The Doomsday Machine (Horatio Lyle) by Catherine Webb Read Free Book Online

violent.
    Five pairs of disbelieving eyes turned in Lyle ’s general direction. Seeing that this was the way the feeling in the room was going, Tess glared at Lyle as well, to make it clear that she was on the side of the masses in this debate, whatever it was about. Tate took advantage of the pause to steal another chestnut from Tess’s lap.
    ‘What was you after again?’ said the cook.
    ‘He ’s here about Mrs Cozens,’ hissed the butler in a conspiratorial voice.
    ‘Oh, that bat! What ’s she gone and done?’
    ‘Can’t really say that, ma’am,’ said Lyle in his best pompous voice. ‘I just need to ask you some questions.’
    ‘What about?’
    ‘Mr Berwick - when did you last see him here?’
    There was an embarrassed silence. Then the maid muttered, ‘He’s in America an’ all.’
    The silence stretched out so long Tess became aware of the sound of the upstairs grandfather clock ticking, and the fall of feet on the crackety floorboards above. Finally Lyle said, ‘America?’
    ‘That’s right.’ No one met his eye.
    ‘Have you heard of Newgate exercise yard?’ Five pairs of eyes gave nothing away. Lyle sighed like a patient man and in the same breath said, ‘It ’s a space about five foot by five foot, where every day the prisoners of the Crown are allowed to march round and round in circles for an hour stretch, maximum, wearing masks so that they can’t see the faces of the others and holding a piece of string for guidance. If they speak, they are punished. And then there’s the oakum hall, where you have to sit working at getting rope from oakum until your fingers bleed, and then there ’s the treadmill which is rather self-explanatory, and the crank, where you wind and wind and wind a crank on a barrel for no good reason until you collapse from eventual exhaustion and then . . .’
    ‘He ain’t in America,’ muttered the cook’s assistant.
    ‘No,’ said Lyle kindly, ‘I know he ’s not. So, where is he?’
    ‘We don’t know.’
    ‘Why did you say he was in America?’
    ‘He told us to!’
    ‘Him, personally, he told you to lie?’
    ‘It ain’t a lie if your master tells you to tell it.’
    ‘I wouldn’t use that as a defence in court, if I were you. When was this?’
    ‘’Bout five months back.’
    ‘Five months? My goodness - does he turn up here at all?’
    ‘Sometimes.’
    ‘Well,’ Lyle ’s voice had taken on the tones of infinite patience, ‘when was he last here?’
    ‘What ’s this got to do with Mrs Cozens?’
    ‘Your master has told you to lie and is pretending to be in America, a lie Mrs Cozens maintains with gusto. I think I’m entitled to a question or two, don’t you? When was he last here?’
    ‘Four days ago.’
    ‘He doesn’t stay the night here?’
    ‘No, he stays where he works.’
    ‘Where does he work?’
    ‘Don’t know!’
    ‘What did he do here?’
    ‘Looked at some books, ate some food, left clothes for washing, and left again! He gets paid really well.’ The maid’s eyes lit up.
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘He gave us all a rise! And with him hardly here we need do nearly nothing; he ’s just throwing away the money!’
    ‘What books did he look at?’
    ‘Don’t know. It’s all just books, right?’
    Lyle flinched. ‘There’s no such thing as just ...’ he began painfully, saw Tess’s reproving expression and swallowed the words down again. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Yes. Well, perhaps. So he comes here every now and again . . . how regularly?’
    ‘Every other week or so, you know? No predicting for sure when he’s going to turn up.’
    ‘And then leaves almost immediately?’
    ‘Yes, that ’s about right.’
    ‘And Mrs Cozens - she’s new?’
    ‘Hired in special to look after the house while he’s gone. Don’t think he interviewed her or anything, she just sort of ... turned up.’
    ‘Who does she talk to?’
    ‘Sometimes this bloke in a top hat comes to talk to her.’
    ‘The city is full of blokes in top