The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [71]
“What is it?” Skinner asked as the carriage creaked to a halt.
“Bookshop,” he said, climbing out. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”
Twenty-Three: Questions. Answers.
Valentine and Skinner returned to Raithower to find Beckett already there. There was something, Valentine thought, that was appropriate about that. Beckett had been gone for days, he’d been sick and out of his mind when Valentine had seen him last. And now he was back in Raithower, sitting in the parlour-office in his charcoal gray suit with his red scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth and glaring at Karine.
It was exactly what he did every day. Right down to the sullen cast of his eyebrows, the way he gingerly crossed his legs to avoid the pain in his knees. Beckett sat in the parlor in Raithower House as though nothing had happened.
“Where the hell have you been?” Beckett snapped.
Really, exactly the same as every other day. “Around,” Valentine replied. “Uhm…”
“Valentine found us a lead,” Skinner put in. “He followed a coachman away from Zindel’s house.” She went on to explain the coachman’s murder, and the murder of his assailant, the incident during the psychestorm, and the interview with Philip Crowe.
Beckett was silent for a long moment while he took this in. Valentine knew the old man, and he knew what was going through his head: Beckett was methodically going over each and every word that Skinner had said, tying every event to every other and working it over again and again, so that he could ask exactly the right question.
“And you think this is connected to Zindel’s murder?” He asked, finally.
Well, thought Valentine. They can’t all be winners. “Maybe.” He held up the parcel that he’d bought on the drive over. “This is Crowe’s last book. I read it before but…” A sheepish expression skittered across the man’s face. “I don’t really remember it. I’m going to go over it again, look for…you know…”
“Clues?” Beckett asked, eyebrow raised.
“I was going to say ‘anything of value,’ but I guess ‘clues’ works just as well.”
Beckett nodded curtly, and Valentine adjourned to the adjacent office to read. Beckett turned to Skinner. “Does the name ‘Lightman’ mean anything to you?”
“In what context? Is it a person?”
“I think so. Harris Lightman, maybe? Harcourt? I met a sharpsie in Mudside who claimed that someone with a name like that hired her to…to mutilate the Zindel bodies.”
“Is it Horace Lightman?” Karine piped up suddenly from where she’d been hovering in the room behind Beckett.
“Well, I don’t know,” the old coroner snapped. “If I knew his name was ‘Horace,’ I’d have asked if she knew a ‘Horace,’ wouldn’t I?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Karine mumbled, as she disappeared into her file-room. A moment later she came back with a thick sheaf of papers. “When you started investigating Herman Zindel, sir, I did some research. I know you like information, so I pulled up copies of all the broadsheets I could find with Herman Zindel’s name in them.” She handed Beckett a small clipping. “Zindel knew a man named Horace Lightman. This is from when they both won the Royal Academy of Sciences Order of Distinction, three years ago. They were colleagues at the University, in mathematics and engineering.”
Beckett took the article, and began to scan it. “Horace Lightman. We need to find him. Karine, I want you to get me an address…”
“I’ve already done it, sir,” Karine said, offering another paper from her sheaf. “The Ministry of Revenue’s tax records. But it won’t help.”
Beckett looked up. “Why not?”
Karine handed the coroner a final page. “It’s a report, sir. The gendarmes in New Bank, you know, they’re very conscientious about your request for….for reports on arrests and….he’s dead, sir. Horace Lightman. He was found dead yesterday, his…”
“…throat bruised and his lungs crushed,” Beckett finished, reading from the report. “In his home, no visible means of entrance or exit.”
“Oh!” Valentine looked up from his book. “Bruised throat, that’s like the fellow…”
“We