The Equivoque Principle (6 page)

C
ORNELIUS QUAINT WAS
sitting in near darkness in his office, the only glimmer of light provided by a single candle positioned on the cluttered table in front of him. Piles of paperwork were stacked up high on his desk awaiting his inspection, but he ignored them this night. His mind was simply not on the job. Admittedly, the circus finances were no fun at all, and there was never a good time to bury one’s head amongst figures and sums, but he had at least hoped they would serve as some kind of distraction. Instead they were nothing more than one more thing to put off and do tomorrow. The very thoughts he was trying hard
not
to entertain remained stubbornly present at the forefront of his mind. The shutters over his carriage windows were down, and an eerie silence had taken hold within the room. It was rapidly approaching two in the morning, and Quaint’s burst of energy from the night’s adventure at The Black Sheep had subsided, giving way to beleaguered tiredness. As much as he hated to admit it to anyone—least of all himself—he was not a young man any more. He rubbed at the third finger on his left hand and stared into the flickering light of the candle, allowing the golden-amber flame to hypnotise him. He rubbed at his eyes, stifling a yawn. Quaint barely even noticed the gentle knock on his office door
before Madame Destine stepped inside, carrying a silver tray with a hot pot of tea and two cups upon it.

‘I thought you would still be awake, my sweet.’ Destine pushed a stack of papers to one side and placed the tray on the corner of Quaint’s desk. ‘You do realise that pile won’t get any smaller the longer it is left, you know. Unless you are trying to perfect a new magic trick to make all the bills disappear.’

‘I think that I would have better luck trying to turn water into wine, Madame,’ Quaint said with a wan smile.

Madame Destine seated herself in a wooden chair opposite him, raised her veil and looked at Quaint intently, her eyes taking in every minute detail of his worn face. She leaned forward to pour tea into his cup, never once removing her gaze from him. After a long pause, she spoke: ‘Is there something on your mind,
mon cheri
?’

‘No, Madame. Why do you ask?’

She blew gently into her teacup as wisps of steam floated to the ceiling. ‘For three reasons; because I know you better than you know yourself, because you cannot hide anything from me, and because I know what the date is today.’

Quaint froze, the teacup suspended in mid-air, inches from his mouth. A hollow silence was borne between them. For a painfully long moment, he tried his best to avoid eye contact with the Frenchwoman, but he knew he couldn’t resist a glance eventually. More than that, Destine knew it too, and when he finally looked up from the tea, her blue-grey eyes were already beseeching him for the truth.

‘Has anyone ever told you that you would make a marvellous torturer?’ Quaint asked.

‘Frequently,’ replied Destine. ‘So there
is
something on your mind then?’

‘Yes, yes! There is something on my mind. Are you happy
now?’ Quaint said, a little more harshly than he had intended. ‘You’re right again, as always. I just suppose…the date sneaked up on me a little quicker than I had expected.’

Destine nodded, choosing her delicate words carefully. ‘I thought as much. It is never an easy time of year for you, Cornelius, so why does this
particular
year cause you more anguish than the previous anniversaries of your wife’s death?’

The directness of Destine’s question made Quaint shudder, as if the words were forbidden, and by saying them aloud, some great taboo had been broken. The melodic control of her voice was like hearing each sentence as a symphony, deconstructed into its purest, most poetic form. Quaint had always said that Destine could read the cargo manifest of a spice merchant’s schooner and it would still sound like angels singing. But that was not to say her words did not sting his heart.

Quaint locked eyes with her. ‘It’s November the twenty-third and with all that has been going on recently, I’ve hardly even noticed.’

‘Perhaps that is a good thing, my sweet. A sign that the healing process has finally begun?’ offered Destine. ‘It has been so many years now.’

‘Twenty-nine, to be exact,’ said Quaint. ‘But I have been distracted; Madame! This day almost passed by unnoticed, and I feel shame for that fact, as if I’m dishonouring her memory somehow.’

‘Poppycock! You remember Margarite in your own way at this time of year, Cornelius…within your heart. There has been much of late to occupy your attention elsewhere. That is not dishonour, my sweet. You have a life to lead, and one that is not frozen in time, locked in the past. As I said, perhaps you are now able to focus more clearly on other things. After all, does this day not normally put you in a most bedevilled mood?’

‘Do I not look to be in a bedevilled mood now, Madame?’
Quaint leaned back in his chair, forcing the creaking wooden joints to complain. A broad sardonic grin forced itself onto his face. ‘I am always bedevilled—it is my lot in life. Even though I have subconsciously pushed these thoughts to the back of my mind, they are not forgotten. Maybe once I finally try and get some sleep tonight they will come back to haunt me once more. My bad dreams always seem to increase tenfold at this time of year.’

‘Is that why you are awake at this hour? Are you hoping to run from your nightmares, Cornelius, because I—of all people—can tell you that they have a nasty habit of recurring, usually when you least expect them,’ Destine said, as she moved her chair forwards, edging closer to the desk. ‘It does no one any good to dwell in the past. For what it is worth, I think all this talk of murder and death of late is the reason not why you
forget
Margarite’s death, but why you allow the
symbolism
behind it to taint every thought you have. After all, is death not everywhere we look recently?’ Destine made a point of a long pause, as she watched the cinders of recognition burn in Quaint’s eyes. This was an important message that she was trying to impart, and she hated giving good wisdom to deaf ears. ‘Your rage is a great fuel for you, Cornelius…just be cautious that once that fuel is burnt out, your soul is not so spoiled that it cannot function without it.’ Destine stirred her teacup noisily, chinking the silver spoon against the saucer, signalling an end to the maudlin conversation.

‘So…why do you not tell me of the night’s adventures? I would so much like to hear of them. Make sure you begin at the beginning, dear, if you don’t mind,’ said Destine calmly. ‘And do not leave out any tales of fisticuffs, for I am far from squeamish and you know how much I
love
to hear tales of you clobbering bad people.’

Quaint nodded, reluctantly giving in to his companion’s
request. He regaled her with the night’s visit to The Black Sheep tavern, and Destine hung on his every word.

‘And whilst Jeremiah, Ruby and myself worked the floor downstairs, Yin and Yang searched the landlord’s residence. I was actually hoping that they’d find something…
incriminating
, some titbit of explanation. But aside from a lot of unpaid bills, bad debts and a few bawdy love letters to a beau named Mary, the twins found nothing. However…downstairs in the bar, the landlord told Ruby and I that an Irishman had given him money to pass the drugged whisky to Prometheus,’ Quaint said. ‘The landlord had never seen him before, or since.’

‘We have been here for only two days and already we have made an enemy who is prepared to kill,’ Destine said, resting her top lip upon the ridge of her cup. ‘Things move fast in this town, Cornelius.’

‘Yes, well…Prometheus has always had a knack for attracting trouble, hasn’t he?’ Quaint said, recollecting more than one occasion when he’d either had to fight, bargain or plea for Miller’s life in one country or another over the years.

‘And how many times has he truly been at fault? He cannot help the way he looks, Cornelius. Prometheus is certainly no lover of conflict. Some people are magnets for trouble, whereas others seem to seek it willingly, like a wasp to jam,’ Destine said, catching Quaint’s eyes. ‘Sound familiar?’

Quaint tried to look innocent, playing with the buttons on his shirt. ‘Not really. The only connection that I’m pinning my thoughts on is that this bloke was apparently Irish, as Prometheus himself is. Perhaps this is what triggered the conflict?’

Destine nodded.
‘Probablement
.’

‘Which beggars the question: how do you pick an argument with a mute? And if you wished to…would you do so with one who looked like Prometheus?’ chimed Quaint.

‘And why not use a knife or a pistol rather than poison?’ agreed Destine. ‘You know that I am extremely sensitive to the emotions of others, Cornelius, and I know that it is usually emotion that is the trigger for murder. As you can testify; emotion and common sense are not mutually exclusive—or need I remind you of your tryst with the Hungarian premier’s wife a few years back?’

A smile (and one that balanced the delicate line between amusement and embarrassment) skirted briefly across Quaint’s face, as his memory recalled the incident to which Destine referred. ‘That was years ago, but even now my lower back still aches on a cold day. Duchess Ariadne took a fancy only to my stage magic and illusion, Madame, not to me. She had such spirit, and such a voracious appetite!’

‘You may paint that particular mental picture for someone else, Cornelius, I am a lady, and do not forget it,’ Destine said, sipping her tea. ‘We need to speak to Prometheus again. We need to try and find the connection, if there is indeed one to be found.’

‘The police said there have been two other murders the past few nights, oddly enough, all since our arrival. To me it’s nothing but coincidence, but to the police…it’s too
much
of coincidence to
be
one. Tell me, Madame Destine, oh great and wonderful reader of fortunes, what does your foresight tell you about this chaos? I mean, all this has just come from nowhere, as if we have stepped into a theatre performance half-way through an act. Something must be at its root, but what is it?’

‘Ah, Cornelius…what a question, and therein lies the mystery,’ Destine said with a thin smile, crows’ feet sparkling at the corners of her eyes. ‘The answers are well concealed, and my feelings tell me that these murders are more than just random street crimes.’

‘This killer is unconventional, would you agree?’ said Quaint. ‘So to apply conventional reasoning to him is pointless. We went
to an awful lot of bother to get information last night, and I know it means something, but I just don’t know where it takes us.’

‘The truth shall be revealed in time,’ said Destine. ‘To get the right answers you have to ask the right questions, and of the right people. I have no facts to offer you, Cornelius, merely suppositions and propositions. As to why this man attacked Twinkle when his argument was with Prometheus…we may never know. Perhaps Twinkle was his target, and somehow Prometheus got involved. When he saw Prometheus lying in the gutter, perhaps he wanted to remove the only witness, and turned on Twinkle, or…’

‘Or what?’

‘Or perhaps he knew
exactly
what he was doing,’ said Destine. ‘Perhaps it was not his intention to kill Prometheus—merely to achieve that which in fact has transpired—to incapacitate him, and implicate him whilst he freely murdered and mutilated Twinkle. A decoy for the police to focus upon.’

Quaint rubbed the back of his head in frustration. ‘What would make someone
do
such horrors to a complete stranger?’

Madame Destine sipped silently at her tea. ‘You are of course working on the assumption that this person
was
a stranger. We have no confirmation that this is so.’

A chilling thought danced across Quaint’s mind, and he clamped his eyes shut, trying to deny his imagination the chance to entertain it. Could this killer be someone from his circus? Quaint knew his people, and surely not a single one of them would harm—
could
harm—someone like Twinkle in such a maniacal fashion. It was abhorrent. Could a monster be hiding within his family undetected?

‘As I said, my dear…
emotion
is a powerful master,’ continued Destine. ‘There are two emotions that men most commonly kill for. One is jealousy, the other, revenge. Both of these emotions inhabit the negative end of the wide spectrum of human emotion,
and can blind a man to what is right and what is wrong. He can be tempted by them…tainted by them, blinded by their power.’ She leaned back in her chair, and stared deeply into Quaint’s dark eyes. ‘I
warned
you about starting down this road, Cornelius, and yet again you choose to ignore me. I pray that more deaths do not come, and yet I know within my heart that they most certainly will.’

Quaint pinched hard on the bridge of his nose. It was by now very early in the morning, and his body was on the verge of collapse. His wracked emotions were making short work of his strength. ‘Well, so far there’s been a murder a night for the past three nights. I just hope there’s another murder tonight,’ he said.

‘Cornelius, what a thing to say!’ Destine scolded.

‘Think on it, Madame. If there’s another killing whilst Prometheus is locked up, that exonerates him, does it not?’

‘And if there is
not
another murder—tonight or any other night? What then do you think the local police shall do?’ Destine asked, folding the corners of her lace veil between her fingers. ‘They will simply say that they have caught the perpetrator, which is why the deaths ceased. I suspect that they are ill-equipped to handle the complexities of a case such as this, Cornelius. I know I advocated restraint to you this afternoon, but I fear that if we place Prometheus’s fate in their hands he may be hanging from his neck by the end of the week.’

‘Is that my governess or my fortune-teller speaking?’ Quaint asked.

Destine smiled. ‘Perhaps a little bit of both. Did you not say that you knew the police commissioner? Can we not enlist his aid?’

Quaint swept a hand through his obstinate hair. ‘Oliver? Well…it’s been a long time, Destine. I don’t know how much pull I’ll have with him these days.’