Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [209]
OFF TO BELOW’S Summer Palace in the dead of winter. The snow was calf-deep, and the carriage driver had to navigate a path around the drifts in the road that led out beyond the circular wall of the city. It was my duty to fill Chibbins in on what it was we were investigating at the heart of the Willow Forest. I had little patience that morning, cold and tired as I was, but I was determined to perform my duties.
He sat across from me, staring out the window, clasping and unclasping his hands, unconsciously blowing saliva bubbles. “I’ve never been beyond the circular wall,” he said, his mouth a hole in dough, his face, a flabby ass with a nose. “I’m a little worried.”
“Very well,” I said. “We’ll be looking into a murder. Barlow, the caretaker at the Palace, was found two days ago, stabbed through the back by an icicle, which impaled his heart before exiting his chest.”
Chibbins asked, “How’s the food there?”
I shook my head. “The only people remaining on the premises are his wife, Mrs. Barlow, their daughter, Ludiya, and a handyman named Rothac.”
Chibbins turned to face me. “Rothac did it,” he said and nodded.
“An ingenious conclusion,” I said, “but there had also been notice from the Palace recently of break-ins, of some stranger wandering the premises at night. Perhaps a story concocted by the guilty party to mitigate suspicion or maybe a real intruder out to do in Barlow, although, having met him once, I have to question the effort.”
Chibbins made a face that I suppose was meant to convey deep thought but came across as a jagged evacuation. He burst out with, “Mrs. Barlow killed him.”
He looked ready to explain, but I quickly raised one finger and said, “Now, Chibbins, it’s time to be silent.” That defused him and sent him back to the window and the mindless clasping and unclasping of his hands.
I WRAPPED MY cape around me to block the fierce wind. The snow was coming down at an angle. I told Chibbins to fetch the bags and ascended, through a series of drifts, the marble steps to the Summer Palace’s main entrance. A woman with a shawl draped over her head and shoulders opened the glass doors and greeted me.
“Mrs. Barlow,” I said.
“Miss Barlow,” she said and removed the shawl from around her face. It was not the tiresome washerwoman I’d expected, but instead quite a physiognomical specimen, exuding a certain ripeness of age. I took her offered hand, delighting in the prospect of getting my calipers on her features.
“Thank goodness you’ve come,” she said. “We fear for our lives.”
I had the inclination that her fingers purposefully lingered in my palm, but the moment, of course, was shattered by the entrance of my fellow investigator.
“Physiognomist Chibbins,” I said and waved in his direction.
Ludiya Barlow offered Chibbins her hand but instead of politely clasping it once and releasing it, he guided it toward his lips and kissed the back of it like blowing a saliva bubble. The young lady was startled and immediately flushed red. It was everything I could do not to kick him.
She took us on a tour of the Palace, four stories of white stone crammed with paintings and curiosities. Enormous arched windows, looking out on the snow and the bare, brown whips of the surrounding acres of willows. The carpets, the chandeliers, the conservatory, the library were magnificent. We finally came face-to-face with Mrs. Barlow, sitting before the fireplace in a room on the second floor. She appeared distraught enough, but in my