Newbury was right. Somehow, the doctor had escaped.
Chapter Twenty Two
Newbury slammed awake with a start. He was momentarily disorientated; he had no idea where he was. Slowly, the room began to resolve around him. A bookcase. A writing desk. A fireplace with a low flame, guttering in the grate. He felt dazed. He was in his drawing room.
After a moment, he realised there was someone standing beside him, calling his name. He looked round. It was Mrs. Bradshaw, her hands on her hips. He had the sense that she had been there for some time. "Good morning, Sir Maurice. Will you be taking breakfast today?" she asked in her dulcet, Scottish tones, when she noticed he was final y paying attention. She looked him up and down. "Whatever have you been up to for your suit to be in such a condition?" She said this with a weariness born of familiarity, of one accustomed to her employer's more bizarre pursuits. She expected no answer. If she were concerned for his health, she showed no signs of it.
Newbury took stock of the situation. He was lounging in a Chesterfield, still wearing yesterday's suit, which was torn at the knees and covered in grime from rolling around in alleyways, factory roofs and an Underground station. His elbows were scuffed, and his jacket was sliced across the front from the swipe of a sword blade. He had not yet attended to his toilet, either, meaning his face was still crusty with blood and oil. He realised he must have looked a pretty sight to his housekeeper.
There was a heavy weight on his chest. He looked down. A book. Meyer's Treatise on Futurism.
Beside his chair, on an occasional table, was a near-empty glass of red wine. He knew what else had been in that glass, too. Sighing, Newbury looked up into the impenetrable face of Mrs. Bradshaw.
"What time do you make it, Mrs. Bradshaw?"
She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. "Time for breakfast, I should say, sir."
Newbury grinned. "Very well. I shall make haste to my rooms where I shall endeavour to make myself presentable. My thanks to you, Mrs. Bradshaw. I suspect I might have slept all day if it had not been for your timely interruption."
The housekeeper smiled without saying another word, and quit the room. Newbury listened to the tread of her feet as she descended the stairs to the kitchen below. Then, heaving himself out of his chair, his bones creaking after hours spent in a less-than-ideal posture, he repaired to his rooms to wash and dress.
After washing and cleaning his wounds – which, Newbury was surprised to discover, were more plentiful than he had imagined – he had partaken of Mrs. Bradshaw's excellent breakfast, before heading out to meet Miss Hobbes at the museum as they had arranged the previous evening.
As he trundled along in a hansom, Newbury considered the events of the theatre. After discovering that Knox had somehow managed to slip his bonds and escape the venue, Newbury, exasperated, had escorted Miss Hobbes to her Kensington home, where, after he had fil ed her in regarding the situation with Ashford, he had insisted she took the opportunity to gain an evening's rest. There was very little else that could have been achieved that night, and not being aware of the ful extent of Knox's plans, they were unable to predict his movements.
What was clear to Newbury was the fact that Knox had been hunting for the key to the Osiris Ritual. Winthrop's and Blake's deaths had been inconsequential to Knox; they were killed by virtue of the fact that they were in his way, regardless of the fact that they had been the ones to recover the artefacts he desired. That much was obvious. But had Knox been waiting for them to return from Egypt? Did he already have a notion of what the ritual involved? The girls had been going missing for weeks, if not months, before Winthrop's death. Newbury could only assume that they were somehow central to the execution of the ritual, that the secretion or hormone Knox had been extracting from their brains was an ingredient of the process. But Knox had the contents of the ushabti figures, the outline for the ritual. Everything was supposition until Newbury could study those contents himself.
Al of this had led Newbury to two conclusions. Firstly, that Knox was planning to enact the ritual, and soon, in the hope of artificially extending his own life. Secondly, that Knox was entirely insane. Neither revelation fil ed him with comfort. Newbury knew that he had to stop him. He doubted very much whether Knox would have anything left to offer the Empire, even in captivity, but he also knew it was his duty to bring him in alive. There were questions that needed answering.
Newbury considered their encounter at the theatre. The experience of meeting his predecessor had shaken him, more than he cared to admit. The man was cold and calculating, yet there was a cool intelligence there, too, an understanding of the world and the way that it worked. He was charming, resourceful, a master manipulator. He knew how to twist things to his own ends. Newbury knew that he had al owed the rogue doctor to get under his skin.
And where did that leave Ashford? The man was still rogue, too, still loose in the city and working to his own set of directives, ignoring the imperatives of the Crown. Newbury's mission had not changed, then. Ashford stil needed to be brought in, even if he wasn't the vicious murderer that Newbury had originally mistaken him for.
That only left Miss Hobbes. What had she been trying to tell him down in that dank cellar? He thought he knew, of course, thought he understood the implication of her words.
She knew Knox. At least, she knew of Knox. There could be very few ways in which she had come across that information, and she had divulged far more than she could have possibly learned from the man himself in such a short space of time. He felt torn. What had she been keeping from him? And for how long? The notion tied a knot in the pit of his stomach. If he couldn't trust Veronica…
Yet, how could he doubt her integrity? She had saved his life on numerous occasions. She knew everything about him. And besides, she was more to him than simply an assistant. She was.. important to him. Yet he could not stil the sharp sense of disquiet that had settled upon him, and throughout his breakfast he had replayed the events of the previous evening, over and over in his mind, trying to recall the exact look on her face, the precise tone of her voice. There was definitely more to it than a slip of the tongue. But what? He was not yet sure.
Whatever the case, he feared causing an imbalance in their relationship. He resolved to manage the situation careful y. He would not confront her outright. That, he thought, could bring about only disaster. He needed more time to ponder on the consequences of what she had said.
First, though, he needed to act on the information she had given him. He needed to find Aubrey Knox. Knox was the key. And Newbury had no idea where to start.
Around two hours later, a smartly dressed Newbury, clean shaven and bright with energy, opened the door to his office at the British Museum and stepped inside. He fil ed his lungs, with the familiar smell of the place. For all of his adventuring, Newbury enjoyed the calm respite he found here, the sense of stillness in a world so usually filled with chaos. He glanced around. Both Miss Hobbes and Miss Coulthard were sitting at their desks, studiously engrossed in their work.
"Good morning, ladies." Newbury removed his hat. "Do I smell a fresh pot of Earl Grey brewing in the pot?" He beamed at Miss Coulthard, who was quick to acknowledge his request, shuffling off towards the stove to fetch him a drink. Newbury crossed the room without removing his coat, and stepped through the partition to the smal er office where Veronica was working. "Miss Hobbes. Are you quite wel?"