Night Music (36 page)

“Which would have been unfortunate for the firm,” said Hassard.

“Most,” agreed Quayle.

He sipped his sherry. Hassard made another attempt to drink his tea, but it was a little strong for his liking, and so thick and tarry as to be almost reluctant to depart the cup. He abandoned it and opened his notebook.

“About Mr. Soter,” he began.

“Yes?”

“Can I assume that you have not heard from him?”

“Not a word.”

“It's a most unusual business.”

“It is.”

“His manuscript has been examined by a number of different experts, including a military psychiatrist. If it is a suicide note, it's not like any that they've seen before.”

“I was permitted only to view a transcript,” said Quayle. “Although it contained clear intimations of Soter's willingness to end his life, one assumes that such an act would have resulted in a body.”

“Which is why we continue to look for him,” said Hassard. “He's wanted for questioning about five deaths: those of Eliza Dunwidge and her father; the book scout Maggs; and two street children.”

“My understanding was that Maggs remained missing,” said Quayle, “and the only account of what might have befallen him was contained in Soter's manuscript.”

“We dragged a body from the Thames last night. It's in a bad way, but we're pretty certain that it's Maggs. That makes five.”

“What of the intruder that Soter claimed tried to crawl in the window of Maulding's home?”

“A phantasm from a troubled mind, perhaps,” said Hassard. “Although Maulding's window was broken, we found no signs of man or beast on the grounds of Bromdun Hall. No, there are just five victims with whom Soter had an association, but that should be enough to put the noose around his neck.”

“You appear quite convinced of his guilt.”

“The manuscript strikes me as self-serving, such as that nonsense about the insects in Maggs's room, and the disappearance of the body. Soter seemed to be trying to imply that old Dunwidge might have been involved in disposing of Maggs's remains, but Dunwidge isn't around to ask anymore. Soter made sure of that. He beat him to death and dumped his corpse in the basement of Maggs's lodgings.”

“So you claim.”

“He remains the most likely suspect, unless you can point us to another.”

“He was a disturbed man, but a hero once. The war broke him.”

“The war broke many, but they didn't all become murderers.”

“No, they did not. But it is necessary to understand the circumstances that might have given birth to one.”

“If you say so.”

Quayle sighed. Perhaps the detective was not so worthy of his interest after all.

“About those children,” said Quayle.

Hassard shifted in his seat.

“What of them?”

“I hear that they were . . . unusual.”

“They had rickets, if that's what you mean.”

“Something worse than rickets. I was informed that they were almost mutated.”

“That's nonsense.”

“Really? Is it also nonsense that you have so far failed to identify them, and that they were without parents or guardians, and no one has come forward to claim their bodies?”

“That's true,” Hassard admitted. “But it doesn't make them any less dead. If I may be so bold, Mr. Quayle, you seem almost inclined to doubt that Soter did anything wrong at all.”

“I'm a lawyer,” said Quayle. “My duty is to question.”

“And mine is to find a murderer, and perhaps his accomplice.”

“Accomplice?”

“Someone entered Maulding's home before the police were summoned by the housekeeper. Soter, in his manuscript, claims to have barricaded the doors of the house before locking himself in Maulding's secret library, but the front door was open when the housekeeper arrived, as was that of the library itself. The doors to both had been broken from the outside. We found marks.”

“What kind of marks?”

“We thought at first that they might have been made by a crowbar, but now a rake appears more likely, or some implement with tines capable of scratching wood. We've questioned the groundsman, but he was at home throughout, and his family corroborates his statement.”

“Tines,” said Quayle thoughtfully. He raised his right hand before him and stretched the fingers, examining the neatly cut nails. If Hassard noticed the gesture, he said nothing about it.

“And the book of which Soter wrote,” said Hassard, “the one that he claimed to have burned?”

“Yes,” said Quayle. “
The Fractured Atlas
.”

“We found no traces of it in the fire.”

“It was a book,” said Quayle. “Books burn.”

“Yes, I suppose that must be it.”

Hassard tapped his pen on his notebook.

“Do you think that Soter was mad?” he asked Quayle.

“As I told you, I think he was disturbed.”

“If his manuscript is to believed, he thought that clocks were running backward, and the dimensions of this world were altering. He ascribed some dread purpose to a derailment that blocked two tracks and brought down the telegraph wires.”

“I remember a different Soter, a better one.”

“Did you know that, some weeks earlier, he'd gone to the home of General Sir William Pulteney and kicked up quite the racket? It's lucky that the general didn't end up a victim, too.”

“I did not, but Soter didn't care much for Pulteney. In that, at least, he was not deluded or insane.”

“Maulding's nephew didn't take that view when I spoke with him.”

“Mr. Sebastian Forbes,” said Quayle, with no particular fondness. “He stands to inherit a great deal of money, once the details of Maulding's estate are finalized.”

“Mr. Forbes is of the opinion that, as executor of his uncle's will, you're dragging your feet on making sure that he gets what is rightfully his.”

“Really?” said Quayle. “How odd. I think it's safe to say that Mr. Forbes will get what's his when the time is right.”

Hassard appeared about to say something in reply, then bit his tongue and put away his notebook.

“Are we finished?” asked Quayle.

“For now.”

“I'm sorry that I couldn't be of more help to you.”

Hassard managed a smile.

“Are you really?”

“You're very cynical, even for a detective.”

“Perhaps. One final question does strike me, though.”

“Ask it.”

“Do you believe that Soter is dead?”

Quayle considered.

“I believe that Soter will not be found alive on this earth,” he said at last.

“That's an interesting reply.”

“Isn't it, though?” said Quayle. “Come, let me show you out. Those stairs can be tricky.”

•  •  •

The night deepened. At last even the thin halo of light visible around the edge of Quayle's drapes was extinguished, and the lawyer himself appeared in the courtyard. He crossed the cobblestones, unlocked the door directly across from his office, and closed it gently behind him. He had not even bothered to check if he might have been observed, for he was sensitive to every minor change in his environment.

After all, he had been there for a very long time, and before him stretched infinity.

He ascended the narrow staircase and entered his comfortable lodgings: a dining room, a living room-cum-library, a small kitchen, and a bedroom dominated by a massive oak bed of the same hue and vintage as the desk in his office. Again, had that mythical figure, the man with time on his hands and a particular interest in the lifestyle of the lawyer Quayle, been permitted entry, and enjoyed sufficient perspicacity, he might have noted that the square footage of the rooms, taken together, rather seemed to exceed the available space within the walls. Most of the volumes on the shelves were legal tomes, although interspersed among them were occult volumes of the most unique kind, including books named but never seen, and treatises cursed by the Church from the moment their existence became known.

Only one book was not shelved. It stood on a reading stand, its cover charred, its pages blackened. Just as Quayle entered, a section of the cover appeared to extend itself, if only by a fraction of an inch, covering a space that had previously been bare board. The
Atlas
was reconstituting itself.

Quayle set aside the sheaf of papers he had brought with him and took off his jacket and scarf. He approached a door set into the shelves, one which, had an intruder succeeded in opening it, would have revealed only a blank wall. But Quayle knew better than anyone the strangeness of the universe, and that what one saw did not always bear an accurate relation to what was actually being seen. He withdrew a key from his trouser pocket, inserted it into the keyhole, and turned it. Although he gave only a single rotation to the key, from behind the door came the sound of many locks working, and it seemed to echo over and over, gradually receding as though a near-infinite number of doors were slowly being unsealed.

Quayle seized the handle and twisted it. He opened the door outward, revealing the naked man who hung suspended before him, seemingly unsecured, floating against the blackness of space beyond.

Lionel Maulding never stopped screaming, but he made no noise in that place. Quayle watched for a few moments as a section of skin unpeeled itself from Maulding's scalp and slowly tore a narrow strip through his forehead, along his nose, then his lips and his throat, moving steadily and evenly down his chest and belly . . .

Quayle looked away. He had seen the show before. He had even timed it. It took about a day for Lionel Maulding to be reduced to muscle and bone, veins and arteries, and then the process of rebuilding would commence. It seemed to Quayle that this was at least as agonizing for Maulding as the mutilation that necessitated it, but Quayle was entirely without pity for the man. Maulding should have known. There was nothing in the occult volumes that were his obsession to suggest the end to his explorations would be a pleasant one.

Beside Maulding hung Soter. His eyes were closed. His eyes were always closed, as were his ears, and his mouth, and his nostrils, all sewn shut with thick catgut, the same material that joined his arms to his body, and his legs to each other. Imprisoned inside that still form was Soter's consciousness, trapped in a hell that resembled High Wood, for after a man had been through such suffering, there was little else that could be invented to torment him further. For Soter, Quayle did feel something like pity. Quayle was not human, even by the low standards of his profession, but some iota of humanity had infected him after all this time.

Behind these two figures hung hundreds of similar forms: men and women suspended like the husks of insects in a great web. Some had been there for so long that Quayle could not even remember their names, or what they might have done to merit this end. It didn't matter. It was, Quayle supposed, all a question of perspective.

Deep in the blackness beyond the bodies, red veins were visible, like the fractures in volcanic rock. The universe was sundering, its thin shell cracking. In parts it was almost transparent. Quayle watched a massive form press itself against the barrier, a being to which entire galaxies appeared only as froth on the surface of a distant lake. He glimpsed jointed legs, and jaws within jaws. He saw jagged teeth, and a mass of black-gray eyes like frogspawn in the depths of a pond.

Even after all this time, Quayle trembled in the presence of the Not-God.

Crowding behind it were others, so many others, not so great as the first but all waiting for the rifts to open and admit them. It would take time, of course, but time was nothing to them, or to Quayle. The world had been rewritten. The book had done its work, but when it was restored it would commence a new narrative, and the first chapter would tell of the creation of another kind of universe.

Quayle turned away. He locked the door behind him, went to his kitchen, and prepared a fresh pot of tea.

Then he sat, and watched
The Fractured Atlas
grow.

M
y grandfather's name was Tendell Tucker, and he was a hard man. He ran liquor for King Solomon during Prohibition, taking care of the road runs from Canada through Maine, and down to Boston. Mostly he answered to Dan Carroll, who was Solomon's partner, because my grandfather preferred dealing with the Irish to working with the Jews. He never said why. He was just that kind of fella.

A lot of people don't know it, but Dan Carroll was a cautious man, which might explain why he lived so long. During Prohibition, most of his shipments came ashore from boats at night and were met by trucks that brought his booze to warehouses for distribution, but he liked to cover his bets when he could. He wasn't a gambler, not like Abe Rothstein, or even Solomon himself. Carroll would calculate his outlay, and the potential profit to be realized from each shipment, then split it accordingly. So if he'd invested $30,000 in Canadian liquor and was looking at a return of $300,000, he would work out how many cases were needed to cover his initial costs, and then run them into Boston separately, usually in specially converted Cadillacs. That way, if the coast guard came sniffing, or the feds, and a shipment was seized, he wouldn't be out of pocket.

That was where my grandfather came in. He was born in Fort Kent, just on the border between Maine and Canada, so he knew the country and the people. He ran the road crews for Carroll: recruiting drivers, checking that the cars were well maintained, and greasing palms to make sure that the local cops stayed out of the way. “There were more cops than criminals in the bootleg business,” my grandfather used to say, and he was right, just as it always amused him that the politicians who passed the Volstead Act were first in line for the illegal booze that resulted from it.