Black Swan (Pax Britannia: Time's Arrow) Read online

  Ulysses slammed into the flimsy sitting room door, the force of the impact splintering the panels before the hinges gave and it came away from its frame altogether. He landed in the hall at the young woman’s feet. Hearing her subsequent shriek of alarm, Ulysses woozily opened his one remaining eye.

  “Get... out...” he said, barely managing to maintain his grip on consciousness.

  He was dimly aware of a dull throbbing sensation from his shoulder. Part of him was surprised that he wasn’t in abject agony. Instead, a warm glow was spreading throughout his body. Nonetheless, somehow he knew that if he tried to sit up, even if he just tried to lift a finger he would suffer the consequences and know pain again. All he wanted to do was sleep.

  But there was another part of him – his stubborn, intractable core – that would never give up, that would fight the oncoming oblivion to the end.

  In his barely conscious state, he was still vaguely aware of what was going on around him. He heard the shuffling leathery footfalls of the silverback as it followed him from the devastated sitting room. He was aware of the clacking of the young woman’s footsteps as she continued to back away from the beast.

  He felt the ape’s eyes on him then, those pitiless black beads of concentrated hatred and evil intent. Its rank breath gusted into his face and ruffled his hair. He was forced to fight the desire to gag. There was only one way out of this now; all he could do was play dead and hope for the best.

  A rough finger prodded him in the side, sending stabbing pains through his ribs.

  Ulysses let his body go limp as the ape rolled him onto his back.

  He thought he heard the woman say something, but her voice was muffled, as if his ears were full of cotton wool.

  And then Ulysses felt the change in the air currents as the gorilla shifted its great bulk and moved away from him. He heard it knuckle its way back across the devastated sitting room and the banging of the French doors as it exited the apartment the same way it had entered.

  And then it was gone, and with a groan Ulysses lost his battle with oblivion.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Unanswered Questions

  ULYSSES CAME TO with a start, the ape’s snarling face and bloodied snout fading along with the rest of the disturbing dream. He tried to sit up and felt ropes bite at his wrists. Blinking his eyeinto focus, he slowly took in his new surroundings.

  He was tied to a bed in what was clearly a young lady’s bedroom.

  “Oh boy,” he groaned, “not again.”

  “Again?” exclaimed the woman seated at the end of the bed. It was the girl from the apartment, the one who, like him, had happened to interrupt the ape’s assault on M. Lumière. “This happens to you a lot, does it?” she demanded in Parisian-accented French.

  “Well, not as often as you might think,” Ulysses admitted and winced.

  He went to put a hand to the stabbing pain at the back of his head, in that moment forgetting that he was still tied to the bed.

  “It’s just that this is the second time in as many days that I’ve come to on some strange young lady’s bed,” he explained.

  He looked again at the knotted rope restraining him. Then he looked at the room, taking in its tasteful, feminine décor.

  “So you just happened to have a hank of rope lying around, did you?” he muttered to himself.

  “Appearances can be deceptive,” the young woman said.

  He looked at her properly for the first time, taking in her auburn hair, piled haphazardly on top of her head, making her appear all the more appealing as a result; the intense look in her flint-hard stare; the sculptural definition of her cheekbones, streaked with grime; her long, slender limbs; her well-endowed bosom, emphasised by the low cut dress and the string of pearls she was wearing; the leather apron worn over the top of said dress; the heavy ironworker’s gloves.

  “But sometimes what you see is what you get,” Ulysses countered, trying his most rakish grin on her.

  “Why don’t you just tell me who you are and what you were doing in my... In that apartment?”

  “No. Why don’t I tell you all about you first?”

  A smile curled the corner of the woman’s otherwise stern mouth. “Go on then. Why not?”

  “Very well.”

  Ulysses took a deep breath and began.

  “You look like you’ve just stepped out of a workshop and from that, coupled with the fact that we met at M. Lumière’s, someone clearly possessed of some ability when it comes to clockwork, and possibly audio manipulation as well,” he added, recalling the gramophone-like device that had been damaged during the ape’s rampage, “I would have to say that you are also of a technical bent. And yet you still believe that to find a place in society you have to conform to accepted gender stereotypes, hence the dress and the pearls.

  “And you haven’t bothered to change, that or you haven’t had time to change yet, so I would say that either we haven’t been here long or there is some pressing matter that you must attend to, possibly resulting from your... Yes, from the way you let yourself into the apartment unannounced by the front door – the similarity in facial features, although not that great a similarity... As a consequence of your uncle’s death.”

  The young woman bristled. So he was right, Lumière had been her uncle.

  Ulysses was in full flow now and there was no stopping him. “It’s not the first time you’ve done something like this, judging by the wear and tear on the apron, which clearly fits you so well, and the same could be said of the gloves. You’re clearly stronger than you look too, having somehow managed to manhandle me here – wherever here is – so I would have to say, at a guess, that you are an engineer, possibly an inventor of some kind, and you were visiting your uncle because... because... Ah yes, because either he needed your help with something, or you needed his.”

  The woman met his gaze for several long, uncomfortable seconds without saying anything. Ulysses could see the tracks of dried tears in the smudges of grime on her face, and from the way she was staring, hardly daring to blink, she was clearly on the verge of crying.

  “So that’s what you think, is it?” she said sharply.

  “Yes.”

  “Whereas, if I were to hazard a guess, judging by your appearance alone, I’d have to say that you were a wanted murderer on the run from the gendarmes.”

  “Come on. I really look like a criminal to you?”

  She tossed the folded newspaper in her hands onto his lap.

  “Yes.”

  Ulysses looked down, only to be met by a hauntingly familiar, yet still slightly sinister, simulacrum of himself that had been circulated throughout the Parisian press.

  “It’s the eye-patch, isn’t it?” he harrumphed. “It’s always the eye-patch.”

  “It does give you a certain... I don’t know what,” the girl agreed.

  “But as you yourself said, appearances can be deceiving.”

  “And as you said, sometimes what you see is what you get.”

  “Ah. Fair comment.”

  “It said in Le Journal that you’re wanted for murder.”

  “It did? And who am I supposed to have done away with to make myself so popular that the press can’t stop printing column inches about me?”

  “A composer.”

  “I was framed, maybe not intentionally, but it doesn’t make any difference in the end.”

  “So you’re taking the rap for someone else?”

  “Not through choice, I assure you.”

  This woman was hard work. Oh to be back in Josephine’s bedroom right now, with someone who he felt would be on his side no matter what happened.

  He suddenly felt exhausted, overwhelmed by it all. Everything was a battle. Just staying alive was a battle, or so it seemed to him, and right then it felt like a battle he was losing. But that was all he needed to tap into that well of inner strength and pep himself up again. For he might be many things, but he was not a loser; he would never be a loser.


  He tested his bonds again. It wasn’t only his wrists that had been restrained; it was his ankles as well.

  “There’s no point even trying,” the woman said. “I know what I’m doing when it comes to knots.”

  He glanced down at himself then, realising that he was missing his shirt. His chest had been bound with a wide bandage. He took a deep breath and winced. It was his ribs. The other bandage and dressing were still in place around his shoulder.

  “Looks like you know what you’re doing when it comes to first aid,” he said.

  The woman nodded.

  “So you must believe I’m innocent,” Ulysses decided, with relief.

  “How do you work that out?”

  “Well why would you go to the trouble of making sure I was fit and healthy otherwise?”

  “How about to make sure you’re in a fit state to answer to your crimes in a court of law and so that you’re in the peak of physical fitness so you endure the full term of your sentence?”

  Ulysses wilted, then brightened again. “So you noticed.”

  “Noticed what?” the young woman said, making a point of looking at something on the other side of the room.

  “The peak of physical fitness thing.”

  “It was merely an observation.” She blushed.

  “And I’m the President of France,” Ulysses laughed.

  “You broke into my uncle’s apartment,” the woman pointed out, returning to the matter in hand.

  “If you’re going to be pernickety about it, I didn’t break in. The ape had already done that for me!”

  The girl said nothing.

  “Much as it pains me to point this out, you saw the brute kill your uncle with its bare hands. I was trying to stop it!”

  “And you failed,” she said bluntly. There was no screaming, no tears, no recriminations, just the weight of undeniable failure weighing down Ulysses’ shoulders. “How did you know the beast was going to be there?”

  “I didn’t, okay? It was just dumb luck.”

  The young woman’s eyes seemed to blaze red with the fires of accusation. “Luck?”

  “Bad luck. The only kind I ever seem to get.”

  The woman looked like she was about to speak.

  There came a loud knock from somewhere nearby. The sound made Ulysses start and his heartbeat quicken.

  The girl rose from the end of the bed and left the room. “Who is it?” she called.

  “It’s the police, miss,” came a gruff, and slightly muffled, voice.

  “Bloody hell!” Ulysses cursed. “Not again!”

  Ulysses tugged at the ropes binding his wrists, kicking his legs against the knots constricting his ankles; the metal bedstead banged against the bare floorboards.

  He heard a tut from the other side of the bedroom door.

  The gruff voice came again. “Are you alright in there, miss?”

  Ulysses tensed.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” the young woman called back. Ulysses heard the rattle of a safety chain and then the click of a catch being released. “I just knocked over my umbrella stand.

  “Sorry about that, now what can I do for you officer...”

  “Sergeant Lecoq, miss.” Ulysses could hear the gendarme’s gruff tones much more clearly now that the door was open. The bedroom was clearly off the main hallway of the property, wherever that was, although he didn’t think it could be too far from Lumière’s place in Montmartre for the girl to have got him here all by herself.

  On most other occasions Ulysses wouldn’t have particularly minded being tied to a young lady’s bed, any time other than right now to be precise.

  He listened intently to the exchange taking place on the other side of the bedroom door.

  “What can I do for you, Sergeant Lecoq?”

  Had she called the police or not? And if she hadn’t, what were they doing here?

  Ulysses could come up with only one reasonable assumption.

  “May we come in?” the sergeant’s voice came again.

  “No. As you can see I’m in the middle of something. Whatever you have to tell me, you can tell me here.”

  “Are you sure, miss? I mean–”

  “I’m sure, thank you, sergeant.”

  “Well, I’m very sorry to tell you that I am the bearer of bad news.”

  “What bad news?”

  “It’s your uncle, M. Gustav Lumière.”

  “My uncle?”

  “He’s dead, miss. I’m ever so sorry.”

  The tears were coming again now. “Dead?”

  “Murdered.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Yes, miss. I can only offer you our utmost condolences.”

  For a moment it went quiet out in the hallway. Then, “Who did it? Who killed him?”

  “We’re still searching for the villain, miss.”

  “But you have a suspect. I saw his face in the paper.”

  “Yes, miss. And don’t you worry, we’ll get him. I am very sorry for your loss.” A moment’s hesitation. “Do you want someone to stay with you?”

  Ulysses heard her breathe in, as if to answer, but no words came.

  “You wanted to say something, miss?”

  “Er... No. No, there’s nothing more to say, is there?”

  “No, miss. Once again, I am sorry for your loss. You have our sympathy.”

  Ulysses heard the door close. He strained to listen to the retreating footsteps of the police.

  A moment later, the bedroom door was flung open.

  The girl stood there, hands on hips, her eyes blazing like the coals of a forge, her merciless gaze upon him.

  “Then you believe me,” Ulysses said, a tentative smile shaping his features. “You’re prepared to give me the benefit of the doubt?”

  “I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt. For now.”

  “Ah. Okay.” It wasn’t quite the response he’d been hoping for. “I see.”

  “So why don’t you do something about removing that doubt,” she went on. “Tell me everything, and you can start with your name.”

  HE DIDN’T TELL her everything, of course; only the bits he thought she’d believe.

  He told her about how he stumbled upon the body of the dead composer Roussel, although he failed to mention the locked door or precisely how he had ended up in the composer’s garret in the first place. He told her about being chased by the gendarmes and his initial encounter with the ape.

  She assumed that he had been shot by the police. He didn’t contradict her.

  He told her he’d laid low for a while, scanning the papers for clues, and how he had made the connection between the composer’s death and that of the ordinateur auteur. He skipped the bit about Madame Marguerite’s boarding house and went straight on to the blood-stained clue scrawled on the back of the rejected piece of manuscript paper, and his enquiries around Montmartre, which brought him neatly to his arrival at her uncle’s apartment.

  He kept the whole agent of the English throne thing out of it, just to keep things simple.

  When he had finished, she remained ambiguously silent.

  “Look, I take it you searched my pockets while I was out for the count.” She nodded. “So you know I’m not armed. I didn’t even have a knife on me when I ran into Monsieur Killer Gorilla.”

  Still she said nothing, her wide eyes locked on his increasingly desperate gaze.

  “And I took on that beast to save you. So come on, untie me, and let’s see if we can’t find out who wanted your uncle dead and why, together.”

  “Would you do that?” she suddenly blurted out, setting to loosening the rope around his ankles. “Only I’m worried Uncle Gustav might have got himself mixed up in something...”

  “Dodgy? Illegal? Revolutionary?”

  Her eyes said it all. “Something like that, yes.”

  As the girl untied him, the dandy felt waves of relief wash through him. At last things looked like they might be getting back on track. Now that he had
a willing accomplice, someone else who had witnessed the ape commit murder, he had a better chance than ever of getting to the bottom of this mystery and clearing his name.

  And once that was done, he would at last be able to return to England and get back to the important business of saving those most important to him.

  “So, seeing as how we’re going to be partners,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing at his wrists, the girl beside him, smelling of engine oil and lavender, “how about you tell me your name?”

  “Cadence,” she said, and offered him her hand. “Cadence Bettencourt.”

  “I take it M. Lumière was your maternal uncle then?”

  “That’s right. And my only living relative.”

  “Well, it is a pleasure to meet you, Mademoiselle Bettencourt.”

  She smiled, her cheeks flushing.

  “So, time and tide, as they say.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Ulysses rose stiffly to his feet, wincing at the twinge this invoked in his bruised ribs.

  “We should get going. There’s no time to lose. We don’t want the trail to go completely cold. I would suggest we start back at your uncle’s place.”

  The girl began to remove her gloves and apron.

  “What were you working on?” Ulysses asked, his curiosity piqued.

  “Oh, just a pet project of mine. Something for getting round town in the rush hour.”

  She placed the folded gloves and apron carefully on her bedspread.

  “You know,” she said, “I had been suspicious of my uncle for some time, truth be told, but as he was my only living relation I didn’t want to pry, or do anything that might upset him or end up driving him away.

  “Uncle Gustav once said to me that if I ever found myself in trouble I should contact Valerius Leroux. I had no idea at the time what he was talking about but he clearly must have known that he had got mixed up with the wrong crowd.”

  “And who is this Valerius Leroux?” Ulysses asked. “And what does he do that makes him the man to turn to in a crisis?”

  “He... He arranges things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Things that need arranging, I suppose. I don’t know any more than that, but he has money and influence.”