Clockwork Killer (Steampunk Detectives: Book 1) Page 2

  At the time of her murder, just eight months before the end of the war, there were a million soldiers in the country, and a tenth of them had swords. “Big field.” I muttered. Even Pinkertons could never get a list of soldiers on leave at that time. Then I found a word next to sheriff; Eau Claire. Could be a town, could be the sheriff’s name.

  Eau Clair.

  Pinkerton’s notes turned out to be mostly questions that I had already considered, details we’d looked for and found missing. I took a Wisconsin map from the pigeon-holes in the main office and spread it on my desk. I easily found Taylor County, and sure enough, Eau Clair was marked as one of the bigger settlements. I had my first destination, and with my fingers measured the distance from Chicago at about three hundred miles.

  I turned a page in my new notebook for the second case.

  18th April 1875, a month before the President’s assassination; so near the end of the war. By then we had the Confederates on the run. We’d won ten battles in succession, and would win many more. I’d been behind enemy lines, blowing up railway lines if I remembered properly. Dressed in grey; a spy. A month before the man we’d protected for four years got taken by a traitor’s bullet. Life had changed so quickly; the recriminations that had been fired by Pinkerton himself when Lincoln had been killed, the venomous hunt for Wilkes Booth.

  And here I sat, excitement long gone, performing humdrum detective work in Chicago.

  I looked at the notes for a location of the second murder. Decatur, Macon County, Illinois. I knew that lay in the south of the state, in the opposite direction, quite a few miles from the last victim. I determined to find out the distance. Grizzell Wallace, aged 17. The two victims were roughly the same age so I surmised a link, our man had a hankering for young ladies. I browsed the rest of the papers, and found a note from the burial service in Decatur. Neck cut almost entirely through. Husband told deputy sheriff that a sword had been used.

  “And that’s what we call a connection.” I mused.

  A sword. Neck cut almost entirely through.

  So two victims, the same age, near enough, six months apart, get their heads cut off with a sword. And looking at the scattered papers, that’s all I had.

  I stood, and retraced my steps back to Pinkerton’s office.

  I knocked firmly on the wooden side of the glass door.

  “Yes?”

  I pushed the door open and poked my head into the gap. “Eh, Boss? It looks like I need to get into the country.”

  Pinkerton raised his head. “So ya’ think the cases are linked?”

  I nodded. “On first look it seems so. I need to get more details; put a bit of meat on the bones.”

  “Aye, I don’t have a problem with that.” He motioned with a pencil in the direction of the small finances office, near the back of the floor. “Go see Missus Bainbridge.”

  “Yes, Mister Pinkerton.”

  As I reported to the dreaded Missus Bainbridge, I remembered him being just as dour with the President. There never would be a photograph that caught Allan Pinkerton smiling.

  I got fifty bucks from the silent Missus Bainbridge, gave her my destination, and with my crisp new bills firmly in my inside pocket, I walked down to the main street. In ten minutes I had reached my digs, just north of the Pinkerton location. There seemed no point in leaving so late in the afternoon, so I picked up a book to read until sunset. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe would keep my mind occupied in foreign climes until I considered it late enough to sleep.

  At six the next morning, I collected my horse from the company stables under the office, and set off on the north road out of town. Three hundred miles lay before me, a week of ass-weary riding. I couldn’t wait on the extension of the railroad northwards.

  I found the sheriff of Eau Claire sitting in his office, one of only ten buildings on the main street.

  I removed my hat, holding it before me. “Good morning Sheriff, my name’s Paul Chapman, I’m a detective from Pinkerton National Detective Agency. We work with the Cook County Sheriff’s office.”

  The old man lifted his head and squinted over thin spectacles. “That’s Chicago.”

  “That’s right,” I nodded. “I’m here investigating a murder a year ago.”

  He looked at me as if I’d spoken in a foreign tongue. “And who would that be?”

  “Annabel Joyce.”

  “Damn,” He gave a wry smile, then leant to one side and spat onto the dusty floor. “I thought we’d heard the last of that one.”

  Catching a distinct hint of weariness from the Sheriff, I walked across the room, and waved my hat at the empty chair in front of his desk. “Can I sit?”

  He gave a heavy sigh. “If you have to,”

  “Sheriff, the Joyce case has been thrown into a more important light recently; I’m looking for more details if you have them.” I took my notebook from my saddlebag and opened it. “I think I’ve got some of your notes, Sheriff, but no name to go along with them.”

  “Ricky White,” He extended his hand across the table, which I shook firmly. “”Pleased to meet your acquaintance.”

  “Likewise, Sheriff,” I opened my notebook. “I don’t have much to go on, Ricky. I don’t even have an address, a location of the crime.”

  “Tom Joyce’s homestead,” he said, leaning back on his chair and rocking it onto two legs. “It’s not far out of town; on the east road.”

  “And Tom was her father?” I asked.

  “Husband,”

  “Oh.” I paused, my pencil poised to write.

  “Came in here one afternoon, all panting and puffing,” White began. “Telling me his wife had been murdered; killed in front of his eyes by some stranger.”

  “Did you catch him? The stranger?”

  “He was long gone.” The sheriff shook his head. “It seems Tom had been tied up to watch the evil deed. His wrists were rubbed to bleeding when he got here. It took him a whole day to get himself untied.”

  “Oh, that sounds nasty.” I said. “Did you get a look at the crime scene?”

  “Crime scene?” Sheriff White gave me a strange look over his glasses. Whatever I’d been censured for, I tried to look sufficiently abashed. “I rode him back to the farm. Found things just like he’d told me. His wife was tied to the bed, her neck neatly cut wide open. The bedclothes were dark red and stinking.”

  I’d decided not to write as the man spoke, memorizing the testimony to write in my notes later.

  “And was there evidence that he’d been tied up?”

  “Oh hell yes, blood soaked ropes near the chair. He was in a terrible way; all shaky and nervous on me. I had no reason to doubt him, and they’d been married less than a year.”

  “Did you have any feeling, any indication that Tom was lying?”

  “Nope,” Sheriff White shook his head firmly.

  “Is Tom still around?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’s in town,” The Sheriff leaned back further, balancing the chair precariously almost to tipping point. “But you’ll get nothing from him. The day they buried Annabel, he rode home to the farm, burnt the house to the ground. Then hung himself in the barn.”

  “Christ,” I said. My exclamation punctuated both displeasure and disappointment; both the crime scene and the witness were gone.

  “Amen, detective,” White said, bringing his trapeze chair back to rest. “It was a dirty business.”

  “Can you remember anything else Sheriff?” I asked, hoping for a fragment.

  “Tom babbled, son, but not a whale of it made sense.”

  “Try me,”

  “Well, for one, he called the man a fornicator, then swore on a stack of bibles Annabel hadn’t been defiled.” He scratched the stubble on his chin. “Railed on and on about it being his own fault, I guess he felt guilty being tied, and all.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I don’t think so.” White shook his head. “Sorry, son, that’s all I got.”

  And I rode from town without
a look at the farm. I forced the horse a bit, and made it back to the office in four days.

  The first person I met was the dreaded widow, Missus Bainbridge. “Mister Pinkerton has put a note on your desk.”

  “Eh, thank you. Is he in today?”

  She shook her head. “He’s with the railroad.”

  I nodded, bowed slightly and walked to my desk. Missus Bainbridge had a way of making you feel uncomfortable, either with a look or a lack of one. To make matters worse, she wasn’t unattractive; she had quite a pleasing face, and her eyes were the deepest of blue. They just looked cold, so bloody cold.

  The new notes lay on top of my folded map, Pinkerton’s handwriting.

  Wisconsin, 21st September,1875. Christine Bismark, aged eighteen.

  Same M.O. as the previous two. Sword cut to the neck.

  Just one week ago, as I’d been riding north.

  I grinned at the M.O. part. A phrase often used by Mister Pinkerton. Modus Operandi, Latin for ‘method of operation’, and I’m sure he coined the phrase himself. He always seemed to be one step in front of everyone else.

  So now we had three murders, and I had a choice to make; go down to Decatur to investigate a murder almost five months old, or head back up into cold Wisconsin to look at a fresh trail.

  No contest.

  Coming to Terms With Guilt

  Francis Smalling, Smalling Apple Farm, Sangamon County, Illinois

  April 15th 1866

  Thinking of myself as the ‘man’ of the house, I felt deeply guilty. I wept in the privacy of my summer house, the windows whitewashed from the inside to keep prying eyes from my work. In public I remained stoic, keeping a strong shoulder for mamma or Margaret to lean on. As the farmhands came to pay their respects I could see their condemning stares; the boy that did nothing to save his own sister. No one could understand the depths of my own frustration as I psychologically lacerated myself every time I thought of the events that night.

  When the sheriff arrived, I stood behind mother, my arm round her waist in case she should fall. She cried, and wandered around the house, but ventured nowhere near our bedroom. Marsha, our housekeeper, marshalled her into the kitchen, where she sat crying some more.

  “We’ll get him ma’am.” The sheriff said as he left the room. He indicated that I join him on the long white fenced porch. “What’d he look like, son?”

  “Tall, light brown hair,” I began. “He wore a long overcoat, Confederate grey.” I paused sorting my memory, trying to categorize the information to deliver it in a structured form.

  The sheriff nodded. “Sorry for your loss, son,” Mister Tandy, the funeral director hovered outside in the sunshine. “In you go, Tandy, it’s all yours.”

  I stood mystified, I’d been cut off, and I had so much more to tell. “Sheriff?” I asked, my hand pulling at his sleeve.

  “Yes son?” Halfway up the path he turned. He looked tired.

  “There’s more.”

  “I know son, but you don’t need to go into details.”

  “No, there’s…”

  He held his hand up in the air, stymying my words. “I got a posse to rustle up, son. There’s no time to lose.” He said, demeaning me further by not asking me if I wanted to ride with them. I owned both rifle and revolver, and considered myself proficient at both. And then the Sheriff patted me on the head, like I was a puppy, like he would have done if I’d been ten years old.

  I was a man now, God-dammit. I could fight for my country, if the war hadn’t finished last year. Men of my age were already being taken to the west, guarding the railway lines against the Indians.

  The sheriff had already turned away, talking in hushed tones to Tandy.

  Why hadn’t the sheriff asked more questions? He was leaving with hardly a thread of information, and was now going to get a posse together? It made little sense to me.

  I took a piece of paper out of my pocket; my notes on the man.

  Six foot, probably. Right handed.

  Flat ears, large nose, long fingers, he bit his nails.

  Wide brimmed hat.

  Almost new, black boots, maybe military.

  Accent was mid to southern.

  Sword had a black handle, gold filigree.

  Slight limp on his left leg.

  In the sunshine I looked at the notepaper and my penciled words, seemingly so important a few hours ago, now discarded by the figure of law in the county. I folded the paper, and tucked it back into my hip pocket.

  That night, I lay awake on my bed, a loaded Colt by my side. I watched my sister Margaret turn in her sleep, sometimes whimpering, but at least she slept. My eyes did not close till the sun rose across the apple orchard. Smiling, I could do no more, and succumbed to my frustrated exhaustion.

  I awoke with the sun bursting in the loosely curtained window. Margaret still lay on her bed, curled on her side, fully dressed but sleeping soundly.

  I roused myself, and found Mamma in the kitchen, elbows on the table, her eyes red with crying. I found myself incapable of any more outpouring, so I kicked open the door and walked across the yard and across the yard to the summer house.

  Only in my laboratory did I feel comfortable. My Jedlik motor still spun on one of my dusty workbenches. I looked at its constant spinning. An oval loop of copper wire gave it its base, and the magnetized spinning arms looked so strange in this primitive world.

  I marveled at the man’s invention; so far ahead of his time. My own version of the motor had been spinning constantly for five weeks now, the large bell-jar battery cell never seeming to run out of charge.

  To take my mind off my sister’s violation, I re-read the latest fliers and determined to travel into town to the post office for new mail. With little impetus to continue my experiments, I took out some frustration hammering on a poor copper sheet, beating it far thinner than I needed for my new capacitor project. But my body felt good delivering the organized hammer strokes, and the noise of iron and anvil did my soul some good.

  After supper I got Marsha the housekeeper to fire up a huge pot of coffee, which she sat by my bedside. I lay in the dark, listening, waiting, tensed for the door to open, and the man with the wide brimmed hat to present himself. He’d promised to return, and I took him at his word.

  I got roused by Margaret leaning over me. “It’s time for the funeral, Francis.”

  It proved to be, of course, a time of more weeping, no resolve, no feeling of closure, and no comfort in revenge. I stood in the dust, resenting the people around me, begrudging the time I had to devote to this social discarding of her carcass.

  I tried to remember her as she had lived, but to my disgust, was only rewarded by a memory of her tense bosom, heaving as she reached her release.

  After the funeral, I again retreated to my workshop in the summer house, a new package been delivered, a large box with four large thick glass bell-jars. Perfectly made, flawless, I gazed through the glass for ages. They would house my new capacitors, large spirals of copper interlaced with rubber sheeting for electrical insulation.

  As the sun fell, I had a silent supper with Mamma and Margaret, then with my now obligatory large jug of coffee, I retired for the night. For the next nine nights I repeated the same pattern, sleeping from dawn to noon. I worked in the orchard in the afternoon, and I worked in candlelight in the summerhouse in the evening.

  After the tenth night, I put the coffee aside and decided to attempt to sleep normally.

  As I slipped beneath my covers, I noticed Margaret sitting up, her back against her pile of pillows. “It’s difficult, having her bed still there.”

  I looked over at Rebekah’s bed, now freshly made up, her covers flat and unblemished. “Maybe we should move it out?” I suggested. I glanced at the place where she’d been violated, where her breasts had arched as she’d orgasmed under the stranger’s ministrations.

  And I’d done nothing.

  I felt the tears come again, and heard Margaret standing by my bedside saying
something to console me. Then I felt my own mattress move as she pushed her body under my covers. I instinctively moved away, but she held my arm and pressed her warm body tightly against mine. “We couldn’t have done anything, Francis.” She said. But as I heard the words, they seemed so insignificant.

  I lay back on the pillow, aware of the heat emanating from her body towards me. With tears in my eyes I fell asleep.

  But I could not rid myself of the notion that I could have prevented the Johnny Reb in some way.

  The next day as I readied myself for work, a stranger rode up the dry clay road to the house. He wore a dark charcoal pinstriped suit, unusual in the country. His dark hat was narrow brimmed in the style of city folk, but he wore a pistol on his hip, the black holster showing below his jacket. As he reined his mount to a halt at the garden white gate, he nodded to me. I tugged my watch from my hat band; ten past ten, early for a city man to be up and around.

  “Is this the Smalling place?”

  I walked to the gate. “Yes, sir, my name’s Francis. How may I help you?”

  He dismounted stiffly, as if he’d had a long ride already that morning. “I’m Paul Chapman, a detective from Cook Country Sheriff’s office.” He whipped his horse’s reins to the rail. “I’m investigating a series of murders.” He took a small notebook from his breast pocket, and whipped it open. “Francis Smalling.” He read.

  The word ‘detective’ had sidelined me, and it felt strange to hear my name read aloud from the book.

  He looked up at me, his fingers turning the well penciled pages.

  “I wonder, son, if I may take some of your time today.”

  “Well I have my work up at the orchard.” I slipped my time-piece back into my hatband.

  “I can walk with you, if you don’t mind.” He said. “The sheriff has given Pinkertons wide license in this case, and with your permission I need to ask you about your sister’s murder.”