Murder, Magic, and Moggies

by Pearl Goodfellow

  The pages Fraidy and I were looking over were tedious in their mundane detail. I knew that golems had precise memories and anything at all could represent the next link in the chain that led us towards a solution. But, did I really need to know that Nebula took her usual bath with jasmine oil at her usual time of 9:03 PM the night before she died? Or that the golem was in the process of fixing a rigatoni pasta dish that Venetia had passed onto her which he claimed had come from a family recipe just before his big fight with Nebula? Or that Nebula’s first words upon waking up every morning were “Bitch, get in here!”?

  Page after page crawled by like a snail trying to run the Glessie 5K marathon. It was only nine pages altogether, yet every page felt like I was reading an entire chapter of War and Peace. I forced myself to stay interested and focused, but it was hard. Maybe that was another good reason to have Fraidy along for this ride. A cat who stays that scared is usually anything but bored.

  That’s why I asked him when we got to Page 7, “Seeing anything I’m missing, Fraidy?”

  “Sure,” Fraidy said. “Lots of ways that Nebula could have been killed…poison in the pasta, something other than jasmine in the tub, arguing with that strange man who made the golem. Plenty of ways to murder a shiksa.”

  The Yiddish term made me look at my cat. “What did you call Nebula?”

  “What she called herself on Page 5,” Fraidy said, amazed that I’d missed it. “It’s spelled out phonetically; the police aren't to blame for taking it down incorrectly, but I know the word when I see it.” He added sagely while leaning his cheek into mine once more.

  I turned back to the page Fraidy had mentioned. Sure enough, there was the exact quote from Nebula as reported by the golem: “I might be a mere shicked saw, but I’ll still be young and beautiful when you’re a tired, old man who will wonder how he could have been may-chug-ga enough to let his best years slip by him.”

  “That’s another Yiddish term there,” I said, tapping the second butchered word in the testimony. “It’s not ‘may-chug-ga,' it’s ‘meshugga.'”

  “You missed that one too?” Fraidy asked with surprise.

  I gave him an affectionate rub on the head. “See why I brought you along now?”

  “Okay, the guy who actually needs this case solved would like some explanations,” David interjected.

  “If I’m reading this right, then Nebula and her sister were, in fact, Jewish,” I said.

  “Yeah, so?” David asked, still not getting it. “You’re assuming that she didn’t pick those terms up from the Mainland and was just showing off her worldliness.”

  “But, in private conversation? With her berated lover? There's really nothing for her to show off in front of such a guy, is there? This is private speech” Fraidy countered, sounding a bit bolder than usual. “She wouldn't have bandied around these terms lightly. She probably remembers a time when the Mainland really had it in for Jews to the point of exterminating them. I’d do my best to hide all that from people too!”

  “Okay, say she’s Jewish,” David allowed, still looking unconvinced. “This matters because…?”

  “Because, Yiddish was probably the language that Goldsmith was talking to Nebula in when he came by for that unfriendly visit to the Spires. The language that the golem didn't recognize. The language that she is trying to describe in this testament right here.” I explained. “Which means the Rabbi may know more about what happened to Nebula than he’s letting on. Because as we are aware, this conversation took place just before Nebula's demise.”

  “Wait,” David said, holding up a hand. “Golems are Jewish creations. Shouldn’t this golem know Yiddish right off the bat?”

  I glowered at the CPI. “That’s as dumb as assuming that you automatically knew English the minute you got out of the womb. No, Goldsmith probably never had a reason to teach his creation anything but English.”

  “Besides, why would he want to make that clay-figurine-come-to-life’s life harder?” Fraidy asked, panic coming back into his voice. “Can you imagine being hounded from place to place just because you spoke the wrong words at the right time?”

  “Sounds like we need to talk to Goldsmith, then,” David said, heading towards the door.

  “Hold on, CPI Trew,” I said. “We’re not quite done reading yet.”

  “You just found a lead that potentially breaks this case, and you STILL want to waste more time?” the Chief Para Inspector grumbled.

  “How do you know that’s all of it?” Fraidy asked. “What if there’s some other deep, dark secret that we don’t know about that could get US killed if we don’t find it first?”

  “Panicky tendencies aside, I’m with my cat on this one,” I said, giving Fraidy another stroke of the head, which prompted another purr. “Besides, you expecting Goldsmith to break out of his cell anytime soon?”

  “Not with the anti-magic wards we’ve got on it,” David said with some understated pride. “Fine…waste a little more of my time and yours.”

  I ignored the jab and turned back to Page 7. Somehow, the reading got a bit easier as I went through the material this time. Maybe it was because I didn’t want to miss another possible detail like I had the first time. Maybe it was because I knew Fraidy would catch me out if my attention failed me again.

  This time, I was the one to find the little niggling detail on the last page. “Right here, Fraidy. Do you see that?”

  Fraidy craned his head a little closer to the material, grabbing my shoulder to the point of piercing his way through my shirt and into my flesh.

  “Right before she gets her letter erased,” Fraidy said in a cautious tone. “She smelled a heavy scent of lavender.”

  Fraidy’s nerve finally broke. He gave a little meow of panic, jumped off my shoulder and darted to relative safety under the desk.

  “Oh, Bast, Oh, Bast, Oh, Bast,” he whined from his new vantage point. “That means she was close to the murderer right before he did the deed! The smell of lavender was still in the air when we were there! If we’d been a few minutes sooner, it would have been us who were killed!”

  “Closed captioning for the detail-impaired, please,” David said, his sarcasm letting us know that he still wasn’t getting it.

  “Shade smelled lavender on the golem when we went into the kitchen,” I said as I bent down to retrieve my cowardly cat. “I didn't mention it, as I'd forgotten it myself. I pretty much brushed it off as an inconsequential and boring detail. Poor Shade, he tried to tell me more than once. You smelled it too, right, Fraidy?"

  “I did,” Fraidy agreed, shaking when my hands touched him. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But, Oh, Bast, I should have, I should have!”

  “Nebula had a vast array of cosmetics all around her bedroom alone,” David said. “I don’t see—“

  “Obviously, or you would have noticed what Shade did,” I said, pulling Fraidy back into my lap. “There was no trace of anything lavender-based, cosmetics or otherwise, anywhere in the house. Which is unusual, as she was known for her love of all natural beauty products. Lavender is the featured ingredient in most natural offerings. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Maybe she had just run out of lavender-based stuff. Maybe the lavender was something that had been built into the golem’s creation, and it was off-gassing at the time of the golem's sleep-state.”

  “But, if lavender were in the golem's make-up, she would have smelled it before. There would have been emissions every time her skin flaked, or every time she banged her shin.” Fraidy added, curling himself into as tight a ball as he could.

  David’s face told me that he was beginning to see it. “The golem would have at least mentioned if it was a scent that was familiar to her. Had any of Nebula's formulations contained lavender, she would have known, and would have therefore mentioned the aroma as similar to Nebula's toe-nail cream, or whatever.” He nodded his final understanding.

  "But, David, how come this detail was missed? I mean, how come I haven't heard of
it? It seems pretty valuable, no? That the golem smelled an aroma mere moments before Nebula was killed?" I shook my head trying to understand the glaring oversight.

  "The pot of water you took from the eye," David looked at me with a level gaze. "My constable looked at, said it was chocka with herbs; chamomile, bergamot and, well, what he thought, no, he was certain it was lavender. His wife used it regularly, and so, well, we thought we had that little detail wrapped up. We took the golem’s statement of smelling something flowery seriously, trust me. We just thought that it was coming from the pot on the stove, is all. ” My mind cast back to the pot of boiling water, and its contents.

  "Rosemary. The flower that your officer thought was lavender was actually rosemary." I closed my mind to the image of the herb. So similar in color in its greenish gray spiky looking foliage, and its tiny tightly bunched purple flowers.

  "Didn't Maude Dulgrey pick this up?“ I asked.

  "She probably did, but I confess I'm not sure my constable has even gotten to that report yet. I can't say I blame him, he's been breaking his back on the Rock Grumlin case on Cathedral Isle. There're all kinds of political heat around this death; PC Ambleside has got a workload that would put the inmates of Steeltrap to shame." he finished.

  “I think it’s time to have a chat with Rabbi Goldsmith.”

  Then, giving me a wary look, he added, “That is if my consultants don’t object.”

  I showed him all of my teeth in a cheesy grin. David took that as his cue to take his leave. Fraidy and I were right behind him.

  Goldsmith was casually leaning against the wall of his cell as we approached the bars. You’d have thought he was waiting at a bus stop, patiently waiting for its namesake's vehicle to pull up. He seemed not the least bit surprised to see us. Not ever having met this stranger, Fraidy got seriously low to the ground, and, ears flat and back, slinked off to some corner to hide while we talked.

  “Is it too much to hope that I may be no longer allowed to enjoy the hospitalities of das bund in the near future?” Isaac Goldsmith asked with irony.

  “You were Nebula and Cressida’s rabbi,” I said, my tone telling him that it wasn’t a question. "The twins were Jewish. Hardly anyone knew, and you didn't provide that detail during your first round of investigation." That provoked a raised eyebrow. “Oh? And what startling revelation would make you think that this was so?”

  “Per your own golem’s testimony,” David said, leaning against the bars to make his point. “You were arguing with Nebula in a language that she didn’t recognize.”

  “Ja, Mein Herr,” Goldsmith admitted with a shrug. “Is it not logical to assume that it was German?”

  “I did a little research on Nebula before I started doing deliveries for her,” I piped up. “She had this interview with a German magazine just before she started her theater tour here, which noted that the conversation was translated from the original English. I’d say, by that, you were talking Yiddish, which is not a language that outsiders tend to know more than a few words of.”

  “Then, there’s the little visit you paid Cressida a few days before Nebula’s death,” David added. “At the time, I thought it had some connection with Nebula’s overdose. But when you look at it in light of the new information…”

  A bit of weariness worked its way into the rabbi’s face as he sighed. “That poor, poor child…like the old tale of the rabbis, for things she reached that should have been left alone and terrible was the price of her hubris. No hatred can I give that one, even if she did invoke a quite offensive spell for all the wrong reasons.”

  “So, you know about the ritual that she tried?” I asked.

  “Only of its consequences,” Goldsmith admitted. “When I saw her, little else did she talk of. The guilt she carried must have been overwhelming; more so now that the sister she would have wronged can no longer forgive her in this life.”

  “We have a record of the ritual that she used,” David mentioned. “If I showed it to you, maybe you could explain it?”

  “Surely you have other experts in these things?” Goldsmith asked.

  “The ritual was syncretic,” I explained. “You’re obviously a Kabbalist, which is a tradition that tends to be syncretic itself. So we were wondering if you could tell us if there was something in all the mishmash of elements that might give us fresh insights.”

  The rabbi hummed for a minute. Then pointing at me, he asked David, “Is she your boss?”

  “No, she’s my consultant,” David said, his voice strained.

  “A pity,” Goldsmith said with a bemused smile.

  “David, that record,” I said, prompting him with an elbow to the ribs before he said something to the rabbi he would regret.

  “I’ll be a minute,” David grumbled before walking off.

  The rabbi then turned his eyes towards Fraidy.

  “And, who is this now?” Goldsmith asked in a soothing manner. “Some feline eavesdropper who fears the gaze of an old man?”

  “Don’t take it personally,” I said ruefully. “He’s afraid of everything.”

  “Well, Nebula’s place should have proved that there’s usually a good reason to be afraid,” Fraidy snapped between his tremoring.

  “No disgrace is it to feel fear,” Goldsmith said, warming to the topic. “The real scandal is to succumb to fear.”

  “Way too late for that,” I muttered.

  “Well, I certainly beg to differ in this one’s case,” the rabbi said in a tone that would suffer no rebuke. “Your scaredy cat may well dread every moment he is around me or everything else in this place. Yet, here he is, despite his fear, by your side.”

  “Both of us are also under an oath of mutual protection,” I added.

  “An oath he would not have sworn unless courage he possessed,” Goldsmith countered.

  Then, getting down on his knees, he gave Fraidy a kindly look and said, “Be of good cheer, liebschen. Not all who walk this earth even make an effort to overcome their fear, let alone succeed.”

  Fraidy looked up at Goldsmith in wonder. I could tell his every instinct was screaming at him to run. But, I could also tell he was thinking about why he HADN’T run, oath or no oath. I'd never seen Fraidy so undecided as to what to do. I watched as he merely pressed his forehead to the Jewish man's left knee. And, the silly cat just stood there, with his head butted up against the suspect’s leg.

  David walked back into the room with Portia’s scrapbook. Noting the rabbi on the floor and looking at Fraidy, he asked, “Did I miss a Kodak moment?”

  “A small matter that has nothing to do with our business,” the rabbi said, getting to his feet. “If I may…?” Fraidy just sat where he was.

  David handed him the scrapbook through the bars. “The page has been bookmarked.”

  Goldsmith nodded and found it quickly enough. A frown started to crease his mouth as he looked things over, getting almost as dark as his brow. Finally, he said, “While lacking in the education in magic that both of you no doubt possess, I can safely say that this was a variant on the Soul Snatcher charm.”

  “Sounds sinister,” I said pretending to have no prior knowledge of the spell.

  “And, possibly important,” David added. “How would it work, exactly?”

  “Hello?!” Fraidy yelled from his place on the floor. “Soul Snatcher charm?! How do you think?!”

  “But, surely you must know, liebschen, that rare is the straight line when it comes to magic,” Goldsmith said patiently. “The Soul Snatcher is no different. It is actually borne of a recurring ritual that must be performed every night for a full lunar cycle; from one new moon to the next.”

  “So, the ritual Cressida was caught doing wasn’t the first time she had taken a stab at it,” I reasoned. "That would explain her many escape attempts too. So, she could physically act out the ritual."

  The rabbi nodded and pointed at me. “No less is required for the gradual squeezing out of the soul from the body than that which the caster wis
hes to take over. But the elements put into any ritual are the key.”

  Holding up the book like an archeologist going over the Rosetta Stone, he continued with, “So far as I can tell, the correspondences Cressida used for this barbaric operation were sound. That only leaves the ingredients she was reliant upon.”

  “The Ravingsbatch,” I said my thought out loud.

  “Pshaw, hardly not” Goldsmith scoffed. “Ravingsbatch is certainly the critical element for this particular charm. For squeezing out a soul, Ravingsbatch is the only candidate to succeed this takeover. But, alas, it is no factor at all when it comes to the replacement of said soul. Therefore, it must stand that the rest of her materials were of an unusually poor quality or meted out in the wrong proportions. Cressida had apparently missed something -- or, somethings -- crucial, and that is why she is the agonized crone we see today.”

  Handing the book back to David, the Rabbi said, “This also fits with something Cressida told me during my last visit; something about that while she felt the emptying of Nebula's soul; she could never feel the pouring of her own soul into Nebula's. She would inevitably be thrown rudely back into her own body.”

  “And, she thought the problem was the Ravingsbatch,” David said. “So, she upped the dosage.”

  “With results that all, even she, can agree left much to be desired,” the rabbi concluded.

  A thought suddenly struck me. “I have a list with me, Rabbi. Could you tell me if these ingredients would fit in with what’s needed for the Soul Snatcher charm?”

  At Goldsmith’s nod, I handed him the list that Millie had translated for me, from the original note found at the Moon by Horace Mangler. Looking it over, he said, “Yes…nearly all of them, I would say, are what would be used for such a transmigration of the spirit.”

  “Including lavender?” I asked, lightly jabbing the last ingredient on the list.

  “Most especially lavender,” the rabbi agreed, handing the paper back. “It acts as a counter to the Ravingsbatch, guiding the ritualist’s soul to travel to its intended destination. In this case, Nebula Dreddock's soul being the target.”