“Mayhap he is enamoured of the baroness and saw his cousin as a rival,” Hero said. “She has turned the head of more than one gentleman ere this.”
“This was no crime passionel, Hero. It was as cold and deliberate as if it were done by guillotine. I give you that Nightingale possesses as ill a temper as I ever saw, and might strike out of wrath, or passion, or wounded pride — but Mr. Paskett was not run through, nor was he felled by a pistol ball, as is likely had his death been in consequence of a matter of honour.”
“How was it done, then?”
“I require more evidence. Paskett’s grave has been robbed. You know why, of course.”
“I should say, so that his corpse might be anatomised.”
“Precisely. And that means it was stolen at the behest of a surgeon or physician, who should consider it a fine opportunity, for who’s to complain if an unconsecrated grave be violated? Nevertheless, Nightingale sought to prevent my making inquiry of the local doctor, claiming he was called away to attend a patient in the country. It may be true, but I do not believe it: A liar’s intelligence is no intelligence at all. In any case, it is impossible that I should canvass the matter with Dr. Witherspoon now, without I alert the lieutenant. But I think I shall not need his testimony after all, for the solution to the puzzle wants but a single fact, for which I need not apply to the doctor at all.”
“And what may that be?”
“I need to know what direction the wind was blowing on the night of the apparition.”
“That you may leave to me. I might easily find the answer at any farm with a weather vane.”
“So you should, Hero. Then until to-morrow.”
The summer sun having risen early to herald a glorious day, Treviscoe quietly departed the town-house while Nightingale was still sleeping off the previous evening’s vinous debauch. Hero was waiting for him in the courtyard of the George, already mounted. He had risen even earlier to put Treviscoe’s question to a local denizen, and was ready with the answer.
“On the night of July the twenty-second, there was a light breeze out of the north-east by east,” he said. “I should regard the testimony thereof as particularly reliable, as the man who gave it was an erstwhile naval gentleman, and finicky about such things.”
“I could not ask for better. Now to Stonehenge, Hero,” Treviscoe replied, “and thence westward.”
The sarsens cast long shadows on the sward, but any menace their crude architecture might have suggested was dispelled by the languor-inducing warmth of the golden sun. Gossamer flies and grasshoppers flitted lazily through the air. In the centre of the monument, exactly where the body had been found, Treviscoe consulted his compass, and indicated their course with his hand. They departed at a deliberate pace.
“Keep a sharp lookout, Hero.”
“I shall, though it might be of some little assistance if I knew what we were looking for.”
“Didn’t I say? Any of three things: sign of flagration in the grass, or a large basket, or what might appear to be a silken theatre curtain.”
Hero knew better than to evince any surprise at looking for a theatre curtain in an expanse of meadowland. Instead, he dispassionately asked, “How large a basket? Of a size to hold a bushel’s worth of com?”
“Larger, Hero — videlicet, large enough to comfortably accommodate a standing man.”
Hero creased his brow with surprise and then laughed in sudden enlightenment. “To accommodate—? Of course! A French balloon!”
“Rather an English aerostat — the invention whereby Mr. Paskett intended to make his fortune.”
“How long have you known?”
“I did not know until I saw your letter from London, had minutely examined Mr. Paskett’s choice of reading, understood the significance of his woollen scarf, and the iron filings embedded in the soles of his shoes, but I suspected it from the first. Consider the circumstances. First, the nature of his wounds. His body was crushed. What is the most likely cause of such extensive damage? What else, but a great fall?”
“The very fall of Lucifer.”
“That irony was not lost on me, Hero. Now, how can a man fall where there be neither mountain nor tower? He must be lifted into the air. The only means whereof I am aware to perform that task is an aerostatic balloon. And then there was the mysterious flash of fire in the welkin that night, in the direction of Stonehenge. I consulted with Mr. Herschel and his sister regarding meteors, and was convinced that the event was not any ordinary meteor, and I realized that although the local populace were gravely in error with respect to it being a demonic manifestation, yet they were right that such a singular occurrence must be connected to Mr. Paskett’s weird death. Recall also the evidence of fire upon and about Mr. Paskett’s person. It requires no great imagination to connect the fire that burned the body to that fire which Nat Spurlock saw in the sky.
“Finally, there was another clew in Paskett’s letter to Lady Fitzdenys. Do you recall his words? He wrote that his ascension was soon to begin — his ascension, Hero. It seemed to me that he used that word not figuratively, but literally — he meant that he was soon to fulfil his ambition to lift himself into the air.”
“But you were not yet confident in your theory.”
“Because every instance might be more sensibly explained by other means, Hero — it is only when they are taken in the aggregate that an aerostat is suggested. Paskett might have been writing poetically — he was, after all, writing to his paramour. The flash of light might have been a true meteor. His body might have been crushed by some mundane means and conveyed to Stonehenge. I needed further evidence. Which, I may say, you were instrumental in providing me.”
“I understand that his purchases of silk, hempen rope, and beeswax were evidence that he was constructing a balloon, they being necessary components for such a device, but what was the significance of iron filings found on the shoes?”
“Ah. There are two kinds of aerostat, Hero. The Montgolfière brothers use hot air to buoy their inventions, but Professor Charles and Monsieur Robert have improved upon them by making use of inflammable air, Monsieur Lavoisier’s hydrogene, to give buoyancy to their balloon. Only last year, they flew in one such marvel from Paris to Nesles-la-Vallée, a distance of almost thirty miles.
“But it were not their success, but rather the risk they undertook, which suggested to me that Mr. Paskett attempted to replicate their experiment. Inflammable air, as the name denotes, is most volatile, and prone to explode in a violent flash, such as our rustic acquaintance Nat Spurlock saw that fateful night. If Mr. Paskett’s balloon had exploded, it was evident that it had been constructed along the lines of the Charles and Robert aerostat. Furthermore, inflammable air does not exist in nature, but must be manufactured, and industry always leaves traces.
“There are two methods for creating great quantities of the gas. One, invented by Lavoisier, is to drip water through a musket barrel, which has been heated till it glows red; but the more common technique is to pour oil of vitriol over iron shavings.”
“I gave you the knowledge that Paskett had acquired the vitriol, and you found the shavings for yourself.”