Frank Tuttle - The Cadaver Client

“Are they dead?”

“You don’t get to ask any questions until you’ve answered mine. Next time I ask it will be down at the Watchhouse on the Square. And after that, you won’t have time to worry about the scarcity of blue fireflowers, Miss. Last chance.”

Her eyes blazed. But she weighed her options.

“There’s only one person who might be looking for Marris Sellway,” she said, so low I could barely hear her. “If you’re his man, screw you. Go get the Watch. Go get a lawyer. Go get them and go to Hell.”

She stood up. I had to admire the way she saw a world of hurt coming but spit in its eye anyway.

“April,” she said. “Call Father.”

I shook my head. “Whoa, young lady. You’ve got me all wrong. I was hired by an old woman named Granny Knot. She brought me a bagful of money and said she wanted it to go to Marris Sellway. That’s who I’m working for. That’s what I was hired to do. That, and nothing else.”

“April. Wait.”

“I’m telling the truth, Miss. I’m not out to hurt anyone. Not you.” I went out on that limb made famous in the proverb. “And not your mother.”

Her face fell. I was right.

“Why don’t you go by Doris anymore?”

“Because of him,” she replied.

“Him?”

Natalie, formerly Doris, glanced furtively around. “He started the fires on Cawling. And I’m sure he killed my father. And if you’re working for him now, and you tell him who we are and where we are, he’ll kill us both. Mother and me.”

“Nobody is going to kill anybody, Miss. And look, this is going to sound crazy, but the man I’m supposedly working for is dead.”

“Dead?”

I sighed. “Like I said, it sounds crazy. A spook doctor came to me. Claimed she came on behalf of a ghost.”

Natalie laughed. It wasn’t a normal laugh, but a release of pent-up terror, and April gave us both the eye from across the room.

“Was this man’s name Gorvis, Miss?”

She shook her head. “He called himself Connors back then. But he liked to brag that he was wanted, so that probably wasn’t his name.” She shivered. “I know they said Father died in that riot, but I never believed it. Father wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t have gotten in the middle of a thing like that.”

I nodded. “A few questions. First, why did you turn Wert and the boys loose on me?”

She bit her lip. “My wedding is next week. I don’t want…my fiancee doesn’t know- When I saw that waybill, well… I thought maybe you’d go away, if…”

“If I got a good beating and a stern warning.”

“Are they…?”

“They’re fine. Not a bruise on them. They’ll be back around looking sheepish in a day or two, I promise.” At least I hoped so. Though I doubted any of Owenstall’s boys would just beat them for the sport of it. “Your mother know about any of this?”

She shook her head an emphatic no. “She thinks I’ve forgotten all about Cawling Street,” she said. “It makes her happy, believing that. So I let her. But. I’ve always known that…man would show back up, Mr. Markhat. I’ve been watching.”

She was pretty. Dark-haired and fair-featured. Her eyes looked older than eighteen, and I guess maybe they were, at least in experience.

“All right. Miss. Like I said, I’m not here to bring you or your family any grief. I’m not going to tell anyone that we’ve spoken, tell anyone your name. It may be that I need to talk to you again. If that’s true, I’ll come back here. I won’t ask you to meet me anywhere else. Got it?”

She nodded.

“Now comes the tough part. I need to know exactly what happened back on Cawling Street. I need as much detail as you can remember. Especially about the man Connors.”

Her face went pale.

“April,” she said. “Could you send for a pitcher of tea and two glasses?”

And then she put her hands in her lap and took me back to Cawling Street.

It was still bright and sunny when I left Stig River’s offices and set back out for home. Normally, I’d have been smiling.

But Natalie’s recounting had erased any vestige of a smile.

Connors or Gorvis, by any name, was a monstrous piece of work. He’d set his eyes on Marris Sellway, and from that moment no one in the family had known any peace.

Natalie was convinced Connors had stabbed her father. If her story about Connors showing up the next day and catching her in a headlock and whispering a description of her father’s death throes in her ear was true, I was willing to believe it too.

Connors even had the Bloods cowed. He paid no protection. They gave him wide berth and showed him complete deference, though outnumbering him an easy twenty to one.

According to Natalie, Connors had gone house-to-house, kicking in doors and searching for Marris, after she hid from him one day. And when he hadn’t found her, he simply started setting fires.

And still, no one had raised a hand against him.

I stomped my way out of the shiny, new business district and took a wandering route towards home.

The man had burned an entire street nearly to the ground. Not once, but twice. And no one could work up the courage to steal up behind him with a brick in hand?

Marris had finally fled with Doris, literally hiding in the rolling clouds of smoke from the second fire. Homeless and penniless, she had somehow avoided the fate that would usually have resulted from such a flight. Instead, she’d taken on another name, found work, found a husband, found a life.

Until now.

I thought about the nature of a man willing to burn down dozens of homes just to make a point to a woman who’d spurned his every advance. I thought about what kind of monster could murder a kid’s father one day and brag about it to the grieving child the next.

Mostly, though, I thought about being used by such a man under the pretense of speaking from beyond the grave.

I wasn’t sure where Granny Knot fit into all this. Maybe she was out and out feeding me the whole line of bull and was being paid for her troubles. Maybe she was somehow being duped into thinking she was speaking with a dead man.

But either way, I’d nearly led a monster to an innocent woman’s door.

It was the bag of coin, of course. I’d been so distracted by that I hadn’t focused on anything else. And that, I decided, was planned as well. I was supposed to be convinced Connors was dead, simply because I couldn’t imagine someone alive letting that much coin slip out of their hands.

At the corner of Maddon and Vent, I paused. Right would lead me to Granny Knot’s. Left would lead me back home.

I squinted at the sun and estimated my walking times. I decided I could just make it home, and then head to Granny’s. I was feeling distinctly unarmed, and while most of the time I don’t feel a need to haul around the implements of mayhem, that afternoon was shaping up to be different.

So left I went, at a brisk pace.

Dead man or not, somebody was going to feel the weighted end of my head-knocker, and bloody well soon.

I was trying to decide whether Granny was duped or dastard when I marched onto Cambrit and passed Mama’s and saw the carriage pulled up right at my door.

I slowed, put my hands in my pockets, lapsed into an amble. I was half-fearing Mama would pop out and shriek my name, but I heard voices inside and knew she had a client.

The carriage was new. It was fancy, too, with rubber-covered wheels and bright steel springs and a shine that would do a funeral wagon proud. And there, on the back, was the logo of the Stig River Runners.

I came up even with the cab, peeked inside. A woman sat there, about my age, clad in an uptown hoop skirt and a hat that someone had festooned with gauze and flowers.