“Clay dust.”
“Yes, sir, that’s what the coroner believes the substance is which he found on the deceased’s clothing and shoes, as if the fellow had been crouching or sitting in the stuff,” Sergeant Simon Bartholomew said, looking up from his notes. “I could scrounge up a chemist to have a look at it as well, though.”
Tipple shook his head. “Troublesome at half-past seven on a Sunday morning. Even so, did Dr. Hansworth give any more detail about what sort of clay? As in river silt, or pottery, or plain earth?”
Simon consulted his notes again. “He said it was a fine sort, evenly colored, as used in kiln-fired ceramics. Dishware and the like. And I expect he’s seen plenty of river leavings to discount silt.”
The inspector pursed his lips and ran a hand through his hair.
Simon let the old man think in peace for a moment. The sergeant knew at least one of the Harker family’s factories made dinnerware and wondered if Tipple would order a search of all premises related to it. A move like that certainly wouldn’t be popular with the family – or the larger public – but manhunts for escaped murderers could afford to step on finer sensibilities.
“Sit down, Sergeant,” Tipple said, interrupting Bartholomew’s thoughts.
The inspector leaned back in his desk chair, steepling his fingers, and regarded Simon in silence for a moment.
“Have you ever watched a magician’s act before?”
“Sir?”
Tipple lit a cigarette from the butt of one still smoldering in the ashtray on his desk and inhaled deeply.
“Have you ever visited a country fair and stopped to watch a conjurer or magician perform sleights of hand?” the inspector said again, his words riding a curl of tobacco smoke. “He dazzles you; blinds you by spectacle, or by a flourish, or encourages you to look elsewhere while the trick is played. ‘Look here,’ he says, and we do, and then we look again and are amazed.”
Simon nodded. “But the rabbit is still in the box.”
“Hidden behind a mirror,” Tipple agreed. “And we’ve seen only what we expected.”
“…Sir?”
“I have been chasing the Harkers ever since the former patriarch, Ernest Harker, finagled his son Winston – the current patriarch – out of a dual charge of rape and murder fifteen years ago. And for fifteen years I’ve chased this family: always watching for one of them to finally stumble. Openly waiting in the wings for one of them to finally leave the evidence I need to make a case strong enough for a conviction.”
“Nicholas Harker did.”
Tipple studied the smoke wafting from his cigarette for a moment.
“Did he?” the old man murmured.
“Sir?”
“Having wanted the Harkers and their societal rot to come tumbling down for so long, I saw everything I wished to see when we came upon that young devil holding a bloody knife. The evidence accompanying Nicholas Harker’s arrest was dazzling, and the trail of breadcrumbs that led from there to the witch’s house was spellbinding.”
“What…what are you saying, sir?”
“That, as bad as the Harkers are, there’s someone worse in the mix who’s murdered to achieve his ends against the family. They’ve been set up.”
The look on Tipple’s face was dreadful as he said this, and Simon realized he was seeing – for perhaps the first time ever – the old man let his usually checked emotions slip free. Anger made the detective’s blue eyes flash, and another, darker emotion flushed his cheeks a light but obvious shade of rose.
“Why are you thinking this, sir? Now, of all times?”
Tipple pursed his lips. “Because, Sergeant – wild though this conjecture may be – I can see no reason for any of what’s happened these last three days to have happened at all if a Harker spearheaded the scheme.”
He reached across his desk and brushed his finger along a small, framed portrait of his wife. After a moment, the inspector went on in a musing voice.
“If I can make two generalities about the Harkers, they are as follows. First, whenever the Harkers come under scrutiny by the law, they draw their people in and seal up their operations to give the police no additional fodder. Secondly, loyalty within the family is fierce, but the repercussions for betrayal are brutal.”
He mashed out his cigarette in the ashtray.
“We’ve gone over the case’s inconsistencies time and again. However, what is perhaps the greatest contradiction or quandary is Frank O’Malley’s murder. Given the man’s connections, he might have met his end for some reason wholly unrelated with our current investigation. And it is also conceivable that he betrayed Nicholas Harker or someone else in the family in some terrible way that merited a swift execution, heedless of timing. But this seems completely against a typical Harker’s public business scruples.
“Add to this my confidence in Dr. Hansworth’s abilities. The hand that killed Mr. O’Malley is the same that killed Milo Gervais and all those others.”
Tipple pursed his lips. “I begin to think, therefore, that perhaps I should look at the whole situation from the opposite direction. Turn it on its head, and all. If it is so unfathomable and unreasonable that our escapee killed the one who seemed to be his greatest ally, perhaps his hand wasn’t the one holding the knife at all.”
“...Which would also mean he didn’t kill Gervais or any of the others,” Simon said slowly.
Tipple nodded.
“Nicholas Harker signed a confession.”
“And those are always honest? Mr. Harker may be merely complicit…or even innocent altogether.”
For the barest instant, the sergeant thought he knew what sentiment had darkened the old man’s expression, but then dismissed the notion at once. There could be no possible reason for Tipple to feel guilty.
“This calls into question everything we’ve taken for granted about the manhunt thus far,” the old detective said. “While I find the traces of ceramic dust on Mr. O’Malley’s clothing an enticing lead, I fear it may be a red herring. Something planted to lead us astray from our true objective.”
“Where do we go from here then, sir?”
Simon sincerely hoped Tipple had thought that far ahead, for the sergeant hadn’t an idea where to turn in a case the inspector had just rent to shambles. Fortunately, the old man had.
“Perhaps we’ll find our man if we search out whomever it is who will benefit most greatly from the collapse of the Harkers’ empire; that is, discover the person or group who will step into the vacuum.
“However,” the inspector went on, standing, “we must carry on without alerting this magician that we are catching on to his tricks. So we go wherever the evidence – the ceramic dust – leads us. Given events, I can only think the perpetrator is moving his plans quickly toward a predetermined close.”
“You don’t think we can prevent whatever’s coming.”
Simon’s alarm must have been plain in his expression, because the inspector gave the sergeant a gentle squeeze on the arm as they both moved toward the door.
“The magician will have his show,” Tipple’s face and voice back to their normal, reassuring mildness. “But at least we’ll be expecting his tricks and will see more than he expects of us.”
* * * * *
They hadn’t run like this since they were children.
Sunlight painted vivid splashes of gold on the forest floor. She leapt over the smaller ones as she sprinted, laughingly glancing over her shoulder at him as she wove through the trees. They moved with the grace of dreams – almost flying rather than touching the ground.
He finally caught up to her on the riverbank. She splashed into the shallows up to her ankles; he flopped down on the cool earth under a tree. They laughed to each other, at each other, but said nothing.
When she sat down next to him after a bit, he tossed her a flower the same brilliant purple-blue as her eyes, and which was her namesake as well. He felt his smile soften as she pressed the tiny blossom to her nose. His eyes went wide, though, when she then leaned over and gave him an impulsive peck on the cheek.
Time, the breeze rustling the leaves overhead, the gurgles of the river along the bank – all these seemed to slow as their eyes met and held. The laughter faded and a serious sort of anticipation budded in its place.
He reached out to brush away a stray, windblown chocolate lock curling down the side of her face, and couldn’t help but lean toward her. Their lips would meet in the middle; the idea filled him with joy and nervousness and boldness and shyness all at once.
An inch apart, he closed his eyes…
…and opened them again in the dim morning light of the clay dusted cell.
“A pleasant dream, I gather?”
Hearing that dry rasp, David Powell sat up in surprise.
There, not an arm’s reach away, sat his friend: awake, alive, breathing easily – alive.
“Lew!”
The other man smiled slightly at the priest’s obvious delight.
“A surgeon came?” Lewis gestured to the neat row of a dozen or so stitches on his side, pasted over with some yellowish ointment. The Chinaman hadn’t bandaged his work.
“A medicine man from the Orient. That gang leader – the fighter – brought him.”
“Ah.”
“Old fellow bled you like a stuck pig and plucked your ribs like a harp.”
The policeman grunted and poked at the surgeon’s handiwork for a moment, then looked back at the priest with a concerned frown.
“A good bit of work – I can barely feel a thing…but at what cost to you?”
“If you’re referring to the lovely state of my complexion—” David touched his bruised face gingerly, “—attribute it to my own wisdom and good fortune. I was rather angry last night and thought it only fair to spread the wrath around.”
“How poorly are you?”
“Compared to you? I’m rather well off: merely lumps and bruises. My head is harder than yours, I think.”
Lewis looked for a moment as though he weren’t sure whether David spoke in bravado or truth, but only asked, “Who’s that other fellow?”
The priest looked around and saw Innocent sleeping in a huddled heap not too far away, his back to them.
“Another soul caught up in this mess, picked up by the same chaps who nabbed us, though his lot seems different from ours.” David licked his cracked lips and looked back at his old friend. “Decent young fellow who saved me from the worst of their attentions last night. He’s been helping me tend to you. He also says you know each other. Name is Innocent.”
Lewis frowned and shook his head once.
“Doesn’t ring a bell.” He coughed briefly, the sound harsh but nowhere near as dreadful as it had been earlier. “Is there any water?”
In answer, David lurched to his feet. He’d been able to ignore last night’s abuse just sitting still; standing and walking, however, were a far different story. His stomach shrieked the worst echoes of last night’s attentions. Compounded with a gnawing hunger, straightening made him gasp involuntarily.
Lew raised an eyebrow at him; however, David only shrugged and smiled and limped to the water bucket.
It hadn’t been refilled since the day before, but the little left at the bottom would do.
“Though you look wretched this morning,” Lew murmured as David offered him the tin cup (the policeman made the priest drink first), “it seems as if a weight’s been lifted from your shoulders.”
The clergyman sat down next to his friend with a comically loud groan.
“Honestly? Perhaps it has.”
“You were even smiling in your sleep.”
“Was I?” David recalled his dream and smiled again. “No wonder: it was a pleasant memory. I dreamt of Violet Carew.”
“Violet,” Lewis repeated with a brief chuckle. “That’s a name I’ve not heard in years.”
His smile faded, and he turned a strangely intense gaze on the priest.
“Is she also why you’ve been out of sorts recently?” the sergeant asked softly. “Regrets?”
“Not of that nature, no,” David shook his head and then snorted. “Though sometimes I miss how simple it all was half a lifetime ago. My only worry seemed to be whether I should’ve kissed her or not…or kissed her again. Or more proficiently.”
Lewis tipped his head back and actually laughed – though that ended quickly enough as he clutched his ribs.
“We were such romantics back then,” the sergeant said.
“We’ve aged like fine wine…or maybe a smelly cheese – but not changed much in essentials,” David returned with a smile.
“True,” Lewis shook his head ruefully, and then his expression became thoughtful. “It’s Sunday: surely we’ve been missed by now. You, most certainly.”
David nodded slowly. “Do you suppose someone is looking for us?”
There was no hesitation in the policeman’s answer. “Yes.” A pause. “Though I can’t think how anyone would know where to look.”
The priest wondered if Innocent might be able to shed any light on that, given his absence Saturday afternoon.
As if on cue, the young man stirred and sat up yawning and rubbing his eyes with both hands. Likely, their conversation had wakened him.
“‘llo,” he said around a second yawn, twisting to face them.
“Good morning. Innocent, this is my friend, Lewis Todd – though I suppose you already know him,” the priest began as the young man stood and stretched. “Lewis—oh!”
The policeman’s face had twisted into a snarl.
With a ferocious, wordless cry, Lewis hoisted himself to his feet and crossed the ground to the young man in three quick strides.
Then, seizing Innocent by the shirt collar, he swiped the boy’s legs out from under him with a sweeping kick and slammed Innocent on his back to the floor.
“Lew! What—?!”
David staggered to his feet as quickly as he could to intervene. The bobby was down on one knee nearly throttling the young fellow.
“This man should be in prison for murder!” Sergeant Todd spat. “He’s Nicholas Harker.”
* * * * *
“It’s very busy here this morning,” a fellow by the name of Conway Duke stated, blotting at a cut on his temple with his handkerchief. “Is something afoot?”
Horace Tipple bobbed his head noncommittally. “What can I do for you, Mr. Duke? If you would like to make a statement regarding an assault, Constable Frost here—”
“—I need to speak with you, Detective Inspector Tipple,” the other returned quickly, his voice at once nervous and earnest. “It’s about Nicholas Harker.”
“Oh?”
“Is there somewhere we can speak more privately?”
Horace pursed his lips. He’d left Bartholomew and Bradtree in his office explaining to H Division’s superintendent their plans to search a few premises owned by the Harkers, and the first floor was packed with bobbies preparing for the raids. He’d only been summoned to the main floor a few minutes before by Constable Frost (who’d remained behind to scribe as needed) to speak with the newcomer. As it was, the corner they stood in in the mostly empty receiving area was probably as secluded as anywhere else in the station.
“What is it you’d like to tell me?” the inspector asked, not budging.
“He told me to find you and give you a message.”
“You’ve been in contact with Nicholas Harker?” Horace said sharply.
“Yes, but not willingly!” Duke replied quickly, gesturing to the bruised cut on his brow. “I never expected to see him again, but he knocked me a good one and threatened me!”
“Do you require a surgeon?” The inspector hoped his tone was solicitous, but the fellow’s demeanor grated, threatening his mask of politeness. It wasn’t the man’s fault: being tired always made geniality difficult.
“It—it isn’t necessary.”
“Please: if you would start from the beginning then.”
Horace gestured for Constable Frost to ready his notepad while Duke collected his thoughts. After a few moments, the message bearer drew a deep breath and started his tale.
“I began working with the Harkers after I returned to London a few months back – right around the New Year. I clerk at one of their factories near Bethnal Green: Harker Fine Goods. They hired me because I’m family.”
“But not a blood relative,” Horace guessed. The fellow, who was average enough in height and build and oddly reminded the inspector of a schoolmaster, hadn’t the look of one of the clan. Not that they were all identical, but Harker males tended to have distinctly dimpled chins. The characteristic was absent on Mr. Duke’s face, and the fellow’s next words confirmed the conjecture.
“My late sister, God rest her, married Rafe Harker. The pair of them perished in the same boating accident in ‘80.” Duke hesitated, the hand dabbing his brow stilling for a moment. “Her son – my nephew – is Nicholas.”
When the inspector made no comment to this, the other man continued.
“In any case, I didn’t see much of the boy when I first returned, or even much of him when he was a lad. I didn’t approve of my sister becoming involved with that family at all, but she is…was…my senior by nearly a decade.
“Most everyone is fond of the boy: they think him slow and his incomprehensible stutter beguiling. But I saw a different side of him once or twice in his childhood: a frightful, diabolic turn of character with which I’m sure you and the police are familiar. A psychiatrist quack might call those turns deranged, manic fugues.”
Conway Duke had begun his speech with considerable nervousness; as he progressed, however, his nerves appeared to steady, and to Horace the man seemed almost eager to finally share his long-held secret.
“In any case,” Duke went on, “I had hoped adulthood would change the boy, and the little I saw of him since my return – preceding his arrest – seemed a good indicator that he indeed had. I was mistaken. While the rest of the family seem keen to support him and deny his culpability, I will not share their good opinion of the boy.”
“And how did you come across him today?” Horace tacitly nudged the conversation back on track.
Duke blinked at him as if surprised the inspector refused to commiserate.
Constable Frost’s pencil stub scratched furiously across the pages of his little notepad.
“I stopped in at the factory where I clerk to pick up some papers. Mr. Harker…Archibald, that is, requested that I bring them round to his house at tea today, and I thought I’d collect them on my way back from services this morning. Mr. Harker’s request isn’t unusual, and I found myself at the factory at about half-past ten.
“I let myself in the back way as I always do after hours. As I was making my way to the offices, I saw someone moving about near the area where equipment and raw materials are stored. I’d thought myself alone until then. I called out to him, and then someone struck me from behind.”
Duke rubbed the back of his head in pained memory.
“When I came to my senses, I wasn’t in the factory anymore, but in some sort of long, bricked corridor with what seemed to be many hallways or rooms branching off from it. And there was my nephew with a few thug-like men. He gave me a brief message – very concise and well-planned as though he’d memorized it…which he must have done for me to understand him at all – then he clocked me on the head.”
Gingerly, he touched the cut at the fringe of his gray-sprinkled hairline.
“I was in the alley behind the factory when I awoke, and came straight here as soon as my wits returned fully.”
“What was the message?”
“To find you and to tell you that he’s ready whenever you are to settle the feud, that you’ll have figured the location, and…” Duke’s voice trailed away, and his dark eyes became nervous once more.
“—And?” Horace prompted.
The message bearer swallowed audibly.
“…and he said he’ll trade the two in his pocket for you.”
* * * * *
David Powell was about to lay a restraining hand on his friend’s shoulder when he realized Lewis wasn’t actually throttling Innocent, but gripping the boy’s collar tightly in one fist – very tightly and very firmly, but not brutally.
After all, there was a difference between Lewis Todd and the thugs who’d kidnapped them.
The police sergeant leaned over. His face inches from Innocent’s, Lewis growled slowly and with noticeable menace: “Why are you here? How?”
Innocent (or was it Nicholas?) spluttered a reply. The look on the young man’s face was frightened, yet he hadn’t raised a hand in struggle and lay still as he spoke.
However, before the young man finished his explanation, which was the same he’d given David before, Lewis shook his head and cut him off.
“No. It’s no use.”
The frustration in his friend’s tone surprised David, who stood still at his friend’s side with one hand outstretched to check the violence that didn’t come.
“Lew?”
Lewis released Innocent abruptly and sat down with an ‘oof.’
“I can’t understand him,” the bobby replied to David’s unspoken question, his voice a rasp once more. “He could be saying anything – a taunt, a threat, a plea – and I’m none the wiser.”
“He said he was sprung from prison and brought here against his will,” David murmured.
His friend looked at him sharply, eyebrows shooting upward.
“You understand him?”
The priest nodded.
“He understands me, my questions?”
Innocent, who had sat up cautiously, and David both nodded at the same time.
Lewis frowned, coughed, and then said, “Then I want to know everything about why you’re here, Mr. Harker, why we’re here, and what’s to be done with us. And don’t test me. I shan’t restrain you – what would be the point in here? – but if you threaten me or my friend in any way I will incapacitate you.”
“That won’t be necessary,” the priest said quickly.
“I mean it nonetheless,” the sergeant returned, the steel in his voice directed as much toward David as Innocent.
The young man nodded once but hesitated. Cocking his head to one side, the Innocent studied the policeman for a moment and then thrust a hand into a pocket in his trousers. He freed his handkerchief and offered it to the sergeant.
“F-f-f-f-or ‘at.”
Lew raised an eyebrow; Innocent pointed; David interceded.
“You tore a stitch or two throwing the boy about,” the priest explained as he sat down stiffly next to the pair. “He’s trying to help.”
The stoniness of the policeman’s expression melted a touch, and he accepted the handkerchief with a nod. Mopping up the red trickle on his side undammed by his exertions, Lewis gestured for Innocent to speak.
For the next hour or more, David translated. Though Innocent at first only repeated the brief tale of how he’d been taken from prison and locked up there, Sergeant Todd soon began asking questions.
“On your behalf, the family lawyers pled innocence to the murder charge, yet you signed a confession to the opposite. Why?”
(I wouldn’t have signed it if I’d known what ‘murder’ meant.)
“What did you do when you finally understood the charge?”
(Frank had explained the situation to me – he understands me like Father David does – but not until I was already in jail. Frank helped me write a letter to you then, a sort of revised confession.)
“He didn’t kill anyone,” David reiterated. He was sure of it. “Ever.”
Lewis glanced at the priest curiously, and then spent a good deal of time questioning Innocent about the most recent murder, as well as several others connected to the case. Though the young man’s memory of details was poor and understanding of things simplistic, he said something every now and again that made the sergeant’s eyes flash. Someone who didn’t know the policeman as well as David mightn’t have noticed the flares of interest, but since the bobby didn’t explain what peaked it so, the priest continued his interpretations without further comment.
“Why did you send me the letter?” the policeman asked after he’d finished going over the case’s details to his satisfaction. “You could’ve posted it to the police station, or to Inspector Tipple who has charge of the investigation, or any number of people.”
(I remembered your name and face best, and Frank had recommended it since you have a reputation for fairness and seem more inclined to listen than Inspector Tipple.)
Hearing this, Lewis’s ears tinted a faint red, but he went on with his queries.
“None of us policemen could understand you. When that became clear, why did no one come forward to speak for you?”
(Frank said he tried, but no one let him. A few others could understand and speak for me, but didn’t. Then the lawyers told me to say nothing more.)
To this answer, Lewis let out a distinctly dissatisfied sounding grunt.
“And when you signed that confession written for you, we wouldn’t have pressed the matter further,” the policeman muttered to himself. He scratched at the whiskers darkly shadowing his chin, the gesture angry, and then asked, “Why does my friend think your name is Innocent?”
(My mother called me her ‘innocent one.’ I miss her.)
“Do you know the men who’ve captured us?”
A nod.
“How might they have learned that you sent me a letter?”
(I only told Frank, so I don’t know. He wrote it for me.)
The sergeant’s face went even more pensive for a moment, but he continued after only a brief pause.
“Who are they?”
(I don’t recognize all of them, but some I do. They work for my uncle.)
“This uncle is the same one who gave you the knife after Milo Gervais’s murder?”
Another nod.
“Did he kill Milo Gervais?”
Innocent gave a hesitant shrug. (I didn’t see what happened.)
“Did you see him kill anyone else?”
(I…maybe. A man fell down once after Uncle Conway finished speaking with him. My uncle was angry with him and with me after.)
The young man had been sitting with his legs drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped around his knees. As the conversation dwelt upon his uncle, Innocent’s shoulders hunched and he began rocking back and forth.
Unaware of or ignoring the boy’s agitation, Lewis frowned and stated, “The Harkers are very loyal to one another. One wouldn’t think…. I don’t recall there being a Conway Harker.”
(No. He’s my mother’s brother. Conway Duke.)
“Oh!” That stopped the policeman short for a minute or so, and David could almost see the thoughts churning in his friend’s head, as if the pieces of a tremendous puzzle were slowly fluttering and falling into place.
The young man’s rocking slowed and stopped in the silence.
“Is it a grab for power? Why gather up and detain all the people who might finger him for that murder…?” the sergeant mused mostly to himself, and then to the young man: “What are his plans for us?”
Though Innocent had no reply, David couldn’t help but think that a person was missing from that ‘all’: what had become of Frank O’Malley? He didn’t voice that thought, however, instead asking a question of his own.
“Where were you yesterday afternoon and evening?”
Innocent’s answer – that Uncle Conway had asked him to deliver a message to the police – David repeated aloud for the bobby’s benefit. Lewis nodded, accepting the explanation, then asked softly:
“What do you want, Innocent?”
The quiet question surprised the priest. For one, he hadn’t expected Lewis to call the young man by anything other than his given name or surname. And also, David thought it was less a question the bobby would ask than would the man himself.
“T-t-t-t-o g-go ‘ome.”
“When we get free of here, then, I think my friend here can help tell your story properly.”
Innocent beamed; David cocked his head at his friend.
“You believe him?”
A brief smile flitted across Lew’s face.
“It’s more that I believe you. That you’re ready to vouch for him isn’t lost on me, and means much.” The sergeant tugged a sideburn fast blurring into his beard scruff. “The court will require more than just his translated word to stay a murder conviction. For me, though: it’s enough that I trust you.”