Sarah Canary (22 page)

A kitchen knife lay beside the man’s hand. Behind a pair of small spectacles, the man’s eyes were open, flat and dead, and larger than they should have been.

‘What did I tell you?’ said Harold. ‘What did I dream? So Sarah Canary killed him, too.
La belle dame sans merci
.’ Chin turned in surprise. He wouldn’t have believed Harold could get to his feet, but Harold stood unsupported and quite steady in the hall behind them, and the look on his face was one of satisfaction.
‘La dame sans merci,’
he said, giving it more thought. He uncapped his silver flask and took a drink. ‘I met him last night,’ Harold told B.J. ‘We had a drink together. Jim Allen. A nice man.’

‘Sarah Canary didn’t kill him,’ Chin said. ‘She’s gone. I told you. She’s been gone since sunrise. Since before we got here. And this man wasn’t dead when B.J. and I came up the stairs.’

‘I could hardly see,’ said B.J. ‘How could you see, Chin?’

‘I couldn’t. But I stepped there.’ Chin pointed to the lower stair. ‘Where the blood is. And then I stepped on the plate of bread. So did you. If he’d been dead then, there would be blood in the bread.’

‘I heard someone on the stairs when we were in that other bedroom,’ said B.J.

‘ “. . . often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room door.” ‘ Harold’s voice was pitched poetically high. He took another drink. He grew steadier and steadier. ‘Have you read Sheridan Le Fanu? The story of Carmilla?’

‘No,’ said B.J.

‘No. I wouldn’t have expected you to,’ Harold said. ‘Nor seen
The Vampyre
performed either, I suppose. So you won’t understand even though the evidence is all there. Her unnatural teeth. How she can’t see herself in mirrors. The wooden stake through the heart. Blood. Horrible lusts. It takes an immortal to recognize the undead,’ said Harold. ‘Mind you, she had me fooled, too, at first, with that innocent Wild Woman act. Just like she fooled Burke. Just like she’s fooled both of you. She does it well.’ Harold shook his head. ‘She does it well. I didn’t really suspect the truth until this morning. In spite of the dreams.’

Chin looked away from Harold, back at the dead man. There lay the dead man’s hand, right on the stair where it had blocked his footstep, turned up and cupped as though waiting for someone to drop something into it. The little finger wore a thick gold band; the index finger was curled and yet still almost touched the knife. If the man had killed himself, could his hand have fallen back into that same position?

‘ “Find a crime, hang a Chinaman,” ‘ said Harold. ‘Perhaps you’re more familiar with that quotation. How about “a Chinaman’s chance”?’

‘I know these sayings,’ Chin said slowly. ‘I have no reason to hurt anyone. I didn’t know this man. And I’ve been with B.J. Or with you. I haven’t been alone.’

‘You’re ignoring the evidence again. We have one man who’s been stabbed on the stairs with a knife. And an unknown Chinaman who was the last man up those stairs. We have a second man who was stabbed. With a
chopstick.
And a lot of men who won’t feel well when they wake up and won’t remember very much. They’d lynch you even without my testimony. But I’ll say it was you, Chin.’

‘That’s a lie,’ said B.J. ‘
I
was the last man up the stairs. I’ll tell them Chin didn’t stab you.’

‘Very convincingly, too,’ said Harold. ‘I’m sure.’

‘They’ll believe me,’ B.J. told him calmly. ‘It’s not like it was Chin’s own chopstick.’

‘What do you want from me?’ Chin’s voice was as flat as a white man’s.

‘I want to know where Sarah Canary is. I’m going to stop her. She has to be stopped. Don’t try to stop me. Stop protecting her.’ Harold licked his fingers and used them to smooth his mustache.

‘This is code,’ B.J., told Chin in a whisper. ‘This is the way they talk on the telegraph.’

‘You worship her,’ Harold said penetratingly.

‘Stop,’ B.J. suggested.

‘Stop,’ said Harold. ‘Tell me where she is or I’ll shout for Blair.’ He opened his mouth.

‘Stop,’ said B.J.

‘She left with another woman,’ Chin told Harold. It was a betrayal, but what could he do? If this was another test, designed by the immortals, then it was a test too hard for him. His situation was exactly as Harold described it. What point was there in hanging Tom if he himself was only to hang later? ‘Miss Dixon. Miss Dixon was asking about the sloop B.J. and I came in on. It’s called the
Biddy.
I think she’s gone to Port Gamble on it. I suppose Sarah Canary is with her. I don’t know where they’ll go next. Really, I don’t.’ He kept his eyes down. He was hiding nothing, but the truth is no servant to man. You can’t make someone believe you just by telling the truth any more than you can make the truth false just by not believing it. ‘Really, I don’t,’ Chin said again. He remembered suddenly that white demons showed their truthfulness by looking at each other’s eyes. He forced himself to look at Harold’s face. He focused on the tip of Harold’s nose, looked up at Harold’s eyes once, quickly, but couldn’t sustain it and dropped his gaze to the wide wings of Harold’s mustache. Harold had obviously gone mad. Chin’s hands were shaking and he hid them in his coat sleeves.

‘Well, that makes sense,’ said Harold thoughtfully. ‘That she would leave with another woman. That’s straight from Carmilla. I suppose they struck up a rather passionate friendship?’ Harold closed his eyes, tipped his flask to vertical, and emptied it into his mouth. ‘She made me hit her,’ he said. ‘Did I tell you that?’

Of course, Chin had hit her, too. That was why he was so eager to prevent anyone else from hitting her. Why he had removed her from the asylum when he had seen another woman hit. And then Harold had taken her and struck her anyway. Chin surrendered himself to shame.

‘She aroused unnatural feelings in me,’ Harold said. ‘She wouldn’t stop.’ He capped the flask, pocketed it. ‘I just hope I’m not too late.’

One of the men further down the stairs stirred suddenly. He sat up. ‘Good God, Blair,’ he said. ‘You’ve forgotten to fill my glass.’ He closed his eyes and slumped sideways again.

Harold turned to him and then turned back to Chin. ‘Give me the chopstick.’ He took it, smiling, sheathed it in the pocket of his coat. ‘Good fortune,’ he said, like a blessing. ‘Long life,’ he said, like a curse. He moved the plate of bread out of his way and put his foot in its place on the stair. His second foot hovered over the bloody pool; he could stretch it no farther and finally withdrew it again to the top step. ‘Well,’ he said. He put his first leg over the railing, swinging around so that he faced Chin and the upstairs hall, seated as if on a horse. Then he slid down, his face receding from them. The railing turned at the landing and they saw his profile slipping away.

‘He’s getting smaller,’ B.J. remarked. ‘Do you see that?’

Harold disappeared from view. They heard a thump at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Would you like some breakfast?’ Blair’s voice floated upward.

Harold answered, words Chin could not make out.

‘Have you heard that your Alaskan Wild Woman is gone?’ Blair asked. ‘I’m dreadfully sorry. It seems Miss Adelaide Dixon is to blame.’

Another unintelligible response.

‘But you don’t have your bag,’ Blair pointed out.

‘The window,’ Chin told B.J. as he pushed back past him. He hurried through Sarah Canary’s room and out onto the roof. A tree grew at the roofs edge. It would have been easy to climb down if Chin’s boots had not been so large. His foot slipped out entirely once, leaving the boot wedged by the toes in the joint between a branch and the trunk. Chin had to sit on the branch to pull the boot free. He put it back on his foot, and it fell off again when he hung from the last branch by his hands, dropping like a ripe apple when Chin swung out and down.

Will Purdy was standing before him on the walk. He held out one hand, palm up as though he were checking for rain. ‘You’d think the Bay View didn’t have stairs,’ he said. Chin said nothing. What could he say? He stood on his one booted foot and thought that at least there was no sign of Harold. B.J. landed beside him.

‘I don’t suppose you paid Blair for breakfast?’ Purdy suggested.

There was no way Chin could go back inside. There was no time to let B.J. handle this. ‘We could pay
you,’
he said, trying to keep the desperation from his voice. ‘You could give the money to Blair.’

Purdy regarded him for a moment and then spoke to B.J. ‘It was a big breakfast,’ he said. ‘Won’t be cheap.’

‘A lot of eggs,’ B.J. agreed cheerfully.

Simply getting away from the Bay View would not be enough. Chin needed to get out of Seabeck and he had only a few coins left. He was forced to bargain. He spoke to B.J. in a low tone, but calculated for Purdy to hear. ‘We can’t spend a lot on breakfast. We won’t have the money for more boat trips.’

‘How much money do you have?’ Purdy asked B.J., who looked to Chin.

‘Enough for boat tickets and a small breakfast,’ said Chin. ‘Nothing more.’

Purdy thought for a moment. ‘I’ll tell you what. I figure the creek might have dropped now, enough for us to cross. You pay me for the breakfast, the big breakfast, and I’ll help you hire a
hyas canim.
An Indian canoe. That would be cheaper than the steamer and you might just catch the
Biddy.
Assuming that’s what you want to do.’ His hand was out.

Chin dropped his money into it and went to retrieve his boot.

The creek had fallen dramatically but still came to Chin’s knees in the middle, and then, just when he expected it to drop again, he stepped into a hole that, even walking on his toes as he was, sent the water alarmingly high up his legs. It reached his thighs but, much to his relief, went no higher. Purdy splashed straight across, leaning to the right against the current and passing Chin, who, being smaller and lighter, found it hard to keep his feet. Chin held on to B.J.’s arm and the two of them made a crooked crossing, scrambling up the bank slightly downstream. Water ran from Chin’s pants and spilled out of the tops of his boots. His feet were soaked. Chin’s teeth began to click together.

He followed Purdy through a stand of trees, up a hill, down a hill, up a hill, grateful for the constant motion. At last they passed the Washington Mill Company lumberyard. The bay glittered behind it, crystalline, like the scenes that grew inside certain kinds of egg-shaped stones.

Purdy stopped at a shanty, a building made of scrap lumber from the mill that slanted so far to one side, it might have just been something the tides left, except that it was placed too high. A small stretch of grass separated the shanty from the beach, and there was dirt, too, where someone had just turned the grass, preparatory to putting in a spring garden. Purdy chose a spot for the three of them, in the sun and out of the wind. Chin stood behind B.J. and tried not to draw attention to himself by shaking with cold. His pants had dried and they chafed him with salt when he walked or shivered, stiff as the sails of a boat. Inside his boots, his feet were as wet as ever.

‘Sam!’ Purdy called out. ‘Sam Clams?’

The door to the shanty was a hanging blanket, which whipped about the empty space in the wind. An Indian came out from behind it, holding it to one side in his hand. ‘
Klaxta o’coke
?’ he asked. He was missing one of his wolf teeth and his legs were bowed.

‘We want a
hyas canim
,’ Purdy told him. ‘We want to catch the
Biddy.
You come and paddle.
Delate hi-hu chickeman
.’

‘No,’ said the Indian. ‘You take the canoe. Buy the canoe. Pay me chickerman. But I’m not going. Too much wind.’

‘Mika wake tickery mornak
?’

‘Delate halo.
Boston man wants
cultus coolley
in my
canim.
Boston man
delate hyas pilton.
Boston man can paddle his own canoe.’

‘He’ll sell us the canoe,’ Purdy translated for B.J. ‘But he won’t rent it and he won’t paddle it. He’s being very insulting. He called me a
hyas pilton.
A big fool.’ He shrugged. ‘Indians. Nothing you can do. You just have to live with them.’

‘Do you?’ asked B.J., suddenly interested.

‘Do I what?’

‘Do you live with Indians?’

‘Not right with them,’ said Purdy.

‘Oh,’ said B.J., turning back to Sam. The interest had faded from his voice. ‘I thought you said you had to.’

‘When did the
Biddy
go out?’ Purdy asked Sam.

‘Fifteen minutes ago. No more. Take the little canoe.’ Sam pointed down to the beach, where a small canoe was lodged on its bottom in the sand between two larger canoes, right at the waterline. As he gestured, he lost his grip on the blanket. It whipped about the doorway. B.J. gasped. Sam grabbed for it again, securing it in his fist.

‘He says we can have the little canoe,’ Purdy translated. ‘He says the
Biddy
went out fifteen minutes ago.’ He turned back to Sam. ‘Isn’t this canoe kind of small for the canal? I want the
Chinook canim.
The wind is too high for us to take the little one.’

‘Are you coming with us?’ Chin asked Purdy. He tried to decide if this would be good news or bad. In the distance, seagulls called to each other over the water.

‘Well,’ Purdy said. ‘Now the steamer has the boiler. I could sit there and get warm. That’s pretty tempting. But I’d like to see Miss Dixon again. She owes me a gun.’