by C. A. Asbrey
“Mrs. Davies,” the woman brushed passed the thin man. “Pardon me, but I just had a hat box stolen. Can you believe it?” She turned back to the clerk. “Mary Davies. I’ll be staying at the hotel in town if you find anything. I’ll be checking in directly after I leave here.”
“The Three Trees Hotel,” Daintree replied. “I’m staying there myself. I’m sure I’ll see you there.” Daintree opened the envelope and glanced inside, satisfied with the contents. He tipped his hat politely and headed for the door. “See you later, Mr. and Mrs. Davies. I hope you find your hatbox.”
♦◊♦
The next day, a weary Nat dismounted and scanned the landscape of yet another tumble-down cabin, the last on their list as they looped their way back to town after a fruitless search. Their flagging spirits dropped as both men stopped and stared at the ground.
“Somethin’ heavy’s been here,” Jake crouched to examine the dual ruts cut into the soil. “And it was recent. It’s driven the grass into the soil. Judgin’ by the fact the broken grass is dead, it’s been more’n a few days ago.”
They both checked out the shabby building, the dilapidated wood siding as gray and dismal as the somber sky which hung over them like a pall. “The house doesn’t look like it’s been used for years. The logs have even lost most of their chinking.”
Nat strode over to the porch and mounted the steps, hesitating at the door. It swung open with a grating creak and he stepped inside, engulfed in the darkness of the interior. His eyes adjusted to the poor light filtering in through the grimy windows, until he could see the details in the poor habitation. The chimney hooks and spit were straight out of his own childhood home.
He turned at a noise, just in time to spot a little masked bandit of a raccoon make a dash for the door. The place had no more than the skeletal remains of basic furniture, and rotten, faded fabric still hung at the windows. His practiced eye told him the dust on the floorboards showed no sign of being disturbed, so he dismissed the idea of anything being hidden beneath them. There was nothing else to see here, so he clunked over the rough planks to the door and walked back outside.
Jake appeared out of what was left of the barn as Nat stepped out of the cabin. He met his nephew’s questioning gaze with a negating shake of the head. “Nothin’, Nat?”
The dark eyes dropped to the ground, a frown creasing Nat’s brow as he followed the ruts out to the perimeter with a sinking heart. He stepped back to ground level, wandering along the length of the tracks until they reached out to the circular, squat, stone wall. “Nat—”
“I know, Jake.”
“The well? Oh, dear Lord. Not the well.”
“We have to check,” Nat agreed, approaching the cover. He paused, holding his tense uncle’s gaze with fearful eyes. “We’ve got to.”
He reached out and pulled back the wooden cover and an ominous cloud of insects flew out, forming a hideous murmuration of necrosis, carrying the stench of rotting flesh with them as they spiraled and danced in mid air in a macabre whirl. Nat steeled himself to peer over the edge, into the black, dank, darkness below.
The stink hit him full in the face and he spun around, grasping his guts as he vomited on the grass.
Knowing blue eyes melded anger and grief with an air of resignation. “We gotta get help, Nat. They need a decent burial. They need someone to do just one decent thing for them for one time in their whole miserable lives.”
Nat straightened, gulping away the acid and tears of his convulsion. He nodded. “Yeah. And if that woman has got nothing useful for us to go on, we’ll get Pearl to ride her out of town on a rail. She’s had long enough to meddle. This isn’t a game.” He glanced toward the well. “Women shouldn’t be involved in this stuff.”
Chapter Nine
A soft, brown hand snaked through the blond curls as Marisol caressed the man in a professional act of welcome. He smiled, his eyes flowing over her golden skin, the color of running molasses, before he pulled himself back to the business at hand with an internal groan.
“Sorry, darlin’. I want that one, Pearl.” Jake pointed at Abigail who loitered by the kitchen door. She gave a little start of anxiety.
This was not the deal. If she appeared to be turning tricks, she would alienate the girls here, and other men might demand her too. She shook her head. “No. I’m a maid. I’m not available.”
“I gotta insist, darlin’. My money is good, and I want her, Pearl. I’ll pay extra. Double.” His eyes burned into her trying to get her to understand how much he needed her to spend time alone with him. Seraphina was ensconced in the kitchen baking bread for the next morning and he had hung around too long as it was.
Pearl paused, understanding the importance of Jake’s visit. “I think you should consider it, darlin’. He’s good lookin’ and pays well. If you were thinkin’ of startin’ out, it’d be a good introduction.” Her eyes narrowed, pressing home the point. “In fact, if you want to stay here you’d better learn to do as you’re told. Talk to him. All I ask is for you to consider it.”
Abigail dropped her head, picking up on the subtext. How could she do this without annoying the girls who were already eyeing her with hostile suspicion? They were paid by the customer, like piecework, and a maid taking a well-paying client was taking the bread from their mouths. “I’ll talk to him alone before I decide.”
She walked into one of the rooms with him, the assorted stares of the working girls penetrating her back like arrows. As the door closed behind him she gave a snort of annoyance. “This is not helping. Those girls hate me now.”
He strolled over to her as he pulled off his hat trying to take account of normal proprieties even in these strange circumstances. “We’ve found the bodies. I had to let you know and we ain’t been able to get you on your own. The cook never leaves the kitchen.”
“No! How did they die?”
Jake shrugged. “I dunno. Does it matter? They’re dead. We found them in a well.”
“It matters. It can tell you a lot about who did it. I need to see the bodies.”
“Abi, they’ve been in a well for over a week. That ain’t a good idea. They stink.”
“Of course they stink. That’s no reason for not doing a proper job.” She fixed him with the patient smile of someone used to handling objections. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, Mr. Conroy. I haven’t spent the last four years as a school teacher.”
He glanced down, still not happy women should be involved in the things his every instinct taught him to protect them from. “This ain’t right, Abi. You shouldn’t be in a place like this, and you shouldn’t be lookin’ at things like that. You’re a nice girl.”
Determined brown eyes burned into his. “Thank you, but Dora was a nice girl. She was also very unlucky. She didn’t deserve to die because of that, Mr. Conroy. We owe both her and Bessie.”
His face softened in way she hadn’t seen since she first regained consciousness in the cabin. “Call me Jake.”
She smiled, realizing this was a turning point for a man who would have cheerfully strangled her not so long ago. “Jake, where are they now?”
“At the funeral parlor. The doc’s gonna examine them tomorrow.”
She nodded. “I need to go there. I want to see them.”
“Are you mad? Besides, it’s locked. I came here to ask what you’ve found out.”
“I’ll tell you after I’ve seen the bodies,” she stripped off her apron and thrust her head out of the window. “At least we’re on the ground floor. That helps. And since when did a locked door stop you two?”
“I ain’t never broken into an undertaker’s. Anyway, locks are Nat’s department.”
She grinned at him as she swung a leg over the sill. “Good job I’m here, then. Come on. You can keep watch.”
“Abi, I came to talk to you—”
But she had already slipped off into the night.
♦◊♦
Jake glanced around as Abigail pulled something fro
m her hair and prodded and probing around in the lock. It wasn’t easy. The back door to the undertaker’s sat in deep, dark shadow, so it was difficult to see what she was doing. As she had guessed, it was a cheap, cursory security measure as most people did their level best to keep out of a funeral parlor, not break in.
“A hair pin?” Jake muttered under his breath. “Are you kiddin’? You’ve read too many dime novels. It ain’t that easy.”
The whites of her eyes caught the poor light as she glanced at him, still working on the door. “I’ll get us in.”
She wasn’t about to disclose to him she always kept a small lock pick in her hair as the truce was only temporary and this information may jeopardize any future attempts to bring them in. It was missed as Pearl tended to her, mistaking it for a hairpin in her innocence of the tools of housebreaking; well, as much as a madam in a brothel could ever be called innocent.
The knob turned with a satisfying squeak as Jake muttered in admiration under his breath. “You’re wasted in the law, Abi.”
“Come on, and be quiet.”
“Why? We ain’t gonna wake anyone.”
She snickered through the gloom as she sought a candle. “Let’s hope not, eh?”
Jake glanced around the room with a shudder. He had seen death in so many guises but something about the way the bodies were laid out made them appear as though they were sleeping, and when coupled with the blank, gray undertones, a crawling tingle crept under his skin. His eyes fixed on an open coffin. It was a little girl, aged about ten. Her eyes were closed but her skin looked like white porcelain whilst the ordered blond ringlets lay at either side of her face, arranged under the pink ribbons in her hair. The velvet dress would have been her Sunday best. She looked perfect; as beautiful as the angel she had become. There was not a mark on her, no sign of why she had died. Her death appeared to be arbitrary and pointless, but Jake understood how empty the life of her parents would be from this point, and a sharp pain speared his already scarred heart.
His breathing came in short, sharp gasps, and his fingers tingled. The sense of terrible foreboding washed over him; a terrible legacy which had followed him from his childhood trauma; the day his family were killed. His head swam and every nerve in his body was alight; ready to fight, ready to flee—but actually frozen. The vision of his sister’s broken body loomed into his mind’s eye, and the sounds from the past rang in his ears.
He felt Abigail’s warm hand slide into his, shaking him from his creeping nightmare. She spoke with steady reassurance, frowning at the trembling stiffness of the man known as a ruthless gunman. “Come on, Jake. Don’t think too hard about this, that’s the trick here. Easy does it. You’re fine.”
“Hmmm.”
“Breathe. Stop and breathe deeply. I know. It takes us all like this to start with, but the dead tell tales. You just have to learn how to read them. That’s how we help them.” She gave him a reassuring squeeze. “It’s also how we help those they leave behind.” She paused and rubbed his arm. “Are you alright?”
He took a sharp juddering intake of breath. “It’s kids. It always gets me when it’s kids.”
He shook himself out of his trance and followed her into the back room.
“Whoa.” He pulled back his head as the stench hit him like a wall. His eyes watered and, surprisingly, so did his mouth as his stomach turned over.
“Shhhh.”
“The smell. How can you stand the smell?”
“You just get on with it. It’ll pass. I’m guessing they’re in here. You can stay at the door if you want.”
She strode over and pulled back the sheet on the first body as a swollen purple, red, and black congested mass of rotting flesh came into view. “Who was the tallest? We’ll never identify them from facial features.”
She pulled back the other sheet and examining them, comparing the rotting cadavers.
Jake winced. “Bessie.” He glanced at the traces of the dyed red hair on the nearest body before he continued, staying as near the door as possible. “Dora was blonde.”
Abigail nodded as she held the candle close, running her eyes over the bodies, examining the limbs, the engorged faces and the obvious bullet hole in the forehead of the larger woman. Her body inspection seemed to take forever before she was satisfied. She then covered the bodies back up to the neck with the sheets. “I’ve almost seen enough. I just need to check a couple of things.”
“I saw enough half-an-hour ago.”
“Do you have a knife, or something sharp I can use?”
Horror flashed over his face. “You ain’t cuttin’ them open?”
She shook her head. “No. I think I can get evidence. I need some paper or something to scrape the fingernails onto, too.” She glanced over at the desk just outside the door. “There’s some out there. Can you get me a few sheets?”
She took the knife and scraped under the nails, depositing the residue on the sheet of paper. “They have broken nails. I’d need my microscope to be sure, but this seems to be human skin,” she glanced at Jake. “They fought for their lives, both of them.”
“They were scared?” Jake’s voice chilled in anger.
“I’m afraid so.”
“So how does this help us? This is even worse.”
“It means the murderer, or murderers, will be scarred for a little while where they were scratched,” Abigail replied. “It helps, as long as we can get them quickly enough. It’s evidence.” She held the candle as she used the knife to move the engorged flesh around the neck before she nodded to herself.
Abigail strode over to the sink and scrubbed at her hands with coal tar soap, and finished by pouring pure alcohol over her fingers and rubbing it in. She blew out the candle with a huff, snuffing out any more conversation and made her way to the back door.
They closed it behind them and crept into the alley where she paused. “Can I come back to the cabin tonight? Right now?”
Jake glinted at her with suspicion swirling behind his eyes as his hand crept to his gun. “Why?”
She smiled, recognizing the gesture. “Relax. It’s not a trap. I think I’ve found out everything I can at Pearl’s. I need to take another tack and find out about the “respectable” people in this town. I can’t do that in a brothel.”
He shrugged. “Sure, but why right away? What did you find out in there that meant you have to leave?”
“The smell. I can take the smell in there, but I can’t take another morning of emptying all the chamber pots at Pearl’s. She can do that herself.”
“Well, Nat wanted to know what you’d got. I guess you can tell him yourself.”
♦◊♦
Nat’s eyebrows rose in surprise as they walked into the cabin. “Abi? What’s wrong? Why are you back here?”
“I don’t want to stay at Pearl’s anymore. I need to move on.”
Jake closed the cabin door. “She examined the bodies, Nat. Handled them and everything. It don’t seem right to me.”
“Move on? What do you mean, move on? You lost interest? If you have, the truce is off.”
She gave a shrug of irritation as she hooked him with an angry glare. “Do your worst. Whilst you’re huffing and puffing, I have work to do. Do you have any paper and ink?”
He narrowed his eyes as she sat at the table. “Sure, yes. You looked at the bodies? Why?”
“Bessie was shot in the head, but Dora was strangled. Double murders don’t usually use different methods unless there’s more than one killer.” She slumped and gazed off, lost in her thoughts. “Poor Dora. I think Bessie was killed quite quickly, but Dora would have suffered.”
The men exchanged a glance. “How could you tell Dora was strangled?”
“The ligature was still around her neck. It was being covered by rotting flesh and adipocere. The rope was a thin one, triple woven a common type, so that’s no help. “
Nat frowned. “Adi—what?”
“Adipocere. The body can react with water to form a thi
ck, soapy substance, but that’s not important. I think we could be looking for more than one killer, people acting together. Bessie probably had to be killed quickly because I’ve heard she was a good fighter. I heard she once laid out a miner with one punch.”
“So? More than one killer?” Jake thought back to the German boy with the twisted mouth, remembering the stocky, grizzled father who lurked in the background.
“Maybe. You can’t assume anything. Bessie could have been killed first to terrify and control Dora or simply to get her out of the way. I’m keeping an open mind. There might have been another reason to kill her by a different method. To punish her perhaps?”
Nat crossed his arms. “If it’s too open you’ll never narrow anything down.”
“I know. That’s why I need the paper, to write it up and see what leaps out at me. I also need to get a different perspective on them and find out more about the respectable people they had dealings with.” She shrugged. “I’ve never understood why prostitutes are considered worse than the men who use them. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a hypocrite.”
Nat stood over her and peered at the scramble of notes. “What the hell is that?”
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye with a smirk. “It’s Gaelic, the Scottish language. You didn’t think I would write in English, did you? I don’t want to let you get a grasp on how I work. Not the way your mind works. These notes are for me—you don’t need to see or understand them.”
He gave a grunt and strode over to the chair at the far side of the table and threw himself down. “You really mean to bring us in, don’t you Abi?”
She gave him a small, regretful shrug. “You know I do, Mr. Quinn. It’s not personal. It’s my job.”
An intense look flickered over his face before his face dimpled into a cold smile. “So, what have you found out?”
“Bessie was almost fifty, or anything up to that, depending on her mood that day. She was born in Louisville and her folks were dirt poor. She married years ago and he left her with two kids. No one seems to know anything about them. Her clientele has been dropping off lately, and Pearl had to reduce her fees. She tried to get out, to find a man, but she only found bad luck, lots of terrible luck.” Abigail sighed and glanced at her paper.
