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by Robin Jeffrey

  “Yes. He wanted to give his loved ones something to go back to and pay their respects.”

  Father was conceited like that; I kept the thought to myself.

  The director gave a heavy sigh, as if the weight of my father’s life had been thrown solely across his diminutive shoulders. “Well, that will be somewhat more difficult and costly to arrange…”

  “Money isn’t a problem,” I said for what must have been the fiftieth time.

  The man shook his head from side to side with such vigor I was afraid it would pop off. “No, no, of course not, sir, I didn’t mean to imply, by no means, yes; indeed, why should it be a problem?”

  The director fell silent as he unlocked the slab-like doors which led to the mortuary. The hermetic seal broke with a whoosh, the doors sweeping open across the linoleum floor. The air inside was stale and cold and tasted like candied plastic, oversweet and thick. Unlike the rest of the funeral home, decorated in the expected blacks, grays and occasional pastels, the mortuary was painfully bright, every steel surface polished to perfection.

  A row of metal beds stood in the center of the room, all empty except for one. I stared at the body, covered by a thick white sheet as if that alone could restore the dignity lost in death, and recognized my father’s familiar shape.

  “The EO returned your father’s personal effects as well, sir.” The director handed me a large bag, sealed at one end. “I would be more than happy to dispose of them for you.”

  His blue suit was visible through the plastic, as were the dark brown specks which stained it. I would have liked nothing better than to hand the gruesome package back and let them burn it all, but Cadence stared at the bag with undisguised excitement. Passing it from hand to hand, I swallowed hard, nodding. “Thank you, but I think I’ll deal with these myself.”

  “As you wish, sir. I will leave you for a moment.” He extended an arm towards Cadence. “Would you like to wait out in the hallway, miss?”

  She glanced back at me, brow furrowing, before shaking her head. “No, thank you. I’d quite like to see.”

  He shrugged and departed, shutting the doors behind him.

  With all the masculine bravado of which I was bereft, Cadence flung the sheet away, exposing my father’s body to the unflattering lights. His jaw was fractured, jutting out to one side in a grotesque scream. His open eyes, covered in a grey film, bulged out from his skinless face, a sharp contrast to the purple and green flesh everywhere else. With the back of his skull collapsed, the rest of his head looked like a deflated balloon.

  I saw where the EO medics chipped away at the bone and removed his brain.

  “I’m going to be sick.”

  Cadence leaned over the body, waving towards the wall. “There’s a sink over there.”

  I dry heaved over the deep sink for the next few minutes, holding the sides for balance as my head swam. Haven eaten no breakfast in preparation for this moment, there was nothing for me to throw up, but my throat still burned as it spasmed. I ran the faucet, bringing handfuls of water up to my mouth and sucking up the liquid as I shook. Behind me, I heard Cadence moving around, humming and tutting.

  “I’m afraid nothing’s jumping out at me,” she said at length. “He was killed with several blows to the back of the head. The skin on his face has been scrubbed away. But with what, and for what purpose, it’s impossible to say. Initially I had assumed his broken bones were further injuries sustained during the initial attack, but,” a crackling that made me gag and clutch the edges of the sink sounded, “there’s no bruising around the breaks in any of his limbs, nor is there significant blood pooled into the breaks in his neck. So, they must have been inflicted post-mortem; again, for some reason which is indeterminable at this time.

  “He was still in his day clothes, which means he hadn’t had time to undress for bed before he was attacked.” Her footsteps echoed in the empty room, followed by the squeal of a seal being ripped open. “I don’t see anything immediately helpful in his personal effects either.”

  I walked back to her, grateful that Cadence had re-covered the body now that she was done with it. She stood by one of the empty metal beds, tipping out the contents of the plastic bag. Tossing the bag to the floor, Cadence moved her hands over the jumble of items with a frown, pushing some things aside and picking up others for examination.

  My eyes were drawn to the folded suit of clothes. Some dispassionate EO tech had marked the blood stains with black circles and written a small number beside each one. With shaking hands, I lifted the jacket up by its shoulders, the fabric swinging and twisting as it dropped open. It looked several sizes too small. My father had been a large man in life, but his clothes had shrunk now he was gone. My gaze moved over the fabric with reluctance until the flapping left sleeve drew attention to a dark stain on its elbow.

  Picking at the sleeve with the tips of my fingers, I pulled the fabric closer. The dark stain wasn’t a stain, but a hole in the jacket itself. A small, jagged tear, frayed strings swayed around the edges, the lighter stripes running off into the hole like train tracks off a cliff. The gap tugged at something in my memory.

  “Hold on a moment,” I put the suit down and began digging through my pockets. Cadence paused in accordance with my request, looking up through half-lidded eyes.

  I pulled the tattered piece of cloth I had found the afternoon before out of my breast pocket and held it up to the light. The fabric was a perfect match to my father’s suit, a dark blue with lighter blue stripes. Laying the scrap over the hole in the jacket, it fit like the final piece of a jigsaw.

  “Chance!” For once, Cadence looked as impressed with me as she should have been, mouth hanging open, her bored eyes now wide with excitement. She jabbed her finger at the ripped segment. “Where did you get that?”

  “It was stuck in the wheel of that cart that you left in my room.” I turned the swatch over in my hands, rubbing it between my fingers. “How the hell did it get there?”

  Cadence’s face went blank quicker than a shut-down screen. She started tapping the table in a quick, eccentric pattern, running her tongue across her lips. “I don’t know.”

  My brows came down hard as I stared at her, one corner of my mouth pulled up over my teeth. “You’re lying. You definitely need to practice if you ever want to get away with it.”

  Cadence cleared her throat and looked away, still tapping. I shook the fabric at her. “This is important somehow, isn’t it?”

  “It is. But it’s dangerous to theorize in advance of the facts.” Bursting into a laugh, Cadence slapped her hand against the table, leaving a dent in the thick metal. “Cy, I’m pretty sure it means you’re off the hook though, Chance, I am pretty damn sure about that! I have to check on some things back at the house, let’s go!”

  All the way home Cadence refused to share her conclusions with me, insisting that to do so would not only confuse me, but ruin the suspenseful flow of narration. Literature never being a strong subject of mine, I nevertheless realized that what she meant was that she didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

  When we arrived back at the manor, Cadence marched through the foyer and into the hallway on the right, coming to a stop in front of the back wall. To her left was a shabby staircase which led to the staff’s quarters. In the opposite corner a small, brown button sat.

  Cadence depressed the button and the dumbwaiter’s door slid open with a creak. Taking a step back, hand at her chin, she gazed into the opening as if waiting for it to speak. After a minute, Cadence dropped down on all fours and crawled inside. It was a tight fit for a woman of her size, and she soon scooted out again, fingers tapping against the ground. Crawling partway in again, she moved her fingers along the welded edges of the shaft.

  Jumping back with a small grunt, her skin pricked by the imperfect seams, she sucked at her fingertips and sat back on her haunches, staring down the hall. “The kitchen butts up against this wall here…” Cadence laid her hand against the wall, “and the dining
room is on the far end…”

  She pursed her lips, looking up at me as she patted the dumbwaiter. “Who has the room closest to this?”

  “Henry, then his mother and father, and then Dr. Merton,” I said, pointing out each room in turn. “Why?”

  Cadence stared at the ground, frowning as if it had insulted her. She made a clicking sound, one arm shooting into the air. “Well, the proximity alone is certainly suggestive.”

  “Proximity? To the dumbwaiter?” I took her by the hand and hoisted her up, still surprised by her substantial weight.

  “Are you certain that Henry doesn’t have any violent tendencies?”

  “He can be particularly vitriolic about resurgence era modernist poetry, but other than that, no.”

  Throwing her hands into the air, Cadence headed down the hallway to his room. “I better ask him myself.”

  “Ask him what, if he’s a psychotic killer?” I grabbed her arm, shuttering forward as she dragged me along before noticing my attempt to stop her. She glared at me and shrugged.

  With a sigh, I released her, shaking my head. “Alright, alright, we’ll go see Henry. Let me do the talking though. He’s liable to think you’re a bafter if you go about it your way.”

  Cadence blinked at me, drawing away from me slightly. “Bafter?”

  I spun my finger next to my temple. “Bafter, you know – crazy? Just let me handle this.”

  There was no answer to my knock and, seeing as the door was unlocked, I let myself into Henry’s rooms. He wasn’t there and it occurred to me that he might be out on one of his constitutions, curled up on some grassy knoll with a pad and a stylus. If that was the case, we would have little chance of finding him until he decided to wander home.

  I had said as much to Cadence when a manservant caught sight of us in the hall and informed us that if we were looking for him, the young man had gone out to the shed some time before.

  The shed, my father’s workroom whenever he brought technical projects home from the office, was a squat, brown thing around the side of the house, hidden from view by some well-placed trees. Originally a greenhouse, it still retained several flowering specimens to which the groundskeepers tended. Over time it had been taken over by more scientific equipment, such as relays, test models, microscopes and chemical distillers.

  Nix dangling from between my lips, I pushed the door open and strolled in with Cadence close behind. Henry sat at the work bench closest to the door, underdressed by his standards: a thin cotton t-shirt and a pair of well-worn corduroys making him look almost common. The computer hummed under the desk, Henry using it to access the vertex on his small black pad, screen glowing beside his microscope. Staring down the lens, tongue sticking out one side of his mouth, he concentrated on the dissection of a large purple flower propped up on the tray.

  “Henry, love – talk to you for a moment?”

  He peeled back the outer layer of stem with his tweezers, revealing the pale pith beneath. “I’m a little busy, Chance. But I suppose it can’t wait?” Looking up from his work at last and, seeing that I was not alone, he attempted a smile. “Oh. Good morning, Miss Turing. Did you sleep well?”

  “I was up most of the night thinking.”

  Henry gave a hum of approval and returned to his scope, picking up a tiny scalpel and cutting at the plant. “A woman after my own heart.”

  Cadence gasped, eyes widening as she pressed her hand to her collar. “I’m not after it, honest!”

  Henry sat up from the scope, blinking and twirling the scalpel between his fingers. “N-no, I just meant–”

  “What is that?” She pointed at the purple-headed specimen on the table.

  “It’s a flower of the Aconitum genus.” Henry pushed back from the table so she could get a better view. “You may know it by names like Monkshood or Wolf’s Bane.”

  Rocking back and forth on my heels, I patted Henry’s back. “Henry is a bit of an amateur botanist when it takes his fancy – only scientific bone in his body, really.”

  “Please, Miss Turing!”

  Cadence, too self-possessed to jump at Henry’s sudden cry, did jerk the stalk away from her face, brows jutting up over her round eyes.

  Taking a deep breath, Henry shook his head, reclaiming the plant from her. “Sorry; but this plant’s very poisonous. You generally have to ingest it, but there’s no point in being careless.”

  “Flowers can kill you?”

  Focused on the pad in front of him, Henry missed the suspicious tone of her question. “Quite a few can, actually; if you know what you’re doing.”

  Cadence’s pointed stare bore into me. Rolling my eyes, I dropped my hand onto Henry’s shoulder. “Henry, you didn’t kill my father, did you?”

  Cadence scoffed from the other side of the table, hands on her hips. “And how was that subtle?”

  “Alright,” Henry swiveled in his chair, pushing it against the workbench and staring up at us, arms slung across his belly. “I’ve seen you poking around the manor, asking everyone strange questions. What are you playing at?”

  “Inspector Brisbois thinks Chance is the murderer, but we know he’s wrong, so we’re trying to figure out who did it instead because I don’t think Brisbois is doing a proper job of it, and I don’t want Chance to go to prison.” A perfunctory smile flashed across Cadence’s face before she leaned down and met Henry’s gaze with a stern frown. “So, did you kill Felix?”

  “No, I did not.” There was more amusement than anger in Henry’s voice as he slumped further into his chair. “Why would I?”

  “You were very angry with him the night of the party. And you told Chance you were worried he was going to fire your father and ruin your family’s reputation.”

  “Miss Turing…” Henry probed his cheek with his tongue, collecting his thoughts. “If you’re really set on going through with this, you should know that looking for someone who was angry at Felix Hale is like looking for someone Chance has made love to – very easy to find. I didn’t like the man particularly, but I don’t know many people who did, his own son included.”

  Beginning to take offense, I wagged my finger at him before I realized there was little point. “That’s fair.”

  Cadence straightened with a huff, prodding at some of the pins holding up her tangled hair. “I don’t suppose you saw anything particularly revealing then?”

  Henry spun his chair back around and pulled himself under the desk. “Everything I saw or heard or thought, I told the inspector.” He peered down his scope, shrugging. “Which wasn’t anything; I was asleep downstairs.”

  “Can’t you think of anything unusual or strange about that night? Anything at all? The slightest detail might be important.”

  Henry looked up, forehead wrinkled, eyes slits of annoyance. “It was bloody hot in my room, does that count?”

  Cadence jumped like one of her circuits had shorted. “Hot?”

  “That room’s always been stuffy–”

  “He didn’t say stuffy, he said hot. I have to go back to the house.” She threw up her hand, wiggled her fingers, and was off. “Bye, Henry!”

  “Miss Turing.” Henry watched her go, brow still furrowed, but the corners of his mouth edging up towards a smile. He turned back to the table with a shake of his head, bending over his work after a cursory glance in my direction. “Aren’t you going to follow her?”

  I leaned against the desk, folding my arms over my chest. “Do I look like a lapdog?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that?” Stylus perched in one side of his mouth, Henry began to laugh. “Honestly, Chance, I haven’t known you to spend this much time with a woman…well, ever. Especially considering that you haven’t even slept with her yet.” He plucked the stylus from between his lips, twirling it at me like a wand. “Could it be that your heathen heart has been softened by our fair angel from Paraesepe?”

  “Stuff it.”

  Looking around, unsure of what to do next, I caught the scent of Cadence’s
perfume lingering in the air and stood. “I better head in.”

  “Did you hear your mistress’ whistle?”

  “I’ll make you eat that stylus.”

  Going back the way I came, I stubbed out my nix underfoot and tried my best to ignore what Henry had implied, uncomfortable with the thought of becoming attached to anyone in a serious, romantic way. I had only seen a relationship like that work once.

  As I swiped my finger and opened the front door, I was surprised to find one half of that pair standing just inside, hands clutched at her sides.

  Minerva must have been walking the grounds, as she often did in the morning, her boots now caked with mud. She turned when the door opened behind her, scowling and pushing a wisp of pale blonde hair up out of her face.

  “Oh, Chance, it’s you.” Turning back into the entryway, she shook her fist at the ground. “You see, you lazy things? You’re causing a traffic jam!”

  I hugged her shoulders, resting my head next to her own. “What seems to be the trouble, Min?”

  “Your FASCs don’t appear to be working, dear.”

  “Oh, it’s probably just some mud or sticks or something that’s jamming them up.” I stepped around her into the entryway, where I noticed Cadence paused by the stairs, watching with apparent interest, but making no move to join us.

  Poking at the FASC door with my foot, I continued, speaking over the pathetic whirring sound as the caterpillar machines tried to emerge. “Happens more often than you might think. If they can’t self-clean whatever’s on them, they just refuse to do any more work.”

  Minerva shifted from foot to foot, throwing her hands up in the air with a huff. “Well, I do hate to track mud in all over the place.”

  Bowing, my arms outstretched, I smiled wide. “I suppose I’ll just have to carry you around the house, then.”

  Minerva threw her head back and laughed, swiping at my arm. “Don’t make offers if you’re not prepared to follow through with them, young man.”

  Laughing with her, I offered her my arm to steady herself with while she bent and removed her boots. Kissing me on the cheek in thanks, she headed off to her room, exchanging passing pleasantries with Cadence, who slipped what looked like a fistful of burnt cloth into her pocket.