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‘So what now?’
    ‘We go straight back to Berwick’s house.’
    ‘An’ confront the evil housekeeper lady?’
    ‘Not exactly.’

CHAPTER 3
    Laundry
    At the same time that Lyle, Tess and Tate were making their way into the mews behind Berwick’s house, where old nags and new saddle horses nipped at hay bags drooping from low stone ceilings, and every other corner held manure filled with hungry worms, the Machine, rattling away with the sound of many steam locomotives racing along the same track, gave off the mechanical equivalent of a fart.
    The invisible thing that accelerated at about three hundred thousand miles a second from the Machine’s spinning heart therefore took approximately 0.00003 seconds to rise up from under the earth, ripple out in every direction and shimmer off beyond the limits of London. No one really noticed its passage, except for one clockmaker who found his delicate little iron springs unhappily straining for an instant in their frame, and one well-meaning scientist at the Royal Institute, who was surprised to find every one of his carbon bulbs, each the size of his own head, flaring up and popping into darkness as the unseen thing rippled through the room. Neither he nor the clockmaker even guessed at what the cause might be.
    There was, however, someone who did. That someone, sitting in an armchair, reading a copy of the Graphic , looked up sharply as the thing passed by. His expression of astonishment didn’t fade until he was distracted by a little drip, drip, drip sound. Unthinkingly, he reached to his nose and, with all the decorum of a custard-pie fight, wiped it on the back of his sleeve. White blood smeared the black velvet of his jacket, dripped from his nose and tasted salty in his mouth. He looked up and was surprised to see static rising across his vision and to hear a sloshing sound in his ears. With an embarrassed, ‘Oh dear,’ he tried to stand up, took one step and collapsed on the floor without another sound.
    By the time all this had happened, the fading remnant of the thing risen up from the Machine had been to the moon and back twenty-seven and a half times, before dissolving out into insubstantiality.
    Outside, it started to rain.
     
    Horatio Lyle liked back doors. They encouraged the secret part of him that wanted to be a rebel; they made him feel reckless and dangerous. He also liked people who answered back doors more than those who answered the front, since they usually had other things on their mind and couldn’t be bothered to ask him relevant and embarrassing questions such as, ‘Who are you, what’s that child doing, is that your dog, are you carrying any explosive substances, do you have any identification, is there any danger associated with talking to you?’ and so on. What they said instead, and what indeed the man who answered this door said, was, ‘You’re selling something?’
    ‘Whatcha wantin’?’ said Tess quickly.
    ‘We ’re not selling anything,’ said Lyle, putting a firm hand on Tess’s shoulder. ‘We ’re . . . do I know you?’
    The man who’d opened the door and was wiping his inky hands on a once-white apron said, ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘You’re the butler, yes?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Been here long?’
    ‘A few weeks - what is this?’
    ‘What ’s your name, sir?’
    ‘Cartiledge; look, if you don’t tell me what this is about I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.’
    ‘Mr Cartiledge,’ said Lyle brightly, holding out his hand. ‘Special Constable Lyle.’
    ‘What ’s a “Special Constable”?’
    ‘The less-well-paid kind,’ confided Lyle. ‘Can I come in?’
    ‘I should probably ask Mrs Cozens . . .’
    ‘Mr Cartiledge, of all the things to do, that is the last.’
    Cartiledge’s eyes narrowed. ‘She ’s not in some sort of trouble, is she?’
    ‘Police business. I really couldn’t say.’
    And there it was, that look in the eye, that slight gleam of ambition that said here was a butler