The Chemickal Marriage

His third shot went to the ceiling as the falling soldier’s sabre slapped Svenson across the forehead and knocked him to his knees. He looked up to see the door close behind Miss Temple, Schoepfil battering the second footman to the ground. The footman, with more than thirty pounds and seven inches on Schoepfil, collapsed, groaning. Schoepfil turned a raging gaze at Svenson, fists clenched.

‘Why should I spare you? Why should you not die?’ Schoepfil kicked Svenson’s pistol away and spun round to Kelling. ‘Open this damned door!’

Kelling barked at the Ministry men, standing off to the side, well clear of the struggle. Now that the prevailing wind of power was established, they willingly joined Kelling at the oval door – Kelling grunting at the pain, but heaving nevertheless – all straining at the iron wheel.

Svenson crawled on his hands and knees. Schoepfil hopped in front of him. ‘Where the devil do you think you’re going?’

‘These men.’ Svenson pointed to the soldiers. ‘Someone must bind their wounds.’

‘And perhaps you should not have shot them!’ But Schoepfil stepped aside, then shrieked at the courtiers: ‘And you! I will remember each of your names! O I will remember your names!’

Despite his patients’ hateful looks, Svenson bent to examine each soldier. The leg would heal easily, bone and artery spared, but the arm would be a trial, for the bullet had pierced the shoulder joint.

‘What’s the old crone thinking?’ Schoepfil asked, ostensibly to Kelling, but his secretary was hard against the wheel. Schoepfil thrust his face between the labouring men and shouted, ‘I am not deceived, Your Grace!’

His searching little eyes found Svenson, his only audience. The courtiers had fled.

‘The Duchess claims the Queen is within. She is a liar.’

‘Is it some Eastern system of combat?’ asked Svenson.

‘Beg pardon?’ Schoepfil chuckled. ‘O! O no, not at all.’

‘You move with an unnatural speed.’

‘And I shall do something unnatural to the Duchess of Cogstead, you may be sure of it! I know who is there! Why should she protect the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza – of all people? And you! You gave that colonial chit my book! My own glass book and you have thrust it into the arms of an empty-headed girl!’

‘Only because I had no time to smash it.’

‘O! O!’ Schoepfil waved both arms at the ceiling. ‘Artless! Crude! Teuton!’

‘If the Contessa is inside, these few men will not take her.’

‘Pah! I’ll take her myself.’ Schoepfil clapped his grey-gloved hands. ‘So hard it stings.’

The wheel gave with a sudden lurch. Schoepfil bustled through, returning the pistol to his secretary as he passed. Svenson pushed after the Ministry men, but Kelling waved the pistol.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Put it away,’ sighed Svenson. ‘If he could spare me, I’d be dead. Since I’m not, I could shoot you in the head and he would only swear at the mess.’

‘You’re wrong,’ Kelling snarled. ‘He remembers – you’ll pay!’

‘You should bind that wrist.’

‘Go to hell.’

Svenson found the others in a low octagonal room, with an oval door in each wall, like the engine room of a steamship. Schoepfil faced the Duchess with his hands on his hips.

‘Well, madam? Your falsehood is exposed!’ When the Duchess did not respond, he screamed again, waving at the doors: ‘Open them! Open them all!’

Doctor Svenson locked eyes for an instant with the Duchess. ‘Whose rooms are these?’

‘Not the Queen’s!’ crowed Schoepfil. Three doors were opened to utter blackness.

‘They were given to Lord Pont-Joule,’ said the Duchess.

‘The late Lord Pont-Joule.’ Schoepfil’s voice echoed from inside a doorway. He reappeared to shove a Ministry man at the next door. ‘Nothing – go, go!’

‘He was charged with Her Majesty’s safety –’

‘I know who he is,’ said Svenson. ‘Or was.’

Schoepfil hopped back to the Duchess. ‘These tunnels follow the springs!’

‘Spy tunnels,’ said Svenson. ‘Just like where we observed Her Majesty’s baths.’ The Duchess gasped.

‘O well done,’ muttered Schoepfil. ‘Blab every single thing …’

‘You ought to have expected others. The rock beneath the Therm? must have been honeycombed for a thousand years.’

Schoepfil sniffed at the next door. ‘Sulphur – leading to the baths proper. Would the Contessa seek the baths? She would not.’ He called to the Duchess: ‘She killed him, you know – Pont-Joule!’ Schoepfil scoffed on his way to the next doorway. ‘You arranged her audience. You aided her escape. He was her lover! Right in the neck!’

The Duchess put her hands over her eyes. ‘I did not –’

‘O I will see you punished. Where is my book?’

Kelling wrenched open the seventh door. Schoepfil sniffed the air. His face darkened. ‘O dear Lord …’

‘What is it?’ asked Kelling.

‘The channel.’ Schoepfil spun to the Duchess. ‘It’s true after all! You knew it! And she damn well knew it! Of all the – O this takes the biscuit!’

Schoepfil’s hand flew at the Duchess. Svenson caught the blow mid-air. With an outraged sputter Schoepfil’s other hand delivered three rapid strikes to the Doctor’s face. Still Svenson held on – giving the Duchess time to retreat – until Schoepfil wrenched his arm free.

‘You presume, Doctor Svenson, you presume!’

Schoepfil’s voice stopped with a guttural snarl. In the Doctor’s hand hung his grey glove, peeled off while retrieving his arm. The flesh of Schoepfil’s hand was a bright cerulean blue, nails darkening to indigo.

‘Sweet Christ,’ whispered the Doctor. ‘What have you done – what idiocy?’

Schoepfil snatched the glove and wriggled his hand inside, glaring at Svenson with a mixture of abashment and pride, like a young master caught plundering his first housemaid. The instant the glove was restored Schoepfil turned on Kelling with a scream: ‘What do you wait for? Inside and after them!’

Kelling dived through, but the Ministry men paused. ‘Is there a light?’ one ventured.

Through the door came a crash and a grunt of pain. ‘There are steps,’ called Mr Kelling.

Svenson opened the doors of a sideboard and pulled out a metal railwayman’s lantern.

‘How did you find that?’ asked Schoepfil.

‘Pont-Joule must have used these tunnels for surveillance.’

‘And look what it got him,’ Schoepfil spat, then shouted at them all. ‘A match! A match! Light the damned thing up!’

Kelling was waiting by a pile of clothing. Schoepfil stood at the black pool, glaring at the billowing effervescence. The Ministry men hovered, one, stuck between care and complicity, arm in arm with the Duchess, for Schoepfil dared not leave her alone. Another held the lantern high, but the cavern had no other exit but the pool.

Svenson gave the candle a glance, noticed the ash around its base and the tiniest curl of unburnt paper, coloured red. The Contessa had left a message, which Miss Temple had possessed the presence of mind to burn.

The riddle of the clothing was even simpler: one woman had followed the lead of the other, the clothing removed to swim. Svenson knelt at the water, swiped a finger through the fizz and put it to his nose, then in his mouth.

‘Colder than the baths,’ he said, ‘though the minerals prove a mingling. This channel meets the river. Underground.’

‘It was a secret way,’ said the Duchess. ‘Used for terrible things.’