Daniel O'Thunder. Ian Weir

blink. There was a smell about him, a strange smell of lavender water and something else, something dark and sharp. Sulphur?

      “I expect you’d do almost anything I asked,” he said, musing. “A girl like you. For a guinea.”

      “Then you’d be wrong, mister.”

      “Would I?”

      “Yes. You’d be expecting wrong.”

      “But you’d do anything for five guineas, wouldn’t you?”

      “Five?”

      With five guineas in my hand I could leave this hole. With five guineas every week, I could be someone different completely. I could have my own rooms, and a servant. I could have a carriage. There were girls all over Mayfair, set up like ladies, cos they had a gentleman who would give them five guineas a week.

      He smiled a little, as if he’d seen the thought cross my mind.

      Oh, Christ—but not five guineas from this one. Not five hundred guineas, if it had to come from this one.

      “What would you want,” I heard myself asking, “for five guineas?”

      He mused for another minute. He was trying to pass for a younger man, maybe five-and-forty, but that was done with paints and dye. He was much older, but there was a ropey strength about him too.

      “I think what I want most of all,” he said finally, “is for someone to die. Yes, I believe I’d like someone to die, for sheer love of me. For five guineas, would you do that?”

      The window behind me was tiny. Even small as I am, I’d never squeeze through. To reach the door, I’d have to get past him, and he knew it.

      “I think you’d best leave, now.”

      “It’s only dying. Everyone does it, sooner or later. One way or another.”

      “I’m warning you. If you don’t leave, I’ll shout for Tim Diggory.”

      “You’d certainly die for ten guineas—because I’d give them to Mother Clatterballock. For ten guineas, she’d hand you over with her blessings. She’d applaud while the deed was done, and for an extra shilling she’d lay on refreshments.”

      “Were you the one that followed me, tonight?”

      It came in a cold flash. I remembered his footsteps on the stairs as he followed me up to the room. With a limp: clip-clop.

      “Tim!”

      But Tim was three long rickety flights below. Oh Christ, I thought, you’ve done it now. You’ve really done it, haven’t you, Nell? You’ve finally done it this time.

      “God’s blood, you’re so much like her.”

      He’d opened the locket, and was looking at the little picture inside. Something had shifted in his face.

      “You truly are. You’re so much like your mother.”

      This came so unexpected that I just stared at him.

      “Her picture, in the locket. That’s your mother, isn’t it? Yes, I saw it in you straight away, outside the theatre. It’s not the features, exactly, but the expression. The eyes, and the set of the mouth. For a moment, I actually thought it was her, come back to me.”

      I made a grab, and snatched my locket back. He was looking at me with the strangest expression.

      “You never knew my mother.”

      “I knew your mother well. I had her many times.”

      “You’re a liar!”

      “But not about this.”

      I was trembling. From the cold of him, and more than that.

      “Where is she, then? Tell me about her.” My voice was shaking now. “If you can tell me where she is, I’ll do what you want.”

      But whatever he was going to say was lost in the ruckus that bust out suddenly from the next room. It had been brewing for a bit—a man’s voice, muttering, and a woman’s, rising. I’d hardly noticed, for obvious reasons. But suddenly it was shouts and crashes, and the man hollering that he’d been bit, and someone’s head being pounded against the wall, and the woman—it was Luna Queerendo; I’d know that voice anywhere—shrieking for Tim Diggory. Except she wasn’t shrieking for Tim, but shrieking at him.

      “Take yer filthy—stop it! Oh please, for Christ’s sake—no!—you filthy—help! Murder! Murder!”

      How it happened I don’t exactly know, but in the next second I was out the door and onto the landing. There was a great splintering as Luna crashed clear through the door of the next room, with Tim on top. More people were coming up the stairs, shouting for Tim to let her go. But none of it was going to help, for Tim was going to kill her.

      He’d always been sweet on Luna, and followed her about— being just her type, since no one was softer in the head than Tim Diggory. He never quite worked up his nerve to touch, cos I think he actually had a notion that she might yet fall in love with him, even though she treated him like a dog. Besides he was terrified of Mother C, who warned him if he pestered the girls she’d have him gelded like a Clydesdale, and his onions stewed for oysters. But tonight, something had happened. I suppose he’d turned that eye on Luna—the one that flashed—and now all Hell had risen up inside. He had her by the hair with one hand, pinned down on the landing, and in half a second Luna was dead. Cos Tim was rearing over her and in his other hand he had a cudgel.

      But the killing blow never fell. Tim went staggering forward and headfirst into the wall, so hard I swear the whole house shook. Someone had come thundering up the stairs behind, and slammed straight into him. It was a man with a shaggy head of yellow hair, and a great wide face, crying in a voice with an Irish lilt: “This won’t do, brother! No, brother—this won’t do at all!”

      He had a spider’s legs, long and spindly—except they weren’t really, which I didn’t realize till afterwards. It was just that the body on top of them legs was so wide, a great barrel body and the arms of a blacksmith.

      But Tim Diggory was even bigger. Tim had his cudgel too, and now both Tim’s eyes were wild. When the Irishman seen them eyes, he groaned.

      “It’s the Devil!” cried the Irishman. “Aw, look at this poor man—it’s the Devil himself has risen up within. But we don’t despair—no, never that, no matter what. For when the Devil rises up, we cut him down to size again.”

      Tim Diggory swung his cudgel in a blow that would dash the Irishman’s brains out. But the Irishman’s mauleys were raised, and he stepped inside the sweep of it. One, two—them mauleys landed on Tim’s ribs with a sound like pumpkins dropped from the roof to the cobbles.

      “Forgive me, brother—and I hope you and I may yet be friends— but I will not abide the Devil.”

      The next blow was flush on Tim’s jaw like chopping wood. Tim’s legs gave a wobble, and then down he went like an ox in a slaughteryard.

      “And look how strong the Devil is still.”

      Tim was struggling to rise to his knees again, grovelling for his cudgel. So the Irishman dropped onto his haunches, which put a stop to whatever the Devil had in mind, since the haunches were on Tim’s head.

      The stairs were packed with gawkers now, peering and exclaiming, and trying to get a glimpse of what was going on through the bodies wedged in front. In the midst was two nice-dressed older women in grey cloaks and bonnets, fluttering wide-eyed with distress and making little strangled cooing sounds like doves. It crossed my mind to wonder what on earth they was doing in a place like this, but like all the rest I couldn’t take my eyes off the Irishman. His face was broad and ugly and red with breathing hard, with side-whiskers like hedges and a nose like a knob of gristle. But there was something about him that made you hold your breath and pray he’d look your way.