Jackaby
Author:William Ritter
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2014-09-16T00:00:00+00:00
Chapter Eighteen
The Emerald Arch was even more heavily guarded than it had been the previous day. The police presence appeared to have doubled, and official-looking rope now stretched around the entire building. A glance down the alleyway as we passed proved that there would not be a repeat of Jackaby’s sneaky business with the balconies, unless he felt like pulling his maneuver in the company of three uniformed officers. From what I had seen of the strange detective in the last twenty-four hours, he might have even pulled it off. In fact, it would probably have come to them giving him a leg up and wishing him all the best.
Charlie marched us past the guards at the front door. I recognized one of them as the thick, hawk-nosed policeman we’d slipped past yesterday. His pinched, suspicious expression hadn’t changed. “Cane,” he said without affection, but this time he didn’t try to stop us as we followed our escort past the cordon.
“O’Doyle,” Charlie answered in a matched tone. That being the apparent limit of their cordiality toward each other, we passed quickly and were soon through the front doors. Charlie had already shared a few details of the scene as we rushed through town, but it had all been a blurry, fragmented mess of information. As we entered the stairwell, Jackaby asked the detective to repeat his story from the beginning, leaving nothing out.
“Well, let’s see. I suppose it began after I left you yesterday, sir,” Charlie began. “I returned to my post outside Mr. Bragg’s room—that is, the late Mr. Bragg’s room. When Chief Inspector Marlowe arrived, I told him that I thought it would be wise to post guards tonight to protect Mr. Henderson. He asked me why. Now, you must understand that the chief inspector is very . . . selective about what he is willing to believe. Some of the other men are more open-minded—Officer Porter told me he attended a séance once, and I’ve even seen Lieutenant Dupin knock on wood—but not Marlowe. Marlowe does not even believe in luck. I couldn’t very well tell him about the banshee, so I just told him that something Henderson said when I revisited his room made me believe he had information about the murderer, and that he was too afraid for his life to come forward.
“The chief inspector just looked angry about that, and asked when I had spoken to his witness without permission. I told him we just stopped by on our way out, and that you had actually had a calming effect on the poor man. That was a mistake. He got all red and asked why the hell I had let that lunatic crackpot—sorry, sir, his words—wander around the building against his orders. He reminded me who was in charge, and told me he would have my badge if I couldn’t recognize the chain of command.
“It was my fault. I should have been more careful with my words. Commissioner Swift had arrived, as you know—he came into the hallway while we were speaking, breathing hard as he came out of the stairwell.
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