This stipulation she decided to ignore.
“Perhaps I’m wrong,” she said to me, the last time I saw her, “but I believe it could be dangerous. Individual objects are only things, but when gathered together, they became something more—first in Mr. Harcourt’s imagination, and then in reality.
“The concept in law of the deodand was that something which had once done evil could be remade into something useful, even holy, by good works. That was not allowed to anything in Mr. Harcourt’s collection—his use of those things was opposed to good; it venerated the evil deed.”
Her way of redemption was to donate everything that remained in the house to a good cause. Being extra cautious, she chose one so far away that she would not have to fear an accidental encounter with her former possessions, and had everything sent to a leper colony on the other side of the world.
I took it as a positive sign that she did not feel obliged to sacrifice herself in a similar way.
She decided to share a flat with her school friend, and embarked on a course of training in bookkeeping and office management.
Jesperson and I, naturally, discussed the details of this case—which began with one unsolved murder, and concluded with two—at great length when we were alone together, and also with Mrs. Jesperson, but we were never able to agree upon how to assign the blame for the killings. We all agreed that both Adcocks and Harcourt were murdered, yet we also agreed that if there was no murderer, murder could not have been done.
I hope our next case will be less of a curiosity.
LORD JOHN AND THE PLAGUE OF ZOMBIES
by Diana Gabaldon
New York Times bestselling author Diana Gabaldon is a winner of the Quill Award and of the Corine International Prize for Fiction. She’s the author of the hugely popular Outlander series, international bestsellers that include Outlander (published as Cross Stitch in the UK), Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, and An Echo in the Bone, plus a graphic novel, The Exile, based on Outlander. The Lord John Grey novels are a subset of the Outlander series, being part of the whole but focused on the character of Lord John and structured (more or less) as historical mystery. The Lord John series includes the novels Lord John and the Private Matter, Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, and Lord John and the Scottish Prisoner (to be published Fall 2011), and a collection of Lord John novellas, Lord John and the Hand of Devils (including “Lord John and the Hellfire Club,” “Lord John and the Succubus,” and “Lord John and the Haunted Soldier”). She has also written The Outlandish Companion, a nonfiction volume, providing background, trivia, and resources, as well as articles on the writing and research of the series.
Here Lord John brings an armed force to the beautiful but faintly sinister island paradise of Jamaica, where he is ordered to suppress an incipient slave rebellion. The uprising is the least of his problems, what with murder, cannibalism, spiders, snakes, and other deadly creatures. Including, of course, zombies.
THERE WAS A SNAKE ON THE DRAWING ROOM TABLE. A SMALL SNAKE, but still. Lord John Grey wondered whether to say anything about it.
The governor picked up a cut-crystal decanter that stood not six inches from the coiled reptile, appearing quite oblivious. Perhaps it was a pet, or perhaps the residents of Jamaica were accustomed to keep a tame snake in residence, to kill rats. Judging from the number of rats he’d seen since leaving the ship, this seemed sensible—though this particular snake didn’t appear large enough to take on even your average mouse.
The wine was decent, but served at body heat, and it seemed to pass directly through Grey’s gullet and into his blood. He’d had nothing to eat since before dawn, and felt the muscles of his lower back begin to tingle and relax. He put the glass down; he wanted a clear head.
“I cannot tell you, sir, how happy I am to receive you,” said the governor, putting down his own glass, empty. “The position is acute.”
“So you said in your letter to Lord North. The situation has not changed appreciably since then?” It had been nearly three months since that letter was written; a lot could change in three months.
He thought Governor Warren shuddered, despite the temperature in the room.
“It has become worse,” the governor said, picking up the decanter. “Much worse.”
Grey felt his shoulders tense, but spoke calmly.
“In what way? Have there been more—” He hesitated, searching for the right word. “More demonstrations?” It was a mild word to describe the burning of cane fields, the looting of plantations, and the wholesale liberation of slaves.
Warren gave a hollow laugh. His handsome face was beading with sweat. There was a crumpled handkerchief on the arm of his chair, and he picked it up to mop at his skin. He hadn’t shaved this morning—or, quite possibly, yesterday; Grey could hear the faint rasp of his dark whiskers on the cloth.
“Yes. More destruction. They burnt a sugar press last month, though still in the remoter parts of the island. Now, though . . .” He paused, licking dry lips as he poured more wine. He made a cursory motion toward Grey’s glass, but Grey shook his head.
“They’ve begun to move toward King’s Town,” Warren said. “It’s deliberate, you can see it. One plantation after another, in a line coming straight down the mountain.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t say straight. Nothing in this bloody place is straight, starting with the landscape.”
That was true enough; Grey had admired the vivid green peaks that soared up from the center of the island, a rough backdrop for the amazingly blue water and the white sand shore.
“People are terrified,” Warren went on, seeming to get a grip on himself, though his face was once again slimy with sweat, and his hand shook on the decanter. It occurred to Grey, with a slight shock, that the governor himself was terrified. “I have merchants—and their wives—in my office every day, begging, demanding protection from the blacks.”
“Well, you may assure them that protection will be provided them,” Grey said, sounding as reassuring as possible. He had half a battalion with him—three hundred infantry troops, and a company of artillery, equipped with small cannon. Enough to defend King’s Town, if necessary. But his brief from Lord North was not merely to defend and reassure the merchants and shipping of King’s Town and Spanish Town—nor even to provide protection to the larger sugar plantations. He was charged with putting down the slave rebellion entirely. Rounding up the ringleaders and putting a stop to the violence altogether.
The snake on the table moved suddenly, uncoiling itself in a languid manner. It startled Grey, who had begun to think it was a decorative sculpture. It was exquisite: only seven or eight inches long, and a beautiful pale yellow marked with brown, a faint iridescence in its scales like the glow of good Rhenish wine.