The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (22 page)

“Speaking of old Evie,” Kolston began, and pulled open one of the drawers behind his desk.

Olivia made a
psht
noise and waved violently at him. She glanced at Chris. “No talk of the good doctor, Rayner, thank you.”

Chris glared at her. “I don’t see why not,” he demanded. “I’m deeply invested in this, you know. I’ve believed Livingstone is innocent all along! I want to see him freed, and―”

“It’s
because
you care so much.” Olivia sighed as Kolston slid the drawer slowly closed. “You can’t be part of this.” She shot a sour look at Kolston. “I really do wish you hadn’t mentioned it in front of him.”

Kolston shrugged. “Sorry, Liv, but I can’t read your screwy little mind up there. You never said to clam, so I didn’t.”

“How soon can you get me something incriminating on Pritchard?” Olivia said, with a look Chris recognized from his youth. The look said ‘we’ll talk about this away from the children,’ and his mother had used it often. He did not appreciate it. He was not a child, Olivia was not his mother, and every last bit of this was completely ridiculous. He slammed his notebook shut, crossing his arms. Olivia gave him a mild look as Kolston shrugged again.

“I can do tomorrow. Don’t bother to haul yourself all the way out here,” he said as Olivia went to speak. “I’ll be in the neighborhood, I reckon. I can stop by your office.”

“I am
rarely
in my office, Rayner. I have a
real
job.” Olivia gave a long-suffering sigh and fanned herself with her hand. Despite the heat, Chris was quite sure she did it as a subtle insult.

“Then I’ll just have to show up first thing in the morning or late in the afternoon. And if you’re not there, I’ll sit and wait for you,” Kolston gave her a grin and his eyebrows fluttered.

“Oh, sweet Maiden’s Sigh!” Olivia fanned herself again, but this time it was purely exaggerated flirtatious nonsense. “What did I ever do to earn the acquaintance of such a gentleman?”

Kolston doffed his hat, placing it over his heart. His hair was definitely black, Chris decided. “Even if it’s pouring, I’ll stand there and get soaked for you, lovey,” he proclaimed.

Olivia snorted and turned away. “As if it could manage to rain in
this
heat.” She crooked one elegant finger. “Come along, Christopher. I want to check something at Heart Church again.” And as much as he hated trotting at her heels like an obedient dog, he did exactly that, out the door, past Missus Clutterbuck, all the way to the carriage.

When they were both seated and the conveyance jolted into a trot again, Chris sighed and looked across the seat at Olivia. “You
know
that he killed a man, right?” he asked. It came out sounding more like a plea.

“Yes, thank all the gods,” Olivia said, sighing in what sounded disturbingly like relief. “Let me tell you, Chris, it would drive me absolutely
mad
if I weren’t sure.”

“Maris should have the autopsy information to me by this evening,” Olivia mused.

She stood in the centre of the curiously grand water closet where they’d found Lachlan Huxley’s bloated body the day before. Lachlan was long gone, and one would never know the back halls had been so flooded if they didn’t look too closely. As always, Chris found the complete erasure of signs of murder disconcerting. A place where something so horrible had happened shouldn’t be capable of going back to looking like it had before. He thought often of Fernand’s upstairs bathroom with its clawed foot tub. In a way, he was glad that Fernand’s nephew had never responded to his efforts to communicate. He never wanted to go back to that house and see that room again. It would live on forever in his mind as he’d last seen it. The floor slick with blood, the tub filled with red water, and Fernand…

The memory haunted him, but some things
should
haunt. Some things
should
remain indelibly seared into the world.

“Are you listening, Christopher?” Olivia demanded, and Chris snapped his head up from the page of disturbing notes he’d weaved.

“No,” he admitted, tearing out the page and thrusting it into his inner coat pocket. His light shirt beneath had sweated through. “I’m sorry, Olivia. I am, now.”

Olivia nodded once and turned away from him, surveying the room. “The door would have been closed,” she said. “Mister Huxley was doing his toilet, after all. He was in his robe, so he must have gotten in or out of the bath. Impossible to tell which.” She turned about slowly. “
Where
he was found is…” She mused, and Chris weaved. “Even if an undine could fill this entire room immediately―” There was a rustle of skirts, and Chris looked up after a moment’s silence to see Olivia staring askance at him.

“Ah,” he said, racking his brain. He really was not an expert in this. “An undine’s water comes from the amphora she holds, but it has infinite capacity. I don’t know what the limits on her water creation would be, but… but there would have to be
some
. Logically.” Did there? After all, an undine had to pour water faster than could logically come from the mouth of her amphora, or else she’d be no threat. He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Could she hold him still and pour the water right down his throat?”

“Definitely not,” Chris knew this much. “Rogue elementals are petty and malicious, but they’re not evil. They’re beings of pure chaos. Something like that would be too… planned.”

“Could a ‘binder command it?”

“Y-yes…” Chris said hesitantly. “Theoretically. A strong enough ‘binder can command most anything of an elemental. But I don’t know if there are any alive who could manage it, other than Rosemary. Besides, the collateral damage done in the previous murders would suggest the spirit was fully wild.”

Olivia nodded her acknowledgment. “Very useful, Christopher, thank you,” she said, turning once again back to the room. “So. That means that where his body was found in the room is meaningless to reconstruction of the scene. Even if the undine
could
fill the entire room immediately―and I agree that seems unlikely―he would have had time to move about the interior of the room before he finally expired.” She made a face. “Goodness, there isn’t much reconstruction at
all
we can do with this scene, is there?”

“You were right that the door was likely shut,” Chris pointed out, trying to encourage her.

“Right!” Olivia smacked her fist into her open palm. Chris watched her visibly retrace her train of thought back to there, and then watched her deflate. “If the marks on his fingers were cuts, he wouldn’t need to have recognized the killer. They could have driven him back in with the knife and then unbound the undine, holding her in stasis while they made their escape to the door. Close the door, sever the connection.” She walked back to the door, shoes clicking along the marble floor. She closed it behind them. “Oh,” she said. “Well, now. Would you look at this?”

Chris moved beside her. He blinked. “We missed this yesterday.”

“We certainly did…” Olivia ran her fingers over where the latch
should
have been. Instead, there was a broken off stub of metal. The surrounding wood was scratched and torn. “And so did everyone else,” she murmured. “I suppose this explains the broken fingernails…”

“The killer broke the latch so he couldn’t get out,” Chris said, feeling sick. “Even if he was fully conscious, there was nothing he could do.” He wouldn’t let himself imagine that. Knowing you were dying long before you died would be…

Fernand had known. How had it felt, sliding that knife along his wrists?

He squeezed his eyes shut.

Olivia tapped her chin. “Whoever did this
definitely
had to know the church. They would have to know the bathing schedule. They would have had to have known they could break the latch. And they would have had to know that this bathroom had no windows Mister Huxley could escape from.” She blinked and turned to Chris. “What about the other three? Were they trapped, too? Gods, I wish I could visit those scenes. Why did I want cold cases, again?”

Chris couldn’t answer her, so he flipped back through his notebook. “Hmm,” he murmured, eyes scanning the page. “It was hard to tell, but it seems as though the doors to their rooms were all fully functional…”

“Hmm.” Olivia mused, swaying back and forth. “So. All three sleep in bed late at night, and no reason to believe any of them knew something was coming or were shut away. And then”―she turned a circle, arms extended―“
this
. Lachlan is the outlier in every single way.” She furrowed her brow. “Could… could he be unconnected to this, somehow?” The question wasn’t aimed at Chris, except to record it. Olivia paced. “
Could
he? Gods, that’s bloody unlikely. Especially since he’s the one with the cuts on his hands. They were cuts. They had to be cuts. Only evidence of foul play. So that would make the
other
three the accidents? No serial? No. No, there’s no way. It’s too much a pattern.” She nodded once, firmly. “No, he’s not unconnected. He’s just… different, somehow. How?”

She went silent for a long, long time, an Olivia-shaped statue staring at nothing. But when he shifted from one foot to the other, she snapped her head up and fixed her gaze on him like a startled cockatrice. “Olivia?” he prompted, indicating the open notebook with his chin.

“Give me an hour. No! Thirty minutes.” She sighed and shook her head. “No, an hour. This one is… challenging. I’m scattered. I need to un-scatter.”

“Don’t you want me transcribing?”

Olivia shook her head firmly. “Normally, I’d say yes. If you were Constance, or any of the others. But you’re not any of them. You’re
useful
. I want you to find the other priests. I want you to talk to them. People talk to you, for some reason.” She gave a weak chuckle. “
I
talk to you. I don’t talk to
anyone
. We could use a little of your…” She wiggled her fingers. “Personal insights?”

“Because of Lachlan’s unique personality,” Chris said.

“Exactly,” Olivia agreed. “And I’m useless with people.”

“No,” Chris said, unable to help the smile that crawled up his lips and settled like a purring cat. “
You?”

She mimed throwing something at him. “Get your handsome face out of here.” She sniffed. “Turn it loose on all the poor lonely women in this bloody place who’ll only ever see one man.
I
”―she spun about, her professional, straight skirts managing a little twirl―“am going to have a conversation with the only room in this mess that can tell me
anything
.”

Christopher took tea with Grandmother Harriet and Grandfather Thaddeus.

The Elder prepared the pot, cucumber sandwiches, and biscuits while the Crone sat with him. They were very scandalous, she told him, a little smile on her wrinkled face. The Elder and not the Crone taking care of kitchen matters. But they’d known one another since they were very, very young, and they’d learned in sixty years how to divide labour in a way they could both be content with.

Chris was glad for the easy place to start a conversation.

“Was it not love at first sight, then?” Chris asked, smiling as he accepted a saucer of black tea from the Elder, who bustled back to the tray he was preparing.

“Goodness, no.” Grandmother Harriet laughed. “Thaddeus had been serving alone as Youth for a year before I went to Lowry for my categorization. Back in those days, it was completely different. When the Elder here at Heart Church had passed and the Crone had gone into retirement, there wasn’t a new Maiden available. Poor Thaddeus here had to go into service all by himself as the previous Maiden and Youth were married and pushed to Mother and Father. He waited a long time for a sweet Maiden to come along and stand beside him, helping him with his duties… and unfortunately, he got me.”

Grandfather Thaddeus laughed quietly along with his wife as he brought the tray over. Chris sipped at his tea.

“I was a rough little thing. I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, you see.
Before
that was half the city like it is, now! Back then, girls like me dreamed of hitting it big at categorization and making a fortune. I was none too pleased when I was told I’d be serving the Gods my whole life. I hadn’t prayed once since I was born!” She looked fondly over at Thaddeus as he slid into his chair. “I was very ungrateful.”