“Precisely my point! She is far too emotionally invested to handle the minutia of this investigation. With each new twist and turn we risk pushing her over the edge, and we cannot foresee what might lie beyond the next curve. Walking this path was hard enough on her when the trail was cold.”
“She’s stronger than ever!” In my frustration, I nearly told him about our secret practices, about our remarkable success with possession—but I bit my tongue. The secret was not mine alone to tell, and Jackaby was being especially bullheaded right now. A cog clicked in my mind. Something had happened. “Wait a moment. What recent developments?” I asked.
“See for yourself.” Jackaby flipped open his satchel and passed a handful of papers across the desk to me. They were torn at the top, as though ripped out of a booklet. “Lieutenant Dupin of the New Fiddleham Police Department very kindly lent me his notes on the matter.”
“Does Lieutenant Dupin know that he very kindly lent you his notes?”
Jackaby shrugged. “I’m confident he’ll piece it together sooner or later. Marlowe keeps him around for something.”
I shook my head, but turned my attention to the notes.
The body of Mrs. Alice McCaffery was found early this morning by one Rosa Gaines, age 32, a maid in the McCaffery household. Mrs. McCaffery had been at my desk in the station house only the day before to file a missing persons report for her husband, Julian McCaffery. En route to investigate now.
I arrived at the McCaffery home just prior to 8 o’clock in the A.M. The scene within is as Ms. Gaines described it. Alice McCaffery lies on the floor of her chamber. Her dress is torn at the neck and signs of a struggle are evident. Cause of death is a single deep laceration to the chest. Blood has dried in a wide pool around the body. My word, but there is a lot of blood.
I stared numbly. I could see why Jackaby was hesitant to share the news. The missing person, the bedroom struggle, the body, the blood. I might as well have just read the police report in the file sitting beside me. It was Jenny’s murder to the last detail.
“What do you make of it?” Jackaby asked.
“Eerily familiar, sir.”
“More than you know,” said Jackaby. “Julian McCaffery was a research scientist, not unlike Jenny’s fiancé, Howard Carson. Carson and McCaffery both studied under Professor Lawrence Hoole at Glanville University, although years apart.”
I swallowed. “That’s an awful lot of coincidences. Hoole went missing, too, didn’t he? Yes, I remember. It was in the Chronicle weeks ago.”
Jackaby nodded. “He makes an appearance in the lieutenant’s next entry, as well.” He gestured to the papers in my hands. I flipped to the next page and read aloud:
It is not yet midday and I have been presented with my second corpse of the day. The discovery was made by Daniel & Benjamin Mudlark. The brothers, ages 7 and 9, disclosed the information in exchange for compensation. They agreed to 5￠ payment and escorted me to the scene.
The body appears to have washed up with sewage runoff on the northern bank of the Inky. Based on physical description and documents found on the body, the deceased is Lawrence Hoole, age 56, a professor at Glanville University. The corpse is waterlogged, but given the minimal state of decay, I estimate he is not more than two days deceased. The only visible injury is a puncture wound at the base of his neck, surrounded by a circular bruise.
The professor is survived by his wife, Cordelia. Glanville Police Department has responded to my inquiries, but inform me that the widow Hoole is . . .
I turned the page over, but that was the last of it. “The widow Hoole is what?”
“Bereaved?” suggested Jackaby. “Disconsolate? Something mournful, I imagine. Probably ‘sad.’ Lieutenant Dupin is nothing if not frugal with his adjectives.”
“Those poor people,” I said. “A single puncture wound and a rounded bruise—that’s Pavel’s dirty work and no mistake. There can be no question that this whole mess is connected, then.”
“What about Cordelia Hoole?” Jenny’s soft voice caught both of us by surprise. I spun to find that she had rematerialized by the window, the sunlight slipping in sparkling beams through her translucent figure.
“Jenny,” I said. “How long have you—”
“I’m sorry, Miss Cavanaugh,” Jackaby cut in. “We really ought to follow up on these leads more thoroughly before we trouble you with the details. I don’t wish to—”
“Jackaby, ten years ago my fiancé vanished and I was murdered. Yesterday that McCaffery man vanished and Alice McCaffery was murdered. Their mentor, Hoole, vanished, and now we know he was murdered as well, and you’re—what? Waiting for the pattern to complete itself? You’re ten years too late to save me, detective. You’re a day too late for Alice McCaffery. The question is, what about Cordelia Hoole?”
Chapter Four
The afternoon air was thick and hot as Jackaby and I left Augur Lane and made our way into the center of town. I had been introduced to a snow-swept New Fiddleham earlier that year, a New Fiddleham where baroque buildings glistened with frost and chilly winds whispered through the alleyways. With the summer sun now beating down on the cobblestones, the city did not whisper so much as it panted heavily, its breath humid and cloying.
Jackaby, still draped in his bulky coat, swam through the mugginess with his usual alacrity, stubbornly unaffected by the swelter.
“Sir,” I said. “With all due respect, I don’t think that Lieutenant Dupin is likely to be very forthcoming about this case, our having stolen what little we already know from his blotter.”
“Borrowed,” corrected Jackaby. “We borrowed what little we know. But I agree. I doubt that Lieutenant Dupin will be of much further use to our side of this investigation. Dupin is merely an artery.”
“He’s a what?”
“An artery,” said Jackaby. “And a good one. But he isn’t the heart. No, we need to speak directly to Commissioner Marlowe. If anything unseemly has landed on the streets of this city, Marlowe will know of it.”
It was still hard to believe that this was my life—murder and mystery in the gritty underbelly of New Fiddleham. Not all of it was as beguiling as it sounds on the page. Truthfully, for all of its intrigue and excitement, adventuring was a most unglamorous career. I grew up on the other side of the Atlantic, a proper English girl. By the time I was ten, I could tell with pinpoint accuracy where I was by the accents around me. I was beginning to develop a similar sensory map of New Fiddleham based on odor. It was not a map I enjoyed filling out.