Marie O'Regan - The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books)

“I’m glad to hear you have some information,” he said. “Do feel free . . . and pour me one while you’re about it.”

“Do you have gin, Mr Rheese?”

Rheese paused for a moment. “Wouldn’t have put you down for that type, Inspector.”

“You do keep it, though?”

“Well, yes, for the staff, you know, or traders. Can’t stand the stuff meself. Did you want—”

“No, thank you, sir. I think the decanter may be chipped, in any case.”

There was a silence. “Really?” Rheese said. “Why would you think that?”

“Because I think it may have been used as a murder weapon, Mr Rheese.”

There was a faint clinking noise, then an odd, crystalline buzzing. The tray on which the decanters stood had begun to vibrate, a rhythmic resonance, silvery and strange.

Rheese rubbed his hands together, with a dry rasping sound. “A murder weapon? Really?”

“I don’t like machines, Mr Rheese. I don’t like the world’s obsession with them. But Jamie Wishart did. He loved them. And he put that love into what he made.” Gairden moved to the window, and looked out into the rain. A tiny persistent ringing made him glance down, and he realized that the latch of the window, too, was resonating, beating against the frame like the clapper of a bell. “You applied for a number of patents, did you not, Mr Rheese?”

“I . . . what? Yes. Of course I did. Where is that damned noise coming from?”

“Your father applied for a number, too. A man of great talent, Mr Matthew Rheese. He invented several mechanisms of some significance, I understand.”

“Yes . . . yes, he did. What is this to do with the matter at hand?”

“He was fond of Jamie, wasn’t he?”

“Really, Inspector …”

“He gave him the job, and the workshop. He even gave him a watch, for his twenty-first birthday. That must have jarred on you.”

“Father had a soft spot for lame dogs, Inspector.”

“But Jamie Wishart wasn’t a lame dog, was he? Your father recognized that. I wonder if the boy had a touch of the other, a strain of the fey to him; I suppose we’ll never know. Either way, Jamie Wishart was a genius. You aren’t, Mr Rheese.”

“How dare you?” Rheese exclaimed. “What do you know about it?”

Gairden pinned him with his gaze.

“Until Jamie came along, you hadn’t applied for a single patent. The patents you applied for after that weren’t yours. The inventions weren’t yours. They were all Jamie Wishart’s. He was too busy making what he loved to realize that you were stealing from him.”

“Now look, Inspector, that’s complete—” Rheese pushed himself out of the chair, his cheeks flushed, his teeth bared.

“Sit down, Mr Rheese.” Gairden’s voice was cold as metal.

Rheese slid back into his chair. “Nonsense! No one will ever believe a word of it.”

“They’ll believe the patent applications, Mr Rheese. You got careless towards the end, once your father was out of the way. You didn’t bother copying the original designs; they’re still in Jamie’s hand, though the applications are in yours.”

“I was doing it as a favour to him! The boy had no business sense …”

“It’s enough for people to start looking very carefully. Looking at why the patent officer, Aloysius Frobisher, suddenly became very comfortably off, just before he retired abroad.”

“You can’t prove anything.”

“Oh, I can,” Gairden said. “Boot polish, in your office? I wondered why a man such as you was polishing his own shoes. I realized the stains on your fingers had left smudges – those on Lassiter’s are ingrained. He didn’t smear the door when he touched it – you did. His fingers are dark with dye – yours were stained with boot-blacking. But you polished the surface, Mr Rheese, and forgot the sole. Not a bad metaphor, is it? You stamped on Jamie’s watch. A childish gesture; the poor man was already dead. I found the minute-hand in the stitching of your shoe. She led me to it, I believe.”

“Who?”

“Yes, I can prove one murder. Proving the second …”

“But there wasn’t . . . I mean—” Rheese’s voice was getting ever louder, as though trying to drown out the soft uncanny music that now seemed to shiver in the very walls.

“You took the gin with you,” Gairden said. “Did you think you might have trouble, getting him to give up this particular patent? Did you plan to get him drunk? He never touched the stuff, but you didn’t know that. You didn’t know him at all. I wonder if anyone did.”

Gairden moved away from the window, towards the table where the clock stood, humming with resonance, even though it was broken, shivering with a kind of life.

“You found them together, dancing. He’d created something you never could. Something extraordinary; something that would make you a rich man. But this time, he wouldn’t let you take out a patent, would he? What he’d created was more than just a mechanism to him. It was a true labour of love.

“You argued. And the gin was in your hand. A little must have leaked from around the stopper when you swung it at his head, again, and again, and again. I knew it wasn’t a regular burglary, you see. Someone there merely to steal his designs, they wouldn’t have been angry enough to hit him so many times, poor fellow. But you, Mr Rheese, you hated the mind in his skull, that genius mind you could never match. You had to destroy it. His refusal to give her up was just the excuse you needed.

“When Jamie fell, she fell, too; Lassiter heard her, though he didn’t know what he’d heard. Something in her broke when Jamie died. She wailed, like a long note on a violin, and then she fell.” Gairden leaned over, keeping one careful eye on Rheese, and took hold of what lay behind the clock, and pulled it upright.

The automaton drooped against his shoulder like a tired child. She was beautiful in her cool inhuman way. Her face was a smooth shining oval, her eyes elongated teardrops of blue glass. “He called her Lalika,” Gairden said. “I thought it was his ghost that was trying to speak to me; it was the girl, Mattie, who put that into my head. But it wasn’t Jamie’s ghost. It was hers.

“She was the one who stopped your machines, not Jamie – he wouldn’t have stopped them for himself. She made them stop for an hour, because that’s what you do when someone dies. And because she knew you would never show him that much respect.”

“You’re insane.”

“He’d made better than he knew – better than you or I understood. I can’t see you hang for her murder, Mr Rheese, but I’ll do my best to see you hang for Jamie Wishart’s. Please don’t try to leave, I have officers downstairs.”

The decanters stilled on the tray. The window latch ceased to ring. The clock gave one last ghost chime, and fell silent. Out of the air a handful of tiny, glimmering cogwheels fell about the two men, frail as butterflies, landing without a sound. Then there was nothing but the relentless, hammering pulse of the great machines.

It was well attended, for the funeral of a boy from the workhouse. At least half the factory workers were there, the place having been closed for the day; and there was an old man with a look of Tobias Rheese about him, who stood, grim and silent, leaning on his cane, watching as the six sweating bearers laboured to carry the coffin with dignity to the waiting grave.

Inspector Gairden, who had also attended, braced himself when the old man approached him. “You’ll be the inspector.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m Matthew Rheese. A dreadful business.” He glanced at the grave, where the diggers were now scooping earth on to the coffin with wet thuds. “One wonders where one went wrong.”