by Frank Tuttle
Chapter Six
The Western Star was passing the Black House before we managed to swap stories.
The Black House is quickly gaining infamy, at least among Rannit’s more sensational papers. It started out as just another railroad warehouse, until the stories about the iron coffins began making the rounds. The C&E railroad officials deny they transport the corpses of any passenger who dies in transit inside iron boxes shut tight with bolts. The C&E denies the Black House stores these coffins until the dead wagons pick them up for that last ride to the crematoriums. The railroad denies they keep the pieces of the cursed Number 39 engine in the five Black Houses that lie along the three thousand mile Western route.
With every stern denial, the legend of the Black Houses takes stronger root.
Neither Darla nor Gertriss appeared to notice as the windowless bulk of the warehouse rushed past our window.
I motioned to Rowdy for another beer.
“So she played us all,” I reflected. “She hired Gertriss to see her money safe to Hogstown. Told her to say nothing to me. Told me the same thing, with the same warning about Gertriss. Gave us both a small trunk of Old Kingdom gold. I imagine the combined weight of them is the price she actually agreed to. Mama, you hairy old snake.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Gertriss muttered. “She could have hired us both. Hired one, told the other the truth. There’s nothing to be gained from this.”
I recalled Mama’s warning about leaving Rannit, and shrugged. “She seemed damned eager to get everyone out of Rannit,” I said. “Maybe that was her end-game. But if so, why did Mama stay behind?”
“We don’t know that she did,” Darla said. “She might be aboard right now.”
“If she was, Buttercup would be right here dancing on the table,” I said.
“True.” Darla frowned and sipped at her wine. She opened her mouth to speak again, closed it, and looked hard at Gertriss.
“Oh dear,” Darla said. “You are going to be furious.” She put her hand on Gertriss’s. “I don’t blame you one damned bit.”
I turned and saw. I was up and moving and I got to Evis before he’d taken half a dozen steps into the car.
“Fancy meeting you here, Mr. Cooper,” I said, pumping his hand and motioning toward an empty booth. “Why don’t we have a drink?”
His face went from bewilderment to embarrassment to ruddy anger in the space of a few heartbeats. I looked back. Gertriss was glaring at us, her expression a near-twin to that of Evis’s.
His hand squeezed mine so hard my knuckles popped.
“Mama,” I said, by word of explanation. “One of her schemes. None of us knew.”
He let go. Let go and cussed and went red, probably for the first time since he’d been turned.
“I got a note,” he said, through a tight jaw. “Claimed you and Darla were in trouble. Said come now.”
“She’s gone too far this time,” I said. “But you might as well come sit down. It can’t get any more awkward.”
“I can get off at the next stop,” he said.
“Next stop is late tonight.” I glanced back at Gertriss and Darla. It looked like my wife was having the same conversation I was enjoying, only with Gertriss. “Look. Come and sit. We’re all adults. We need to compare notes, anyway. If Mama’s up to something, forewarned is forearmed, correct?”
He didn’t agree, but he didn’t turn away in a huff, either.
“You were bound to run into her sooner or later,” I said. “You just did. The worst has happened. What can having a beer hurt?”
“One beer,” he said. “Just to compare notes. That’s all.”
“That’s all.” I put on a smile and sauntered back to my booth. I slid in beside Gertriss, leaving Evis a spot by Darla.
“Rowdy,” I called. “A fresh round, please.”
It wasn’t a merry meeting.
Gertriss spoke in terse monosyllables when she spoke at all. Evis took to muttering and staring straight ahead. Darla tried to carry on as usual, but gave up any pretense of jocularity quickly.
Most tragically, three beers went unsipped.
“I’ll get off at Wetherneck,” said Evis after a silence lingered.
“You know, I expected the train to be rather faster,” observed Gertriss, her voice suddenly casual and light. “Why, I believe anyone, perhaps even a man, could simply jump right off it, and land without injury.”
Darla put down her glass with a resounding thunk.
“I have listened to both of you whine and bleat for months now,” she said. “I don’t know what happened between you. It’s none of my business. But what is my business is this—you are both behaving like children in my presence, and I will tolerate it no longer. Silence.”
She spoke the last word in a tone and at a volume that turned heads throughout the bar car and even roused the clown to a brief semblance of awareness.
“You will both remain at this table until we reach Wetherneck,” she said. “You will sit and you will look each other in the eye and you will by the Angels talk, like adults, and you will take one final stab at saving the love you obviously once felt.” She turned a withering glare on Evis. “I once watched you join her in the dance of the damned,” she said. “You were willing to die yourself, just so she wouldn’t die alone. And you.” Darla fixed Gertriss in her stare. “When he lay near death, did you not weep? Was your heart not broken? What was it you said? That you’d do anything, give anything, to see him live?”
Darla took in a breath, and no one dared speak. “If either of you leaves this car before Wetherneck, I swear before the Heavens you will wish it was Mama you infuriated, because Mama might forgive and Mama might forget but I don’t just hold grudges. I breed and train and raise them like prize racehorses.” Darla rose. “Get up,” she said to Evis. “Let me out. Angels preserve you if you don’t sit back down.”
Evis rose. Darla exited. He sat.
I stood, keeping my own words of wisdom to myself. Darla gave them both a final furious glare, and then we sought our sleeping compartment, arm in arm.
I was waking from a nap when a knock sounded softly at our door.
“You owe me fifty crowns if they both stay,” Darla whispered. “Sixty-five if they’re already holding hands.”
“I’ll be glad to pay it,” I replied. I opened the door, expecting either Gertriss or Evis or both.
Instead, Rowdy stood there, pale-faced and sweaty.
“Sorry to bother you, Captain Markhat, but I thought you ought to know,” he said, keeping his voice low. “We’ve got one for a railroad funeral, in the second sleeper car.”
Darla laid her hand on my shoulder and cussed under her breath.
“Natural causes?” I asked.
Rowdy shook his head no. “Too much blood,” he said. “The engineer knows you’re aboard. He asked if you might have a look.”
“My husband isn’t a railroad employee,” Darla said. “Isn’t there a Watchman aboard?”
Rowdy swallowed hard. “Not anymore,” he managed.
I echoed Darla’s curse word. “Let me get dressed,” I said. “Wait here. Be right out.”
By the time I closed the door, Darla was already concealing weapons about her person. I did the same, though I settled for only two—my old Army knife down my right boot, and a revolver in plain sight in a holster at my hip.
Darla patted down her long skirt and made a few small adjustments, and any sign that she was armed vanished.
“Let’s go view the corpse,” I said. “Ready, dear?”
“Ready,” said Darla, not smiling. I opened the door to find Rowdy pacing.
“Calm down, son,” I said. “Lead the on. Tell us what you know on the way.”
He got his feet sorted out and headed toward the next sleeper car. What he knew wasn’t much—both he and the engineer had seen the Watchman board. Rowdy had shown him to his usual berth. The man had gone inside and shut the door and when he hadn’t come out for his obli
gatory stroll up and down the cars, the engineer had sent Rowdy to see if he was drunk. Rowdy knocked, got no answer, peeked inside, saw the man lying face-down in a pool of blood.
The kid choked up a bit describing that. I briefly pondered how fortunate he was, to be so unfamiliar with the sight of death that he still found it unsettling.
We passed a dozen or so idlers on the way to see the dead man. None were wiping down bloody swords or attempting to launder fresh blood from their shirts.
Rowdy paused at the door.
“In there,” he whispered, turning a light shade of green.
“Stand watch out here,” I said. “No one gets in. Understood?”
He gulped and nodded. He opened the door and looked away. I stepped inside, my hand on the butt of my revolver.
Darla followed. Once inside, she shut the door quickly behind her.
She knelt, touched the man’s neck, shook her head. “He’s dead,” she said. “Still warm. Shall we roll him over?”
He was face down, arms straight by his sides. The blood pool was going dark and sticky.
“Not just yet.” There was barely enough room for two Markhats and a corpse, so I stayed put. “Tell me what you see.”
Darla shrugged. “An unhappy dead man. Blood. A bunk that hasn’t been used. His bag is still closed. His hat is on the floor by the door.”
“Good eye. So. Watchman comes in, arriving with the herd. He takes off his hat and puts down his bag and he’s probably about to unpack but he gets killed instead.” I knelt beside the corpse and rolled him over.
“Stabbed in the neck. Something narrow but long and very sharp.”
Darla nodded. “Someone knocked at his door. Asked to come in, or asked him to come out. He grabbed his hat, opened the door, and died.”
“Pretty much. The question is, why?”
I rummaged through the man’s pockets, mindful of the blood that soaked his clothes. I found a ring of keys, a handkerchief, sufficient coins for an evening of beers and railroad food, a comb, and a six-sided good luck charm he’d obviously wasted his money on.
I stood, the key ring in hand. “Cover him up, if you don’t mind,” I said. “Don’t want Rowdy fainting all over the corpse.”
As Darla pulled a bedsheet over the dead man, I ushered Rowdy inside. He gulped and shivered but kept down his lunch.
I showed him the ring of keys. “I took this from him,” I said. “He was a Watchman. I’m assuming he’d have a master key, just like you do. Can you spot it on this ring?”
There were only four keys. Rowdy and I compared his master to each of them, but none was a match.
“You think someone murdered a Watchman, just to get his key?” Rowdy asked.
“I think you need to fetch the engineer or the conductor or whoever is the captain of this big iron ship,” I said. “He and I need to have a talk. Right now, son. Right now.”
Rowdy scurried off.
“I should go check on the lovebirds,” Darla said. “Unless you need me to shoot someone?”
“Maybe later,” I replied. “Stay with them, won’t you? Not everyone aboard this bucket is what they seem.”
Darla nodded. “Neither are we,” she said, blowing me a kiss as she left.
I sat on the dead man’s berth and waited for Rowdy to return.
While I waited, I planned my argument. We’ve got a murderer on board, I’d say. A murderer with a master key tucked away in their pocket, right next to their gutting knife. The smart thing to do would be to throw the engine in reverse and go home. Let the Watch barge in and start bludgeoning people until someone slipped up and confessed. Before someone else died.
Boots came stomping my way. I stood. My silent friend on the floor remained where he was. “Sorry it ended this way for you, pal,” I muttered. Then I took a deep breath and opened the door, just as the dead man had done.
I found Darla sitting alone in the rear of the bar car. Neither Gertriss nor Evis was anywhere in sight.
I slumped into my chair.
“Well?” Darla asked.
“You first,” I said. “Did the lovebirds reconcile, or did they call it quits for good this time?”
Darla’s smile told me all I needed to know.
“Damn,” I muttered. “Sometimes I wonder who’s the better witch, you or Mama.”
“Me, of course,” she replied.
“So where are they?”
“Off in a corner somewhere making up for lost time, I imagine,” Darla replied. Her smile faded. “Why?”
“I need Evis,” I said. “The sooner the better.”
“So we’re not turning around.”
I replied in a mockery of the engineer’s deep bass voice. “‘It is the position of the C&E railroad that its trains maintain their schedules, sir, at all costs,’” I said. “‘This train will continue to Railsend. We cannot and do not stop for every single mishap along the way.’”
Darla raised an eyebrow. “I doubt Captain Holder of the Watch will be inclined to view the murder of one of his own as a mere mishap,” she said.
I nodded in agreement. “Seems there’s no great love between the C&E and the Watch,” I replied. “Engineer Stoddard maintained that the Watchman, whose name was Baker, by the way, was a notorious womanizer probably offed by a jealous husband or a jilted lover.”
“And what does finder Markhat say to that?”
“Same thing I said to Stoddard. If it was an act of passion, why steal the master key?”
“And? What did he say?”
I sighed and took off my hat. “He said that was my problem now. He cited some railroad laws enacted last year. Claims in the absence of the Watch, the Army takes on security.”
She kept her face blank. “The Army. The one in which you, my dear, are a Captain.”
“The very same.” I saw Rowdy dart past and snagged his elbow. “The gentleman who boarded at the last minute? The one who raised a stink?”
Rowdy nodded. “Cooper?” he asked.
“That’s one of his names, yes. Find him and bring him here, right now. Tell him to stop whatever he’s doing. Tell him he should have jumped when he had the chance.”
“Sir?”
“Just go,” I said. He blinked and just went.
Darla waited until various eyes and ears turned away from us. “What now?” she asked.
“I double Mama’s fee,” I replied. “Then I charge the railroad double that.”
“I meant about the rampaging murderer, dear.”
“We make rampaging difficult,” I said. “That’s why I need Evis. And you and Gertriss.”
I laid out my plan in whispers while we waited.
“Do you think Gertriss was right?” she asked when I was done.
I frowned. “Right about what?”
“Could we all really just jump off the train, right now, and walk home?”
Before I could reply, the doors at the front of the car opened and Evis came stomping in, followed immediately by Gertriss.
Evis’s face was grim, but his right hand held Gertriss’s left. Gertriss was dabbing at her eyes with a hanky.
They plopped down across from us. Evis was the first to speak.
“Can we make this quick?”
“Quick but not easy,” I said. “There’s been a killing. Worse, railroad law has been invoked. We’re on active duty, Captain Prestley. The pitching of woo will have to wait for Railsend.”
“Boss?” asked Gertriss.
I laid it all out. Evis glared.
“The engineer refuses to turn back?” he asked. “Despite the danger to all aboard?”
“Adamantly.”
“Then we are in, as they say, a pickle,” said Evis. “Do you have any idea who might want a master key so badly?”
“Someone who isn’t quite done killing is my guess.”
Evis and Gertriss sat close, shoulder to shoulder, still holding hands. Evis was still grim-faced. She still dabbed at tears. But whatever anger Evis felt was
obviously not directed at Gertriss, and whatever had her bawling wasn’t being blamed on Evis.
A brief silence lingered. Darla broke it in a whisper.
“Does this master key open anything besides berth doors?”
“Nope. I asked. A different key opens the locked luggage car. Yet another key operates the door to the freight haulage car.”
“Stupid, killing the Watchman just to get his master key,” said Gertriss.
“Maybe not so much. The killer probably knew the train won’t stop for anything short of a missing bridge. Maybe they figured the theft would go unnoticed until the Watch itself got involved on the return trip,” I said.
“So what do we do?” asked Gertriss.
“There are two sleeper cars,” I said. “The rear-most car has thirteen berths. The forward car has sixteen. Let’s say I’m the killer. I know where my next victim sleeps. I plan to sneak to my next victim’s door, use my stolen key to slip inside, do the deed, and sneak back out. But what if suddenly I’m no longer sure who is sleeping where?”
Evis spoke. “So we shuffle the passengers all around. Remove the killer’s advantage.”
I nodded. “We do. Every evening. We also post watchers at the end of both sleeper cars, so anybody moving around is seen. We keep notes. We make murder impossible.”
“What if the killer gets off at the next stop?” asked Darla.
“Then good for them. Let the Watch chase them down after we’re all home and snug in our beds. That’s actually the outcome I’m hoping for. No more deaths. A relaxing train ride to Railsend.”
“Holder will scream for your head if that happens, boss,” said Gertriss. “You know he will.”
“We’ll interview everyone aboard,” I said. “Keep careful notes. I’ll turn all that over to Holder, remind him that the C&E is a law unto itself out here. He’ll get red-faced and loud, sure, but he’ll calm down if he has a hundred pages of notes to read through and only twenty-eight suspects to round up and browbeat.”
“If you say so,” replied Gertriss. “How do we play this, then? Keep the murder a secret, pretend there’s some problem with the train?”
