Mr. Defoe chuckled but it held an edge of uncertainty. “Interesting negotiating technique.”
“This isn’t a negotiation. I’m inviting you to leave.”
The chuckle died on Mr. Defoe’s lips. He shot to his feet and pointed the cigar wedged between two fingers at Mr. Kinloch. “I thought the British did business like gentlemen.”
Miss Wheeler swept past her employer and offered her hand to Mr. Kinloch to shake. “Thank you for the whiskey. It’s a smooth blend. Good evening, gentlemen,” she said to Oscar and me, albeit mostly to Oscar. “It’s been interesting.” She left without a backward glance, the pleats of her dress swaying with the movement of her hips.
Mr. Defoe wasn’t quite ready to give up, however. He pointed the cigar in Oscar’s face, his own face turning quite red. “You’ll regret this, Barratt.”
Oscar flicked the ash that had fallen from the cigar off his trousers. “Would you like to add ‘This isn’t over?’ to complete the cliché?”
Mr. Defoe’s face grew even redder and the muscles in his jaw bunched as he worked himself up to respond.
Before he could, the butler returned. Upon Mr. Kinloch’s nod, he stepped up to Mr. Defoe. Redmayne towered over the smaller, slimmer man. “The carriage is almost ready. Please follow me.” I’d not noticed how intimidating Redmayne was until that moment. He was a tall, solid fellow with large hands. He could easily win a fight against the American. Unless Defoe used a spell to fling iron objects at us, that is.
I kept one eye on the fire irons.
Mr. Defoe strode to the door only to point the cigar once more, this time at Mr. Kinloch. “Fool. I could have made you rich.”
“You’re the fool for thinking I want to be rich. I am quite comfortable, thank you.” Mr. Kinloch exchanged a glance with his butler who came up behind Mr. Defoe.
The American tugged on his cuffs and marched out of the room, Redmayne dogging his steps.
Oscar strode to the window and looked down at the street below. I could just make out his smile in the reflection. The smile suddenly vanished, however, and he leaned even closer to the glass.
I joined him at the window. “Is something the matter?”
“Miss Wheeler appears to be arguing with Defoe.”
“About the book? His obnoxious behavior?”
“I can’t tell. She gestured toward the neighbor’s house then back at this one.”
I followed his gaze to where Mr. Kinloch’s carriage waited. Miss Wheeler blocked the carriage doorway with her parasol, as she had done at the station to us. She said something to her employer that made him bristle. His response seemed to appease her, and she lowered her parasol. I couldn’t make out her expression in the weak light cast by the streetlamps. She climbed into the carriage ahead of Mr. Defoe.
I expected the coachman, Blackburn, to drive off, but he suddenly glanced up at us. Oscar and I quickly stepped back, out of sight from below.
“Professor Nash, Mr. Barratt, are you ready to see it?” Mr. Kinloch opened a drawer of the small desk in the corner and removed a book a little bigger than his hand.
My pulse quickened. “Is that it?”
He indicated I should sit on the sofa, then brought the book over. “A Treatise on the Laws of Witchcraft and Maleficium in Scotland by His Majesty’s Lord Advocate George Mackenzie,” Mr. Kinloch said as he handed the volume to me. “Calfskin binding, rather plain with some blind tooling decorations in the outer corners. It’s in remarkably good condition.”
“It is,” I said on a breath as I opened it. I resisted the urge to sniff the old paper. The one time I’d done that in front of Oscar, he’d looked at me as if I were mad. Instead, I carefully turned the page.
“Mackenzie was a remarkable man,” Mr. Kinloch said. “Complex too, by modern standards. As Lord Advocate, he defended the use of torture to secure confessions, yet he believed so-called witches were ordinary elderly women. His thoughts on witchcraft went against those of his contemporaries. That’s why one particular incident he recounts in this book is of utmost importance to the study of the history of magic, as we now know it. He once met a woman whom he believed was a real witch. In another famous work penned by Mackenzie, he describes how he studied and questioned her, without torture, and learned that she could manipulate wood using spells.”
Oscar approached and stood behind us to peer over our shoulders at the book in my lap. The mention of magic and a wood magician, rather than witches and witchcraft, had drawn his attention.
Mr. Kinloch continued. “Mackenzie investigated her and discovered that her family knew an ancient spell to work wood into beautiful and sturdy objects. He seems to have learned their spell, although it’s not clear how he got wind of it. He tried to recreate the woodworking effect using the same words of the spell but couldn’t. We know now that he failed because he wasn’t a wood magician, but at the time he didn’t know about magic being an inherited trait. He was artless and magic was kept secret, for obvious reasons.”
“Remarkable,” I said, reading the lines of Mackenzie’s story myself. “It redefines what we know of the history of magic discovery by the artless. I don’t know of any other eye-witness accounts about magic written by an artless that aren’t colored by prejudice and religious zealotry.”
Oscar clapped me on the shoulder. “India will find this fascinating. I can’t wait to show it to her, and Matt too, of course. Kinloch, at the risk of sounding like Defoe, what are you asking for it?”
“I think ten pounds is a fair price. It may sound like a lot, but it is rare.”
Ten! I could buy a wardrobe full of clothes for that. Oscar, with his finer tastes, could probably fill half a wardrobe, however.
