Part 5 (1/2)
”We have them,” the detective said in satisfaction. He snapped his notebook shut.
I took a train down to Southampton the following day. A car was waiting for me at the station. The drive out to the Raleigh family inst.i.tute took about forty minutes.
Southampton is our city, the same way Rome belongs to the Caesars, or London to the Percys. It might not sprawl on such grand scales, or boast a nucleus of Second Era architecture, but it's well-ordered and impressive in its own right. With our family wealth coming from a long tradition of seafaring and merchanteering, we have built it into the second largest commercial port in England. I could see large s.h.i.+ps nuzzled up against the docks, their stacks churning out streamers of coal smoke as the cranes moved ponderously beside them, loading and unloading cargo.
More s.h.i.+ps were anch.o.r.ed offsh.o.r.e, awaiting cargo or refit. It had only been two years since I was last in Southampton, yet the number of big ocean-going pa.s.senger s.h.i.+ps had visibly declined since then. Fewer settlers were being ferried over to the Americas, and even those members of families with established lands were being discouraged. I'd heard talk at the highest family councils that the overseas branches of the families were contemplating motions for greater autonomy. Their population was rising faster than Europe's, a basis to their claim for different considerations. I found it hard to believe they'd want to abandon their roots. But that was the kind of negotiation gestating behind the future's horizon, one that would doubtless draw me in if I ever attained the levels I sought.
The Raleigh inst.i.tute was situated several miles beyond the city boundaries, hugging the floor of a wide rolling valley. It's the family's oldest estate in England, established right at the start of the Second Era. We were among the first families out on the edge of the Empire's hinterlands to practice the Sport of Emperors. The enormous prosperity and influence we have today can all be attributed to that early accommodation.
The inst.i.tute valley is gra.s.sy parkland scattered with trees, extending right up over the top of the valley walls. At its heart are more than two dozen beautiful ancient stately manor houses encircling a long lake, their formal gardens merging together in a quilt of subtle greens. Even in March they retained a considerable elegance, their designers laying out tree and shrub varieties in order that swathes of color straddled the land whatever the time of year.
Some of the manors have wings dating back over nine hundred years, though the intervening time has seen them accrue new structures at a bewildering rate until some have become almost like small villages huddled under a single multifaceted roof. Legend has it that when the last of the original manors was completed, at least twelve generations of Raleighs lived together in the valley. Some of the buildings are still lived in today. For indeed I grew up in one; but most have been converted to cater for the demands of the modern age, with administration and commerce becoming the newest and greediest residents.
Stables and barns contain compartmentalized offices populated by secretaries, clerks, and managers. Libraries have undergone a transformation from literacy to numeracy, their leather-bound tomes of philosophy and history replaced by ledgers and records. Studies and drawing rooms have become conference rooms, while more than one chapel has become a council debating chamber. Awkley Manor itself, built in the early fourteen hundreds, has been converted into a single giant medical clinic, where the finest equipment which science and money can procure tends to the senior elders.
The car took me to the carved marble portico of Hewish Manor, which now hosted the family's industrial science research faculty. I walked up the worn stone steps, halting at the top to take a look round. The lawns ahead of me swept down to the lake, where they were fringed with tall reeds. Weeping willows stood sentry along the sh.o.r.e, their denuded branches a lacework of brown cracks across the white sky. As always a flock of swans glided over the black waters of the lake.
The gardeners had planted a new avenue of oaks to the north of the building, running it from the lake right the way up the valley. It was the first new greenway for over a century. There were some fifty of them in the valley all told, from vigorous century-old palisades, to lines of intermittent aged trees, their corpulent trunks broken and rotting. They intersected each other in a great meandering pattern of random geometry, as if marking the roads of some imaginary city. When I was a child, my cousins and I ran and rode along those arboreal highways all summer long, playing our fantastical games and lingering over huge picnics.
My soft sigh was inevitable. More than anywhere, this was home to me, and not just because of a leisurely childhood. This place rooted us Raleighs.
The forensic department was downstairs in what used to be one of the wine vaults. The arching brick walls and ceiling had been cleaned and painted a uniform white, with utility tube lights running the length of every section. White-coated technicians sat quietly at long benches, working away on tests involving an inordinate amount of chemistry lab gla.s.sware.
Rebecca Raleigh Stothard, the family's chief forensic scientist, came out of her office to greet me. Well into her second century, and a handsome woman, her chestnut hair was only just starting to lighten towards gray. She'd delivered an extensive series of lectures during my investigatory course, and my attendance had been absolute, not entirely due to what she was saying.
I was given a demure peck on the check, then she stepped back, still holding both of my hands, and looked me up and down. ”You're like a fine wine, Edward,” she said teasingly. ”Maturing nicely. One decade soon, I might just risk a taste.”
”That much antic.i.p.ation could prove fatal to a man.”
”How's Myriam?”
”Fine.”
Her eyes flashed with amus.e.m.e.nt, ”A father again. How devilsome you are. We never had boys like you
in my time!”
”Please. We're still very much in your time.”
I'd forgotten how enjoyable it was to be in her company. She was so much more easygoing than dear old
Francis. However, her humor faded after we sat down in her little office.
”We received the last s.h.i.+pment of samples from the Oxford police this morning,” she said. ”I've allocated our best people to a.n.a.lyse them.”
”Thank you.”
”Has there been any progress?”
”The police are doing their d.a.m.nedest, but they've still got very little to go on at this point. That's why
I'm hoping your laboratory can come up with something for me, something they missed.”
”Don't place all your hopes on us. The Oxford police are good. We only found one additional fact that wasn't in their laboratory report.”
”What's that?”
”Carter Osborne Kenyon and Christine Jayne Lockett were imbibing a little more than wine and spirits
that evening.”
”Oh?”
”They both had traces of cocaine in their blood. We ran the test twice, there's no mistake.”
”How much?”
”Not enough for a drug induced killing spree, if that's what you're thinking. They were simply having a
decadent end to their evening. I gather she's some sort of artist?”
”Yes.”
”Narcotic use is fairly common amongst the more Bohemian sects, and increasing.”
”I see. Anything else?”