The Seer (9 page)

“Would a man risk his livelihood and his freedom for a timepiece like that?” Scoth returned. “That wasn’t going to make him rich. Why not take a finer piece, pawn it, and run?”

“Maybe he did, and was keeping the timepiece for himself. He took his money and headed off into Cantercaster, where he ended up in Wattling. You need to get a list of the jewelry that Lord Ennings gave to Jibb and another list of what ended up in the bank vault.”

“Is that what I need to do?” Scoth queried testily.

“You’re the detective, aren’t you? Apparently you need some reminding of that fact since you’re asking for my wholly unqualified opinion instead of giving me yours.”

“It’s never a bad idea to get another person’s perspective on a tricky case.”

That settled Jesco down. He had misread Scoth’s reason for asking. In a way, it was almost an apology for how Scoth had acted in their first case with the dead woman in the garden. With less tartness in his tone, Jesco said, “I didn’t hear anything that seemed all that relevant to how he died. If he was going to steal the jewelry and make a run for it, why bother to deposit anything? And I would think he would run farther than Wattling, and not return to the office and take on that second job to Melekei. So if it has nothing to do with the jewels, nor is the timepiece something that belongs to Lord Ennings, and the whirly-gigs were delivered, then he was doing something unrelated to his job after work ended for the day. What caught you in all of that?”

“That he didn’t make friends of the couriers.”

“What does that mean?”

“Maybe nothing. I just find it elucidating about his character. He considered them not worth his time, if the supervisor was interpreting the situation correctly. Yet Hasten Jibb worked as nothing more than a courier. How was he any better? Did he fancy himself a long-lost prince beneath that green jacket? Where did he find his friends if not through work? Where did he find his lovers, since he wasn’t chasing any of the women there? Or the men? Why did he hold himself apart, or was he just very shy and awkward in social situations, and it was misattributed to being aloof?” Scoth tucked the pad of paper and pen into his trench coat. “We’ll speak to his mother now. The bank will be closed by the time we get there. That will have to be done another day, as well as visiting Lord Ennings and the old woman with the whirly-gigs.”

A hard wind blew past, flapping cloaks and trousers on the passerby. “I had wondered if he was in Wattling to visit a brothel there,” Scoth said. “Some places cater to very odd tastes that can’t be found elsewhere. Yet if he found his fellow couriers beneath him in matters of love, would he be the sort to visit a Wattling prostie? It seems like he wanted to associate himself with richness. He bought the most expensive bicycle on the market and was thrilled to be assigned to Golden Circle. This man would patronize a finer establishment.”

“If he had a very odd taste, then he couldn’t satisfy it there,” Jesco said. “But he would wait until he had a day off, to my reckoning. He had had a full day at work, and another scheduled for the next day. Wattling is a long trip to make there and back. I wouldn’t do it.”

“In the throes of lust, a man will do just about anything,” Scoth said. “Here we are.”

The autohorse was pulling over in front of a shabby home. It was narrow and had two stories capped by a round roof. Identical houses stretched right and left on both sides of the street. They looked like long lines of thumbs in beige and brown, and there was barely a foot of space between them. However, when compared to Wattling, this was the height of luxury. Most of the homes were tended if humble, although the one where Hasten Jibb once lived had been treated with a slapdash hand. It needed to be repainted, and the garden was weedy.

“She’s been informed, hasn’t she?” Jesco asked, loathing to be the bringer of bad tidings, and pitying the poor old woman who would sob to receive them.

“She’s been informed,” Scoth said. “Her name is Guiline Jibb.”

A white-haired woman opened the door to them. She was dressed all in black. Looking far more annoyed than grieved, she listened to Scoth’s introduction and jerked her head to welcome them in. She clipped down the hallway to the kitchen, Scoth and Jesco going after her. There was a framed photograph on the wall of the woman in her younger years, seated upon a chair and with two boys posed behind her. Each had a hand on her shoulder. The younger was Hasten Jibb.

Pans clattered in the kitchen. As they entered, the woman hung a pan upon a hook and said, “Sit at the table then, I can’t stop my day for you.”

“We are very sorry for your loss,” Scoth said. “I assure you that I’m going to do all I can to bring your son’s murderer to justice.”

They sat down. Mrs. Jibb banged a teapot on the counter and filled it with water from a pitcher. “That’s life, isn’t it? It gives and takes away. It took my husband when he ran off; it took Dochi when his heart gave out. Twenty-two years old, a strapping lad, and dead on the sidewalk. He worked for Lord Calvert, the only one that the lord trusted with his show dogs. Huge brutes, Kavenyork breed, but just big loves, Dochi said. Stand tall and let them see you won’t be knocked about, and they won’t knock you about. He went with Lord Calvert to the show over in Oppentown, and the lord had Dochi guide the best dog through his tricks for ten thousand people. Second place. Second place!”

Having banged the full teapot onto the stove and thumped a mug onto the counter, now she was lifting a cloth from a bowl to check the rising dough inside. Even that she somehow did loudly. From there, she checked a pot on another burner upon the stove. Letting the lid fall with a resounding crash, she said, “The lord was giddy with that red ribbon, upped Dochi’s salary and said he would up it again once he was holding the blue. Dochi was going to be known as the finest dog trainer in all of Ainscote had he lived. All of those lords and ladies would have been fighting tooth and nail to have him out to their manors to train up their dogs in agility. And he said, Mother, when I’ve gotten rich off those fools, I’m going to buy an autodog so I don’t have to clean up so much
hair
anymore. Kavenyorks have a coat so thick that you could sleep on it in winter, and they shed in great sloughs the rest of the year. Hair on his clothes, hair up his nose, hair all over this house from him trailing it in.” She laughed.

This was not what Jesco had expected from a woman who just lost a son days ago. Even Scoth seemed taken aback as Mrs. Jibb went on. “Just
hair
. I’d tell him that we would have been those lords and ladies going silly over dogs, but my great-great-grandmother was a lord’s bastard on a prostie. She made good, that prostie, but she didn’t get a title out of it, nor did the baby. But that’s how close we were to manors and champagne and Kavenyorks. Dochi was going to get us there.” Three bowls landed on the counter, the lid was jerked from the pot, and a ladle crashed inside. Liquid splashed everywhere.

“We’re here to talk about Hasten,” Scoth said.

“Got himself killed. I told him that he would get himself killed, riding around on that stupid bicycle. Who do you think is going to win in a crash between you and a carriage in the road? Who do you think is going to win if you get sued for mowing down a pedestrian on the sidewalk? Bicycles don’t belong in roads and they don’t belong on sidewalks and I don’t think they belong anywhere. I just hate them. But no, he never listened to me.”

Alarmed to hear this, Jesco looked at the detective. His voice gentle, Scoth said, “Hasten wasn’t killed in a bicycle accident. Someone stabbed him. Were you told that?”

“Oh, yes, the officer made mention of it.” Filling the bowls with soup, she slammed them down on the table and went to a drawer for spoons.

“Did Hasten have any enemies? Was anyone bothering him?”

She clattered about the utensil drawer. “How would I know? He came in at the end of the day and had his dinner, went upstairs to his room and closed the door. He always left early to have breakfast over at Shining Water, so I hadn’t seen him in the morning. He wasted his money dining there. You get a red jacket for an owner in your company, and
then
you eat there. Anyone can have a green jacket. You have to be someone first. Dochi only ate there when Lord Calvert’s son invited him, to talk dogs and training with friends of his who were interested. That’s what put Shining Water in Hasten’s head. He thought he was making some connection just by being there with his waffle and eggs and that’s not how it’s done. Connections are for lunch and dinner, and you have to know someone to
make
a connection. A waste! But he took after his father, spitting image, went about things the wrong way and wouldn’t change course for anything.”

“You don’t know what he did on the day he passed?” Scoth asked as she laid out the spoons and took a chair.

“I got up and he was gone with his bicycle like regular. Went about my day, visited with the ladies, did the shopping, and I came back in the afternoon to make dinner. He came home and was acting queer.”

“Can you tell me more about that?”

“He took his satchel up to his room rather than putting it on his hook by the door, and I had to call three times before he came down for dinner. He gobbled up his food and went back upstairs.” She had not been interested then in what was bothering her son, and it didn’t appear that she was interested now. Sipping her soup, she said, “I did the dishes and took to the parlor to do some mending and listen to music. He came downstairs and left without a goodbye, fit to be tied about something.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw his face. Mad or upset about something as he went by. He had his satchel on again, his work clothes still, and I heard him get on his bicycle. Then he rode off and never came back. Exactly like Dochi, just left and didn’t return. Is there something wrong with your soup?”

“A querulous stomach,” Jesco lied. Because some people still found a demonic cause to his power, Scoth had introduced him as a police consultant until they had a better guess of the woman’s most likely reaction to the truth.

The soup before Jesco was of uncertain color, scent, and description, its surface pimpled by mysterious chunks of meat or vegetable underneath. He had not brought his own utensils from the asylum and could not risk the spoon touching his lips or tongue. Nor could he wipe off with a napkin.

Displeased with him, the woman turned to Scoth. He ate a spoonful to placate her and said, “Thank you. This is good.” There was something quite subtle in his eyes that made Jesco think it was not good.

“I like to see a man with a healthy appetite,” she said to Scoth. “I could put a whole roast chicken in front of Dochi and come back ten minutes later to a heap of bones and him in the cupboard looking for something else to eat. Never picky.”

After taking a second and third sip of the soup, Scoth brought out a photograph of the timepiece. “Mrs. Jibb, this was found near your son. Did it belong to him?”

She looked at the photograph and shook her head. “He didn’t own a timepiece, that one or any other.”

Scoth put it away. “Was he ever in trouble?”

“What do you mean?”

“Trouble with women or men, trouble with opium, trouble of any kind. Did he run with friends who had some trouble?”

“That boy never ran with anyone. I told my sons from the time they were small: you don’t have anything to do with these common folk. You’ve got the blood of lords and ladies in your veins! All of this is beneath you. So you talk proper and use your manners, act like lords until the world gives you your due. Lord Calvert saw the grandness in Dochi. He didn’t scuffle about on break with the grooms in the stables but read a proper book in the corner, said please and thank you to the maid who brought him food and drink, always rushed to get the door for the lord’s wife and to wish her a fine day. He made sure his clothes were spit-spot and a cut above anything you’d find in any closet on this block. He could mingle with the rich at that show and not stand out with nasty street dialect or behavior.”

Jesco could only feel sorry for Hasten Jibb, who was neither the favorite son while he lived, nor very much mourned in his death. His mother could only keep bringing the conversation back around to her beloved Dochi. She cast Jesco another peeved look for not touching the soup and turned her full attention to Scoth. But then she grew peeved with him as well, because he was just as stubbornly bringing the conversation back around to Hasten. “Is it possible that Hasten stole this piece?” he asked.

“Stole?” she exclaimed in outrage. “Hasten was not a thief! I taught my boys to be respectable.”

“I’m just trying to figure out how this arrived at the crime scene.”

“It came some other way than in Hasten’s pocket! I didn’t raise a criminal in this home!”

“He doesn’t mean to offend,” Jesco said as the old woman swelled up. She looked like she wanted to yank the bowl of soup away from Scoth. “We only want a clear picture of your son to help with finding the person who deprived you of him. Hasten sounds like he was an honest fellow.”

“Yes, he was! Honest!” Mrs. Jibb cried. “He wasn’t half the man that Dochi was, but he was
honest
. If he had ever found a wallet in the street, he would have returned it with every cent intact. I’ve got money squirreled away and he knew where, and never did a dollar of it go missing even when he was so keen to buy that big, stupid blue bicycle.” Now she preferred Jesco and turned in her chair to face him. Given a scornful shoulder, Scoth had another sip of his soup and winced.