Widow's Welcome

by D. K. Fields

  Wherever you lived in the Union – Fenest, the Steppes, the Tear – life left its mark. Some said those realms that lived near the capital had it easier, that the Perlish and the Seeders were softer for that, and Cora could believe it. She’d heard stories about life down in the far south. How the Torn managed to not only live in the Tear but thrive there was no small wonder, and the Rustans likewise. For all their lofty peaks, the Rusting Mountains were still right in the middle of the Tear. And the Caskers on their boats weren’t that far from it, either, when you stopped and stared at a map of the Union. This Wayward now at her feet looked rough as used nails. In her time in the police she’d seen plenty of Seeders looking no better. Perhaps nowhere in the Union offered a softer life. Certainly not Fenest at any rate.

  Footsteps echoed at the end of the alley. Without looking up she said, ‘This is a new one, Pruett.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Gorderheim.’

  Hurrying towards her was a stocky figure in a worn brown suit, a battered tub hat pulled low over his ears. Someone she hadn’t expected, but knew all too well: Butterman, writer for The Spoke, Fenest’s largest-selling pennysheet.

  ‘Disappointed doesn’t begin to describe my feelings on seeing you, Butterman,’ she said. ‘You’re paying your sources well these days.’

  ‘This one didn’t cost us a penny,’ Butterman said, his breathing laboured as he bent to look at the Wayward’s face. ‘They weren’t wrong about the mouth. What will the Widow make of it, I wonder?’

  ‘You knew about the mouth?’ she said, unable to keep the surprise from her voice.

  ‘The source was detailed. And insistent.’

  ‘And here you are, before even the stitcher has seen the body.’ She blew smoke into Butterman’s face and was pleased when his coughing forced him to move away.

  ‘How long until Pruett gets here?’ he said.

  Cora shrugged.

  ‘Helpful as ever, Gorderheim. I’ve enough here to start the story, at least.’

  ‘And in time for the afternoon edition,’ Cora said. ‘Why doesn’t that feel like coincidence?’

  ‘Hard getting space in any edition right now.’

  ‘The election?’

  Butterman grunted. ‘For two months there’s been nothing in this whole city but that. Trust me, I’d rather be covering fights over Mrs Hawksley’s whores.’

  ‘I thought you just made it all up anyway,’ Cora said.

  ‘Only when we can’t be bothered to follow the tips,’ he said, and grinned.

  ‘So what made you get up early for this one?’

  ‘Note said there was something special about it.’ He nodded towards the sewn mouth. ‘They weren’t wrong.’

  ‘Is the source one of your regulars?’

  ‘Come now, Detective Gorderheim. You know I can’t reveal that.’

  ‘There’s a difference between “can’t” and “won’t”.’

  Butterman ignored her and scribbled in his notebook.

  She flicked away the stub of her smoke. ‘At least tell me—’

  ‘My job is to write the stories, Detective. Your job is to investigate them. I assume that’s what you’re doing when you visit the back room of the Dancing Oak? Or is that something more—’

  ‘You know I can’t reveal my sources, Butterman.’

  ‘Then I s’pose we’ll each keep our council, won’t we? Now, any comment for the readers of The Spoke about another body found in the gutters of Fenest?’

  Now it was Cora’s turn to grunt.

  ‘Thought not,’ he said. Then something behind Cora caught Butterman’s eye. ‘But here’s a man who might be less tight-lipped than you and the dead.’

  Cora turned to see the stitcher, Pruett, making his way towards them from Hatch Street. Constable Jenkins had stayed with Pruett’s assistant and the cart on the street.

  ‘Morning, Pruett,’ Butterman said cheerfully. ‘Care to comment on—’

  ‘The Audience won’t want to hear your stories, Butterman, and neither do I.’ Pruett opened his black stitcher’s bag. Inside was a jumble of cloths and metal tools, none of which looked clean.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Butterman said. ‘My readers will be glad of a change from the election.’

  Pruett reached into his bag and drew out a small saw, the teeth of which were flecked with white powder. Bone dust from the last person Pruett had opened. He pointed the saw at the pennysheet hack.

  ‘The only stories I’m interested in hearing are those of the dead. So, unless you want to join them, I suggest you get back under the stone you’ve just crawled out from.’

  Butterman backed away, palms raised. ‘No need for that kind of ugliness, is there? I’ll send a lad for the report.’ And then to Cora: ‘See you at the Oak, Detective.’ He touched the rim of his battered tub hat and headed down the alleyway.

  Pruett looked at the dead man for the first time. He didn’t recoil on seeing the Wayward’s sewn mouth, but a flicker of distaste passed across his face.

  ‘No wonder the ’sheets are keen,’ he said.

  ‘Presses can’t be stopped.’

  ‘But do they have to see the bodies before I do? You let them get away with too much.’

  ‘Butterman had a tip,’ Cora said. ‘He nearly beat me to it. Someone wanted this body found.’

  ‘That so? Who is he, then?’

  ‘Still unidentified. Discovered by the lamp-man just before dawn.’

  Pruett began to rifle through his bag. He looked to have come straight from working in the cold room: the parts of his shirt visible beneath his tattered wool coat were flecked with blood and smears of something Cora didn’t want to speculate on. At least he’d taken off his apron.

  He knelt beside the dead Wayward. Cora knew better than to speak to him while he was assessing a body. She moved away to roll another smoke. More of the alley had revealed itself in the strengthening morning light. A rat scuffled in the crates of rotten vegetables. Two storeys up, a scrap of blue cloth was caught in the closed window of Mrs Hawksley’s place. Cora briefly allowed herself to imagine the warm bed on the other side.

  ‘Not dead more than a few hours,’ Pruett said.

  ‘And killed somewhere else.’

  ‘I’d say so. No sign of a struggle hereabouts.’

  ‘Risk of witnesses,’ Cora said, ‘that time of night. Mrs Hawksley’s whores keep late company. Strangled?’

  ‘Likely, but I’ll know more when I’ve got him back to the cold room.’ Pruett signalled to his assistant, Bowen, to get the stretcher from the back of the cart.

  Cora stood back to let Pruett and the assistant move the body, and enjoyed the last of her smoke. Time to get back to the station and tell Sergeant Hearst what she’d found. Another body in the gutters of Fenest. Was that all it was? Just another victim of the city? Wayward weren’t two-a-penny in Fenest, but they were just as likely to be killed over a drink, a bet, a woman as someone from another realm, and it was an election year, after all. That brought almost as many extra dead bodies as there were voters.

  But the sewn mouth, and the tip to bring The Spoke?

  Pruett and Bowen lifted the stretcher and Cora checked the cobbles beneath where the dead man had lain. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But as she stood, she saw something on the alley wall at eye level.

  It was a smear of red-white dirt, directly above where the body had been. The mark was finger-length and crumbled at her touch. There were no other marks like it anywhere else that she could see.

  Pruett had noticed her inspection and stopped.

  ‘More of the city’s filth?’ the stitcher called back.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Cora fished a grubby handkerchief from her coat and carefully collected some of the flaky dirt.

  They went on their way again, the men bearing the Wayward, Cora just behind them. The unevenness of the cobbles meant the body teetered on the stretcher, jiggling the laces erupting from his mouth, as if the dead man were t
rying to tell his last tale.

  Two

  Back at the station, Cora and Pruett parted ways: the stitcher to the cold room beneath street level, where he would examine the Wayward’s body, Cora to her cupboard-office opposite the briefing room.

  She’d occupied the same spot since she’d made detective, more than ten years ago now, and had resisted all attempts to move her somewhere more in keeping with her rank – the kind of fancy rooms detectives had in other divisions. Part of the reason Cora had stayed in such a cramped office was the fact her parents would have been appalled by it.

  A daughter in the police force was bad enough, after all that expensive Seminary schooling and a guaranteed job in the Commission’s Wheelhouse. The Gorderheim name might not have had the power it once did, thanks to Ruth running off and the stories in the pennysheets, but her mother insisted it still counted for something. Cora was a chance to rebuild what was lost.

  But a police constable, the lowest rung of one of the lowest professions in the city? That was hardly the kind of thing that would impress those who mattered in Fenest. Madeline Gorderheim had often been heard disparaging the police of Fenest at receptions and parties, even after her own daughter joined the force. And here Cora was now, all these years later, only a little further up the ranks and in a space no bigger than where the constables kept the coffee supplies. Not that Cora’s parents would be coming to visit her office, of course, given that they’d both joined the Audience long since: her father in that terrible first week after Ruth had left, and her mother only five years later.

  But just the thought of their disappointed faces was enough to lend her office-cupboard some charm. After all, windows were overrated, and if Cora had more space she’d only fill it with chequers’ slips and the other detritus she seemed to collect. From her desk – an old card table – she could hear the constables in the briefing room that served as canteen, dormitory and the place where investigatory announcements were made. She could hear them even with both doors closed. That the constables often forgot that fact was no bad thing.

  Sergeant Hearst forgot nothing. Cora had just inked her pen to start her report on the body in the alleyway when her commanding officer blocked the little light that found its way into her office.

  ‘Well?’ Hearst said, closing the door.

  He was slight, a head shorter than Cora. There was a fine dusting of sandy-coloured crumbs on one of his elbows. He’d been feeding the pigeons on the station roof again.

  ‘The lamp-man claims he found the body just before four this morning,’ Cora said. ‘That’s his regular spring time for dousing in the alley. Does Hatch Street too.’

  ‘And did our lamp-man see anyone else at the scene?’

  ‘Only the rats,’ Cora said.

  ‘I’ve heard Mrs Hawksley’s whores called many things, but that’s a new one.’

  ‘Same chance of catching something.’ She put her pen back in the inkwell. ‘But the girls and boys had finished for the night. No one about but our lamp-man.’

  ‘Any reason to suspect he isn’t telling us the truth?’

  ‘None that I can find,’ Cora said. ‘I sent the new constable, the one with the teeth—’

  ‘Jenkins,’ Hearst said.

  ‘I sent her door-knocking round that way. In the meantime.’ Cora sifted through the papers on her desk until she found her notes. ‘Apparently, the lamp-man has been dousing in the alley since he was old enough to lift the pole. He’s a regular at the Seat of the Commoner and gives money to the Orphan Fund.’

  ‘Sounds like one of our more commendable citizens. And Pruett’s report?’

  ‘I’m going down now,’ she said. ‘He should be ready to hear the Wayward’s stories.’

  ‘Wayward?’ Hearst said, his voice losing its former lightness.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Hearst noticed the crumbs of bird seed on his elbow and spent a moment picking them off. Cora waited.

  ‘A Wayward in the alley behind Mrs Hawksley’s,’ Hearst said, checking his other arm for seed. ‘No mystery as to what he was doing there, I suppose.’

  ‘The whores don’t usually sew their customers’ mouths shut.’

  His attention was on her again, his eyes wide. ‘What?’

  She told him about the laces through the Wayward’s lips, and about Butterman getting to the scene almost as she did.

  ‘Well, well,’ Hearst said. ‘Perhaps the afternoon pennysheets will tell us more. But in the meantime—’

  ‘Pruett. I know. I’m going.’ Cora stood with a practised care that didn’t disturb the piles of paperwork.

  Once they were out in the corridor, Hearst caught her arm.

  ‘Sillian is to be kept informed about this one,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Sillian? Why?’

  Hearst shrugged. ‘As if she’d tell me. But I’m telling you: she wants to know.’ He turned and went into the briefing room and Cora heard the constables scrambling to attention.

  As she made her way down the steps that led to the cold room, Cora asked herself why Chief Inspector Sillian, head of the Bernswick Division of the Fenestiran police force, was so interested in a dead Wayward behind a whorehouse. She hoped the stitcher had the answer.

  *

  Despite the bone chill that gave the cold room its name, Cora found Pruett in his usual state when examining: his old wool coat was hanging on the butcher’s hook behind him – looking for all the world like a body waiting its turn on the table – and he’d rolled his shirt sleeves past his elbows. His grey apron was smeared, stained.

  The Wayward was on the examining table. Pruett was behind his head, using pliers to grip one of the laces still threaded through the dead man’s lips. The cold room was full of such tools and they winked in the light of the many lamps dotted about, giving a strange gleam to the dark purpose of the place.

  ‘So, who is it that I’ve been getting to know?’ Pruett said.

  ‘Was hoping you’d tell me,’ Cora said. ‘Nothing to identify him in his clothes? No letters? Bills?’

  ‘Bowen did the rifling.’

  Pruett’s assistant was mixing something foul-looking in a large mortar. He had to work it hard, which put a little colour in his cheeks, but his breath still misted in front of him.

  ‘Not so much as a pennysheet,’ Bowen said, wiping his forehead clear of cold sweat.

  ‘Pity,’ Cora said.

  Pruett tugged at the lace. When it didn’t give, he yanked it, and the lace came free of the small, ragged holes that lined the Wayward’s top and bottom lips. A ‘W’, being un-inked.

  ‘That’s got you,’ Pruett murmured. He dropped the lace into a small bowl and set about removing the one that remained.

  Cora picked up the bowl and looked at the black lace. Other than being stiff with dried blood, it appeared ordinary enough. But it had been used to sew someone’s mouth shut – that made it anything but ordinary.

  She turned to look at the figure on the table. Now that he was stripped of his clothes, laid out on stone rather than his cloak, Cora asked herself if she’d still know he was Wayward. The contrast between his sun-stained face and arms and the chalky flesh of the rest of him was clear enough. But she’d seen as much on Casker dockers and Seeder farmhands. And the red glistening of his exposed guts would be as everyone else’s. When Pruett got to someone with his saws and clamps, Bowen standing by with pails to catch the heart and lungs and all the rest, it didn’t matter which realm they were.

  Another yank and Pruett had the second lace moving. Like the black one, this slowly left the Wayward’s flesh. As the lips parted at last, free of what had bound them, the dead man moaned.

  Cora stumbled back from the table and knocked over a pile of tools, which made the floor’s stone ring like the Poet’s bells. Pruett, unperturbed, widened the Wayward’s mouth and peered inside.

  ‘Nothing obvious here. Tongue looks healthy enough. Thought there might have been something stowed in the mouth to warrant th
e stitching.’ He dropped the pliers into the bowl with the laces.

  ‘And that… that noise?’ Cora said.

  ‘Air escaping. Happens more often than you’d think.’

  ‘It sounded like he was speaking.’

  Pruett gave a grim laugh. ‘The dead do speak, Gorderheim, but not in any language you’d understand.’

  ‘So what did this dead Wayward tell you?’ she said.

  ‘That he was in good health, up until he was killed.’

  ‘And how was he killed?’

  ‘Strangulation.’ Pruett waved at the series of bruises that ringed the Wayward’s neck. ‘You saw the marks.’

  ‘To crush someone’s throat with your bare hands,’ Cora said, ‘you can’t be rushing.’

  ‘Which would tie in with you thinking the deed was done elsewhere and the body brought to the alley afterwards. But you’re wrong about the bare hands.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Those marks are too thin to be made by fingers.’

  Cora bent closer to the Wayward, holding her breath against the cloying smell of blood that rose from the man’s punctured lips. Bowen brought a lamp to aid her.

  ‘A rope then?’ she said. ‘You think he was strung up?’

  Pruett shook his head. ‘Neck isn’t damaged enough. Remember the boy found swinging from the North Gate last summer? The one who’d kept the women in the cellar?’

  ‘The mob got to him,’ Cora said.

  ‘And his neck was broken from the body’s weight.’

  ‘You can’t mistake a hanging,’ Bowen called over, almost cheerfully.

  ‘So what happened to our friend here?’ Cora asked.

  ‘Garrotted,’ Pruett said. ‘Sitting or standing.’

  ‘And the weapon?’

  ‘A thin length of cord, I’d say. Not too roughly made, given the lack of burn marks.’