Black Light

by Bedford, K. A.

  We went on, getting more and more bogged down in the same questions, the same answers. It was taking on a feeling of unreality. Time seemed to stop, and hang in the air like the bitter black smoke from the old man’s cigarettes.

  Sills took pages and pages of shorthand notes.

  The old man in the back listened but said nothing; his unreadable expression did not alter.

  Slowly, around six o’clock, we came around — again, for the nth time — to discussing the night Father William and Julia were killed. This time, however, Inspector Carmody wanted to probe into exactly what Gordon and I had been doing that evening. Clearly he liked the prospect of fitting up Gordon as an accessory.

  I had tremendous pain across my back, up my neck, spreading into my head. This chair would be the death of me. When Carmody asked, again, what Gordon and I had been doing that night, I said, also for the nth time, “We were out driving around, taking my car for a spin.”

  Carmody turned to a sheaf of typed pages in the back of the file. He said, “We have spoken to Mr Duncombe about that night … ”

  It was suddenly hard to breathe. “Is that right,” I managed to say.

  “What did Mr Duncombe have to say, Inspector?” Campbell asked, quite unruffled.

  Carmody glanced across at Sills, who shrugged and twiddled his pencil. Carmody said, “He said you were out for an evening drive, and that you talked about books and his plans for his ‘time machine.’ ” Carmody could not have injected more ironic venom into the phrase.

  Campbell said, “Is that all Mr Duncombe had to say?”

  “It is,” Carmody said. “He was … very insistent.”

  “Wouldn’t say boo to a grasshopper,” Sills added.

  I could not keep the feeling of extreme relief I felt at this from showing itself. Mr Campbell shot me a look, urging me to keep such displays to myself. Even so, I had been worried about what Gordon might say if he was questioned; the way things were between us, I had even worried that he might tell all, revealing our involvement in all kinds of pursuits.

  Campbell drew my attention for a moment. He pointed. The old man in the corner passed a small note to Carmody, who read it with a brief, angry look, and passed it to Sills, who made a cryptic notation before pocketing it.

  Campbell said, “Is there any chance you good chaps might reveal the content of your little note there?”

  “Oh you’d love that, wouldn’t you, Campbell!”

  “If it’s germane to the matters at hand … ”

  Carmody just looked at him, his face like tired rock. Sills discreetly shook his head, and did not look up. The old man lit another cigarette from the burned down end of the previous one, which he crushed against the floor with his shoe. The atmosphere worsened.

  There was a knock on the door. Sills got up to answer it. A young man in plain clothes handed Sills a folder, and glanced at me for a moment before flicking his gaze away. It had been enough to surmise that this new folder was probably the fingerprint comparison report.

  Sills handed Carmody the folder. He read the half-page typed summary and glanced at the collection of enlarged photographs showing prints found at the scene of the crime, and the prints from my fingers, taken earlier. The forensics chap had circled several areas on the photographs and on enlargements of the actual prints taken from me earlier.

  Carmody allowed himself a humourless smirk and showed the report to Sills, who made notes. Mr Campbell requested a chance to examine the findings.

  He explained things to me without patronising me too much.

  “They like to have eleven or twelve points of identity,” he said. “Here they’ve managed to find, at best, eight, here with this thumbprint taken from the letter-opener, see?” I looked at the photograph, and saw where a blood-smeared hand had gripped the engraved steel handle of the opener.

  “They’ve got me,” I said. Even I could see it.

  And before Campbell could stop me, I said again, “But I didn’t do it! I didn’t kill him!”

  Carmody grinned. He looked wickedly satisfied. “Ah, Mrs Black, but you did.”

  32

  “Mrs Black,” Campbell said to me during a brief break, even as I felt the icy draught from the vast hammer plunging down to smash me apart. “Remember what I told you. We can get evidence like this disallowed. It will be all right. You just need to hold yourself together now. Believe me.”

  I could think of nothing more to say. I’d protested my innocence, and it had not been enough.

  And yet, something else was going on here, other than the main show. It was all about the old man in the corner, sitting there quietly, killing his disgusting cigarettes under his shoe. I wondered if Carmody’s earlier agitation and his excitement now had anything to do with this man. He did not look like a policeman of any sort. There was something “other” about him that I could not place, and rather felt that I would regret finding out. Still, he took no part in the proceedings. He had offered no further notes.

  Once back in the stifling box, I sat next to Campbell, and did my best to shut up. It was not something which came naturally to me. I believed I was finished. Campbell, if he managed to change the way it would surely play out at all, would most likely only succeed in reducing my sentence. I thought, a sarcastic voice in my head, about prison novelists. All that time to do nothing but sit and write.

  Carmody said, at one point, sitting back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest, “You know we’ve got enough. You might as well confess, love.”

  Campbell felt me bristle. He said, “It would not be the first time one of your perfectly airtight cases fell completely apart in court, though, Inspector, now would it?”

  Sills looked unhappy about that barb, but Carmody kept on smiling. “It’s all over, mate. You know it. I know it.” He turned his gaze on me, and smiled. “Even you know it, Your Highness. It’s all over. You’re done, and done properly. This isn’t bloody England, where nobs like you can go about living as you like because you’re all born to rule and the rest of it. This is here, this is Australia, a whole country full of convicts and the grubby spawn of convicts. We take this sort of thing rather seriously, m’lady. Here, we don’t let the upper classes get away with rank arrogance and foul deeds like yours. We put people like you away for a bloody long time. A long time. And when you go and murder a man of the cloth, a helpless old man, in cold blood, like what you done — well, we take a very special interest, don’t we, Sergeant? Isn’t that right?”

  Sills did look smug, in a subdued sort of way.

  The old man considered his black cigarette, and took a long, long pull on it. The black smoke jetting from his big nostrils looked like poison.

  “At this point, Mrs Black,” Campbell was saying to me, “what you need is a rock-solid alibi, to prove you could not have been at the scene that night. So far we only have your story that you and Mr Duncombe were out all that night driving about the countryside. The fact that Mr Duncombe tells the same story does not help you much — you both had long enough to agree on your story. What you need are witnesses or documents which demonstrate you were nowhere near Father William’s cottage … ”

  I looked at him, trying to convey things to him without speaking. Campbell knew where I was that night. I had told him. He knew, as I knew, that the only possible witnesses were, on one hand, a demon, and, on the other hand, what might have been an elven shaman. Even if we could find this latter individual, it did not seem likely that he would provide helpful testimony. Thanks to Gordon’s protection charm, there was a high likelihood that the elf had not even seen me. And it was hard to believe a court of law would accept testimony either from a demon, no matter how “tame”, or about a demon, particularly considering the demon’s own role in what had happened to “poor” Father William. As tempting as it was to think that a magistrate would laugh the demon evidence out of court, I knew it was foolish to count on such things. A good Crown Prosecutor, it seemed to me, could possibly find a way to make the e
vidence in Father William’s book work.

  All of which left me trapped like an insect in a killing bottle.

  I knew how the legal system operated. I could be charged with either Manslaughter, Murder, or, worse yet, Wilful Murder. Then, once I was formally charged, the police would transport me up to Perth, where I would appear before a magistrate at the Supreme Court, and plead “Not Guilty”. There was little to no prospect of bail; they would remand me to sit in prison until the trial started. It could take a long time.

  So, this time tomorrow, I could be in prison.

  I was still no closer to learning the truth about my father and Antony.

  Julia had said in her note from the deadworld that she had somehow found the shade of Father William. And he had all the answers I needed — and no reason on Earth to tell me.

  My staff would lose their jobs, and their home.

  I could not imagine seeing Gordon again, or that he would forgive me. I truly had been willing, that night, to sacrifice my right arm. Had I not made that clear enough to him? There had been no need to sacrifice his dogs. No need at all. I would have managed. I meant what I had said. I could type with one hand. How could he not have understood that? Was it pride? Idiot male pride, not wanting the help of a woman? But how could his pride have been stronger than his devotion to his beloved dogs?

  Mr Campbell offered me a silk handkerchief. Not looking up, I thanked him.

  Inspector Carmody smiled, seeing me brought so low, and soon lower still. He said, “Well, since you don’t seem to have anything much to say, m’lady, we might just move to the exciting part, and work out the formal charges. How does that sound?” He rubbed his hands with vicious glee. Sergeant Sills looked as though he did not share his superior’s taste for humiliating women.

  Mr Campbell, still not looking troubled, said, “This won’t pass muster, Carmody. No magistrate is going to accept the fingerprints.”

  “Nothing wrong with them that I can see. What about you, Sergeant? Looks pretty straightforward, eh?”

  Sills made a show of looking at the prints. “Looks tickety-boo to me.”

  “Yes,” Campbell said, his tone making clear what he thought of Sills’ analytical skills, “you would think so.”

  Sills bristled. Carmody looked at me. “We just have to get the paperwork typed up. Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes. Feel free to wait here.” They left. I could hear Carmody chuckling as they went up the hallway.

  The air was unbreathable. I felt as if I were choking.

  The old man sat forward in his chair, legs apart, holding his cigarette, burning end tilted up. He continued to look thoughtful, even a little amused. It was hard to tell. I wanted to know what on Earth he was doing there, but no-one was talking to me.

  I asked Campbell, “What makes you think you can get the fingerprints excluded?”

  “Well,” Campbell said, “seventy-five per cent.”

  “The police don’t seem too worried.”

  “The police,” he said, smiling thinly, “don’t know who my fingerprint expert is.”

  “You have a fingerprint expert.” It seemed like something he would have.

  “She’s particularly good at spotting shonky prints like these.”

  “They’re more than shonky,” I said, trying to keep my voice down, and trying not to cough.

  “Precisely. That’s the sort of thing she does.”

  “She knows about …?”

  “Her bread and butter, Mrs Black.”

  “The inspector won’t be pleased.”

  “The inspector should be accustomed to this sort of thing. I’ve rubbed his nose in it often enough.”

  “I see,” I said. “What about what happened to Aunt Julia?”

  “Separate business. The inspector is still snuffling about, I expect.”

  “So it’ll go unsolved, and Aunt Julia will get no justice, you mean.”

  “It’s an imperfect world, I’m afraid.” He looked not much bothered by this. Julia’s brutal, terrifying death meant little to him. He was terribly sorry about it, but it was not his problem. After all, he understood, from my story, that it had been likely committed by an entity from another realm of existence. “Bit hard to serve an arrest warrant where no Earthly jurisdiction applies,” he had said.

  Which left me to deal with it.

  I knew that Father William had given Variel the instructions that led him to kill Julia.

  I knew where Father William could be found.

  Carmody’s heavy footsteps came charging down the hallway outside. He was a big man; it was easy to imagine him, decades earlier, many stones lighter, intimidating smaller players on the football oval. And now he was back, bearing fateful papers. Sills brought up the rear, looking considerably less excited, and glancing worriedly at the old man. It occurred to me that Sills did not know who this was, either.

  Carmody did not sit. He slapped the sheets down before me, and, pointing with his stubby finger at the typed text as he spoke, informed me that under the laws of Western Australia, I was being charged with Wilful Murder in the matter of one Father William Arthur Dennis. As he read it all out to me, Mr Campbell held my hand, and told me that it was all nonsense, and that I had nothing to worry about.

  I did not believe him.

  I believed I was finished.

  Carmody finished explaining everything, and showed me where I needed to sign and initial the papers in recognition of the fact that the arresting officer had indeed told me of the formal charge against me, and that I understood everything. He showed me where I needed to put today’s date, as well. It was all very proper. The papers, with layers of carbon paper between each sheet, smelled very official. The inspector’s fountain pen moved well across these papers. My hand shook, however, and I left unsightly blobs of purple ink everywhere. Carmody muttered about the mess I was making.

  Then, at last, it was done.

  “Please stand, Mrs Ruth Elizabeth Black,” Carmody said to me.

  I tried to stand, but my legs were weak. Campbell helped me up.

  “A car is being brought around as we speak. Once it is ready, Sergeant Sills and I shall take you into our custody, place your hands and feet in irons, and we shall transport you to Perth, where you shall be housed temporarily in the Roe Street police lock-up, prior to your appointment tomorrow with the magistrate for the preliminary hearing. Is this clear, Mrs Black?”

  Sergeant Sills produced a set of iron manacles and chains.

  I stared at them. A stray part of my mind, still aware and thinking, wondered where Carmody had been hiding those. Another angry part of me wanted to scream that I was damned well innocent! Instead, all I could coax out of my dry mouth was a feeble noise. I had kept the kite of my unorthodox life aloft for a long time, colourful and beautiful, a rare and exotic thing, but now its wreckage lay at my feet, everything ruined.

  33

  “Inspector; Sergeant? That will do, I think.”

  My eyes had been fixed on the black iron manacles. All I could hear was the heavy chinking sound they made in Sills’ hands.

  Carmody swore. “You bloody bastard.”

  “I’ve made up my mind,” the new voice said.

  Carmody swore quietly and said, “You said you bastards needed more time!”

  “I said, Inspector, that I have decided.”

  “I knew it! I bloody knew it.”

  “Surrender the prisoner to my custody, as per the Act.”

  Confused, I looked around. Carmody was shouting now, at someone. Campbell indicated the old man in the corner. He was standing now, very still, holding his current cigarette upright in his left hand, down at his side.

  “You can’t do this to me. Not now!”

  The old man said, quietly, “Do not test me, Inspector.”

  “You said you hadn’t decided — ”

  “I needed time.”

  “But we’ve got her — don’t you bloody see? She’s done!” Carmody was shouting again, waving th
e forensics report at the old man. “Dead to bloody rights!”

  Sills looked as confused as I felt. He was looking around, perhaps for somewhere in which to disappear. Carmody was swearing and punching the stone wall.

  “Mrs Black,” the old man said. “My apologies.” His voice was quiet and hoarse; he spoke with some sort of European accent that I could not place.

  “What’s …?” I looked at Campbell.

  Campbell sighed. “This is what I alluded to previously. There are other interested parties.”

  Carmody was saying, “Dead to bloody rights!” over and over, and flicking through the arrest documents. His knuckles were bleeding.

  The old man turned, looking slightly pained, and said, softly, to Carmody. “Wait outside. Both of you.”

  “So help me I’ll bloody kill you, mate, you mark my words, mate. You watch out, I’ll bloody kill you!” Carmody said, but he went. As the door closed on him and Sills, the inspector shouted, “I’m not finished with you, m’lady! You mark my bloody words! I’m not finished with you by a long chalk!”

  Campbell said, “My word … ”

  The old man said, “Please, sit, sit.” He gestured with his free hand, and sat himself in Carmody’s chair. He closed both case folders and, carefully, set them to one side.

  “You took long enough to show your colours, sir,” Campbell said to him.

  More confused than ever, I stared at Campbell, and then at the old man. He looked as though he would like to dismiss Mr Campbell as well as the policemen.

  Minutes earlier, facing the prospect of iron manacles and immediate imprisonment, my future had acquired a certain bleak simplicity. I could not then see how things could play out differently from how the inspector described. I was going to prison, and that would be that. The terrifying threat to the Establishment would be taken away forever. The world would once more be safe for ordinary people. And even if, by some miracle, I had been acquitted of the charge, my future in Pelican River did not look favourable. In the minds of many townsfolk, I would always be held responsible for Father William’s death. No amount of proof would suffice. People, I knew, were like this. They could hold onto their prejudices as if they were lost at sea, clinging to life-preservers.