A Proposal to Die For (6 page)

Or was it something cooking?

If it was, it was disgusting.

Alkmene pretended to rub her face while keeping her nose shut against the stench.

They had to walk up an endless amount of steps spiralling to the top floor. Here and there the steps were so worn she was worried she'd tread right through them and plunge down. Her heart pounded with exertion, and her lungs struggled for air.

At the top, at last, Dubois knocked on a battered door. A voice from inside called, ‘Who are you?'

‘Three for the fisherman and two for the priest.' Dubois leaned his hand against the door as if he expected this magic formula to open it.

It did open a crack, and giving full pressure, Dubois pushed his way in.

A small man, hunched forward so his chin rested on his chest all the time, sat on a tall stool at a table, covered in parts. Parts of watches, clocks. Cogwheels and tiny springs and bit and pieces Alkmene had never seen before.

He was holding a gentleman's pocket watch in his hand and trying to take some part out or put it in with tweezers.

Alkmene stared in awe at the mess around him. The floor was covered with piles of old books, while the shelves on the left wall held stacks of yellowing papers. A kid no older than six had opened the door, and then scurried back into a corner where he was playing with something…

It took her a few moments to realize they were actually tin soldiers, but all the paint had rubbed off. The child squatted on the floor moving his hands with the soldiers up and down and muttering something in his play. His hair was matted with dirt, and his clothes could better be thrown out with the trash. Trying to mend them would be no use as on the knees and elbows the fabric had gone so thin it would tear again the moment it was pulled together with needle and thread.

The old man looked up at them. ‘Got catch for me?'

Dubois shrugged. ‘Just something for identification.'

The old man shook his head. ‘You should bring me things I can use, not ask me questions I cannot
answer.'

Then his eyes focused on Alkmene. ‘Who is that fine lady? Another client?'

‘Ah,' Alkmene said, ‘so you are some sort of consulting detective.'

The old man laughed, so loud the boy looked up from his play, with wide eyes. Apparently he didn't hear this sound very often.

The old man said, ‘The police are there to restore order, or at least so they say. They are like these – cogwheels in a bigger whole. They churn because they are put into motion from the outside and they grind to pieces whatever they catch between them.'

Alkmene shivered, not just because of the bleak reality he painted, but also because of the desolate acceptance of it as a fact of life. This man here had no hope at all that things could be different, better, from what he expected.

‘Now our friend here,' the old man continued, ‘creates his own world of cogwheels and he thinks he controls them. He digs up dirt and then he is surprised he is finding dead bodies. But when you overturn stones, you find critters creeping out from underneath them.'

‘Enough platitudes for one day,' Dubois said gruffly and he tossed the precious brooch at the old man.

Deftly, he caught it between his weathered hands.

Alkmene winced as she imagined the sharp stab again that the pin had put in her finger. But the old man didn't seem to feel anything. He studied the work with a gleam in his eyes. ‘Very good. Highest level of craft. Certainly not English. Eastern. Russian maybe.'

‘Russian?' Alkmene took a step forward.

‘I have to look up the mark in a book,' the man said and dropped himself off the stool. He limped over to the piles of books and began to run a finger down the spines, muttering to himself.

Alkmene glanced at Dubois, who mouthed, ‘He has got a system.'

Alkmene nodded, not convinced it would actually work. She scanned the room some more. Her gaze kept coming back to the child, playing with the worn-down soldiers. So intently like they were brand new. Probably because he didn't have anything else.

She bit her lip. If Dubois had brought her here of all places, to make a point, he was succeeding better than she had thought possible. As a child she had had so many toys and been bored soon with most of them. She had always wanted a pet, but her father had deemed it caused too much trouble with the servants who would have to clean away hair or worse.

Out of spite she had immersed her best doll in the bathtub so the body was ruined, having soaked up too much water. Not to mention the time when she had cut off the beautiful brown curls to give the doll a more fashionable short do. Her nanny had wailed about what such a china doll cost, with her hand-painted face and nails and clothes of real velvet and leather shoes with little laces. This boy had probably never even owned wooden toys.

‘Aha.' The old man had found the volume he wanted and pulled it out of the stack. It collapsed against another. He leafed through the pages, again discussing his attempt with himself. ‘No, that is not it. No, further. Or maybe… No, not that either.'

Alkmene shuffled her feet.

‘You can sit down,' Dubois said, nodding at a couch in a corner that looked like it would collapse as soon as anybody sat on it. She wasn't quite sure about bugs either.

Glancing down, she was glad her skirt's hem was not touching the ground. Maybe she should clean her shoes thoroughly tonight.

What had Cook said that helped against critters? Petrol?

The old man returned the brooch to Dubois. ‘Most certainly Russian, made by one Sergejev of Saint Petersburg.'

‘You should call it Leningrad these days,' Dubois said with a glance at Alkmene.

The old man shrugged. ‘I don't follow those things,' he said. ‘Saint Petersburg had good goldsmiths, that is all I know and care about.'

He shut the book and dumped it where he stood, returning to his desk with that slow painful limp. He seemed too old to have been wounded in the recent war, but perhaps it had simply been an accident, a fall, that had changed his life for ever.

Dubois put the brooch back in his pocket and nodded. ‘'Til next time.'

He directed her to the door. Outside she asked in a whisper, ‘Should you not have paid him? He helped us.'

‘I know what I am doing.' He sounded irritated. Pushing his hands deep into his pockets, Dubois went down the stairs, his shoulders pulled up as if he was cold.

Alkmene followed him closely. ‘Now that you know it is Russian, what will you do?'

‘I will think about it. The best thing you can do when things are unclear is wait until they become clearer.'

‘Somehow that doesn't sound like your kind of philosophy.' Alkmene took the last steps, panting. ‘I thought that when you wanted something, you dived right in.'

He looked at her, his face half shadowed in the dim hallway. ‘I did dive right in. I found out about the row at the theatre. I also have dug up more information about the dead man's body: when it was found, and his financial situation. Did you find anything new?'

No, she had not found out anything more, mostly because she was not sure how to go about it. She itched to know what he had dug up. But she wasn't about to admit that to Dubois. Smiling, she said innocently, ‘I thought we could…exchange our information.'

‘So you said before. But it seems the deal is becoming more one-sided over time. Besides, sharing has to be one's free choice, remember?'

It irked her that he threw her own words back in her face like that. She had never met someone who really tried to beat her at her own game.

It is not a game, he had said at Waldeck's.

Was that the main brunt of his resentment against her? That to her this was still a game providing her with diversion, excitement, while to him it was a serious thing?

Perhaps even a matter of justice?

Sobered, she followed him outside. She wanted to say something meaningful and profound, but she had no idea how she could prevent it from sounding thought-up and untrue.

Dubois turned away from her. ‘I am looking forward to receiving my handkerchief back.'

She was left standing there, in the middle of this rundown street, like Dubois didn't care whether she ever found her way home or not. But she didn't bother to run after him like a little girl. She didn't need him. She knew what she was doing. And she was not about to leave this place until she had done
something about that little boy.

She went into one of the small shops and bought vegetables, then went into a bakery that looked neat and bought bread and cookies in a big blue box. They had passed a pawnshop at the start of the street and there she found a wooden horse and cart. The paint was chipped a little, and the horse had once had more hair for manes and tail. But at least you could see what it was without guessing trice. She bought it as well and returned to the house on the corner.

She laboured up the steps once again to the fourth floor and banged on the door.

As the voice came, she repeated what Dubois had said. ‘Three for the fisherman, two for the priest.'

The door opened again, and she stepped in.

Instead of the old man seated at the table, there was a younger man with wild hair and red-rimmed eyes, staring back at her like she was some vision. The little boy had seemed to become even smaller, huddling in his corner as if he was not there.

Alkmene quickly dropped the bread and vegetables on the shabby couch, clutching the box with cookies and the horse and cart.

‘Whatdoyouwant?' the dishevelled man growled.

‘I am here to make payment,' Alkmene said in a firmer voice than she felt. She went to the boy and smiled down on him. ‘This is for you. A horse and cart to play with and some cookies to eat.'

She held them out to him, but the dishevelled man moved with lightning speed. He slapped the items from her hands, so that the horse and cart tumbled to the floor.

The box with cookies, being lighter, first sailed up to the ceiling, hitting a beam. It burst open, and cookies rained down over Alkmene's head and shoulders.

Staring at the mess at her feet, anger raged through her. ‘Why did you have to do that?' she asked the man.

But he was staring at the boy. ‘What did you do?' he howled. ‘What made this fancy lady want to reward you? Have you been to the church again, speaking to that vicar who thinks he can change the world? Our world never changes, never…'

He came over to Alkmene, kicking at the horse and cart. The fallen cookies crunched under the soles of his coarse boots.

The boy yelped and cowered against the wall, throwing up his arms to protect his face.

Suddenly a tall figure filled the door. ‘Enough.' Dubois walked in. He was glowering, not at the man, but at Alkmene. ‘What are you doing here?' he hissed.

‘Bringing some food to these people,' she retorted, ‘and making sure this little boy has something decent to play with instead of that.' She nodded in the direction of what passed as tin soldiers.

‘We don't want your charity,' the man snarled.

Dubois raised his hands. ‘I was here this afternoon. Your father looked up a few important things for me in his books. This lady was with me. She misunderstood and believed she had to pay for your father's help. Therefore she bought these things. It is not her fault.'

His tone belied what he said, and the man laughed. ‘Not her fault? Everything here is her fault. People like her have made my life miserable. People like her have killed…'

He began to cough, staggering into a corner and hanging against the wall.

Dubois signalled Alkmene with his eyes to leave, quickly. She wasn't about to argue with him now.
She fled through the door and raced down the steps, the cookie crumbs still crunching under her soles.

In the landing of the second floor she halted and held her hands against her face. Dubois was so right. She knew next to nothing. She had wanted to help the little boy and she had only hurt him even more. She was almost certain that madman would beat him as soon as Dubois left the two of them alone.

Footfalls came down behind her, and she turned, shouting, ‘Why do you leave that miserable drunk alone with the little boy?'

‘He is his father. Ever since the mother died, he started drinking. They lost their home and moved in here with the old man.'

‘If there is a child in the house, it should be clean and neat. He should have nutritious food, clean clothes and toys to play with.'

Dubois laughed softly. ‘I would almost say: try taking him home, Lady Alkmene. Give him a nice guest room with a big bed and clean, whole clothes and see how he turns them into a big mess in no time. How he takes the ball you give him to knock down your precious vases like it is a game in itself. This child has never had anything. He doesn't understand any language but that of physical violence.'

‘And you accept that?'

Dubois's jaw tightened. ‘I do not accept anything. But I am realistic enough to see I cannot change it overnight. Your sweet little gesture…' his voice dripped acid ‘…has only served to push that drunk man into a rage. The boy will be beaten because of you. Because of some cookies and a horse and cart.'

Alkmene's eyes burned. Her voice croaked as she said, ‘Please go back and make sure he does not beat him. Please.'

Dubois caught her shoulders. For a moment she thought he was going to shake her and scream at her some more about her ignorance and her disastrous good intentions.

But he just squeezed for a moment, then dropped his hands. ‘I can't, Alkmene.' His voice was soft and weary. ‘I cannot protect the boy.'

Alkmene wet her lips. ‘I am sorry for what I did. I only wanted to help them.'

Dubois nodded. ‘I know.' His voice was even more bitter now than she had heard it before.

She looked up the steps. ‘Shall I go back and try to explain…'

‘Don't you see that your presence has only made it worse?' Dubois inhaled slowly. ‘Your kind of people are what caused all their misery to begin with. I can only hope for the boy that his father will collapse soon, to sleep off his haze, and that he won't remember a thing when he comes to.'