Ghosts by Gaslight (61 page)

What I had in my pile of papers was the record of all of those cases he’d investigated from when he was a student at the Ministry, to when he achieved the superior rank of First Class, at which point he either stopped writing or there is another box buried in the city somewhere. The interesting thing about them, though, is that they must be his personal record, for, as a student, he often disparages his professors and later, when he has become a professional, his superiors. They are by no means succinct reports but windy conflations full of opinion, outbursts, fractured narrative, and flights of a bleak fancy.

Although many of the cases have been completely obliterated by rain, words turned to black stains, many complete cases remain intact or at least readable. On the last night of the week, our club of archeologists gets together at someone’s home. We smoke a pipe, drink a glass of Rose Ear Sweet or that whiskey brought back from the city whose label names it Tears in the River. At some point in the evening I will read one of Physiognomist Cley’s cases for everyone. We have a hoot and a hallo over them, and later, beneath the moon, on the way home along the riverbank, we think about their implications. Here’s the one I’ll be reading this week:

The Summer Palace

Chibbins—I see the dolt now, sitting across from me in the carriage, his face as futile a bowl of porridge as has ever been whipped up through the grim processes of intercourse. His father is none other than the Master’s, Drachton Below’s, personal butler, known to the populace by the full title Chibbins, My Good Man. This pale bag of potatoes that sits before me in my memory, though, has succeeded through the academy and into the physiognomical service due only to his father’s exalted position. Everyone knew the son was an idiot—a cursory reading of his visage tells the dim tale—but no professor dared fail him, no administrator in the service would do more than grin and bear his buffoonery. It’s just this kind of nepotism that is blunting the scalpel edge of the sweet science. When, in the future, I finally achieve the rank of Physiognomist, First Class, evicting Physiognomist Scheffler, I’ll put things to rights concerning the Ministry. I believe my first order of business will be to have the mincing Scheffler sent off to the salt mines of Doralice, not the least of which for sabotaging only my third professional case by saddling me with the gibbering Chibbins. “If I were you, Cley, I’d make sure the young man has a wonderful experience, if you catch my drift,” he said. I nodded while in my eye’s-mind my hands were wrapped firmly around his throat.

OFF TO
B
ELOW’S
Summer Palace in the dead of winter. The snow was calf-deep, and the carriage driver had to navigate a path around the drifts in the road that led out beyond the circular wall of the city. It was my duty to fill Chibbins in on what it was we were investigating at the heart of the Willow Forest. I had little patience that morning, cold and tired as I was, but I was determined to perform my duties.

He sat across from me, staring out the window, clasping and unclasping his hands, unconsciously blowing saliva bubbles. “I’ve never been beyond the circular wall,” he said, his mouth a hole in dough, his face, a flabby ass with a nose. “I’m a little worried.”

“Very well,” I said. “We’ll be looking into a murder. Barlow, the caretaker at the Palace, was found two days ago, stabbed through the back by an icicle, which impaled his heart before exiting his chest.”

Chibbins asked, “How’s the food there?”

I shook my head. “The only people remaining on the premises are his wife, Mrs. Barlow, their daughter, Ludiya, and a handyman named Rothac.”

Chibbins turned to face me. “Rothac did it,” he said and nodded.

“An ingenious conclusion,” I said, “but there had also been notice from the Palace recently of break-ins, of some stranger wandering the premises at night. Perhaps a story concocted by the guilty party to mitigate suspicion or maybe a real intruder out to do in Barlow, although, having met him once, I have to question the effort.”

Chibbins made a face that I suppose was meant to convey deep thought but came across as a jagged evacuation. He burst out with, “Mrs. Barlow killed him.”

He looked ready to explain, but I quickly raised one finger and said, “Now, Chibbins, it’s time to be silent.” That defused him and sent him back to the window and the mindless clasping and unclasping of his hands.

I
WRAPPED MY
cape around me to block the fierce wind. The snow was coming down at an angle. I told Chibbins to fetch the bags and ascended, through a series of drifts, the marble steps to the Summer Palace’s main entrance. A woman with a shawl draped over her head and shoulders opened the glass doors and greeted me.

“Mrs. Barlow,” I said.

“Miss Barlow,” she said and removed the shawl from around her face. It was not the tiresome washerwoman I’d expected, but instead quite a physiognomical specimen, exuding a certain ripeness of age. I took her offered hand, delighting in the prospect of getting my calipers on her features.

“Thank goodness you’ve come,” she said. “We fear for our lives.”

I had the inclination that her fingers purposefully lingered in my palm, but the moment, of course, was shattered by the entrance of my fellow investigator.

“Physiognomist Chibbins,” I said and waved in his direction.

Ludiya Barlow offered Chibbins her hand but instead of politely clasping it once and releasing it, he guided it toward his lips and kissed the back of it like blowing a saliva bubble. The young lady was startled and immediately flushed red. It was everything I could do not to kick him.

She took us on a tour of the Palace, four stories of white stone crammed with paintings and curiosities. Enormous arched windows, looking out on the snow and the bare, brown whips of the surrounding acres of willows. The carpets, the chandeliers, the conservatory, the library were magnificent. We finally came face-to-face with Mrs. Barlow, sitting before the fireplace in a room on the second floor. She appeared distraught enough, but in my immediate gross examination of her features, I detected through her maze of wrinkles an eye distance measurement that denoted a dangerous degree of shrewdness. It appeared to me that her hair was in the process of falling out, so I refused her hand, though it was offered twice. I allowed Chibbins to stand in for me, and he kissed her on the knuckles. She drew her hand back quickly and wiped it on her dress.

W
EARING A FUR
coat and a pair of men’s boots, the old woman showed us outside, behind the conservatory where she’d found her husband. Steam wrapped her words in white puffs. “There,” she said, pointing near the building. The brown bloodstains were evident even beneath the fresh snow. “He must have been working on the basement window, there.”

“Fascinating,” said Chibbins and got down on his hands and knees near the window.

I, instead, looked up. There were icicles as long and thick as my leg hanging from the gutter, jutting out from the fourth floor. They looked sharp enough to impale a man from that height. I looked at Chibbins, who, in an attempt to reenact the crime was pretending to fix the window.

“Off your knees, Chibbins,” I said. “Back away from the wall.” He did exactly what I’d asked, and when he was standing next to me, whispered, “How was that?”

“Well done,” I said. At that moment one of the icicles cracked and shot straight down, spearing the fallen snow and shattering.

My partner jumped and gave a shout. The old woman shot me a look as if I was responsible for his foolishness.

“I think it’s obvious what happened to your husband,” I said.

“Your daughter did it,” said Chibbins.

“Shut up,” I told him and tweaked his ear. I turned back to the Mrs. “An unlucky coalescing of events is what I see. Your husband was only murdered if one can ascribe criminal intent to a falling icicle.”

“You don’t know, Physiognomist. There’s a most unnatural spirit that pervades the grounds of the Summer Palace. We’ve seen it, at night, stalking through the halls. It’s everywhere.”

“How very insubstantial,” I said.

“It’s a ghost,” she said. “It wants to kill us all.”

“I’m not about to chase some fart of your imagination through the Willow Forest in the dead of winter.”

“Help us,” she said, and tears formed in her eyes.

I turned away from her and saw Ludiya staring at us from the conservatory window. She looked to her mother and then to me. I spun around. “On second thought,” I announced, “I’ve decided we’ll stay and get to the bottom of things.”

Mrs. Barlow let out a sigh of relief that somehow excited me. She drew close and put her arms around my arm. “Thank you. Thank you,” she said.

I remembered her scalp condition and shrugged her off, pretending to look for Chibbins. He was back at the basement window on his hands and knees, finishing whatever job he’d started earlier.

“C
HIBBINS IS COLD,”
said Chibbins as we walked a snowy path through the willows. We’d been told by Mrs. Barlow that we would find the handyman, Rothac, out in his quarters on the eastern side of the fountains. The forest was cold and the day dim, overcast and sliding into late afternoon.

“Chibbins is cold and tired,” said Chibbins, and he began dragging his feet and groaning every few seconds. I’d had enough of it long before it started. Stopping, I turned around and confronted my partner.

“Are we going home?” he asked.

I made a fist with my right hand and punched him in the face. It was like hitting a pillow. He stood there blinking at me as the blood began to trickle from a split lip. “My bowel has produced turds with more intelligence than you, Chibbins,” I said. “Unless you want me to cut your throat, I’m going to require that you at least, for the rest of this investigation, say nothing. There will also be no more of your witless antics, kissing the lady’s hands, crawling around, playing make-believe.”

“My father will be sad to hear of this,” he said.

“It won’t matter because the news of your demise will undoubtedly cheer him. Do you understand?”

Chibbins nodded, and we continued on our way. Two minutes later, he said, “When is dinner?”

My hand was in my pocket, wrapped around the scalpel. The only thing that saved the idiot’s life is that Rothac’s cottage came into view. The chimney of the place belched a strange violet smoke, and as we drew closer to its door, the air filled with a sweet aroma.

At the cottage door, Chibbins turned his back to it and then knocked with the heel of his shoe. “How’s that?” he asked.

I couldn’t let him know because the door opened then and an exceedingly short, balding man, wearing a fur vest and holding a large knife, came into view.

“Rothac?” I said.

He nodded.

“Physiognomists Cley and Chibbins,” I said. “We’ve been sent by the Master to investigate Barlow’s death.”

“Come in,” he said.

I had to duck to get through the door, and once inside, the ceiling was mere inches above me. Chibbins was taller than I, and he was forced to keep his head down. The handyman showed us to small chairs at a small table.

“Welcome to my home,” said Rothac.

“A droll trolliary, to be sure,” I said. He smiled while I studied his form. The bulging, naked forehead accentuated by a ring of hair was an obvious sign of intellect, but the rest of the runtish fellow seemed underdone as if Nature had taken him from the oven before the yeast had risen. My instruments, I was sure, would indicate a propensity for treachery and animal desire.

“What can you tell us of ghosts?” I asked.

Rothac looked behind him and then leaning forward whispered, “The Sanctity of Grace. She hears everything, sees everything, knows everything.”

Chibbins leaned to the side in his chair and farted. “Do you think she heard that?” he asked.

“She heard it before you were born,” said Rothac.

“Who is she?” I asked.

“She comes at night, out of the old cemetery, sometimes wailing, sometimes humming as if to a child at bedtime. She glows green in the dark and her face is cruel.”

“And she killed Barlow?” I asked.

“If you believe in accidents, then Barlow’s death was one,” he said.

“Don’t speak to me in riddles,” I warned him. “Your stature and this tragedy of a home are enough as it is to make me think I’ve fallen into a tedious fairy tale. Out with it directly.”

“Hear, hear,” said Chibbins and banged the table with his fist.

“One can’t be sure, but the Sanctity has the ghost magic to have made it happen.”

“The Sanctity?” I said.

“Of Grace,” said Rothac. “As the fairy tale would have it, she was one of the workers, let’s say, ‘impressed’ into service by Master Below to build this forest retreat. No one knows her real name, but there were many stories from the workers in the camp about her acts of kindness. There was even a story in which she breathed life into a dead calf.”

“To the point,” I reminded.

“Well, when the Palace was finished, because it contained secret passageways and tunnels that the Master wanted revealed to no one, he called in his security force and on a summer afternoon, at gunpoint, the workers were ordered to dig their own graves. When they were finished, they were to signal to the gunmen, at which point they would be shot and fall to their final rest. For their service to the city, Below had four hundred headstones brought, each expertly carved with one of the dead worker’s names.”

“Generous,” I said.

“Munificent,” said Rothac with a touch of seditious irony.

I was about to point out to him that a stone could easily be carved for him as well when Chibbins inquired as to what was in the bubbling pot on the hearth. “Stew?” asked my partner. I have to admit, I was wondering, myself, as the aroma from it was most alluring, like some kind of hot liquid pastry.

Rothac said, “Come and see this.” He hopped down from his little chair, and I lifted my aching hindquarters off mine. We all repaired to the adjoining room where there was a very large fireplace, its brickwork taking up one entire wall. The fire blazed and bubbles were bursting in the pot, which hissed and spit like a wildcat. As we drew closer to it, a faint violet mist could be seen rising away from the brew and up the chimney.