The Banshee's Walk

by Frank Tuttle

  I nodded knowingly, and a pair of jerks made their way to my palm, and then quickly into his.

  He motioned for me to follow, and I ambled away in his wake, happy to be rid of the Kelson and its unsubtle remembrances.

  “Here we have a pair of remarkable Galways,” he said, in a loud stage voice. “She’s not exactly embraced by the bosom of Rannit’s art community,” he added, in a soft whisper. “She refuses to depict anything involving the War. That doesn’t follow in line with the galleries, or even the Regent’s Council of Art. Makes her a pariah, truth be told.”

  “So is she able to sell anything?” I asked, whispering.

  “Sir, one of her artists could smear manure on a soiled bed sheet and sell it for twice anything here. The galleries claim they don’t want her, but the truth is it’s Lady Werewilk who doesn’t need the galleries. One vet to another.”

  I grinned, and another jerk appeared and just as quickly disappeared.

  “I find his use of perspective somewhat disturbing,” I barked.

  Steven made commiserating noises. We moved on, circling the gallery, and while Steven prattled on about this use of color or that sense of scale and perspective, I mused on more worldly matters.

  Lady Werewilk’s House might lack political power or even the kind of wealth that might make the Hill crowd nervous, but she had certainly caused an uproar in Mount Cloud. And if her crowd was selling their paintings like deep-fried money, that had to be putting a crimp in the coffers of every gallery on the street.

  Lady Werewilk hadn’t ever alluded to any such thing, and probably had never considered it. I doubted she thought of the money itself as anything but a way to keep track of whose art was lining the most walls.

  We’d come full circle, and I found myself standing before the Kelson that depicted Right Lamb. I inquired about the price just to be polite.

  Eight hundred and ninety-five crowns. That was an easy fifteen years of work for most of Rannit.

  “None of that is right, you know,” I said, not caring who might hear. “There weren’t any mounted lancers left, by dusk. And even if there had been, no one ever convinced a horse to charge a line of Trolls at night.”

  “Indeed, sir,” said Steven, with a small disgusted sniff.

  But he pointed as he spoke. Bottom left of the painting, a tiny hillock, one burned oak tree atop it.

  “I’m sorry you are not interested, sir.” he said. His eyes were grim. One Tree, they called it. Only six men out of two hundred left that hill alive.

  “Maybe another day,” I said, and then I got out of there.

  I guess I’ll never understand art.

  I ambled around Mount Cloud for another hour, and actually caught two more art shops open. I was shown out of both at the mere mention of Lady Werewilk’s name, the last time accompanied by a rather snippy “we deal in art at this establishment, sir, not amateur dabblings, good day.”

  Which only confirmed everything early-rising Steven had said. Lady Werewilk may or may not be making art history, but she was making enemies.

  Enemies who might be leaving surveyor’s sticks littered around her property.

  I checked a big brass clock in a shop and decided I had time for a cup of that high-priced coffee that I got hooked on during the War. Of course, we’d strained it through scraps of tent-cloth and used creek-water heated over a campfire, but I must admit I like the fancy café version better.

  I sat and sipped and watched people pass. Not once did I see anyone walk past with a just-purchased painting, but there was a lot of traffic in and out of the galleries. Some were workmen, some were clerks hurrying to work, some were bleary-eyed owners squinting in the sun.

  None looked particularly formidable. But of course if Lady Werewilk’s troubles were coming from Mount Cloud, they’d hire out the dirty work. People who don’t get up past noon are hardly likely to know anything at all about the surveying trade.

  But of course plenty of people did. With the slow but steady post-War boom, surveying was a big business. Trying to sift through the thousands of people who might know enough math and have some experience setting marker sticks would be a lot more difficult and time consuming that shaking down every gallery owner in Mount Cloud, and even that was impossible.

  I drained my cup and waved the waiter off. I’d be back to Darla’s in exactly two hours, which I figured would be at least an hour early but if anyone was going to gloat it was going to be me.

  Finding a cab was easy. I let Mount Cloud roll past, and I kept my gaze out of those windows.

  The Big Bell was banging out the appointed hour when I returned to Darla’s. Neither Darla nor Miss Gertriss was available, quoth little Mary the salesgirl, though from the giggling and hushed words coming from the back I didn’t have to guess where they were.

  Darla keeps a chair for me in the corner. I’ve always been a little nervous about that chair and its quiet implication that I’ll be spending so much time waiting for her that I might as well have a seat and fossilize. But it’s a nice chair, so I sat and pulled down my hat and was more than halfway to a snooze when someone tapped lightly on my shoulder.

  A woman was standing over me, smiling.

  My mouth was open to say something—I still don’t know what—when the woman laughed, and it was only then I recognized Gertriss.

  Her hair fell down on her shoulders in a smooth blonde wave. Her eyes were luminous, her lashes long and dark, her skin aglow as if from candlelight. She smelled of soap and a hint of Darla’s own perfume.

  Gone was her burlap smock. She was dressed smartly, not seductively, in black pants and a dark red blouse and shiny leather lady’s boots. Her waist was belted with a silk sash, and Mama was likely to emit steam when she saw the figure Gertriss was hiding under all that sackcloth.

  “Damn,” I said. Gertriss went wide-eyed and jumped back, as though I’d sprouted horns and cursed, and I realized with instant regret she was half right.

  “I meant you look amazing, Miss Gertriss,” I said, rising.

  “She does, doesn’t she?” said Darla, stepping out from behind her counter. “A little make-up, a few simple street clothes, and I believe she’s ready for life in the big city.”

  Gertriss blushed, deeply and suddenly. She kept her hands together, as if hiding them, and Darla grinned and caught them both up in her own.

  “We’re going to get you a manicure right now,” said Darla, with a sideways wink to me. “Mary, wrap up her things, will you? And see that Mister Markhat here gets the bill.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Darla took Gertriss by her elbow and led her toward the door. “We’ll be back in a bit, Markhat,” she said. “By the way, I left you a note.”

  And then she blew me a kiss, and left with Gertriss in tow.

  I shook my head and grinned. Mary darted up to me, curtseyed and handed me an envelope.

  “Thank you,” I said, as she busied herself wrapping and hanging what appeared to be the entire shop’s inventory of clothing.

  The bill wasn’t as bad as I thought, and since that would be Mama’s burden anyway I managed a smile and put it away. Darla’s note was folded in the far-too-intricate way of hers, so I took again to my chair and unfolded it and read.

  Darling, it began. I grinned. She always pronounced the word with a put-on aristocrat’s air, and I could hear it plainly in the letters she’d written. Your new protégé mentioned Lady Werewilk, and the case, and it just so happens one of our clients has a brand new Coltin—that would be one of Lady Werewilk’s resident artists—hanging above her mantle. It also happens that our client is to have a gown delivered this very morning—so if you could be persuaded to take a parcel to her, you might strike up a conversation about Lady Werewilk from someone who knows her. I have no idea how well they know each other, or if my client will even speak to such a rogue as yourself, but I know you’d prefer tramping around Rannit to sitting comfortably in my chair. Mary will give you the gown and the address. Mind
you don’t let the hem touch the ground. Dinner tonight at seven. Love, D.

  And there was Mary, grinning that female-conspiracy grin, address in one hand and gown wrapped in linen on hanger in the other.

  “I’ve never worked at a dressmaker’s shop before,” I said. “Do I curtsey before I hand over the gown, or after?”

  Mary wordlessly handed me her things and darted away. I tramped out the door, the famous finder Markhat abroad, gown in hand against a sea of troubles.

  Mary, at least, had the good grace not to giggle.

  Chapter Four

  The name on the card was Mrs. Adorn Hemp. The address was a complicated mess of turn lefts at the butcher’s and go right three blocks down from the Hanged Man and then look for a half-painted house—half red, half white—that stood next to a cab-stop.

  I wondered how many half-red half-white houses I was likely to encounter, next door to cab-stops or not, as I plunged into traffic and headed south and east. I judged the Hemp residence to be about five blocks, total, when I set out. It turned into an easy fifteen by the time I backtracked and wound through the old Spice District and finally gave up and asked a blue-capped Watchman for directions.

  Turns out they’d finished painting the house just that morning. All red, this time. I pondered the danger of relying too much on assumption all the way to the Hemp’s sturdy, tall walk-up.

  The stairs were freshly swept, and the door was ajar, and there were voices inside. Raised voices, a man and two women, the man choosing to employ bellowing and the women opting for a duet of high-pitched shrieks.

  I looked about. There were people nearby a—woman digging in a flowerbed, a man and a boy playing catch on a lawn smaller than my office, another woman staring at the sky while her poodle-dog defiled a rather nice rosebush with fertilizer of its own. I know they had to hear the voices, but none of them so much as glanced in my direction.

  I was about to knock when the man bellowed out “I’ll kill you both,” and then a woman screamed.

  I dropped the gown and charged through the door.

  The door opened into a foyer, and it opened into a great room, and I came stomping through it. There was a man a good four strides from me, his hands clamped around a tiny woman’s throat, while another woman looked on in horror.

  The man was wearing a badly fitted black suit and a monocle. The woman being choked was a busty brunette who managed a healthy squeal despite the large hands wrapped around her pale white throat. The other woman, a tiny blonde, stood by the fireplace and screamed, her hands raised to her chin in a useless expression of horror.

  The man doing the choking and the woman being choked were far too occupied with the business at hand to even notice me. A fireplace poker was leaning against the wall, and I took it and raised it and would have brought it solidly down on the gentleman’s murderous head had not the tiny blonde woman spoken.

  “You’re not Robert,” she said, in a voice far too casual to be used at the scene of a brutal murder. “Don’t tell me he’s claiming sick again.”

  She never lowered her hands from her mouth, or lost her expression of dawning horror.

  “He’d better not be,” added the woman being choked. Her tone indicated the sort of offhand annoyance one might express as being short-changed a penny by the kindly old apple-seller. “Or I swear I’ll see him replaced, today.”

  The monocled choker nodded, released the chokee, frowned at the poker in my hand, and then reached into his jacket pocket and produced a dog-eared sheaf of papers.

  “I thought I got hit with the poker in Act Three,” he said, rifling through the pages. “They haven’t changed it again, have they?”

  I lowered my poker.

  The woman being choked produced a similar document and, frowning, began to leaf through it.

  “You’re not Robert,” repeated the blonde. She finally lowered her hands, and looked confused rather than terrified. “You’re not even in the cast, are you?”

  “My name is Markhat,” I replied. Confused glances were exchanged all around. “I heard what sounded like a woman being murdered, so I let myself in.”

  The blonde raised an eyebrow. “So when you lifted that poker…”

  “I was about to enact Act Three a bit too early and a bit too hard,” I said. I leaned the poker carefully back where I’d found it. “I apologize for barging in. Are you Mrs. Hemp?”

  “He thought we were real,” said the brunette, beaming. “He thought you were really about to kill us.”

  The man grinned. “Not bad for a stand-in, huh? I haven’t rehearsed Robert’s role.”

  I stuck out my hand. It was the least I could do, after nearly braining the man.

  “You had me thoroughly convinced,” I said. Then I turned again to the woman while we shook hands.

  “Mrs. Hemp?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, I’m Mrs. Hemp,” she replied, smiling. “I’m sorry. I should have closed the door, but I didn’t want to leave Robert out on the stoop.” She stepped forward, laughed again, and offered me her hand to shake. “We’re rehearsing,” she said, as we shook hands. “Of course we rehearse at the theatre as well, but this scene is so sticky we wanted to work on it here.” She brightened suddenly. “Are you with the theatre, Mister Markhat?”

  I grinned back. “I’m not, Mrs. Hemp,” I said, while the brunette and her murderous male friend sat down on the couch and began a whispered exchange punctuated by numerous stabs at the script. “Actually, a friend sent me by with a parcel for you. She knows I’m interested in art, and I understand you have a new piece by—”

  I trailed off as Mrs. Hemp flew into a silent but furious flurry of shushing signs at me. She glanced at the pair on the couch, sighed in relief when she decided they hadn’t been listening, and ushered me out of the room, through the foyer, and out the door, which she closed with a solid bang.

  “That’s a secret, Mr. Markhat,” she said. “I’m not even going to hang it until the evening of our cast party for Three Murders by Midnight. It’s a Werewilk,” she whispered. “The best I’ve ever seen.”

  I winced. Darla’s linen clad gown lay crumpled on the stoop, so I bent and picked it up and handed it ruefully to Mrs. Hemp.

  “It’s from Darla’s,” I said. “I dropped it when I thought your friend was being throttled.”

  She brushed it off and smiled. “Well, I can hardly blame you for that,” she said. “I doubt it’s hurt. Darla always double-wraps.”

  “I’ll make it good if a stitch is out of place,” I said. “Now, about the you-know-what.”

  “You can’t see it,” said the blonde. “Not unless you come to the cast party.” She grinned a sly grin. “It’s two weeks from Saturday,” she said, looking up at me with an ever-widening smile. “If you’re interested?”

  I smiled back. I’m a generous fellow, with my smiles.

  “Oh, I’m interested,” I said, with commendable accuracy. “Do you know Lady Werewilk? Personally, I mean.”

  Mrs. Hemp nodded a happy yes. I began to wonder where Mr. Hemp might be, and if he himself had access to any wrought iron fireplace pokers.

  “Erlorne? Oh yes, I know her quite well,” said Mrs. Hemp, with an unwifely gleam in her eye. “Very well indeed.”

  Mrs. Hemp’s hand had made its way to my collar, and was adjusting it. Ordinarily, I’d have made mention of Darla and her collar-straightening duties, but in the interest of keeping Mrs. Hemp talking I let her correct whatever imperceptible flaw had crept into my shirt.

  Inspiration struck. “Let’s say I wanted to get my hands on a Werewilk right now, Mrs. Hemp,” I said. “You know the art community. How would an outsider go about that?”

  “Well, Mr. Markhat, if you’re so eager to get your hands on something, I suppose you could just go visit the woman herself,” she cooed. “You know, like you did with me. Just show up at the door.”

  Now it appeared my neck needed attention. I’d run out of stoop on which to back up. She knew it, and grinned, showi
ng teeth that were white and straight.

  “Oh, bugger,” she said. “At least have the kindness to tell me I almost had you.”

  I frowned before I could stop myself.

  Mrs. Hemp pouted. “That was my best femme fatale,” she said, stepping back. “Or are you in love?”

  I stared and she laughed. “You are in love,” she said. “That’s all right, then. No wonder you didn’t succumb to my wiles.”

  “I was succumbing, really I was. Another minute, I’d have been in a swoon, proposing marriage, assuming your husband wouldn’t mind.”

  “Mr. Hemp did me the courtesy of dying on our wedding night,” said Mrs. Hemp. “But I’d have said no, in any case, Mr. Markhat. I know all about you and Darla Tomas, you see, and I simply couldn’t lose access to Rannit’s best dressmaker’s for any mere man.”

  I grinned and wiped sweat I hadn’t known was there off my brow. “Good show, Mrs. Hemp,” I said. “And all that without a script.”

  She bowed. “Now then,” she said. “What is it you want to know about Lady Werewilk?”

  “Anything you can tell me,” I replied. “I’m not out to hurt her. The opposite, in fact. But the art scene isn’t one I know, Mrs. Hemp. And I don’t have much time to learn it.”

  “All right,” she said. She paused to let a gaggle of pedestrians pass. “I’ll tell you what I know. But only because you came charging to my rescue, you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Erlorne Werewilk wanted to be an artist, Mr. Markhat,” she began. “But she had an accident as a child. You’ll never see her with her gloves off, but if you do, you’ll see she’s missing three fingers on her right hand.” Mrs. Hemp shook her head sadly. “She’s had a lot of bad luck, now that I think about it,” she added. “That. Her poor addled brother. The Regent’s Council of Arts refusing her admittance, bad-mouthing her artists. And the rumors too…”

  She shut up, realizing she’d said something she hadn’t intended.