Death by Silver by Melissa Scott Read Free Book Online Page A

Carruthers in Yard metaphysics, but he’d have solved the case approximately never, so I can’t work up much regret about calling in an outsider.”
    “That was a simple enough matter,” Ned said, and it had been, once he’d identified the curse on the necklace worn by the unfortunate Mrs Barton the night she died. It had been an interesting little piece of work, but Ned had suspected it wasn’t entirely in an English system from the beginning, and had gotten one of the Indian students of metaphysics at Oxford to confirm that whoever had done the work had almost certainly lived in India. That had narrowed the investigation abruptly to Mrs Barton’s son, home on leave from the Army and – as was reported in the accounts of his trial – in desperate need of an immediate inheritance to settle gambling debts.
    “Simple once we got someone other than Carruthers into it.”
    “I don’t expect he’s had much experience with foreign enchantments,” Ned said diplomatically.
    “I don’t expect he has, but what good is that to us? We can’t do police work assuming that everyone’s English and has always lived in England.”
    “I take it you’re not here because you think I did away with Edgar Nevett?”
    Hatton stopped pacing and raised a bushy eyebrow. “Have any reason to?”
    “Every reason not to,” Ned said frankly. “I’d just acquired him as a client, or so I thought.”
    “Yes, tell me about that,” Hatton said, withdrawing a notebook from his coat and settling finally into the chair opposite Ned’s desk. “I take it he came to you about a curse?”
    “He complained of a curse on the family silver, with exceedingly vague effects,” Ned said. “I found nothing whatsoever wrong. In my professional opinion, he was making the whole business up.”
    “A nervous fancy?”
    “More deliberate than that, I’d say. More that all the best families have curses, and he intended to pay for the chance to say that his family had one, too. I expect he’d have been happier if I’d told him that a spectral beast would appear to stalk the footmen every full moon.”
    “And did you?”
    “I may not be above being paid to make a show of things, but I’m not a fraud,” Ned said. “I told him there was nothing wrong with his silver, which was the truth, but that I’d do a thorough cleansing of it to be sure. Which I did.”
    “You’d guarantee that the silver was free of any enchantment when you were finished?”
    “I would,” Ned said at once. “Nothing but a few domestic things. Lids magicked to shut themselves, that sort of thing.”
    “Not candlesticks cursed to fall on people’s heads.”
    “Certainly not. I saw nothing to suggest this isn’t a straightforward burglary.”
    “It’s a damn funny burglary if it’s that,” Hatton said. “Too little taken, and a professional would have wanted to get in and out without any fuss, not bash someone’s brains in and then throw down twenty pounds’ worth of silver at his feet.”
    “He was surprised in the act, I suppose.”
    “That’s the best line we’ve got at the moment,” Hatton said, but he sounded as if he weren’t entirely satisfied. “According to everyone we talked to, the body was found first thing in the morning by a parlormaid. Nevett sat up late in his study until after the servants went to bed, going over some papers. Not unusual for him, apparently. The girl went in to air the room before breakfast, found Nevett lying dead on the floor with his head bloodied, and screamed the house down. When everyone calmed down enough to take stock, they found silver missing from the butler’s pantry.”
    “You don’t look as if you like it.”
    “I don’t like it,” Hatton said. “It doesn’t feel right. For one thing, if the burglar surprised Nevett at his desk, would Nevett really have sat doing nothing while the man walked across the room and swung a candlestick at his head? Nevett wasn’t a young man, but he looked as if he