The Equivoque Principle (7 page)

‘It is an avenue worth exploring, is it not? Our
only
avenue, in fact.’

‘I…I suppose it cannot hurt,’ Quaint said. ‘Dray’s father, Sir George, used to own a shipping company working out of Singapore; cargo and trading ships mostly. I never really meshed with the old man’s philosophies, but Oliver was all set to take over the reins, the last I heard. I guess something made him change his mind, eh?’

‘Maybe your saintly influence rubbed off on him?’ Destine jibed.

Quaint laughed. ‘I hardly think that likely. We first met whilst I was travelling through Peru…must have been all of twenty years ago now. I saved his life once, too, as I recall. But then, back in those days I was always saving somebody or other’s life.’

‘Perhaps that is why you have never been concerned with saving your own, hmm?’

Quaint continued: ‘The word is that his father and Robert Peel were old friends from their schooldays at Harrow, and Sir George helped pave the way for Oliver’s success in the police force.’

‘This case could get very nasty very quickly, Cornelius,’ said Destine. ‘Let us hope this Commissioner friend of yours has a strong stomach.’

C
OMMISSIONER OLIVER DRAY
vomited all over the tiled floor of mortuary in the station’s basement. He collapsed onto his knees, his body twitching in convulsions as a thick trail of sputum trailed from his mouth to the floor. Clutching the side of the mortuary table, he wrenched himself up onto his feet, watching though bleary eyes as Sergeant Berry replaced the sheet over Twinkle’s body.

‘Jesus, Horace…you could have warned me!’ Dray said, trying to hide his embarrassment. He wiped spit from his lower lip with his sleeve. ‘She looks like a damn mackerel…sliced open to the gullet. And that…
thing
cut into her,’ he said, gesticulating with a shaky finger at the corpse. ‘What’s the hell’s that supposed to be?’

‘It’s a crucifix, sir.’

‘I can see it’s a damn crucifix, man, but what on God’s green earth is it doing carved into that woman’s chest?’ Dray yelled. ‘What is this, witchcraft or something? It’s obscene!’

Berry shrugged. ‘Neither Lily Clapcott nor May Deeley looked as bad as this, especially with such…religious significance. There was so much blood it was difficult to ascertain cause of death.’

‘Cause of death?’ blurted Dray. ‘Are you insane, Horace? The woman’s got a bloody big gaping hole in her guts—
that’s
the cause of death!’

‘You might think so at first glance, but the victim was actually killed by a single knife wound to the heart. The
crucifix
was cut into her body post-mortem.’

Dray palmed his eyes. ‘After? Are you sure?’

‘Yes, sir,’ confirmed Berry. ‘You can tell when you look at the state of her arteries. The heart stopped pumping the blood, you see—’

‘If I wanted a bloody pathology lecture, Horace, I’d go see Dr Finch!’ Dray snapped. ‘And what about this devil you’ve got locked up? This…
abomination
of a man…what’s he had to say for himself?’

Sergeant Berry looked back blankly. ‘Haven’t you heard, sir? The man’s a mute! It’s pointless to try and communicate with him—he just sits there and stares at the wall with those big gaping eyes of his, like he’s a hunk of beef, or something.’

‘Oh, and you think Whitehall will be satisfied with
that
, Horace?
“He can’t actually speak, but take my word for it, Minister; he’s as guilty as sin!”
’ mimicked Dray. ‘They’ll want a bloody confession, man, nothing less.’

‘Commissioner, we’ve as much chance of getting a confession out of him as we have of a full day’s work from Jennings.’

‘Well, Horace…you’d better start getting creative, hadn’t you. It’s not the first time we’ve had to
assist
a prisoner with his confession, and it won’t be the last!’ Dray rubbed at his wrinkled forehead. ‘You mark my words…the bloke’s probably escaped from some mental asylum somewhere, and then run off the join the bloody circus. Send a couple of men to Bethlem Hospital out Lambeth way; see what they can tell us about any escapees, especially ones with fixations for crosses. That should keep the brass off my back.’

‘There’s more, Commissioner. You really need to have a read of this.’ Berry searched his pockets, and passed Dray a letter. ‘It’s what I was hinting at earlier.’

‘What’s this, Horace, your resignation?’ Dray said with a smirk, removing a pair of thin wire spectacles from his breast pocket, perching them on the end of his nose. He cleared his throat, squinting at the spidery scrawls upon the letter, and read aloud:

Dray looked up from the note. ‘What’s all this is rubbish about, Horace? It sounds like the ramblings of a madman. Where did you get this letter from?’

‘It was next to the last victim’s body, sir. I thought it’d fallen from
her
pocket at first, but then, after I checked the prisoner’s charge sheet with Marsh, I discovered something interesting.’

‘I thought the dead girl was called Argyle or something. Who’s this “Miller” character then, the one it’s addressed to?’ Dray mumbled, waving the letter at Sergeant Berry.

‘That’s my point, sir,
that’s
why it’s so interesting,’ said Berry, a grim look whitening his face. ‘We managed to get some details out of the giant not long ago, just the basics, name, age and that. Just stuff we got him to write down.’ Berry inhaled sharply. ‘It seems he’s originally from Ireland…and his name is Aiden…Aiden J. Miller. The man the letter is addressed to! This whole case worries me, sir…it has since I first found him by the body. I knew there was something fishy about him, and this note adds a whole new way of thinking to this. It’s too convenient, too simple.’

Dray waved him away. ‘Simple is right, Berry. Simple mathematics. One dead girl, plus one unconscious murderer, equals we’ve got our man, case closed!’

‘No, sir, I don’t agree,’ appealed Berry. ‘Now we’ve got this note, everything’s changed. The giant may well have been unconscious when we found him at the scene—but I don’t think we can just
assume
that he’s the killer. If he’s managed to kill twice before and get away with it, why would he be stupid enough to stick around and get caught? And how come he was unconscious when we found him?’

Dray didn’t budge. ‘It resolves nothing and complicates everything, is what that note does, Berry! We’ve got three dead women on our hands, and the only man who knows what happened to at least
one
of them is in our custody. Now what do you want me to do? Let him go? All because of some damned note? For all we know, the bloody giant wrote it himself.’

‘You’d be happy to imprison an innocent man, would you? Without proof? Surely you don’t want
that
on your conscience?’

‘One more thing won’t kill me,’ muttered Dray. ‘There’s already a lot of talk floating around town about these killings, Horace. Sooner or later, it’s going to reach the Yard’s ears and when it does, it’ll be
your
head on the block if you’re wrong about him.’

‘But if I’m
right
, there’s a killer loose out there on our streets, and we’ve got an innocent man locked up!’ Berry gritted his teeth
to contain his anger. His superior was possibly the most stubborn man he had ever met, but this trait of his had never gotten to the point where it clouded his perception of justice before. Dray was being swayed by his anger, and his concern about being made a scapegoat, and it seemed to be up to Berry to be the voice of reason. ‘Commissioner…Oliver…we need to be a hundred per cent sure that the man in our custody is the killer. This won’t just dry up and go away, you know, these things never do. I’ve got a really a nasty feeling in my water about this case. I just know that things are going to get a damn sight worse!’

Dray poured the remnants of his whisky down his neck. ‘Something will come up, Berry…something that ties all these loose ends up. We just need to be patient. An answer will present itself to us in time.’

B
Y A QUARTER
to ten the next morning it had become a bright, if slightly chilly day, and as Cornelius Quaint threw open the doors of Crawditch police station, the idle sunlight illuminated him with an aura of misplaced serenity. The man was anything but serene. Accompanied by Madame Destine, he was of a mind to see the captive Prometheus again—and he would not take no for an answer. Quaint walked determinedly towards the enquiries desk, and his hardened expression softened slightly as he recognised the familiar face of Constable Tucker at the podium.

‘Constable!’ he said cheerily. ‘Don’t you ever go home, man?’ Tucker cracked a brief smile. ‘You’ve been speaking to my wife. Well, I can’t fault your timekeeping, sir, the Commissioner is already here. He’s in his office right now with Sergeant Berry, and he’s been told to expect you.’ Tucker pointed to a large set of mahogany doors behind him. ‘Straight ahead, through them there doors. The Commissioner’s office will be right in front of you.’

Quaint and Destine nodded politely, and bustled through a small, knee-high wooden gate into the police station, past a variety of uniformed men busily writing reports and filing paperwork, flitting around like bees during springtime. Quaint raised his
knuckles to knock on the Commissioner’s door, when suddenly Destine’s hand darted from nowhere and gripped his wrist.

‘Wait, Cornelius,’ she said softly. ‘This friend of yours…can we trust him?’

‘Need I remind you this was
your
idea? It’s a little late for cold feet,’ Quaint said. ‘Stop worrying and come on. He’s a police commissioner, for goodness sake. If anyone can ensure Prometheus gets a fair hearing—it’s him.’

‘It’s just that…’ Destine paused, ‘after my vision yesterday, I am feeling a trifle nervous all of a sudden. It is probably nothing.’

‘Nervous? The vision from my past, you mean? Surely, you can’t mean Oliver. A police commissioner? Come on, Madame, if we can’t trust a policeman—whom
can
we trust? Oliver and I were friends a long time ago. Admittedly, we haven’t set eyes on each other since, but he’s certainly got no quarrel with
me.’

‘Oh really?’ questioned Destine. ‘What about that business you mentioned with his father? Did he not once threaten to kill you?’

‘Ah…well, yes, but that was over twenty years ago. I’m sure that’s all water under the bridge by now.’ Quaint said, knocking twice on the Commissioner’s door. Not waiting for an answer from inside the room, he turned the knob, and strode inside.

As he entered the Commissioner’s office, Quaint scanned the two men’s faces in the room. One was unknown to him, and one looked familiar, but decidedly older than the one he recalled from his memory.

‘Oliver!’ Quaint said, grasping the somewhat bemused Commissioner’s hand firmly. ‘How marvellous it is to see you again, old chap.’

‘And who the bloody hell might you be?’ barked Dray. ‘Who let
you in here? Hang on a mo…wait…is that…
Quaint?
Cornelius Quaint, is that you? What on earth are
you
doing here?’

‘Just a bit of business, Oliver. What’s it been? Eighteen? Nineteen years? I swear you haven’t aged a single day, you old Scottish dog.’

‘I wish I could say the same for you, Cornelius! What a bedraggled mess you are,’ Dray said, flicking at Quaint’s greying curls. ‘Look at that mop of hair!’

‘And what of your own hair, hmm?’ replied Quaint. ‘I trust you have your best men out searching for what’s left of it?’

‘Aye, and if they come across your fashion sense, I’ll let you know. Look at yourself. Never have such fine clothes been so sorely wasted on a body,’ Dray said, looking Quaint up and down. ‘A cloak and velvet smoking jacket at this time of day? You look like you’re off to the bloody opera!’

‘A gentleman can never take too much pride in his appearance, Oliver, no matter what the time of day,’ Quaint parried. ‘But then, I suppose you wouldn’t know anything about that.’

‘Cornelius, if I may?’ interrupted Madame Destine. ‘Perhaps you two could postpone your verbal swordplay for another time, or do I need to remind you that we are here on most urgent business?’

‘Ah!’ Quaint chewed at his lip and nodded. ‘Quite right as ever, Madame. My apologies to you. I forget myself…and my manners.’

‘I suppose introductions are in order, eh?’ Dray said, nudging Berry’s shoulder. ‘This fellow here, Horace, is none other than Cornelius Quaint, an old…
friend
of mine from a misspent youth. Cornelius, this is Sergeant Horace Berry, the best beat copper on the force, bar none.’

‘Sergeant Berry, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,’ Quaint turned on his heel and glanced at Destine, ‘And this is
Madame Destine, my personal advisor. Madame, this fellow is Oliver Dray, commissioner of police, no less.’ Quaint cleared his face of all expression and focused his eyes upon Commissioner Dray. ‘And now that’s out of the way, gentlemen, if you don’t mind, I would like a word. Oliver, you currently have one of my employees locked up in your cells, charged with murder. It is imperative that I speak with him urgently.’

‘Your
employee? You’re the giant’s
boss?
The one we found with that dead girl?’ scoffed Commissioner Dray, slapping his forehead with his palms as if it were the most amusing thing he had ever heard. ‘Oh,
this
is ripe! Cornelius Quaint? Owning a circus, of all things? Ha! Bloody typical, that is—I knew you could never go respectable, it’s not in your nature.’

‘Yes, well, it’s obviously in
yours,’
Quaint said, poking at Dray’s crooked tie. ‘I won the circus in a game of chance with two Prussian fellows. Fair and square, I might add, and it’s a marvellous experience, trekking from one place to the next entertaining folk. You really get to see the spark of the human spirit in full illumination. There is nothing like it on earth.’ Quaint’s expression suddenly darkened, and the light faded from his eyes. ‘Of course…when something like this nasty business transpires…well, it does tend to stick in my craw somewhat. I do not like my circus getting involved in local matters, Oliver.’

Dray snorted indignantly. ‘Local matters? You make it sound so clear cut,’ he said. ‘Murder is never clear cut, and thanks to your bloody circus lot, this one appears muddier than most. Actually, Horace and I were just discussing it. We’ve got three murders on our hands here in Crawditch, and murders that began just as
your
circus crew arrived. So what are you going to do about it, Cornelius?’ asked Dray.

‘Shouldn’t I be asking
you
that question, Oliver?’ enquired Quaint. ‘You do have a vicious murderer at large in this district;
after all…I am not at all sure I wish to risk any more of my people. Perhaps we should postpone our show in Hyde Park.’

‘That would certainly deflect the blame from your circus, eh?’

‘It sounds to me, Oliver, as if you have already closed this investigation, when in my eyes it is still very much open. My people aren’t in the habit of going around slaughtering innocent people, and might I remind you that one of our
own
has also been killed. With my strongman wrongly incarcerated at the moment, my circus is feeling double the pain right now.’

‘Only you—a man who deals with the strange and fanciful on a daily basis—could be tied up in all this nonsense,’ Dray rubbed fiercely at his thinning scalp. ‘A great ox of a mute, a slain dwarf with a bizarre cross carved into her chest, and now a note from someone who says he’s going to exact his revenge upon the giant!’

‘Did you say a note?’ Quaint’s black eyes widened. ‘What note?’