by Jordan Reece
“’Allo, just Tammie then, Jesco. Neat things you got there,” the junior artist said in the broad dialect of south Ainscote. She snagged a chair leg with her foot and jerked it over. Dropping her satchel to it, she looked around for a table.
“Mr. Currane has two accessories to a piece of evidence in the Poisoners’ Lane case, as I was informing you in the carriage,” Lady Ericho said frostily. Tammie shoved over a table, transferred her satchel to it, and plopped down in the chair. As elegant as Lady Ericho was in her movements, everything planned and executed with precision, so was the younger woman sloppy. Sketchpads and pencil cases splashed over her table, a drawing working its way free and fluttering down to the carpet by the wheelchair.
She waved her foot for it but came up an inch short. “Ach, can you reach it?”
“I can’t touch it,” Jesco said, stuffing down laughter at how much this had to be trying Lady Ericho’s patience. Sliding down in her seat a little further, Tammie stamped on the corner of the paper and drew it back. She stuffed it into her sketchpads at random and opened up a pencil case. One promptly rattled down the small mountain of pencils inside, hit the table, and rolled off.
“Have there been any new developments in the case?” Jesco asked Lady Ericho as Tammie flailed about to get herself in order.
Looking steadily away from her companion, Lady Ericho said, “The body discovered in the alley was taken to the coroner, where it was determined that he died from two stab wounds to his chest. Both were killing blows. His photograph was taken-”
“I took it,” Tammie said. “Got a liking for photography.”
“That aside,” Lady Ericho said, “the photograph has been widely disseminated and identifications gathered.”
“He had more than one?” Jesco asked.
“No, but more than one person claimed him as a missing relative. Detectives Ravenhill and Scoth performed interviews all through yesterday of those claiming the deceased. Some were simply misunderstandings, and others purposeful in the hopes that claiming him might win them monetary restitution.” So upright in her chair that she didn’t press on its back, Lady Ericho gave a minute nudge to her pad so it was in the perfect position. Tammie continued to tidy a variety of messes upon her table. “However, there remain names upon the list that have not been eliminated. As to the timepiece, it is still under examination. There is an insignia upon an inner plate, presumably inscribed there by its maker, but it matches none of the most recognized clockmakers in Ainscote. An expert is set to come tomorrow for his opinion.”
“In other words, it’s a whole lot of not much,” Tammie said, at last ready to work. She was oblivious to the cold eye of the lady upon her. “Nothing really they’ve found since you were brought back here. Fleets of patrol clip-clopped all over those roads around the dead zone there, looking for the place where that chap was stabbed and asking everyone to take a look-see at his photograph. Trotted it into every opium den and saloon and inn and grocery and brothel around that area. I did some of it myself yesterday evening since I live over at the Byway near Wattling. Found myself standing in a crowd of the prettiest ladies and gents you ever saw at The Spanker. Never been in there before, but it was police business and the prosties were quite nicer than I expected-”
Lady Ericho cleared her throat. “Shall we begin?”
The angry man who had disliked his gift of the timepiece was the more interesting of the two in Jesco’s visions. He described the fellow as Lady Ericho’s pencil whisked over the paper in confident angles and curves. That weak but pretty face took shape. Jesco worked off the most recent image he had of the man, so it was thin as well.
A hand extended to his weather-catcher, which was the only whirly-gig that he had not returned to the satchel. He gave off on describing the man’s hair to move it away and said, “You must not touch it without gloves, Tammie, or you could impart memories to it. Then I will not be able to touch it bare-handed ever again.”
“What if I wrap up my hand in a scarf, will that do?” Tammie offered. “I’ve never seen one of those up close. Do you know how much they cost?”
He knew because he had paid for it. Exasperation piercing through the frost, Lady Ericho said, “Ms. Squince, please contain your curiosity! We must get these done and back to the station. Prepare yourself to draw the redheaded woman.”
“Mine won’t take as long,” Tammie said, leaning down to rest her head upon her arm as she stared at the weather-catcher in fascination. “I’m going to use my book of pieces and that never takes as long as from the raw. Should we do that other woman, too? The blonde that the man was talking to?”
“Only if Mr. Currane’s strength will hold. She is not as relevant to this inquiry as the others.” Lady Ericho’s eyes flicked in distaste to the long, narrow book that Tammie was now dumping out onto her table. She rifled through the thick pages, each of which had drawings of noses, chins, and eyes upon them.
So aggravated was the older woman that when her drawing of the man was finished, she excused herself to get some air. Tammie instantly pushed the book of pieces over to the edge of her table and said, “You have a good recollection for faces.”
“Impeccable, due to the visions,” Jesco said. “I just don’t have the talent at art to render them in drawings myself.”
“Good for that, because then people like me would be square out of a job.” She flipped to a picture of eyes. There was a dozen in a long line. “Just point and I’ll put it together.”
Each pair of eyes was drawn upon a card, and as he pointed to the one that most resembled the redheaded woman’s, Tammie removed it from the book. Then she turned to noses, and on they went until she had a face made of cards upon her table. Cocking her head as her pencil flashed over the sketchpad, the junior artist said, “She’s a pretty one.”
“More than pretty,” Jesco said.
“You took a liking to her then?”
“Not my type.”
“More mine,” Tammie said, and they smiled at one another in perfect understanding.
It had never seemed appropriate to speak to Lady Ericho about anything other than the face while she was amidst its creation, but Tammie was far more casual and quite at ease with talking and working at once. “It was a mess at the station all morning, and I’m sure it still is now. Every grease-haired clodhopper on duty because the Shy Sprinkler has done it again, dribbled letters late last night all about the Parliament building with threats to break in and unload his snapper powder on them all. It’s a bug-killer, but it’s no good for people neither. Have you heard about this case? It’s been going on for some time.”
“No, not a word,” Jesco said.
“They’re doing their best to keep it out of the news. Worried it’s going to encourage people to do more of the same every time Parliament votes something off-ways from how you like it. This is the fourth time the fool has done it, waits for Parliament to have a session and says he’s coming to kill, but he never shows. The seer they’re using on that case can’t tell much from the letters. The fellow wears a mask and costume when he composes them, he must wear a pair of gloves too, come to think of it, and he’s got a massive amount of liquor in him besides so it skews everything. All those rich, bewigged gavel-holders are fit to be tied that he’ll muster up his gumption at last, however, stop talking big and actually show with murderous intentions. The building’s security has been tripled. You can’t breathe there without a guard staring up your nose and they’ve got every station in twenty miles on alert. But on alert for what? No one knows what he looks like. It could even be a she. Scoth got into a huge row with Captain Whennoth about it, office door wide open and the two of them having a good, healthy holler about it as I came in this morning.”
Enjoying the gossip that he never would have gotten out of Lady Memille Ericho in ten thousand years, Jesco said, “What exactly was the fight about?”
“The way that Detective Laeric Scoth sees it, he works homicide and there hasn’t been a homicide f
or him to work when it comes to the Shy Sprinkler. He’s got done deal homicides on his desk that need his attention and plenty of them: Mr. Dead in the Alley, the woman murdered and dumped in the sewer last month, the necktie killings and all those unsolved faces in the pictures behind his desk that keep him working all night long. So he doesn’t know why anyone’s trying to get him involved in helping out with the Shy Sprinkler case when at this point that man is just a big talker and a menace to people’s sense of safety.”
Her pencil swerved merrily around the paper. “Now, the way that Captain Tacker Whennoth sees it, he’s got the whole of Parliament breathing down his neck to catch this man, and he can feel the whole of the country breathing down his neck if he doesn’t. Can you imagine the headlines if that loon pulls it off? Can’t keep that out of the news. It’s the captain’s station closest to the Parliament building, and its welfare is in his purview. It’s his head that will roll if he misses an angle and the Shy Sprinkler chugs his bug-killer over everyone. So he wants every pair of feet in his station flooding the streets to look for suspicious activity, visiting the companies that manufacture the poison, doing everything they can to nail the culprit. Cases like this one here can wait, he said. I saw Scoth take a pace past the door right then, and to my reckoning, he was three ticks away from a personal explosion. It isn’t Mr. Dead in the Alley’s fault that his case isn’t as shiny as the Shy Sprinkler, Scoth said, and the dead man’s got every right to have a detective working his case while it’s still hot.
“The captain didn’t like that. Do you know who Mr. Dead in the Alley is? That’s what he shouted. Mr. Dead in the Alley is some dolt who went chasing after a married woman with a jealous husband, or dodged his tab at an opium den. No one does that and lives to tell about it. Maybe he acted up in a brothel somewhere, took liberties with a prostie that weren’t discussed beforehand. The ladies at The Spanker told me that that happens every week, men paying for the front door but taking a dive at the back, or breaking out handcuffs or plugs or nipple clamps by surprise since they didn’t want to pay the extra to see Madam Zostra. Only the Madam there handles those things, and with a bodyguard hidden in the corner behind a screen to make sure all the play stays respectful. Any of that kind of behavior on a regular prostie will get a fellow kicked straight out of The Spanker, and if he gets an attitude, he’ll receive a fist to his face or a crop across his back until he goes off. He’ll get more than that if he dares to come back. Or maybe Mr. Dead in the Alley got drunk in a dancehall and in the face of the security there to keep order. The captain suggested that, too. He was just a nobody who got himself poked in the chest, and the case can wait. The Shy Sprinkler is plotting to take out the most important people in all of Ainscote.”
Now she was adding color to the picture of the woman, a pink flush to the cheeks and red to the hair. “That made Scoth tick down to boom. He flat-out refused to take point on the Shy Sprinkler case or have anything at all to do with it until the man actually murders someone. The captain told him to pack up and get out of the station since he couldn’t follow orders. Scoth came flying out on a wave of wrath and plopped himself down at his desk to look over the latest identifications that have been coming in for Mr. Dead in the Alley. He was calling the captain’s bluff and the captain let it be called. He saw Scoth there for the rest of the morning and didn’t say a word to remove him.”
“An exciting day,” Jesco said, thoroughly entertained by the garrulous junior sketch artist.
“One of those arguments that you can see both sides, to my mind. But if I ever get myself murdered, I’d want Scoth on the case. He’s a veritable bloodhound. I don’t know how he stands to always have Death looking over his shoulder with that sad line of pictures. He had a brother or cousin murdered when they were lads, they say at the station, and that’s why he’s got such intensity about everything. Unsolved case. Having a bad morning all the way around with Detective Ravenhill so drunk that he passed out in his chair, and then he woke up and got reassigned to investigating poison companies. He didn’t throw a fit about it. Didn’t care. So Scoth doesn’t have a partner for the time being. Not that Ravenhill is much of a partner, but don’t go around telling people I said that or I’ll tell them that you said it first. He needs a bump on the backside to retirement. Any time he talks to me, I have to hold my breath or risk getting drunk on the fumes.”
After Jesco picked out the cards for the blonde, Tammie constructed the face from them and started work on a fresh page. Lying upon Lady Ericho’s abandoned table were the completed pictures of the black-haired man and beautiful older woman. They were almost exactly the people in his visions. “Where did you receive your schooling?” he asked.
“I grew up in Flanders, a little place far southeast of here that’s just above the Squasa Badlands. I’ve been drawing since I was supposed to be doing my chores as a girl, and I was accepted for the two-year program at the Cantercaster Institute of Art when I was eighteen. My parents were fit to be tied. I had a proposal from a lordling with a squashed nose that would have given me a title, but that world is gone, eh? Titles should have gone down with the kings but they can’t bear to let go of what once made them important. That aside, even if he had been a she, and the title still meant something grand, I just couldn’t wake up next to someone with a squashed nose everyday. It’s such a distraction. Every time he came around, all I could see was the great, bulbous cauliflower of his nose. When he breathed, it sounded like he was whistling with the air forced in and out of those two tiny slits for nostrils. I told my mother that I would be in prison for his murder within days of our wedding from having to listen to his nose whistle, and all she had to say about it was that lords and ladies are sent to a nicer prison than commoners so I should marry him anyway. I just wear this-” she gestured to her ring, “to dissuade strange folk into coming up and offering themselves, as has happened too many times especially when catching a carriage.” Erasing the curve of a cheek, she redid it as Jesco looked out the window. Lady Ericho was taking a brisk constitutional around the garden paths.
Redoing the cheek, Tammie said, “How long have you been stuck here in this asylum?”
“Since I was eight,” Jesco said. “It isn’t an imprisonment. Here my needs can better be served.” He turned his hands over in explanation and nodded to the chair.
“Does your family come to see you? Are they understanding? A lot aren’t, as I’ve heard.”
“My oldest sister comes to visit every few months, and brings her children.”
“Just a sister out of a whole family?”
“Yes.” It was a painful topic for Jesco, who fell quiet as she drew. Being a seer and a child of the angels was incompatible with divine teachings, and the Church had a strong hold on the farm communities still. His ability aligned him with the plagues of the earth. They had tried to drive it out of him when he was six, the prophets of the church in his hometown of South Downs. By hand, by lash, by paddle, by hunger, by thirst, they strove to return him to the angels and finally gave him back to his parents in defeat. The dark king of seersight had laid a hand upon Jesco, and it would be best if they just . . .
To their credit, his mother and father did not kill him. But they were simple folk without a letter between them, and they were terrified of their son who writhed and screamed and slept for days only to wake up and do it all over again. They locked him in the attic and mourned him in the community, their poor son fallen to fever and swept away before a doctor could be summoned.
Two of his older brothers, Lyall and Novani, unlocked the door on occasion to beat him bloody and spit on him. His father showed his love through a belt when he was drunk. Almost twenty years later, Jesco could recall with perfect clarity his mother’s thin, pale face framed by the gap in the door where she gave him food and drink. Jesco? Are you being a good boy? Are you praying? Wear out your knees in prayer and the angels will hear . . . they will not turn away the penitence of a child . . .
They had. But luckil
y for him, whispers about his faked death and imprisonment were spreading, and at last they landed in the ear of someone in the South Downs police force who had sympathies for othelin. Jesco was freed, and brought to the asylum.
Tammie was now adding color to the blonde woman. Awkwardly, Jesco said, “My family was, and is, very religious. But my eldest sister married a man of science and he convinced her that I was simply an aberration of genetics, not a child of demons. Rafonse died a few years ago in a carriage accident, but Isena still comes to see me. Rafonse is the one who got me interested in whirly-gigs. He worked for a company that sold them.”
Giving him a sympathetic nod, Tammie pressed no further. “Well, I won’t ask exactly what you paid for that weather-catcher, because then I’ll want one and I’ve got too much claim on my coin already. I’ve got a rough notion of that price tag and it’s a flincher.” Adding a final dash to the last sketch, she held it up for his opinion. “Is that the woman you saw in your vision?”
“It is.” Tammie had captured her well, all the way down to the nervous expression.
“I don’t recognize any of the three, not that I would, but hopefully someone will if Scoth is still employed and working on the case. Strange, this murder. Strange all the way around. I can’t make head or tails of anyone dragging a body to Poisoners’ Lane of all places. You couldn’t make me go into the dead zone for any reason under the sun and stars.” She put the drawing on the empty table and packed her things haphazardly in the satchel. The door to the drawing room opened and Lady Ericho came in. Giving a crisp nod to the three pictures, she stowed them in her belongings.
“Mr. Currane, it has been a pleasure,” she said formally.