Chapter Seventeen
A few minutes later Cordelia Hoole was sipping her tea with trembling hands. She and Jackaby sat on either side of the front desk, with Owen Finstern lying motionless on the bench beside them. I had deposited Finstern’s bulky machine in the laboratory and brewed a quick pot of tea before rejoining them. Jenny Cavanaugh did not reveal herself, and I wondered if she was just keeping out of sight because of our visitor, or if my ghostly friend still had not rematerialized since the incident in the street.
“You know that you’re in danger?” Jackaby asked the widow Hoole as I took up a position beside him at the desk.
“Yes. Yes, of course,” she replied. “That’s why I’ve been in hiding.” Her cup rattled against the saucer. “After what happened to Alice . . . I—I knew her.”
“Alice McCaffery?”
She nodded. “She and Julian were so nice to me. I didn’t know very many people in my husband’s social circles—but the McCafferys were always so kind. It was bad enough when Lawrence didn’t come home that night, but then I heard about Julian disappearing and—and about what they did to Alice . . .” She trailed off, her breath coming in shallow gulps.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Hoole,” I said. “You’re safe here.”
“How did you hear about them?” Jackaby asked. “Our contact in the police department said you were gone before word could reach you about the grisly state of your husband’s corpse.”
“Sir,” I said, “some sensitivity.”
“Excuse me,” he said. “The grisly state of your late husband’s corpse. Alice McCaffery’s body was discovered the same day—how did you hear about it before police could reach you?”
“Miss W-W-Wick.” Mrs. Hoole sniffed and set her cup and saucer down on the desk. “Our housekeeper. She tells me everything. I think she heard it from the McCaffery’s maid. She was worried for me. I packed a bag and left at once. Miss Wick stayed to put things in order before joining me.”
“Hm,” Jackaby said. “Miss Wick was still at the house when we came to call on you. Until she wasn’t. She was not as forthright as I might have hoped about our investigation.”
“You speak Polish?” I asked Mrs. Hoole.
She shook her head. “No, but I’ve known Miss Wick for many years. She speaks more English than she lets on. It’s sort of her little secret.”
“Indeed,” said Jackaby. “Your housekeeper is good at keeping secrets. Her baby, for example. Was the child with you when we came calling on her?”
Mrs. Hoole bit her lip. “Please, detective. Leave them alone. They’ve been through enough. I came here to help you. I want to put a stop to this before anyone else gets hurt. I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but just leave them out of this. It’s my fault they’re involved at all.”
“Hm,” said Jackaby again. He looked unsatisfied, but he moved on. “Tell me about your husband’s work.”
Mrs. Hoole took a slow sip of tea before she spoke. “My Lawrence was a genius,” she said at last. “He designed locomotives that could run on half the fuel for twice the distance and adding machines that could solve complex equations in a matter of minutes. He contrived such wonderful inventions.”
“Which of them was he working on when he died?”
“None of them. He wasn’t building anything of his own design—he was rebuilding someone else’s. He said it was a brilliant but broken concept. He was very excited at first. It had something to do with electricity and conduction, but it was all Greek to me when he got talking about the details. Oh, it’s my fault, I know it. He was content just tinkering away on his own projects. I pushed him to take the job. I just thought it w-w-would be his chance to be r-r-recognized.”
“Can you tell us anything more specific about what he was constructing?” Jackaby urged. “Think hard now.”
Cordelia shook her head. “Lawrence never spoke at length about his machines with me. Sometimes he would try, but he would get frustrated trying to simplify it all—or else he would get distracted by an idea and just start tinkering away at it right then and there and forget we were speaking. I used to tease him that I would have to register for one of his classes if I hoped to hear the end of a sentence. All of those clever ideas. It’s s-s-such a waste. He never wrote half of them down. It was like his pen couldn’t keep up with his brain. Whatever he was working on, he t-t-took it with him, I’m afraid.”
Jackaby grimaced with dissatisfaction.
“And now he’s gone and they’re probably going to k-k-kill me, and I don’t even know why!” Cordelia Hoole’s shoulders shook as she finally broke. I hurried to offer her a handkerchief and she took it gratefully, burying her face in it as she sobbed.
“Mrs. Hoole,” said Jackaby in an even tone, “if we are to keep you safe, you will need to be completely honest with us.”
“Honest?” she wiped her eyes and sniffled. “I have been honest with you, detective.”
“Honest—but not completely. I have a talent that allows me to see certain truths, and the truth is that you are concealing something. I can see willful obfuscation spread over you like marmalade on toast. I do not care for marmalade, madam, and I care less for secrets.”
“Of course there are things about me you don’t know.” She sniffed and her brow furrowed indignantly. “I don’t know anything about you, but I came, didn’t I?”
“I suppose you did.”
“And I c-c-came inside when you bade me, even after I found you carrying that man into your house. I’ve put more than my share of trust on the table, thank you very much, Mr. Jackaby. I think I’m entitled to my privacy where I see fit.” She glanced back at the figure occupying the bench. Owen Finstern was breathing evenly. Every once in a while his cheek twitched as he slept off the effects of the jolt his machine had given him. “Who is he, anyway?”
“He is an inventor, like your late husband,” Jackaby answered. “He’s called Finstern. He is wanted by some thoroughly unpleasant individuals, the same individuals responsible for Lawrence’s death. Beyond that we know very little.” He shook his head, eying the prone figure. “There’s something about him I don’t like,” he added.
“Could it be the fact that he tried to suck the life out of your steadfast and lovely assistant?” I suggested.
Jackaby glanced in my direction. “The question is: why didn’t he succeed?”
“Your concern is overwhelming,” I said.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Jackaby groused. “Your vital energies should have been completely—” He stopped, staring straight ahead.
“This is madness!” Mrs. Hoole’s eyes were pink and puffy. “I should never have come.”
“Please, Mrs. Hoole,” I soothed, “you’re safe here.”
“No,” said Jackaby, his gray eyes locked on the front door. “She’s not.” A moment later the horseshoe knocker rapped out three loud clacks from the other side. “It’s him.” Jackaby’s voice was grave. “I know that aura. A foul, anathematic shade with a faint halo of lavender. It’s him. It’s Pavel. The wretch is on our doorstep.”
My eyes shot between the widow Hoole and the dormant Finstern. Of course Pavel was here. We could not have painted the house with two larger targets. “What do we do?”
“The polite thing”—Pavel’s voice came muffled through the wood—“would be to stop acting as though I can’t hear you and invite me in. Maybe put the kettle on?”