Jackaby (Jackaby #1)(66)
“Shall we resume our discussion over lunch?” I suggested to my employer, but Jackaby’s gaze was fixed on the front of the crowd. “I’d like to swing by Chandler’s Market on the way if you don’t mind,” I persisted. “I do still owe a troll a fish.” My employer made no indication he had heard me, instead taking sudden, deliberate strides toward the head of the assembly. I followed, squeezing past the exodus of mourners like a trout swimming upstream.
As I reached the front, Jackaby stood before Swift’s coffin. “Let’s not have a scene, Jackaby,” Marlowe was saying. “Just let it go.”
“It’s an insult,” Jackaby said. He gestured to the coffin. “It’s a dishonor to the dead!”
“Jackaby . . .” Marlowe growled. His muscles tensed, and I could see he didn’t want to have to forcibly remove the detective from a quiet memorial service. “These nice families just want to say their good-byes in peace.”
“But it isn’t right,” continued my employer, opening his little brown satchel, “that our dear, honorable commissioner should be the only friendless corpse without so much as a lily at his head. Let me see, I’m sure I have some appropriate token in here.”
Marlowe looked dubious, but he stood down as Jackaby made a show of rummaging. “Ah, here we are. He was so fond of these.” It took a swing of his arms to get them up onto the box, but the echoing clank of the redcap’s impossibly heavy iron shoes as they crunched into the wood was satisfying. A bent and charred piece of the leg brace still clung to one, fastened by a rivet at the ankle. Jackaby left the explaining to Marlowe and marched away.
I caught up just outside the gates. “I know, I know . . . ,” he said before I could comment. “I don’t need to make things difficult for Marlowe.”
“You don’t need to make them easy, either,” I said. My employer raised an eyebrow at me as we walked. “Swift tries to kill me and gets to be a public hero. Charlie saves my life, and now he’s a public enemy. You don’t owe me any explanations.”
Jackaby nodded contentedly as we headed back to 926 Augur Lane.
Chapter Thirty-One
The following morning, I planted myself at the front desk and began sorting the mound of bills, case notes, and receipts that lay before me. Jackaby had conveniently disappeared before we could return to discussing my future duties, so I resolved to just make the best of the task. After several hours of stacking and shuffling, I was finally drawn out from behind the mess by my employer’s return. He hung his scarf and hat on the hook without apparently noticing me.
“Good morning, sir. I didn’t know you had gone out.”
“The postman’s come,” he said, riffling through a handful of mail. He paused on a small brown parcel, pursing his lips.
“What’s that, then? Something you ordered?”
“No.” He tucked it hastily beneath the rest of the mail. “Or yes, actually, but I’m not sure I should . . .” He trailed off. “This one’s addressed to you. Here.” Still without making eye contact, he dropped an envelope into the empty space I had cleared on the desk, and continued on his way down the crooked hallway.
The letter was from Mr. Barker of Gadston, Charlie’s new identity. Gad’s Valley, he wrote, was as lovely as Marlowe had suggested. Commander Bell had offered him a quiet post on the police force there as soon as his injuries healed, and Charlie was strongly inclined to accept. He was feeling better every day, and took frequent opportunities to slip out to enjoy the countryside now that he was walking again. The detective and I, he insisted in his postscript, must come and visit when next we had the chance. Since Charlie’s departure, I had tried to put my feelings for him to rest, but butterflies rose in my stomach at the thought of seeing him again.
Jackaby burst energetically back into the room just as I finished reading the note. “We’ve gotten word from Charlie,” I informed him.
“No time for that now, I’m afraid. I’ve urgent business in town.”
“Is something wrong?”
“I should say so, fantastically wrong!” He brandished a letter of his own, waving the page with enthusiasm. “A woman with a lamentably forgettable name has asked me to look into a matter of her ailing cat. The cat, I believe, is called Mrs. Wiggles.”
“Bit of a step down, isn’t it? From catching a serial killer to a sick pet?”
“Ah, but the details are delightful.” Jackaby tossed his scarf around his neck and pulled on his knit hat. “It seems Mrs. Wiggles has recently shrunk in stature, begun to molt, and started lounging in her water bowl for hours at a stretch. Most perplexingly, she has begun growing scales from tip to tail as well. The veterinarian just made useless jokes about it being ‘rather fishy,’ and then prescribed some skin ointment, the tit. The whole thing is marvelously odd.”
“And you do love odd,” I said. “Let me just get my coat. Where are we going, anyway?”
“You are going nowhere,” Jackaby said flatly. “As for me, I am tracking this post back to its origin. There are distinct traces of the supernatural saturating the paper—no doubt remnants of the lady’s curious pet. The document will have left an aura along its path, one that I can navigate as long as I make haste before it fades.”