Hellbound Hearts (11 page)

“I came as quickly as possible,” he said, carrying his case into the foyer, where he set it down as Grandmother Abigail closed the door.

They faced each other in the elaborate foyer, surrounded by the odd religious icons that had been his father's passion and then peculiarity over the years.

“I suppose it's too much to hope that he's turned up,” Colin said.

Grandmother Abigail shook her head, her lips quivering slightly, a tiny yet startling concession to her fear for her son.

“Not a trace, Collie. Not a trace,” the old woman said, and then the familiar, hard mask he knew so well returned. “Word has spread throughout the city for people to be on the lookout for him, but there's been no word. The grounds have been searched and every room in the house, from attic to cellar, but the only thing down there is Edgar's mechanism.”

Colin frowned. “Mechanism?”

His grandmother fluttered her hand in a way that revealed a new delicacy in her, one that he had never seen before, brought on now by fear or advancing age or some combination of the two.

“A strange contraption of metal and wood, with no purpose I ever saw or he ever shared,” she said, her disdain obvious despite her concern for her son.

“I never imagined Father as much of an inventor,” Colin said, mystified.

“He began building it last year, not long after an argument he had with that ugly Irish spiritualist.”

Colin shivered. Finnegan had been a charlatan, no doubt, but his father had always seemed somehow to enjoy the man's company.
The birdlike man with his small eyes and misshapen nose had always tried to get Colin to call him “Uncle Charlie,” but as a boy he had only managed it once or twice, and as a young man, Colin had wanted nothing to do with him.

But he'd been away at university for more than a year, home only for brief visits in the summer and at Christmas, and had never thought to inquire about Finnegan. He had not even been aware that his father and the ugly Irishman had had a falling-out.

Perhaps Sir Edgar Radford had finally realized that, no matter what he claimed or what sort of show he put on, Finnegan's mediumship was a sham. The Irishman had been trying to help Sir Edgar contact his dead wife for more than a decade.

“Do you want to see it?” Grandmother Abigail asked.

Colin frowned. “See what?”

“Why, your father's mechanism. The very thing we were just discussing.”

“I'd think my time better spent in joining the search, wouldn't you?”

Grandmother Abigail dropped her eyes, as though worried what he might see in them. “Perhaps.”

“And yet?” Colin prodded.

The old woman lifted her gaze. “The infernal thing troubles me, that's all. In the past few weeks, your father spent so much of his time down there, and he grew increasingly irritated at any intrusion. Fervent in his efforts and . . . hostile, yes, toward anyone who might question them. But you see, I had no desire to linger in the cellar. The thing makes me uneasy, even if it doesn't . . .”

Dread climbed his spine on skittery spider legs. “Doesn't what?”

Again she glanced downward. “It doesn't work, of course.”

“What is it you're keeping from me, Grandmother?”

With that, she shook her head and waved him toward the stairs. “Go on. Put your things away. Martha has seen to your room, and I'll have a meal prepared for you. I imagine you'll wish to speak to Thomas Church, who is organizing the search.”

Grandmother Abigail turned away, bent with age, and began to retreat along the corridor that led to the kitchens. “Perhaps it's better you keep away from the thing after all.”

Befuddled, Colin watched her go. The old woman had never treated him with the kind of warmth many associated with the role of grandmother, nor did she exhibit the witchlike sort of behavior often portrayed in stories. Neither kindly matron nor wizened crone, Abigail Radford kept mostly to herself and had a fondness for coffee over tea and biscuits rather than scones. When not knitting or strolling the grounds on watch for “pests,” she had forever seemed to lurk just over young Colin's shoulder, ready to tut-tut at any seemingly imminent infraction. If he attempted to slip into the kitchen for an early taste of dinner or to snatch a cooling scone from a baking sheet, she would be there. If he jumped on his father's bed, slid on the banister, or tried to climb up onto the roof of the house, Grandmother Abigail seemed ever present, and able to dissuade him with a clucking of her tongue and the knitting of her brow.

A gray, joyless woman. And yet he knew she believed her efforts were all to keep him safe, and that in her way she loved him, a vital bit of knowledge for a boy who had grown to manhood without the benefit of a mother.

As a child, he had been told that his mother had gone off with the fairies and that one day she might return. A million fantasies had been born of this lie, and he had often imagined himself wandering into the woods in pursuit of his beautiful mother, joining her in the kingdom of the fairies, living with sprites and brownies and other creatures of magic and mischief. By the age of eight, he had begun to realize that this was mere fancy, but it was not until he turned twelve that his father told him of his mother's drowning.

Now, with his father having also “vanished,” he could not help but remember the lies about his mother's death. Had Edgar Radford also gone off with the fairies? Had the old man wandered off in the
grip of some dementia, been killed by brigands, or suffered some fatal misadventure?

Colin meant to find him, no matter the answer. The idea that his father's behavior had altered so radically over the past year with Colin completely unaware of the changes unnerved him. He would join in the search. If necessary, he would begin it again and conduct it himself.

Yet even as he made this silent vow, climbing the stairs and striding down the corridor toward his childhood bedroom, he realized just how impossible a task he had set for himself. Norwich was no tiny hamlet, but a city, with thousands of dark nooks and shadowed corners, not to mention the woods and hills, and the ocean that had claimed Colin's mother. And if Sir Edgar had left Norwich somehow . . . well, he would be found only if he wished to be found, or if some unfortunate happened upon his corpse.

The quiet emptiness of the house—despite the presence of his grandmother and the servants—closed around him, suffocating, as he stepped into the bedroom. A fire had been laid in the fireplace, and logs crackled and popped, low flames dancing. The room had been decorated in shades of blue and rich cream and it ought to have been filled with the warmth—if not of the fire, then at least of memory.

Yet it was cold.

He did take a look that afternoon at what his grandmother had called “Edgar's mechanism,” once he had searched his father's study and found no note or journal or other document that might indicate the man's state of mind prior to his vanishing.

Sir Edgar had left behind only the mechanism.

Though its intended use confounded him, Colin did not find himself unsettled by the machine the way the old woman seemed to be. Concerned, yes, even troubled—its seeming lack of purpose made him worry for the state of his father's mind—but nothing more than that. If anything, the madness inherent in the contraption's design made him hopeful that his father remained alive somewhere, that as Colin suspected, dementia had crept into his father's life and he had subsequently wandered off somewhere, forgotten the way home, and would eventually be found and returned to his family.

Dementia seemed horrid, but Colin told himself he would prefer that to learning of his father's death. Sir Edgar might be experiencing a certain amount of mental slippage, but at least Colin would be able to see him again, to provide him some comfort as he faded from the world. The man deserved that. For all of his eccentricities, Sir Edgar had been a proud, loving, and patient father.

Colin had left him behind without a single reservation, presuming that he would always be there, that there would forever be a home to which he might return, and the strange wisdom of Sir Edgar Radford to draw upon.

The air in the cellar was close and damp, warm even though the October days were chilly in Norwich and the nights even more so. Filgate had seen to it that there were lamps burning in the cellar before Colin descended, but as he examined the machine, he wished he had arranged for more light, or less. A single lamp would have done the job almost as well. With several, the light shifted and shadows played tricks upon his eyes, so that he had to use the lamp in his hand to take a closer look at the various gauges and turns and vents to ascertain their true shape and attempt to determine their purpose.

No matter how much light he shed upon the mechanism, however, he could not divine its use. During its construction, the cellar had been separated into three distinct spaces—one a wine cellar, one for cold storage, and one built around the base of a chimney, so that goods could be stored there in winter without freezing. Subsequent additions to the house had included expansions of the cellar, and it was in one of those that Sir Edgar had built his mechanism.

To Colin, it looked like discarded pieces of other machines, a tangle of pipes and flues, enormous cogs and gears, wooden joists and shelves and pulleys. Colin pulled levers and turned cranks, but his experiments with the thing yielded no result save for a clattering here and a grinding there. The machine, whatever its ambition, did not work. It did not run.

What puzzled him most were the thick iron pipes—perhaps four inches in diameter—that led off from the apparatus and directly into the stone walls in half a dozen places. They seemed intended to carry water or steam, but the mechanism worked not at all and so Colin could not determine which.

After half an hour wasted in the gloom, he doused the lights and ascended the stairs, to find Thomas Church awaiting him in the parlor. The ruddy-faced man had the paunch and thinning white hair of a friar, but his strong, scarred hands spoke of his youth as a mason, before circumstances conspired
to raise him to a life in the magistrate. As a child, Colin had always found himself impressed by the air of authority Church carried with him, in spite of his meager beginnings as a tradesman.