The Harvest Man (5 page)

W
hy did he do it that way, do you think?”

Dr Kingsley straightened his back and swiveled his head a few degrees in the direction of the bedroom door. “Who did what?”

“The murderer. He did it messy.”

Kingsley sighed and turned his head the rest of the way so he could see the doorway. Constable Bentley leaned there against the jamb, his hands in his pockets.

“He did indeed do messy work here,” Kingsley said.

“Is there clues about who he is, him what done it?”

“Look right there.” Kingsley pointed to a long smudge of gore near the corner of the bed. “Do you see these ridges in the blood?”

“It’s a boot print, is what that is, Doctor.”

“Yes. A boot print.”

“And you can tell from that print whose boots they is?”

“I can indeed. You’ll note the distinctive pattern here of wear along the outer edge. This narrows down the suspects to one pair of boots among a thousand.”

“You’re some kinda genius, you are. To be able to see all that. So who done it, then?”

“You, Constable. This is a print from your own boot. You’ve walked through the blood over there, you see?” He pointed. “Then you picked up a bit of the man’s face on the tip of your right boot and deposited it over here, which caused you to slip just a bit and smear through this small pool of blood right here.”

Bentley backed away, his palms up. “No, sir. Wasn’t me did all this. No, sir!”

“Of course not. I’m not implying that you killed these people, you fool. But you might just as well have been the murderer’s accomplice, since any evidence I might have found here you’ve completely obliterated by tramping through the room like a bloody elephant.”

“Weren’t only me in here.”

“No. The lot of you have ruined this crime scene. As you’ve ruined half the crime scenes I’ve been to.”

“You got your work to do and we got ours.”

“Yes, but could you possibly see fit to stop obstructing my work as you carry out your own?”

“You mean, there’s no clues left here at all?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Constable. Please go away and let me concentrate. I might still find a clue intact.”

“I can tell you right off the murderer’s a madman. Full of hate.”

“We can’t know that.”

“Sure we can. It looks to me like he cut bits off ’em and then laid the bits on the floor and kept on cuttin’ and cuttin’ the bits, even though they was off already. Just choppin’ and choppin’. He musta hated these people to go on killin’ ’em even after they was dead.”

“You’re substituting assumptions for facts and then treating them as history. That won’t do.”

“How so? If I was Inspector Day, you’d be hangin’ on me words.”

“You’re not Inspector Day.”

“Looka all these pieces of people underfoot. There’s a nose. But over there’s another bit of nose, might be the same damn nose.”

“It is the same nose,” Kingsley said.

“That’s hate,” Bentley said. “You’re a doctor. So I respect that. You see sickness. You see it in the body and you must see it in the mind. People come to you, think they got somethin’ wrong in their bodies, but it’s in their minds. But me, I’m police. And I see hate. I see it every day. Hardly nobody I see but they’re fulla hate, and I see what they do to their neighbor with that hate. They use it like a weapon, see? That’s what this is. A bit of that man’s nose here and a bit of that same nose there. Hate.”

“This is, in fact, the woman’s nose that you’re pointing to now. Or parts of it.” Kingsley rocked back on his heels and contemplated his bloody fingertips. “And I don’t know that it is hatred on display here.”

“What else could it be?”

“It could be that the doctor’s busy and you’re in his way.” Inspector Tiffany crossed the landing and tapped Bentley on the shoulder. “Get back to work, you. You’re wasting Dr Kingsley’s time and your own.”

“Wasn’t trying to waste time. Trying to understand why we’re here, is all.” But Bentley tipped his hat to Kingsley and elbowed his way past Tiffany and down the stairs.

“Sorry,” Tiffany said. “He doesn’t know any better.”

“Actually, I suppose I can appreciate his point of view. I tend to come to a thing like this with the idea that I’m looking at a manifestation of some brain injury or an imbalance of spirits. It’s easy to forget that people are capable of the worst acts when they think they’re justified.”

“You think young Bentley’s right, then?”

“No. Not this time. This is a seriously deranged individual. Your man’s hypothesis leaves off the most telling point, which is that whoever did this did it while the people were alive and he did it in stages.”

“Stages? You mean like he was putting on a show?”

“No, I mean he did it bit by bit. He cut off this part of the woman’s nose”—Kingsley turned his lens and used the handle to point at a piece of flesh on the floor near the corner of the bed—“then went back and cut off this part.” He pointed at another chunk of meat. “Then this and this and this.”

“You’re saying . . .”

“I’m saying he took these poor people apart a little at a time, while they lay there helplessly and they may have even watched him do it. I only hope the ether kept them asleep the entire time.”

“But I thought—”

“You thought what Bentley thought. That he cut them and then cut the pieces of them. But no, he cut them and then cut them deeper and deeper until there was nothing left to cut.”

“He’s mad.”

“He is assuredly mad. And when he ran out of things to cut, he became angry. That’s when he killed them.”

“Good Lord.”

“By that point, death must have been a mercy.”

“You can tell all that?”

“I can. Their blood continued to flow as the night wore on. It must have taken hours.”

“And you’re saying there was no hate involved in a thing like that?”

“I don’t think so. I think he was molding them. Or trying to.”

“Molding them as what?”

“Perhaps he’s an artist.”

“I’m not interested in art,” Tiffany said. “I’m interested in catching this bastard.”

“Ah,” Kingsley said. “Then I’ll get back to it.”

F
iona Kingsley climbed the steps at 184 Regent’s Park Road and stood, hesitating, before the blue door. An older man stood at attention there. He glanced at her and nodded a greeting. She nodded back, then turned and looked down the street toward the park, but it was out of sight around the bend. She sat down on the top step and opened her bag, took out a large sketch pad and, after another minute of rummaging, found a thick pencil. She looked up again at the guard on the door, but he wasn’t paying attention to her. Fiona took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and when she opened them again she focused on a tree across the road. She found a blank page in her pad and held her pencil loose, barely touched it to the paper as she set down guidelines for her drawing. She didn’t hear the door open behind her.

“I didn’t hear you knock.”

Fiona jumped and dropped her pencil. She turned and goggled at Claire, who stood just inside the open doorway.

“I startled you,” Claire said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s not your fault,” Fiona said. “I was lost in thought.”

“That tree must be very interesting.”

“I like trees. I tend to trust them more than I do people.”

“Oh.”

“Well, except for you,” Fiona said. “And a few others.”

The guard raised his eyebrows. “A sensible attitude to take, young lady.”

Claire smiled. “Thank you, Inspector. Fiona, are you going to come inside?”

Fiona nodded and picked up her pencil, tucked the sketch pad under her arm, and stood. She hoisted her bag, ducked her head as she passed the guard, and followed Claire into the front room. Claire gestured toward a daybed that was angled in the far corner of the room beneath a small, framed portrait of the twin babies, and Fiona perched on the edge of the bed. She set her bag next to her and folded her hands atop the sketch pad on her lap. Claire sat opposite her in a comfortable chair before the fireplace and arranged her skirts so that they wouldn’t bunch under her.

“I hope I didn’t leave you out there for a very long time,” Claire said.

“Oh, not at all,” Fiona said. “I never even knocked.”

“Then I couldn’t possibly have known you were there.”

“Of course not. I wanted to see the children, but then I realized I had no idea what your new nanny’s name is and I got confused and sat down and decided to draw a tree rather than bother anyone.”

“But you’re never a bother,” Claire said. “I do miss having you here. All these strangers about . . . I much prefer my friend’s company.”

“Me, too.” Fiona grinned and looked away at the floor. Her gaze traveled around the room, along the skirting boards. “It seems . . . It looks very clean in here. I mean, after . . .”

“I so rarely come in here anymore. I thought I might brave it today, with you here to keep me company.”

“Did you ever actually see . . .”

“The body? No, thank goodness.”

Fiona had briefly seen both the corpses that had been left in the Days’ home and she had not been able to forget them. One of the victims had been opened up and displayed like a trophy in the front room. The other, young Constable Rupert Winthrop, who had been assigned to protect Claire, had been left in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. Commissioner of Police Sir Edward Bradford had personally overseen the removal of both bodies and had paid to have the rooms cleaned and redecorated, but their invisible influence remained.

“And what of Constable Winthrop?” Fiona kept her eyes down, examining the tops of the new patent leather shoes she had changed into. “Did you see him? His body?”

“I never did. But knowing he died in that room . . . Well, I don’t enter the kitchen anymore, either.”

“That’s two rooms you don’t use.” Fiona tried a timid smile. “You should find a tenant and get some use out of them.”

Claire smiled back at her. “I suppose there will come a day when I won’t let past events bother me so much, but quite honestly I’d simply rather move away.”

“I can’t blame you one bit. Are you able?”

“My parents insist on it, but you know Walter can’t afford a place big enough and he wouldn’t care to impose on my father again. For now, we have a guard on the door, that nice Inspector McKraken, and a houseful of new people, all of which makes me feel the slightest bit more secure until we decide what we can do.”

Claire sighed, then sat up straighter and clapped her hands together as if the noise would dispel the ghosts they both felt there. “On a happier note, the babies are doing splendidly.”

Fiona perked up. “I’d love to see them.”

“They’re sleeping.” Claire put a finger to her lips. “Nanny will be cross if we wake them just now.”

“Oh.”

“But do stay until they wake. Keep me company.”

“Of course. I’d be glad to. Father’s out examining a crime scene. The Harvest Man has killed again, only Father won’t allow me to sketch anything. He’s changed his mind about my being there and seeing the bodies. Thinks it’s somehow improper.” In fact, Fiona still woke every night screaming, the image of Constable Winthrop’s body vivid in her mind. Dr Kingsley had told her he feared for her sanity and could no longer allow her to be exposed to the consequences of evil deeds.

“I can’t say that I disagree with him. It all sounds perfectly horrible,” Claire said.

“It is, but when I sketch the bodies for him it feels important to me. It takes on a different aspect. A body becomes a part of a task, rather than a dead person, if that makes any sense at all.”

Claire started to nod, but grimaced and raised her eyebrows. “No, I’m afraid it doesn’t. I thought it might, but it doesn’t.”

“Well, at any rate, I’m out of a job and I’m not needed here with you any longer and I find myself completely irrelevant in every way.”

“I’m in a similar predicament. All I do is make up awful rhymes to read to the babies. They seem to like it, but Walter barely listens when I read to him.”

“I’m sure he . . . Oh, wait, I almost forgot!” She bent and opened the top of her bag and pulled out a small bound volume, which she handed over to Claire. “I brought this for you. Well, for you and the babies.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“It’s Robert Louis Stevenson. He often writes about the strangest things, but these are lovely.”

“A Child’s Garden of Verses,”
Claire said, reading from the spine of the book.

“Very much like the things you write.”

“Not at all like my humble rhymes, I’m sure.”

“I thought they might inspire you.”

“Oh, thank you so much. You’re too kind, really.”

“There’s one I particularly like about shadows.”

“I wrote one about shadows, too,” Claire said.

“Did you? I want to read one of yours.”

“I couldn’t let you.”

“You most certainly could.”

“Well, if you insist.”

Claire jumped up and scurried from the room. Fiona waited a moment, tapped her finger against the cover of her pad, and opened it to the page where she had drawn the faint beginnings of a tree. She pressed her pencil hard against the paper and drew the outline of the tree, then moved her hand up and down, drawing long irregular lines from top to bottom. Later, she would scribble short horizontal lines between the verticals to indicate bark. She liked to give a thing as much texture as she could, liked to imagine she might actually be able to reach out and touch the image, as if it were real. She stuck the tip of her tongue out against her upper teeth and frowned. What shape to make the leaves?

“Here’s one I just finished this morning.”

Fiona looked up as Claire entered the room carrying a piece of paper with a jagged edge, as if she’d recently torn it out of a book or diary. She handed it over to Fiona, but turned and left the room the moment she let go of the paper. Fiona read out loud.

She has a little curl in the middle of her head,

And she has a string of pearls in a darling shade of red.

The smallest silken stockings to adorn her little feet,

But her eyes: so wide and merry for a creature so petite!

Tiny hat and tiny dress and tiny woolen bib.

How like a little girl she seems within her little crib!

“It’s a doll,” Fiona said. “It’s a child’s doll.”

Claire stuck her head back into the room, grinned, and nodded; she had been waiting just around the corner in the hallway. “It’s exactly the doll that my mother gave the girls. But I can’t give it to them yet, because I worry they might choke on the pearls.”

“Does it really have a pearl necklace? It sounds terribly expensive.”

“Oh, it must have been. Entirely inappropriate, really. Here, I’ll show you.” Claire bustled out of the room. Fiona opened her tablet again and turned to a new page. She pursed her lips and loosely sketched an image from her head, got the basic shapes down on the page and built them up into the form of a baby doll, added features and hair and outlined the sketch so that it was fully formed. It was the work of perhaps five minutes, and she stopped when she heard footsteps approaching.

Claire entered the room, carrying a miniature bassinet with a lace ruffle around it, and set it down at Fiona’s side. Fiona peered into the top and saw a wee baby girl made of wood with a horsehair wig, and painted eyes and lips, and a tiny wardrobe that was better than anything she had ever owned for herself.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“It’s too much,” Claire said.

“Well, maybe that, too. But it inspired your poem.”

“For what that’s worth, I suppose. Only doggerel, after all.”

“Oh, but I like it. And I think girls like to read about this sort of thing. It’s smaller than they are, you know. Children like things that are smaller than they are.”

“Well, then, you’re right. This poem is a very small thing indeed.”

“That’s not what I meant at all. But your inspiration became my inspiration.”

“What do you have there?”

“It’s nothing. I just wanted to draw what you described. And I do think it’s close, don’t you?”

Claire took the sketch pad and looked at the new drawing on the topmost page. “Why, that’s it exactly.”

“The face is not the same. But you didn’t describe the face. And, of course, it needs more details. I just barely started drawing it.”

“I like it.”

“A thought has occurred to me,” Fiona said. “You should publish your nursery rhymes so other children can see them.”

Claire paused, then laughed, a single sharp bark that shattered the stillness.

“But I’m serious,” Fiona said. “You really should consider publishing these, Claire.”

“They’re just for the girls. Only they don’t understand them, of course.”

“You’ll think about it, though? I think it’s a marvelous idea. And then I’d be able to point to a book of your rhymes and say, ‘I knew her before she was a beloved children’s author.’”

Claire laughed. “Oh, I’ve missed having you here, Fiona. You will stay for dinner, won’t you?”

“If you’ll have me. I don’t know what else to do with myself today.”

“Wonderful. Let me tell Cook. Oh, come with me. I should introduce you to the nanny so you’ll remember her name and not sit on our porch the next time you visit.”