Jackaby (4 page)

T
he hallway was long and narrow, concluding with a wide window at the far end. It was lit by oil lamps, which cast a sepia glow over the scene. A single uniformed policeman waited outside the apartment immediately ahead. He stood leaning against the frame of the open door, peering back into the room he guarded. A plaque above him declared it apartment 301. The smell, like copper and rot, grew more powerful as we advanced. Jackaby walked ahead of me, and I noticed his step falter slightly. He paused, cocking his head to one side as he looked at the policeman.

At the sound of the stairway door closing, the officer snapped to attention, then relaxed his stance a bit as he made eye contact. He watched our approach, but made no move to engage us. He was clean-cut, his uniform crisp and neatly ironed. His collar was starched, and his badge and buttons shone. His shoes, which looked more like the sharp-toed wingtips of a dress uniform than the sturdy boots of an average beat cop, were buffed so brightly they might have looked more at home on a brass statue than a living body.

“Good day, Officer,” said Jackaby. “Marlowe is waiting for us inside. Don’t want to keep him.”

“No, he isn’t,” said the man, simply. His face was expressionless, studying Jackaby. By the light of the lamps I made him out to be just a year or two older than I. Curls of jet-black hair peeked out from beneath the brim of his uniform cap. He turned to acknowledge me with a polite nod, and his rich brown eyes paused on mine. He smiled shyly, turning his attention quickly back to the detective. My face felt suddenly warm, and I was grateful that he had looked away again.

“Ah, yes,” responded Jackaby, not losing pace, “but he’ll be wanting to see us in there, nonetheless. Bit of a surprise. He’ll be thrilled.”

“I doubt that very much,” said the policeman. His accent was difficult to place—Americanized but faintly eastern European. “I know you,” he said.

Jackaby’s eyebrows rose. “Oh?”

“Yes, you’re the detective. You solve the”—he sought for a word—“
special
crimes. Inspector Marlowe doesn’t like you.”

“We have a complicated relationship, the inspector and I. What’s your name, then, lad?”

“Charlie Cane, sir. You can call me Charlie. The chief inspector is down the hall right now, talking to witnesses.” He stepped aside, opening the doorway for Jackaby. “I know all about you. You help people. Helped a friend of mine, a baker down on Market Street. No one else would help him. No one else would believe him. He had no money, but you helped anyway.”

“Anton? Good baker. Still saves me a baguette every Saturday.”

“Be quick, Mr. Jackaby.” Charlie glanced up and down the hallway as the detective slid into the room behind him. “And you, Miss—?”

“Rook,” I answered in my most professional tone, hoping I did not sound as flustered as I felt. “Abigail Rook.”

“Well, Miss Rook, will you be examining the room, also?”

“I—of course. Yes, I am Mr. Jackaby’s assistant. I will be, you know, assisting.”

Jackaby shot me a momentary glance from within the room, but he did not correct me. I slipped inside and was immediately overwhelmed by the coppery stench. The apartment had only two rooms. The first was a living area, populated by a small sofa, a writing desk, a bare oak table, and a simple wooden cupboard. Not many decorations adorned the area, but there was a dull oil painting of a sailboat on one wall, and a small framed portrait of a blond woman propped up on the desk.

The door to the next room hung open, revealing the grisly source of the smell. A small halo of dark crimson stained the ground beneath the body. The dead man wore a simple vest and starched shirt, both of which were dyed vivid red at the chest and tattered so thoroughly, it became impossible to discern where clothing ended and flesh began. I felt light-headed in earnest this time, but drew on all my practiced stubbornness not to succumb to a genuine faint. I forced my eyes away from the bloody scene, following the detective instead as he hastened around the first chamber.

Jackaby gave the spartan living room a cursory examination. Wrapping a finger in the end of his scarf, he opened and shut the cupboard, then peeked beneath the table. He lingered briefly by the writing desk, pulling out the chair and returning it. Beside the desk sat another chair, which Jackaby examined more closely, leaning in and delicately brushing a finger along the grain of the wood. Rummaging in his crowded pockets, he removed a blue-tinted vial and held it up, staring at the chair through the glass.

“Hmm.” He straightened and quickstepped to the macabre scene in the bedroom. The vial disappeared back into the coat. I followed, breathing through the fabric of my sleeve—which helped only a little. Jackaby took a rapid tour of this room as well, checking in the closet and under the pillow before bringing his attention to the corpse. I tried to survey the room—to take a careful and deliberate mental inventory of the dead man’s belongings—but my memory of that space remains a faded blur. Almost against my will, my eyes fixed themselves on the horrific sight of that poor body, instead, the picture burning itself into my mind.

“Tell me, Miss Rook,” Jackaby said as he knelt to examine the victim, “what did you notice in that last room?”

I dragged my gaze from the slain body and back to the doorway as I tried to remember anything unusual. “He lives simply . . .
lived
simply,” I corrected myself awkwardly. My mind peeled very slowly away from the corpse and began to find focus as I considered my surroundings. “I would guess he lived alone. It looks like he had a girl, though—there’s a picture of one in a nice frame over there. Not much food in the cupboards, but a lot of papers on the desk, along with a very modern typewriter, several pens, and at least one spare inkwell. By the letterhead on his stationery, I take it his name was Arthur Bragg. The wastebasket is full of crumpled papers. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a writer.”

“Huh.” Jackaby glanced back at the door. “Wastebasket?”

I tried to read his expression without looking back at the body. What sort of detective didn’t look in the bin? The men in my adventure magazines were always finding important clues in the bin. “Yes. Back there, just beside the desk.”

Jackaby went back to looking at the body. He lifted a corner of the rug and peered beneath it. “What about the chairs?”

I thought a moment. “The chairs? Oh, of course—there are two at the writing desk. One where you would expect, but the other—he must have had company!” I looked out again. “Yes, I can see where it’s been taken from its place at the table. Someone was sitting opposite him at his writing desk. That’s why you were so interested in it. Is it strange they didn’t sit around the table, instead? What do you think it means?”

“Haven’t a clue,” answered Jackaby.

“Well, have I got all the important bits? Did you notice something I missed?”

“Of course I did,” said Jackaby, with such a matter-of-fact tone as to almost obscure the arrogance of the statement. “You entirely ignored the clear fact that his guest was not human. I suppose that could, in other circumstances, be inconsequential—but given the state of the man now, it seems rather pertinent.”

I blinked. “Not human?”

“Not at all. Remnants of a distinctly magical aura are all over the chair, and even stronger on the body. Hard to tell what sort of being was here, but old, I can tell. Downright ancient. Don’t feel bad, no way you could have seen that. Now then, what do you notice about the body?”

I paused. “Well, he’s dead,” I said, not wanting to look again.

“Good, and . . . ?”

“He’s clearly lost a lot of blood, having been”—I swallowed hard, keeping my eyes on Jackaby—“torn open, like that.”

“Precisely!” Jackaby grinned at me over the body. “An astute observation.”

“Astute?” I asked. “With all due respect, sir, it’s impossible to ignore. The poor man’s a mess!”

“Ah, but it’s not the wound that’s strange, now is it?”

“It isn’t strange? I suppose you see people with their chests ripped open every day?”

“What the . . .
detective
is saying,” came a new voice from the doorway, hesitating on the word “detective,” as if bestowing the title with great reluctance, “is that the blood that isn’t here is more of a mystery than the blood that is.”

I turned. A uniformed policeman with two silver bars on his sleeve stepped into the room, looking down sternly at Jackaby. Heavy iron handcuffs hung from his belt and clinked against his leg in a measured rhythm until he drew to a halt just a few paces from the body. He was clean-shaven, with a hard jawline.

Jackaby did not look up. He fished about in his pockets and continued examining the body through various vials and tinted lenses as he spoke. “Right you are, Chief Inspector,” Jackaby said. “This carpet alone should be entirely saturated, and yet it’s hardly stained except immediately about the torso. It looks as though the wound’s been daubed. Just here, and all the way across, like someone’s taken a towel to mop it up.” He packed an oblong jade disk back into a pocket and got to his feet. Speaking more to himself, he added, “Only, why bother cleaning up the body at all if you plan on leaving the scene like this?”

“Thank you ever so much,” said Chief Inspector Marlowe, “for providing me with deductions I had reached an hour before you trespassed onto my crime scene. And now, Mr. Jackaby, any reason I shouldn’t have you in a cell for the remainder of this investigation?”

“What, just for paying you a friendly visit at work?”

“For that, and also for obstruction, trespassing . . . hell—I’m sure that god-awful hat of yours is worth a couple of charges all by itself. You still haven’t thrown that rag away?”

“Obstruction? Is that what you call freely offering my invaluable insights?”

“There’s not a lot of value in insights I can provide for myself.”

“Wait, there’s more than that,” I piped up, instantly wishing I had stayed silently in the corner. “Er, he noticed something else . . .”

The chief inspector interrupted. “No, no, let me guess: the culprit is . . .” He paused for mock dramatic effect. “Not human?”

“As a matter of fact,” answered Jackaby.

“Just like the thieves in the Winston Street Bank case?”

“They most certainly weren’t human,” Jackaby answered. “Welsh pixies, a small clan.”

“And the bar fight at Mickey’s Tavern?”

“Well, not the scrawny fellow, obviously, but I maintain that big bloke was a troll. Half blood at least.”

“And the ‘Grocery Ghost’ who kept rearranging produce after hours?”

“Okay, I have already admitted I was wrong on that one. As we saw, that was Miss Maudie from Hampton Street, but you have to admit, the old girl is very strange.”

Marlowe breathed in deeply and sighed, shaking his head, then turned his attention to me. “And you are?”

I gave the inspector my name and started to explain about my arrival and the job posting. He cut me off again.

“Another one?” He directed the question at Jackaby, then turned back to me. “A little advice, young lady. Get out before he drags you too far into his craziness. This business is not for the female temperament. Now both of you, I want you off this crime scene and out of my way. This isn’t some two-bit bar fight—this is murder. Out!” He turned and called into the hallway, “Detective Cane, between this idiot and Mr. Henderson, I’ve had quite enough lunacy for one afternoon. Please show the man and his young lady off the premises.”

Marlowe stepped aside, and Charlie Cane appeared, looking uncomfortable and fiddling nervously with the polished buttons on his uniform.

“Nice chat as always, Marlowe,” said Jackaby pleasantly as he passed. Marlowe grunted. I followed my new employer into the hallway and the chief inspector slammed the door behind us.

“Well, he’s cheerful today,” Jackaby quipped.

“Oh, Marlowe is an exceptional chief inspector,” Charlie replied.

“I’m sure he is,” I said, “Detective Cane, isn’t it?”

His gaze dropped, and he looked sheepishly aside. “It’s Junior Detective, to be totally accurate, miss,” he said. He met my glance again with a smile before he went on. “It really is an honor to work with Chief Inspector Marlowe. He’s just a bit edgier than usual today. The new commissioner is supervising this case very closely. He makes Marlowe tense.”

“Who’s Henderson?” asked Jackaby.

“Who?” said Charlie.

“Henderson. Marlowe mentioned him. Something about lunatics.”

“Oh, that would be William Henderson—room 313. He is . . . odd. We thought he might have some useful information, because he says he heard wailing early this morning, like someone crying very hard. Only, when the inspector asks him how long the cries persisted, Mr. Henderson looks at him funny and says they haven’t stopped. He tells us all to listen, and says they’re clear as anything, can’t we hear them? Now, we all listen—and I have very good ears. There is no sound. Henderson insists it’s as loud as though someone were weeping in that very room, and shouldn’t we do something about it? He begins to get agitated, so the inspector excuses himself, assuring the man we would look into it. Very odd.”

“Interesting.” Jackaby started on down the hallway, glancing at room numbers as he passed. I hurried after him.

“Wait,” said Charlie, following. “I told the inspector I would take you out of the building.”

“And so you shall,” Jackaby called over his shoulder. “Expertly, I imagine, and to the letter of the instruction. However, I don’t recall Marlowe giving any specific directions about time, nor about the route we take, so let’s have a quick chat with someone odd, first, shall we? I do love odd. Ah, here we are!”

Jackaby rapped firmly on the door to room 313. After a pause, it flung itself open, and we faced a poorly shaven man with bushy, muttonchop sideburns, tired, sunken eyes, and a pair of bright red pajamas. Around his head a leather belt had been strapped, holding two decorative throw pillows tightly to his ears. Little fabric tassels on one of them swayed to a stop as he stared at us from beneath a furrowed brow.

“Well?” the man said.

Jackaby smiled and extended a hand in greeting. “Mr. Henderson, I presume?”