Hell to Pay (5 page)

“I did question every member of the staff most thoroughly, sir. They would have told me if they’d known anything. Anything at all.”

“On the evening Melissa vanished, did you admit any unusual or unexpected visitors to the Hall?”

“People are always coming and going, sir.”

I gave him one of my hard looks. “Are you always this evasive, Hobbes?”

“I do my best, sir. This is Miss Melissa’s room.”

We stopped before a door that looked no different from any of the others. Solid wood, sensibly closed. No obvious signs of attack or forced entry. I tried the brass handle, and it turned easily in my grasp. I pushed the door open and looked in. The room before me was completely empty. No boy band posters on the walls, no fluffy animals, no furniture. Just four bare walls, a bare bed, and an even barer wooden floor. Nothing to show a teenage girl had ever occupied this room. I glared at Hobbes.

“Tell me her room didn’t always look like this.”

“It didn’t always look like this, sir.”

“Did the Griffin order this room emptied?”

“No, sir. This is exactly how I found it.”

“Explain,” I said, just a little dangerously.

“Yes, sir. Miss Melissa was supposed to join the rest of the family for the evening meal. The Master and Mistress have always been very firm that all members of the family should dine together, when in residence. Master William and Miss Eleanor were present, and her son Master Paul, but Miss Melissa was late, which was most unlike her. When she didn’t appear, I was sent to summon her. When I got here, the door was ajar. I knocked, but received no reply. When I ventured to look inside, in case she was feeling unwell, I found the room as you see it now. Miss Melissa never was much of a one for comforts or trinkets, but even so, this seemed extreme. I immediately raised the alarm, and security searched the Hall from top to bottom, but there was no trace to be found of Miss Melissa.”

I looked at him for a long moment. “Are you saying,” I managed finally, “that not only did Melissa’s kidnappers remove her from this Hall without anyone noticing, but that they walked off with all her belongings as well? And no-one saw anything? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I have a major slap with your name on it in my pocket, Hobbes.”

“I feel I should also point out that no magics will function in Griffin Hall unless authorised by a member of the Griffin family, sir. So Miss Melissa could not have been magicked out of her room…”

“Not without her cooperation or that of someone in her family.”

“Which is of course quite impossible, sir.”

“No, Hobbes, nailing a live octopus to a wall is impossible, everything else is merely difficult.”

“I bow to your superior knowledge, sir.”

I was still thinking
Inside job
, but I wasn’t ready to say it out loud.

I peered into the empty room again and tried to call up my gift, hoping for at least a glimpse of what happened, but my inner eye wouldn’t open. Someone with a hell of a lot of power really didn’t want me using my gift in this case. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Someone was playing games with me…

Footsteps sounded in the corridor behind me. I looked round just in time to see a uniformed maid come to a halt before Hobbes and curtsy respectfully. Damn, the servants moved quietly around here. She bobbed a quick curtsy to me, too, as an afterthought.

“Pardon me, Mr. Hobbes, sir,” said the maid, in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “But the Mistress said to tell you she wants a word with Mr. Taylor before he leaves.”

Hobbes looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

“Oh please teach me how to do that,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to be able to raise a single eyebrow like that.”

The maid got the giggles and had to turn away. Hobbes just looked at me.

“Oh what the hell,” I said. “Might as well talk to the Mistress. She might know something.”

“I wouldn’t bank on it, sir,” said Hobbes.

The maid hurried off on business of her own, and Hobbes led me all the way back up the corridor to Mariah Griffin’s room. I was curious as to why she would want to see me and what she might be prepared to tell me about her grand-daughter that Jeremiah wouldn’t, or couldn’t. Women often share secrets within a family that the men know nothing about. We finally came to a stop before another anonymous door.

“Mariah Griffin’s room, sir,” said Hobbes.

I looked at him thoughtfully. “Not Jeremiah and Mariah’s room? They have separate bedrooms?”

“Indeed, sir.”

I didn’t ask. He wouldn’t have told me anyway.

I nodded to him, and he knocked very politely on the door. A loud female voice said
Enter!
and Hobbes pushed the door open and stepped back so I could enter first. I sauntered in as though I was thinking of renting the place, then trashing it. Even though it was what passed for midafternoon in the Nightside, Mariah Griffin was still in bed. She was sitting up in a filmy white silk nightdress, propped up and supported by a whole bunch of puffy pink pillows. The walls were pink, too. In fact, the whole oversized room had a kind of pink ambience, like walking into a nursery. The bed was big enough for several people, if they were of a friendly inclination, and Mariah Griffin was surrounded by a small army of maids, advisors, and social secretaries. Some of them grudgingly made way as I took up a position at the foot of the bed.

The elaborate and no doubt very expensive counterpane was covered with the remains of several half-eaten meals, even more half-consumed boxes of chocolates, and dozens of scattered glossy gossip magazines. An open bottle of champagne stood chilling in an ice bucket, conveniently near at hand. Mariah conspicuously ignored me, apparently intent on all the people milling around her bed, competing noisily for her attention. So I stood at the foot of the bed and studied her openly.

Mariah Griffin was on the plump side of pretty, pleasantly rounded if not actually voluptuous, from the old school of beauty. The hair piled up thickly on top of her head was so pale a yellow as to be almost colourless, but her face made up for that with bright gaudy makeup. Scarlet bee-stung lips, rouged cheeks, dark purple eye-shadow, and eyelashes so thick it was a wonder she could see past them. Mariah looked to be in her early thirties, and had done for many centuries. Her strong bone structure gave her face what character it had, undermined by a vague manner and a pettishness in the voice. She looked more like an indulged mistress than a wife of long standing.

Various maids and flunkies clustered around her, attending to her every need almost before she could think of them; plumping up her pillows, offering her a new box of chocolates or freshening her glass of champagne, as necessary. Mariah ignored them all, giving her entire attention to the day’s correspondence and the updating of her social diary. It soon became clear that her default expression was a pout, and whenever events seemed to conspire against her, she would lash out feebly with a plump hand at whoever happened to be closest at that moment. The maids and flunkies took the blows without flinching. The fashion and social advisors were all careful to stay just out of arm’s reach, without being seen to do so. Those nearest to me studied me carefully out of the corners of their eyes, and after a few moments to raise their courage, began making pointed little remarks to each other, loud enough for me to hear.

“Well, well, look who it isn’t—the famous John Taylor.”

“Infamous, I would have said. I always thought he’d be taller. You know, more butch.”

“And that trench coat is so last year…I could run him up something really daring in mauve.”

“Ask for his measurements!”

“Oh, I don’t like to!”

There’s definitely something about the Nightside that brings out the stereotypical behavior in some people. Emboldened that I hadn’t taken offence, a large gentleman in chin-to-toe black leather glared at me openly.

“Well, lo and behold—the Nightside’s very own private dick…always trying to slip in where he isn’t wanted.”

“Lo
and
behold?” I said. “I can behold all you want, but if loing is required, someone’s going to have to coach me. I’ve never been too clear on what loing actually involves…There ought to be an instructional booklet;
Loing for Beginners
, or
A Bluffer’s Guide to Loing
.”

“You start anything with me, John Taylor, and I’ll summon security, see if I don’t. And then there’ll be trouble!”

“Will there be loing as well?” I said hopefully.

“Why is this woman still writing to me?” Mariah Griffin said loudly, waving a letter in one plump hand to draw everyone’s attention back to her. “She knows very well I’m not talking to her! My rules are very clear: miss two of my parties, and you’re Out. I don’t care if her children had leprosy…”

She was looking at everyone in the room except me, but the whole performance was for my benefit. She carried on complaining about this and that to her various advisors, who all gave her their full attention if not their interest. Mariah desperately wanted to come across as regal, but she lacked the necessary concentration. She’d start off on one subject, switch to another, get sidetracked, then forget where she’d started. She fluttered from one topic to another like a butterfly, always attracted by something else that promised to be a little bit more interesting or colourful. I got bored waiting, so I started wandering round the room, looking at things, picking them up and putting them down in a deliberately careless way.

If that didn’t work, I’d start tossing them out the windows.

There were luxurious items as far as the eye could see, delicate china figures, antique dolls, glass animals, and porcelain so fragile it looked like it would shatter if you breathed on it too heavily. All carefully laid out and presented on antique furnishings of the highest order. Some deep-seated anarchist part of me longed to run amok with a sledgehammer, or perhaps a length of steel chain…I eased my inner barbarian by helping myself to chocolates from the opened boxes. All the soft centres were gone, but I made do.

Judging by the pile of still-unopened letters cascading across Mariah’s bedside table, she got a lot of correspondence. E-mail never really caught on in the Nightside—far too easy to hack or intercept. And there was always the problem of computers developing sentience, or getting possessed by forces from the outer dark…and techno-exorcists don’t come cheap. Handwritten letters are the done thing these days, especially in what some people like to think of as the Highest Circles. The immortal Griffins are the closest thing the Nightside has to its own aristocracy, which meant every social climber in the place was desperate to get close to them, in the hope that some of the Griffins’ standing and glamour would rub off on the more favoured supplicants. Snobbery is a terrible vice, as easy to get hooked on as heroin and as devastating to give up when you’re no longer In, and going through withdrawal symptoms.

Even royalty came to sit at the feet of the Griffins and beg discreetly for boons and favours. We get them all in the Nightside—kings and queens in exile, princes of This and lairds of That, and every rank and station you can think of. They arrive via Timeslips from other worlds and times and dimensions, cut off forever from their own people, power, and riches. Some buckle down and make something new of themselves. Most don’t. Because they don’t know how. They still expect to be treated as royalty just because they once were, and get really upset when the Nightside makes it clear it doesn’t give a damn. Mostly they hole up together in private little members-only clubs, where they can all address each other by their proper titles and spend most of their time angling for invitations to the Griffins’ latest ball or soiree. Because acceptance by the Griffins validates their special nature in the eyes of all. Unfortunately, there are so many aristos running around that the Griffins can pick and choose. And they do. You get one chance to prove yourself interesting or amusing, and then you’re Out. Zog, King of the Pixies, was notorious for continually trying to crash the Griffins’ parties, even after it was made clear to him that he was not welcome, and never would be, no matter with whom he arrived.

(He peed on the floor. Apparently where he came from, a servant used to follow him around with a bucket. And a mop.)

Mariah had always had pretensions to taste and style, but unfortunately possessed none herself, and so was dependent upon a series of fashion and social advisors to help her decide who was In and who was Out, and which fads and styles would be followed each Season. But it was Mariah alone who enforced these decisions, with a whim of iron. And so the advisors shoved and elbowed at each other to get closest to Mariah, and argued every point with loud and affected voices, accompanied by large, dramatic gestures. Which occasionally degenerated into blows or slapping matches. Advisors could make or break a social reputation with a word or a glance, and everyone knew it, which was why these poor unfortunates had many acquaintances but few real friends. If the truth were known, they were probably even more paranoid and insecure than the social climbers who hung on their every word.

In the end Mariah got bored or impatient pretending I wasn’t there and abruptly ordered everyone else out of the room. Including Hobbes, still lurking by the door. Everyone left, with varying degrees of reluctance, bowing and scraping and blowing kisses all the way, until finally the door closed behind the last of them, and Mariah Griffin and I were left looking at each other. She studied me coolly, trying to decide whether I was someone who could be commanded or someone she would have to flatter a little to get her way. In the end she smiled sweetly, batted her long eyelashes coquettishly, and patted the pink eiderdown beside her.

“Come here and sit with me, John Taylor. So I can get a proper look at you.”

I walked forward, pulled up a chair, and sat down facing her, careful to maintain a safe distance. She pouted at me and eased down the front of her nightdress a little more, so I could get a good look at her cleavage. She wasn’t upset by my caution. I could see it in her eyes. She always liked it better if the prey struggled a little first. Up close her scent was almost overpowering, the reek of crushed petals soaked in pure animal musk.