The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal Read online

  “A—”

  “A butterfly, sir. Ever after, whenever Bishop Peter opened his fist, the miracle was repeated. People came from far and wide to be blessed by him. He became known as the butterfly bishop, so the tale goes.” The verger paused, evidently struck by his own story. “And that’s a funny thing, sir, now I think. I don’t know if you’ve seen the news—”

  I didn’t wait for him to tell me. I was already hurrying out of the great, shadowy hall, walking as fast as respect for the holy surroundings allowed, and the second I passed out of its doors, I broke into a run.

  Simon and I stood together, staring at the broken tomb. I had met him on the way out of the morgue, which was fortunate, else I should have doubtless forced my way in to get him, given the urgency I had felt. Now, standing in front of a centuries-old relic, I wondered if I had just made something of a fool of myself.

  Simon was crouched down, one hand on the tomb to balance himself, the other hovering over that dark opening.

  “What could it mean?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “That hole is big enough to reach in. What might someone have taken from in there?”

  “I don’t know.” Simon’s face was intent. He murmured something under his breath, and then, quite suddenly, he pushed the tips of his fingers into that awful, waiting hole. The colour drained from his face so fast I thought he would faint. He snatched his hand back, and I felt pure relief to see it emerge intact.

  “What is it? What’s in there?”

  “Cold.” He swayed slightly, and his knuckles whitened where he gripped the sepulchre’s stone.

  “Are you all right?”

  Simon’s mouth moved slightly. It was very dark now, the dim lamps casting long shadows. His deep-set eyes were black pits, and his skin looked not just pale but oddly colourless.

  “Simon?” I put my hand on his arm and felt the violent shudder that ran through him. “Simon!”

  His hand shot out, grabbed my coat, pulled me down. I landed hard on my knee on the cold flagstones. He grasped the back of my head, forcing my face close to his, and I had a momentary flash of alarm that he might mean to kiss me, and in a cathedral, of all places—but he did not. He pushed his face against the side of my head, forcing words into my ear, so close I felt his lips move on my skin, still barely audible. His breath was very, very cold.

  “Help—me. Get me—out.”

  It was only a few hundred yards, thank God, and though I had not Simon’s strength, I was sturdy enough. I dragged him along, his arm over my shoulders, his feet stumbling. I suppose people thought he was drunk.

  By the time we reached our lodgings, Simon’s weight was making me stagger. I pushed him up the stairs, past the landlady’s disapproving gaze, and into my room, where he half fell onto the bed and then, in a sudden spasm of activity, began tearing at his shirt.

  “Simon?” I said helplessly.

  “Get this off!”

  He was dragging at his coat, like to tear it. I joined him—this was not how I had imagined undressing him—and unfastened his shirt, and recoiled at what I saw. The writing on his skin was frantic, far worse than before, huge jagged letters, the ink stabbing itself up and down over his chest. His face was grey.

  “Mirror,” he rasped.

  I grabbed the looking-glass from the wall and brought it over, twisting round so that I could see his reflection too.

  The last time, the mirror writing had been clear, if obscene, English. This time, it was utterly incoherent. The letters had the rectangular form of those one sees in illuminated medieval manuscripts, utterly indecipherable.

  “I can’t read it,” I said.

  “Nor can I.” Sweat beaded on his forehead. “Trying to talk. Too old. I can’t. I can’t understand. Stop it!”

  I was close to panic now. “Simon? What can I do?”

  Simon was pushing and scraping at his chest with his nails, leaving scratched trails that beaded red, as though he were trying to rip off his own skin. It had no effect on the scrawl which became, if anything wilder.

  “Stop it!” I dropped the glass and grabbed his hands. He pulled back, hard, far stronger than me, but I didn’t let go, and he jerked me forward into his lap, and whether it was him or me I could not to this day say, but we were kissing then, his lips and teeth hard and desperate on mine. He shoved me backwards, and I fell onto the bed with his muscular bulk pinning me down, and his hands pinioning mine.

  It was scarcely kissing now. He forced his tongue, thrusting, into my mouth, and I moaned my surrender around it. His hand moved, so that one held both my wrists while the other went to his waist, and shoved clothing aside. He shifted above me, still holding me down, and knelt over my face, and like that, without a word, he pushed his stiff cock into my bruised, wet mouth.

  I almost choked. I almost came.

  I did not know, I still do not understand, why it should be such a pleasure to have Simon manhandle me so. I do not lack self-respect. No other man has ever used me ill, and I should resent it extremely if any tried. But then, no other man has ever held on to me as though he were lost in darkness, as though my body were his last connection to the light.

  I knew more later. God help me, I was to discover so much, and to learn the truth of Simon’s words, that some knowledge would be better lost forever. But even then I think I understood that he was dying inside, and he found life in me.

  So he fucked my mouth, desperate and bruising, and I squirmed and moaned underneath him, unable to take even the slightest control and painfully aroused by his need, and when he came, hard and deep, in my throat and his grip on my wrists relaxed, I fought my hands free and unbuttoned myself frantically. He was still in my mouth as I frigged myself no more than twice and spent with a cry of painful ecstasy muffled only by his prick.

  Simon pulled away from me, breathing hard, and rolled off me.

  I was hanging half over the edge of the bed. I slid down to the floor with a thump.

  “Robert.” Simon sounded exhausted. “I…” He did not try to finish the sentence.

  “Are you all right? What happened in the cathedral?”

  “The story.” He gestured at his chest. The writings had calmed now, still moving, but more like the gentle pace of a fountain pen than the insane skittering script of before. “The story was too old. It’s distorted. Decayed. I couldn’t read it, and it needs to be read. It was so angry, and it would not stop. It filled my mind, until…well, until you filled it instead. Robert, please, I had no intention of distressing you—”

  “The only thing that will distress me at this moment is if you apologise. I should take that very ill indeed.”

  “I forced you.” His voice was raw.

  “On the contrary. I should have insisted.” That got his startled attention. I put a hand up, resting it on his thigh. “And I am delighted to have been of assistance.”

  There was a pause, and Simon began to laugh. He laughed like a man who was not used to the act, and who was not quite sure why he was doing it. I hauled myself back onto the bed and leaned over to kiss him with my bruised lips, and he pulled me close and held me there. I ran a finger over the skin of his chest and felt nothing but coarse hair and warmth.

  “You are quite remarkable,” he said. “So matter-of-fact. Does nothing dismay you?”

  “I was not matter-of-fact just now,” I pointed out. “I enjoyed myself exceedingly. And while I may be dismayed on occasion, I have never seen the point of having vapours. Are you recovered?”

  “Thanks to you.” His arm tightened.

  “What’s in the tomb?”

  “So many questions, Robert.” It was not a rebuke, but he clearly did not intend to give a full answer. “A grave has been violated. That must be set right.”

  I asked the question that had been burning in my mind since the verger spoke. “Do you think that the folk tale is true? Butterflies from empty hands? King Arthur? Because, the thing is, Dr. Merridew kept his hands flat. Whe
n he shook my hand, he did not close his own at all. And when he spoke he had his palms on his legs, open, pressed down, as if he was trying to keep them still. Could it be that he did not want to risk closing them in front of you? Is he creating the things?”

  Simon sat up and began to pull his clothing back to decency. I went to get my spare shirt front, since the one I wore had taken the brunt of my excitement. “I think it likely,” he said. “Merridew was…wrong. I found the atmosphere peculiar. Did you sense something in there?”

  “Me?”

  “You felt something, I think.”

  “The butterfly deaths gave me the horrors, that was all. I imagined them somewhat vividly.”

  “You, who are so matter-of-fact.” Simon did not smile, but his voice was warm.

  “But how can Merridew be doing it?”

  “I don’t know. But it seems clear that he took something from the tomb, and it has been missed, and it must be returned.” Simon stood. “It is my experience that gifts are very dangerous things to steal.”

  We stood together at the doctor’s door, knocking relentlessly for some five minutes, before the man opened it himself. He looked flushed, and there was a butterfly on his shoulder. A Red Admiral, a creature that should have died well before this time of year, wings moving slowly back and forth, open and shut.

  Merridew attempted to slam the door. Simon pushed back hard—very hard, considering the apparent frailty of the elderly man on its other side. In the end, it took our combined weights, shoulders to the door, to force it. Merridew stepped away with a gasp. We were inside.

  There were butterflies in the hall, spread-winged on the walls, crawling on the ceiling, moving slowly underfoot. Some were those I recognised, Cabbage Whites and Painted Ladies. Others were the bizarre shapes and colours of the pinned specimens. All were alive.

  “What is the meaning of this intrusion?” demanded the doctor.

  “Shut your hand and open it again,” Simon told him.

  “I shall do no such thing.”

  “Do it, and we will leave.”

  The doctor glared at him, looked at me. He held out a scrawny fist, turned it palm up, opened it.

  A huge black-and-white butterfly slowly opened its wings and flew off in a papery flurry.

  Simon nodded, then took an unceremonious stride forward, past the doctor, and threw open the study door.

  There were thousands of the things in there, crawling and flying and hanging in great heaps and mounds, many smashed to pulp underfoot. I clamped my lips shut and grabbed for my handkerchief.

  “What did you take from the tomb?” Simon asked.

  “Oh, you are clever.” There was a fanatic light in the doctor’s pale eyes. “It will do you no good, you know. What have you to accuse me of? I have done nothing wrong.”

  “You desecrated a tomb. Two men are dead.”

  The doctor gave a shrill laugh. A huge butterfly landed on his head, sitting at a jaunty angle, like a fashionable hat. “Superstitious nonsense. You can prove nothing. And the butterflies killed those men. Not me. I had no motive. No intention.”

  “You made the butterflies. You let them go. The deaths are on your shoulders, Doctor.”

  “Well, I could scarcely keep the damned things in here, could I?” Merridew gestured around. “Look at them. They get everywhere! You’ll find them in your boots, you know.” He turned up his palms, appealing for understanding, and gave an involuntary little clench of one fist. A white butterfly appeared on his palm; he glanced at it, and clapped his hands together.

  “A Cabbage White,” he explained, brushing the broken thing to the floor. “Worthless. Look, Mr. Feximal, the men were accidents. The butterflies were hungry, they swarmed. A tramp died, and some other fellow. That was unfortunate but it’s hardly my fault.”

  “Why don’t you stop making them?” I demanded as his hand closed and opened yet again.

  The doctor frowned at my failure to understand. “I have to keep on. I must have a Cobalt Saturn.”

  I looked at his face, so intent, so dedicated, and at his hand, clenching and unclenching, dropping butterflies. I took a step away, towards the workbench, and my elbow hit something. The marble mortar, I realised. It was perhaps the only item in the room on which butterflies did not crawl.

  Simon was wearing a singularly intimidating scowl. “Dr. Merridew, you are perhaps unaware of what you have done. You must return what you took from the tomb. You are turning a gift to ill uses, and you have awakened something that should be asleep. It must end.”

  The doctor laughed again. It was almost a shriek. “Return what I took? Oh, that will not be possible, I fear.”

  “It is not yours,” Simon repeated, voice hard and commanding.

  I looked down at the mortar, next to my elbow. I saw the fine yellow-brown dust.

  “What did you take?” Simon was demanding. “Stone from the tomb, jewellery, a piece of the body? What have you done with it?”

  There was a feverish glitter in the doctor’s eyes. His hands opened and closed, butterflies rising from them every second. I stared at him, and the mortar, and the words of the old tale were ringing in my mind. I’ll grind his bones to make my bread…

  “Simon.” I could not say more.

  He turned to me. I pointed at the mortar, and the dust within. He looked down, and up, back at the doctor. Dr. Merridew laughed and laughed, pitch rising, and any lingering doubts about his sanity fled, because no sane man would have found amusement in the expression on Simon Feximal’s face.

  “You damned fool,” Simon said, and the commonplace expletive rang out like a funeral bell.

  “I see you understand.” The doctor giggled. “The bishop’s gift is within me now. I have consumed it, and it is mine. Mine.”

  Simon’s jaw was set as he looked at that elderly madman, alight with energy, the fragile creatures rising up in a thin, twisting stream from his clenching hands. “Will you cease this?” he demanded.

  “No. Why should I?”

  “You must. Stop using it. Come to the tomb now, make what apology you can, and hope you may earn forgiveness. This is your only chance and there will not be another.”

  “Certainly not. What nonsense you speak.”

  “Very well.” Simon turned abruptly. “Come, Robert.”

  “Come?” I echoed. “But—”

  “There is nothing the police can do. Dr. Merridew has committed no crime in the eyes of the law, except for desecrating the tomb, which we cannot prove. There is, as he says, no way for him to return the bishop’s bones now. We can do nothing, so let us leave.”

  “No.” I could not understand this. “Two men are dead. Hubert Lord left a wife and a child. Others might die if he lets more butterflies go. How can you—”

  “Come, Robert,” Simon repeated. He grasped my wrist and pulled me to the heavy door. I pulled back angrily, uselessly. Simon stopped in front of the door, powerful grip still tight on my wrist, and paused, not turning back to face the doctor. “I hope you find your stolen gift worth its cost, sir.”

  Dr. Merridew did not reply. He was batting another Cabbage White off his hands.

  I had stopped resisting. We stepped out of the foul, infested room, and Simon shut the heavy door, then pushed me gently in the direction of the front door. “Leave. Wait outside.”

  “No.”

  “Robert, I must ask you to go now.”

  “No. I saw you take it.”

  He looked at me, eyes steady on mine, and in that long moment of mutual regard, a partnership began.

  “Go on,” I said. “Do it.”

  Simon opened his hand to reveal the key that he had taken from the other side of the door. He put it in the keyhole and turned it, and with that act he locked Dr. Merridew in that hot little room filled with butterflies of his own creation.

  It was Simon who locked the door, but it was I who took the key out of the keyhole, led the way out of the house, and dropped the key down the first drain I saw.

/>   We returned to the inn without a word between us. I don’t know if Simon thought of what we had done as an execution, or a murder, or as justice. He did not speak, and nor did I, but we went together to my room, and there we stripped each other wordlessly and he laid me down on the rumpled bed and took me then, gasping with each thrust as though that was the only way he could breathe.

  Afterwards we lay together. I ran my fingers over his chest. I did not attempt to trace the patterns that wrote themselves at a leisurely pace on his skin. That seemed like a very bad idea, somehow.

  I said, “I should like to meet again.”

  Simon gazed at the ceiling. “You have seen what I do. My life is not always safe, or clean. I should not like to see you stained by it.”

  That was, I observed, not the same thing as a “no”.

  I had little doubt that he was right. What I had seen of his strange work was frightening and disturbing, and my complicity in the night’s work was something I had yet to allow myself to think of. Any sensible man would have walked away. But I was fascinated.

  “I think I must insist,” I said. “You may refuse, of course, but I warn you, you will be in grave danger of receiving another letter.”

  Simon shook his head, but I felt the muscles of his arm tighten around me, and the beginnings of a reluctant smile curved his lips once more.

  The next night, with the verger’s permission, Simon and I stood alone in the cathedral, before the tomb. I do not quite know what Simon did, and I could play no part in it, but I held the candles that lit him as he murmured incantations that closed the strange rent that the doctor’s desecration had opened, until the crack in the tomb was no more than a piece of broken stonework, no darker or colder than the rest.

  The alarm was raised by Dr. Merridew’s housemaid when she could not enter his room in the morning. He was found under a shroud of butterflies more than two feet deep. What made this death different from the others was one peculiar feature. Over his face, in his lungs, every butterfly was of the same type.