Why hadn’t Jon seen it before? Was it because he simply refused to believe that such savage treachery couldn’t reside in the heart of his own family? How could he have not seen that all the fingers of guilt pointed directly at Thomas?
And—more importantly—now that he realized it, what in the world could he do about it?
Thomas was up all night. He couldn’t sleep. He didn’t want to eat or drink. He felt giddy as a child anticipating all holidays rolled into one, with his birthday on top. As, in actuality, it was. He couldn’t ask for a better present than the one he’d given himself: control of Noir Manor, and all lands, buildings, funds, and other objects accrued to it. He couldn’t wait to try it all on for size. He was sure that the title would fit him even better than it had fit the Captain, God—of some sort or another—rest his soul.
In the meantime, there was much to do. He had to get that snoop Irving alone and question him. Make sure he hadn’t noticed that incriminating bloodstain. He’d need Callie’s help for that. She was good at finding out things. The trousers themselves were safely hidden away. He’d [217] hate to loose such a finely cut pair. After things had died down he’d get Callie to remove the bloodstain. She was also quite good at that.
He supposed he’d also better call on his betrothed. It wouldn’t do to neglect her. Then there was the Captain’s funeral to arrange. Seth could handle that. Thomas intended to keep him on to handle paperwork and such. With Jon milking the cows and planting the corn, that would take care of most of the work, leaving plenty of leisure, most of which could be spent away from Geiststadt. Speaking of brothers, there was also the worthless James. He’d get the boot as soon as it was appropriate. Perhaps right after the Captain’s funeral.
What to do? A hundred thoughts swirled dizzily through his head. He knew now how the Captain felt. How it was to grasp the reins of power in your very own hands. How to wield Life—for Seth and Jon—and Death—for James—like a veritable god.
Thomas made his decision. He reached out and tugged the bell pull that would summon McCool. He waited patiently until the Irishman arrived.
“Yes, Your Honor?”
Even McCool seemed to sense the difference in him. At least, he was more respectful in his address.
“Fetch hot water,” Thomas Noir said. “I’m going to take a bath.”
Jon peered out from behind his barely opened bedroom door, watching across the stairwell as Tully McCool dragged two buckets of hot water all the way from the kitchen on the first floor. He was huffing and puffing [218] and grumbling to himself under his breath. Jon couldn’t understand the words he was saying, but he comprehended their tenor by the expression on McCool’s face as he went down the hall, put the buckets down in front of the bathing room’s door, opened the door, picked the buckets up, and went into the small chamber.
There came the sound of splashing water as McCool emptied the buckets into the occupied tub, and then Thomas’s complaining tones.
“The water’s tepid. I don’t pay you to fetch tepid water, my good man.”
An outraged grumble came from the Gael.
“You don’t pay me ’alf enough to fetch any fucking water.”
“Watch yourself,” Thomas said bluntly. “You can always go back to Five Points if you don’t like my money.”
McCool’s mumbled reply was unintelligible to Jon’s straining ears, except for the “yes, Your Honor,” which was attached at the end with seemingly less than total sincerity.
McCool left the room, buckets swinging.
“And come back and close the door you damned bogtrotter,” Thomas cried. “I’m catching a draft in here.”
Jon was close enough to see the rage that suddenly surged over the Irishman’s features. His pale skin flushed with anger until his face was nearly as dark as his hair. His teeth clenched in a savage grimace, his eyes wide open and wild, like those of a maddened horse. The change in McCool’s normally laconic, mildly mocking posture was amazing.
But it lasted for only a moment. The Irishman mastered [219] his emotions with a facility that suggested long practice, returned to the door, and shut it carefully and quietly. Jon had half expected him to bang it shut as a symbol of his rage, but apparently McCool was subtler than that. As he went down the hall to the landing and back down to the kitchen his face was studiously blank of emotion.
For the first time, Jon realized that there was something in Tully McCool that should be feared.
He didn’t know much about Manhattan, but everyone knew Five Points. It wasn’t exactly the neighborhood where one would go to find a valet or a manservant. Killers, though, were as common there as dead cats.
A bit of the puzzle locked in, Jon thought. But no proof. He swallowed heavily. He knew where he might find some, though. Thomas was absorbed in his bath. He’d be awhile. McCool was busy fetching water. He’d be occupied as long as Thomas. Longer, in fact. Someone had to empty the basin, and that someone wasn’t going to be Thomas.
Now was as good a time as ever.
Jon took a deep breath and slipped out of his room, silently pulling the door closed behind him. He crept down the hallway. Thomas, now singing to himself as he soaked and scrubbed in his overblown wash tub seemed utterly unaware of his passage.
Jon made it to his brother’s bedroom and slipped inside, quietly shutting the door. The only noise he heard was the thudding of his own heart as he prepared to violate the privacy of his brother’s room, something he’d never before even conceived of doing. He had no idea of what to look for or what he might find, but surely [220] there must be something that, however tenuously, would connect his brother to the killings—if, indeed, he were guilty of them.
A quick glance around the room told him little that he didn’t already know. His brother had expensive tastes and he indulged them as fully as he could. His furniture—bed, chairs, nightstand, wardrobe—were all much nicer than Jon’s. Jon sat down on the bed and felt as if he were sinking into a pit full of feathers.
More comfortable, too, he thought. No time to waste, he quickly added. No time.
He pulled open the nightstand’s upper drawer. Inside were some papers. Old manuscripts, scrolls similar to those his father had owned. Also a small flask. He shook it. It sloshed. Open, it smelled of fine brandy. Jon was tempted to try a sample, but knew better than to drink of an unknown potion in his brother’s room. He put it back and rummaged around. His hand closed around a slim, round object and he pulled out Thomas’s watch, given to him by their father just last year.
It was weighty in Jon’s hand. It had a good, solid heft to it. It felt warm, as if it’d been sitting in sunlight for a while rather than a dark drawer. Jon looked at it closely. He was drawn to it. He’d admired it in the past as a finely wrought artifact. He’d never felt covetous about it. But this time he had to stiffen his resolve to put it back in the nightstand drawer. It was almost as if the watch itself was whispering to him, offering itself, urging him to take it, no one would miss it, it would feel so good in his waistcoat’s pocket.
Nonsense, of course, Jon said to himself, shutting the [221] drawer. Thomas would miss it in an instant. And what could he do with it? Put it in his desk and take it out under the cover of darkness to stroke it like a miser gloating over a pile of gold coins? He wasn’t here to rob his brother, but to find clues regarding his guilt—or perhaps innocence—in a most damnable crime.
He opened the nightstand’s bottom drawer and felt something inside it wrapped in cloth. Something oddly shaped and textured.
He pulled out the package and quickly unwrapped it, his wonder growing as he uncovered a crude statue, maybe eight inches high. Jon couldn’t figure out what it was made from until he smelled it and realized it was dough of some odd consistency, baked hard as a rock. It was fashioned into a human form, roughly female, if the two lumps on its chest were any indication. Pins, or nails, were driven into the thing’s chest between those breasts. Into its flat forehead. Into the juncture of its thighs.
>
A spell doll, Jon thought. He knew just enough about them to recognize one when he saw it. A female spell doll. That could possibly explain Trudi’s extraordinary behavior of the last few days. Thomas had cast a spell on her. He did make her love him. Literally.
Anger burned through Jon. Any doubts as to his brother’s innocence in this whole terrible crime suddenly vanished. Thomas was behind it all. Maybe he hadn’t actually performed the killings with his own hands. Jon couldn’t know. Maybe they’d been carried out by his hired thug from Five Points. But regardless of whoever [222] had held the knife, Thomas was ultimately responsible for its use.
And Thomas, he vowed, would pay.
Jon clamped down on the anger that threatened to overwhelm him and push him to actions he’d regret. He had to get proof, which he could then lay out for Constable Pierce and Washington Irving. Surely they wouldn’t be swayed by Thomas’s charm or power as the new head of the Noirs. They would help bring him to justice.
He stood suddenly, the question now in his mind of what to do with the spell doll. He couldn’t destroy it, or put it where it might be harmed. He had no idea what such an action might do to Trudi. If the doll made her love Thomas would its destruction result in her death? He didn’t know. But Callie would. If he dared ask her. In the meantime, he could take it and hide it somewhere where it’d be safe from Thomas. Then he could figure out what to do with it.
He needed evidence, solid evidence to link Thomas to the crimes. He didn’t know how much time he had left before Thomas would finish his bath. He would have to search the rest of the room quickly, as best as he could. He slipped the doll inside his shirt and turned to Thomas’s wardrobe.
The seconds ticked off in his head as he searched wardrobe, trunk, and even among the cushions of Thomas’s chairs. Nothing. Nothing tangible, let alone damning. He was jittery with frustration and the fear of being discovered, virtually hopping from foot to foot in his anxiety, when he thought of the bed. He flipped up [223] its soft mattress, exposing the taut hemp ropes beneath. And the wine-colored trousers that had been pressed between. The trousers with the suspicious dark stain on the upper thigh.
Work long enough on a farm and you can easily recognize a bloodstain on clothing. There was no doubting that this was one. Jon clamped his mouth shut so that he wouldn’t shout in glee. He grabbed the trousers and balled them up in a tight a bundle as he could, letting the mattress fall back in place.
He went to the door, listening for a moment. He heard nothing. He slipped out the door, shutting it behind himself as suddenly a grumbling McCool reached the landing with yet another pair of buckets.
Jon went down the hall as unconcernedly as he could, his heart hammering in his chest.
“Good afternoon,” he said.
“Afternoon, Your Honor,” McCool replied.
John couldn’t tell if there was suspicion in that cool Gaelic expression or not. He ducked into his room before the blush he felt rising on his features could betray him, and pulled the door shut.
He had, he was sure, his proof. All he had to do now was live to use it.
Thomas rubbed himself dry on his soft, freshly laundered towels, and shrugged into his robe. He went whistling to his room, planning the day’s next activity. He’d better see to Irving. It’d have to be subtle, though, because he couldn’t afford to offend a rich, famous author. A pillar of New York society who had the ear of the Brooklyn [224] magistrate and lord knows how many other politicians and social functionaries. In fact, Irving would be a man to cultivate. If he played his cards right, Thomas thought, Irving could be his entree into the highest levels of New York society.
He opened the door and stopped, nonplused, at the sight of Tully McCool sitting in his best chair.
“What are you doing here?” Thomas said ominously. “I’ve told you never to enter this room without my specific request.”
“Aye, that Your Honor did,” McCool said in his calculated tones that put Thomas’s teeth on edge. “But I’m only looking out for Your Honor’s interests. Someone should be guarding your property against snoops and light-fingered thieves, I’m thinking.”
“What in the world are you babbling about?” Thomas asked, entering the room and shutting the door behind him. He had the sudden feeling that he didn’t want anyone listening to this conversation.
“Why, I saw your brother leaving this very room, didn’t I? Not a few moments ago when I was bringing up the last buckets o’ water. Tully, I says to myself—”
“My brother?” Thomas rumbled, his face starting to cloud with anger. “James?”
“James?” McCool repeated, and pondered for a moment. “Why no, sorr. Jon it was.”
“Jon,” Thomas said flatly. He sat down on the edge of his bed without even realizing it. It would have to be Jon. The one Noir not firmly under his control. The one Noir who had been his antagonist, all his life. “He didn’t [225] have anything with him, did he?” Thomas asked suddenly.
“Well,” McCool said, as if enjoying Thomas’s sudden apprehension, “let me think.” His expression slipped at the sudden change on Thomas’s face, as if he decided he’d better come clean. “He had a cloth bundle of some kind, rolled up into a ball. Dull red in color.”
The color went out of Thomas’s face as if someone had pulled a drain plug. He jumped to his feet and suddenly flipped his mattress up, to see nothing underneath.
“Damnation and fire on his treacherous head,” Thomas swore.
“Something missing?” McCool asked innocently.
Thomas shook his head. He hadn’t told McCool about the bloodstained trousers, and he wasn’t going to. He didn’t trust him half enough to tell him about evidence incriminating him in the Captain’s murder.
Damn that Jon! He—wait. Thomas suddenly sobered, suddenly cool and in control. If Jon had searched the room, perhaps he’d taken something else.
Thomas went right to the bottom drawer of the night-stand next to the bed. It was empty. He sat back down on the bed, too angry to show any expression at all on his features.
“What is it?” McCool asked, something between concern and curiosity in his voice.
“Nothing,” Thomas said flatly. “Nothing you need to know of in detail. My dear brother Jon has taken ... two items ... from my room. Two items that I need back.”
“And Your Honor wants me to get them back?”
“Yes. Search his room at the first opportunity. He may [226] be just enough of a dolt to try to hide them there. If they’re not there, follow him. Keep your eyes on him. See if he’s taken them somewhere else to hide.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
Thomas looked at him. He could find any one of a dozen men to run the farm. Only Jon could tie him to the Captain’s death and Trudi Schmidt’s ensorcelment. The scale of his brother’s fate slipped from Life to Death.
“Get him somewhere. Make him talk.”
McCool nodded. Above all, he was a man who loved his work.
14.
“What hat’s this?” Jon asked, holding the odd pin-cushioned doll before Callie’s eyes.
She was silent for a long time, but her expression didn’t change. It was as antique and unreadable as always. Jon felt affection towards her. He had all his life, though she had never demonstrated that her heart did anything but move blood around her body. But Jon’s store of sentiment was running out. Being accommodating to others, being decent in his relations with those close and even distant to him, had gotten him nowhere. Perhaps it was time for him to change.
“Tell me,” he repeated, gripping the doll harder and shaking it in her face, “what is this thing?”
“Be gentle with it,” Callie said softly, without looking at him. “Do not harm it least you harm who it signifies.”
“You mean Trudi.”
Callie nodded.
“Did you help Thomas put the spell on her?”
For the first time she met his gaze and again he couldn’t read her eyes. Perhaps
because there was nothing in them to read, he suddenly realized. Perhaps because she was a shell, emptied over the years of all human feelings and emotion. His resolve to be hard, to be inexorable, if necessary, suddenly fled almost as quickly as it had come.
“Oh, Callie, why? Why did he have to have everything?”
[228] “He—” For the first time that he could remember in his entire life there was uncertainty in her voice as she stumbled over her words. “He was the young master. Everything he wanted was to be his.”
“Why?” Jon put almost twenty-one years of frustration into his whispered query, torn from his heart unwillingly, almost unconsciously.
Callie looked back at the fire, rocking slowly, as if the springs governing her ancient body were finally running down.
“Because he would not live beyond his twenty-first birthday.”
Jon was struck to utter silence. His mind, for a long moment, could not encompass Callie’s words.
“What are you telling me?” he finally asked in a voice that sounded as dead as his father’s corpse now lying in the icehouse.
Callie stopped rocking. She sighed. When she looked at Jon she was just an old, old woman who had lived beyond everything she had ever loved or wanted.
“He was the thirteenth son. He was born to be the vessel for Captain Noir’s spirit once the Captain had reached his old age. The Captain always planned to take over Thomas’s body just before his twenty-first birthday. But the spell ... failed ... somehow. When the Captain tried to jump the transfer almost killed Thomas. Twice. That would have meant the Captain’s death as well. The second time convinced the Captain that something was wrong ... terribly wrong ... Thomas was not the proper vessel.”
THE TWILIGHT ZONE, Book 1: Shades of Night, Falling Page 18