Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [44]
“A comb?” asked Susan. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s quite straightforward sympathetic magic,” said Magnus. “In essence, the adept makes an identical copy of the target’s favorite comb, using some of their hair. Then, some distance away, they drip moondawn daffodil poison on the copy and by magical transference, the poison soaks into the real comb. The next time it is used, the poison enters the victim through their scalp and kills them instantly, with the perpetrator nowhere to be seen. Even better, someone else may have been plying the comb, so they get the blame.”
“I see,” mused Susan. “And is this process of distillation difficult to manage? Does it require any particular apparatus?”
“Yes it does,” said Magnus. “And I see what you’re thinking. Interestingly, and I never realized it before, it also ties in with a comb being the typical sympathetic object of moondawn daffodil poisoning.”
“Why?”
“Because the ritual involves the daffodils being cut up with a silver blade and placed in a retort with a scented oil. A silver razor, or scissors, would work a treat, and for the scented oil you could use the barber’s favorite—”
“Macassar oil!” interrupted Susan.
“Indeed,” said Magnus. “So the adept works with hair, silver razor or scissors, and hair oil.”
“What else?”
“It needs to take place underground, with the usual harmonization requirement,” mused Magnus. “An old Mithraeum, or something like that. An Anglo-Saxon crypt would work, maybe a Norman one at a pinch. It all points to one of those below-street barbers—”
“How long does the ritual take? How much time do we have?”
“I’m not entirely sure, never having undertaken the dastardly deed myself. But I seem to recall the daffs have to fester for several days in the oil, with lots of highly repetitive incantation . . .”
“So we need to look for an underground barbershop on the site of an old temple or church.”
“Yes . . . it will also be relatively close to Green Park, as the daffodils have to be in oil before the sun is fully up. Even so, it could take a while to find out somewhere that matches all that. There are a lot of barbers about. Damned tedious to sort through them all, looking for old temples or whatnot.”
“You could ask your cousin.”
“Sherlock? He hates this kind of . . . oh . . . Mycroft. I suppose I could think about that.”
“It might even be in his bailiwick, as it were,” said Susan. “After all, who would our adept want to poison in this way? Someone difficult to reach by other means.”
“Yes,” said Magnus. “The Queen is one possible target, though perhaps the prime minister is more likely. Easier to get his hair, anyway. I suppose if I put it like that, Mycroft might even be polite.”
He tapped the ceiling twice, and the small hatch beneath the driver’s seat slid back.
“Carstairs! The Diogenes Club, thank you.”
FOLLOWING HIS VISIT, Sir Magnus returned to the hackney in a bad mood and handed Susan a note on which an address was written in Mycroft’s distinctive copperplate.
“It really is the most boorish place,” complained the baronet. “All I said was ‘Good morning, Mycroft.’ I whispered, but you would have thought I was bellowing out ‘Hello, ladies, I’m just looking in’ from the way they carried on. Mycroft wouldn’t even talk to me, I had to write everything down for him.”
“You know their rules,” said Susan. “I believe you talk just to annoy him. Anyway, you got an address.”
“Gregory Cornet’s in Curzon Street is the only barbershop that fits all the criteria,” said Sir Magnus. “Its lower cellar was a temple to Bast, once upon a time.”
“The Egyptian goddess?”
“Yes, the fiscal procurator for several successive Roman governors was Egyptian and had a thing for the old cat . . . I get my hair cut at Cornet’s by Radziwill. I do hope he’s not involved. A good barber is hard to find.”
“Really?” asked Susan, pointedly staring at the not very successful Vandyke which was a fairly recent addition to Magnus