The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [16]
“I’m fine.” He said. Too much. That was Cross the Water. “Fine.” He took a long, slow ragged breath, and wiped off his mouth.
Her voice heavy with concern, Skinner pointed out, “You’re not fine. You’ve been using more, lately.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Nothing matters. He had a job to do, and he would do it. If that meant shooting his veins up with fang every five minutes, then that’s what he would do.
“But . . .”
“Doesn’t. Matter.” Beckett’s voice was stone. He rubbed his temples and tried to settle his thoughts. “If. Even if someone had hired sharpsies to hide the murder…”
“Or someone else. Anyone with a…” Skinner broke off. “Well, I imagine there are probably tools for…for doing that.”
Beckett nodded. “How did they get in? No broken windows, no broken locks.”
They both sat for a moment, and considered. “Let’s be logical.” Skinner said. “If someone got in, and no locks were broken, then they must have come in somewhere there wasn’t a lock. Either another entrance to the home, which I would have found…”
“Or a door that we know about, but was open.” There was one conclusion readily available; it made sense, in itself, but didn’t help him make sense of anything else. “Our milkman said the door was unlocked when he found it. No one in North Ferry leaves their doors unlocked. So, someone let the murderer in. A maid?”
“No. Maid works every third day. She was off the day before and the day of.”
“One of the Zindels, then.”
Skinner rolled her cane around in her hands while she thought. “Someone they recognized? Someone they were comfortable enough with to take into the sitting room. Who also had reason to murder them all.”
Beckett nodded again. “His collaborator.”
“You think so?”
The coroner shrugged. “Maybe. We don’t know enough. We don’t even know what he was working on in there. Who’s our scientific contact for Aetheric Geometry?”
Skinner snorted. “You’re joking? Only half a dozen people understood it when the church forbid . . . forbade? When they had it forbidden. Even then, I think it was only ever Wolfram that got it. And when he died…we don’t have a contact for Aetheric Geometry, Elijah.”
“Next best thing, then. Charterhouse.”
“He’s a psychometrist.”
Beckett began wrapping his scarf around his face again. “And a cartographer. We can’t have Aetheric Geometry, at least we can get regular geometry. Besides, I want him to check over the scene. We need more information.” Beckett pulled on his coat and hat. “Where’s Valentine?”
“He’s watching the cordon, making sure no one gets in and disturbs something.”
“Good.” Beckett grunted. “Maybe he’ll shoot that damned gendarme.”
Five: Alan Charterhouse
Alan Charterhouse’s hands were moving almost of their own accord. They quickly used the draftsman’s tools on his desk: compass, stylus, t-square, triangle, and his favorite, the intricate brass slide-rule. His pen moved in smooth, steady, straight lines as he copied the map in front of him. He’d divided it into small sections, and his eyes focused intently on each one, making sure he didn’t miss a single line or degree. Despite the amount of concentration it took, Alan found his mind wandering.
He was alone in the drafting room, a room in the basement of his family’s house that would have been quite comfortable if it hadn’t been jammed full of heavy slanted drafting desks, piled up with books, bundles of paper, old broadsheets, and, of course, maps. There were maps everywhere. Rolled up maps lay in bundles on the floor, or were piled up on shelves. Maps of the Rowan-Harshank Corridor, made of folding steel plates, stood in a neat stack by the door. There were copperplate maps, hide maps, and at least one map that his father had made of Corsay on a wide piece of tree-bark.
Alan Charterhouse had woken up that morning with a fantasy about his father coming home; maybe his father would wait until after breakfast, letting Alan think that today wouldn’t be the day, and then surprising him during the meal. When that didn’t happen, Alan had reconsidered;