Officer Moore and I hurried to join Jackaby at the window, outside which the nosy neighbor had been conveniently trimming an already immaculate bush. She swallowed and glanced around her garden.
“I’m sure it’s none of my business to meddle—” she hedged.
“Please do, madam. You meddling would be greatly appreciated.”
“Well”—she dropped the shears and leaned in—“the baby isn’t Cordelia’s. It came in with that maid, the foreign one. Anybody’s guess who the father is. She is a woman of ill repute, make no mistake. The Hooles hired her on shortly after they got back from their honeymoon. I have no idea why poor Lawrence—rest his soul—why he let that woman into his house. Cordelia was always fraternizing with her, too. Talking—and laughing, even! It’s not how you’re supposed to interact with the help, let alone such a disreputable sort.”
“If the baby is Miss Wick’s, then where is it off to now?” I said. “We’ve been through every room in the house.” I turned back to regard the Hooles’ unassuming housekeeper, but Miss Wick was suddenly nowhere to be seen. “Miss Wick?” I said. Moore and Jackaby joined me in scanning the room. “Miss Wick?”
Officer Moore helped us search the house from top to bottom, but Miss Wick had vanished. “Her aura is stiflingly unremarkable and it’s everywhere in this house,” Jackaby griped as he hunted for a trail. “It’s like searching for hay in a haystack.” Eventually he caught a recent thread of panic and distress in the air, but it led out the back door and off into the bustling Glanville streets. “She’s gone,” he announced.
“Huh,” grunted a baffled Officer Moore. “Miss Wick’s been around for every stage of the investigation. She never gave us any trouble. Her running off like that . . .” He took off his uniform cap and shook his head as he peered up and down the busy lane. “That’s odd.”
“Yes,” said Jackaby. His gray eyes sparkled and his lip began to pull into an involuntary smile in spite of the sudden turn the day had taken. “Yes, it is.”
Chapter Six
“I really don’t see what you’re smiling about, sir,” I said as the evening express to New Fiddleham chuffed to life beneath us. “We haven’t come any closer to finding our killers or finding truth and justice for Jenny. We’ve found nothing but more questions.” Glanville ambled lazily past our window, and the setting sun painted the marbled buildings outside our train car in shades of gentle reds and oranges.
“Questions are good,” Jackaby said. “Questions are to the clever mind as coal is to the stoker. I will worry more when we run out of them.”
“Be that as it may, I would be happier if we had at least a few satisfying answers to go with them when we report back to Commissioner Marlowe.”
“Detective work is neither a happy nor a satisfying business, Miss Rook,” said Jackaby, settling in as the amber buildings sailed past our window. “Marlowe will understand.”
“I don’t understand at all.” Commissioner Marlowe kept his voice low and even as we sat across from him the following morning.
“What I mean to say,” Jackaby explained, “is that our excursion yesterday was very instructive indeed.”
“You found your missing woman?”
“Not exactly. Not remotely. No. We did manage to find a woman who was not missing.” Jackaby’s optimistic humor found little purchase on Marlowe’s granite countenance. “And then we misplaced her,” Jackaby admitted. “So now there are two missing women. Also there is a baby.”
“What? A baby? Where did you find a baby?”
“We did not find a baby. The baby is also missing.”
The commissioner’s eye twitched as he set both palms on the table and took a deep breath.
“We’re still looking into the matter, sir,” I cut in. “We will be certain to keep you abreast of any developments, but in the meantime, my report should detail more clearly the results of our inquiry in Glanville.” I passed the pages I had typed up that morning across the desk and Marlowe accepted them with a curt nod—high praise from the stoic commissioner.
“Hm,” he said as he looked over the report.
“Strange and unsatisfying seem to be the tone of this case, sir, I know,” I said.
“It’s been no more satisfying on our end,” Marlowe grunted. “My boys followed the money trail for Spade’s project, like I told you. It seems his fund-raisers got a few donations from legitimate businesses, but the lion’s share came from a corporation called Buhmann’s Consolidated Interests. Turns out the exact same company bankrolled major portions of Poplin’s project a decade ago.”
“Buhmann?” Jackaby shook his head. “Not the most creative fa?ade.”
Marlowe rolled his eyes. “I know. German for bogeyman. I looked it up. The group is more than just children’s stories and nursery rhymes, though. They own some legitimate real estate downtown, including an impressive-looking building in the Inkling District.”
The bogeyman. Jackaby nodded sagely as though it were perfectly ordinary to hear that the bogeyman has been inconspicuously funding major municipal science projects. I shook my head. Every new clue just seemed to stir up the mud in the already murky waters of this case.
“It’s a start,” said Jackaby. “Chasing fresh leads has left us empty-handed. I would say it’s definitely worth our while to pursue a much older one. We’ll have to go and say hello to the mayor’s mysterious benefactors.”
“Good luck with that.” Marlowe tucked my report into his desk and shut the drawer. “On paper the Buhmann building is their head of operations and the beating heart of another fine example of American industry. In reality—much less so.”
“Empty?” Jackaby said.
Marlowe nodded. “The place is a dried-out husk. It’s like a set from a vaudeville production about depressing old factories. There’s nothing there.”
“Sounds like somewhere we might find a few more questions,” I said.
Jackaby grinned.
“Seriously,” said Marlowe. “It’s cobwebs and rats.”
“We’ll have a look around anyway,” Jackaby declared, rising to his feet. “Miss Rook loves cobwebs and rats.”
Chapter Seven