by Jordan Reece
It was a very exciting place to work, and Jesco thought of the dead man who had once gone up and down these steps with a green jacket and satchel. But the image that came to mind more strongly was of his corpse, still and staring upon a carpet of trash.
The door opened and Scoth came out with a thickset older man. The buttons of his jacket were under great strain from his extra bulk, and he had a file tucked under his arm. Gauging from the style of jacket, he was not a courier. It was green, but had red trim. Running a hand through his thinning hair as the breeze tossed it about, the man looked over the railing as he followed Scoth down the steps. Then he shouted at a boy crashing the front wheel of his bicycle into the racks. “Ho, there! You! If I find a popped tire on any bicycle today, it’s coming out of your paycheck!”
“Sorry, sir!” the boy yelled, kicking down the stand. A limp satchel over his shoulder, he ran for the steps, squeezed by Scoth and the man with a polite nod, and went inside.
“Endrick Wassel, this is Jesco Currane. He is helping with the case,” Scoth said when the two got to the carriage. “Mr. Wassel was Hasten Jibb’s supervisor.”
The man glared over his shoulder to two couriers aiming for the rack. “Ho, there! Mind yourself! Mind those bicycles more; I can replace you faster!” They hit the brakes and brought them to the racks at a crawl. Wassel turned and said, “The crash, all day long I hear the crash of them hitting those racks. They think it’s grand fun, but I daresay it won’t be so fun when I dock them all a penny per crash I hear. So, this is better then. We can talk out here. Office is being repainted-” he explained to Jesco, “-and there’s no place to talk in there without someone running into you every minute. Let’s keep this quick, eh? I’ve got a meeting in ten minutes.”
“How long did Hasten Jibb work here?” Scoth asked.
Jesco assumed that the file was related to Hasten Jibb’s employment, but the man answered without needing to check. “Eight years and a little more. Odd chap but regular, and I’ll put up with odd for regular. He got the job done and that’s all I care about.”
“How was he odd?”
“Just odd. Odd is odd.” Seeing that this was not a sufficient explanation, he elaborated. “Jibb didn’t make friends out of the other couriers. They go out and get a drink after a shift; they stand about in back between jobs and have a lark. He never did that with them, just wanted to be on his own. It was like they weren’t worth his time. We’ve got some very pretty women here and he never showed a whit of interest in making their acquaintance.”
“What about the men?” Scoth queried.
“Got some strapping men here as well and he wasn’t interested in making their acquaintance either. They certainly wanted to make his, a lot of the women and a few of the fellows. Jibb was a handsome chap. He worked his way up to Golden Circle two years ago and the smile on his face when I gave it to him . . . first smile I’d ever seen on him.”
As they didn’t understand courier parlance, the man hastened to clarify. “The newest couriers work Iron. Cheap jobs taking cheap goods to cheap places. Some of them are far out so they spend the day biking only two or three deliveries. Do a good job on Iron and move up to Brass. Then they spend their days doing business strips. We got contracts with over a hundred companies and they love our Brass boys and girls. Iron made them strong and Brass teaches fast. When Leggato Music Limited tells Mr. Customer that a wagon will be at his house tomorrow morning with his brand new piano, then that piano had better be there tomorrow morning as promised. If we can’t provide excellent service to both Leggato and the customer, well then, Leggato will just hire its own couriers to deliver and dump us on the curb.”
He gave a foul look to another courier on a bicycle, but that one dismounted and walked it the last steps to the rack. Pleased, Wassel said, “Do good on Brass and move up to Silver. Those are for our companies and private citizens who have paid for preferential treatment. They want their money carted to the bank for deposit, or their messages carried from one office branch to another lickety-split. And at the top is Golden Circle. You’re working with the richest of the rich there. They expect strength, speed, honesty, and discretion, and they’ll tip for it. Jibb was odd indeed, but he had those things.”
“Do you keep a list of his jobs?” Scoth asked. “We’re especially interested in the jobs that he had on the day he died, anything that might have carried him near or within the Wattling area.”
The supervisor looked at him incredulously and opened the file. “We’ll deliver just about anything to anywhere for the right price, but I can’t think of the last job that took one of our couriers to Wattling. Nothing but slums and grime, Wattling, and I very much doubt our Golden Circle clients have family or business there.” He shuffled through the paperwork. In minute print, each shift and its jobs were catalogued. “This file has the work he did for the current year . . . if you want back years, I’ll have to get a secretary to dig them out of the basement.”
“We’ll start with the current,” Scoth said.
“Here we go, his last day. Yes, it was his regular trip to Lord Ennings over in Kevor Heights.” Wassel looked up with an expression that could only be described as preemptive indignation. “Am I to understand that this conversation is privileged between us?”
“Nothing is privileged within the context of a murder investigation,” Scoth said. “However, should the lord be determined to have no connection to this case, his private information will remain private.”
That satisfied the supervisor. “Lord Shooster Ennings is . . . a man of mercurial moods. He owns seven homes scattered about the area, all of them filled with the finest in art and furniture and which he is constantly moving about as fancy takes him. We are contracted with him for that reason. Jibb had a monthly appointment to take an autohorse and covered carriage to whichever residence the lord is currently residing within, and to move whatever the lord deemed necessary.” Squinting at the miniscule print, the man said, “It says here that Lord Ennings had nothing to move between his homes that day, but he wished Jibb to place several pieces of jewelry within his bank vault in Corder. Jibb did so and returned to the office.”
Jewelry. Jesco shot a look to the detective, who kept his attention on Wassel and said, “I’ll need the bank information.”
In umbrage, Wassel said, “You can be sure that the jewelry is there! We don’t promote couriers to Golden Circle to steal and ruin our image. I’ve got a tick here that indicates the bank gave him a receipt. That will be in another file, if you want to see it.”
“I am not accusing the deceased,” Scoth said. “But he was in possession of jewelry that someone else might have had a keen interest in acquiring.”
With a grunt, the supervisor returned to the notes. “It says here that he got back late in the day. But that wasn’t surprising. Lord Ennings has kept our couriers late before as his mood and decisions change, and Jibb also had to swing wide for Corder.” He closed the file. “I know the rest of it since I saw him when he was here. There wasn’t anything left for Golden Circle, but a Silver job had come in and all of those couriers were out and about. None of the Brass knows that circuit so I couldn’t use them. I asked Jibb. Figured that he might be insulted, but he had no problem running the package. He had to take his bicycle; the autohorse was needed for something else. It’s a lovely area, though, Melekei, fancy homes and not far. The package had five of those whirly-gigs inside, so it was marked fragile all over. Going to old Mrs. Daphna Cussling for her grandchildren and she likes her deliveries sharp. She doesn’t care if it’s dinner or almost bed; she just wants that knock on the door and she’ll slip the courier a personal if she’s pleased. That was Jibb’s day, and he never showed up the next. And I know those whirly-gigs made it or else Cussling would have stomped in here days ago and rapped her cane on the counter.”
“He had to take his bicycle, you said?” Jesco asked.
“Couriers serving Silver and Golden Circle often buy their own bicycles. Lightwe
ight and speedy. Nothing wrong with the company bicycles, but it’s something to show off and they don’t have to come back and return it at the end of the day. They can ride whatever they want as long as they wear the green jacket. Jibb pedaled about on a sapphire blue Fleetman, rode it into work and locked it up in the special rack out back when he didn’t need it. He must have been saving up his personals since he worked Iron to afford a Fleetman, or else he was slipping courier work on the side.” Primly, Wassel said, “Ragano & Wemill doesn’t approve of that, but it’s hard to stop.”
The detective and supervisor traded information and then they parted, Wassel going up the stairs quickly to make his meeting and Scoth opening the carriage door. Jesco climbed in. There was nothing here for him to touch, since all of Hasten Jibb still at his workplace was a file that he had never handled himself.
Once the carriage was moving, he said, “What did you make of that?”
Scoth scribbled a note into his pad. “What did you?”
He wanted Jesco’s opinion? Jesco tugged at his gloves and said, “It wasn’t a job that led Hasten Jibb to Wattling, although he wasn’t necessarily killed there. He couldn’t have been murdered too far away, though, could he? He died in the night and was found early in the morning. The comment about the jewelry was interesting. I wonder if the timepiece was something he lifted from it. Perhaps he deposited some of the jewelry but kept the rest for himself.”
“Would a man risk his livelihood and his freedom for a timepiece like that?” Scoth returned. “That wasn’t going to make him rich. Why not take a finer piece, pawn it, and run?”
“Maybe he did, and was keeping the timepiece for himself. He took his money and headed off into Cantercaster, where he ended up in Wattling. You need to get a list of the jewelry that Lord Ennings gave to Jibb and another list of what ended up in the bank vault.”
“Is that what I need to do?” Scoth queried testily.
“You’re the detective, aren’t you? Apparently you need some reminding of that fact since you’re asking for my wholly unqualified opinion instead of giving me yours.”
“It’s never a bad idea to get another person’s perspective on a tricky case.”
That settled Jesco down. He had misread Scoth’s reason for asking. In a way, it was almost an apology for how Scoth had acted in their first case with the dead woman in the garden. With less tartness in his tone, Jesco said, “I didn’t hear anything that seemed all that relevant to how he died. If he was going to steal the jewelry and make a run for it, why bother to deposit anything? And I would think he would run farther than Wattling, and not return to the office and take on that second job to Melekei. So if it has nothing to do with the jewels, nor is the timepiece something that belongs to Lord Ennings, and the whirly-gigs were delivered, then he was doing something unrelated to his job after work ended for the day. What caught you in all of that?”
“That he didn’t make friends of the couriers.”
“What does that mean?”
“Maybe nothing. I just find it elucidating about his character. He considered them not worth his time, if the supervisor was interpreting the situation correctly. Yet Hasten Jibb worked as nothing more than a courier. How was he any better? Did he fancy himself a long-lost prince beneath that green jacket? Where did he find his friends if not through work? Where did he find his lovers, since he wasn’t chasing any of the women there? Or the men? Why did he hold himself apart, or was he just very shy and awkward in social situations, and it was misattributed to being aloof?” Scoth tucked the pad of paper and pen into his trench coat. “We’ll speak to his mother now. The bank will be closed by the time we get there. That will have to be done another day, as well as visiting Lord Ennings and the old woman with the whirly-gigs.”
A hard wind blew past, flapping cloaks and trousers on the passerby. “I had wondered if he was in Wattling to visit a brothel there,” Scoth said. “Some places cater to very odd tastes that can’t be found elsewhere. Yet if he found his fellow couriers beneath him in matters of love, would he be the sort to visit a Wattling prostie? It seems like he wanted to associate himself with richness. He bought the most expensive bicycle on the market and was thrilled to be assigned to Golden Circle. This man would patronize a finer establishment.”
“If he had a very odd taste, then he couldn’t satisfy it there,” Jesco said. “But he would wait until he had a day off, to my reckoning. He had had a full day at work, and another scheduled for the next day. Wattling is a long trip to make there and back. I wouldn’t do it.”
“In the throes of lust, a man will do just about anything,” Scoth said. “Here we are.”
The autohorse was pulling over in front of a shabby home. It was narrow and had two stories capped by a round roof. Identical houses stretched right and left on both sides of the street. They looked like long lines of thumbs in beige and brown, and there was barely a foot of space between them. However, when compared to Wattling, this was the height of luxury. Most of the homes were tended if humble, although the one where Hasten Jibb once lived had been treated with a slapdash hand. It needed to be repainted, and the garden was weedy.
“She’s been informed, hasn’t she?” Jesco asked, loathing to be the bringer of bad tidings, and pitying the poor old woman who would sob to receive them.
“She’s been informed,” Scoth said. “Her name is Guiline Jibb.”
A white-haired woman opened the door to them. She was dressed all in black. Looking far more annoyed than grieved, she listened to Scoth’s introduction and jerked her head to welcome them in. She clipped down the hallway to the kitchen, Scoth and Jesco going after her. There was a framed photograph on the wall of the woman in her younger years, seated upon a chair and with two boys posed behind her. Each had a hand on her shoulder. The younger was Hasten Jibb.
Pans clattered in the kitchen. As they entered, the woman hung a pan upon a hook and said, “Sit at the table then, I can’t stop my day for you.”
“We are very sorry for your loss,” Scoth said. “I assure you that I’m going to do all I can to bring your son’s murderer to justice.”
They sat down. Mrs. Jibb banged a teapot on the counter and filled it with water from a pitcher. “That’s life, isn’t it? It gives and takes away. It took my husband when he ran off; it took Dochi when his heart gave out. Twenty-two years old, a strapping lad, and dead on the sidewalk. He worked for Lord Calvert, the only one that the lord trusted with his show dogs. Huge brutes, Kavenyork breed, but just big loves, Dochi said. Stand tall and let them see you won’t be knocked about, and they won’t knock you about. He went with Lord Calvert to the show over in Oppentown, and the lord had Dochi guide the best dog through his tricks for ten thousand people. Second place. Second place!”
Having banged the full teapot onto the stove and thumped a mug onto the counter, now she was lifting a cloth from a bowl to check the rising dough inside. Even that she somehow did loudly. From there, she checked a pot on another burner upon the stove. Letting the lid fall with a resounding crash, she said, “The lord was giddy with that red ribbon, upped Dochi’s salary and said he would up it again once he was holding the blue. Dochi was going to be known as the finest dog trainer in all of Ainscote had he lived. All of those lords and ladies would have been fighting tooth and nail to have him out to their manors to train up their dogs in agility. And he said, Mother, when I’ve gotten rich off those fools, I’m going to buy an autodog so I don’t have to clean up so much hair anymore. Kavenyorks have a coat so thick that you could sleep on it in winter, and they shed in great sloughs the rest of the year. Hair on his clothes, hair up his nose, hair all over this house from him trailing it in.” She laughed.
This was not what Jesco had expected from a woman who just lost a son days ago. Even Scoth seemed taken aback as Mrs. Jibb went on. “Just hair. I’d tell him that we would have been those lords and ladies going silly over dogs, but my great-great-grandmother was a lord’s bastard on a prostie. She made good, that pros
tie, but she didn’t get a title out of it, nor did the baby. But that’s how close we were to manors and champagne and Kavenyorks. Dochi was going to get us there.” Three bowls landed on the counter, the lid was jerked from the pot, and a ladle crashed inside. Liquid splashed everywhere.
“We’re here to talk about Hasten,” Scoth said.
“Got himself killed. I told him that he would get himself killed, riding around on that stupid bicycle. Who do you think is going to win in a crash between you and a carriage in the road? Who do you think is going to win if you get sued for mowing down a pedestrian on the sidewalk? Bicycles don’t belong in roads and they don’t belong on sidewalks and I don’t think they belong anywhere. I just hate them. But no, he never listened to me.”
Alarmed to hear this, Jesco looked at the detective. His voice gentle, Scoth said, “Hasten wasn’t killed in a bicycle accident. Someone stabbed him. Were you told that?”
“Oh, yes, the officer made mention of it.” Filling the bowls with soup, she slammed them down on the table and went to a drawer for spoons.
“Did Hasten have any enemies? Was anyone bothering him?”
She clattered about the utensil drawer. “How would I know? He came in at the end of the day and had his dinner, went upstairs to his room and closed the door. He always left early to have breakfast over at Shining Water, so I hadn’t seen him in the morning. He wasted his money dining there. You get a red jacket for an owner in your company, and then you eat there. Anyone can have a green jacket. You have to be someone first. Dochi only ate there when Lord Calvert’s son invited him, to talk dogs and training with friends of his who were interested. That’s what put Shining Water in Hasten’s head. He thought he was making some connection just by being there with his waffle and eggs and that’s not how it’s done. Connections are for lunch and dinner, and you have to know someone to make a connection. A waste! But he took after his father, spitting image, went about things the wrong way and wouldn’t change course for anything.”