Doctor Who_ The City of the Dead - Lloyd Rose [4]
'Some of the cases were smashed,' noted the Doctor.
Rust nodded. 'The murder was secondary. Chic probably surprised the burglar -'
'Was his name really Chic?' said the Doctor. 'Or was that just a catchy business alias?'
Rust caught the disgust the irony was meant to conceal. So the place had gotten to him after all. 'His name was Maurice Chickly. He was a creep, but I always thought he had the sense to keep out of trouble. He stayed out of that cemetery art theft mess back in '99. We had antiques dealers on Royal Street who didn't have the brains to dodge that one.'
The Doctor frowned. 'Cemetery art? You mean statues of angels and things like that? There's really a market for those?'
'A big one. Not all of it freaks, though of course it's the freaks I tend to end up having business with. Sexual weirdoes. Black-magic nuts.'
'Ah, I see,' said Thales. He seemed fully recovered. 'You want me to look over the inventory list and tell you if something is missing that might have appealed to a would-be sorcerer. But you know, almost anything connected with the dead is supposed to have magical value.'
'Why steal whatever it was?' said the Doctor suddenly. 'So much attention-getting fuss. Why not just quietly buy it? Unless,' he added thoughtfully, 'the thief had tried to buy it but it was already promised to another purchaser.'
'Why, yes,' Rust agreed languidly. 'My mind was running along that very track. Chic was a practical fellow. He'd have given the thing to whoever offered the most money. So the purchaser must have had deep enough pockets to outbid anyone else. Institutional money, maybe.' He looked lazily at Thales, whose mouth tightened.
'You're not a gentleman, Lieutenant.'
'A cop can't afford to be.'
'I was going to tell you.'
'Well, I thought you might. I've been waiting. But you were taking your time.'
Thales was silent. 'You were bidding for something Chic had, weren't you?'
With surprising quickness, Thales seized his crutches and stood up. He didn't look at either of them. 'Let's go back to the museum,' he mumbled. I'll explain things there.'
* * *
Thales irritably refused Rust's suggestion of a cab. The three of them - the Doctor remained unselfconsciously attached to the party -moved along the sidewalk at an awkward pace, the two able-bodied men shifting ahead or falling behind to dodge other pedestrians while Thales clanked stubbornly straight on, forcing people to make way for him. Rust wouldn't have been surprised if he'd swatted at someone with a crutch. When he wasn't watching out for Thales, Rust found himself trying to keep track of the Doctor, who continually stopped to admire the long balconies with their iron-lace railings or became transfixed by a hint of greenery at the far end of a dim tunnel-passage. It was like escorting two children, one ill-tempered and the other wide-eyed.
Fortunately, the Museum of Magic was only a few streets away, on a quiet block in the eastern part of the old French Quarter of the city. Thales unlocked a wrought-iron gate in a high blank whitewashed wall. The Doctor glanced at the tiny brass plaque that read simply Eula Mae Lavender Museum of Magic, no opening or closing hours. 'Very discreet,' he observed.
'This is not a tourist attraction like those voodoo museums and fortune-telling parlours,' Thales harrumphed. 'It is a serious museum.'
Somewhat to Rust's surprise, Thales allowed the Doctor to help him push the heavy gate open. They entered a narrow bricked yard fronting a pale-green two-storey