Wax by Elizabeth Bear
* * * *
No one slept well that night.
A little after three A.M., as a cold whispering rain fell over steep-gabled slate, husbands silently pulled wives close in the clammy darkness. Nursemaids rose from narrow beds to check bundled babes; massive-headed mastiffs whined by banked hearthfires as household cats insinuated between dream-running paws; and in their warm, summer-smelling loose boxes, arch-necked carriage horses stamped and rolled white-rimmed eyes, leaning against the barred partitions to press flank to flank. The City of New Amsterdam tossed restlessly.
Detective Crown Investigator Abigail Irene Garrett had no one to turn to for comfort on a dismal night in April. When the chill slipped like an unwelcome guest between sheet and featherbed and her faded blue eyes came open, Garrett’s hand crept automatically to the pistol under her pillow. Her half-awakened intellect checked her wards and guards. Intact. Despite the muffled impact of her heart against her ribcage, she was as alone as she should have been.
The pearl grip cool and heavy in her hand, Garrett sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of her black wood bedstead. Her left hand resting on the ornate spiral of a bedpost, she ran through her wards again. At her feet, her ragged patchwork terrier whined into the darkness.
“Hush, Mike. I know.”
Nothing. She slipped her revolver back under the pillow and stood, belting a cream lace negligee over her nightgown. Her wand—ebony capped in silver, as long as the span from elbow to fingertip—lay on the nightstand, and this she lifted and touched to the wick of a gnarled beeswax stump. The candle sparked into light and Garrett drew a long, tight breath, trying to ease the clenching in her belly. Thirty years in the service of the Crown, and she had never felt such apprehension.
Setting her wand aside, she crossed rug-scattered tile to the credenza, where she poured herself whisky without water and sipped it slowly. Mike scampered close at her heels. She opened the casement one-handed, rainbeaded glass icy on her fingertips, and leaned out into a gaslamp-jeweled night. Falling water trickled down her neck, washed her face like tears. The woeful exhalation of a late-arriving steamship, packet boat from England or places more distant, hung on the night. The black stone windowledge gouged a cold furrow across her belly. Mike shoved dustmop paws against the wall, too small to reach the windowledge. She reached down and ruffled his ears.
When the first inch of liquor warmed the chill from her shoulders, Abigail Irene Garrett straightened from the window, unwound white fingers from her tumbler, and began to dress.
“Grisly,” Garrett commented—an uncharacteristic sentiment.
And an understatement. The rain had slowed to a mist, but the flagstoned walk lay puddled under her feet. Her eyes narrowed as she gathered the navy-blue skirts of her walking dress in her hands. She lifted them clear of the bloodstained stoop of a wide-fronted three-story brownstone as she minced up the steps. Stringy, clotted runnels dripped down them like paint.
She glanced at uniformed representatives of the Colonial Police and two of the Duke’s city Guard, looking apprehensive and outnumbered. “Who can tell me what happened here?”
A patrolman stepped forward, avoiding the DCI ‘s gaze—and avoided following the direction of it when she turned her back on him, bending toward the body crumpled against the scored wooden door. She couldn’t keep her boots out of the clotted blood, but uniformed officers had already walked through it. And a detective or two who should have known better, I warrant, she thought. Well, we’re not all cut out to be sorcerers.
She glanced over her shoulder, pinning the hapless patrolman on a needle-pointed gaze, wondering which of her notorieties occupied his attention. Perhaps it’s just the scent of blood paling his face. “Well?” Perhaps.
“DCI, I was first on the scene.”
“And?” Garrett drew herself upright, ash-laced blonde hair falling in a wing across her forehead. Don’t smile at him, Abby Irene, or you’ll never get another word of sense out of him, and he might very well piss himself. And you know Division would have something to say about that—disgrace to the uniform and so on. The thought quivered her lips. She fought the smile to a standstill and converted it into an expectant frown.
“He was dead when I arrived, DCI. I heard the screaming...”
“I see.” She let him see her lean forward to note the number on his shield. “Did you identify the bystanders? At what time?”
He took a half-step back. “Sunrise, ma’am. Perhaps an hour ago. There were no witnesses present when I arrived.”
“No-one came to his assistance? You heard screaming—”
The officer trained his gaze on the blood-spattered leaves of a just-budding rose alongside the wrought-iron fence. “It was over quickly. Ma’am. As I arrived, the neighbors began coming out of their houses. I was only around the corner.”
“No-one has touched the body since?” Poor lad. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen. What was he doing out so early in the rain?
“Officers entered. But they climbed through the window.”
She could see that from the footprints. Thankfully they had sense enough not to move the body to open the door. Garrett planned to go inside once she had finished her work with the victim. She was too old to climb through windows in the rain.
I wonder what’s become of his spine? She leaned forward to examine the damage. The skull is cracked, and I would wager the poor lad’s brains have been scooped out. If a human being could do that, I’d say so violent an attack was personal. She crouched to investigate a scatter of pale flecks on the steps, like a splash of milk frozen in place.
The patrolman swallowed loudly. Red hair and freckles, couldn’t have been four years older than the victim. Despite herself, Garrett took pity on him. “What’s your name, officer?”
“Forester,” he replied. His face gleamed white around a fevered flush spotting the center of each cheek.
She sighed, seeing her own imperious face reflected in his eyes. Twenty years ago, she had been thought a great beauty. Boys like Forester had been so far beneath her notice that she had not even realized it was possible for them to have feelings. Times change, Abby Irene. “I am a sorcerer, lad, not a cannibal. You did as well as could be expected.” She turned away.
“Ma’am?”
“Dismissed,” she confirmed. “Go back to your dispatch for debriefing, Forester. You were right to call me in. This is a matter for the Crown.” She knew perfectly well that the summons had come from the city Guard, and not from the Mayor’s Colonial Police, but it was polite to lie.
Sometimes—but only some times—Garrett could almost admit a sympathy for the Mayor and his push for home rule. Her true loyalties, however, lay with the Crown. And the Duke.
Except, she mused, bootheels clicking as she made her way back to her waiting carriage, the Crown was an ocean away on the other side of her self-imposed exile, and in these days of threatened hostilities with the French and Iroquois it seemed to prefer to forget the Colonies existed. And the Duke, loyal Patriot that he was, had problems of his own.
Still, it rankled: in London, she could have counted on a specialist sorcerer and at least one additional DCI for so gruesome a murder. In the entire reach of the Colonies, from the Atlantic to the Iroquois territories West of the Appalachians, Garrett’s only colleagues were in Boston and Philadelphia. One doddered through the closing years of a white-bearded wizard’s career; the other was a puling idiot who never would have achieved his Th.D without judiciously applied nepotism.
Yes, unequivocally—and especially since the Iron Queen’s death and her eldest son’s succession—Garrett was on her own.
Her driver, huddled miserable on the box, touched his cap. The renewed patter of rain on the cobbles told her to hurry. Uniformed officers held the gathering crowd back while Garrett rooted in her blue velvet carpetbag, kept dry in the enclosed coach. Quickly, she found what she needed and returned.
It was nasty work, sketching a circle around the corpse, and the hem of her dress was black with sucking mud and daubed red as well by the time she closed it. Renewed murmurs ran through the onlookers. Garrett shook her head, not troubling herself to look up. They can’t have only now figured out who I am.
But deliberate steps clipped along the bloodsoaked walk, and a silken voice close behind her said, “Crown Investigator.”
Garrett pinched the bridge of her nose, thinking very hard about the silver flask of brandy in her carpetbag. She knotted the circle off so that it would hold during her distraction and turned to face the intruder.
“I see the officers recognized you, Viscount,” she said, briefly distracted by hazel eyes under a fall of brown-black hair. Princely cheekbones, a caballero’s noble nose, and the sensual lip of a Rumanian aristocrat. Garrett bit down on a sigh.
“Please,” said the notorious amateur detective, extending his grey-gloved hand, voice melodious with the interwoven tones of his native language. “So lovely a lady must by all means call me Sebastien. Besides, your English titles are so confusing.”
Garrett transferred her wand to her left hand and allowed him to bend over her right. Much as she despised the man, she had to admit to a certain agreeable shiver when his lips brushed her glove. Don Sebastien de Ulloa straightened and smiled, gesturing to the mangled remains of the boy with the tip of his walking stick. “And so, my dear investigator—what have we here?”
Garrett pursed her lips in frustration, but kept her voice level. “I’m not certain yet,” she said. “I’ve just finished containing the scene. There are a few interesting anomalies....”
“That is candlewax.” Don Sebastien leaned forward, laying a hand on Garrett’s arm to steady himself away from the circle.
“It appears to be,” she answered, shifting from the touch. “Interesting, is it not? Other than the mud and blood, it is obvious that the doorstep and facade were immaculately kept; probably scrubbed daily, if their housekeeper is anything like my Mary. So the wax can be no older than a day.”
Don Sebastien was no sorcerer, and she largely ignored him while she dipped mingled salt and lampblack out of a little pouch and spread those around the circle, pretending she did not notice the cold water dripping down her collar. Don Sebastien seemed untroubled. “What intrigues me, Crown Investigator, is the swiftness of the attack. Have you eliminated a human agency?”
She tucked the little pouch into her pocket. “I’ve ruled out nothing,” she answered, feeling as if he tested her. “But I must admit, I can see no way around suspicions of sorcery. Unless it was a beast.” She let her voice drop. “In which case, we can expect further attacks.”
Don Sebastien pursed sensual lips. Rain spattered from the brim of his hat. “May I call you Lady Abigail? It is so much less unwieldy than ‘Crown Investigator.’”
“My name is ‘Abigail Irene.’ And I would prefer to be addressed by the title appropriate to the situation. ‘Garrett’ will do if you are pressed for time, Don Sebastien.”
“I meant no disrespect. DCI, have you considered some of the more unpleasant possibilities?”
“Such as?”
“Were-thing. Wampyr. Summoned demon, improperly bound.”
“What would you consider the more pleasant possibilities, Don Sebastien? A deranged lunatic with the strength to peel a man’s spine out of his back?”
“Ah. I take your point, Investigator. Although I admit, I am still exceedingly curious about the candlewax.”
Garrett chuckled. “So am I, Don Sebastien. So am I. And curious as well, where the other residents have gotten off to. Shall we proceed?”
Once the coroner had moved the body, Don Sebastien wrapped the brass door-pull—which had already been examined—carefully in his handkerchief and tugged it open, stepping aside so that Garrett could precede him. “Crown Investigator, may I join you?”
“Thank you, Don Sebastien. If you must, you may.” She shook her gore-daubed skirts and knocked the worst of the mire from her boots before she crossed the threshold; it didn’t help. Wet cloth still clung to her knees when she crouched. “Well.”
Don Sebastien reached up and pulled a taper from the sconce upon the wall, keeping the drip shield at its base. He set it alight with a silver lighter, drawn from his coat pocket, and dropped to one knee facing Garrett, tilting the candle to give her light. Shadows scrolled about them. “More candle-spatters,” she said. “Beeswax, and a good quantity of it, too.”
“Do you maintain your good opinion of the housekeeper?”
She lifted her chin and glanced around, hair moving against the nape of her neck. Don Sebastien’s eyes were on the scrollworked secretary beside the door. Garrett reached out and ran a kid-gloved fingertip along its edges. She examined the results in the glow of the taper, which was of good enough quality not to drip even when he angled it. “Even the back is clean,” she said. “And a family of some means, if they were spending so on candles. And that candle does not drip like this.” She drew out a penknife and flaked a few dribs of wax into a glassine envelope.
“Your reputation does not do you justice,” Don Sebastien said, and stood, offering Garrett his assistance. “The intruder’s light, do you think?”
“If there was an intruder.” His flesh was cool even through her glove. “Don Sebastien, you were too long in the rain.”
“I am always cold,” he answered, and released her lightly once her balance was sure. “The trail appears to lead this way. Shall we have a look upstairs, Crown Investigator?”
“By all means. Lead on, Lucifer.” Light-bearer.
He laughed and held the candle high. “I have been called worse. You have noticed the angle of the drippings?”
“Of course,” she answered. “They fell from the candle of someone leaving the house.”
“Indeed.” They entered the front room. He stood aside again, to allow her to precede him up the sweeping stair.
Very pretty. For a hobbyist. Does he think because a Crown Investigator is also a woman, she needs an expatriate Spaniard as her shadow to solve a murder? And then, since he was only looking at the back of her rain-wet head, she allowed herself a little, mocking smile. Perhaps he’s just hoping to catch a glimpse of your ankles. “There is more wax up the stair runner.”
“And on the banister.”
“And across the landing—interesting. The droplets crisscross the hall.” She bent again, gesturing for the light. Don Sebastien was beside her as silently as a cat in his patent-leather boots, dabs of mud marring their mirror shine. “The intruder spent a fair amount of time here.”
“Do you suppose he came in through an upstairs window? Two were open; strange on a stormy night.”
“Do you suppose he was a he?” Garrett answered mildly, moving to the closest of the bedrooms, from which a cold draft flowed. The door stood open; mud on the threshold told her the officers had been through it, and she wished she knew if the door had been closed or open when they arrived.
She paused in the frame of the doorway, letting her eyes take in the room. A young man’s, by the schoolbooks and fencing gear, and the bed had been slept in—disconsolately, judging by the crumpled and thrown-back covers and the disarray of the pillows. Unlike the downstairs entryway, there was light enough in this room to see the spatters of wax on the floor, although there was no candle in the holder by the bed.
A chill lifted the hair on Garrett’s neck. She moved to the window, aware of Don Sebastien behind her, although the wide wooden boards scarcely seemed to flex under his weight. “Are you a swordsman, Don Sebastien?”
“A notorious one, in my youth,” he answered, giving it the slight inflection of a double entendre. Her lips twitched. She did not look, instead leaning down beside the windowframe and tilting her head to examine it against the slanted light. The floor beneath was damaged, the wood already swollen from rain falling inside. That rain had washed away any traces that might have been on the windowsill; Garrett stared until her eyes crossed and found nothing. Still her skin crawled.
“He is restless,” Garrett said, straightening and stepping away from the casement. She whirled, noticing Don Sebastien’s sudden stillness, as if he set himself for an attack. Garrett pulled her eyes from the Spaniard and paced quickly to the bed. “He rises. He—”
“—kindles a light,” Sebastien interrupted. “There is a burnt match in the candle holder, and the box in the nightstand cubbyhole.”
“Very good. Except he’s neglected a candle—”
“—or perhaps he pulls the candle from the holder.”
“To what purpose?”
“I do not know.” Their eyes met, and Garrett released the deep-drawn breath she had been holding. The thrill of the chase.
“Were you restless last night, Don Sebastien?”
“I am always restless at night, DCI.”
“Then perhaps—” she advanced with a firm step like a duelist’s “—you would be better served at home, resting in your bed.” She didn’t smile to soften it, and again their gazes crossed. Garrett fancied she could hear the ring of steel. “This is still a Crown investigation, Viscount.”
Don Sebastien reached up to tip his hat, which he had not removed when they stepped inside. “I am very restless,” he answered. “And, too often, very bored. And I do not imagine that this is anything but your case, Crown Investigator.”
“As long as you understand me.”
She turned away and went to the window again. She was leaning out to grasp the edge of the casement with the intention of swinging it closed when he spoke again from close beside her. “Oh, never that, Abigail, I—”
His body struck hers a moment before she properly registered that he had stopped speaking mid-sentence, slamming her forward, belly against the windowsill and her arms flung out like a diver’s. Her corset took the brunt of the impact, whalebone bruising her at belly and breast, and she shouted outrage and scrabbled at rain-slick wood. She teetered, Don Sebastien’s weight pinning her, and kicked wildly, expecting any moment to feel his hands on her ankles tilting her forward into a sickening, tumbling fall.
She didn’t think the rose-bushes would break her fall enough to save her. Especially if she hit the fence. Why would the Great Detective murder a wealthy East Side boy? Amazed by the calm precision of her own thoughts even as she twisted, bringing her gloved hands up to fend him off.
His strength was irresistible. He simply wrapped hands as hard as barrel-hoops around her wrists and—hauled her spluttering back into the room and down onto the floor. “Are you hit?” he asked, patting her cheek anxiously. His hat had tumbled off and fetched up in the far corner, and his glossy, hard-looking hair stood up in disheveled spikes.
“Hit?”
“The carriage—” He shook his head. “You didn’t see.” And rolled on his back, away from her, and raised his right hand to point across his face to the ceiling directly overhead. “There was a rifleman down on the street.”
Detective Crown Investigator Garrett certainly knew the look of a fresh bullet-hole in plaster, when she saw one. “Ah,” she said quietly. “Someone must be taking an interest in the case.”
A little before noon, Garrett marked time in the antechamber outside the Mayor’s office, grateful at least for the chance to shed her soaked oilcloth. Although the rain had stopped falling and the clouds had thinned shortly before Don Sebastien took his leave, the afternoon promised a continuing overcast.
Blood and mud still smirched the hem of her walking dress, and it might have been politic to return to her rooms and change. However, his Lordship, Peter Eliot, Mayor of New Amsterdam, had made it known that he expected to see her with all deliberate speed, and far be it from her to think of preserving the man’s prized Persian carpets under such circumstances. Garrett swallowed a pleased smile.
By the watch pinned to her bodice, she’d been waiting at least twenty minutes before the door opened and the Mayor’s confidential secretary—a well-made young man with dark blue eyes, whom she noted appreciatively—gestured her in. Garrett smiled; she’d taken the opportunity to rifle his desk while he was away, and had one of his visiting cards slipped inside the cuff of her glove. Simon LeMarque, M.Th.S. Another sorcerer. And French. How interesting. The Mayor must be more worried about the Duke and me than he admits. Although, given the number of times he’s tried to—embarrass—us both, I shouldn’t be surprised.
She swept past Simon LeMarque, holding her soiled dress well aside, and glided to a halt before Peter Eliot’s enormous mahogany desk. The Mayor didn’t trouble himself to look up from the papers that occupied his attention, and Garrett gave her sodden skirts an extra shake to settle them. “Your Lordship.”
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