“That accounts for the stains on your knees, then,” said Jackaby. “I take it you’ve been to examine the corpse?”
The last word seemed to thump into Charlie like a sandbag. I watched as he breathed in deeply, collecting himself. His knees were, indeed, stained a deep merlot, but it was hardly discernible against the dark blues of the uniform fabric. Looking more intently, I noted that the mirror polish of his shoe had been marred by a smudge of red across the pointed toe as well. “I was there,” Charlie said. “I was there all night, and I couldn’t save him.”
“Of course you couldn’t,” Jackaby answered dismissively. I shot my employer a stern glance. The junior detective looked stricken. Jackaby caught my expression and reached out stiffly to pat Charlie on the arm. “No one could have saved him,” he amended. “No escaping it, once he heard the cry. Good of you to try, though. The silver lining to this tragedy, of course, is that we have a new, fresh crime scene. After Miss Rook and I have had a quick breakfast, we’ll come see what clues our villain has left for us, this time.”
Charlie shifted his feet impatiently. “Detective, surely time is of the essence! A man is dead!”
“Lamentably so, and no amount of hurry and bother will revive him. He will still be dead when we reach him, I assure you. Now, a good bit of hot breakfast will only help to improve our faculties and ensure that we don’t miss—”
But the detective’s sentence was cut short by a sudden, deafening boom, and the crunch of an iron skillet lodging itself halfway through the wall, its black handle poking out into the hallway at a jaunty angle, the metal visibly vibrating from the impact. The ringing silence that followed was broken by a few tinkles and thumps from within the room, and a half-dozen ripe, red apples rolling into the hallway.
“Too much paprika?” I offered.
“On second thought,” Jackaby continued with nonchalance, “it wouldn’t do to weigh ourselves down before we’d even gotten started, would it?”
Charlie’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly as he blinked at the pan.
“Yes, just a quick bite should do the trick. Apple?” Jackaby bent and retrieved one, and I accepted the proffered fruit.
“I’ll just fetch my shoes, then?” I asked.
“Do hurry,” Jackaby instructed. “Time is of the essence, Miss Rook. A man is dead.”
Chapter Eighteen
The Emerald Arch was even more heavily guarded than it had been the previous day. The police presence appeared to have doubled, and official-looking rope now stretched around the entire building. A glance down the alleyway as we passed proved that there would not be a repeat of Jackaby’s sneaky business with the balconies, unless he felt like pulling his maneuver in the company of three uniformed officers. From what I had seen of the strange detective in the last twenty-four hours, he might have even pulled it off. In fact, it would probably have come to them giving him a leg up and wishing him all the best.
Charlie marched us past the guards at the front door. I recognized one of them as the thick, hawk-nosed policeman we’d slipped past yesterday. His pinched, suspicious expression hadn’t changed. “Cane,” he said without affection, but this time he didn’t try to stop us as we followed our escort past the cordon.
“O’Doyle,” Charlie answered in a matched tone. That being the apparent limit of their cordiality toward each other, we passed quickly and were soon through the front doors. Charlie had already shared a few details of the scene as we rushed through town, but it had all been a blurry, fragmented mess of information. As we entered the stairwell, Jackaby asked the detective to repeat his story from the beginning, leaving nothing out.
“Well, let’s see. I suppose it began after I left you yesterday, sir,” Charlie began. “I returned to my post outside Mr. Bragg’s room—that is, the late Mr. Bragg’s room. When Chief Inspector Marlowe arrived, I told him that I thought it would be wise to post guards tonight to protect Mr. Henderson. He asked me why. Now, you must understand that the chief inspector is very . . . selective about what he is willing to believe. Some of the other men are more open-minded—Officer Porter told me he attended a séance once, and I’ve even seen Lieutenant Dupin knock on wood—but not Marlowe. Marlowe does not even believe in luck. I couldn’t very well tell him about the banshee, so I just told him that something Henderson said when I revisited his room made me believe he had information about the murderer, and that he was too afraid for his life to come forward.
“The chief inspector just looked angry about that, and asked when I had spoken to his witness without permission. I told him we just stopped by on our way out, and that you had actually had a calming effect on the poor man. That was a mistake. He got all red and asked why the hell I had let that lunatic crackpot—sorry, sir, his words—wander around the building against his orders. He reminded me who was in charge, and told me he would have my badge if I couldn’t recognize the chain of command.
“It was my fault. I should have been more careful with my words. Commissioner Swift had arrived, as you know—he came into the hallway while we were speaking, breathing hard as he came out of the stairwell. Having the commissioner around always puts Inspector Marlowe on edge. I apologized and assured him it would not happen again. Then I asked if he would still be placing any officers to watch Henderson. That was another a mistake. He used quite a few unpleasant words to tell me no. Well, I could not argue with the chief inspector, especially with the commissioner present . . .”
“But you couldn’t stand idly by while a man’s life was in danger, either?” Jackaby offered. “You came back anyway, didn’t you?”
“I had to try to help him. Yes, I returned after my shift had ended and all of the rest of the police had gone.”
“Your time might have been better spent comfortably at home with your family.”
“I have no family here, Mr. Jackaby, and I can think of no better way to spend an evening than in service to my city.”
“That sounds terribly lonesome,” I said. “I mean, isn’t there anyone . . . ?”
“My life is . . . complicated,” said Charlie. “I find it much more convenient to live alone.”
I might have liked to know a bit more about the stoic policeman, but Jackaby pressed forward with the matter at hand. “So, Henderson was already dead when you arrived?”