Convicted Innocent(41)

By then they’d reached the room the sergeant wanted to show the inspector. As it turned out, it was the first goldmine of four.

In that room, Horace saw evidence of recent occupation, or perhaps captivity. Two pairs of shoes had paced through and footprinted the old pottery dust caking the floor – one an average size for a grown man, the other considerably larger – and a wad of black fabric that (when held up) seemed to be some sort of clerical garb lay forgotten in the corner.

If nothing else, these small signs refuted any doubts Horace still had about whether Harker, Todd, and Powell could be entangled together.

A constable brought word of a fresh discovery in the room next door while the detective and the sergeant were still inspecting the first for clues (the bodyguards waited in the hall).

This chamber’s secret was more ghastly: a large, rusty stain had marred the floor and painted macabre swirls in the clay dust before drying.

“I think….” Bartholomew began, his eyes roving over the room without dwelling too long on the stain on the floor, “—I think we may have found where Frank O’Malley died.”

Horace chewed his lip but said nothing.

While the next few chambers were uninteresting and unhelpful, they eventually came to one that showed signs of habitation: sleeping cots, a table, several candle stubs, a lantern that had been extinguished recently (it was still warm), a few heels of bread gone only slightly stale.

While this was telling, the room next door shouted silent volumes to the mute whispers of the other three.

This chamber had all the signs of bodies living rough. The dust on the floor was much more scuffed than it had been elsewhere, and there were spatters of red everywhere. Sprinkled on the floor here; near the wall, there; a streak or two where someone may have lain and bled for a time. Taken together, perhaps the rusty streaks didn’t amount to as much as in the second room, but this wasn’t particularly comforting in light of the telltales of prolonged violence.

Sergeant Bartholomew, swearing softly and eloquently to himself under his breath, stooped to pick up a dark blue rag while Horace stood still in the center of the room, his eyes narrowed and roving.

“Lew’s, I reckon,” the sergeant murmured, shaking out what was left of a policeman’s tunic.

The old detective spared a glance for the tattered uniform. Yes, the chevrons were as expected, and the sleeves looked to be long enough for a man Sergeant Todd’s size: Bartholomew was right.

“But where have they gone?” the sergeant asked.

Horace squatted down, not really listening, and touched his fingertips to something in the dust.

“Sir?”

The inspector rubbed his fingers together, his eyes tracking out of the room into the corridor; he stood after a moment and strode out, still staring at the floor.

“Sir?”

“Sergeant,” Horace replied tersely. “You’ll note the droplets on the bricks. They’re not quite dry and they mark a path that way.”

He pointed down the hall in the direction the policeman had not yet searched. “Gather a squad to start tracking it.”

The sergeant quickly gave the order and nearly a dozen bobbies bent to the task in short order.

“We’re being led somewhere,” Sergeant Bartholomew murmured unhappily, his voice pitched so only the old detective could hear.

“Of course. But that doesn’t mean we must see only what they wish.”

This new bout of tracking took them much further down the corridor, around a sharp corner, down a slight incline, and toward a narrower, unlit side hallway. A few paces beyond where the trail vanished in the blackness, the main corridor ended in a wide, heavily bolted metal door.