A Rip Through Time(45)

I half curtsy. “That is most kind, sir. I’ll read it and be out of your way.”

He waves a distracted hand at a chair. “There are quite enough papers here to keep us from quarreling over them. I would appreciate your thoughts as you read.”

I straighten a little at that. “Thank you, sir.”

“I daresay you shall bring a very different lens to the reading. One untainted by expertise in these matters.”

I bite my tongue. Bite it so damned hard. Instead, I lower my lashes. “Of course, sir. I am flattered that you think a housemaid could have anything to add.”

“Everyone has something to add, Catriona. Do not discount yourself like that. With enough learning, you could be a proper little detective. You seem to have some talent for it.”

“So kind of you to say so, sir.”

Reading those damn papers is an exercise in restraint. In restraining myself from dissecting the accounts of the crime and giving a commentary that will leave Gray gaping.

I am an observer in this world. I cannot risk raising the suspicions of the one person who does not suspect me of anything untoward. I can make the occasional observation—such as noting that Evans had been tortured—but I can’t overdo it.

In truth, as much as I want to show off, I’m not sure I could. There’s nothing in these accounts we don’t already know. Well, nothing of truth. Even the newspapers are rife with fabrications. One journalist, who claims to have known Evans personally, says he was an “unusually handsome young man, with curly hair and the smooth face of an angel.” The guy on Gray’s examination table had been bearded, with straight hair.

“They’re making it up,” I say. “Even the newspapers.”

“Of course.”

“But why? There was a press conference. I hardly saw anyone there.”

Gray shrugs, his eyes still scanning an article. “Why bother attending that when they can invent something more entertaining? They are wordsmiths, crafting a narrative to suit their audience.”

“And these?” I lift one of the single pages. “These are pure fiction.”

“Yes, and probably written by the newspapermen under a nom de plume. They could not get away with that level of insinuation and lurid detail in the regular press.”

He glances over his newspaper at me. “I know broadsides are going out of fashion, but I am surprised you have never read one.”

“Why would anyone read them?”

“Presumably for the reason they are written. Entertainment. Crime is a profitable business. My sister has, more than once, threatened to turn my cases into novels to make her fortune. I think she was joking, but I am not actually sure.”

I flip through the pile of newspapers, along with the two “broadsides” plus two pamphlets that go into slightly more—equally fictional—detail. “The case is getting a lot of attention.”

He tilts his head. “I presume you speak in jest.”

“This isn’t a lot?”

He gives a low laugh and then rubs away his smile. “I do not mean to mock. You obviously fail to share the public’s fascination with murder, and so this might seem like a great deal of attention. It is the opposite, in fact.”

“Why? It’s a strikingly singular murder.”

“Too singular, and in entirely the wrong way.”

“Explain.” I cough. “I mean, please explain your thinking, sir, if you would.”

“It is singular in its staging. As an intellectual exercise, poor Evans’s death is fascinating. What person conceives of such a thing? I am no alienist, but even I must wonder at such a mind. It is almost, dare I say, artistic.”

“The killer has a vision. Or else he is plagued by inner demons, and this is his way of expressing it. A compulsion.”

Gray’s eyes light up, and I feel like a student giving a perfect answer. “Quite right. That makes the murder and the killer remarkably interesting to me, and apparently also to you. However, to the average citizen, Evans’s murder lacks passion. It is a cerebral killing, and therefore quite dull. Nary a severed limb to be found. They’re bloodless crimes, and as such…”

I feign a yawn, and that has his face lighting up in a way that makes my heart stutter.

Gray leans forward, warming to his subject. “They are boring. That is why we have this.” He lifts one of the broadsides. “Writers doing their best to work with what little they have.”

“What are people looking for?” I ask. “Blood and gore?”

“That is the question, Catriona, and one you ought to discuss with my sister, who is fascinated by which crimes do—or do not—catch the public’s attention. As soon as one thinks one has the answer, there is an exception. Blood and gore, as you put it, certainly sells papers and broadsides. Yet you will also find such cases knocked clean off the front page by a man falling from a ladder and dying of internal injuries.”

“Because there’s more story to the man on the ladder? He was about to marry or have his first child or such?”

“Pathos, yes, that certainly plays a role. Violent and pathetic deaths. An innocent babe, murdered alongside her sweet mother. A promising young man, his head bashed, bits of brain on the ceiling. An elderly woman, throat slit as she awaits the first visit from her great-grandchild. Yet again, Isla could show examples of the most tragic situations that barely rippled the public’s attention. Also, one must account for competing events. I was following one particularly fascinating case myself four years ago, when it disappeared from the press, swallowed by a foreign murder.” He waits, as if to see whether I’ll figure it out. “The shooting of an American president.”