A Study in Revenge: A Novel

by Kieran Shields

  Lean chuckled. “Good of you to come, Grey.”

  “I was surprised to hear from you so soon.”

  Lean tilted his head. “We haven’t spoken in nearly a year.”

  “Yes, but during that last bit of business, you voiced your hope that we wouldn’t need to renew our professional acquaintance.”

  “Yes, well, I missed that radiant bonhomie of yours.”

  “Bonhomie?” Grey chuckled. “Good to see that the Vocabulary for Policemen correspondence course is paying dividends.”

  He looked again at the building. The paint was peeling from the sides. Dry rot was visible in the sills below the few narrow windows. Many of the panes were cracked, and all of them held several years’ worth of dust and grime.

  “Judging by the air of morbid curiosity among our crowd of onlookers, and the absence of any signs that a financially motivated crime would even be possible at these premises, I assume that the offense was one of bodily violence.”

  “Violence to the body would be a very apt description,” Lean said.

  “And yet there’s something else at hand that concerns you?”

  “Several bizarre pieces of evidence. The type of thing that, after our previous work together, I thought might be of interest to you.”

  Lean led the way over to the building. The front door was just a step up from the alley. The single granite block had been level at one time. Though the idea seemed foreign now, in the heat of July, the step had clearly fallen victim to decades of severe frosts that had caused the ground underneath to heave and buckle. Now it sloped noticeably to the right. It fit the building, which also sagged and slouched with age.

  “This isn’t just a stain,” Grey said as he peered at the hand-shaped mark on the door.

  “No—it’s actually burned into the wood.” Lean slid past, into the front room. The unkempt space was poorly lit, and the walls had gone a flat gray from lack of wiping. Years of scuffing by soles tracking in dirt had left the wooden floor dull and soiled. Still, a new series of blackened footprints stood out, leading from the front door across to the staircase on the far side of the room.

  Grey knelt and examined one of the footprints closely. He ran a finger through the mark, then sniffed the sooty material. Lean felt a bit uncomfortable watching the man dirty the knees of his expensive-looking trousers. Grey came from money on his mother’s side and, apart from his earliest years, had been raised to be a gentleman. He dressed accordingly, always in impeccably tailored suits. As if to balance the ledger, Lean straightened his waistcoat and tightened the tie he’d been loosening over the course of the warm morning.

  With the close inspection of the ashen marks finished, Grey returned to the front door. He then crossed the room, comparing his own track to that of the blackened footprints.

  “I’d say a man of average height, in no particular hurry, wearing mismatched shoes and intent on leaving a trail.”

  Lean nodded in agreement. “The body’s upstairs.”

  Grey held up a finger, wishing to pause a moment as he checked the other two rooms on the ground floor. The back room was small and held nothing other than a door to a dark, narrow closet. The kitchen, which never boasted running water, had been greatly abused, with the drawers and cupboard doors all having been removed, presumably for use as firewood. The brief examination complete, Grey started for the staircase, but Lean stepped in front of him.

  “Something I want to show you before we enter the attic.”

  The door at the top of the staircase was open, but Lean stopped short so he could close it. A small, four-paned window admitted enough light to reveal an image on the front of the faded, whitewashed door. Grey paused and studied the crudely drawn figure. A rough-shaped face, traced in ashes, stared back at them. It lacked a nose or mouth, the only features being two slitlike eyes that appeared to be drawn in blood. Above these was a small pentagram. The face narrowed at the chin, giving the look of a short, pointed beard. The head was topped with two curving horns, completing the malevolent, inhuman impression. Above the face, scrawled in greasy ash, was a two-word message:

  “ ‘Hell Awaits,’ ” Grey read, then motioned Lean to proceed. “Onward now. Impolite to keep your acquaintances waiting.”

  They entered the room, and despite the grisly sight ahead of them, Grey focused on the scent that permeated the space. He continually sniffed the air as he approached the body.

  “Like sulfur. Cheap eggs or expensive matchsticks—which have you been indulging in?”

  Lean nodded at the body. “His fault.”

  Grey bent forward, close to the seated corpse, and sniffed again. “So it is.”

  He briefly examined the man’s shoes, then stepped back. “That explains the difference in the footprints. He has a deformity—clubfoot, probably.”

  Grey began to slowly circumnavigate the room, patiently looking into every corner and occasionally stopping to consider the dead body from various vantage points. After a few minutes, he arrived back in front of the body, staring at a face scorched beyond recognition.

  “All in all, this is quite the case of fire and brimstone, eh? Well, we can officially eliminate what it seems we were meant to assume as obvious. The man was, of course, not actually on fire when he entered the house. The footprints do not reflect his deformity. Also, they’re too evenly and closely spaced. No one suffering the unbearable pain of being burned alive would have been able to walk up the stairs and find his way to a chair with so measured a step as this trail would have us believe.”

  Grey stepped closer and lifted the dead man’s arms one at a time, checking the palms. The back of each hand was charred, but the palms looked undamaged.

  “Furthermore, neither palm is burned, which refutes the right handprint on the outside door as being made by the victim. If such a ludicrous possibility even needed to be disproved.”

  After a close study of the face, which was swollen and horribly blistered, Grey tugged at the man’s collar, enough to glance down his neck. “No burns on the torso.”

  “Arms or legs neither,” Lean said.

  Grey pointed to the dead man’s mouth and then the right side of the head. “He’s missing teeth and part of his ear, but they could well be old injuries. Difficult to tell with the extensive damage from the facial burns. Has the photographer been here? And the city surgeon?”

  “Photographer’s come and gone,” Lean said. “Dr. Sullivan preferred to wait at Maine General and view the body there.”

  Grey’s dark eyes flashed a bit of surprise. Lean thought he saw a hint of annoyance as well, even though Grey had no formal ground on which to object to the surgeon’s choice. The deputy just shrugged.

  “In any event,” Grey said, “the scorch marks are placed selectively. His hair is only partly singed, the clothes are largely fine, though it looks like he may have taken a roll in the dirt. The soles of his shoes are slick with soot, but the laces are knotted loosely. They were tied by someone else, in a hurry and at an awkward angle. There’s something seriously out of place with this body.”

  “I’m glad to see that your powers of observation have remained sharp,” Lean said.

  Grey raised an eyebrow at the comment, and the faintest hint of a smile appeared. “As has your keen wit. I’m not speaking of him being burned and dying, but rather the order of those two events.”

  He stared at Lean for a few seconds. “Each one of my observations has been obvious. No inference I’ve drawn from the scene has been surprising. You didn’t need me to come here and tell you that all of this is a false design, some kind of hoax. So what is it that you’re not telling me, Lean?”

  The deputy feigned insult. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that, based on our past dealings, I’ve come to expect that you have an opinion on this. Furthermore, you usually find it difficult not to share your opinions. Which leads me to believe that you must have an ulterior motive for standing there so quietly.”

  “Well
, I know how you like to form an unbiased opinion of a crime scene, without the rest of us ruining the canvas with our foolish observations and—what do you call them?—preconceived notions.” Lean allowed himself a smile. Though he knew it was a touch immature and unprofessional, there was an undeniable bit of delight in knowing some elusive fact that Perceval Grey was only able to guess at.

  “Still waiting.”

  “His name is Frankie ‘the Foot’ Cosgrove. Knew him from those missing teeth—and he lost that ear in a fight years ago.”

  “I recognize the name,” Grey said. “Burglar, good with locks and safes.”

  “Usually small stuff, though. Nothing worth getting killed over. But he was shot early Sunday morning, the second. Single bullet to the chest. Small service, then they buried him over in Evergreen on Wednesday.” Lean wandered across to stand behind the dead man. He rested a hand on the back of the chair. “I was there in case any of his few friends started mouthing off about him getting shot. Came away empty-handed—or so I thought. Heard they had an open casket at the viewing the day before.”

  Grey took in the expression on Lean’s face. “I see. So at least you know for a fact that the late Mr. Cosgrove here went into the ground without a burn mark on him.”

  “You’re right, Grey. I didn’t need help in seeing through this ghoulish display.” Lean left the body and slowly approached Grey, gathering his thoughts. “Maybe it’s my lurid imagination getting the better of me. Maybe it’s the smell of the burned body, bringing back memories. It’s hard to get past that. But I can’t help feeling that once again there’s something … more lurking beneath the surface. And what I do need is a clue as to what it all means. Why would someone go to such lengths to desecrate a dead body so horribly?”

  [ Chapter 3 ]

  ONLY A FEW SCATTERED VISITORS MEANDERED ALONG THE manicured pathways that crisscrossed the two hundred–plus acres of Evergreen Cemetery. Grey and Lean stood close to the burial ground’s eastern edge, where a few broad-canopied elms and maples provided a bit of shelter from any prying, morbid eyes. A uniformed officer was also present, watching the two gravediggers haul up the empty remains of Frank Cosgrove’s casket.

  The men set it down atop the small mound of freshly turned earth that was supposed to be covering the man’s body for a peaceful eternity. Lean stepped close to get a better look at the plain pine box. The top third of the casket was shattered, and pieces of thin wood littered the area. Scattered about in the dirt and debris were the mangled remains of a wreath of flowers. Lean glanced at the diggers, who had already backed away from the grave. Even the patrolman had a skittish look about him.

  “What do you think?” Lean asked.

  Grey glanced up, then redirected his attention to the ground. He had one knee in the earth as he gathered up shards of the pine box, trying to fit them together like pieces of some ghoulish mosaic. After a minute, Grey settled on one section of pine board in particular, which he brought to the casket and held in various spots, trying to gauge its original location.

  “Here’s our answer.” Grey held the pine board aloft to view it in the sunlight.

  “Proof that Cosgrove was as dead coming out of the grave as he was when he went in?” Lean’s loudly voiced question had its desired effect, drawing the patrolman and cemetery workers closer to hear what he knew would be a perfectly rational explanation of the events.

  “Of course. Look here: The edges have been deeply scored to weaken the cover, and right here a small, perfectly round cut. Someone drilled a hole in the casket lid.” Grey then handed the piece of wood to Lean. “Look at the interior of the bore hole.”

  Lean raised the board to let sunlight stream through the hole. He saw several thin strands. He plucked one away and held it in front of his nose.

  “Rope fibers.”

  “Exactly,” Grey said. “The perpetrator covertly placed a rope inside the coffin with one end threaded through this hole. The wreath of flowers decorating the top hid the rope end and also disguised his further tampering. The grave robbers only had to dig a narrow hole into the loose soil of Cosgrove’s fresh grave, recover the end of the rope, and pull. The lid, weakened by cuts, would give way with ease, providing access to Cosgrove’s corpse.”

  “Then they could recover the body without digging up the entire coffin, and the shattered lid gave the appearance that Cosgrove somehow crawled out of his grave. Very clever.”

  “Makes sense.” A thick reluctance clung to the nearby patrolman’s words.

  “Still …” added a digger, who also volunteered a tilt of his head, which comprised the full measure of his insight into the matter.

  “Still.” Grey repeated the word like an accusation and gave Lean an incredulous look. “And there you have it. The scheme of our unknown corpsenapper achieves its purpose. An impossible event is disproved, but the belief that it happened still cannot be dislodged from the superstitious mind. People are scared. But who, exactly, is he trying to frighten? And why?”

  Lean glanced at the gathered faces. He wanted them to hear Grey’s explanation and so be able to spread the word that the dead body coming out of the grave was definitely a hoax. He did not, however, want them all over town doling out whatever potentially bizarre theory Grey might be about to conjure.

  “Let’s walk a bit,” Lean said to Grey.

  “Deputy, what about the hole?” the patrolman called after him. “And the box?”

  “Leave the hole; we’re going to rebury Cosgrove as soon as Dr. Sullivan’s done with the body. The coffin …” He looked sideways at Grey, who shook his head.

  “It’s told us all that it can.”

  “Get rid of it,” Lean ordered the diggers.

  The ground sloped away in front of them, and they passed a series of grass-covered mounds rising out of the hillside. The front of each mound held the door of a granite-faced vault that looked out over the back end of the cemetery.

  Lean broke the silence. “This whole business is a tremendous amount of work for someone to go through, and for what? A grudge against Cosgrove?”

  “Seems unlikely. If someone was angry enough at him to dig up his body, burn it, and drag it all the way across the city, why would they have killed him so cleanly in the first place? The single shot to the heart was a rather workmanlike murder. It doesn’t seem motivated by any personal animosity.”

  “Could be two totally separate culprits,” Lean offered. “Someone didn’t get his chance to settle a score with Cosgrove before he was killed. Took it out on him afterward.”

  “Possible.” Grey had his head bent forward, studying the ground as they walked. “But consider where he was found. Taken from here into the city to be arranged in that abandoned house.”

  “There’s nothing interesting about that property.”

  “Exactly. It stands to reason that the house was chosen because it would get attention. It provided shelter so that the criminal could make his arrangements, but the place is frequented by tramps and neighborhood kids, ensuring that the gruesome sight would soon be found. And few people spread rumors as quickly and wildly as do drunks or children. Add in the elaborate nature of the hoax: faking burned handprints and such. I suspect that these actions were not aimed at Cosgrove. This was intended for an audience that can appreciate the message—one that’s still with us.”

  “A threat, perhaps. At Cosgrove’s killer—someone seeking vengeance,” Lean suggested.

  “Or a message from the killer, scaring off Cosgrove’s associates or threatening someone else who might have been a part of whatever got the man shot to begin with. All speculation. More facts are needed.”

  Ahead the ground evened out, and the men continued on toward a group of four ponds that marked Evergreen’s far boundary. Benches and arbors adorned a perimeter trail around the three closest ponds. Tiny islands dotted the waters, and short wooden bridges spanned some of the narrow sections. A couple of families with small children loitered about, tossing crumbs to the swarms o
f geese, ducks, and wayward seagulls that patrolled the water.

  “The devilish images and words, dead bodies being moved. It’s hard not to think about the last time,” Lean said.

  “Jotham Marsh and his followers. The idea had occurred to me.”

  The occult murderer they’d pursued last summer had been a onetime member of Dr. Marsh’s mystical society, the Order of the Silver Lance. Marsh claimed to have previously severed ties with the killer over the latter’s desire to pursue the study of black magic. Lean had found the man to be creepy and somewhat suspicious. Grey had a stronger reaction, thinking that Marsh had some blood on his hands by the time that tragic investigation ended.

  “There’s not a shred of evidence that Marsh has any involvement here,” Lean said.

  “True,” Grey said. “But I wouldn’t want to delay inquiries in that direction too long. I can’t help but consider how things might have ended differently last year if we’d fully understood the breadth of Marsh’s society. The worst of dangers can arise from unexpected corners. We should never again let Jotham Marsh and his cronies be a surprise.”

  The detectives entered onto one of the pond’s walkways, passing through a massive tree crotch overturned so that the two diverging trunks formed a pedestrian archway.

  “The only thing that’s sure is that the guilty party needed access to this coffin. You’ll have to talk to the undertaker,” Grey said.

  “What, not curious enough to come along?”

  “On the contrary, I’m quite intrigued. But I have a prior commitment, one that’s already been postponed twice.”

  “How pressing can it be if it keeps getting pushed off?” Lean asked.

  “The man’s lack of consciousness has prevented the previous two meetings. I’m told he’s unlikely to last the week.”

  “Well, I know when I’m beat,” Lean said. “I’ll let you know what the undertaker has to say.”

  [ Chapter 4 ]

  THE BUTLER MET GREY IN THE GRAND ENTRYWAY OF HORACE Webster’s house and promptly handed over a small envelope.