Chapter Ten. A Curious Museum
CHAPTER TEN
A Curious Museum
“ARE you meaning to tell me that you’re actually investigating this murder?” Ruan’s voice came out scarcely over a whisper. I drew in a breath through my nose, waiting for him to continue with his objections to my plan for the evening.
Mrs. Penrose had long ago retreated to the hall beyond the closed kitchen door with Mr. Owen, carrying on their own conversation in hushed tones—one also focused upon me and my ill-advised plans.
“Was it not this very morning, in this very kitchen”—I poked a finger at Ruan’s stomach—“when you said things were suspicious and that we had another mystery to solve?”
He bit into an apple, chewing slowly, unperturbed by my words. My eyes remained fixed on his lower lip as he sucked a bit of juice from it. “What I say when roused from my bed at four in the morning should not be considered an agreement to commit larceny.”
“It’s not larceny, I’m simply going to look around—I’m not stealing anything.” I sniffed, fiddling with the button on my sleeve. “It doesn’t matter, because I’m going whether you wish to join me or not.”
Ruan glanced out the darkened window then back to me. “Whether I wish to come with you is immaterial. There is a murderer loose on the streets of Oxford, and you have a habit of getting yourself into trouble. I don’t see as I have a choice about going along with you, if only for your own sake.”
He wasn’t entirely wrong.
“I know I’m not. What in the gods’ names even possessed you to walk into the police station today? You are lucky they let you walk out with only a tongue lashing and didn’t arrest you for interference.”
“Stop eavesdropping!” I snapped. It was hard enough to think around him, let alone guard my thoughts from him as well.
“Stop thinking so loudly and maybe I’ll try?”
I rolled my eyes and started up the stairs. “Stay put, would you? I’ll be right back.”
I could have sworn the ghost of a smile crossed his face as I walked past him.
Oh, he could pretend to be exasperated with me all he wanted, but I knew good and well that Ruan Kivell enjoyed these investigations nearly as much as I did.
He’d grown weary of his country life in Lothlel Green, and despite any protestations to the contrary, the man would follow me to the ends of the earth if required of him.
Not required—he would come at my request—regardless of whether he liked me very much at present.
The pair of us were bound together by something stronger than either of us could possibly comprehend.
The connection was frustrating, yes—but it was there whether we willed it or not.
After retrieving my roll of lockpicks, I met Ruan in the kitchen and the pair of us slipped out into the darkened streets of Oxford.
No one paid us any mind as we hurried through the narrow streets in the pitch of night. Our path was illuminated by the gaslights dotting the streets, unaided by the meager light reflected from the fingernail moon. The rain from earlier had stopped hours ago, but even still hardly anyone was about.
It was strange how unsettling night in the city could be.
In the countryside there was always something awake and with you.
A bird. A fox. Insects. Sounds to remind you that you were never alone.
There was a comfort in that anonymous companionship—for you could trust the birds to quiet before a predator struck.
Their silence a warning to all. But in a city—a space where man had slowly strangled nature into submission—in man’s absence grew an unsettling stillness far more frightening than anything nature could dream up.
At least I had Ruan with me tonight. I kept my head down, scarf pulled high around my chin as a bulwark against the winter wind. Dressed as I was, in a pair of trousers and my thick shapeless coat, passersby would assume we were a pair of lads off for a pint after work.
“Do you recall the first time we burgled together?” I asked, my fingernail catching on the smallest of my lockpicks.
I nervously flicked the tip. Harker’s Curiosity Museum was just ahead.
It was smaller than the two university buildings flanking it, like a young child lovingly nestled between two parents.
Had Julius Harker intended that when he leased the space?
To sit there as a thorn in the side of the place that had thrown him out?
It surely could not be a coincidence. I hurried ahead of Ruan, not waiting on his answer, and opened the narrow iron gate before slipping into the alley in search of the back entrance.
Ruan made a low sound in his throat, his body blocking my view of the street beyond.
“I do recall the first time you pulled me along on one of your schemes, yes. And I pray to the gods there’s not another dead baronet on the other side of this door like there was that time.
” He inclined his chin to the small entrance at the bottom of a narrow set of steps.
I turned to him, spotting the faintest glimmer of humor in his eyes before it disappeared entirely.
I took three steps down toward the door and sat my rump on the icy middle stone stair, eye level with the lock. The dampness soaked through my trousers and then my drawers, sending the cold straight through me.
Lovely. Just lovely.
The lock was a simple warded affair, nothing difficult. I lifted a pick to the moonlight. Which to choose, which to choose?
Ruan glanced down the alley toward the street before he let out a low laugh. “I cannot decide whether or not I should be disturbed at the ease with which you bend the law to suit your whims or to admire you for it.”
I furrowed my brow, focused upon the brass keyhole, and jiggled the pick once.
Then a second time. It did not want to give. I sighed, rocking back onto my now cold, damp haunches. “If it’s any consolation, I cannot decide either. Besides, I do not consider this burgling. I was invited by the museum owner to investigate.”
Ruan shifted and I caught a glimpse of the street again and a canine-shaped shadow at the end of the lane. My breath caught. “Do you see that?”
Ruan turned, blocking my view of the street and the dog along with it. “See what? There’s nothing there … just an empty street.”
The hair on the back of my neck rose. “You … you didn’t see the dog? It was just there.” I lifted my hand, pointing to the entrance to the alley.
Ruan’s back stiffened as he turned back to face me. “You are telling me that you saw a dog.… Does this have to do with what you asked me this morning?”
I caught my lower lip between my teeth. “I know. I know. Omen of death—or so you said. But as we already have a dead man, I think we’re all settled on that score.”
“I’m not amused. Ruby, if you are seeing spectral creatures, I would say that is a slight problem.”
“It’s not a spectral dog. I would certainly know if I’d seen a ghost or a demon or whatever exactly that omen might be.
” I tried to make light of the concept, but after the things I’d encountered since meeting Ruan, I was not as easily able to discount the otherworld as I once was.
I cleared my throat. “It’s likely a stray, seeking out a spot to bed down for the night.
There are hundreds of dogs in Oxford, I’m inclined to believe I’ve seen one of those and not some harbinger of doom. ”
Ruan grunted in disagreement, but at least he let it drop.
The dog. Then that man outside the Covered Market.
I swallowed hard, trying not to think of what that meant.
Surely I was not seeing things that were not real—not again.
I squeezed my eyes shut trying not to think about those days, of how close I’d come to being put into a hospital for shell shock in 1917.
They said I’d been too close to the front lines for my delicate feminine constitution.
I believed them … at least for a time … chalking up the inconsistencies of my memories to the trauma of the war.
But I was no more mad then than I was now.
I had seen something. Not a ghost. Not my imagination. There’d been a dog. There had to be. But I was wise enough to let it drop, lest I end up in the same situation now as I had been then. No matter how kind Ruan was, seeing things that no one else does never bodes well.
I shook my head and turned my focus back to the brass plate covering the keyhole and continued fumbling with the lock until I felt it give, and the door swung free.
“Now … shall we see what Mr. Harker is hiding?”
WE CREPT UP the narrow winding stair until we reached the landing, which opened onto a small gallery before leading out into the main exhibition space.
Meager moonlight made its way through the glass dome overhead.
We silently made our way through the main hall, neither of us willing to use a flashlight, lest we attract unwanted attention from the sleeping city outside.
“I don’t like this place,” Ruan murmured, pausing alongside a glass display case from the last century. He laid a gloved hand upon the glass, oddly transfixed by what was inside. “Hurry up and find what you’re looking for so we can be gone.”
I drew closer to him, peering over his shoulder at the darkened case. “I would like to point out that it is hard to hurry when I don’t even know what I’m looking for in the first place.”
“Then you’d better get started.”
I muttered something rather unkind about irritating Pellars, glancing back over my shoulder to the windows leading onto the street. We were far enough from them that I doubted my light would draw much notice. I flicked on my flashlight and cautiously shined it into the case.