The Falling Ice

"Some weapons do not need to be found. They only need to melt."

The corridor outside Lady Aurelia's room was lit by a single oil lamp, and by the time Thalessa reached it, the footman on guard was already on his knees.

It was Uriah Finch. He knelt on the crimson carpet with both hands pressed to the door, as if he could hold it shut by faith, and his thin pitted face was the color of tallow. He did not look up at the sound of boots. He was saying something in a low, unbroken whisper, over and over, and it took her a moment to understand that it was a prayer.

"Mr. Finch," said Roderick.

"I never left, sir. I swear it on my mother. I never left the door. I heard her cry out, and I tried the handle, and it's locked, sir, it's locked from the inside, and she doesn't answer—"

"Stand aside."

The footman scrambled back against the wall. Roderick put his shoulder to the panel once, twice, and the third time the lock gave with a shriek of splitting wood and the door swung inward on a rush of cold.

Cold, and a smell. Thalessa knew it before she saw anything. Wisteria, faint and sweet, and under it the clean metal smell of blood.

The room was dark but for a single candle that had been blown flat by the draft. The window stood open. Sleet blew through it in a fine white spray and lay on the sill and the floorboards in a glittering crust, and the heavy curtains stood out from the wall like sails.

Lady Aurelia Vance sat in the chair by the window.

She was in her nightdress, with the black shawl still around her shoulders, and her head had fallen back against the high wing of the chair as if she had been listening to music. Her eyes were open. Her mouth was open a little, with an air of mild surprise. In the center of her breast, just left of the breastbone, a slender shaft of something clear stood out of her body, no longer than a hand, and about it the white lace of the nightdress had gone slowly, deeply red.

Roderick said a word under his breath that Thalessa had never heard from him.

She crossed the room, set her chest on the bed, and drew on her gloves. She did not hurry. There was no use in hurry. She had seen enough to know that the woman in the chair had died within a minute of being struck, and that the body was still warm.

She touched the shaft with one fingertip.

It was wet. It was cold. And as she watched, a bead of water gathered at its base and ran down in a thin, bright line to join the blood.

"It's melting," she said.

"What is?"

"The weapon." She bent closer. "It's ice, Inspector. A dagger of clear ice, ground to a point. A hand's length, perhaps nine inches. It entered between the fourth and fifth ribs and went straight to the heart." She straightened. "In an hour there will be nothing left of it but a puddle. In a warm room, in half that."

"There is a fire in the grate."

"There is a fire. And it will take her blade, and all the evidence with it."

She was already moving. She lifted the glass bell-jar off the washstand, tipped out the water, and held it under the dagger to catch what ran off. Then she took a pair of long silver tongs from her chest and, with infinite care, drew the shaft out of the wound.

It came with a soft wet sound. She laid it on a sheet of oilcloth and looked at it under the lamp.

Nine and a half inches. Perfectly clear, perfectly smooth, the surface faintly frosted where the warmth of the flesh had begun to cloud it. The point was ground thin as a needle. And the butt, the end that would have been fixed to something, was not smooth at all. It was ragged. Fractured. Torn.

"It broke off," she murmured. "It was launched from something, not thrust. It left the mount and shattered at the base."

"Launched."

"From a distance. By a spring, or a lever." She turned her head. Her eyes went to the open window and the white dark beyond. "From out there."

Roderick was beside her in two strides. He leaned out into the storm with one hand on the sash. Sleet beat on his face; he narrowed his eyes against it and looked up and down and across.

"Third floor," he said. "A sheer wall. Forty feet of stone, and a drop below that to the garden. No ledge." He drew back. "Nobody climbed that."

"No. Nobody climbed it." Thalessa's gaze lifted. "Nobody had to. Look at the angle of the wound. It entered downward. Slightly. From above, from some high place at a distance."

They looked at each other.

Neither of them said the word. They did not need to.

Far above their heads, in the tower, the wheel had stopped turning.

…

Uriah Finch was questioned in the corridor, on the same bench where he had sat all evening, with the broken door at his back.

He had not moved from his post, he said. Not once. Not to relieve himself, not for water. He had sat on the straight chair that the Inspector had set against the wall, and watched the handle, and listened. The lady had gone in at half past six. She had turned the key. He had heard it. At a quarter to eleven he had heard a window go up, and a rattle, and then a small sound, no louder than a person setting down a cup.

"And then?" Roderick asked.

"And then she said, 'Oh,' sir. Quite softly. Like she'd remembered something."

Thalessa wrote it down. Oh. The word sat on the page like a small black seed.

"Did you hear anything before the window?" she asked. "Anything from above?"

"The wheel, ma'am. In the tower. It was going all evening." He wiped his mouth with the back of a shaking hand. "I know I told you it was the wind. Miss Vespera said it was. But the wind doesn't go round regular. And tonight it was going round regular, and then it stopped, just before."

"Just before the window?"

"Just before she said 'Oh,' ma'am."

Roderick and Thalessa exchanged a look.

"You may go, Mr. Finch," Roderick said. "Do not leave the hall tonight. And Mr. Finch."

"Sir?"

"Tell no one what you have told me."

The footman went white, and nodded, and fled.

…

They climbed to the roof of the east wing by a ladder in the linen closet, because the tower door was still locked, and because Roderick would not leave the thing to morning.

Sleet blew flat across the leads. The slates were glazed with ice, and the parapet was a ridge of white. Thalessa gripped the iron rail and followed the lantern, step by step, to the lip of the roof, and stood looking up at the bell tower where it loomed against the clouds, a black fist against the gray.

It was a hundred and ten feet from where she stood to the little arched window below the bell. A hundred and ten feet, and a drop of perhaps thirty above Aurelia's sill. The line between them was straight as a ruled stroke.

"You can see her window from here," said Roderick.

"You can see it from the louvres of the belfry." She measured it with her thumb held out, one eye closed. "A launcher on a fixed mount, aimed in daylight at a lit window. A shaft that melts. A mechanism of springs, and a cold box beside it to keep the ice from softening." She lowered her hand. "It would not need a hand on the trigger."

"A timer."

"A clockwork. A tower full of them." She laughed under her breath, a short sound with no mirth in it. "The wheel, Inspector. The wheel that turns by night. It was not the wind in the gears. It was the winding. Someone has been preparing, for weeks, for months. Every night that wheel turned, a little more tension was set in a spring, a little more cold packed round a block of ice."

"And tonight they let it fly."

"At a quarter to eleven, when a woman with a candle sat down by her window." She was silent for a space. "Whoever set it knew that she would open the casement. She was frightened. She would want air. She would want, at the last, to see out."

"The footman was on the door."

"The footman was on the door, and the door was locked from the inside. A perfect room." Thalessa shook her head. "The killer did not need to be anywhere near her. The killer need only have been somewhere else, with a good alibi, listening to a clock."

They stood a moment longer in the wind. Below them, the dark gardens lay cold and white and shadowless, and the sea beyond the cliffs boomed on the rocks like a slow drum.

"I do not like it," said Roderick.

"Nor do I."

"No. I mean it." He turned and looked at her, snow in his lashes. "I have been a hunter of men for twelve years, Ashwood. I know their fear and I know their cunning. But this—" He gestured at the tower. "This is patience. The patience of someone who has had four years to build it. We are not matched against a madman. We are matched against a mind."

"A mind that wants us to see," said Thalessa.

"To see what?"

"I do not know." She pulled her collar up. "But it leaves its marks so tidily. A petal. A letter. A nail through the hand. It wants to be read, Inspector. All of it. As if the whole house were a page."

"And we are the readers."

"And we are the readers."

…

By midnight the household had been gathered in the hall, and nobody had slept.

The Duke sat in the high-backed chair beside the fire with a rug over his knees, shaking. He had not spoken since they brought him down. Doctor Malakor stood at the mantel, perfectly upright, his hands behind him, his gaze fixed upon the opposite wall as if some message were written there that no one else could read. Uriah Finch huddled on a bench by the door with his arms round his knees. And Vespera stood at the foot of the stair, hands folded, with her pale eyes turned toward nothing.

"Three," said Roderick.

He did not raise his voice. He did not need to.

"Three of you remain who sailed on the St. Jude. Three of the five who came to this house. Two are dead. A third lies upstairs with a hole in her heart, and the window of her room was open." He looked slowly round the hall. "Someone in this house is killing you, one at a time, and the method grows cleverer with each stroke. I do not intend to stand here and watch it done."

"You have a duty," said Malthus.

"I do."

"Then do it. Find the man."

"I will." Roderick's eyes did not move from the surgeon's face. "But I would be a good deal assisted, Doctor, if one of you would tell me what it is that the killer has come to collect."

No one answered.

The fire spat. The wind whined in the chimney.

"A debt," said Thalessa, from the shadows by the stair.

They all turned. She had not meant to speak. She stepped forward into the light, and found that her voice was perfectly steady.

"Mr. Valerius died with the letter T. Mr. Sterling died with an S. I have not yet found the petal for the lady. The body has not been searched." She let her gaze travel over each face. "But there will be one. There is always one. And someone in this room already knows what letter it will carry."

Doctor Malthus gave a dry little laugh.

"You are building a cathedral from sand, Scholar Ashwood."

"Then why are your hands shaking?"

He looked down. They were.

He put them behind his back again, slowly, and met her gaze with a face that had been wiped clean of everything. "I am old," he said. "And tired. And we have all had a very long day. May I go to my room?"

"You may not," said Roderick. "None of you may. Not alone, not this night. There are chairs, and there is a fire, and I will have a lamp in every corner." He drew his revolver and laid it on the arm of the nearest bench, with a small, deliberate click. "We will wait for the light together."

Nobody moved.

And in the gray silence that followed, the Duke raised his head. He looked, not at the Inspector, not at the doctor, but at the blind housekeeper at the foot of the stair.

"Vespera," he said, in a wavering old voice. "My dear. Stay near me."

"Yes, Your Grace."

She crossed the hall without a sound and stood behind his chair, and laid one thin hand lightly on his shoulder.

Thalessa watched the hand. It was a small plain hand, red with scrubbing, and it rested on the old man's coat as gently as a bird.

She did not know why her skin had turned to ice.