Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [175]
“Red and troubled as the flames of Hell, Sir Seaton. Coming out of that evil, muddy fog. I swear I hadn’t had a drop.” Corky’s gin-bloated features contradicted his claim, but Begg was inclined to believe him. It was Boxing Day. They sat together in Begg’s rather austere morning chamber at Sporting Club Square where pale light, filtering through old lace, gave the room a silvery, rather unreal, appearance.
Clarke had glimpsed bone-white skin “like a leper’s,” a dark cape revealing a scarlet lining and the hilt of a massive sword in black, glowing iron, set with a huge ruby. “I thought he must be the Devil, Sir Seaton. You would have done, too. He came at me so sudden and horrible! His eyes pulled my heart out of my chest and left me gasping, tasting that sharp, oily fog as if it was the sweetest air of Kent, and so grateful for my life! I heard his footsteps, light and bright like a woman’s, tapping off up Salt Pie Passage. Oh, Lord, sir! I never want to endure that again. I thought all my sins had caught up with me. Those crimson eyes! I’m a new man now, sir, and conscience-bound to answer your poster.”
“Mr. Clarke, you’ve done well and I commend you!” Seaton Begg was excited. “You bring to mind an old neighbour of mine!” Corky’s description had triggered a train of thought Begg was anxious to pursue. “I note you’ve joined Purity Bottomley’s Born Again Tolstoyans and work for the relief of the homeless. Good man!” He pressed a couple of “shields” into the fellow’s palm.
“God bless you, Seaton Begg!”
“It’s you, Mr. Clarke, God will surely bless! Soon all Britain will have reason to thank you. Farewell, my good chap. I must shortly interview my next witness.” And with a flourish Begg opened the door for the reformed crook, telling his housekeeper, Mrs. Curry, to preserve his peace at all costs for the next hour. Whereupon he went immediately to his shelves, selecting a large German quarto, a jar of his favourite M&E and a baroque meerschaum. Reading eagerly he flung himself down at his table, his pipe already forgotten. Begg was smiling thoughtfully to himself when Mrs. Curry announced his next visitor.
Hamish Ogilvy worked as a porter-attendant at the New Billingsgate Fish Museum. Still in his uniform, he was a small, eager man with a soft Highland accent. On special leave, he was clearly in awe of the famous Seaton Begg as the investigator kindly coaxed his story from him.
On the night of the BBIC murders, Ogilvy, staying late in attendance on a pregnant cuttlefish, had missed the evening bus and decided to risk the walk to Liverpool Street. Ogilvy was soon lost in another fog, arriving at last in Crookburn Street at the corner of Sweetcake Court where BBIC’s brutal architecture was softened by the weather. Pausing to read a sign, he heard a cab behind him. Hoping to ask his way, he saw the cab had come for a shady figure hurrying from BBIC. “I saw her face through the taxi window, Sir Seaton. She was staring back, terrified out of her skin. It was that poor, loony Mrs. Ratchet, who used to be in the government. Pale as a ghost. I could almost hear her teeth chattering.”
Ogilvy was also rewarded and thanked, though less enthusiastically. Reluctantly Begg decided to follow up the account. Apart from Barbican Begg, Lady Ratchet was the only surviving BBIC director. Under the impression that she was variously the English Queen, the Israeli Prime Minister, the American President and Mary, Queen of Scots, she was at best an unreliable witness. She had moved South of the River on the assumption that her enemies could not cross running water and refused all visitors, even relatives. She went out only to “go over my books.” She did not trust modern electronics so her accountants kept a large ledger which she inspected every month. She agreed to a telephone interview only after Begg threatened, under his new powers, forcible entrance of her Esher Tudor castle.
Gentle and firm as possible with the babbling old creature, Begg