The Seer (11 page)

“He’s not all there in his head, not even by half, but he’s no murderer,” Tammie said. “And then Jibb had the Silver job in Melekei, and Scoth went to see that old woman, too. Jibb delivered her whirly-gigs in the afternoon and she was happy to see him. It’s been a couple of years since he’s come by her place since moving up to Golden Circle. She gave him a glass of lemonade and five dollars. Makes me think I’m in the wrong profession. Nobody tips me for a drawing.”

“Was Jibb still in good spirits by that time?” Jesco asked.

“He was,” Scoth said. “Mrs. Daphna Cussling said they had a drink and a chat about the whirly-gigs she’d purchased, and he helped her get down her box of tissue paper and ribbons so she could wrap them up as gifts. She called him the boy who never grew up. She didn’t know about his fever, but she could tell that he was immature. Yet it was a harmless immaturity, he was polite and responsible with his work, and she liked him very much. After their visit, he rode away on his bicycle. It was late afternoon. She showed no signs of deception and had no reason to harm him, nor is she physically capable of doing so herself. She is frail from age and has heart trouble.”

“Husband thinking that the courier was flirting with his wife?” Tammie guessed.

“Widowed,” Scoth said. “Her cook confirmed Jibb’s visit, and brought in the lemonades for them. All was well.”

Something had happened between that late afternoon in Melekei and the evening when Jibb arrived at home in Chussup. “Did Mrs. Cussling see which way he rode off?” Jesco asked.

“She didn’t, but the cook did as she went out to pick herbs from the garden for dinner. He turned left down the road, which was the normal route he would take to either get home or return to the office. Nothing was amiss at that point.”

“But something was soon after.”

“Mrs. Cussling lives at the farthest edge of Melekei. He would have passed through the whole of the city and a few miles of farm country before he pulled into Chussup. I tried to retrace the most likely route he would have taken. It leads through many streets of fine homes and shops, no dangerous territory, and there were plenty of couriers about on bicycle and horse. I stopped at the east gatehouse that he would have had to pass through to leave Melekei. The guards took no special notice of a man in a green jacket that day in their logbook. They tend to wave couriers on.”

“Then what is the point of having guards?” Tammie said.

“Melekei is a home for the financially comfortable. It isn’t couriers they want to watch for but beggars and troublemakers. Anyone who looks a little suspicious has his or her particulars noted, and passed on to the other gatehouses and the police force. They’ve had a real problem with people coming in to beg and steal. Hasten Jibb drew no attention to himself going in or out that day.”

The autohorse delivered them to the train station, where Tammie waved enthusiastically from the platform until the autohorse pulled away. The silence in the carriage was not as awkward as it usually was, and Scoth volunteered what information he had about the clockmaker. “Seele is deceased, as of a year ago. Wasn’t married, no children. His shop was passed on to his nephew and niece and they run it still.”

“The man could have made a thousand identical timepieces,” Jesco said. “Are you going to track down each purchaser?”

“Remember, though, Seele did not create for a mass market. He also did custom pieces. This timepiece could have been made for one specific person, and never did he make another like it again. When we get there, don’t say where exactly we found the timepiece save Wattling. We don’t need anyone getting twitchy about Poisoners’ Lane and refusing to examine the piece.”

“Do you have it with you?”

“It’s in my luggage. It isn’t contaminated; I had it checked over thoroughly.”

Being so close to it still made Jesco nervous. “If I never have to return to Poisoners’ Lane, it will be too soon.”

“Quite.”

It was well into the afternoon when they arrived in Vasano. A thin splatter of rain had fallen, wetting the roads. The shops in this city had brightly colored walls and red roofs. Some were downright garish in peacock blues and pumpkin orange, which made the clockmaker’s shop stand out all the more when the autohorse arrived at it. Wedged between a forest green grocery and a butter yellow tailor’s, it was a simple white building with faded green trim and small windows filled with timepieces on display. Over the door was a sign that said SEELE and nothing more.

Something about it made Sfinx come to Jesco’s mind. Today it was a clockmaker’s shop; tomorrow it might be burned to the ground; in a year, it could be an empty field and in a hundred years, a farm. It was a melancholic ability to see the ages, and a beautiful one at the same time. A place could be ruined and remade, ruined and remade again. Nothing was attached to time but change. Getting out after the detective, Jesco followed him into the shop.

It was cluttered yet tidy, every conceivable surface crowded in clocks but everything dusted and arranged neatly. There was a proliferation of ticking and dinging, tapping and cuckoos. A track ran along the ceiling, and from the cars of an upside-down train hung antique timepieces. The clock part was hooked close to the car like each was cargo, and the chains stretched down. They went in a circuit around the shop as the train whistle made merry toots.

A man with a thin mustache and glasses balanced atop his head was working at a counter in the back. He had not heard them over the ruckus, and only took notice of them when they stepped up to the counter. Wiping his fingers upon a rag, he said, “May I help you?” Scoth laid out a succinct explanation while Jesco gazed at the shop. The train had come to a crossing and stopped, its chains waving in the air. He only looked back once the timepiece was handed over the counter.

The man was named Phineus, and he had worked with Wotalden Seele for many years. Jerking his head casually, his glasses tumbled off his crown and landed directly upon the bridge of his nose. He turned over the piece and said, “Oh, yes, Seele designed these for Kyrad Naphates about nineteen, twenty years ago. It was right about the time I began here as his assistant.”

“She wanted more than one?” Scoth asked.

A hint of a blush touched the man’s cheeks. “Quite a few were in that first lot, and she ordered several more lots of them since then. In fact, I just received another order about six months ago, but I had to inform her that Mr. Seele had died. She sent back a bouquet in his memory and a personal note.”

“Do you know what she did with so many timepieces?”

His cheeks stained redder and redder until Jesco feared he might burst. “Mrs. Naphates has many . . . friends. I believe she gives them to those whose company she finds most . . . entertaining.”

“Would this entertainment be of a sexual nature?” Scoth asked. It was the only reason that this man could be so embarrassed.

“Do not misunderstand: it is nothing improper! Her husband died of a heart attack weeks after their marriage long ago. He was very old; she was only in her early twenties then. A person has needs, man or woman, and she never remarried,” Phineus said in a rush. “She just has . . . more needs than most. But I will never believe that she is in any way involved in a murder! She is a lovely woman, very considerate, and she changed Naphates Mines that she inherited from her late husband for the better.”

“You feel quite strongly about her,” Scoth said.

He nodded with sincerity. “All the mines were fighting every regulation the government tried to lay on them. People were dying but what did those rich men care? Why should they care as long as they got their money? She broke that wall and accepted the regulations. No little children put to work! Proper ventilation and roof support! Inspections twice a year! If the inspectors find something dangerous, she fixes it up lickity-split. And she pays good wages! A working man, a working woman, they can support their families on what they make and send their children to school. She came up from nothing, a family of miners, so she’s seen it from both sides. My family hails from that area, and people will fight for a chance to work for her. She’s fair as a summer day, and I don’t just mean in her looks.”

“Does she, perchance, have red hair?” Jesco asked.

Phineus beamed. “Yes, the most beautiful red hair. She lives in Rosendrie. I just read a small piece in the papers that she has put herself forth for a position as liaison with the Parliament Committee of Mine Safety.”

Suddenly, Scoth jumped for Jesco and pushed his head down almost all the way to the countertop. Jesco struggled, crying out in surprise, and then realized the train was passing directly overhead. The chains on the timepieces were trailing through Scoth’s hair. Phineus stepped back in alarm as Jesco was released. The train chugged on and whisked the timepieces away.

“Just chains,” Phineus squeaked. “Nothing to worry about.”

“He is a police consultant with special abilities,” Scoth said.

Phineus lost his startled look. “An othelin, eh? Here, then, just a second.” He went to the wall, lifted a teacup hanging there, and flicked a switch. The train on the ceiling halted. “I pushed to remove the chains, but Seele liked how it looked, and his nephew Jon-Jakob doesn’t want me to change anything. But we’ve always fielded complaints from our taller customers swatted in the head over and over with those chains.” He was also tall, and rubbed his head thoughtfully. “Will you be wanting her old order forms? I can give those to you.”

“I would be grateful,” Scoth said as rain hit the windows.

“Thank you,” Jesco muttered to Scoth after the man disappeared into the back. Only the angels and demons knew the history in all of those chains attached to the antique timepieces.

Scoth wrote the woman’s name in his pad of paper, along with Rosendrie. “That’s close to Wattling. Just a few miles south.” He took out the drawings of the red-haired woman, thin man, and nervous blonde, along with a photograph from the coroner’s office of the deceased Hasten Jibb. Putting them in a line on the counter, he looked at the redhead. “I want to confirm with him that this is Kyrad Naphates.”

“And then we’ll go to Rosendrie?”

“Unless you can think of somewhere better.” His eyes flicked to the windows, where raindrops were streaking down the glass. “We won’t make it there today. There’s an inn at Keepsie where I’ve often stayed on investigations, and we can make that in a few hours.”

Phineus returned with the order forms. “Here. You can keep them. Jon-Jakob doesn’t design timepieces. This shop mostly does repairs now, and sells the already existing stock. That timepiece won’t ever be made again.”

“Do you recognize any of these people?” Scoth asked.

Phineus nodded immediately about the redhead. “That’s Kyrad Naphates there. You won’t see me proven wrong about this: she’s no killer, and she’s not involved in any way with someone who is. She doesn’t have the title, and she does have quite an appetite for entertainments, but she is a lady. Once you meet her, you can’t help but to like her.” He skimmed over the rest of the pictures. “No, I’ve never seen these other people.”

It was raining furiously by the time they left the shop. Jesco got straight into the carriage; Scoth went to Horse to program it for the inn. When he climbed into the carriage himself, the hard strikes of the rain on the roof had turned to raps of hail.

All the traffic on the road faded away at the change in weather, and the autohorse pulled them on at a fast pace. Chunks of ice bounced over the pavement. It was too loud to speak, so Jesco debated with himself about how and why Hasten Jibb had gotten to Poisoners’ Lane, and what the connection was between him and the timepiece.

“We should have something to eat. It’s well past lunch,” Jesco said once the rain and hail abruptly stopped. Scoth made a gesture to indicate he was fine. “What do you and Ravenhill do? Just keep working until you pass out from hunger together?”

“I grab something here and there. We could wait until we get to the inn.” Scoth gazed out the window. Then he heaved a sigh and lifted one of the panel additions along the back window. Jesco stared in amazement at the array of buttons. Pressing one, Scoth said loudly and clearly, “Food.” He put back the panel and sank into his seat. “We’ll see if that works.”

“What were all those?” Jesco asked.

“Some additions I made to the carriage and autohorse. If it goes well, the autohorse will stop at the next inn or restaurant it comes across.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“We’ll go off the road and stomp through someone’s field, or land in a river somewhere.”

When the autohorse pulled over, it was at a grocery. Scoth got out, the rain restarting as soon as he was on the sidewalk, and returned with a random assortment of food. There was jerky and bread, cheese and fruit, two bottles of fizzy drinks, and candy. They ate well as the carriage moved along, reset for the inn in Keepsie. A piece of jerky pinched in his fingers, Scoth went through the order forms. “This Naphates woman has ordered close to a hundred of these over the last two decades.”

“He’s so certain that she has nothing to do with it.”

“They’re always certain,” Scoth said gruffly. “If I had a nickel for every person that was certain someone they liked had nothing to do with it, I could buy a second autohorse.”

“What would you name that one? Otto the Autohorse?”

It was almost a smile, but the detective bit it back fast. “Horse Two.”