The equivoque principle cq-1

by Darren Craske

  'Has anyone ever told you that you would make a marvellous torturer?' Quaint asked.

  'Frequently,' replied Destine. 'So there is something on your mind then?'

  'Yes, yes! There is something on my mind. Are you happy now?' Quaint said, a little more harshly than he had intended. 'You're right again, as always. I just suppose…the date sneaked up on me a little quicker than I had expected.'

  Destine nodded, choosing her delicate words carefully. 'I thought as much. It is never an easy time of year for you, Cornelius, so why does this particular year cause you more anguish than the previous anniversaries of your wife's death?'

  The directness of Destine's question made Quaint shudder, as if the words were forbidden, and by saying them aloud, some great taboo had been broken. The melodic control of her voice was like hearing each sentence as a symphony, deconstructed into its purest, most poetic form. Quaint had always said that Destine could read the cargo manifest of a spice merchant's schooner and it would still sound like angels singing. But that was not to say her words did not sting his heart.

  Quaint locked eyes with her. 'It's November the twenty-third and with all that has been going on recently, I've hardly even noticed.'

  'Perhaps that is a good thing, my sweet. A sign that the healing process has finally begun?' offered Destine. 'It has been so many years now.'

  'Twenty-nine, to be exact,' said Quaint. 'But I have been distracted; Madame! This day almost passed by unnoticed, and I feel shame for that fact, as if I'm dishonouring her memory somehow.'

  'Poppycock! You remember Margarite in your own way at this time of year, Cornelius…within your heart. There has been much of late to occupy your attention elsewhere. That is not dishonour, my sweet. You have a life to lead, and one that is not frozen in time, locked in the past. As I said, perhaps you are now able to focus more clearly on other things. After all, does this day not normally put you in a most bedevilled mood?'

  'Do I not look to be in a bedevilled mood now, Madame?' Quaint leaned back in his chair, forcing the creaking wooden joints to complain. A broad sardonic grin forced itself onto his face. 'I am always bedevilled-it is my lot in life. Even though I have subconsciously pushed these thoughts to the back of my mind, they are not forgotten. Maybe once I finally try and get some sleep tonight they will come back to haunt me once more. My bad dreams always seem to increase tenfold at this time of year.'

  'Is that why you are awake at this hour? Are you hoping to run from your nightmares, Cornelius, because I-of all people-can tell you that they have a nasty habit of recurring, usually when you least expect them,' Destine said, as she moved her chair forwards, edging closer to the desk. 'It does no one any good to dwell in the past. For what it is worth, I think all this talk of murder and death of late is the reason not why you forget Margarite's death, but why you allow the symbolism behind it to taint every thought you have. After all, is death not everywhere we look recently?' Destine made a point of a long pause, as she watched the cinders of recognition burn in Quaint's eyes. This was an important message that she was trying to impart, and she hated giving good wisdom to deaf ears. 'Your rage is a great fuel for you, Cornelius…just be cautious that once that fuel is burnt out, your soul is not so spoiled that it cannot function without it.' Destine stirred her teacup noisily, chinking the silver spoon against the saucer, signalling an end to the maudlin conversation.

  'So…why do you not tell me of the night's adventures? I would so much like to hear of them. Make sure you begin at the beginning, dear, if you don't mind,' said Destine calmly. 'And do not leave out any tales of fisticuffs, for I am far from squeamish and you know how much I love to hear tales of you clobbering bad people.'

  Quaint nodded, reluctantly giving in to his companion's request. He regaled her with the night's visit to The Black Sheep tavern, and Destine hung on his every word.

  'And whilst Jeremiah, Ruby and myself worked the floor downstairs, Yin and Yang searched the landlord's residence. I was actually hoping that they'd find something…incriminating, some titbit of explanation. But aside from a lot of unpaid bills, bad debts and a few bawdy love letters to a beau named Mary, the twins found nothing. However…downstairs in the bar, the landlord told Ruby and I that an Irishman had given him money to pass the drugged whisky to Prometheus,' Quaint said. 'The landlord had never seen him before, or since.'

  'We have been here for only two days and already we have made an enemy who is prepared to kill,' Destine said, resting her top lip upon the ridge of her cup. 'Things move fast in this town, Cornelius.'

  'Yes, well…Prometheus has always had a knack for attracting trouble, hasn't he?' Quaint said, recollecting more than one occasion when he'd either had to fight, bargain or plea for Miller's life in one country or another over the years.

  'And how many times has he truly been at fault? He cannot help the way he looks, Cornelius. Prometheus is certainly no lover of conflict. Some people are magnets for trouble, whereas others seem to seek it willingly, like a wasp to jam,' Destine said, catching Quaint's eyes. 'Sound familiar?'

  Quaint tried to look innocent, playing with the buttons on his shirt. 'Not really. The only connection that I'm pinning my thoughts on is that this bloke was apparently Irish, as Prometheus himself is. Perhaps this is what triggered the conflict?'

  Destine nodded. 'Probablement.'

  'Which beggars the question: how do you pick an argument with a mute? And if you wished to…would you do so with one who looked like Prometheus?' chimed Quaint.

  'And why not use a knife or a pistol rather than poison?' agreed Destine. 'You know that I am extremely sensitive to the emotions of others, Cornelius, and I know that it is usually emotion that is the trigger for murder. As you can testify; emotion and common sense are not mutually exclusive-or need I remind you of your tryst with the Hungarian premier's wife a few years back?'

  A smile (and one that balanced the delicate line between amusement and embarrassment) skirted briefly across Quaint's face, as his memory recalled the incident to which Destine referred. 'That was years ago, but even now my lower back still aches on a cold day. Duchess Ariadne took a fancy only to my stage magic and illusion, Madame, not to me. She had such spirit, and such a voracious appetite!'

  'You may paint that particular mental picture for someone else, Cornelius, I am a lady, and do not forget it,' Destine said, sipping her tea. 'We need to speak to Prometheus again. We need to try and find the connection, if there is indeed one to be found.'

  'The police said there have been two other murders the past few nights, oddly enough, all since our arrival. To me it's nothing but coincidence, but to the police…it's too much of coincidence to be one. Tell me, Madame Destine, oh great and wonderful reader of fortunes, what does your foresight tell you about this chaos? I mean, all this has just come from nowhere, as if we have stepped into a theatre performance half-way through an act. Something must be at its root, but what is it?'

  'Ah, Cornelius…what a question, and therein lies the mystery,' Destine said with a thin smile, crows' feet sparkling at the corners of her eyes. 'The answers are well concealed, and my feelings tell me that these murders are more than just random street crimes.'

  'This killer is unconventional, would you agree?' said Quaint. 'So to apply conventional reasoning to him is pointless. We went to an awful lot of bother to get information last night, and I know it means something, but I just don't know where it takes us.'

  'The truth shall be revealed in time,' said Destine. 'To get the right answers you have to ask the right questions, and of the right people. I have no facts to offer you, Cornelius, merely suppositions and propositions. As to why this man attacked Twinkle when his argument was with Prometheus…we may never know. Perhaps Twinkle was his target, and somehow Prometheus got involved. When he saw Prometheus lying in the gutter, perhaps he wanted to remove the only witness, and turned on Twinkle, or…'

  'Or what?'

  'Or perhaps he knew exactly what he was doing,' said Destine. 'Pe
rhaps it was not his intention to kill Prometheus-merely to achieve that which in fact has transpired-to incapacitate him, and implicate him whilst he freely murdered and mutilated Twinkle. A decoy for the police to focus upon.'

  Quaint rubbed the back of his head in frustration. 'What would make someone do such horrors to a complete stranger?'

  Madame Destine sipped silently at her tea. 'You are of course working on the assumption that this person was a stranger. We have no confirmation that this is so.'

  A chilling thought danced across Quaint's mind, and he clamped his eyes shut, trying to deny his imagination the chance to entertain it. Could this killer be someone from his circus? Quaint knew his people, and surely not a single one of them would harm-could harm-someone like Twinkle in such a maniacal fashion. It was abhorrent. Could a monster be hiding within his family undetected?

  'As I said, my dear…emotion is a powerful master,' continued Destine. 'There are two emotions that men most commonly kill for. One is jealousy, the other, revenge. Both of these emotions inhabit the negative end of the wide spectrum of human emotion, and can blind a man to what is right and what is wrong. He can be tempted by them…tainted by them, blinded by their power.' She leaned back in her chair, and stared deeply into Quaint's dark eyes. 'I warned you about starting down this road, Cornelius, and yet again you choose to ignore me. I pray that more deaths do not come, and yet I know within my heart that they most certainly will.'

  Quaint pinched hard on the bridge of his nose. It was by now very early in the morning, and his body was on the verge of collapse. His wracked emotions were making short work of his strength. 'Well, so far there's been a murder a night for the past three nights. I just hope there's another murder tonight,' he said.

  'Cornelius, what a thing to say!' Destine scolded.

  'Think on it, Madame. If there's another killing whilst Prometheus is locked up, that exonerates him, does it not?'

  'And if there is not another murder-tonight or any other night? What then do you think the local police shall do?' Destine asked, folding the corners of her lace veil between her fingers. 'They will simply say that they have caught the perpetrator, which is why the deaths ceased. I suspect that they are ill-equipped to handle the complexities of a case such as this, Cornelius. I know I advocated restraint to you this afternoon, but I fear that if we place Prometheus's fate in their hands he may be hanging from his neck by the end of the week.'

  'Is that my governess or my fortune-teller speaking?' Quaint asked.

  Destine smiled. 'Perhaps a little bit of both. Did you not say that you knew the police commissioner? Can we not enlist his aid?'

  Quaint swept a hand through his obstinate hair. 'Oliver? Well…it's been a long time, Destine. I don't know how much pull I'll have with him these days.'

  'It is an avenue worth exploring, is it not? Our only avenue, in fact.'

  'I…I suppose it cannot hurt,' Quaint said. 'Dray's father, Sir George, used to own a shipping company working out of Singapore; cargo and trading ships mostly. I never really meshed with the old man's philosophies, but Oliver was all set to take over the reins, the last I heard. I guess something made him change his mind, eh?'

  'Maybe your saintly influence rubbed off on him?' Destine jibed.

  Quaint laughed. 'I hardly think that likely. We first met whilst I was travelling through Peru…must have been all of twenty years ago now. I saved his life once, too, as I recall. But then, back in those days I was always saving somebody or other's life.'

  'Perhaps that is why you have never been concerned with saving your own, hmm?'

  Quaint continued: 'The word is that his father and Robert Peel were old friends from their schooldays at Harrow, and Sir George helped pave the way for Oliver's success in the police force.'

  'This case could get very nasty very quickly, Cornelius,' said Destine. 'Let us hope this Commissioner friend of yours has a strong stomach.'

  CHAPTER XIII

  The Letter

  COMMISSIONER OLIVER DRAY vomited all over the tiled floor of mortuary in the station's basement. He collapsed onto his knees, his body twitching in convulsions as a thick trail of sputum trailed from his mouth to the floor. Clutching the side of the mortuary table, he wrenched himself up onto his feet, watching though bleary eyes as Sergeant Berry replaced the sheet over Twinkle's body.

  'Jesus, Horace…you could have warned me!' Dray said, trying to hide his embarrassment. He wiped spit from his lower lip with his sleeve. 'She looks like a damn mackerel…sliced open to the gullet. And that…thing cut into her,' he said, gesticulating with a shaky finger at the corpse. 'What's the hell's that supposed to be?'

  'It's a crucifix, sir.'

  'I can see it's a damn crucifix, man, but what on God's green earth is it doing carved into that woman's chest?' Dray yelled. 'What is this, witchcraft or something? It's obscene!'

  Berry shrugged. 'Neither Lily Clapcott nor May Deeley looked as bad as this, especially with such…religious significance. There was so much blood it was difficult to ascertain cause of death.'

  'Cause of death?' blurted Dray. 'Are you insane, Horace? The woman's got a bloody big gaping hole in her guts-that's the cause of death!'

  'You might think so at first glance, but the victim was actually killed by a single knife wound to the heart. The crucifix was cut into her body post-mortem.'

  Dray palmed his eyes. 'After? Are you sure?'

  'Yes, sir,' confirmed Berry. 'You can tell when you look at the state of her arteries. The heart stopped pumping the blood, you see-'

  'If I wanted a bloody pathology lecture, Horace, I'd go see Dr Finch!' Dray snapped. 'And what about this devil you've got locked up? This…abomination of a man…what's he had to say for himself?'

  Sergeant Berry looked back blankly. 'Haven't you heard, sir? The man's a mute! It's pointless to try and communicate with him-he just sits there and stares at the wall with those big gaping eyes of his, like he's a hunk of beef, or something.'

  'Oh, and you think Whitehall will be satisfied with that, Horace? "He can't actually speak, but take my word for it, Minister; he's as guilty as sin!"' mimicked Dray. 'They'll want a bloody confession, man, nothing less.'

  'Commissioner, we've as much chance of getting a confession out of him as we have of a full day's work from Jennings.'

  'Well, Horace…you'd better start getting creative, hadn't you. It's not the first time we've had to assist a prisoner with his confession, and it won't be the last!' Dray rubbed at his wrinkled forehead. 'You mark my words…the bloke's probably escaped from some mental asylum somewhere, and then run off the join the bloody circus. Send a couple of men to Bethlem Hospital out Lambeth way; see what they can tell us about any escapees, especially ones with fixations for crosses. That should keep the brass off my back.'

  'There's more, Commissioner. You really need to have a read of this.' Berry searched his pockets, and passed Dray a letter. 'It's what I was hinting at earlier.'

  'What's this, Horace, your resignation?' Dray said with a smirk, removing a pair of thin wire spectacles from his breast pocket, perching them on the end of his nose. He cleared his throat, squinting at the spidery scrawls upon the letter, and read aloud:

  Miller,

  So, you have come to London at last, I see. That's right…I'm watching you.

  You can't make a move in this city without me knowing about it. Travelling with a circus was a stupid idea…you may as well have taken out an advertisement for your whereabouts in the London Gazette.

  You wronged me in the past, but that will not go unpunished for much longer. I have cultivated, nurtured and fed this desire for revenge for so very long. Once, you cut out my heart, and now I will cut out yours. I will destroy everyone you love… I will unleash a terror unlike any seen before, and the corpses of your loved ones will litter the streets.

  This is inevitable, Miller. I will not give you the luxury of death; you will suffer a torment as I have done these past years. You will live with the pain that
you have given me-and I will be stood right there enjoying every moment.

  Dray looked up from the note. 'What's all this is rubbish about, Horace? It sounds like the ramblings of a madman. Where did you get this letter from?'

  'It was next to the last victim's body, sir. I thought it'd fallen from her pocket at first, but then, after I checked the prisoner's charge sheet with Marsh, I discovered something interesting.'

  'I thought the dead girl was called Argyle or something. Who's this "Miller" character then, the one it's addressed to?' Dray mumbled, waving the letter at Sergeant Berry.

  'That's my point, sir, that's why it's so interesting,' said Berry, a grim look whitening his face. 'We managed to get some details out of the giant not long ago, just the basics, name, age and that. Just stuff we got him to write down.' Berry inhaled sharply. 'It seems he's originally from Ireland…and his name is Aiden…Aiden J. Miller. The man the letter is addressed to! This whole case worries me, sir…it has since I first found him by the body. I knew there was something fishy about him, and this note adds a whole new way of thinking to this. It's too convenient, too simple.'

  Dray waved him away. 'Simple is right, Berry. Simple mathematics. One dead girl, plus one unconscious murderer, equals we've got our man, case closed!'

  'No, sir, I don't agree,' appealed Berry. 'Now we've got this note, everything's changed. The giant may well have been unconscious when we found him at the scene-but I don't think we can just assume that he's the killer. If he's managed to kill twice before and get away with it, why would he be stupid enough to stick around and get caught? And how come he was unconscious when we found him?'

  Dray didn't budge. 'It resolves nothing and complicates everything, is what that note does, Berry! We've got three dead women on our hands, and the only man who knows what happened to at least one of them is in our custody. Now what do you want me to do? Let him go? All because of some damned note? For all we know, the bloody giant wrote it himself.'