The Seer (6 page)

Gavon delivered Jesco’s meal and started to fix a napkin in his shirt. Batting him off, Jesco said, “I’m well enough to feed myself, thank you.”

“That’s a good spirit you’ve got in you this morning,” Gavon said cheerfully. “Well then, I’ll go and say hello to everyone and come back to wipe you off in a few minutes.” He lumbered away.

After eating, Jesco was taken to the drawing room. It was a beautiful space full of small tables and comfortable chairs, a library of books along two of the walls and a grand view of the garden through the bay windows. Gavon set up a tray for Jesco to work upon and left him to it, only coming by now and then to check on matters and bring lunch.

Jesco deconstructed and reassembled for long hours, and then an attendant opened the door to the drawing room and threw him a significant look. The sketch artist entered a moment later. Another woman was with her, one that Jesco didn’t know.

Lady Memille Ericho hailed from a proud old Ainscote family, never to sit the throne in its time of monarchy but ever in the wings as advisors. The fall of the kings and the advent of Parliament seated them high in government and university chairs. The luster had worn off the rose in the intervening decades, other old families and new upstarts to the scene commanding more power, but the good Lady Ericho carried herself from a time in which everyone in the land knew her surname. She was nothing but a sketch artist, the branch of her family fortune having been shaken of its leaves, but her posture was rigid, her manners and dress impeccable, and the roots of her nobility without question. Striding into the room with her long blue dress swishing about her ankles, she gave Jesco a curt nod. The attendant was already bringing over a chair, which she took as she motioned for a table. He supplied it in a snap.

Her features were too severe to be called pretty, yet her very aura drew attention. “Greetings, Mr. Currane. I trust my call has not been too soon.”

“Not at all, my lady,” Jesco replied, putting away most of his whirly-gigs. “I hope you are well, and your husband.”

“Quite well, thank you.”

The second woman was the complete antithesis to Lady Ericho. Ink smudges on her fingers and chin, her light brown hair askew in its braid and her dress soiled at the hem from a puddle, she had a threadbare satchel over her shoulder where the lady carried her art supplies in a polished case. For all the mess of her, or perhaps because of it, she had a friendly and approachable attractiveness. A plain gold band was around her fourth finger.

No sooner had the attendant brought the table than the lady laid her sketchpad atop it. “I have been assigned a junior sketch artist temporarily. This is Ms. Tamora Squince. Ms. Squince, bring over a chair and table for yourself.” There had been the slightest emphasis on
temporarily
, like she was relieved that their partnership was not going to be a permanent one.

“’Allo, just Tammie then, Jesco. Neat things you got there,” the junior artist said in the broad dialect of south Ainscote. She snagged a chair leg with her foot and jerked it over. Dropping her satchel to it, she looked around for a table.

“Mr. Currane has two accessories to a piece of evidence in the Poisoners’ Lane case, as I was informing you in the carriage,” Lady Ericho said frostily. Tammie shoved over a table, transferred her satchel to it, and plopped down in the chair. As elegant as Lady Ericho was in her movements, everything planned and executed with precision, so was the younger woman sloppy. Sketchpads and pencil cases splashed over her table, a drawing working its way free and fluttering down to the carpet by the wheelchair.

She waved her foot for it but came up an inch short. “Ach, can you reach it?”

“I can’t touch it,” Jesco said, stuffing down laughter at how much this had to be trying Lady Ericho’s patience. Sliding down in her seat a little further, Tammie stamped on the corner of the paper and drew it back. She stuffed it into her sketchpads at random and opened up a pencil case. One promptly rattled down the small mountain of pencils inside, hit the table, and rolled off.

“Have there been any new developments in the case?” Jesco asked Lady Ericho as Tammie flailed about to get herself in order.

Looking steadily away from her companion, Lady Ericho said, “The body discovered in the alley was taken to the coroner, where it was determined that he died from two stab wounds to his chest. Both were killing blows. His photograph was taken-”

“I took it,” Tammie said. “Got a liking for photography.”

“That aside,” Lady Ericho said, “the photograph has been widely disseminated and identifications gathered.”

“He had more than one?” Jesco asked.

“No, but more than one person claimed him as a missing relative. Detectives Ravenhill and Scoth performed interviews all through yesterday of those claiming the deceased. Some were simply misunderstandings, and others purposeful in the hopes that claiming him might win them monetary restitution.” So upright in her chair that she didn’t press on its back, Lady Ericho gave a minute nudge to her pad so it was in the perfect position. Tammie continued to tidy a variety of messes upon her table. “However, there remain names upon the list that have not been eliminated. As to the timepiece, it is still under examination. There is an insignia upon an inner plate, presumably inscribed there by its maker, but it matches none of the most recognized clockmakers in Ainscote. An expert is set to come tomorrow for his opinion.”

“In other words, it’s a whole lot of not much,” Tammie said, at last ready to work. She was oblivious to the cold eye of the lady upon her. “Nothing really they’ve found since you were brought back here. Fleets of patrol clip-clopped all over those roads around the dead zone there, looking for the place where that chap was stabbed and asking everyone to take a look-see at his photograph. Trotted it into every opium den and saloon and inn and grocery and brothel around that area. I did some of it myself yesterday evening since I live over at the Byway near Wattling. Found myself standing in a crowd of the prettiest ladies and gents you ever saw at The Spanker. Never been in there before, but it was police business and the prosties were quite nicer than I expected-”

Lady Ericho cleared her throat. “Shall we begin?”

The angry man who had disliked his gift of the timepiece was the more interesting of the two in Jesco’s visions. He described the fellow as Lady Ericho’s pencil whisked over the paper in confident angles and curves. That weak but pretty face took shape. Jesco worked off the most recent image he had of the man, so it was thin as well.

A hand extended to his weather-catcher, which was the only whirly-gig that he had not returned to the satchel. He gave off on describing the man’s hair to move it away and said, “You must not touch it without gloves, Tammie, or you could impart memories to it. Then I will not be able to touch it barehanded ever again.”

“What if I wrap up my hand in a scarf, will that do?” Tammie offered. “I’ve never seen one of those up close. Do you know how much they cost?”

He knew because he had paid for it. Exasperation piercing through the frost, Lady Ericho said, “Ms. Squince, please contain your curiosity! We must get these done and back to the station. Prepare yourself to draw the redheaded woman.”

“Mine won’t take as long,” Tammie said, leaning down to rest her head upon her arm as she stared at the weather-catcher in fascination. “I’m going to use my book of pieces and that never takes as long as from the raw. Should we do that other woman, too? The blonde that the man was talking to?”

“Only if Mr. Currane’s strength will hold. She is not as relevant to this inquiry as the others.” Lady Ericho’s eyes flicked in distaste to the long, narrow book that Tammie was now dumping out onto her table. She rifled through the thick pages, each of which had drawings of noses, chins, and eyes upon them.

So aggravated was the older woman that when her drawing of the man was finished, she excused herself to get some air. Tammie instantly pushed the book of pieces over to the edge of her table and said, “You have a good recollection for faces.”

“Impeccable, due to the visions,” Jesco said. “I just don’t have the talent at art to render them in drawings myself.”

“Good for that, because then people like me would be square out of a job.” She flipped to a picture of eyes. There were a dozen in a long line. “Just point and I’ll put it together.”

Each pair of eyes was drawn upon a card, and as he pointed to the one that most resembled the redheaded woman’s, Tammie removed it from the book. Then she turned to noses, and on they went until she had a face made of cards upon her table. Cocking her head as her pencil flashed over the sketchpad, the junior artist said, “She’s a pretty one.”

“More than pretty,” Jesco said.

“You took a liking to her then?”

“Not my type.”

“More mine,” Tammie said, and they smiled at one another in perfect understanding.

It had never seemed appropriate to speak to Lady Ericho about anything other than the face while she was amidst its creation, but Tammie was far more casual and quite at ease with talking and working at once. “It was a mess at the station all morning, and I’m sure it still is now. Every grease-haired clodhopper on duty because the Shy Sprinkler has done it again, dribbled letters late last night all about the Parliament building with threats to break in and unload his snapper powder on them all. It’s a bug-killer, but it’s no good for people neither. Have you heard about this case? It’s been going on for some time.”

“No, not a word,” Jesco said.

“They’re doing their best to keep it out of the news. Worried it’s going to encourage people to do more of the same every time Parliament votes something off-ways from how you like it. This is the fourth time the fool has done it, waits for Parliament to have a session and says he’s coming to kill, but he never shows. The seer they’re using on that case can’t tell much from the letters. The fellow wears a mask and costume when he composes them, he must wear a pair of gloves too, come to think of it, and he’s got a massive amount of liquor in him besides so it skews everything. All those rich, bewigged gavel-holders are fit to be tied that he’ll muster up his gumption at last, however, stop talking big and actually show with murderous intentions. The building’s security has been tripled. You can’t breathe there without a guard staring up your nose and they’ve got every station in twenty miles on alert. But on alert for what? No one knows what he looks like. It could even be a she. Scoth got into a huge row with Captain Whennoth about it, office door wide open and the two of them having a good, healthy holler about it as I came in this morning.”

Enjoying the gossip that he never would have gotten out of Lady Memille Ericho in ten thousand years, Jesco said, “What exactly was the fight about?”

“The way that Detective Laeric Scoth sees it, he works homicide and there hasn’t been a homicide for him to work when it comes to the Shy Sprinkler. He’s got done deal homicides on his desk that need his attention and plenty of them: Mr. Dead in the Alley, the woman murdered and dumped in the sewer last month, the necktie killings and all those unsolved faces in the pictures behind his desk that keep him working all night long. So he doesn’t know why anyone’s trying to get him involved in helping out with the Shy Sprinkler case when at this point that man is just a big talker and a menace to people’s sense of safety.”

Her pencil swerved merrily around the paper. “Now, the way that Captain Tacker Whennoth sees it, he’s got the whole of Parliament breathing down his neck to catch this man, and he can feel the whole of the country breathing down his neck if he doesn’t. Can you imagine the headlines if that loon pulls it off? Can’t keep
that
out of the news. It’s the captain’s station closest to the Parliament building, and its welfare is in his purview. It’s his head that will roll if he misses an angle and the Shy Sprinkler chugs his bug-killer over everyone. So he wants every pair of feet in his station flooding the streets to look for suspicious activity, visiting the companies that manufacture the poison, doing everything they can to nail the culprit. Cases like this one here can wait, he said. I saw Scoth take a pace past the door right then, and to my reckoning, he was three ticks away from a personal explosion. It isn’t Mr. Dead in the Alley’s fault that his case isn’t as shiny as the Shy Sprinkler, Scoth said, and the dead man’s got every right to have a detective working his case while it’s still hot.

“The captain didn’t like that. Do you know who Mr. Dead in the Alley is? That’s what he shouted. Mr. Dead in the Alley is some dolt who went chasing after a married woman with a jealous husband, or dodged his tab at an opium den. No one does that and lives to tell about it. Maybe he acted up in a brothel somewhere, took liberties with a prostie that weren’t discussed beforehand. The ladies at The Spanker told me that that happens every week, men paying for the front door but taking a dive at the back, or breaking out handcuffs or plugs or nipple clamps by surprise since they didn’t want to pay the extra to see Madam Zostra. Only the Madam there handles those things, and with a bodyguard hidden in the corner behind a screen to make sure all the play stays respectful. Any of that kind of behavior on a regular prostie will get a fellow kicked straight out of The Spanker, and if he gets an attitude, he’ll receive a fist to his face or a crop across his back until he goes off. He’ll get more than that if he dares to come back. Or maybe Mr. Dead in the Alley got drunk in a dancehall and in the face of the security there to keep order. The captain suggested that, too. He was just a nobody who got himself poked in the chest, and the case can wait. The Shy Sprinkler is plotting to take out the most important people in all of Ainscote.”