cavalcade came to an abrupt stop outside Charismo’s residence.
“Next door,” muttered Barnum to himself. “Surely the militia have business next door?”
But it was not next door, as was made abundantly clear by a barked command from outside: “Halt! Charismo residence, blue door! Ready the cannon.”
“Cannon?” said Barnum, in a voice that was surely two octaves above his usual register.
The manservant dropped his beloved blade, drew a revolver from inside his coat, and raced across the kitchen and through the service doors.
The doors had not yet finished flapping when a thundering explosion rattled the very foundations, channeling compressed air through the house’s stairwells and passageways. The blast threw Barnum and his gun back through the service doors. The six-shooter pinwheeled across the kitchen, shattering a wall tile with its butt, then skittered into a sink.
Barnum himself was not in good shape. His waistcoat had been shredded, and a hundred small wounds on his chest allowed his life’s blood to leak onto the wooden floor.
Barnum had seen enough of death to know that his number was up. He turned his gaze laboriously to where Chevie lay on the worktop.
He attempted to speak, but before he could get it out, a final rattle signaled his departure for the next world.
Chevie rolled herself from the worktop, landing with a thump on her shoulder, which did not break.
Lucky break, or lucky non-break.