The Deathsniffer’s Assistant (The Faraday Files Book 1) (25 page)

“I’ll see to your supervisor,” Officer Dawson said, and indicated the door with a quick jerk of her head. “Lead the way, please. I don’t have all day to waste. It was inconvenient enough being forced to come at all.”

Dutifully, the lifeknitter set the folded sheet down on the bed and walked past them, head lowered, out the door. Officer Dawson followed her at a brisk pace, Olivia at her side. “I knew there was a reason I liked having you along, sometimes,” Olivia said in a gleeful little voice to the policewoman, and Chris hurried along after them.

Miss Caldwell led them through white, bleached corridors, and Chris spent the whole time looking down at his feet and breathing very deeply. Eventually, they went through a door marked with the familiar three linked circles into a small dining room. It was warm and lit by orange salamander’s fire rather than sterile alp-light, and fragrant with the scent of baking bread. The smell was heavenly, and Chris was immediately hungry for the breakfast he’d foregone.

They took their seats around a little wooden table. “Will you be eating?” Miss Caldwell asked.

“I should hope so!” Olivia said, echoing Chris’s thoughts. “I’d have to assume you
were
a killer, if you were cruel enough to not let us have any of that bread!”

“Yes, well,” Miss Caldwell said, after craning her neck to look into the kitchen and raising four fingers at whoever she saw there. “I hope you all like tea, eggies and toast. That’s all they ever serve. My patients love to complain. The only variation is whether we have jam or marmalade.”

“We aren’t here to discuss breakfast, Miss Caldwell.” Officer Dawson folded her hands on the table.

Miss Caldwell dropped her eyes. “No, of course not,” she agreed.

Officer Dawson nodded once to Olivia. That was all she needed.

Olivia leaned across the table, bridging the gap between herself and Miss Caldwell. There was an excited, predatory smile curled around her lips, one Chris found quite unsettling. “Where did you meet the Duke, Vanessa?” she asked.

It wasn’t the question Chris had been expecting. It wasn’t what Miss Caldwell was expecting, either. She started a little, and then that imperious look reappeared around her eyes and in the tightness of her mouth. “I didn’t kill him,” she said. “We’ve been through this, haven’t we? I would have been an idiot to have killed him. Ask me about the Duchess. Ask me about the night he died. Ask me―”

“Answer the questions you’re asked, please,” Maris commanded shortly, and Miss Caldwell’s mouth shut instantly.

She sat in her chair, clearly caught between her instinctive desire to do as the police officer said, and her distaste for Olivia and her questions. Chris recorded that silence, the way Miss Caldwell carefully picked an imaginary piece of lint off the sleeve of her uniform, the way she set her shoulders and straightened before she finally began speaking once again. “I…” She hesitated. “I sought him out. He’s quite well known, if you care to know,” she continued. Her reluctance dripped from every word, and she wouldn’t make eye contact with Olivia. “The Duke has made a bit of a name for himself, over the years. Any young artist who’s having a difficult time getting noticed, getting
acknowledged
, she starts to ask what she can do, how she can change the situation. And when she asks that question in the right places, a name just keeps coming up. Duke Viktor val Daren. He’ll make you into what you only dream you could be, if you can hold his interest for long enough.” She shrugged a single slender shoulder, looking almost bashful. “It was no chance meeting. I put myself in his path. Over and over again, until he grew quite tired of seeing me there and had to acknowledge me. I suppose you could say I courted him.”

“And how long ago was that?”

“Not long,” Miss Caldwell sighed. “Not long enough.” Darkness clouded her face. Her plucking at her sleeve grew aggressive, as if it had done something to personally offend. “Half a year. A little more, perhaps. Just long enough for him to”―her lips twisted into something that was not even almost a smile―“to
appreciate
my work, to really know what
direction
to take me in. We were about to start scouting for publications. Finally. And then his wonderful wife had to go and kill him and ruin it all.”

“And what did you think of him?”

“He was a sentimental old sop, overwrought, miserable, and unpleasant. His attachment to me was insufferable. He wanted to be a part of every single aspect of my life, putting himself into my personal affairs, and he was always bringing me to his home. I hated him,” Miss Caldwell said, entirely without shame. Her dark eyes glittered. Olivia raised an amused eyebrow at Officer Dawson, and Miss Caldwell raised her chin in defiance. “Yes, I admit it. Viktor was a means to an end. I considered it worthwhile. My art is everything to me.”

“If you’re so good, why did you need a patron?” Olivia asked, her voice mocking. She rested her chin on her palm and drummed her fingers against her cheek.

Miss Caldwell looked up at her, eyes flashing with venom. She shot a quick glance at Officer Dawson, however, and Chris watched her carefully choosing her words before she spoke, despite how badly she clearly wanted to spit out whatever she was feeling. “The…
situation,
” she said, “in Darrington. I said this to you yesterday, Miss Faraday. Perhaps you just didn’t hear me?” When Olivia said nothing into the silence, Miss Caldwell shook her head and continued. “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s been a difficult decade. Categorization is failing. No one can decide what to do. Traditionalists and reformists arguing. Have none of you opened a newspaper, lately?” She gestured around the little dining hall, which Chris noticed for the first time, was quite empty. “They’ve been saying all year this hospital is going to be closed. Not enough doctors. Not enough nurses. Far too many patients, but the new lifeknitters awakening in categorization are all like me—can’t even see the bloodstream, good for nothing. Which publication has time for
poetry
when the world is falling apart? An artist has to go the extra mile.”

“And bribe people to publish you?” Olivia’s eyes sparkled with mirth. “Ah, yes, the artist’s dream of an appreciative audience for their work!”

“All it takes is one decent review,” Miss Caldwell snapped. “Just
one
word in the right ear. That’s what I needed from Viktor. You could be the best painter in Tarland, and it wouldn’t matter if nobody ever had a chance to see your bloody painting.” The poet’s jaw ground. Chris watched her anger grow as she considered her situation. “Gods,” she said into her own tortured silence. “She just had to do away with him right before he finally made things happen for me.” She shook her head and her pridefully set shoulders slumped, just a little. “I’ll be changing linens and stocking closets for the rest of my life, now.”

It hit him from nowhere after seeing that defeated drop in her posture. This was a woman who had come close to achieving a lifelong dream, only to have it snatched away. Chris quite suddenly, quite surprisingly, felt badly for her.

Olivia did not.

She lifted her bag into her lap and began pawing through it. “Do you know what the good thing is about you giving me the run-around, Vanessa?” she asked as she rooted about. Miss Caldwell didn’t reply, watching the Deathsniffer with wary black eyes. “The
good
thing,” Olivia continued, not seeming to notice her question was ignored, “is that I got to spend some time doing research! This morning, for example, while good Officer Dawson and my handsome assistant drank tea and wondered where eccentric old Olivia Faraday had gotten to,
I
was doing my job. Aha!” she announced proudly, and then slapped something down on the table.

It was a copy of
The Daily Herald
, Darrington’s most distinguished publication. The headline proclaimed
DOCTOR LIVINGSTONE DECLARES WHITE CLOVER TO BE INDICATIVE OF GREATER CONCERNS
, and it was dated, as indicated by Olivia’s finger, for yesterday.

Vanessa Caldwell blanched.

Olivia Faraday smiled.

“Do you know why I have this paper, Miss Caldwell?” she asked, her voice quiet and very sweet. “Why I went to a newsstand and looked for a day-old paper?” When she received no immediate response, she merely shrugged. She took the paper into her hands and opened it, leisurely going through the pages until she found what she was looking for, and then cleared her throat dramatically. “
Sea of White,
” she declared, in a voice expressive enough for a theatre. “By Vanessa Caldwell.” She gave each of them at the table a pointed look before continuing. “I am standing above the sea of white. The cliff face is sheer beneath me. The sea is eternal. It stretches. It lingers. Oh, how it―”

“Is there a point?” Miss Caldwell bit off. Her hands were folded on the table, and they were shaking.

Olivia smiled slowly, languidly, and dropped the paper. It fluttered in the air before descending with angelic grace to the table. “So, we’ve already established you really need someone with money to get you noticed in this day and age. The country is in turmoil, after all.” She reached out and tapped her finger against the headline. Miss Caldwell refused to look at her directly. “And this, well, this is the
Herald
. You don’t get a spot in the
Herald
unless you really earned it! Someone must have dropped quite a few royals to get your ditty in this paper, Vanessa, dear. Now, just who…?” She let the thought dangle in the air, unfinished but clear to all of them. Officer Dawson raised an eyebrow. Chris weaved furiously in his notebook.

“It was one publication,” Miss Caldwell protested. She was quite pale now and the bitter venom was all but gone from her eyes and voice. “I hadn’t mentioned it because it was barely worth mentioning.”

“Hardly the words of a woman getting her lifelong dream. A poem in the
Herald
? I’d be beside myself, and I don’t even care about poetry!”

“It was
one
publication!” Miss Caldwell pressed, more insistently. “I still needed him! I still―”

“All it takes is one review!” Olivia said mockingly. “That’s what you said, isn’t it? We’ve already established you despised the Duke, and he involved himself in your life. I know all about Viktor val Daren, Vanessa. I know he stays with one artist, entranced by her, loyal to her, until he’s tired of her. That can take years.” She tapped the newspaper again, grinning ferally. Her teeth glittered in the light from the salamanders along the wall. “Maybe you didn’t want to wait years. You had your publication in the
Herald
all lined up to go! You were tired of him, tired of the game, tired of being his little pet, and you had what you wanted. The stir over the Duke’s brutal murder…that would make enough talk to get someone looking at your work, wouldn’t it?”

“That is not―” Vanessa Caldwell no longer looked imperious. She no longer looked cold. Now, she looked terrified. “That’s not how it is,” she said, her voice wavering. “Please, you have to listen to me! I knew if I said something about it—it was the Duchess! She hated him, she hates
me
! She’s jealous, she’s petty, and she’s a madwoman! I read about how he was killed, what she did to him. She’s capable! She’s stronger than she looks, and you haven’t seen how angry she can get! She hates it, she hates all of it, everything he does—
did
. She couldn’t stand the thought that her husband was sleeping with another woman, and she―”

“Wait,” Olivia interrupted. “Wait, wait,” she repeated, holding up one hand. “You were
sleeping
with the Duke?”

Olivia’s confusion seemed to empower Miss Caldwell. She sat up straighter, and a little bit of the colour returned to her cheeks. “You didn’t know?” she asked, and a bit of triumph stole into her dark, dark eyes. “Oh, Miss Faraday,” she said sweetly. “Did you never wonder why the Duke never patronized young, talented, attractive
men
?”

o,” said Duchess Evelyn val Daren.