Despite my earlier critiques over some of his personal peccadilloes, Constable Richards was an upright man who oversaw his duties with great pride and diligence. Upon reaching his office we found him sitting at his desk, not a single button unfastened and not a single crease in his shirt. His epaulettes proudly proclaimed his rank in short numbers, and his Custodian Helmet, sitting upon his desk and perfectly in line with the front door, gleamed as though he had just polished it's proud 'ER' insignia. Upon the wall behind him was a list of wanted criminals, which comprised of mug shots so dated that they must have since died of old age. Behind a greeting smile the young man’s scrutiny beheld an eye that seemed to question ever visitor’s intentions and past criminal record. He also stamped library cards for a young boy who had just checked out a series of books involving a talking steam locomotive.
“Ah, good morning Mr. Fugit,” he greeted, curt but courteous.
Withdrew my pocket watch and glanced at the time. “Good afternoon, actually,” I corrected. Perhaps I may a bit rigid, but I felt that the time was not something to be trifled or mistaken.
“Actually, it is ‘good morning’,” Jill corrected me, and she didn’t seem to mind doing so in front of others. She then nudged me. “You’re still three minutes fast, remember?”
I shut my eyes for a moment and consumed my patience. “Thank you, Jill.”
“How can I help you, Mr. Fugit?” the constable asked, obviously hoping to get to the issue of my presence. He shut the boy’s last book and handed them to him. “Back by next Friday this time, alright?” he insisted. Perhaps he would use the threat of imprisonment as a fine for a tardy return. He returned his attention to me. “If you are here to speak to Mr. Gallows then I am afraid that he is no longer present.”
“And what of Mr. Coaltree?”
“He is still refuting visitation on the advice of his lawyer.”
I glanced down at my watch, still vexed by it’s misrepresentation. “And who might his lawyer be?” I asked, challenging him just in case it be a ruse.
“Mr. Reese,” he replied indignantly. “The butcher.”
I snapped my pocket watch shut and placed it back into my vest pocket. “Indeed. Mr. Richards...”
“Constable Richards.”
“Yes. Constable Richards, I am in need of information that perhaps you, in both of your capacities, could provide.”
“Go on,” he said, suspiciously.
“I require the original specs for the Mews, no doubt drawn upon it's revival. Should they still exist then I would suspect that they would be housed either here or at your father’s office.”
“You are correct, Mr. Fugit. They are housed here, as are the original plans for a few of our other notable estates, however I am afraid that they are not available to the public.”
“Well I must then correct you,” I retorted, “for I am not the public, rather I am in the employ of the Mayor’s Office.”
“They are extremely old, Mr. Fugit, and not to be trifled with. They cannot simply but unbound and opened every time someone wishes to have a look to satisfy their curiosity.”
“How do you think the distinguished Mr. Barberwart would feel if he discovered that his most reputed representative of the law had done his best to hinder my progress in a matter personally laid out by his own charge?”
The constable gave me a stare that was not becoming of a man in his position. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “In the back, top shelf. By the computers.”
I bid him good day as I bypassed his desk and entered the small and sparsely populated library. There were only a handful of shelves, most of which were only waist height, but at the very back wall there were a number of steel racks, atop of which were a number of rolled up sheets of paper. If they were not for public viewing then they were hardly kept secure.
“Oh wow,” Jill cooed. “Vic 20's! These things are ancient!”
“Never mind those useless devices,” I muttered. I had always viewed microcomputers as a passing fad and had yet to be convinced of their usefulness. “Help me search through these. One of them has to be for the Mews.”
We pulled them all down and unleashed a cloud of dust, inducing coughing fits on both our parts. Once the cloud had settled we set about examining ever label, attempting to read the faded pencil writing identifying the structure it represented. When this failed we resorted to opening every one and determining which building it was.
“Hey, this one is my house,” she chirped, folding it out on the table. It was a rather simple drawing of a small detached home that was, it would seem, built upon the foundations of what was once a blacksmith's forge. “I bet they kept the swords and spears in my room.”
“This might be it,” I said, helping her roll up her own blueprint before she was prepared to, making space for the item of interest that we had come for. “This is a layout for the entire estate of Lord Morrow,” I explained. “Amazing condition, I must say. Perhaps a copy of an original.” I pointed at the larger structure. “This here is where Greyfield Park now lies.” I moved my finger over to a smaller design. “And I assume that this is the Mews, or at least the stables and servant lodgings as they were at the time.”
“Well it’s going to be a bit different now, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps, but like the house in which you dwell, the foundations should remain virtually unchanged.” There were several reams of paper with this particular plan, and I flipped through a few until coming to a breakdown of the several levels of the stables. “Here,” I said, pointing to the basement level. The staircase was depicted, as well as the wall it led to, necessitating one to go either left or right, around the staircase, to enter the main cellar.
“If the stairs lead straight to a wall,” Jill asked, illustrating my thoughts exactly, “then how did they manage to store all those large boxes and barrels down there? It’s kind of a tight corner, isn’t it?”
“Exactly,” I remarked. “There must be another entrance for storage.” My finger traced our path from the day before, leading around the staircase, through the main cellar, and around a corner to where the entryway to the disturbance lay. It was another large storage area, but the drawings indicated a storm door at the opposite end. “We must find this door and enter from the opposite end,” I determined. “Perhaps we might find something conclusive on this side.”
“And if we don’t?”
I pondered that notion, then simply shrugged. “I’ll go back inside, only this time tethered and with your camera.”
She withdrew said camera and took a few snaps of the drawings so that we would have no trouble finding the location of the storm-door. When she was done I began rolling the papers up tightly, but as I did so I felt the impression of a small and slightly more thick piece of paper set between the sheets. As I fluted the pages a number of small postcards and photographs fell out. They all bore a slight curl as they had been rolled up for decades.
“What’s this?” Jill asked, reaching down and picking up a postcard with various notations. “God, did everyone have bad handwriting back then?”
I snatched it from her in excitement and gave it my scrutiny. It seemed to be an eyewitness account of the fire, although it was difficult to determine which blaze they reference - the estate or the mews? I looked at another card, baring a different style of handwriting, and read of an eyewitness account of a servant attempting to jump from a window, but suffering a fatal fall.
“There’s some pictures,” she noted, and began picking them up, one by one. Very poor quality black and white photos showed a blaze in progress. I looked at the back on one such photo and it was marked ‘1953'. “It must be the Mews,” she said. “I doubt they’d have had a camera on hand back in the late 1800's for the Estate. Not in this little village, anyway.” We looked at each photo as she picked them up from the table. One showed more of the fire as it engulfed the east wing. Another showed people attempting to dowse the flames w
ith mere buckets of water. Another depicted a body laying in the grass, perhaps the servant who attempted to leap to safety. Each image made the tragedy seem as though it happened only yesterday, for until I saw these images I had only ever known the Mews in its current state.
I picked up the last photo, which had fallen face-down upon the table. Written on the back was simply ‘Lady Morrow’. I turned the photo over.
We both stopped breathing, as though the library had become a vacuous void.
It was the same haunting image we had seen in the window of the Mew’s remains. In this photo, a woman gazed emptily out the window whilst the building blazed about her. She seemed distant and resigned, like a witch who accepted the fires at the stake. How anyone could stand so stoically while suffering such a fate was beyond comprehension.
“She...she must have wanted to die...” Jill gasped. She could look at the photo no longer, and flipped it face down on the table. I was, I admit, grateful for her actions as it broke my hypnotic trance that I had, for a second time, held with the lady’s devoid eyes.
“...this is most astounding...”
“I gotta pee.”
“...it is also most perplexing...”
“I'm shaking. Look at me. I’m shaking.”
I glanced over toward the entrance. The constable was not at his desk nor was he in sight. I quickly pocketed the photos and cards, then continued to roll up the floor plans of the Estate. I had only committed theft twice in my life, each time in aid of completing an intricate puzzle, but it gave me a deeply dishonest feeling nonetheless.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said. “We shall go there first thing in the morning. Prepared.”
“What? Tomorrow morning? Why wait?”
“Because. We don’t with to rush these things. We have to be prepared. We have to be...”
“You’re scared, aren’t you?”
“I most certainly am not.”
“It’s okay, I’m terrified, but we can’t let that stop us.”
“We need to be prepared.”
She did not say anything, but lifted up her over-stuffed backpack and gave me a look that seemed to question my short term memory.
“We need tools. We might have to dig our way to the storm door, or move some heavy objects.”
“We’ll swing by the Gallows farms on the way. They’re not using their shovels and spades anymore, that’s for sure.”
“Young lady, that is hardly appropriate.”
She opened her mouth to offer another impatient excuse, but as she did so a scream was heard from the front of the library. It was a deep bellow, partly in horror and partly as an offensive ploy against a would-be offender. I immediately arose and rushed to the front foyer of the library/police precinct and found Constable Richards upon the floor, attempting to stand while grasping his bloodied shoulder. Looming over him, looking like a man possessed by the devil himself, was Justin. He held a butcher knife which he held raised, prepared to strike again.
“Justin!” I called, unable to believe my eyes. “Good Heavens lad, what are you doing?”
His head shook like a man snapped out of a trance. He looked to me in fright, then down to the man beneath him. His features dropped as though it were he himself who was being threatened. The young lad looked again to me, as though he were about to ask me 'why', rather than vice versa, but by that point the young constable had regained his footing and lunged himself at the young homosexual, bringing him to the ground and disarming him. Showing a mark of bravery herself, Jill quickly scuttled forward and retrieved the blade, thus assuring that it could not be used again by either party.
Although he was the initial assailant, I couldn’t help but feel for young Justin, who looked frightened and bewildered by what had transpired, as though he had been unjustly attacked. Given his choice of lifestyle he was probably accustomed to unjust treatment, and I might have thought his attack to be a response to the narrow-minded beliefs and legislation that the constable and his father the mayor shared.
Yet if that were the case, then why did he appear so terrified before he had a chance to inflict the final blow?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN