Daniel Friedman - Riot Most Uncouth

I didn’t smell much of anything, since my own nostrils were stuffed and scabbed as a result of my various recent injuries and indulgences, but I saw no reason to disagree with him.

The inner hallway was dark; barely lit by a couple of lamps, and I tensed myself as Angus worked the key in the lock. The door squeaked, and we stepped into Knifing’s room, and found it empty.

“He hasn’t been here,” Angus said. “Perhaps he’s slipped out of town.”

“If he did, he left his things,” I said. We paused for a moment to examine the heavy trunk at the foot of the bed. It was framed in iron and secured with a sturdy padlock. Breaking it open would require some uncommon skill or specialized tools, and neither was immediately at our disposal.

But something was wrong about the bed itself. I ran my hands over the blankets. They were tucked under the thin mattress and pulled tight and smooth.

“I’ve used the accommodations of various Cambridge inns when consorting with lovers whom I would not allow to be seen entering my campus residence,” I said. “I often find the bedclothes rumpled in these places and I’m lucky if the linens appear to have been recently laundered. I’ve never known an innkeeper to make a bed like this.”

“You’re right,” Angus said. “That’s how we square a rack in the army. Knifing did this himself.” He peeled back the bedclothes and ran his hands over them. “The sheets are cool, but just slightly damp. He’s slept here tonight, but he left some time ago.”

In the wardrobe, we found the Baker rifle. Angus stuck his little finger down the barrel, and it came out black with powder.

“It’s been fired very recently, unless Knifing’s the sort to leave his weapon dirty.” Neither of us thought Knifing was that sort. “But if Knifing is the killer, why would he stop Dingle from arresting you?”

“I’d have mounted a vigorous defense against the charges, and uncovered his misbehavior in the course of clearing my own name,” I said. “He needs to pin the crimes on someone who can’t effectively rebut them.”

“But if he’s fled, how do we find him?”

“Most likely, we don’t,” I said. Angus and I were employing techniques to track Knifing’s whereabouts that the investigator himself had taught us. It was no wonder he had escaped ahead of our discovery; he probably had a number of deductive skills he hadn’t shared with us. Maybe he had some way of knowing about Hanson’s missive to me, and if he was adept in the tracking techniques of the bushman and the red Indian, he was probably capable of covering his trail as well. He’d have no trouble escaping to safety on the Continent before we ever got close to him.

“What a disappointing resolution,” I said. “There were no vampires for me to discover, and no bandits for you to rain vengeance upon. Just a mad one-eyed butcher who outflanked and outsmarted us.”

“Maybe when we crack open his luggage, we’ll find some clue.”

“I don’t think he’s the sort who’d leave us one. We didn’t find anything useful at any of the murder scenes.”

I looked around the room. Everything was clean; far cleaner than any room I’d ever seen in any English inn. He must have wiped the dust from all the furniture and moldings, and swept the floor, either as an expression of his fastidious nature or as a means of destroying some evidence of his guilt. I wondered what he’d done with all the blood he’d taken from the victims.

Angus shook his head. “I suppose it will be me who will have to go to London to tell poor Lord Whippleby his daughter’s killer slipped away from us.”

“I’ll do it, if I can keep the rifle,” I said.

“That’s a murder weapon. You want no association with that.” We stepped back into the hallway and Angus locked the room.

“It’s such a nice murder weapon, though.”

Angus stuck the keys in his pocket; he didn’t seem to think the disposition of Knifing’s rifle was a matter open for discussion. “I could do with some breakfast,” he said as he started back downstairs.

“I could do with a drink,” I said. But I stopped; a thought had occurred to me. “When you said the stink of death was in this place, did you mean that in a metaphorical sense?” I asked.

Angus turned, smushing his ample belly against the walls of the narrow stairwell as he did so. “No. It smells in here.”

The blood was concealed someplace nearby.

“We’re not done searching,” I said.

Angus paced up and down the hallway and decided the scent was strongest right by Knifing’s door, so we searched the room again. We tugged on the floorboards, tapped on the walls, and moved the furniture around. There wasn’t anything in there. We stepped back into the hallway and locked the door again.

“The smell is stronger in the hallway than it is in the room,” the constable said.

I turned slightly, and regarded the door opposite Knifing’s; room number 5. According to the paper I’d copied from the innkeeper’s ledger, the occupant was one Colin Underhill. The name meant nothing to me.

Angus turned his key in the lock and pressed the door slightly open. I hadn’t been able to smell it before, but I was buffeted now by a thick, meaty, rotten stink; the sheer power of it made both of us take a step backward.

“We should flee from this place,” Angus whispered. “We should send for soldiers, or a magistrate.”

“If we leave, whatever is in there may be gone by the time help arrives,” I said. “We must summon the fortitude to investigate now.”

Angus let out a soft, strained laugh. “I will say, in this situation, I am deeply sorry that we are not accompanied by your Professor.”

“He’d never be so foolish as to step into that room.”

“Remind me, then, why we act with less wisdom than a dumb beast.”

“I’m a foolish drunk, and you’re foolishly honorable.”

“That’s true, I suppose. So, our path is set.”

Angus pressed on the door. Its hinges groaned in protest, and we lost any hope of surprising any enemies lurking inside the room. I peered through the opening, but saw nothing stirring. Indeed, I saw nothing at all; though it was a bright morning, the room’s occupant had drawn heavy curtains over the room’s one small window, and the dim light from the lamps mounted on the walls of the interior hallway didn’t penetrate far past the doorway. Only a sliver of sun cut through the space between the curtains, giving us barely enough illumination to discern the outlines of the room’s furniture; a chair, a low cot, and a large chest or wardrobe against the back wall, by the window. From the corner of the room farthest from both the door and the window, there was a strange sound; a discordant, toneless hum like the sound of a dozen violins playing out of tune and out of time, and muffled beneath a feather bed. In the darkness, I could not identify the source.

“What is that sound?” I asked.

“I’ve heard it once before; the day I found my wife and daughter in the woods. It’s flies.”

“But to make such noise, there must thousands.”

A single tear rolled down Angus’s rough cheek. “If we’re going to undertake this plan, let’s stop discussing it, and rise to action,” he said. He unslung his musket and kicked the door all the way open. Leading with his gun, he barreled toward the room’s darkest corner, where the awful noise originated.