“Oh, think you know so much?” Hatun shook a finger at the detective. “Well, I’ll have you know I saw a lot more than boys with badges and a lot of silly rope. I was by there last night, and I looked the devil in the eyes, I surely did. I’m guessing you saw it, too, eh? Can’t ignore what you see with your own eyes, can you? Not you.”
“You saw him?” Jackaby’s eyes widened. “Hatun, you mean to say you actually saw the murderer last night?”
“Murderer?” Now it was Hatun’s turn to look surprised. “Oh dear. I guess must have, at that. I hadn’t realized. Who did he get?”
“Bragg,” I answered. “Arthur Bragg. A newspaperman. Did you know him?”
She shook her head. “No. Poor soul. But I’ll say a few words tonight.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve spoken to Marlowe or any of his officers yet?” asked Jackaby.
“Oh no. Been keeping to myself. Kept my shawl on all tight all night, didn’t want anyone finding me after what I saw.”
“You were hiding in your shawl?” I asked.
Hatun gave the pale blue knit shawl around her shoulders an affectionate tug. “Only street folk can see me in this, beggars and homeless, like. Never had much cause to watch out for them—they’re good souls, the most of ’em. For everyone else—well, it doesn’t make me invisible or nothing, just impossible to notice.” She smiled proudly.
Jackaby and I exchanged glances.
“Erm, I found you,” said my colleague.
Hatun gave him a knowing wink. “You don’t exactly follow the rules when it comes to finding things, though, now do you, Detective?”
Jackaby looked to me again. “Miss Rook? Are you able to . . . ?”
“Yes, of course I can see her.”
Jackaby turned back to Hatun. “I’m afraid it may not be working properly,” he said with a pitying look. “Now, what is it you saw at the Emerald Arch last night, precisely?”
“Oh, stuff it with the snooty faces.” Hatun closed the gap between us and looked me up and down. “Young lady, that’s a lovely dress.”
“Thank you, I—”
“Where do you live?”
“Well . . .” I hadn’t yet found proper lodgings, and having only had gainful employment for a matter of hours, hadn’t yet felt up to asking Jackaby for a week’s advance. “I’m working on that.”
The woman stuck out her tongue at Jackaby. “See? Homeless. It’s working fine.”
Jackaby raised an eyebrow in my direction, but persisted with the matter at hand. “The Emerald Arch, Hatun? What did you see? Be specific.”
“Well.” She glanced quickly around and lowered her voice. “It was getting late in the evening. The sun had gone, and the lamps near that corner were dark. They need new wicks, that whole block, they’re always going out—but the moon was near full, and it brightened up the street pretty well. I was only out to see if I could scrounge something for Hammett. He does threaten to turn me to stew, but it gets cold out here and I worry about him. Poor thing’s had a cough for weeks. So, I was just across the street behind Chandler’s Market—Ray just throws out the bones and fish heads—and I hear a sound coming from that Emerald Arch building. I look way up and see a dark shape at the window—not the top one, but at almost-the-top window. The window creaks up and someone sticks his head out and looks up and down the street.”
“Did you get a good look at his face?” Jackaby pressed.
“Oh yes. I’ll never have that face out of my mind. So, his head comes out and he’s got evil, evil eyes, and terrible, sharp teeth. He looks up and down the street, but I have my shawl on, see, and he doesn’t see me. That awful head ducks back inside for a second, and then out comes his leg and he starts to step out onto the balcony. Well, about then, I backed up to stay as far from that creature as possible, and I backed right into a crate of old scrap shingles some fool left in the alleyway. The things clatter to the street, and the beast just leaps back into the window and pulls it shut.”
“You’re quite certain that what you saw was a creature of some sort, and not a man?” asked Jackaby.
“He was a beast, all right. Nothing human about that face. Strange, though, he dressed like a man. It was dark, and he was good and high up there, but I could see his trousers and a suit jacket. Normal kind of clothes, I think, except his shoes. His shoes were shiny metal. Coming out of the window, their soles looked like the hot side of an iron, and they clanked as he stepped onto the balcony. I stuck around in the alley for a long time, to see if he’d come back, but he never did. Must’ve gone out the front, instead.”
Jackaby’s face was clouded with thought. “He did indeed, Hatun. His trail resumed on the interior stairwell. Was there anything else?”
Hatun informed us that she had returned home after that, and hadn’t seen the creature since, nor anything else out of the ordinary. “Do be careful though,” she added. “The chimneys and stovepipes have not been singing as often lately. That’s never a good sign for the city. They know something’s wrong.”
Jackaby thanked her for her time and counsel, and offered her an apple, plucked from somewhere up his sleeve. With a few mumbled cordialities, we left the woman to her frosty bridge and returned to the streets of New Fiddleham.
We had walked several blocks before I interrupted Jackaby’s intense concentration. “You were right,” I said. “About the shoes, I mean. Even if she doesn’t get it all right, she saw just what you predicted. So, they are metal. And this is good, right? We’ve narrowed things down—eliminated more possibilities?”
“Yes, indeed. Except that it isn’t good at all.”
“No?”
“She said he wore a suit jacket.”
“And that’s bad?”
“Monsters are easy, Miss Rook. They’re monsters. But a monster in a suit? That’s basically just a wicked man, and a wicked man is a more dangerous thing by far.”
Chapter Thirteen
By request of my employer, the contents of chapter thirteen have been omitted.
~ Abigail Rook
Chapter Fourteen
Back in his home on Augur Lane, we passed through the quiet lobby—my eyes still willfully avoiding the frog—and down the crooked, green hallway. Instead of continuing to his office, Jackaby pushed open the door to the library. Soft light played in through the alcove windows at the far end, and the detective didn’t bother with the lamps. He began plucking books from the shelves. Some were massive, impressive-looking, leather-bound volumes, and others seemed little more than pamphlets.
“May I help?” I asked.
He set down an armload on the table next to me and glanced up. “What? Oh. Yes, of course, of course, that’s why I hired you. Let’s see, there should be a few useful titles down that aisle. Look for the Almanac Arcanum, and anything by Mendel.”
He bustled off around the corner, and I perused the spines nearest me. Neither the authors’ names nor the titles of the books seemed to have been taken into consideration in Jackaby’s shelving method. “Is there a system to these? How do you find anything?” I called.