by MK Alexander
“Remember now, no stopping in the hallway,” the brigadier warned. “And for heaven’s sake, bring one of those paddles with you.”
“If you hurry, you’ll be up in time for dessert,” Madeline said brightly. “Cook has a lot to tempt you back: “Creme tangerine and a Montelimar. A ginger sling with a pineapple heart, an apple tart or coconut fudge.”
“All that for a Friday? And what’s for dinner then?” the brigadier asked. “Not duck soup again, I hope.”
“You mean to say Saturday, brother, surely?” Madeline asked and looked across to the calendar, a bit confused.
“They’ve arrived a day early, Maddy,” the brigadier said and rose laboriously. He walked over to the calendar and gave it a good whack on the side. The date changed from Saturday to Friday. “Is it a leap year?” he asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“It got stuck, me thinks. Edmund promised to fix the damn thing…”
“Friday?” Madeline shouted. “Bartholomew, you- you bastard.” She strode over to him and slapped him hard across the face and then stormed from the room.
The brigadier smiled weakly. “She was under the impression it was Saturday,” he announced. That comment made sense to Fynn, though not to me.
“She forgets her age, I think,” Fynn said. “Luckily for me I am a happily married man.”
***
It was not a simple matter of bounding down the main staircase into the stacks. Some preparation was necessary, I soon learned. The brigadier gave me a lantern and a small rucksack with provisions: sandwiches that Cook had wrapped in wax paper and a Dewar’s flask filled with hot tea. He also insisted that I take a paddle. This was a device that monitored the flow of time, he explained, and it should never be allowed to go into the red. It looked somewhat like a thick ping pong mallet, though only half as wide, and inlaid with four colored gems: green, yellow, orange, and red.
Brigadier Thomas offered a bit more explanation, “Mr Mekanos made these for us.”
“Who?”
“Tractus, haven’t you introduced Patrick to Pavel yet?” he called out across the room.
“Not to my memory.”
“Oh, well, then you’re in for a real treat someday.” He smiled painfully. “It’s an absolute wonder… We never go downstairs without it… and please don’t lose it. They are irreplaceable.”
“And these glowing gems?”
“Here, green as you see it. All the clocks click as one. As you go down further that will start to change. The first, yellow… every minute is roughly a second. It would be as if an hour passes in about sixty seconds. Then there is orange, every second marks almost an hour. That’s quite fast. And finally red. You don’t want to see this ever glowing red. If it does, run.”
“Back up you mean?”
“Yes… or you can dash into any of the alcoves.”
“Are you sure this is safe?” I asked, now having second thoughts.
“It’s perfectly safe so long as you’re above the BG line.”
“BG?”
“Before Gutenberg, of course; fourteen ninety-nine… rather an arbitrary date.”
“How will I know?”
“There’s a big fountain there, and the rooms change from single years to decades.”
“Right… and after that?”
“Oh, well, further down every alcove represents a century.”
That’s not quite the reply I had hoped for. Even Inspector Fynn seemed a bit concerned. “Are you sure you don’t want company?” he asked and put a hand on my shoulder.
“No thanks, I’ll be fine.”
“Well, be careful. I suggest a brisk pace... and no unnecessary dawdling.”
I finally made for the stairs and straddled over the velvet rope.
“Mind the gap…” the brigadier called out.
* * *
chapter twenty-nine
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It all seemed quite normal when I first started down. The alcoved years passed in a blur, my wooden paddle illuminated green as I walked along a grade so subtle, it hardly seemed to be descending. I reckoned I was at least level with the Hudson River by now, or even below sea level. I was passing by the seventeenth century and feeling a bit hungry. I didn’t dare stop, and that’s when things got a bit odd. It felt like I was making no progress at all, and couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I was walking through an MC Escher drawing. A wave of tiredness filled me and I had the strange sensation that everything was moving, albeit very slowly, churning like some infernal machine.
The ramp got steeper as I walked and I couldn’t fully realize how time was passing. Paradoxically, the spiral seemed narrower, yet it took longer and longer to make it around one full circle. The whole way down to my left, by the balustrade, I noticed a small aqueduct, like a slide filled with a trickle of water. It finally emptied out into a large fountain. I was about to descend beyond Gutenberg. The yellow light flickered on and began to glow.
In the alcoves, I could see piles of books stacked on tables, presumably not yet shelved, and some rooms were in complete disarray. Each had a mirrored back wall, a soft glow that offered just enough light to read by. In the hall though, I began to see the occasional person now and again. They would flit by into an alcove, hiding deliberately it seemed, to furtively peek from the shadows when I passed. As I went deeper, a few empty rooms could be seen, and in the sloping hall, I started to notice bundles of old clothes strewn about, some with ominous piles of dust at their center. There were several skeletons as well, heaped against the railings, or just collapsed on the floor.
By the time I reached the eighth century alcove, I feared for my safety. Surely time was passing much too quickly. The paddle flickered orange. I roughly tossed Fynn’s Kid Charlemagne book onto the nearest table, that is to say in a panic, and flew back up the ramp as fast as I could. Somewhere around eighteen hundred I heard an anguished cry. It was coming from just above, and caused me to quicken my pace. A few moments later I found a man in the hallway. He was on all fours, crawling, and had a nasty gash on the back of his head. I stopped to help.
“What year is it?” he gasped and took my arm.
“Nineteen thirty-three.”
His hand fell away and he slumped back down.
“Come on, I’ll help you up.”
“No, you go, I’ll never make it.”
“Of course you will.”
“I haven’t eaten in days.”
I noticed a trail of empty tins strewn about, and a knapsack nearby, still half full of canned food and some kind of jerky. “I have a sandwich… and some tea.”
“We can’t stop here,” he cautioned in a raspy voice.
He was right. I dragged him to the nearest alcove: 1839. The man sat on the floor to devour the sandwiches and drink all the tea. I stared at him and thought he might be familiar, though I couldn’t think from where. His clothes were in tatters aside from a fringed buckskin jacket, and he was heavily bearded. I fought back an urge to pull it from his face, thinking it might not be real.
“What’s your name?” I asked, almost certain I knew him.
He looked at me suspiciously. “I prefer not to say.”
“Oh…” I replied. “Well, we should be getting upstairs. Are you feeling any better?”
“No. You can just leave me here for now.”
“I don’t think I should… come on,” I said and helped him to his feet. It was useless though. He could barely stand, let alone walk. I managed to get him over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift and started up the slope. For such a frail, skinny guy, he was remarkably heavy. A long ways later we reached the main staircase. At the top, I called out to Fynn and the brigadier. They came rushing over to lend assistance.
“Who did this to you?” Fynn asked while cradling the man to the carpet.
“Him…” he tried to lift his arm to point, but didn’t seem to have the strength. “He snuck up from behind. This is the man who assaulted me, I am sure of it.”<
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“Who, me?” I asked, astonished.
“He beat me with a stick.”
“I don’t have a stick.”
“You dropped it along the way. And you stole my hat…”
I looked up at Fynn and the brigadier, just shaking my head.
The man gave off a sort of gurgling noise. He clutched at my shirt and pulled me closer. His breath was weak and shallow. He tried to speak, able to utter only a few words: “try… stop… Drummond…” His head fell to one side and he was dead just like that.
“What did he say?” Fynn asked.
“Stop Drummond, I think.”
Upon hearing the ruckus, Madeline returned from rooms unseen. She stood away from the stairs and put her hand to her mouth. I noticed she was dressed more modestly now. “My goodness,” she said, regarding the fallen man on the stairs, “Did someone just jump through at the temple?”
I had no idea what she meant. Fynn glared at her sharply.
“Not to worry, Tractus. No one knows about the temple, aside from us… and well, now, your friend Patrick…”
“Are you quite sure?”
“Of course. It’s our little secret.”
I knew Fynn well enough to see that he was not at all satisfied with Madeline’s promise.
“The poor man just fell and hit his head on the banister,” the brigadier said hopefully.
“It hardly seems consistent with the wound on the back of his head. This man has been murdered,” Fynn said grimly.
“Wouldn’t be the first corpse we’ve carried out of here,” Madeline added.
“Shouldn’t we call the police or something?” I asked.
“The police? Whatever for? We have Tractus to investigate.”
“How do we know your new friend Mr Jardel is not the killer?” Brigadier Thomas said.
“Are you serious?” Fynn was on the verge of anger. “I vouch for Patrick. This is not a thing he’d do… besides, what sort of strategy is it to attack a man, and then drag him up the stairs just in time to be accused of murder?”
“Quite a fiendish one, I’d say.”
Fynn ignored him and continued, “What motive could he possibly have?”
“I know not of his motives, benign or otherwise.”
“Patrick may have foiled this crime by helping the man up the stairs… most likely, he was left down there to rot.”
“I suppose you’re correct, though he is rather dead.”
“Where exactly did you find this man, Patrick?”
“Eighteen forty or so.”
“Hmm, not so far down…” Fynn considered. “In the corridor though?”
“Yes.”
“Time travels quickly enough there, we wouldn’t find much definite evidence. Nonetheless, we should at least go down and find your cane.”
“But it’s over there,” I said and pointed to a chair near the fireplace. Fynn hurried to retrieve it.
“Look, it’s covered in blood,” the brigadier remarked after giving it just a glance.
“I don’t think it’s blood at all,” Fynn said with some assuredness. He dabbed his finger on the top of the cane and put it to his mouth. “Some type of sauce, the kind you might dip prawns in.”
“I still say it’s the murder weapon.”
“Surely he would have stabbed him with this,” Fynn said and unsheathed a sword from the shaft of the cane. “Not bludgeoned him… besides the wound is quite different. It looks to be made from something with a sharp edge, a hatchet or a small axe.”
Madeline laughed from the other side of the salon.
“What so humorous?” the brigadier asked.
“Why, one of the guests, Mrs Hatchet.”
“Maddy, you know she wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Tell that to her deceased husbands.”
“That was an entirely different set of circumstances.”
Fynn ignored them. “Snuck up from behind is the most likely scenario… I don’t see any defensive wounds… and he even said something to that effect.”
“Who is he?” Madeline asked.
“An excellent question. Neither of you recognize him?”
“It’s Kaiser Wayne,” I said.
“Nonsense,” the brigadier observed over my shoulder. “Kaiser doesn’t have a beard.”
“You know Kaiser?”
“Of course, a frequent visitor and a good friend to the Inquisitor. Why, one of his children is at the cottage as we speak.”
“Well if it’s anyone, it’s the Texan, I should think,” Madeline observed.
“Drummond?”
She nodded. “He usually has a beard, or at least a mustache.”
“Did he check in?”
“He may have. You can look at the register.”
“We’ll have to positively identify him… when is he from, where is he from, and alike,” Fynn said. “There are some clues from his clothes… dressed from the nineteen sixties, I would venture to say… Was he wearing a hat?” Fynn asked me specifically.
“I didn’t see one.”
“I can have Ming check the cloakroom.”
“Any papers on him? Any identification?” Fynn knelt and started the loathsome task of searching the corpse but found nothing but a brass key. “We must ask, why is he here and what was he looking for?”
“Isn’t this the chap who was playing the piano the other night?” the brigadier commented, now back in his usual chair.
“Of course not, that was Edmund,” Madeline said.
“Oh, I thought he played rather well.”
“Did you? I preferred the Serbian gentleman… it was years ago… Do you remember…?”
***
With the help of Ming and the brigadier, we moved the body into a storage room, out of sight at least. There was some argument about whether this was the best place for him. Madeline tried to persuade us to bring him back into the deep stacks so “that nature may take its course,” but no one else was too keen on the idea.
“Truly a quandary,” Fynn said. “This poor man could have been struck on any level and dragged up or down to where he was found. That puts the time of the actual attack in dispute.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Hours could pass in the stacks and only a few seconds would go by in the salon, if one were to go deep enough.”
“So alibis are not much use, eh?”
“Such remains to be seen, but I do like your thinking, Patrick.” Fynn turned to Madeline. “How many patrons might be down in the stacks?”
“There’s no way of knowing,” she replied.
“Don’t you keep records of your visitors?”
“Well, there’s a sign in sheet. But it’s more of a courtesy than a requirement. After all, there’s only the two of us running the whole place.”
“What about Cook and Ming?”
“They’re invaluable of course, but have little to do with the day-to-day running of the library. Ming spends most of his time translating, and other odd jobs. Cook? Well, you might guess what she does.”
“Um, I saw a few people down there.”
“Who, Patrick?”
“Can’t really say. It was dark and they seemed to be hiding.”
“Hiding you say? Where about?”
“Not sure… in the alcoves.”
“Probably just the runners,” Madeline said.
“Runners?” I asked.
“Of course, they deliver books to the stacks…”
“Just people off the street?”
“No, that would be quite impossible,” Madeline said as if it were obvious. “Usually they are apprentices to other travelers… interns, if you will. None of them capable of murder.”
“Tractus, are you suggesting the killer might still be down there?” the brigadier asked.
“It’s a distinct possibility.”
“And a rather dangerous one, if he’s gone to the depths,” the brigadier called out from his chair. “Ah, we’ll post a sentry at
the top,” he announced. “I’ll take first watch.”
“Has anyone come up the stairs since?”
“Not that I saw,” Madeline said though she was wrong.
“What about that guy from earlier?”
Fynn turned to me. “Who do you mean, Patrick?”
“Just before you arrived… some guy came up… bushy beard, big hat, bulky jacket. I didn’t like the look of him.”
“Nor did I,” the brigadier affirmed.
“Funny, I thought he was the Texan.”
“There could hardly be two Texans, Maddy dear… a dead one and one still lurking about.”
“Where is he now?” Fynn asked.
“Gone, I suppose.”
“You think he’s our killer?”
“We have no direct evidence at the moment. Can you say any more about this man?”
“He lingered by the fireplace and then just left through the main hallway.”
“He was carrying a knapsack full of books,” I said.
“Was he?” Madeleine asked. “I saw no such thing.”
I walked over to the fireplace and found an iron poker. I began to stir through the embers and hit the corner of something, some object. I gingerly fished it from the ashes. It was a book, or at least half of one, badly damaged by fire along the edges.
Fynn watched me intently and came over. “What have you found?”
“A book. Burned to hell though… not much left of it.”
Fynn took a look at the charred remains. “A History of Texas, the Centenary Edition, 1936, by Desmond— I can’t quite make out the last name.” He turned back towards Madeline and the brigadier. “Certainly you would have noticed if someone walked by and threw something into the fireplace,” Fynn said, and not without a bit of frustration.
“I may have been napping,” the brigadier replied.
“And we are not always here in the salon, Tractus, surely you must recognize that,” Madeline added.
“Yes, yes, my apologies.”
“I don’t suppose he’s had time to get very far,” Brigadier Thomas said.
Inspector Fynn glanced across the room to the triple-clocks. “How long ago was this? When did he leave exactly?”
“Not more than an hour ago, I’d venture to say.”