The Cadaver Client: The Markhat Files, Book 4

by Frank Tuttle

  She shook her head. “He’s dead. I’m sure of it.”

  I nodded, made sure my voice was soft. “Unless you killed him yourself, Mrs. Mays, I don’t think you can be absolutely sure of anything.”

  She shook. She had to bite her lip for a moment.

  “I saw the body. I watched them put it in the ground.”

  “This is important, Mrs. Mays. Where did the burial take place?”

  “One of the poverty cemeteries. Elfend? Elways? Elfway. Yes. I remember.”

  “And the name on the wardstone?”

  “Gorvis.” She spat the word, as though it reeked of something foul. “Bastard.”

  A literal shiver went down my spine.

  In my tiny room behind my office, Three-leg Cat began to spit and hiss and then make that throaty feline growl he only made when feral dogs were outside.

  I didn’t hear any dogs.

  The air got cold. Mrs. Mays’s eyes got wide. Her breath steamed as though we were standing outside at Yule.

  I didn’t see anything. There was Mrs. Mays, in my chair. There was my desk, a slew of crumbs from my breakfast thrown into sudden high relief by the slanting afternoon sun. There was me, my door, the door behind me. But the woman seated across from me was going pale. Her eyes were wide, and she was seeing something behind me that I know just wasn’t there.

  Mrs. Mays leaped to her feet. I did the same.

  And then her hands flew to her throat, and I could see and hear her choking.

  I rushed around the desk and took her by her shoulders. Her mouth was open and working, but she couldn’t make a sound. I took her hands in mine and pried them away from her neck, but she continued to shake and stare and wordlessly beg for help.

  My right hand darted into my pocket. I felt Mama’s hex bag, and I took it out and I yanked the yellow yarn from around the neck of it, and I shook the contents of the bag right out on her fruit-encrusted hat.

  She screamed. She screamed and backed herself hard into a corner, and she kept screaming.

  The glass pane set in my door shattered, sending slivers of glass tinkling out onto the street.

  Three-leg Cat went berserk. Summers yelled something incomprehensible, and I heard him land heavily on the street and then charge my door. Mama Hog yelled from her door, and I heard it slam just as Summers barged in to my office, a shortsword in one hand and his pony whip in the other.

  He took one look at Mrs. Mays and took a slice at me with his blade. If he’d served in the Army, it hadn’t been with the infantry, because he dived in with a clumsy overhanded swing aimed more or less at the top of my favorite head. I grabbed my chair and let him have the legs of it hard in his gut. His blade clattered off the high chair back, and I shoved and swept his legs out from under him and sat down hard on his fool back.

  Mama charged in and kicked the sword away and then kicked Summers in the face for good measure.

  Mrs. Mays finally stopped screaming.

  “Boy,” said Mama, “what in Hell’s name is goin’ on in here?”

  “I hope you can tell me,” I said. “See to the lady. I’ll handle Summers here.” I grabbed an ear and yanked. “Listen, you. I never laid a hand on her. So if you take another whack at me I’m going to put you down, and put you down hard. Tell him, Mrs. Mays. Tell him I wasn’t the one hurting you.”

  Mrs. Mays managed a nod. Her fingers were probing her neck, which was beginning to show red marks as if she’d just been choked.

  “He—he was trying to help, Summers,” she said.

  Summers cussed and wiggled, and I damn near pulled his ear off.

  “You better listen to the lady,” I growled. “I’m not in a good mood.”

  “Summers. He’s telling the truth. He didn’t touch me. Quite the opposite. Behave.”

  At least he quit struggling.

  Mama glared at me, opened her mouth, then clamped it shut. Out came her dried owl. She shook it twice at Mrs. Mays, who was covered in the powder from the bag.

  “You opened the hex bag.”

  “I did.”

  Mama frowned, waved her owl. “Why’d you pour it out?”

  “What the Hell was I supposed to do with it? Make tea?”

  Mama stomped around Mrs. Mays, who regarded her warily before giving me a questioning glance.

  “Mrs. Mays, meet Mama Hog,” I said. “Mama, Mrs. Mays.” I sat up. “You all know my good friend Summers here.”

  Summers rolled over and rose to his feet, but wisely found a corner and folded his arms across his chest and settled on glaring at the floor as an outlet for his wounded pride.

  “We were talking, Mama. About you-know-who. Then the room got cold, and Mrs. Mays here had trouble breathing.”

  “There were hands,” said Mrs. Mays. She brushed hex dust off her shoulders and shook it off her hat. “Hands around my throat. I could feel them.”

  “I couldn’t see or feel anything. I dumped your hex bag out on her, and my glass shattered, and the Hero of Cambrit Street over there charged in here and tried to stick me. Which was actually brave of him, even if I was the intended party.”

  Summers grunted.

  “So, what about it, Mama? Your owl find anything sorcerous floating around?”

  “Hush.”

  Mama wandered about, mumbling and shaking her owl. I couldn’t help but think she was putting on a show for the woman in the fancy necklace wearing the expensive clothes.

  Another dried bird popped out, this one a finch even more ragged than the owl. Mama held a long, whispered conversation with them, and then she walked to the door and repeated her performance just outside.

  I managed to get Mrs. Mays back into a chair. Summers stood protectively by her. We were becoming fast friends. He only glared at me when he touched his ear.

  Mama came stomping back in.

  “Boy. You got to get these people out of here right now.”

  Mrs. Mays looked up at me.

  “I mean right now, boy. Right now.”

  “Out,” I said. “Mama is the closest thing to a wand-waver I’ve got. If she says get out, we’re all getting out. Mama, the lady’s carriage—safe or not?”

  “Leave it where it sits. He knows it, might follow it. You all got to go.” Mama grabbed Mrs. Mays’s sleeve and yanked her out of her chair and dragged her protesting body toward my door. I saw Summers tense up. I snatched up his sword and poked him in the small of the back with the sharp end.

  “Mind your manners.”

  And outside we went.

  Mama made for her place at a run. She let go of Mrs. Mays, but whatever she’d been muttering must have had some effect because the plump woman was outpacing her.

  I flipped Summers’s sword around and handed it hilt-first to him and made for Mama’s. If he didn’t want to follow I wasn’t going to herd him. But we all piled into Mama’s tiny potion shop at about the same time.

  Everyone started talking at once. Mama shushed us and started rummaging through drawers and opening jars and screeching long, strange words that made the hairs on my arms stand up. She concluded her brief fit by throwing a handful of dust into the air and giving her door a thorough shake of her dead owl.

  Then she collapsed into her card-reading chair and looked up at me with weary Hog eyes.

  “I done what I could, boy. Reckon the rest is up to you.”

  Mrs. Mays and Summers both started yelling. Mama and I ignored them.

  “What exactly did you do, Mama, and why?”

  “I reckon I fixed it where that haint can’t follow you or them two. Leastways not for a while.”

  “So you’re saying we just had a visit from—”

  “Don’t say his name, boy, what I done weren’t that good. I ain’t no spook doctor.”

  Our companions fell silent, listening and glaring.

  I leaned against the only bare spot on Mama’s sooty wall.

  “Mrs. Mays, even if I don’t believe in vengeful ghosts, it may be that sorcery is involved he
re. Did you-know-who have any connections to anyone with that kind of talent?”

  She shook her head no. “None that I know of. But I suppose he could have hired one.”

  Freelance sorcery is illegal in post-War Rannit. Not that the law stops private practitioners, although it cheerfully hangs them if they make nuisances of themselves.

  “Boy. That weren’t no wand-wavin’. That was a haint. Come to do this lady harm.”

  “Sure, Mama.” Sorcery or spook, one thing was clear—everything led back to a wardstone that bore the name Gorvis.

  And even a sorcerous working would need a focus. Something solid, material, to act as an anchor.

  Or a trigger.

  The bag of coins and Marris Sellway. In the same room.

  I cussed.

  Everyone gave me the eye.

  “Sorry. I’ve had an epiphany. Mrs. Sellway, we need to get you out of here. But if I’m right, this isn’t just going to go away on its own. If I send word for you to be at a certain place at a certain time, even if it’s after Curfew and in a bad part of town, can I count on you to show up?”

  “Now wait just a damned minute.” Summers put himself in front of Mrs. Sellway.

  “You can bring General Summers here. And as many others as you can trust to keep their mouths shut and do what I say.”

  Mrs. Sellway knew what the certain time and the certain place were likely to be.

  “How many?”

  “Five. Ten. A hundred, if you can get them. As long as they know I’m running the show.”

  I was hoping she could manage a dozen. Making a scene after Curfew in a poor neighborhood was going to be like ringing a big, silver dinner bell for any halfdead out for a snack. It’s one thing to slip down to Eddie’s after dark for a quiet beer and a sandwich, but if I was going to raise a ruckus I wanted an army at my back.

  And raising a ruckus was the order of the day.

  Summers snorted. “I reckon you’re aiming to put this here ghost back in the dirt. How much that gonna cost her, Mr. Markhat? Look me in the eye and tell me how much.”

  “Not a copper. I’m not doing this for show. Something has taken a swipe at someone sitting in my office. They’ve broken my window and upset my cat. I won’t have it. Mrs. Sellway, go home. Make sure you keep your daughter in sight. Don’t say certain names, round up men you can trust and wait. Can you do that?”

  She nodded. The marks on her throat were plainly visible now. Some of the red was going purple.

  Summers opened his mouth to say something, but Mrs. Sellway cut him off. “Get us a cab, Summers.”

  He stomped out, giving me a good hard glare the whole time.

  Mama appeared with a clean, white china cup steaming in her hand. She offered it to Mrs. Sellway, who took it but did not raise it to her lips.

  Mama laughed. “It’s clean. Just tea. With some honey and chamomile. Your throat’s goin’ to be needin’ both before long.”

  Mrs. Sellway sipped.

  “He burned Cawling Street,” she said, after a moment. “Twice. All because I wouldn’t come out into the street when he called.”

  “Somebody ought to have put him down,” muttered Mama.

  Mrs. Sellway nodded. “They ought to have. But no one did. He was a monster, you know. Not just a bad man. Not just an angry man. You could feel it. He wanted to hurt you. Even strangers, children, animals. Anything that lived, it—offended him, somehow.”

  I’d known a man like that, during the War. Even the officers were afraid of him.

  Until one night someone emptied an oil lamp on his tent and set it ablaze while he slept. Not a soul had moved to aid him as he burned. I’d watched too. But I hadn’t lifted a finger to help.

  “Whatever it is, Mrs. Sellway, it gets put down tonight. I promise you that.”

  She shuddered. “Do you think Natalie—my daughter—is in danger too?”

  “Not yet. Not ever, if we do this right.”

  Summers stuck his head back through Mama’s door.

  “Got a cab, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Sellway rose and thanked Mama for the tea. She adjusted the collar on her high-necked dress to hide some of the marks, and then she faced me by the door.

  “I will, of course, pay you your usual fees.”

  “You’ll send me an invitation to your daughter’s wedding. That and nothing else. Now beat it, before Lance Corporal Summers here has a fit.”

  She didn’t laugh, but at least she smiled.

  “Boy,” said Mama, when we were alone, “just what have you got planned in that fool head of yours?”

  “We’re going to a funeral, Mama. Better knock the moths off your best black dress.”

  Mama scowled and set about gathering a bagful of her most potent dead birds.

  The Cadaver Client: The Markhat Files, Book 4

  Chapter Five

  The undertaker’s parlor smelled of fireflowers, cinnamon and half a dozen kinds of particularly pungent incense.

  And something else, of course. An odor so primal and familiar and so immediately and deeply disturbing that no number of imported incense-sticks could ever hope to do anything more than slightly obscure it.

  If the smell of death bothered Echols, of Echols, Masey and Benlop, Morticians, he didn’t let it show.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” he said in a voice that oozed a deep and sincere concern. “How may I be of assistance, in this hour of your deepest sorrow?”

  We were seated in the reception room. The walls were pine stained dark to mimic oak. The floor was covered in at least three threadbare rugs, each placed to cover the holes in the one beneath it. The ceiling was warped and cracked, and at one point I could hear scrambling above as rats scurried by on urgent business of their own.

  I did not want to know what those rats had last feasted upon.

  “I’d like to hire a hearse-wagon and a pair of ponies for the night.”

  The imperturbable Echols raised an eyebrow.

  “And caskets. You have a selection here, I presume?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Finely made, I dare to add, yet priced with an eye toward consideration for the family of the deceased.”

  “I’ll need one. A good one. Top of the line. Shiny, with lots of trim.”

  Echols almost brightened at that, but managed to keep his enthusiasm from inducing more than the slightest reduction in the furrowing of his brow.

  “One is saddened to have to ask this, sir, but nevertheless I must.” He paused dramatically, leaning in toward me. If I’d been a woman, he’d have laid his right hand gently atop mine. His big soft eyes practically welled up with heartfelt tears of abject sorrow.

  “When will Sir be bringing the remains by, for final preparations?”

  I grinned. “I’m right here, my good man. Shall we start by settling on a price?”

  “Boy,” said Mama. “I’m tellin’ you right now I don’t like none of this.”

  I grunted. The closest thing I had to a suit was my old Army parade jacket and a freshly bleached white shirt and a pair of black pants I’d managed to haggle out of Echols. I’d put a shine on my old Army doggers, and they’d have to do as fancy grave slippers.

  I was more worried about my possible need for sudden mobility than actually completing the look of a well-dressed corpse.

  I finally got the jacket on. Buttoning it was out of the question. Who’d have thought wool would shrink so much, hanging in my tiny closet for ten years?

  “I’m the one who’ll be taking a ride in a coffin, Mama. All you’ve got to do is sit there and look bereaved.”

  Mama grunted. “After Curfew.”

  “Mama, I’ve seen you break Curfew a dozen times in the last month alone.”

  She couldn’t argue with that.

  “Still don’t hold with this funeral business.”

  I shrugged. I’d already explained to Mama why I thought it was necessary.

  If we were facing sorcery, that sorcery was created to respond to certain acts or
situations as triggers for built-in actions. That much I knew from being in the Army.

  And if something in that cemetery was lying in wait for me, I didn’t want it choking me at the gate.

  But anything that hides in a cemetery is going to have to be built to ignore a few things. First among these things would be funerals.

  And even if what had tried to strangle Mrs. Mays was a murderous ghost, well, I had surprises in store for it too.

  “Ain’t no way Granny is mixed up in no shenanigans, boy.”

  “Not knowingly. I never said she knew what was going on.”

  My reasoning was this—assume the man Gorvis is so bent on getting his hands on Marris Sellway one more time that he planned all this. He had himself buried right next to Granny Knot’s stomping ground, because he’d also heard she was the real deal. He comes spooking around to her, with sob stories of lost love and guilt. He hands her a small fortune and begs her to give it to the wife he left behind.

  Only the coin is tainted, either cursed or ensorcelled so that it leads him right to her.

  My reasoning worked whether Gorvis had hired a sorcerer before his death to put all this in place, or whether, against my better judgment, he’d risen from the grave to do the dirty work himself.

  But either way, he hadn’t counted on Granny hiring me. Or Marris having so much money of her own that three hundred crowns was something she could sneer at.

  But even without the money being near her, I knew whatever was out there would eventually find her, or her daughter. And that would be partly my fault.

  And that wasn’t going to happen.

  So the funeral carriage, and the coffin, and my old Army jacket to boot.

  That’s something else I’d learned, way back when. Never go into a battle by doing exactly what the other side expects you to do. Show them something new. Make them pause and scratch their heads and think.

  Make them wonder just what it is you’re up to.

  “You understand what I need you to do, Mama?”

  “I ain’t daft, boy. I remember.”

  “Good.” I squinted at the light seeping around Mama’s doorframe. The sun was about to sink behind the rooftops. Soon I’d need to climb into my casket and prepare for my sad, slow journey through Rannit’s empty streets.