Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(82)
“Mr. Kincaid occasionally enjoyed a pipe of tobacco and a sip of bathtub gin. He also sharpened his pencils to a very fine point, and wore them down to nubs.”
“That says plenty about him,” I murmured, returning my attention to the desk. I found a box of unused chalk, a very nice pen, and some lined paper with an assortment of numbers and formulas jotted across the top sheet. (The rest were blank.)
I looked up and saw an empty box in the corner. It resembled the sort a postman or an office secretary might use, and indeed might have been either one of those things. It would hold the dregs of evidence well enough, I decided—so I tossed in the newspaper clippings, stray sheets of lined paper, and everything else, and suggested that Lizbeth do the same should she find anything promising.
She sighed in my general direction. “I’m beginning to fear that George, or the investigators, beat us to the punch. At least we had a chance to see the highlights, before the storage room gets around to eating everything for good.”
“Check under the bed and in his drawers,” I suggested. “I’ll poke my head inside the icebox and the cupboards.”
She grinned at that, and agreed. Between us, I didn’t think we’d need another ten minutes to scour the place in earnest. The modest flat was not large at all, barely two rooms—a bedroom with a washroom, and a combination kitchen/living area/everything else so cramped that I could have packed the whole thing into my own office back in Boston. With room to spare.
We’d be best served to hurry, anyway.
The cupboards were lined with cans of vegetables and jars full of rice, beans, and pasta. I found a variety of sauces and tins of crackers, peanut butter, and the like—all of it organized with an architect’s precision. Or an accountant’s, as the case may be. “A precise fellow, this Kincaid. Everything so organized and tidy.”
“He even folded his socks,” Lizbeth informed me.
I wasn’t surprised.
The icebox handle stuck, but I wrestled it open anyway. The door popped ajar, and a cool, damp gasp of air escaped when the seal was broken. Inside it was wet, for the ice had melted (as ice is wont to do), but it still held a bottle of milk, and a box of something else, too. It looked like the kind of thing you’d take home from a restaurant—made of stiff waxed paper. I opened it up, expecting to find leftovers, but instead I retrieved a stack of photos tied up in twine.
The whole batch was soggy and unpleasant to the touch, but the images weren’t yet lost. “I’ve found something. Maybe.” Or so I announced to my companion, who’d finished her examination of Leonard Kincaid’s worldly personal belongings.
“Oh, good, because I didn’t find a thing. I was afraid this was all for naught.”
“It might be still. These photos are decidedly waterlogged.”
“Why would he keep them in the icebox?”
I shrugged, and looked back into its dark, dank depths. “It’s a safe, insulated place. In case of fire, not much else would be likely to survive. I suppose he thought he was protecting them—and he surely didn’t plan to be murdered before the ice block melted.”
“No doubt. But tell me,” she urged, coming closer to look inside for herself. “It’s lined with . . . what? Lead, do you think?”
“Lead, asbestos. Anything to insulate it. This is a cheap model,” I noted. It was built into the kitchen cabinetry, a permanent part of the flophouse structure. It ought to be considered a feature, no doubt—despite the poor construction and a latch already falling to rust. “It might have sawdust in between its walls, for all I know.”
“I bet it’s lead,” she said firmly. “Vintage lore says lead can protect almost anything.”
“From what?”
“From almost anything else. Let’s take those back to the hotel and hang them up to dry. There’s . . . look.” She indicated one of the slippery scraps. “He wrote something on the back.”
I turned it over. “Not in pen, I hope.” But there was already a smudge of black ink on my fingertips to suggest I wouldn’t be so lucky as that.
“Some of it’s in pencil. Here, don’t try to pull them all apart just yet; let’s take them back to the hotel, and take our time with them. We’ve seen all there is to see here. We should go before someone throws us out.”
She was right, and we withdrew to sequester ourselves in my room—indecency be damned. We ran a line of string between the foot-end posts of my bed, and with the help of a few stray paper clips, soon all fourteen photos were strung up to dry. They grew brittle as the moisture left them, and their images were washed out to varying degrees, but the progression was clear enough.
“I daresay we gaze upon the visage of Mr. Kincaid himself,” I declared.
“Over a span of . . . how long, do you think? These might be dates, written on the back . . . but it’s hard to tell. Well, no—here’s one, clear enough: January 18, 1921.” She crawled up onto my bed and dangled her feet over the side so she could see the back of the photos more intimately.
“What else does it say? I think your eyes might be better than mine. I’m a tad farsighted in these spectacles, but wildly nearsighted without them. Everything in life involves a trade-off, after all.”
She drew it closer with the very edges of her fingernails, careful not to touch or damage anything further. “Something about . . . a shadow, I think. But I’m not sure I see any kind of shadow in the image, just some water staining . . . ? Where did he take these, anyway? Did you see a camera in his flat?”