Woolgathering

by Christina Hambleton

  ***

  Morrigan Coombes sincerely doubted that God's sense of humor was anything less than suspect.

  A woman of great prominence, not of reputation but stature, she had in this, her twenty-second year of life, been bereaved of her father. Being a poor and disowned Shidaran among Ashlanders, he had left in his will that his daughter might be placed into the care of a benefactor of his. Coombes had been skeptical to say the least that her doe-eyed father's wishes would appeal to the senses her education had cultured her to possess, but she had come to 636 Wotcher Street, nevertheless. It was remarkable what one would do out of respect for the dead and well-intentioned.

  Thus far her venture had not yielded promising results. The house number she was looking for had been curiously rotated so that it read 939 and fasted as such, and it had only been after a great deal of hesitant knocking that she had been accosted by a young sibilant voice from within crying loftily: "If it is R. Farley you seek then enter, yon damned, determined knocker!"

  So now here she stood in the narrow, sparsely furnished halls of R. Farley's home, boring into him with a steady, expectant gaze as he sat, much less oblivious than he seemed, in the parlor.

  Mr. Farley was exceedingly young— his smooth face and full lips, androgynous though not in such a way as to make him handsome (disappointingly enough), were sufficient to deem him no older than nineteen. Twenty at the most. His spare form was draped with clothing, draped over the desk upon which he was scribbling attentively, his dull brown curls turned pointedly toward her, his sharp little nose turned away.

  Morrigan knew he'd heard her enter, and the youngster be damned if he thought she would be the first to speak, that she would herald her own entry. She was an academic, not a lady, and she hadn't the patience.

  Once Miss Coombe's brown eyes (to call them hazel would be generous in light of their dark, blazing indignation) had drilled at last through young Farley's head he glanced up with a sigh. He had gray padlock eyes with pupils like rusty key holes.

  Naturally, Morrigan expected him to greet or dismiss her. Instead, he took one look at her stout figure and its practical petticoats, the typical Shidaran spirit of her haughtily tilted chin, and he flung himself maniacally back onto the paper, crying aloud:

  "And who would claim, without fear've reprise

  That pride t'weren't trouble in woman's guise?"

  "Excuse me?!" the woman balked, beginning very much to doubt the sanity of her father and his young benefactor alike.

  Dotting the line he'd just completed with a flourish of his quill, R. Farley twirled back on his toes to grant her an elaborate bow filled with such mockery and suspended mirth that Miss Coombes could just imagine lightning arching through the curtained window to strike the jolly bastard down.

  "My apologies," he was saying. "You must be Miss Coombes. I beg your pardon if I startled or disserviced you. Among investigation, foolery, and other pursuits I write prose for the wealthy to giggle over. Throw in a few high society refrains, a lexicon of some substance, and they're all waving the nonsense under the working classes' nose like it's the secret to life. Still, lines my pockets, and seeing as its the contents of these pockets off which you'll be living I shouldn't think it would render you that wroth."

  Her brow arching menacingly at his gall, Morrigan began: "First of all, Mr. Farley, that was not prose, and second—."

  The bell rang, and she jumped almost out of her skin, not having noticed that such an object existed while she was without the house. She colored.

  "Ah that'll be my fellow Investigator, Ulisse!" chirped Farley enthusiastically. "Only he knows where the bell is— do come in Investigator!"

  "Investigator Ulisse?!" blurted Miss Coombes, and she turned upon hearing the approach of very soft leather boots indeed to find herself face to face with the paragon of justice himself. He was the pride of north and south Ghileswick alike, he and Farley both dwelling on the narrow streets of the bridge connecting the halves, and he had a reputation for being both incorruptible and brave. Women adored him. The man was of Illumni descent, so he was handsome in a dark, swarthy way in spite of his too long, too protruding face and heavy brow. And his stoop was apparent from the moment he crossed into the foyer— he walked as though bent toward some far-off destination, as though he wouldn't halt even for the hellish pit.

  Still, he didn't seem too frightening as he removed his black deerstalker and bowed his head in deference to her.

  "I hope I haven't intruded?" he asked, looking to her and ignoring Farely's reply as the youth answered with a dismissive wave:

  "It's only my cousin, come to live on my good graces."

  "I should think I'm not!" she protested vehemently, with an ugly glare at the miscreant, wishing that the Investigator wasn't blocking the door.

  Ulisse smiled as he dusted some of the mud off his knees onto Farley's spotless floor and the youth's lips curled up in reprise. "I suppose Risk has neglected to tell you that he's not just a poet, he's a gentlem— I mean liar."

  Farley chuckled darkly at the joke in a way that implied it was more irritating than amusing, reciting suddenly:

  "Ah what is truth but the lark of God?

  He changes his mind and it's gone— aplomb!"

  Then, with an expressive twinkle in his eye: "Oh— that was good!" The unbalancing youth drew back his sleeve to unveil a bundle of parchment affixed to his wrist, taking the quill off the table and scrawling his inspiration feverishly.

  "His name is Risk?" Morrigan remarked sardonically, sensing an ally in the Investigator, though she wouldn't be staying long enough to need his services. Certainly not. "Why am I not surprised?"

  "Risk, Rich, Richard, Ricky," drawled Farley. "Any of those will do, but if you deviate, Miss Coombes, I'll be quite cross."

  Ulisse shook his head; he was a good fifteen years his friend's senior, and well within his rights to scold. "He's not as terrible as his dishonest nature compels him to brag, Miss Coombes. But for now, and though it's his day off, I fear I'll have to borrow your poet. Investigator business and all that— Hangman's noose." Something grave and reverent entered his tone as he spoke of it, in direct contrast to the droll organization of his words.

  "A poet who writes prose..." Morrigan muttered to herself, feeling a tad overwhelmed.

  "I don't write prose," Farley informed her as he pulled the regulation great cloak and deerstalker from his couch. "Chronic liar, recall? Help yourself to my cellar and cupboards if you should wax faint in my absence. The neighbors are nosy but sympathetic— they'll tend to your emotional needs better than I."

  "They're just nosy," Ulisse clarified for her. "I wouldn't speak to them, if I were you."

  "You don't honestly believe I've decided to stay!" the dignified Miss Coombes admonished Farley, who tossed her the most genuine, cynical grin of their brief acquaintance.

  "With any luck, if we do our jobs right," he told her, "this city may become a place in which fiery young women with loose tongues can live alone and at peace. For the present, Miss Coombes, I would bet my savings you'll stay right where you are and put up with me until you find a nice husband to hand my will and testament as a dowry."

  He wrenched the door open, Ulisse scowled and made a remark about only using truth as a thumbscrew, and then the portal slammed back shut, leaving Morrigan Coombes both mortified and intrigued.

  This was not a wise course of action.

  Which was why, as the Investigators approached the scene of the crime they were to be applying their profession to (a sizeable house in Ghileswick's southern docks) Ulisse was saying, observationally:

  "If you keep taking out your moods on others you'll scare her away from the first." He turned one dark eye on his companion, and his other scanned the ivy-enshrined stones of the house before them, the carriages rattling past, the innocuous town criers milling quietly about in hopes that the junior officers following the Investigator wouldn't thump them for prying.

  "With any luck I'll scar
e her," Farley snorted, creasing those boyish features of his before smirking capriciously at a secret joke. "Can't stand women, m'dear Investigator."

  "Ever the paradox," Ulisse the Illumni scoffed at him, unimpressed.

  Farley beamed gaily. He smiled as though that were the only response to any and all stimulus, even sorrow, even rage.

  "I'd love," he confessed in musical tones, "For you to limit your advice to poetry and profession, Ulisse. You're remonstrance rather irritates me."

  "You lie," the Illumni said unnecessarily as Farely and he ascended the marble slab that was the cramped mansion's doorstep. He turned to the ivory and gold wrought handle. It was an ostentatious little curiosity that opened up, not down, though the elder Investigator seemed to have taken note of this peculiarity before he laid his hand on the knob, because he opened it first try. "But alas, we are here," he continued as Farley stroked his chin. "You analyze the scene and I'll praise or deride your conclusions accordingly."

  "The docks..." Farley mused as he moved to enter. "Happened right under your nose, didn't it?"

  "You could," Ulisse suggested, "Have the common decency to wait to cut to the heart of the matter until after we've entered the building." But he knew his incorrigible pupil wasn't listening, and he didn't expect him to. The youth had drawn up his sleeve once more to expose the paper over his wrist, and he was penning his observations raptly in charcoal even as he spoke them aloud.

  The foyer consisted of polished wood floors and rugs from the west, from the desert lands. They were colorful, an array of tessellations and sinuous colors of thread that could not be forged by one who hadn't known the loom intimately from their earliest days, and by comparison the gilded mirror and stylishly carved coat rack seemed most dull.

  "He was well-to-do, obviously," Farley said, "But not the usual Ashlander's taste for the luxuries of home— judging by the furniture and quality he's either a trader or an eccentric."

  "Trader," Ulisse clarified with a wry thought on the irony of the word 'eccentric' passing through Risk Farley's, of all lips. Perhaps he would comment next time the youth needed to be knocked down a peg. In the meantime they moved further in, Risk's eyes sweeping the hall in search of anything unusual, which there wasn't until one stepped into the central ballroom and living space.

  At the time of the murder it had been used as a living space, with more foreign rugs, vases, and low tables. There were also pearl white couches and bookshelves filled with the kind of practical knowledge only a seaman and a merchant could appreciate. Farley took all this in before he allowed his eyes to gravitate toward the magnetic, grisly scene that occupied the center of the immense chambers, because he knew once he afforded it his attention the power of it would color his judgments.

  "...the manner of death was very clean— professional," he said at last as he indulged in a look at the cadaver, gruesome not for the contortion of the face, nor for the brutality— there was none. Indeed, it was the fact that a single bullet wound had been aimed perfectly straight, perfectly steady, and struck the tradesman's heart at precisely the mark where, on a target, the bulls-eye would have been placed. The lack of signature, of any personality, of any bearings or closeness to the deed at all was exceedingly casual, almost artistic. "May I proceed to examine the point of entry?"

  "There are a few more observations I expect of you, first," Ulisse told him with an enigmatic smile, which Farley matched with such a dimpled, innocent grin as barred his teeth manifestly. Nevertheless, the youth turned back to the scene, biting his full lip, tapping the charcoal pencil against his notepad.

  "He... was taken by surprise. The killer did not speak to him at all, only shot and killed," he said at last. "There is a scuff mark on the floor there, by his calf where his boots chafed the wood and presumably he spun, noticing his killer's presence. But... then how did the killer strike him so perfectly when he was moving? He must be exceptional."

  Ulisse nodded, seemingly satisfied. "The killer may also have had a lucky shot," he said, but his voice bore no conviction.

  Farley took this as invitation to move at last to the corpse. He was a man of somewhat advanced age for his profession, fifty or so, with browned skin starting to weather and streaks of ugly iron gray through his fair hair. The man was muscled, but it appeared as though he'd been lax of late— the sinews were softening in places. In death his wide-set eyes and low brow only served to give him a more stricken appearance. The youth was not concerned with the humanitarian aspect, however. He smoothed the silken clothes over the man's chest, gray eyes boring through the hole thereon almost as intensely as the bullet had.

  "Interesting," he murmured, jotting down notes on his wrist. He didn't seem to notice the blood his fingers had contracted, and even smeared it over his forehead absentmindedly as he rose and wiped his brow. "I would swear he was killed by one of the old issue pistols we used. Beside ourselves, I can think of but three others who still have them."

  "As ever your infatuation with weapons does not fail you," Ulisse ceded. "Conclusions?"

  "Obviously an assassination. A skilled one. Likely not mercenary. Likely trained under an organization."

  "Not obviously and not certainly," Ulisse reminded him.

  Farely rolled his eyes. "Explanations are innocent of falsehood until proven guilty."

  "But you've still missed something, though it isn't contrary to your hypothesis at all."

  The youth bristled. "Oh? And what is that?" he demanded with faux cheerfulness.

  "Point of exit, my friend? How are you to make anything of eyewitness accounts if you have not pieced together the method of entry and withdrawal, the two most commonly glimpsed phenomena?"

  "A minor detail," Farley insisted, though to his round face rose a blush.

  "He came in through the front door, exited by the window," Ulisse told him, and though he was ever serious about his work he afforded his pupil a wink as he moved toward the aforementioned window and gestured out it.

  "Take a look," he instructed Farley. "What do you see?"

  Farley looked out, then up, and then down. "A puddle," he said, though not flatly, but with interest, licking his lips as he glanced back at his instructor. "I'll take note of that, as well. It doesn't look wholly undisturbed, what with the mud dried over the cobblestones adjacent."

  "Excellent," Ulisse nodded at him. "What think you next?"

  "I think," Farley said, adjusting his deerstalker, "that I need to see if I can't find some history of offense or intrigue in yon tradesman's past. He was looted after death; the pocket is tucked in by an outside hand— look at the bulge of it. Name, please?"

  "Thomas Worthingson," Ulisse obliged. "I won't keep you any longer."

  "Ah, but allow me to keep you for one more question." Farley spoke wistfully, almost to himself as he drew closer to the Investigator. Behind those disused keyholes of pupils many cogs were turning, racing, tumbling. For once he was utterly dissimulated, and that was as close to a true expression as Ulisse had gotten out of him in a long time. "Do you know what it is like to toil under abuse or... threat, Ulisse?"

  The Investigator's brow furrowed. At first it seemed he was about to admonish the younger for imprudent questions, but then he answered, truthfully: "No. No I can't say that I do."

  Farley's lips curled back up in that smile, that all-important crown of equivocality. "That's a shame," he said, airily. "In that case, I don't think you could understand my current musings— at least, not until I am certain of a few more details."

  Ulisse ruffled his hair; above all things Risk Farley hated contact, hated closeness. "Bastard," the Investigator muttered, just so it was clear this was a punishment. "Do you have any ideas as to a suspect?"

  Farley's eyes closed, his entire visage cherubic with his widest, most pervasive and roguish of grins. "Of course not."

  "Lying bastard," the Investigator corrected.

  "Why, Ulisse!" Farley chuckled as he all but skipped out the door, "You wound me."