Adding Up.

The only thing I believe Arthur Enright is guilty of is secrecy. I’ll admit that secrecy, while asking all others to supply every scrap of a notion they might have, is a bit hypocritical, but that’s all Enright can be accused of – hypocrisy. Not the grand scale fraud Samuel is accusing him of. Samuel’s become obsessed with looking inside that house. He thinks he’ll find a demonic alter in there or something: a first born child in a cage. I think he misses the old days.

I rang Enright myself. I told him about the file I’d been working on for his timeline (most of which is entirely dull – hovering bronze dishes fell to the floor and magic lights went out), and said how much I enjoyed working on it. I mentioned Samuel and his eyes by way of comparison:-
“But of course he can’t supply a time check, what with him being blinded.”
“Of course. Not all circumstances that night were suitable for these interviews.”
“He’s had a bad run of luck lately actually. He was beaten up around Christmas time, did you hear about that?”
“Samuel was? No, I didn’t hear about that, but then he and I don’t really move in the same circles.”
“You do now.” I said. “I thought you knew him before, but maybe under a different name?” I held back from calling him Salt.
“As I think I told you before, ours is a solitary life – or rather it was. We know each other by reputation, very rarely in conversation. I don’t believe I ever met your friend before you brought him to our meeting at The Red Deer.”

I told Samuel this and he swore that Enright was lying. We were with Sebastian at Castle Market, as promised. I felt a little embarrassed about showing him round, like it was the best the city had to offer. In Sebastian’s eyes, although he kept up a veil of professional interest, it was not the sort of place he was used to. I’d been looking forward to going back there as well – I’d missed the days spent in their cafes, tucking into apple pies and pots of tea. I’d missed the life of the place – but now, with Sebastian unsure where to put himself, I could feel the threat. It goes deeper than physical – it’s like being stripped of something. I can’t explain it better than that.

“When you saw Enright here, did he know who you were?” I asked Samuel.
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t pick him out when we saw him here together? I met Arthur Enright the same day I met David,” I explained to Sebastian. “If you knew who he was, why didn’t you say?”
“I didn’t know exactly who he was.” Samuel offered, as though that explained everything. I looked up at the ceiling tiles and strangled a deep, pitiful groan.
“Why don’t you tell us,” said Sebastian, “exactly what happened the day you were attacked.”

“I’d been told, by a friend,” began Samuel. Already it sounded unlikely. “There were rumours of something significant in the foundations of the old castle. I didn’t know exactly what I should be looking for, so I ended up doing circuits, up and down the stairs. Then I met a magician I knew, he was with Arthur Enright and Nicholas Graham, but he didn’t introduce me. He told them my name, rather caustically. In my previous meeting with him, we’d disagreed, bitterly. This was on the lower level, I remember him stood in front of that display of trophies. I came upstairs to the food market, and Enright must have come up another way, because he was stood in front of the bakers, using his mobile phone. We made eye contact, but he was talking, so I kept on going past him.”
“Was it that stall there?” I pointed out the bakers in the corner of the market. Samuel looked, visualised it, and shook his head. We went up to the next level, where another bakers tops the central stairwell.
“This is it.” Said Samuel.
“But you would have been at the foot of the stairs when you left him. There’s no quicker way up than the way you came. Except of course…”
“He already had the stone.”

The theory is then – and we worked this out between the three of us – that Enright finds the stone, wants to search more thoroughly, invites a couple of acquaintances to join him, leading to rumours that spread to all quarters, meanwhile he has hold of the only known magic in the world. Naturally, when Samuel witnesses him travel two flights of stairs in half the time humanly possible, he panics. He isn’t ready to reveal the stone yet. He has the bodyguards he’s hired to protect the stone jump Samuel before he can blab. Which is ironic, because Samuel didn’t even realise what he’d seen.
“It didn’t strike you as odd?” I said. “Not only that he got there before you, but he wasn’t even on the move or out of breath.”
“I’ve seen a lot of things that qualify as odd in my life. A man being further upstairs than he was before doesn’t come close to the list.”

I didn’t push it, just as I didn’t challenge the further theory that Castle Market was only ever a smoke screen, because as Challoner pointed out, the manor of Waltheof was somewhere round Rivelin Valley. I don’t believe that Enright is the cat stroking villain Samuel wants him to be, despite the moustache, but I’m going along with Samuel, because if he’s breaking into Enright’s house then I’m going with him. Norman can’t risk it, and I’ve said that it’ll be safer with two. Besides which, I’ve been in the house before and I know my way round. This isn’t because I trust Samuel more than I trust Enright – I don’t – but if there is some proper magic going on inside that house then I want to see it.