Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(35)
As I explored, farther and farther into this underworld of junk, I detected some noise at the very edge of my hearing: a muttering, grumbling sound, accompanied by the rustle of paper. A swearword or two, and the wadding, crumpling noise of paper being crushed in someone’s fist.
It grew louder as I pressed deeper.
I erred on the side of feeling that this was a good thing, that there was some light at the end of this tunnel—or some revelation, some person, some reward for my troubles. I was beginning to wonder how far I could have possibly gone, thinking I must not be beneath the council building anymore, surely . . . when the way widened and the path deposited me into an open space.
It was another hallway, but a proper one with perpendicular angles and nothing to clutter it, save a pair of small desks and an old icebox lying on its side. This landing was marked by a dozen doorways—some open, some closed—that ran its length, and conveniently enough, I was standing immediately before Storage Room Three. To the left I saw Two, and to the right I saw Four, so I made my way to the right until I reached number Six.
Room Six did not have a door. It had hinges from which nothing hung.
Beyond it, there was a man. He had his back to me. He was tearing through file drawers, picking some things out and leaving other things behind, swearing under his breath all the while.
I cleared my throat and said, “I beg your pardon . . .”
He stopped. Stood up straight, and turned around. “Now why would you do that?”
Confused, I stammered, “I’m sorry? Why would I . . . do what?”
“Why would you beg my pardon? You don’t need it. Nobody needs it,” he added with a mumble. “Anybody can do anything he wants around here, especially with regards to me. You can come on in, make yourself at home, put your feet up on the paperwork, pour yourself a drink, and light a match—and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. So why the hell would you bother to beg my pardon?”
“Ah,” I said, because I understood, or I thought I might. And because I needed a moment to muster a response.
The man before me was in his early fifties. He was white, though he stopped just shy of appearing swarthy—with dark curly hair and bushy eyebrows to match; and the set of his cheeks made me wonder if there wasn’t some Spanish or Italian lurking in his family woodpile. A good-looking man, he was: stout without running to fat like myself, with muscled forearms holding his shirtsleeves rolled up and shoved back.
I cleared my throat again. “George Battey Ward, I assume?”
“Yes, and who wants to know?”
“Simon Wolf. I’m an inspector from Boston, here to investigate your recent axe murders. And likewise the murder of Father Coyle, though that seems essentially solved already—and unlikely to conclude with any real justice.”
My response surprised him. That was probably the best I could’ve hoped for, considering the man was radiating rage like a Franklin stove, and appeared on the very verge of opening fire on anyone who dared to speak with him. From what I knew of his week, I could hardly blame him.
He took a moment, and rested his hands on his hips while he looked me up and down. “Boston?”
“That’s right.”
“What shit does Boston give?”
“None,” I said. “But Coyle was my friend, and he thought the axe murders were worth a closer look. That’s why he sent for me,” I exaggerated only slightly. He’d tried to send for me, hadn’t he? It was only a tragedy of timing that found me in his hometown in the wake of his death. “I’m a specialist.”
“You’re an axe murder specialist?” he asked with something perilously close to a smirk.
“I’m a specialist in violent crime, particularly violent crime of the . . . decidedly strange variety. How well did you know Father Coyle?” I wanted to know, hoping that a series of pointed questions might calm him down, and reassure him that I meant business.
He didn’t answer right away. “I knew him well enough to know he had an interest in . . . the decidedly strange,” he borrowed my wording. He sighed then, and wiped at his forehead with the back of his wrist. He closed his eyes, and opened them again. “I ought to tell you I’m sorry.”
“I ought to tell you it matters, but I’m willing to skip all that, if you are.”
That gave him something more like a smile, but it was not a happy one. It was the social smile of someone trying to convey that I’m not the one he’s angry with. “Consider it skipped.”
I shook his hand when he offered it, stepping farther into the cramped storage room in order to do so. “This is quite the arrangement you’ve got. Does Barrett know you’re down here?”
“I doubt it. How’d you find me?”
“A fellow scraping your name off the door. He passed your location along like a secret.”
He frowned thoughtfully. “That’s odd. I came in through the back, and let myself down the service stairs. I didn’t think anyone saw me . . . But I’ve been wrong before.”
“Service people always have ways of noticing, without being seen. Regardless, you should be glad he treated the information so quietly. I don’t think he wished to expose you to his new boss. But tell me, is this where . . .” I looked around at the mounds of newspapers, magazines, chair legs, pencil stubs, damp-swollen law books, and everything else that made up the jumble of Storage Room Six. “. . . You hid the case files on the axe murders?”