I fell asleep again halfway back to Cambrit. Gertriss says I dreamed, and they must have been troubling dreams, because I clenched my fists and mumbled. If she caught any of the words she had the good grace to pretend otherwise.
I stumbled out onto the sidewalk while Gertriss counted coins. The cabman made a pass at her, which she ignored, and when I saw he meant to repeat it, I glared and he snapped his reins and took his leave.
I had just enough time to thank my errant guardian Angel that Mama wasn’t outside on her stoop waiting for us when Mama flew out of her door and stomped toward us, her grizzled old face set into a wrinkled scowl that would have turned Trolls, had any been lingering nearby. She had Buttercup by the hand, and though the tiny banshee tried to resist Mama’s pulling, she was dragged along anyway, blinking in the light, her false wings sagging and drooping.
I ushered Gertriss inside and said the magic word-beer.
I have an icebox in the back now. It’s a tiny one, barely big enough to hold a chunk of sawdust-covered ice and eight tall, dark glasses of Biltot’s best, but it will keep them chilled for a week.
“Boss? Now?”
“Two. One for me, one for you. If Mama doesn’t like that, tough. Go. I’m in a mood.”
Gertriss went, vanishing about the time Mama came stomping through my door.
“Where the Hell you been, boy? And where is that niece of mine? I reckon we all got to have a talk.”
She let Buttercup go. Buttercup did a little hop-skip and hugged my knees, looking up at me with something like worry on her fragile little face.
“Your dolls are in the back, honey,” I said. “Go play while the grownups talk. Scoot.”
Buttercup nodded and vanished.
I could see Gertriss’s shadow under my backroom door. I knew she had the beers, and I knew she was lingering, probably giving Buttercup a hug, taking a few extra seconds before facing Mama’s inevitable assault.
I sank into my chair and threw my hat at the rack and missed and didn’t give a damn. My joints ached, my head was stuffed with cotton, and I was thinking it was time to remind one and all whose hospitality it was they were abusing.
“Where I’ve been is working. Same for my associate. She answers to me, and I don’t answer to anybody. She and I are going to drink a beer. You can have one, or you can not, or you can leave. But I’m not about to be yelled at or have my staff yelled at by the general public. Is that clear?”
Mama made strangled snuffling noises, but stood her ground.
“Gertriss, our beverages. And bring the folding chair for our guest. If she’s staying. Are you staying, Mama?”
Mama surprised me. “You knows I am, boy. And, boy, I reckon I’ll have one of them fancy beers. Seein’ as we’re all drinking to excess these days.”
I heard glass tinkle as Gertriss pulled another Biltot out of the icebox.
“I didn’t know you liked beer, Mama.”
“I reckon there’s lots you don’t know about me, boy.” Gertriss came in, beers and chair filling her hands, and Mama helped her without a word, save for a single “thank ye” that was neither dripping with sarcasm nor delivered in a hiss between clenched gums.
“Mama’s being polite, Gertriss. I think we’re in for some bad news.”
“That you are, boy. Miss. I reckon your boss has done told ye about the Sprangs?”
Gertriss nodded. She hadn’t touched her beer. Mama guffawed and drained a quarter of hers in one loud draught.
“This ain’t half bad.” Mama wiped her lips. “Go on, drink it. It ain’t like you’re a little ’un no more.”
Gertriss nodded and took a sip.
“I done wrong, to both of you,” said Mama. “I told things I hadn’t ought to have told. I done it thinkin’ I was protecting you, niece. I didn’t have no way of knowing it would bring them Sprangs all the way here, to do what they come to do.”
I shut my mouth by filling it with beer.
“Mr. Markhat knows you didn’t mean any harm.”
Mama took another expert swig of my uptown beer. “And what about you, child of my sister? You have a right to be angry. And a right to say so.”
Gertriss clenched her beer so hard her knuckles went white and shook her head.
“You didn’t kill anyone, Mama. I did that. That’s why they came.”
“We both knows why you kilt that man, child. Neither of us blames you.”
I nodded. “He had it coming. I’d have killed him myself, had I been there.”
Gertriss was shaking. She couldn’t speak. I wasn’t surprised-she’d been with me for more than a year, and we’d never discussed this in any but the most oblique terms. Getting it out wasn’t going to be easy.
“I still can’t believe I ever agreed to marry…him.” She spoke in a whisper, after a long bout of shaking. “I never…loved him. But all the other girls were married, and there weren’t many men left, and I’d given up on coming to Rannit, did you know that, Mama? I hated Pot Lockney. Hated the pigs. Hated it all-but I was afraid. Afraid of leaving. Isn’t that stupid?”
“No, child, not at all,” said Mama. Her voice had no rasp, no bluster. “I was afraid too. They sold me to a tinker. Did you know that? Nine years old, and sold to a man my grandfather’s age, because I was stunted, and had the Sight. I really ought to send a pox upon them.”
Gertriss laughed despite herself. I raised an eyebrow at Mama. She didn’t respond, so for all I know that story was the truth.
“So when Harald started coming around, I went out walking with him. I knew what he was. I’d heard the stories. But he was sweet. Brought me flowers. Said I was pretty.”
“He was right about that,” I said.
Mama shushed me with a glare.
“He said he’d buy us a farm. Said I could raise the swine, and he’d herd the cattle. Said we’d have a big fine log house and two horses and a well of our own.” She took a big draught of beer, and her face went pale. “Might have been the promise of a well that pushed me over the edge. All those years of hauling buckets.” She shook. “And then one night he came around drunk. He wasn’t talking flowers and log houses. He…He…”
“I reckon we knows that part,” said Mama. “So you kilt him. And rightly so. Harald Suthom was a mean drunk, quick to rape, and from what I hears quick to kill. Ain’t nobody cryin’ no tears for his worthless ass, child.”
I’m not sure Gertriss heard. Her face was pale, and her eyes were wide. She was looking at me but not seeing me at all.
“I tried to just get out of the house,” she said. “All I wanted to do was get away from him. Come to Rannit. Get away from him. But he wouldn’t let me go, Mama. He hit me, knocked me down. I kicked him but he was too drunk to even feel it. He pushed me down on my bed, and I always sleep with a knife under my pillow. A good plain sharp knife, that’s what Daddy always taught us girls. A good sharp knife, put where you can reach it when you need it most.”
She blinked and was back with us.
“Daddy would have been proud. A good sharp knife, where I could reach it. Harald didn’t even know I’d cut him at first. He was laughing when he died. Laughing and cussing. Then he just fell on me. Dead. Stinking. Dead.”
Mama rose and went to Gertriss and hugged her and whispered for a long time. I sat there awkwardly and drank beer.
When Mama let Gertriss go, they were both crying, both trying hard to hide it.
I rose. “We all need another beer.” I left and took my time.
When I came back, beers in hand, Three-leg Cat was perched on Mama’s lap, purring and preening as she scratched him behind his one intact ear. Gertriss was fussing with her makeup, squinting into one of the new tiny glass mirrors ladies have begun to carry in their purses this season.
I distributed beers. Mama’s first bottle was empty. Gertriss had hardly touched hers. I hate to see good beer get warm, so I took it.
I gathered the emotional storm was over. But there were still things I needed to know. “So the Sprangs came here looking for money.”
“Mostly.” Mama took a draught and belched, loud as any man, and Gertriss laughed. “Vengeance, too, after they heard Gertriss had took up with a man. They can’t take no vengeance on women. But they’ve got their eyes set on you, boy, thanks to me.”
I shrugged. “How much money are we talking here?”
“Mama’s eyes went hard. “You ain’t thinking about paying them road apples, ’ere you?”
“Why not? If the price is right, it seems like a good way to get rid of them for good. How much?”
“Eight crowns,” said Gertriss softly. “In Old Kingdom coin. They won’t take Regency paper, or anything but gold.”
I snorted. “Hell. Eight crowns. Fine. I can afford that. I’ll pay them, when they get out of the Old Ruth. By then they’ll be so ready to get the Hell out of Rannit they probably won’t stop running long enough to count it.”
“I can’t let you do that, Mr. Markhat.”
“What is it with Hog women? I said I’d pay them. It’s not a fortune. If you want, call it a loan. Even on what your cheapskate boss pays you, eight crowns won’t take that long.” I frowned. From their expressions, I was missing something fundamental to the situation. “This is some Old Law country thing, isn’t it? Do I also have to give them an ear? Agree to consort with their oldest, ugliest daughter? Spill it. I’m a city man, remember?”
Mama sighed. “Tell him the rest, child. I’m liable to tell it wrong.”
I put my beer down a little too hard.
“Wrong or right, ladies, somebody better start telling me something right now.”
Gertriss cleared her throat. “I didn’t know this, until today. I swear I didn’t, Mr. Markhat. Mama just told me.”
“Keep talking.”
“Harald. Harald-he had a brother.”
“Lots of people do. So?”
“He’s dead too.”
Silence. Gertriss was on the verge of tears. I looked to Mama.
“Kilt with the same knife that kilt Harald,” she said. “On the same night. The Suthoms reckon Gertriss kilt him too.”
Gertriss wouldn’t meet my eyes. My mouth went dry.
“I have to ask, Gertriss. You know I do. Did you kill them both?”
She shook her head.
“I didn’t know nothing about the other Suthom boy ’til today,” said Mama. “The Sprangs got big mouths. They talked it all up and down the Old Ruth, about how they come to Rannit to put the vengeance on the man what took up with the woman what killed the Suthom boys. I reckon they aims to kill you, boy, and then go home and collect a reward from the Suthoms. So I ain’t sure eight crowns is going to stop this mess. I ain’t sure at all.”
I swallowed the rest of Gertriss’s warm beer, opened my cold bottle, and took a swig of it too.
“And I thought my day couldn’t get any worse. Funny old thing, life.”
Gertriss burst out crying, and I thought seriously about joining her.
It was nearly Curfew before I got the women settled enough to finish talking things out.
We were all out of beer. My throat was dryer than the Regent’s tears. Gertriss had cried away most of her make-up, leaving nothing but dark circles under her eyes. Even red-nosed and a bit raccoonish, she was still fetching.
Mama was gruffing and puffing and threatening to set out for Pot Lockney at first light to “set them Suthoms straight.” I’d dissuaded her from that notion only barely, and at the cost of most of my voice.
I’d filled two notebook pages with times and names and dates and places. I wasn’t ready to leap to my feet and declare the identity of the real murderer of Harald Suthom’s brother Ash, but I had my suspicions.
“I still say they can’t know the same knife killed both Suthoms,” I said. “Especially if the second body wasn’t found for nearly a month.”
Mama shook her head. “Old woman Nilkill says it were the same. She fancies herself a blood witch. If she says both Suthom’s blood is on that knife, that makes it so, boy, in Pot Lockney.”
“How convenient. And they know it’s Gertriss’s knife how, exactly?”
Gertriss sighed. “I carved my name in it when I was ten.”
I groaned. “Well, at least now I know you didn’t kill the second Suthom, Miss. You’re too smart to use a signed knife.”
“Boy!”
“Sorry, sorry, fine. So Harald Suthom meets his well-deserved demise at around eight of the clock. Gertriss is on the road by nine. Sometime in the next few days, Ash Suthom is dispatched with the same knife, wrapped in old burlap, and laid to rest in a briar patch. He lies there until a bear pulls him out and scatters him over old man Ferlong’s cotton patch. That about right?”
Mama and Gertriss exchanged glances, then nodded yes in unison.
“Since we know Gertriss didn’t kill Ash on her way out of Pot Lockney, that means somebody else did. Any idea who? Was Ash as charming and well-loved as his older brother?”
Mama shrugged. “Ain’t none of them Suthoms worth a damn. But I’d never heard tell of Ash ’til today.”
“He was quiet,” said Gertriss. “Never heard him speak. People were scared of him, just for being a Suthom, but I never heard any stories about him. He worked the cows. He paid his bills. He didn’t cause any trouble at the inn. That’s all I know. Except that I didn’t kill him.”
I doodled on the paper, drawing a little stick man with a knife in his back.
“So who found Harald?”
Gertriss looked at Mama.
“Way I hear it, it was his foreman, come looking to roust him out and get started working. They knowed he’d been to see Gertriss, he’d bragged about it. Came in and found him dead in her bed, and her gone.”
I gave my little stick man Xs for eyes.
“So for all we know this foreman took the knife out of Harald and then left it in Ash.”
Mama shrugged. “Ain’t no way for me to know that, boy. Nor you.”
“And then a bear helpfully pulls the corpse out of a briar patch and makes sure he gets a proper burial, right after the good people of Pot Lockney remove a signed knife from his back. How fortuitous. Miss, the next time you go to all the trouble to wrap a corpse and drag it into a briar patch, you might consider removing the murder weapon at some point during the festivities. Especially if said weapon carries your name.”
Mama opened her mouth to gruff at me, but caught on. Gertriss got there faster.
“Someone wants me blamed for Ash’s murder.”
“Oh yes. Bear my ass. They hoped the body would be found, but it wasn’t. So they helped matters along. Now, we’re looking at one of two things here. One, they knew you’d killed Harald, and they knew you’d left town. That made you the perfect pick for killing Ash, too, nothing personal, just business. Or second, somebody back home hates you enough to kill a second man just to make sure you’d be hanged for killing the first. Who would want to do that to you, Miss? Who hates you that much?”
“No one.” She shook her head. “Honest, Mr. Markhat. Nobody.”
I dropped my pencil and leaned back in my chair. Fatigue was settling over me like a coat made of rocks.
“All right. We can worry about who killed the Suthoms later. Right now, here’s what we do.”
And I spent my last bit of wile making plans for the night.