The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist #1)(62)

There was a great deal of “tidying up” to do after the doctor’s frantic foraging from the previous day. He went to the study while I tackled the library, shelving books, stacking papers, and throwing away the blackened fragments of the old grave-robber’s hat and the heat-warped spine of his father’s journal, which had escaped the fire. I felt rather like a malefactor cleaning up the scene of a crime, which, in a sense, it was. No sound emerged from the study as I worked. I suspected the reason for this silence, and when I ducked into the room to inform him I was finished, my suspicion was confirmed: The doctor had not been cleaning. He sat in his chair, an island in a sea of rubble, lost in reverie. Without a word I set to work while he watched, his gaze not unlike the inward stare of Malachi Stinnet, seeing me, but regarding something altogether different.

The knock came at a quarter past three. The doctor rose and said, “You can finish later, Will Henry. Just close the door for now, and show the constable to the library.”

Morgan had not come alone. Standing behind him was his driver, silver badge gleaming on his lapel, and revolver conspicuously strapped to his side, and Malachi Stinnet, whose dejected countenance noticeably brightened upon my opening of the door.

“Is the doctor in, Will Henry?” asked the constable in a rigid, formal manner.

“Yes, sir. He’s waiting for you in the library.”

“Waiting for me? No doubt he is!”

They followed me to the room. Warthrop was standing by the long table upon which I had left the marked-up map with its bright intersecting lines and sloppily drawn circles and stars, rectangles and squares. I had neglected in my haste to roll it up, but the doctor seemed unaware of it lying in plain sight, or he did not care.

He stiffened when we entered, and said to Morgan, “Robert, I am surprised.”

“Are you?” rejoined Morgan coldly. His attitude was one of barely contained contempt. “Will Henry said you were expecting me.”

The doctor nodded toward the deputy and the lone survivor of that morning’s massacre. “You. Not them.”

“Malachi asked to come. And I asked O’Brien.”

The constable tossed something onto the table. It slid a few inches on the slick surface of the map and came to rest beside Warthrop’s fingertips.

It was my beloved little hat, the one lost at the cemetery, now found.

“I believe this belongs to your assistant.”

Warthrop said nothing. He was not looking at the hat; he was looking at Malachi.

“Will, is that not your initials on the inside band there, W.H.?” asked the constable, though he had not turned his impeaching eye from Warthrop.

“Will Henry, would you take Malachi into the kitchen, please?” said the doctor quietly.

“No one leaves this room,” barked Morgan. “O’Brien!”

With a knowing smirk the burly deputy stationed himself in the doorway.

“I think it would be best if Malachi-,” began the doctor.

Morgan interrupted him. “I shall decide what’s best here. How long have you known, Warthrop?”

The doctor hesitated. Then he said, “Since the morning of the fifteenth.”

“Since the…” Morgan was aghast. “You have known four days, and yet you told no one?”

“I did not believe the situation-”

“You did not believe!”

“ It was my judgment that-”

“Your judgment!”

“ Based on all the data available to me, it was my judgment and my belief that the… the infestation could be addressed with dispassionate deliberation without inciting unnecessary panic and… and unreasonable, disproportionate force.”

“I asked you this morning,” Morgan said, apparently unmoved by the doctor’s rationalization.

“And I told the truth, Robert.”

“You said you were shocked by their presence here.”

“I was… and I am. The attack last night certainly did come as a shock, and in that sense I did not lie. Are you placing me under arrest?”

The constable’s eyes flashed behind his spectacles, and his mustache quivered. “ You brought them here,” he said.

“I did not.”

“But you know who did.”

The doctor did not respond. He did not have the chance. At that moment Malachi, who had been listening with growing consternation, who had insisted upon coming in ignorance of the constable’s deduction, who now was in the presence of the man whose silence had damned his family, turned not upon the man in the dock, but upon O’Brien. He yanked the gun from the unsuspecting man’s holster and threw himself upon Warthrop, forcing him to the floor and pressing the muzzle of the revolver against his forehead. The click of the hammer locking into place was very loud in the stunned silence that followed.

Malachi straddled the doctor’s fallen form, brought his face to within inches of Warthrop’s, and spat out a single word: “You!”

O’Brien lunged forward, but the constable slammed a hand into his chest to stay him and called out to the grief-stricken boy, “Malachi! Malachi, it will solve nothing!”

“I want nothing solved!” cried the maddened Malachi. “I want justice.”

The constable stepped toward him. “It is not justice, boy. It’s murder.”