Chapter 28: Comparing Notes
In Which Miss True and Mr. Taylor put their heads together and Strephon meets his rival.
Cassandra juggled her grocery bags as she attempted to fish her keys out of her purse. It took her longer than she had planned to stop at the store and get home after work. At least she made it before Saul showed up; he had promised to come over that evening.
Just as she put her key to the lock, the door of her flat swung open. "Hullo, Sandy!" Cecily said in a bright, chipper voice.
"What are you doing up?" Cassandra grumbled. "I thought you called in sick this morning."
Cecily shrugged. "Must have been a 12-hour bug. I feel fine now!" She was dressed for partying, with tight, embroidered jeans, her favorite black top and a bright red bandanna around her neck. She wore deep purple eye shadow and had apparently spent her sick day doing her nails with sparkly polish. "I'm just on my way out. Want to join me?"
Cassandra glared at her. "I have work to do."
"All work and no play..." Cecily sang.
"...Means Cassandra pays your share of the rent again."
"Oh, that reminds me. I borrowed a couple quid from your dresser. Hope you don't mind. I'm famished." She breezed past Cassandra and flounced down the hall. "Oh," she added, "there was a phone call for you. I wrote it down. Ta!"
Cassandra lugged her bags into the flat and dumped them on the table. Sure enough, she saw the message: Cecilie had scrawled it on the refrigerator door.
"7 cMMg @ Sffn"
"That's really helpful!" Cassandra sulked. She dug a roll of paper towels out from under the sink and began scrubbing the refrigerator. She managed to remove about half of the cryptic scrawl when the security buzzer sounded.
"Hi. I hope you don't mind Indian food," Saul said as Cassandra let him into her flat.
Cassandra took the bags of takeout from his arms. "No, that's fine. I love curry." She cleared off the table and helped un-parcel the cardboard cartons of Tandoori Chicken on a Bun and Curry Chips.
"So," Cassandra said after a hastily scarfed meal, "What have you got for me?"
Saul solemnly opened his briefcase and pulled out a folder of papers. "I hope you appreciate this. I spent much of the afternoon digging through the morgue. Okay, here's what we have. I traced the Bellman family back to the early 1800s. Bartemius Bellman was the vicar of St. Aithea’s, a small church in the village of Woggle.”
Cassandra looked up. “That’s a curious name.”
“Woggle? That’s the suburb north of the M68. It used to be a village a hundred years ago. You know Woggle.”
“No, Aithea. I never heard of a church by that name.”
“Oh. It’s not there anymore. I think it was torn down during the War when they built the Air Force base. You won’t find Aithea on the church calendar; she was one of those old pagan legends who got re-christened as saints during the Middle Ages so that people could go on worshipping them. I guess she was some kind of a local figure, but she’s pretty much forgotten nowadays.”
Cassandra hastily scribbled a note to herself This was something to pursue later. It was odd that if Strephon had a family connection to a church named after Aithea, he never mentioned it when she told him the story of Aithea and Togwogmagog. “What about the vicar?”
“Yes. He found a baby left on the doorstep of his church. That would have been in 1852. The vicar adopted him and named the child Strephon. That was the first Strephon.”
“The first Strephon? There were more?”
“Oh, yes. This Strephon studied for the clergy for a few years, but switched to the law about the same time he married the daughter of a local manufacturer, a girl named Phyllis Woodrow"
"Phyllis?"
"Is that important?"
"Hm... maybe. Go on," Cassandra said.
"He became quite a successful barrister, quickly becoming a partner in his firm. Here's a picture of him." He handed Cassandra a photocopy of a newspaper clipping. The young man with side-whiskers in the photograph looked remarkably like the Strephon she knew.
"It says here that he sued Gilbert and Sullivan? Whatever for?"
"It doesn't say. The matter was settled out of court. Anyway, in time he became a QC, then a judge. That was when he built his mansion, Bellman House. It's still standing, it's one of the oldest buildings in the Little Kingston district."
"I know, I've been there. So what happened to him?"
"He retired from the bench at about the start of the First World War, but served in the government during the War in the Home Office. His wife did a lot of work locally for the Red Cross too. Then after the War he and his wife did a lot of travelling abroad, but after Phyllis died in 1931, Strephon became a virtual recluse."
"How did Phyllis die?"
"Um... Heart attack. Why do you ask?"
Cassandra took a sip of diet cola. "Curious, that's all."
"All right, be mysterious then," Saul said with a half-serious scowl. "Strephon died four years later in 1935. His grandson, also named Strephon, arrived from Canada to take over the house."
"Wait a minute, his grandson? Old Man Bellman had a son then?"
Saul checked over his papers again. "Apparently. I couldn't find references to a child being born, but apparently he was raised abroad by relatives."
Cassandra frowned. "That doesn't make sense. I thought Strephon was an orphan."
Saul shrugged. "Members of the vicar’s family, I suppose. Or maybe Phyllis’s. The only references I could find in the Star were vague about the grandson’s background. He was partially crippled in his legs and pretty much stayed at home."
"Crippled? By polio?"
"How did you know?"
"Lucky guess."
"Anyway, apart from some charity work during the Blitz, the grandson stayed out of the public eye. In fact, the next reference I find is 1972 when a developer attempted to buy his house and much of the surrounding neighborhood to build a shopping mall. The deal fell through for unspecified reasons."
"Was that the current Strephon, or the grandson?"
Saul checked his clippings again. "I'm not sure. There were several Bellmans in the obituaries, but the only one that seemed related to this family was the old judge, the first Strephon."
Cassandra bit her lip in thought. "How can a family live for several generations in the same house without any record of births, deaths or marriages? I've checked the city records. I could find none. I even got a friend at Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy to check his hospital records. He has none! You're telling me that a man stricken with polio who's lived most of his life in a wheelchair has never seen a doctor?"
Saul gathered his papers together again and shut them in his briefcase. "I have a better question," he said. "Why are you so interested in this Strephon Bellman anyway?"
Cassandara's cheeks turned pink. "Um... interested? Well, it's just that... well, he's mysterious. He's always talking about himself and his family; he loves talking about all his crazy aunts; but he never seems to actually say anything. And there are these little inconsistencies, like his late wife and his mystery illness. He's hiding something from me, I know it!"
Saul put his hand on hers and repeated. "Are you interested in him?"
For a moment, Cassandra almost said yes! Then sanity took over. "Of course not."
"Good!" Saul gave her hand a squeeze.
Just then a knock came at the door. "Who could that be? If Cecily forgot her keys again..." Cassandra excused herself and went to open the door. She looked down and her jaw sagged.
Now Cecily's message made sense: "stFn cuMMing @ 7" meant "Strephon coming at seven".
"Good evening," Strephon said uncertainly, noticing Saul in the room behind her. "Erm, am I interrupting something?"
* * * * *
The knot of embarrassment in Strephon's belly, which he had manfully tried to ignore on the trip up to Cassandra's flat, abruptly jerked up and tightened around his throat.
Strephon had found his lunch with Melchior quite distasteful and wanted to cleanse his palate, so to speak, with more pleasant company over dinner. On an impulse, he had called Cassandra and left a message with her roommate. Cassandra obviously did not receive it. And now he found this.
Perhaps he's her brother, he thought desperately. No, Cassandra would not be acting this guiltily over a brother.
“I’m… sorry for not buzzing,” Strephon said. “One of your neighbors was kind enough to let me into the building.” Actually he charmed the door to open. Strephon disliked security buzzers. In hindsight, he saw this was a mistake.
The handsome stranger came up to the door behind Cassandra. "You must be Strephon." The stranger placed his hands on her shoulders.
Strephon's embarrassment turned to ire. The unmitigated cad! How dare he take that liberty! Strephon immediately cursed his Victorian sensibilities. Then he realized his Victorian sensibilities had it right: the stranger was clearly making a proprietary claim on Cassandra; saying, in effect, she is mine now, not yours.
Cassandra seemed to sense this, too. She squirmed out from under the stranger's hand and turned to face them both. "Yes. Strephon, this is Saul Taylor. He works with me at the Morning Star. We were just... uh..." she gave a guilty glance back at the remains of an intimate, if greasy, dinner.
"Working on a story over dinner," Taylor offered, extending his hand to Strephon. "Pleased to meet you, Strephon. Or should I call you Steve?"
"I will thank you to call me Mister Bellman, if you please," was what Strephon wanted to say. Instead he gravely took Taylor's hand. "At your service, Mister Taylor."
As soon as Taylor's hand grasped his, Strephon felt a jolt, almost like an electric shock.
Magic.
The man was a sorcerer. What in the name of Heaven was a sorcerer doing in Cassandra's flat eating third-rate East Indian fast food?
"Nice grip you have," Taylor said with a forced smile.
"Ah. One of the small advantages of being wheelchair-bound. One tends to develop one's upper body strength." Strephon released Taylor's hand. A petty display, but it gave him some minor satisfaction.
The three stared uncomfortably at each other for a moment. Then Strephon said, "I'm terribly sorry for intruding. I should be going."
"Do you have a cab waiting?" Cassandra asked.
"No." Curse her. Now he would have to wait while she called a cab. He did not want to linger. Unfortunately, he had sent Tobias away. He assumed that Cassandra might need time to dress or decide where to go or what-not and didn't want to put her under the pressure of a waiting cab. Now he was stranded in a highly delicate situation.
"I'll give Steve a ride home," Taylor volunteered.
Strephon scowled at that but quickly comported himself. "You mustn't put yourself out."
"No problem," Taylor assured him. "I'd be happy to."
Yes, Strephon thought, you'd be more than happy to get me out of the way.
* * * * *
Taylor was courteous; infuriatingly so. He made a great show of pushing Strephon's chair out to his car, despite Strephon's protest that he was perfectly capable of pushing himself. For a moment, Strephon feared that Taylor would try to physically pick him up to help him into the back seat, but Strephon forestalled that indignity by hefting himself out of the wheelchair with his crutches, unaided. Apart from a curt “Thank you” for opening the door, Strephon held his tongue until Taylor got behind the wheel.
"So, have you told her what you are?" Strephon asked.
Taylor glanced up at Strephon through the rear view mirror. "Have you told her what you are?"
Under other circumstances, Strephon might have acknowledged the touché. Instead, he pressed on. "What precisely is your game, Taylor?"
Taylor chuckled. "Are you asking about my intentions towards Miss True?"
"If you like."
Taylor seemed amused. "What business is it of yours?"
"Miss True happens to be a friend of mine," Strephon answered, doing his best to keep his tone cool and level.
"Yes, and a fine job you've been doing of protecting her so far."
"What do you mean?"
"By my count, in the fortnight you've known her, you've put her life in danger no fewer than three times." Taylor ticked them off on his fingers. "There was the werewolf attack outside the restaurant the night you met. Then there was the murder attempt at that party of Dusk's you took her to. And, of course, we mustn't forget Morrigan kidnapping her specifically to get at you."
"Those were not my fault. And I saved her in those instances."
"As I understand it, in the last case she actually saved herself. The fact remains that she wouldn't have been in danger to begin with if not for you."
Strephon was silent. The blackguard had a point. That very fact had been bothering him. After a while he said, "What is your interest in Cassandra?"
Taylor shrugged. "She's an attractive girl. Perhaps I just enjoy her company."
"You're a sorcerer, and I suspect your employer Simon Knox is also a sorcerer. Am I to believe that your interest in... in my friend is just a coincidence?"
"You can believe what you like. Maybe Knox asked me to keep an eye on her as a favor to his pal, Melchior Dusk. Maybe my editor asked me to show a rookie reporter the ropes." Taylor paused a moment and glanced in the mirror at Strephon again. "Maybe I just fancied a bit of a roll in the old Flowers of May, eh wot?" He shifted into an offensively broad cockney accent.
He's trying to provoke me, Strephon thought to himself. He clenched his kneecaps tightly. "If you lay one finger on Miss True..."
"You'll what? Horsewhip me? Thrash me within an inch of my life? Write a scathing letter to the Times?"
Strephon fumed in silence.
"You may not have noticed, Strephon old bean, but your Miss True is not exactly happy with you. She's quite fed up with the lies and evasions and the patronising attitude. You had your chance with her, and frankly, you muffed it."
The car turned the corner onto Fitch Street. "I believe that's your house up ahead. Would you like help with your wheelchair?"
"No, thank you. I'll manage."
Strephon watched as Taylor drove away, cursing his own impotence. Now the villain would go back to Cassandra's flat and who knew what he would do.
* * * * *
He needn’t have worried. Cassandra was so annoyed with both men that when Taylor returned she told him she had a headache and that she’d talk to him later.
