The Broken Bell (21 page)

It had been dark. I hadn’t noticed.

“It isn’t mine.”

“That is perhaps not as comforting as you think it is.” She gave me a quick kiss and grabbed the basket. I went to my door, didn’t bother with the key and opened it.

“I’ll be damned.”

Grist had stacked the bricks neatly in a corner.

Darla surveyed the bricks and the remains of my brick-dropping apparatus.

“Darling, what happened here?”

“Had a gentleman come calling,” I said. “He meant to surprise me. I surprised him first. He cleaned before he left, though. I wasn’t expecting that.”

Darla held up her hand for silence and then set about opening the basket and dispensing the contents atop my desk.

“Did your visitor have anything to do with Tamar’s missing groom?”

She’d brought a jar of strawberry jam. I have a considerable weakness for strawberry jam.

“He was part of the crew after Gertriss. By the way, Mama has flown the coop. Gone to Pot Lockney to confront the hex-caster.” I grabbed a biscuit. “Still warm.”

“Coffee too.” She poured.

I ate and drank, speaking between swallows. I told her about Pratt, about the attempt to snag Tamar. I told her a man died, but I didn’t specify who killed him, and she didn’t ask.

“You should either stay at Avalante or at my place,” said Darla while I prepared another biscuit with jam. “You can’t drop bricks on everyone who comes to see you.”

“True. I’d soon run out of bricks. I don’t think there will be any more hexed callers for a while, though. The blood on my jacket? That was the last of them, I think. Halfdead got to him before I did.”

Darla shivered. I put my biscuit down and took her hand.

“Enough about that. You asked about Tamar. I do have a thought or two in her regard.”

She eyed me over a slice of toast. “Pray tell.”

“Let’s say the same bunch that grabbed Carris was also after Tamar.”

“Seems likely, doesn’t it?”

“It does, oh light of my life. Which leads me to believe that the Lethways and the Fields have something more in common than just a pair of kids in love.”

“What?”

“I have no idea. But look. Tamar said someone came to see her father a few weeks ago. Shouting ensued. Aside from me I don’t think Mr. Fields shouts at many people. Have you met him?”

“A few times. He seemed very…baker-ish.”

“Exactly. Now, Pratt tells me he’s not sure what the people who grabbed Carris want. What if it’s not money at all?”

“What else could it be?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Yet. Aside from their kids, the Lethways and the Fields don’t have much in common. Lethway runs a mining outfit. Fields pounds dough into donuts. Mrs. Lethway drinks to excess. Mrs. Fields prefers imported coffee. They don’t move in the same social circles. They don’t live in the same neighborhood. They don’t even travel the same streets.”

Darla swallowed. “So where do you start?”

“As far back as I can. They both served. Both in the Sixth, but not together.”

“You think they’re lying.”

“Somebody always is.”

She poured herself a fresh cup of coffee. “So you’ll go to the Barracks and look through old payroll records?”

I grinned. “You’ve been hanging around me too long.”

“I think I’ll come with you. I have the day off. Martha’s been wanting Mary to try handling the front. Will they let a woman in the Barracks, or will I need a false moustache and a hat?”

I thought of old Burris, the Barracks caretaker.

“Not only will they let you in, dear, I’ll probably be forced to resort to arms just to get you out.” I drained my cup. “Are you sure, hon? It’s dusty, and the rats are so big they’ve taken to wearing pants and shoes.”

She laughed. “Then I’ll see their outfits are fitted properly. Will you want to bathe before we go?”

She didn’t mention the blood specifically.

“Only if you wait in a cab,” I said. “Might not be safe here.”

“You just said the last hexed man was gone.”

“I said I think so. Better you wait in a cab. Oh, and thank you for breakfast.”

She smiled. “I’m always going to worry, you know.”

“I know. I wish that wasn’t so.”

“You are who you are.”

Three-leg leaped onto my desk, sniffed dismissively at my breakfast, and emitted the kind of odor only the prolonged ingestion of diseased sewer rats can generate.

We scrambled for my room behind the office. I grabbed clothes and shaving kit and we darted out, leaving Three-leg perched atop my desk, casually surveying the remains of our meal.

He meowed in triumph as I shut the door.

Bathed and shaved, with Darla at my side, I bade the cabbie head toward the Barracks.

I hoped we’d find answers. Or at least rule out a couple of questions. Maybe we’d find absolutely nothing but rat-chewed payroll ledgers, but trying is part of this business, and it’s not a part you can treat lightly.

Darla quizzed me on the way, mainly about how the payroll ledgers were entered, balanced and maintained. I laid it out as best as I could. Judging by her lifted eyebrows and snickering, my layman’s description of how a military payroll was disbursed and recorded was lacking to the ear of a highly skilled former accountant.

The Barracks is just that—barracks. Forty-seven long, low-roofed troop lodges, spread over five city blocks. When the War ended, the Regent ordered every record maintained by the Army brought back to the Barracks, where’d they’d simply been dumped. In the eleven years since the end of the War, a small dwindling army of former paymasters and clerks has doddered from stack to stack, trying to put them in some semblance of order deep in the Barracks.

It was there, amid the crumbling, moldering heaps of yellow-green papers that I would start finding in earnest. If you know a name, and you have the patience, you can often trace the history of any soldier from his pay. Even if you can’t find the full story from the old records, you can find other names, names of soldiers who’d lived and come home and who might remember the things I was paid to find out.

“We’re here,” I said as the cab rolled to a halt. Darla peeped out and wrinkled her nose in mock distaste.

“Are you sure? This looks more barn than barracks.”

“Barns are more luxurious.” I paid the cabbie and Darla let me help her out of the cab, and then we were alone on the street.

I tried and failed to bite back a yawn. The only sleep I’d gotten had been in the back of my borrowed Avalante carriage, and even four cups of coffee wasn’t keeping the cobwebs from forming.

“That’s what you get for carousing all night. Where’s the front door?”

“In typical Army fashion, the front door is on the side.” I started walking. She fell into step behind me, all business. Somehow she produced a smallish writing pad and a fancy brass pen. I hadn’t seen either in the cab.

“So we’re looking for any record concerning Lethway or Mr. Fields.”

“Right. We find them, mark them and gather them together. Then we trudge through them, looking for whatever is it we happen to find. That’s the door. Charming, isn’t it?”

The doors to the Barracks are old garrison gates tall and wide enough to admit a ten-horse wagon. Painted across them to let taxpaying citizens know where they stand are the words NO ADMITTANCE REGENCY BUSINESS ONLY.

I marched us up to them and was poised to start raising a ruckus when the hinges groaned and the right door swung inward enough for Burris the caretaker to appear, blinking in the sun.

Burris might be as old as Mama claims to be. He might once have been a tall man, but now he is set in a permanent stoop so profound he’d tip over if you took his cane. His eyebrows would make wonderful moustaches. The only other hair left is nested about his ears, giving him the appearance of a gap-toothed gnome.

“How can we be of service to you today, Miss?”

So much for Darla’s worries about sexism in the Barracks.

“We’d like to look through your payroll records, if we might,” said Darla. She smiled as she spoke. Nothing too big, nothing too obvious, but if she’d asked Burris for his false teeth and a handful of sunshine he’d have scrambled to hand them over.

“And good morning to you, Master Sergeant Burris. Remember me? Markhat, the finder?”

Burris snorted. “I remember you. Come right in, Miss. I’ll get you a table, a lamp and a nice comfy chair.”

He motioned us inside.

“Do I get a comfy chair too?”

“You’ll get a knock upside your head, any more smart talk.”

Darla laughed. “Yes, behave yourself, Mr. Markhat.” She grabbed my elbow. “I just can’t take him anywhere.”

Burris chuckled and led us down a dark, narrow hallway that stank of mothballs. “Now, Miss, what kind of payroll records ’ere ye after? We’ve got everything more or less separated by theatre. You got yer northern divisions in Barracks One. Yer western divisions in Two and Three. Yer eastern in Four, and yer southern in Five.”

“We want the western ones, then. The Sixth, specifically, isn’t that right, hon?”

I nodded an affirmative. If Burris was mesmerized by Darla’s presence into being helpful I wasn’t going to break the spell by speaking.

“Well now. The Sixth. Big one, the Sixth. We ain’t got all them filed yet.” Old Burris risked a half-turn toward Darla and grinned at her. “But don’t you worry none, Miss. We’ll find what yer lookin’ for. Yes, we will.”

Turned out Master Sergeant Burris was a poor prophet.

Not that I blame him much. When we finally traversed the many halls and passed through the numerous rooms that lay between the front door and Barracks Two, we were greeted by crates stacked upon crates stacked upon crates, sixteen crates high in places, in heaps and mounds that stretched as far as the eye could see.

“Oh.” That was all Darla said. But she covered her heart with her right hand, a sure sign of distress.

A pigeon fluttered and another cooed, somewhere amid the crates.

I rolled up my sleeves. Burris set about finding chairs and lighting lamps. Darla lowered her hand and walked up to the first open crate she saw and started reading.

I slipped up behind her and put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said. “The crates with the actual ledgers will be marked in red. The ones with troop rosters will say rosters. The rest we can ignore.”

“That narrows it down to only a few thousand.”

“And you wonder why I yawn so frequently.”

She managed a smile. “This is actually part of an expense account.”

“Then we don’t need it. Over there. That one. Let’s start there.”

I pointed to a red crate, sitting alone at the edge of a teetering stack of ten. The lid was already pried off. We made our way to it, each grabbed a side, and hauled it over to the rickety old table Burris managed to push away from the wall.

I grabbed a fistful of papers. Darla did the same. Dust flew.

“This ought to be our best date ever.”

“Shush. Darling. Where are the dates?”

“Upper left corner. They write them all backwards.” I shrugged at her raised eyebrow. “It’s the Army. Don’t ask.”

She laughed, settled into her chair, and we plowed into our first red crate.

By mid-morning, I had sorted through two entire crates. Aside from disturbing a family of mice and raising a substantial cloud of dust, my efforts were for naught as far as finding any connection between Lethway and Fields.

Darla, on the other hand, was so engrossed she’d stopped speaking. She had covered the table and built another table out of empty crates and then she’d started just stacking papers on the floor while she darted between them, staring and muttering. Her notebook was filled with page after page of scribbles. They were in some accountant’s shorthand, so my peek at them told me nothing.

When Darla gets immersed in numbers, she might as well be out West. I handed her heaps of papers when she appeared to run low and Burris kept her supplied with coffee and freshly-sharpened pencils.

Noon came and went. Burris sent his clerk out for sandwiches. Darla ate hers on the move. I emptied another pair of crates before I found my first glimmer of a clue—a disbursement entry made out to one H. Fields, who bore the rank of private first class, and who was listed as officer’s cook.

Another half-hour of searching matched that ledger with another, and that one with yet another, and with that I was able to establish that Tamar’s father had indeed served as a cook in the eighth regiment of the Kingery Division of the second battalion of the Sixth Army of the West.

“Hurrah,” I said, leaning back in my chair and stretching. “I just confirmed what we already knew. Mr. Fields was a cook in the Sixth. I’d promote myself, if I weren’t already the boss.”

Burris snorted. He had an armload of papers and was waiting patiently for Darla to notice and take them from him.

Darla took the papers and smiled at Burris.

“Is there anything else you’ll be wantin’, Miss?”

“Another pot of coffee would be lovely,” said Darla. I swear she even batted her eyes.

She needn’t have done so. Burris was already shuffling off toward the kitchen, promising not only coffee but biscuits and honey as well.

“You’re going to give the old boy a stroke.” I rose and caught her from behind in a hug. “Now then. Care to tell me what it is that’s got you so excited?”

I nuzzled her neck. It’s a nice neck for nuzzling.

She laughed and settled back against me.

“I’m about to make you a very happy man,” she said.

“You do that here and we’ll have to haul old Burris out in a box.”

She turned in my embrace and draped her arms around my neck.

“Your Mr. Fields not just a cook in the eighth regiment of the Kingery Division of the second battalion of the Sixth Army of the West. He was a private cook, for an officer.” She rubbed the tip of her nose against mine. “Care to guess the name of that officer?”

“You don’t say.”

“I don’t. The records do. They knew each other well, my bleary-eyed intended. Didn’t you say they both denied ever meeting the other?”

“I did. They did.”

“Then you were right. Everybody lies.”