The Heartreader's Secret

by Kate McinTyre

  Chris barked a laugh. There was barely any mirth in it, but when he met Olivia’s eyes, she smiled faintly.

  He shook his head. “The last word I would ever use to describe you,” he said, “is tender-hearted. This just makes you slightly more… human.”

  Her face twisted into an expression of exaggerated disgust and she stuck out her tongue. “Oh, now, quite enough of that. Imagine.” She rolled her eyes and whirled, headed towards the big oak doors and their carved apple blossoms.

  Without much searching, they found Maris slumped in a vast, fluffy chair. She’d chosen a cozy little parlour close enough to the kitchens to be filled with the chatter of the staff and the tempting smells of cooking food, decorated with plush pastels and shining metal accents. On a clear afternoon, sunbeams would float through the large lattice casement windows and catch glinting life in the silver and gold trimmings. However, the dour weather of the day made the room seem dark and oppressive, which matched the look on the policewoman’s face.

  Out in the hallway behind them, a cuckoo clock was chirping the hour—two o’clock—but Maris didn’t seem to notice. She barely looked up when they entered the room. She met Olivia’s eyes, and then blinked and turned her attention out the window. “I have bad news for your bloody Festival,” she groused. “That looks like the kind of rain that could pound a roof clean off.”

  “Well,” Olivia said, artificially cheery as she settled into a chair across from Maris’s, “good. My mother will be furious, I will cackle quite inappropriately, she’ll make some ridiculous claim that I am somehow personally responsible for the weather… it will all be quite exciting and dramatic.”

  Maris grunted. She ran a hand through her mass of tight ginger curls. Chris tentatively took a seat beside Olivia. He couldn’t let himself relax and hovered at the edge of the chair with a straight spine and hands folded awkwardly in his lap. He couldn’t stop picturing a man he’d never known, Roger Greene, kicking out as his face blackened. Did he reach out to whoever was with him in those last moments? He must have. He bloody well must have.

  How could they have just let him hang, and then said… nothing?

  “You know it would kill Em to see you like this, you ninny.”

  “Well, then, maybe she ought to have considered that before she pranced off onto thin ice!” Maris looked up. The hollows around her eyes looked almost as if she had been in a fistfight, and her gaze was bloodshot. Chris hated her look of despair. He hated her misery. Maris was strong, tough, and indomitable, not dead-eyed and thwarted.

  His subconscious mind moved entirely on instinct like it had perhaps been doing for years. He caught himself reaching out to brush a sense of peace and relief into Maris a split second before he made contact.

  Will’s voice cracked across his consciousness like lightning. Who the hell do you think you are? My emotions belong to me.

  He fumbled his control, and his attempt at comfort hit Maris in a wave. She swayed and shuddered, chin snapping up and looking about as if scanning for an invisible attacker. Chris flinched back, and Maris’s attention zeroed in on him like a predator detecting movement. Chris swallowed hard. Maris narrowed her eyes.

  “Are you quite all right? I thought you might want to go over the facts with me,” Olivia said. Her voice was very nearly kind.

  Whether it was the words or the tone, Maris’s focus was broken. She shook herself and turned her attention to Olivia.

  Chris folded shaking hands in his lap. Will’s voice, his furious expression, his clenched fist, and the barrel of Agnes’s pistol pointed at his face rolled through his mind. Will had been a—a petulant child about the whole matter, and that was a damned fact. All Chris had meant to do was fix things, to mend a hurt. Would he have lost his temper in such a way at a lifeknitter soothing a torn muscle?

  He didn’t reach out to Maris again. He told himself that it was because he didn’t think he had the control to manage it, but Will’s face and voice echoed in his mind.

  “Why the hells would I want to help you go over how little we know?” Maris asked, voice sour. “What’s the fucking point?”

  Olivia sighed. She pulled off her hat and set it on her lap. “Well, Maris,” she said and began to pull out her hairpins one at a time, “it’s this thing that I tend to do in an investigation, often with both you and Christopher involved, to gather our thoughts and organize our theories.”

  “You have theories?” Maris asked flatly.

  Olivia shook a finger at her. “Now, don’t be like that. As it happens, yes, actually, I have several. Now, you dragged me out here to this awful place for a reason, so at the very least, humour my process!”

  Maris opened her mouth, jaw firmly bulged as if she were prepared to start hurling insults, but then she drooped. She peered at Olivia with dark, shining green eyes. “What if something’s happened to her?” she asked. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Then you will find whoever is responsible and shoot them until they are dead,” Olivia responded matter-of-factly. “And Christopher and I will help you cover it up.”

  “I…” Chris hedged, and then subsided into silence because there was a flintiness in Olivia’s voice that made him think she might not be joking.

  Maris snorted faintly. But whether it was a joke that cheered her or a promise that steeled her, she did straighten somewhat in her chair. “All right, then,” she said. “Have at it, investigator.”

  Chris had his notebook out and in his lap before Olivia could glance in his direction. She favoured him with a surprisingly warm smile around the three hairpins in her mouth.

  “All right,” she mumbled around the pins before withdrawing and depositing them into her lap. “First of all, we establish what Em herself told us about the situation. She is not a paranoid sort of woman, and yet she believed someone was watching her. Moreover, she believed that person was affiliated with one of the political factions, traditionalist or reformist. Therefore, anyone with an allegiance should be looked at.

  “Now. Emilia has been working in two separate labs for months now. It’s possible that she started the second lab in the family vault right after she arrived, though I can’t possibly fathom how she found the thing so quickly. Nevertheless, she was working on some project so sensitive she wanted it kept hidden from everyone, even Francis Livingstone and/or his nephew, who is acting as his assistant.”

  Chris weaved. Despite his cluttered thoughts, the notes came out surprisingly smooth.

  “The vault is normally hidden behind a dryad-grown oaken barrel that has to be rolled uphill, so Em couldn’t have gained access herself. Nor could she ask the frail and elderly doctor. She enlisted Roger Greene, the stablemaster, to help her set up the lab. Roger was a thick sort of fellow and has always had a reputation as a loyal and friendly sort of bloke, so he isn’t an outlandish choice of confidante, but from what I recall, Arthur Norwood joined his uncle out here in the country no more than a week after the trial. If all she needed was an able-bodied person who shared her agenda, Norwood would be the obvious choice.” Olivia focused her attention on Chris. “Norwood not being chosen for the job is suspicious. In addition, we know for a fact that he’s aligned with some faction of the reformist movement. Finally, he is so bloody squirrelly he makes my head ache!”

  Chris nodded.

  Arthur Norwood

  - known reformist

  - doctors nephew/assistant

  - lives at guest house

  - acts suspicious

  - possible suspect

  “I can’t make heads or tails of the actual work Em was doing,” Olivia continued. “The table full of objects, whatever on earth they were, looked like flashy, vinegar-smelling junk to me! But some work she was doing in that second lab, away from the good doctor, resulted in that light hanging in the dining room. Which she installed the day before she disappeared.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Maris muttered. “Em respects the hells out of the good doctor now that he’s not up
to his ears in the petty politics of it all, and even if she didn’t, she damn well needs him to get her new tech out there in front of the public. I can’t see her keeping a major breakthrough from him.”

  Olivia tapped her chin. “So perhaps this project isn’t done. After all, the light in the dining room flickers quite abominably and sometimes just stops working for hours at a time. Mother’s complained about it. The wait and kitchen staff all say they’d quite prefer the old style, higher risk be damned so that they can do their jobs!” She nodded slowly. “Does she just… not want the doctor to have false hope, in case it doesn’t work out? Mn, that doesn’t sound like her, does it? Why be so excited about something, and yet keep it so quiet!”

  As he weaved the words, something connected in Chris’s mind, so profoundly that he could have sworn it made a real sound. His head snapped up, and he blurted, “because it’s dangerous.”

  Both women turned to him.

  Chris swallowed and ducked his head, but began speaking, more and more quickly. “Emilia, ah, that is, Miss Banks isn’t shy about, well… Gods, the moment the automobile had a working prototype, she hosted that damned ball and almost got us all killed! O-or the hot water heating system! She was already clambering about it in the papers, making noise, and it could have scalded you all over when she had us help test it!” He shook his head. “She wants to share her ideas. She wants to give people hope. The only thing she’s ever created that she kept secret is—”

  “The disruptor,” Maris said.

  Olivia’s lips folded into a line and Maris looked grim. The two women were doubtless thinking of the dryad Miss Banks had released in the Piffleman’s Gala House, but Chris remembered Sister Elisabeth Kingsley, the poor mad priestess who’d used a stolen disruptor to kill five of her peers… and nearly herself and Chris.

  “You’re right, Chris,” Maris said, her voice gruff. “Damn, you’re right. Em’s showed me things she’s cooked up in her lab that could blow an idiot’s eyebrows all the way to Frelia and tried to have it on the front page by morning. So why is she so cagey about this?”

  “It makes an especial kind of sense,” Olivia mused. “This new light is supposed to somehow… calm spirits down when they’re bound to it?” She shook her head. “Gods help me. I have no bloody idea what that means, but whatever it is, it’s spirit tech, just like the disruptor. And she’s terrified Albany or Combs might get their hands on it.”

  “Em isn’t paranoid!” Maris snapped.

  “I didn’t say she was! Good Gods, woman, it’s a good thing you’re so naturally dispassionate about your cases, or you’d be a right bleeding pain to work with!”

  “Now you know how I feel,” Maris grumbled, settling back sullenly.

  “Chris,” Olivia said, back on target. “Emilia was looking over her shoulder, afraid of someone with political ties. So. We’re going to take a moment and catalogue everyone who has crossed our path since we got on that train with ties.” She removed the last of her hairpins and stretched. “Take notes.”

  Chris jumped when the cuckoo clock out in the hall pierced his concentration.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  He rubbed his eyes. “We’ve been here an hour,” he said. He was starting to get a cramp in his mind, like a stitch from running too hard. He wasn’t used to weaving straight through like this.

  “Can’t keep up?” Olivia asked playfully, but she pinched the bridge of her nose and blinked hard.

  “There can’t be anyone else,” Maris insisted.

  Chris paged back through the notes he’d taken. Four pages of names and descriptions recorded in his clean, clear weaving. Could there possibly be any value in such an exhaustive collection? The sheer number of names caused most of them to lose meaning.

  Buffy Gleeson, kitchen worker, father once joined a traditionalist protest.

  Billy Jones, scarred orchard worker, stalking the guest house, possible reformist connection?

  Lila Berrington, cidery worker, was arrested during a summer spent in Vernella, attached to a traditionalist protest.

  Dougal Foster, veterinarian, benefits financially from categorization changes.

  Dayton Spencer, Fernand’s nephew, neighbour, wants to buy Miller, known associate of Avery Combs.

  Fanny Woolingham, house staff, mother left Miller to attend Lowry and never came back. Affiliated?

  There were other names, too. Names Chris had protested being included in any list of suspicious persons.

  Francis Livingstone was kept uninformed by miss banks, former reformist leader PRIOR TO BEING ARRESTED AND OUSTED.

  Elouise Faraday, unknown agenda, invited miss banks here, !THIS IS PETTY OLIVIA!

  Rachel Albany, governess, sister and only known living kin of garrett albany, current reformist leader. I TRUST HER.

  Rosemary Buckley, affiliation unknown. SHE IS A GOOD GIRL AND WOULD NEVER DO ANYTHING LIKE THIS.

  She’d barely convinced him to record the last.

  “What about Jack?” Olivia asked. “He works down at the mill. He’d have close access to the guest house without much attention on him and—”

  “Jack Mersey?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “’Jack Mersey, mill worker, father was a Vernellan banker with ties to the Combs family,’” Chris recited.

  Olivia sighed. “Ah, well,” she shrugged. “It must have been a good thought if I’d already had it once!”

  Chris snapped the cover of the notebook closed. “We need to get ready for the Festival,” he said shortly. “I’m hardly wearing this.” He indicated his clothes. “I smell like horse and dust and my hair is a mess.”

  Maris rolled her eyes. “Mother Deorwynn,” she snorted. “Not your hair.”

  “Oh, leave it, Maris,” Olivia sighed. “He’s right, after all. This is the event of the year. We’ll just stick out if we look tired and unkempt.”

  Maris’s lip curled, but she said nothing.

  Chris brushed his hand through his hair and stood. Something cracked in his lower back. He winced.

  “Oh, don’t,” Olivia begged, looking up at him with long-suffering ice-blue eyes. “You are twenty years old, Christopher! You do not get to cry about a stiff back, thank you very much.”

  “I’m still tense from the train,” Chris protested.

  “Oh, bugger off, the train is—” Olivia stopped. She pursed her lips. “The train.”

  “Yes, what—”

  “Sister Margaret. Margaret McKenna, or whatever she’s calling herself, now. When you met her on the train, she was asking an awful lot of questions, wasn’t she? About Livingstone, about our business… even about Em.”

  Maris furrowed her brow. “What, really?”

  Chris shook his head. “I’ve thought about this, and it just doesn’t make sense. Miss Margaret was coming up to Summergrove almost a week after Miss Banks disappeared. She didn’t even seem to know that the doctor was here at Miller. She went into town. Her mission is certainly political, but I don’t think it’s related!”

  Olivia raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Well, I’m so glad you have it sorted!” She held up a hand, her index finger extended skywards. “That girl stated outright that she’s joined up with the reformists.” Her middle finger joined the index. “She was a street thief before she was a priestess, and she disappeared through the cracks after the Livingstone trial without ever being found, so she knows how to sneak about.” A third finger. “You said yourself that you thought she was prying, trying to piece together what we knew and why we were on the train.” And one more. “And we just saw her at the post office, hanging about in the very place we were investigating!” She opened her hand and flicked it, palm up, like she was giving a deeply unladylike shrug. “Trains go both ways. What proof do we have that she wasn’t in Summergrove the day Em disappeared?”

  “Plausible enough for me,” Maris growled.

  Dutifully, Chris recorded her name. Margaret McKenna. Possible reformist re
cruit. Currently in Summergrove. It left a sour taste on the back of his tongue. For better or worse, he liked the crude, savvy former priestess. She’d been through hell and back during categorization, and with the church. She was clever and delightfully scandalous. She’d managed to avoid death during the disruptor case. Her actions were suspicious, certainly, but….

  But… he supposed he thought of her as someone he and Olivia had saved, in a way. That was rare enough. They usually investigated bodies rather than preventing them. And in that light, he hated to think of her working against them.

  But Olivia was right. It was entirely plausible.

  He closed the book and stood up. Maris gave him a weary look, shaking her head faintly, but Olivia bounced to her feet holding her hat full of hairpins in one hand without so much as a twitch to show she was feeling her superior age.

  “I enjoyed this trousers experiment, Maris,” she said. “Very convenient for riding. But I think I’m quite through with it, now. There’s a certain authority in skirt-swishing. Back to lady’s wear for the evening, I believe.” She turned to Chris. “You’ll dance with me, of course?”

  Chris opened his mouth. He shut it again. He flushed. “I….”

  Thinking about dancing—in any context at all—made him think of Will. Will as a smiling boy, Will swing-dancing with his mother, Will warm and solid and gorgeous as sin in his arms. Sin, indeed. Chris shook his head and winced. “I….”

  “Don’t worry,” she said ruefully. “You won’t have to embrace me if that’s what you fear. This far from the city, there’s only going to be one waltz. We’ll dance longaways. Up and down the line. We’ll each be able to steal a few moments of time from each man and woman on the line, between us.”

  Chris coughed. “I… I don’t know how to dance longaways.”

  Olivia blinked at him and then giggled incredulously. “What. Really?”