The rest of the journey was mostly silent, but the awkwardness had fallen away behind us. I leaned in, and Charlie put his arm around my shoulders while we rode. There were some adventures I could not have with Mr. Jackaby.
Our ride came to an end half a mile from our destination, and we walked the rest of the way to the Coolidge Gardens. Technically a public park, the gardens were no simple planter box of geraniums or patch of grass in the middle of a city. The Coolidge Gardens were big. They sat at the northernmost limits of the city, a sprawling three-acre plot situated atop a high hill that overlooked New Fiddleham. It was a manicured Eden of hedges, heathers, and hundreds of varieties of fragrant flowers, whose perfume rolled through the paths and hedgerows and spilled up over the high fence that surrounded the property.
Charlie led us discreetly out of sight of the policemen stationed at the front entrance and along the perimeter until we came to a very old oak tree growing against the border. The tree’s lower branches had been trimmed back to accommodate the barrier, but its upper branches reached over the fence and hung just above the garden. With a quick glance back to ensure we had not been observed, we climbed up and shuffled along the sturdiest branch, dropping down to the soft turf on the other side as quietly as we could.
The walk from there to the actual site of the crime was downright idyllic. Walking with Charlie as the early evening sun came streaming over fields of forget-me-nots and rosebushes, I was beginning to feel that the universe was conspiring to set entirely the wrong atmosphere for the evening’s purposes. Charlie, mercifully, still did not broach the topic of the ring even once on our journey. If he had intended to propose, as Jackaby had warned, then at least he did not seem inclined to do so on our way to a grisly murder site. Credit to Charlie for that.
We came around a fat pink shrub and I shuddered to a halt. Directly ahead of me stood another uniformed policeman. There was no hiding from him; if I had been any closer we might have slow-danced. He was familiar. I had seen him in the precinct a dozen times, reporting officiously to Marlowe. What was his name?
The officer looked as startled as I was, and then his eyes turned to Charlie. Maybe he won’t recognize him, I thought, desperately. Charlie was out of uniform—maybe the man would just take us for young lovers out for a walk in the park. Young lovers who had somehow failed to notice the armed police barricade at the entrance.
“Cane,” the man said.
My heart sank. Charlie Barker was just a man. Charlie Barker had no history beyond last winter. Charlie Cane was a dangerous fugitive.
“Lieutenant Dupin,” Charlie answered. “How is Marie?”
“Walking already,” said Dupin, his face softening. “Growing so fast. Calls me Da. She calls the dog Da, too, and the neighbor’s cat, but I try not to take it too personally.” He coughed and jabbed his chin meaningfully toward me, raising an eyebrow. “Who’s she?”
“She’s here with me,” Charlie said.
“You mean she isn’t,” Dupin corrected. “Because you’re definitely not here.” He sniffed. “Well, then. Standing here, all alone as I am, I feel suddenly compelled to go investigate a noise I might have heard over . . . elsewhere.” He gave me a civil nod, and then added: “Should anyone not be here while I’m away, they would do well to make their not being here brief. The chief investigator sent for the coroner’s boys to collect the body an hour ago. They’ll be along any minute now.”
“Thank you,” said Charlie.
Dupin gave Charlie a pat on the arm as he passed. “You have nothing to thank me for, Cane. You’re not here.”
I heaved an enormous sigh of relief. Commissioner Marlowe knew the truth, but I had assumed everyone else in the police department had turned on Charlie.
“Dupin seems nice,” I said.
“He is an excellent detective.”
“You don’t think he’s going to raise the alarm?”
“Whether he does or not, it sounds like we should be quick about it. Are you ready?”
When one is raised in polite English society, one does not expect to find oneself keeping a mental list of gruesome crime scenes one has visited—and certainly not to silently rank them by quantity of blood and horridness of smells. What one expects to learn is how to dance the polonaise and to make small talk with the viscount at Mother’s garden party and to stuff oneself into an elaborate costume to be presented at court. All things considered, the murder scene was not so bad.
This section of the park opened to a sort of fresh-air amphitheater. The lawn sloped downward, bordered by lush hedges that defined the space and drew the gaze toward a simple stone stage at the center of the clearing. I could easily have pictured a pretentious poetry reading or a fancy wedding ceremony taking place there. Except that the last ceremony performed here had clearly been less fancy and more fatal.
The figure lying on the stage had been covered with a cloth, but I could see the outline of a man’s body. There were candle stubs in an arc around the victim as well, all melted down to nothing. He lay on his back, his legs and arms splayed out as though posed for a rendition of the Vitruvian Man. I tried not to think too hard about the spots of red seeping through the cloth. I stepped closer. On either side of the body were broad patterns, as elaborate as lace embroidery, but drawn with pale yellow lines that had been scuffed and blown away in a few places.
“Cornmeal,” said Charlie. “I made some inquiries downtown. The design is apparently called a veve. Madame Voile recognized it. She has a book about vodou invocations.”
“Vodou?” I said.
“That’s what she said. Doesn’t explain the rest, though.” Charlie gestured to the trees that formed a sort of natural backdrop to the theater. The nearest trunks had each been marred by rough carvings. One had been etched with a pentagram, another with a hexagram, and the one in the center with a sort of cross with a loop at the top. I recognized it as an Egyptian ankh. Jackaby had one or two of those among his relics back home. He had told me they stood for life and death. My mind tried to catalogue the symbols. Pagan, Judaic, Egyptian. What was the pattern?
Some sheer fabric had been draped from their branches as well. It rippled in the gentle breeze behind the stage. The scene was sinister, to be sure, and obviously tragic, but somehow the weight of it felt hollow. I should have been revolted and frightened and overwhelmed—I should have felt at least some distant cousin of the emotions that had left me reeling the first time I saw a dead body—but I wasn’t. I felt something else, instead. It was a subtler sort of unsettling, like a mosquito hum in the back of my mind. Perhaps I had begun to grow numb to the macabre, or perhaps it was simply that the stage for this latest murder was a literal stage, but I found myself curiously unmoved by all the paranormal paraphernalia and supernatural set dressing. What troubled me now was that it felt somehow irritatingly familiar, like a morbid moment of déjà vu.