TEN
“What’s this I hear about you arresting Gibson’s killer and then releasing her without charge?” Graham’s boots thundered on the hardwood floor as he marched into Calum’s office.
The sound sent panic through Calum’s joints. He pressed his fingertips into the wooden surface of his desk, noting the warmth of the fire to his left—reminding himself that he was in Mossburgh, and he was safe.
“I arrested a person of interest in Gibson’s murder, then released her because it became clear she couldn’t have been the killer. I didn’t charge her because there was nothing to charge her with.” His voice shook slightly; he clenched his jaw to steady it.
A vein pulsed in Graham’s forehead. “But I’ve already told the chief constable that you caught the killer!”
“What did you do that for?” Calum snapped, his patience wearing thin.
“Why do you think?” Graham swept a hand over his hair. “I had to show him something to justify my faith in you.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that. Sir.” He added the last belatedly in an effort to seem less combative.
Graham’s hands clenched at his sides. He unfurled his fingers before speaking. “You know how this looks, right?”
“I know.” Calum pressed his hands into the desk. “From the chief constable’s perspective, I’ve just let another murder suspect free.”
“And you’ve reported another colleague for mistreatment of a suspect.
” Graham sniffed. “I’ve kept that in the station house for now, and penalised Bruce appropriately, but if Bruce puts in a complaint about the whole matter and it comes out that you’re the one who made the report . . .” He spread his hands.
Calum’s skin heated with rage. “So I should have just ignored it, allowed him to get away with it?”
Graham’s face was tense, like he was trying hard not to start shouting. “Of course not. But could you have waited until after you caught the murderer?”
“And risked Bruce continuing this behaviour in the meantime?” Calum retorted.
Graham sucked in a breath, his expression smoothing.
“You know that most people round here don’t think like that.
” He held up a hand as Calum opened his mouth to dispute that.
“I know, they should, morally and legally, but you know as well as I do that most people will argue that Morrison was right to torture a criminal to get a confession, and that Bruce did nothing wrong if the lass was willing to trade sexual favours in return for her freedom.” He peered down his nose at Calum.
“You have a great career ahead of you, Calum. If you play your cards right.” He sighed. “Do you have anything at all to go on?”
Calum smoothed his hands down his kilt. He did, but Graham wouldn’t like it. “Gibson’s wife.”
“What about her?”
“It seems Gibson was not entirely faithful to the marriage bed.” There were those who wouldn’t mind their spouse visiting prostitutes, some even who would happily join in, but Calum suspected if that were the case for Gibson and his wife, the burgess would simply have gone to the Guild of Courtesans.
Aly had suggested he hadn’t because he had no cash, but the Guild held tabs for regulars.
More likely, Gibson sought secrecy; the Guild of Courtesans’ members counted Gibson’s own colleagues amongst their peers, and though discretion was an essential part of their services, it wasn’t guaranteed.
There had been a case a few months back where a wealthy merchant’s mistress had felt the need to inform his wife, and the wife in turn had tossed her husband headfirst into a canal.
Graham waved a hand dismissively. “Well, it can’t have been her. She’s been in Ardstede for work for weeks.” He frowned. “Poor woman won’t even have heard yet.”
That would seem to rule the wife out as a suspect, anyway.
Though Calum couldn’t help thinking what Aly had said about the method of killing being a way of sending a message.
That suggested the killer knew Gibson and didn’t like him.
The way she’d phrased it made it sound like she suspected one of the crime lords’ enforcers, but Calum wondered whether it may have been someone Gibson knew, someone from his wealthy circle of friends and colleagues who didn’t care whether they ruined the coat.
And someone who had, perhaps, cared enough to lay the body down on its back rather than letting it collapse.
“Do you know when she’ll be back?” Calum asked. “I’ll need to speak with her.”
“Not till the end of the week,” Graham said.
“By which point I hope you’ll have this sorted and be able to present her with a killer.
” He turned and swept towards the door, his kilt swirling about his knees.
He paused with a hand on the doorframe. “You could do a lot of good here, you know, if you can learn when to pick your battles.” He left before Calum could reply.
Calum watched Graham go, his mind churning.
He had no evidence against the wife, no evidence that she even knew what her husband was up to—but if she did know, she was a strong suspect.
He couldn’t think how she could have got from Ardstede to kill her husband and back again, so first he dashed off a letter to the Port Authority in Mossburgh to confirm she’d left when she said she had, and another to the Port Authority in Kingsward to follow up with her colleagues there and confirm she’d been there the day before the murder—there was simply no way she could have got from Ardstede to Mossburgh in a day.
He dusted sand over the ink to dry it, then folded up the letters and sealed them each with a spot of red sealing wax, tucking them into his sporran to post.
He couldn’t do anything else to investigate the wife until she returned from Ardstede. For now, though, he would speak to Gibson’s secretary.
The room Gibson’s personal secretary had led Calum to was at the back of the house on the second floor.
The broad canal sparkled in the sun outside.
The windows were of the newer sort, two wooden sashes, each of six panes of glass, rather than the more common casement leadlights, with their tiny diamond-shaped panes.
There was no fireplace, and the floorboards and walls were bare, but the room was warm, the temperature even from one end to the other.
There was no draught as Calum stood at the window, watching the water bus ferry people across the canal.
In many grand houses, the magical heating was only installed in the main rooms of the house.
Often only the reception rooms, where guests would be able to marvel at it, and occasionally the main bedroom and bathroom.
To extend it to the secretary’s office, a room Gibson likely never went into, suggested a benevolent employer and a man of means.
The room was done out in shades of pale green and yellow, the walls painted a bright spring green and the chairs upholstered in striped yellow silk, their legs a pale, lightly varnished wood.
Calum turned as the door creaked open and a gangly man, whose mud brown hair was only just starting to go grey at the temples, walked in, carrying a silver tray. He set the tray on a scalloped tea table between two chairs, gesturing for Calum to sit.
Calum took the teacup proffered to him and took a sip, more out of politeness than anything else, then set the teacup down on the table and pulled out his notebook.
“Can you confirm your name, please?” he asked, retrieving a pencil from his sporran.
“Malcolm Donaldson,” the man said, his hand shaking as he lifted his own teacup to his thin lips. “I was Burgess Gibson’s personal secretary.”
For a moment there was no sound but the scratching of Calum’s pencil on the rough-textured paper.
The house was well-insulated against the noise outside; there was no background thrum of water bus conductors shouting out the fares or fish sellers offering their wares.
It was eerie. He missed the countryside desperately sometimes, the vast open moors where you could see for miles and not encounter another person, and the tree-filled glens whose leaves muffled all sound.
But the memory of such solitude always held a tinge of isolation, for it had been when he was alone in the woods, with no one to hear him scream, that Caoimhe had taken him.
He knew logically it wouldn’t have mattered to her if there had been anyone else around, but even so, he had grown used to the sounds of the city and the comfort, however inaccurate its foundation might be, that came with knowing there were other humans about.
Calum dragged his thoughts back to the task at hand. “And when did you last see your employer?”
“Last night, around eight o’clock.” Donaldson sat on the edge of his seat, his shoulders stooped like he was trying to curl in on himself.
“And how did he seem at the time?”
“Normal, I suppose. A little bit anxious, but that wasn’t unusual for him.” Donaldson looked down, worrying at a stray bit of thread on his red and gold kilt.
“Did he say anything about where he was headed?” Calum continued.
Donaldson shook his head. “I didn’t even know he’d gone out. After we finished work for the day, I was always free to do as I wished, and I was out myself last night. I went to the theatre with some friends.”
“I’ll need their names and addresses, please, as well as the name of the theatre and play you went to see.
” Calum recorded them as Donaldson recited them.
He’d have constables confirm with the theatre when the play had ended, as well as whether Donaldson and his friends had gone to a pub or restaurant after.
The pathologist’s report suggested Gibson had died sometime before two or three in the morning, so if he could confirm Donaldson had been accounted for in that time period, it would rule the secretary out as a suspect.
“Was there anything Burgess Gibson was working on lately that might have made him a target in any way?”
Donaldson’s tea sloshed into the saucer as he jolted. “You can’t possibly— Do you mean to say he might have been killed for his work? How preposterous!”
Calum held up a hand. “I’m not saying anything. I just need to explore all possibilities.”
Donaldson settled back into his chair. “Well, then, I suppose—I suppose I can have his files sent to the station house.”
“Thank you.” Calum stood, tucking his pencil and notebook away as though he was preparing to leave, then paused. “One more thing: It was you who gave the description of Burgess Gibson’s kilt pin to my constable, wasn’t it?”
“Aye,” Donaldson said. “As his personal secretary I was also responsible for his finances. I keep an account of all his valuables.” He stood and crossed to his desk, opening a drawer and pulling out a book.
He leafed through it until he found the page he was after.
“Here, a sterling silver kilt pin in the shape of a claymore, with a sapphire set in the hilt. Oh, I’ll have to edit that now as it’s missing.
Quite a few of these have gone missing in the last several months, actually.
All of them Gibson’s, though, none of his wife’s. ”
Calum stood and approached the desk. “What else has gone missing?”
Donaldson flipped through the book. “Cuff links, a few rings, some cravat pins.”
“Was Gibson having financial trouble?” Calum asked. “What does his wife do? I understand she’s in Ardstede.”
“She’s a merchant. Deals mostly in fabric, I believe.”
Calum made a face he hoped was sympathetic.
“That can’t be easy this year.” There had been more storms than usual that autumn, before the normal time when shipping wound down in anticipation of the rough winter seas.
Alongside that, there had been a rise in smuggling of the more precious and valuable goods as excise duties had risen.
Essential goods, too, like wool, could be subject to heavy taxation if they didn’t come from the mainland of Eskalan, and as a result they were being smuggled into the city more and more.
Increased patrols had done little to catch the smugglers, who simply changed their routes and behaviour, and there was no stemming demand when the excises themselves were a complex web of Eskalian and Mossburgh-only legislation that meant legitimate importers could be hit with surprise fees.
Donaldson tilted his head. “They’ve been getting by.” His gaze flicked to the ledger.
“Have they?” Calum pressed.
“Gibson paid all his bills and lines of credit on time with his regular income, and his wife does the same.” Donaldson smoothed a hand over the cover of the ledger. “But I heard them arguing one day. I shouldn’t— I shouldn’t say anything.”
“He’s been murdered,” Calum said. “If you think this could help, I need to know.”
“She— She asked him why he never wore the silver cuff links with the emeralds anymore. They were going to a ceilidh, I think, something like that, and his kilt was a green tartan, so the emerald cuff links were an obvious choice. He said he’d lost them, and she asked why he wasn’t wearing the gold ones with the green garnets instead.
And then he admitted he’d sold them. He said they needed the money, but she was furious.
She said something about how it was all his own fault, and he was frittering away her children’s inheritance on his own vices. ”
Well, then. It sounded as though Gibson’s wife knew exactly what her husband got up to, and she didn’t approve of it in the slightest. She would have been the strongest suspect, were she not a week’s journey away.
“Can I take this?” Calum asked, gesturing to the book. It sounded like the kilt pin wasn’t the first time Gibson had paid in jewellery. The other pieces had likely long been pawned and sold on, but perhaps they’d get lucky.
Donaldson passed the book to Calum. “Of course. And I’ll send his files to you.”
Calum slipped his notebook and pencil into his sporran. “Thank you.”