He silently clicked his bare heels for Stoner, standing behind his desk, then again for Hackney. “Chief Inspector.”
Tanyon took up his usual attendant position. Bruckmann, at the secretarial desk, began writing.
“Major Faust.” Hackney rose and nodded to him, not exactly smiling but with his eyes crinkling at the corners. Tanyon hadn’t exaggerated. The detective was wet through, dripping like a landed walrus onto the floor of the meticulous office, the imprint of his hefty frame darkly impressed into the seat of the wingback chair. He opened a canvas grip and pulled out Faust’s ankle boots. “Here you are.”
“Thank you.” Faust sat and pulled one on, keeping his face bent over his crooked knee as he laced and tied it. Stoner was too good at that game and Faust didn’t want to play tonight. “I had a weird dream earlier, about running on the shore of the Baltic, maybe because my feet were cold.” He pulled on the other boot. “I realize it’s not a lot in the grand scheme of things.”
Hackney shrugged and sat in the chair beside his. “Cold feet aren’t pleasant.”
“No, they’re not.” He laced the second boot. “If I’m not being indiscreet, how is the investigation coming?”
“Slowly, slowly. We’ve got some evidence, but the list of suspects is long and it’s going to take us time to sort it all out.” Hackney fixed him with a keen stare from beneath his sopping hair. “Do you know what I mean?”
“You said you had the killer’s bootprints and blood type.” He ignored what sounded like a rhetorical question and laced his second boot. “And fingerprints? Did you say you have those, too?”
“No. We hoped we did, but we were wrong.”
Boots on; that was better. Faust turned to face Hackney, the occasional table between them. “Am I still a suspect?”
Hackney paused. His stare had not wavered nor lightened. Tension lay beneath the surface of his casual chatter; it hadn’t been there last night. “That’s a difficult question to answer. Understand, your bootprints and blood type are both wrong for the killer.”
What a wonderful English non-answer. “Does that mean no?”
“It means I couldn’t make a case against you in a British court of law under British rules of evidence. But not everyone understands the science involved in a case like this.”
“I’m not certain I do.”
“Well, there you are.” Hackney nodded as if he’d scored an important point.
“But what does that mean?” Faust asked.
Hackney paused again. His intensity ratcheted up another notch. “It means some people won’t believe the evidence. Some people are still going to think you did it, you murdered those girls, no matter what we say to the contrary.”
There was some hidden message buried within Hackney’s words; the unwavering stare was too pointed for anything else. But Faust had no idea what the message could be.
“Well, don’t some people still believe the world is flat?” Faust glanced at Stoner, impassive and listening politely despite the waterlogging of his office. He turned back to Hackney in time to see his chin lower two inches.
“Something like that.” Hackney riveted him with his stare. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Caution; Hackney must be advising caution. Perhaps he worried about a potential lynch mob should Faust escape and fall into the wrong hands. And perhaps he had a point, but with Stoner’s investigation — or interrogation, or whatever — gathering momentum and about to steamroller right over him, he could no longer afford caution.
“Yes. I understand you.”
It seemed to satisfy Hackney. “Right, then.” He rose; Faust and Stoner followed suit. “I’ll get back to my involved investigation and you gentlemen can return to your concerns.”
Stoner spoke for the first time. “Sergeant Tanyon, escort the prisoner back to his cell. Chief Inspector Hackney, can I not interest you in spending the night in spare quarters here? The rain has hardly lessened.”
Faust clicked his heels for Stoner and Hackney, audibly this time, and half-bowed before leaving the office, those boots clumping behind him.
“What was that all about?” Tanyon asked as they stepped onto the second-floor landing. The rain pounded the skylight above.
“Darned if I know.” Faust glanced over his shoulder. In the blacked-out darkness beneath the skylight, Tanyon’s bulk loomed only a step behind him. He turned down the corridor and eased along it toward the guardroom. “Did you get the impression he was trying to tell me something?”
“I did, at that.”
“Any idea what the message might be?”
“Nope. You said you understood it.”
“I lied. Couldn’t you tell?” Faust paused outside the lavatory. He didn’t turn again. His heart thumped so loudly, the man had to hear it. “Here first?” When Tanyon hesitated, he added, “I mean it, I’m not going to clean it up.”
Tanyon sighed. “Leave the door open.”
“Fine,” Faust said, then twisted and slammed his left fist as hard as he could into the pale blob of Tanyon’s face.
The sergeant smashed into the wall and bounced off. His body slumped and started to fold. It was Faust’s second victory against the English and it felt fabulous. He hit Tanyon again, harder, with a sort of manic desperation — frag it, this had to work — then put his entire weight behind an uppercut to the jaw. Tanyon’s head snapped back, hit the wall again, then he slid to the floor in a huddled heap.
“Sergeant?” Pym’s voice called from the guardroom down the hall. “Sergeant Tanyon, is that you?”
Faust swept the lavatory door shut behind him and shot the bolt home. He only had seconds. His heart beat light and free, galloping like a horse along a white-sand beach, and he wanted to laugh for sheer exultation.
He crossed the small room in two strides, stepped behind the w.c., unlocked and pushed out the casement window. The blackout shutters bolted from the outside. No time for finesse; he punched them open and ignored the flash of pain across his knuckles. Rain cascaded into the lavatory, soaking him within seconds. It was tingly and wonderful, like a poetic kiss, like the cold Baltic surf. No man doth mark whereso I ride or go. In lusty leas at liberty I walk —
He leaned out and looked down. There were bushes below that would break his fall. Without hesitation he stepped out into the rain.
Chapter Forty-Seven
early evening
Margeaux Hall
Black night engulfed the entry, black as the pit, and rain cascaded down the etched glass in torrents, splashing in rivulets from the panes overhead. Nobody could possibly want to walk in such a gullywasher, no matter what he claimed. Bruckmann made a last appeal to reason. “Chief Inspector Hackney, are you certain I can’t talk you into staying the night? It’s no problem, I assure you.”
Behind the switchboard, Ellington showed as a pale gleam with darker spots for eyes, glancing from him to Hackney and back. At least in the dark, his usual dreamy, open-mouthed expression couldn’t embarrass the military.
Hackney smiled, his small eyes crinkling into slits. “You’re a lot like my younger son, Lieutenant Bruckmann. Did I mention that?”
A crash, followed by a calling voice, drifted from upstairs. Ellington sucked in a sharp breath.
Bruckmann ignored it, ignored the spasm of horror it generated within his stomach, and forced a smile even if no one could see his expression. No need for Hackney to figure out they had a disaster in the making. “No, sir. In what way am I like your younger son?”
Hackney glanced up the wrought-iron staircase, then tugged down his sodden fedora and buttoned his still-dripping greatcoat. The housemaid, Sally, would murder all of them in the morning. “Lovely manners, but sometimes you miss the point.” He pulled a small flashlight from his pocket. “I like walking in the rain. Like a naughty boy, if I don’t come home soaked, it’s not worth it.” A last wave, and he disappeared into the downpour, the beam of his flash wavering then vanishing in the murk.
; Bruckmann secured the door. Without pausing to panic, he clattered up the wrought-iron stairs, running as fast as he dared in the next-to-utter blackness. The small sitting area on the second-floor landing was deserted, the sofa and chairs mere lumps hulking in the shadows like hiding beasts. An even darker gloom enveloped the corridor beyond, a pathway into nowhere, with only a narrow line of light slicing from the slightly open guardroom door and cutting into the floor and opposite wall.
“Tanyon?” he called into the blackness. “Pym?”
“Lieutenant?” It was Pym’s voice, coming from the guardroom and still at his post. So the disaster at least wasn’t total.
Bruckmann hurried forward and shoved open the guardroom door, releasing the light into the corridor. Something moved further along, groaning and stirring among the shadows near the floor.
“Lieutenant?” It sounded like Tanyon’s voice, but shaky, as if hung over. “Give me a hand, would you?”
He ran down the corridor and fell over something soft and yielding before he expected to, tumbling into the wall, the soft something, and finally the floor. Whatever it was swore in Tanyon’s voice, too.
“What the — ” Bruckmann scrambled to his hands and knees.
A large hand clamped onto his shoulder and pushed. His elbows nearly buckled. A doorknob rattled, then Tanyon’s voice swore again. Bruckmann’s eyes were growing accustomed to the dark and he made out a dark hulking form above him lifting a foot.
“Sergeant, what — ”
The foot slammed into the door. It was the lavatory, Bruckmann realized, and suddenly the whole farcical situation made a horrible sort of sense. He scrambled the rest of the way up and followed Tanyon into the room, stopping when wetness misted his face.
The window gaped open and the bathroom was empty.
Bruckmann grabbed at the form beside him and connected with an arm. “Faust?”
He sensed rather than saw the nod. “Faust.”
“The bugger.” Bruckmann turned and ran for the wrought-iron stairs, Tanyon on his heels.
Chapter Forty-Eight
early evening
Margeaux Hall
They were rose bushes, and crikey, those thorns bit deep. Faust smelled sweetness, crushed branches, wet earth. The rain and runoff water from the roof poured over him like a baptism. Roses have thorns, Shakespeare wrote, and silver fountains mud. He rolled, yanking free, and fell face-first into the sodden grass. For a moment he lay there, drawing a deep lungful of air laden with moisture and the scents of grass and roses. Then he scrambled up and ran for the wall. The row of apple trees, and Woodrow, should be off to his left somewhere and not quite half a mile distant.
It was so dark, with the uncompromising downpour and the blackout, he only knew the trees were above him from the sudden slowing of the torrent, and he nearly ran into the wall before he saw it. The branches he’d seen had almost touched the ground. He scrambled about like a drunkard, waving his good arm and staggering in the dark, wetter than it was possible to be. Finally his hand swatted sodden leaves and he grabbed a bough. Faust held on, gasping with exertion and incredulous delight, and started to climb.
At the top of the wall he paused and glanced back. A dim glow lit the inside of the glass-walled vestibule. A voice cried out in the night. They were already in pursuit. His pulse accelerated. No half-hearted measures this time; he had to get away before Stoner buried him. Faust dropped to the ground on the other side of the wall.
A big dark shape loomed on his right, a tiny crack of light peeping from one window. He paused again, rain sluicing down his face. He had to get away, but the light drew him. Stoner was still in his office; it could only be Jennifer, alone in Woodrow and not minding the blackout. Faust crept closer.
Yep, it was Jennifer. He watched her cross the lamp-dim sitting room, walking past the unlit hearth to the oak dining table on the far wall. She wore a white apron over a pastel-flowered housedress, her auburn hair pulled back from her face into a bump on the nape of her neck. She carried plates and flatware, wine glasses perched atop, and as he watched, she set the table for two.
He was a fool, he knew he was a fool to stand there and observe her domestic tranquility while a glorious chance to escape this fiasco washed away in the rain. But he couldn’t look away. Whenever he’d set a table, at the orphanage or while working at the gasthaus, it had only been a job to do so people could eat. Somehow this was different.
She smiled as her quick hands arranged the flatware, her generous mouth softened by the lamplight glow that touched her face from below. Perhaps it was the flame’s warmth, perhaps it was the changed hairstyle and the way it emphasized the lines of her face, or perhaps it was the palpable happiness that lit her from within. But she was again the most beautiful girl in the world, the one he’d seen across Woodrow’s garden Sunday morning while he was too stunned to escape her presence before she captured him, heart, body, and soul. The lamplight returned the poetic roses to her cheeks, the coral to her inviting lips, and emphasized the fine dark eyes which would have attracted Wyatt even more than Anne Boleyn’s. If only Faust could sweep her away with him — but Wyatt had been there, too, and gave voice to that emotion four hundred years ago. I leave off therefore, since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
He’d never lived with a family, just occasionally shared a bed with a girlfriend, so if this was normal he had no way of knowing it. But from the way she straightened the napkins within the wine glasses, setting the table seemed less a chore and more a responsibility, a means of taking care of another person and demonstrating her love.
For Stoner. Never for him, and he had to become reconciled to that fact. He was the enemy and the man she believed murdered her little sister, and even if Hackney disproved one of those, the other remained.
Like everything else in his life, this was an utter disaster. He’d found the perfect poetic woman, one who’d taught him the reality of all those love poems he’d read and misunderstood through the years, who’d taught him to know his own heart without ever speaking a word of encouragement or affection to him. And she’d kill him before she ever would. I now have learned love right, and learned even so, as who by being poisoned doth poison know.
Should he knock on the door and tell her Stoner would be late for dinner? He grinned without mirth. No, she had that shotgun somewhere. Better not tempt fate, nor her.
Another voice called behind him. Still grinning, he ran south through the rain, leaving all hope behind where Jennifer walked.
Chapter Forty-Nine
early evening
Margeaux Hall
Bruckmann scrambled down the dark stairs to the vestibule, Tanyon behind him. Thunder crashed overhead and inside the curious empty spot invading his soul. They had to get Faust back before Stoner realized he was gone; green little lieutenants who failed at such fundamental tasks were surely returned to other, less desirable duties forthwith.
“He’s physical,” the sergeant said. “He’ll try to fight his way through one of the gates. Ellington, where are those flashlights?”
Bruckmann fished his keys from his pocket and unlocked the front entry, hearing Ellington at the desk sorting through the drawers. Amazing how calm he felt, panic confined to his unfinished edges while mundane activities demanded his center stage. But his pulse was picking up speed in a gentle acceleration like a train on a downhill gradient.
“You check the postern. I’ll run down to our gate.” No sense bothering with the main gate; it had rusted shut and the iron spikes atop it would emasculate Faust should he try scaling it. “Who’s on duty tonight?”
Tanyon pressed a hard round cylinder into his hand. “Whiteside.”
Bruckmann pocketed his keys, flicked on the flashlight, and hauled the door open. The rain roared down beyond his nose, spray tingling on his face and making him blink. It sounded like an oncoming freight train. Nothing for it; he sucked in a deep breath and ran into the storm. Without coat or hat, he was drenched in seconds. Faust woul
d pay for this and it was going to feel good. Bruckmann galloped for the front gate.
The cone of light, dancing with his slithering strides, flickered over a dark form huddled in the lee of the wall. He ran straight to it as it hurried forward.
“Lieutenant?” Whiteside stiffened to attention, ludicrous in a streaming waterproof, rifle vertical on his shoulder.
“As you were.” Bruckmann slid to a stop, balancing as the slick ground seemed to move beneath him. “Faust is loose. Has he come this way?”
Whiteside shook his head. “No one’s been by, sir.”
The postern gate, then. “I realize this means little under the current circumstances, but keep your eyes and ears open and report anything.”
Without waiting for an answer, Bruckmann ran north along the mortared-stone wall toward Woodrow, the finger of light flickering across the lawn before him. His heart beat faster, the train’s downhill course steepening as it descended into an ugly abyss within him. The ground near the wall, especially the rough, rooty area beneath the apple trees, had slicked into mud, forcing him to potter about while the prisoner escaped. “Sergeant!”
Another beam of light angled through the rain ahead of him. He changed course and accelerated, shining his own light toward it, but his feet shot from beneath him and he sprawled full-length in the slime. He paused long enough to snarl one of Tanyon’s choicest expressions, then scrabbled up, grabbed the flashlight, and stumbled on.
“Anything?” he asked when he arrived.
“Nothing, sir.” Tanyon paused, as if tacitly acknowledging the inaccuracy of his original assumption, but he didn’t apologize for it. “We have to sound the alarm.”
Deal with the Devil Page 33
