The Buried Life

by Carrie Patel

  “Then a lot of people would have known they would be there.”

  Malone nodded. “Presumably.”

  “Yet the report indicates that the murderer was a mugger – that he robbed and killed the Satos for the valuables they carried. That doesn’t add up.”

  Malone continued to watch her partner with a prompting expression.

  “Nobody would be desperate enough to rob and kill people like them for their pocket change. Either he didn’t recognize the Satos, or he recognized them after he accosted them and killed them in a panic.” He twirled a fingertip through the air, tracing a twisting path of thought. “He was in trouble either way, so perhaps he thought he stood a better chance by eliminating the witnesses.” He drummed his fingers and broke his gaze. “Still, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  “Which may be why we’ve been directed to this contract.”

  “What does the file say about the mugger?”

  Malone thumbed through several more pages. “Mortimer Stanislau. A freight worker born in Recoletta and connected with several smuggling operations but never convicted. The inspectors handling the contract picked him up less than thirty-six hours after the murders on a tip. An anonymous tip.” Malone paused, reading further down the page. “He was in possession of one hundred and fifty-seven marks and valuables belonging to the Sato family. A knife in his domicile matched the cuts on the victims, and he had no alibi for the night of the 17th. He was brought to trial on the 21st and appointed a lawyer, and a bench of five judges unanimously convicted him and sentenced him to death by firing squad.”

  Sundar gaped. “All in one day?”

  “Over two days. But that’s fast.”

  “Even for a crisis.”

  Malone pinched a thick sheaf of paper. “There’s a transcript of the proceedings, and it looks thorough. There were no surviving witnesses, so that might explain the lack of delays.”

  “Character witnesses?”

  “A couple,” she said. “Foremen from his loading team. Given Stanislau’s reputation for unscrupulous behavior, it’s no surprise that these testimonies were not in his favor.”

  “No long, pleading statements from the accused?”

  “None. Stanislau’s lawyer, Edmund Wickery, handled his end of the proceedings and provided all of Stanislau’s statements.”

  Sundar took the sheets detailing the transcript and skimmed through them. “This doesn’t leave us with much.”

  Malone was reading through Stanislau’s dossier. “No wife, no children, no surviving family, and no friends to speak of. After the execution, Stanislau’s assets were absorbed by city coffers.”

  “In other words, there’s nothing left on this guy.” He slumped in his chair, sighing. A long pause followed during which Malone continued to flip through the pages.

  “Well, this is interesting,” she finally said.

  Sundar leaned forward. “Did you find something?”

  Malone reread a passage of interest. “According to the files, Mortimer Stanislau was mute.”

  * * *

  Jane had spoken correctly at the gala: the remainder of the party passed uneventfully. Fredrick remained silent throughout the carriage ride home, leaving Jane to her thoughts. “Good night,” he finally said when they parted at her door. “I’m forecasting a late morning with a chance of hangovers, so, whatever you do, don’t knock before noon.” She nodded and bade him good evening.

  The following day elapsed with the same sort of quiet. Jane washed, sewed, and mended without any remarkable happenings. The only excitement arrived in the form of Fredrick, who arrived late in the evening with a vengeful appetite. If he was still cross with her for her imprudence the previous evening, she couldn’t tell. His customary jauntiness made it clear that she should anticipate no rehashing of the previous night’s argument and no apology for it. As always with Fredrick, his humors changed with the tides of the day.

  Over dinner, she had little trouble drawing him into their usual rhythm of conversation, so thankful was she to have overcome the awkwardness from the end of last night.

  “So, the editor liked your story about the gala?” she asked, loading her plate.

  “Quite a lot, if I may say so. Of course, she didn’t have a whole lot of choice – it had to run today one way or another, but I prefer to think it was better than your average drivel.”

  “Did Burgevich say anything about it?”

  “Hah!” Fredrick looked up between bites of broccoli, his eyes gleaming. “That sorry hack couldn’t make eye contact with me all day. Serves him right – he nudged Chiang for the Vineyard murders.” Jane didn’t mention that by “nudged” he meant “bribed” and that he, Fredrick, would have done the same thing if Chiang’s price weren’t so high. Fredrick continued. “Now he doesn’t have a thing to write about. I guess that’s something to appreciate about the Council’s secrecy.” He merrily turned his attentions to the salted cod on his plate.

  Near-silence passed as both focused on dinner. When they had picked their plates clean, Jane cleared the table and brought tea, which enlivened Fredrick again. “How were your house calls? See anyone from last night?”

  She started as she looked up, but she realized that he was not talking about Roman. “I just had a couple of stops as far as the Vineyard, but I didn’t see anyone from the gala. Even if I had,” she added, pouring her cup, “I think the recognition would have been one-sided.”

  “Ah, such sweet irony,” he mused with a wry smile. “And yet you were the toast of the evening, m’dear.”

  Jane coughed into her tea. “I was?”

  “Oh yes,” he said, lifting his eyebrows and fixing his stare on a spot on the table. “You were quite the topic of conversation. I hope you don’t mind being so objectified.”

  “Who was talking?”

  He waved his hand. “Everyone.”

  “Well, what did ‘everyone’ say?”

  “Oh, this and that. You know, the usual. Charming girl, lovely smile, interesting friends, very elegant in red…”

  Jane frowned, passing the sugar bowl. “My dress was white.”

  “Whatever, same thing.”

  She could not tell if he spoke seriously or if he was toying with her. She was inclined to believe the latter, and she set her jaw, resolved not to take the bait.

  Fredrick, as if sensing this, nodded earnestly over his own tea cup. “Honestly, those ladies you met last night liked you very much. They told me you seemed like a pleasant young woman. And that’s gushing, coming from them.” He hesitated, as if on the verge of a corollary, but he seemed to think better of it. When they finished their tea and Jane walked Fredrick to the door, she allowed her relief at their pleasant banter to eclipse the lack of closure with which it ended.

  Perhaps as a result, she awoke the next morning with a sense of unease. She bathed and dressed early and had churned through much of her morning’s work by nine, when Lena arrived with a parcel of suit jackets for Councilor Hollens.

  “The councilor needs the spot removed from this jacket on top,” Lena said, pointing to the offending stain, “but the other had a split in the seam, so I brought it along, too. They’re rather urgent,” she added, managing to make it sound more like a suggestion than a specific request.

  Jane examined the two articles. “Thanks, Lena. I’ll have these back by tonight.”

  Lena dipped her head, relieved. “You have a good day, Miss Lin.”

  “You, too.”

  The door closed behind her, and Jane set to work on the two jackets. The stain on the first, some kind of dark grease, came out easily with a compound of mineral spirits and careful brushing. As she reached for the second jacket, her door began to resound with knocks, and her threshold became a momentary epicenter of activity.

  Her less exclusive clients arrived with bundles of laundry to be processed en masse, and Jane thought it prudent to begin at once with the washing to allow for adequate drying time. The early hours of the afternoon had
come and gone by the time she had strung the linens and clothes around the front parlor, pumping a bellows in front of the glowing fire to circulate warm air. The aromatic infusion of crushed herbs and flowers inside the bellows gave off a light, fresh scent akin to a warm spring breeze. Anticipating the heat, she cracked the window by her door, which faced the apartment warren hallway, and she opened the vents located around the room.

  This completed, she returned to the workroom where Hollens’s two jackets hung. The second was more of a light overcoat than a standard suit jacket, she reflected as she turned it on its hanger. It showed fading around the hem and a frayed stitch under the right arm, yet like everything Hollens owned, it seemed meticulously cared for. She had to search to find the tear, but, running her fingers along the inside-front seam, she detected a split about three inches long where the fabric of the liner separated from the heavier stuff of the coat.

  Jane marveled that Lena could have noticed such a minor defect, but a councilor’s servant was nothing if not meticulous. Jane laid the coat on her desk and set to work. She pinned the parted edges together and smoothed the liner fabric just beyond the tear with her fingertips. As she traced the satiny material, she felt something unusual. She pressed her fingers more slowly into the fabric, and the effect was like a phonograph needle jumping at a scratch.

  Suspecting that a scrap of material had somehow fallen inside, she unpinned the liner and slid her fingers into the gap. They found a folded sheet of paper. The compartment itself, she realized, was a deliberate contrivance, a pocket sewn discreetly inside the coat and several inches deep. With her index and middle finger, she grasped the paper and slid it out of the pocket as professional qualms and curiosity played table tennis with her conscience.

  The paper was folded in several times on itself and was soft with age and use. Ignoring that it had been concealed in a secret pocket, it almost seemed too plain to hold any information of real importance. It was probably a receipt or a shopping list. Still, Jane wouldn’t know what to do with it until she read it, and there could be no harm in simply reading the paper, could there? She unfolded it and read:

  1. A Ruthers

  2. A Hollens

  At number 3, someone had crossed out “L Fitzhugh” and written in “P Dominguez”.

  4. C Hask

  Below this hierarchy were two separate columns of names. She read through the eighty or so names listed, recognizing only “W Cahill”, a probable match with the murdered historian. Reaching the bottom of the list, she gave a start to see “R Arnault” scrawled in the bottom margin and separated from the others, as if added in afterthought.

  A jumble of names with a handful she recognized and several dozen she did not. She was familiar with the two councilors and the two murder victims, and she knew of only one Arnault. Without knowing the other names or understanding the connection between them, the list meant nothing. But it evidently held enough importance to hide in the seam of an old coat, she thought. Her dilemma now was how to fix it. She could not sew this compartment shut, or Hollens would know that she had found it. Yet what could she say to Lena? It would be obvious if she did not fix it, but equally incriminating if she explained why she didn’t.

  Jane did not have to ponder for long. Someone pounded frantically at her door just before bursting through it. At the sound, she dropped her pins and thread with a yelp.

  “Jane! Jane, where are you?” Fredrick shouted as he stumbled over the threshold, groping at the hanging sheets and clotheslines. “Jane!”

  She slid the paper back into the jacket. “In here,” she called. She shoved through the drying clothes and rushed to him, trembling. Both breathed in heaving sighs of relief. “What on earth are you doing here? You scared me to death,” she gasped.

  “I was so worried,” he said. He blinked and stared with a kind of fearful concern so utterly removed from his usual irreverence. “Have you heard?”

  Much to her later chagrin, she stamped her foot in exasperation. “No, Freddie, I have not heard. You come bursting in here and shouting like the world’s going to end, and you ask me if I’ve heard. I gave you that key for emergencies, not for–”

  “Jane, he’s dead,” he whispered. “Just now. In the middle of the day.”

  “Dead? Who…?” Her frustration sizzled in a cold pool of dread.

  “That councilor. Hollens. Stabbed in his own house little more than an hour ago. The maid found him in his sitting room – Jane, she thought he was napping! The domicile full of servants, and someone got to a councilor in the middle of the day.”

  The weight of his statement hit her with an almost physical force. “Freddie, are you sure?”

  “I was in the office when our man rushed in, and I ran all the way here.” He was still panting from the combination of exertion and panic, a hapless expression on his face. She felt a pang of guilt at her earlier outburst.

  “Oh… this is…” Words ground to a halt in her mind as she searched for something meaningful to say. But what? Unexpected? Shocking, yes, but no one could have thought that the architect was the end of it. The week of patrols and curfews had seemed more like a pause than a conclusion in the increasingly alarming series of murders, and the city had bathed in denial. Now, the news cut through the week of haziness like a sharp beam of light, dispelling any illusion of security.

  Jane was barely aware of the reeling sensation as her head dipped and her body sagged downwards, crumpling at the knees. She was even less conscious when Fredrick caught her under the arms, reaching behind her to stop her descent, and carried her gently to the sofa. She did not regain consciousness until moments later when he patted her cheek, crouching on the floor in front of her. She blinked dizzily, trying to piece together the moments between swaying on her feet seven paces away and lying slumped on her couch.

  “You fainted,” Fredrick said, his jutting elbows and knees silhouetted by flames as he perched. The firelight cast his recently shaven jaw in a sympathetic glow, and she could see the day’s growth of stubble.

  She glanced around the living room, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Freddie.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Don’t think of it. This is a tough bit of news to receive and a hard way to hear it.” He pushed himself up with his hands on his thighs and sat beside her. She opened her mouth to speak, but he waved a hand to quiet her, fluttering his fingertips. “Besides,” he said, “you have a lot at stake.” His eyes focused on her and his mouth hardened into a line. “Which brings me to something else we need to discuss. You’ve known both of the last two victims, and I’m concerned for your safety.”

  Jane’s eyes widened to unnatural dimensions. She took his hand. “I need to show you something.” Without a word, he followed her out of the den and down the hall.

  Returning to the workshop with its dangerous little mystery gave Jane a tiny shiver. The light reflecting from the wooden table and workbenches and spilling into the hallway had a yellowish hue that Jane normally associated with warmth, but now it carried a noxious tinge. She imagined that the folded paper, endowed with an importance disproportionate to its size, now radiated a yellowish color like a toxic fume.

  Jane pulled the paper delicately from its compartment and placed it in Fredrick’s outstretched hand. He whispered the first ten names slowly, barely enunciating as he scanned the page. “Jane, I don’t understand. What’s this supposed to mean?”

  “Councilor Hollens’s maid dropped these suits off this morning. I was looking over this one when I found a secret pocket – very well hidden – in the lining. When I reached inside I found that paper.”

  Fredrick’s eyes narrowed to points as he studied the page. “Do you have any idea what this is?”

  “No.”

  “But you weren’t supposed to find it. Anything so thoroughly concealed was meant to remain so. Has it occurred to you that three of the people listed here have died in the past week and a half?” He shook the paper in his thumb and forefinger, and her blood froze. “
I doubt Hollens was murdered over a scrap of paper, but I know we aren’t supposed to have this.” He closed his fingers around it and moved for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to burn this, Jane. Hollens is dead, and no one ever needs to know we’ve seen this.”

  Jane leapt forward, catching Fredrick in the hall. “Wait. Give it back to me, please.”

  He blinked incredulously. “What could you possibly want with it? You already know what it says. You can’t mean to keep this.”

  “I’m showing it to Inspector Malone.”

  “Jane, have you lost your mind? If the rumors of corruption are true, that’s the last thing you should do.”

  “Nonsense. The Council threw the Municipals off of this contract, remember? The City Guard practically shut them down.”

  “And there may be a very good reason for that. Jane, has it occurred to you that you might be trusting the wrong people? Based on that look you’re giving me, I assume not.” He shot her a paternally disparaging expression that irked her more than his words. “Plus, like you said, they’re off the case. What good could the inspectors do for you even if they are clean? Besides, whoever’s responsible may be watching the station. We have to assume that they know who you are and what you look like. If you go in there, whatever mysterious grace you may or may not have from them will be gone,” Fredrick said, his voice lowered to a furious rasp.

  She looked down and pondered for several seconds. Only the crackling fire in the den made a sound. “I trust Malone. She needs to see this.”

  “Have you heard a thing I’ve said? Whether or not you trust her is beside the point.”

  “I don’t have to go to the station. There’s another way.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s a drop box.”

  He threw his hands forward and clenched his eyes shut. “Jane, are you listening to yourself? That’s even more suspicious. Do you have any idea why she would be so secretive about this?”

  “You’ve already given a great list of reasons. Maybe she’s corrupt, or maybe she’s hiding from people who are. A minute ago, we can’t trust the Council, and now you don’t trust anyone else. What could I possibly do right?”