The sky was turning from black to gray as we passed Christ’s College. We followed a narrow path called Milton’s Walk that cut across the disused pastures that some clever students long ago had named Christ’s Pieces. In short order, we arrived at the inn. Our knocks raised no response, but we found the door unlocked. The innkeeper’s desk was vacant, and nobody answered the little bell when we rang it. The proprietor was likely back in his quarters, asleep. Or maybe his corpse was hanging from a meat-hook someplace; I don’t think I ever bothered to find out what had happened to him.
In any case, Angus rummaged the desk drawers and found the master key. The inn was a large one; three stories high with eleven guest rooms, but the innkeeper’s ledger revealed that Mr. Knifing was in room number 4. All the other rooms were inhabited, but I recognized none of the other names.
I thought it odd that the inn had no vacancies; most Cambridge innkeepers earned their year’s keep during the few weeks when students’ families packed the town: Fall student enrollment and for the graduation ceremonies in Winter and Spring. The rest of the year, there was a surplus of rooms to let, and that situation had been exacerbated by the murders, which had caused most travelers to conclude or cancel their business in town.
At least, however, this odd bit of fortune might have explained the innkeeper’s absence. With his rooms all rented, he had no need to be on hand to receive new guests.
I found a pencil and copied the names in the ledger onto a scrap of paper; collecting such data seemed like something Archibald Knifing might have done in similar circumstances and, thus, the sort of thing the world’s greatest criminal investigator should do as well. I also checked the book for Dingle’s mark, but he must have found his lodgings elsewhere.
I produced a brimming whisky flask from my waistcoat, and Angus and I drained it before proceeding up the narrow, creaking stairs to confront Knifing.
“The smell of death is heavy in this place,” the constable whispered.
I didn’t smell much of anything, since my own nostrils were stuffed and scabbed as a result of my various recent injuries and indulgences, but I saw no reason to disagree with him.
The inner hallway was dark; barely lit by a couple of lamps, and I tensed myself as Angus worked the key in the lock. The door squeaked, and we stepped into Knifing’s room, and found it empty.
“He hasn’t been here,” Angus said. “Perhaps he’s slipped out of town.”
“If he did, he left his things,” I said. We paused for a moment to examine the heavy trunk at the foot of the bed. It was framed in iron and secured with a sturdy padlock. Breaking it open would require some uncommon skill or specialized tools, and neither was immediately at our disposal.
But something was wrong about the bed itself. I ran my hands over the blankets. They were tucked under the thin mattress and pulled tight and smooth.
“I’ve used the accommodations of various Cambridge inns when consorting with lovers whom I would not allow to be seen entering my campus residence,” I said. “I often find the bedclothes rumpled in these places and I’m lucky if the linens appear to have been recently laundered. I’ve never known an innkeeper to make a bed like this.”
“You’re right,” Angus said. “That’s how we square a rack in the army. Knifing did this himself.” He peeled back the bedclothes and ran his hands over them. “The sheets are cool, but just slightly damp. He’s slept here tonight, but he left some time ago.”
In the wardrobe, we found the Baker rifle. Angus stuck his little finger down the barrel, and it came out black with powder.
“It’s been fired very recently, unless Knifing’s the sort to leave his weapon dirty.” Neither of us thought Knifing was that sort. “But if Knifing is the killer, why would he stop Dingle from arresting you?”
“I’d have mounted a vigorous defense against the charges, and uncovered his misbehavior in the course of clearing my own name,” I said. “He needs to pin the crimes on someone who can’t effectively rebut them.”
“But if he’s fled, how do we find him?”
“Most likely, we don’t,” I said. Angus and I were employing techniques to track Knifing’s whereabouts that the investigator himself had taught us. It was no wonder he had escaped ahead of our discovery; he probably had a number of deductive skills he hadn’t shared with us. Maybe he had some way of knowing about Hanson’s missive to me, and if he was adept in the tracking techniques of the bushman and the red Indian, he was probably capable of covering his trail as well. He’d have no trouble escaping to safety on the Continent before we ever got close to him.
“What a disappointing resolution,” I said. “There were no vampires for me to discover, and no bandits for you to rain vengeance upon. Just a mad one-eyed butcher who outflanked and outsmarted us.”
“Maybe when we crack open his luggage, we’ll find some clue.”
“I don’t think he’s the sort who’d leave us one. We didn’t find anything useful at any of the murder scenes.”
I looked around the room. Everything was clean; far cleaner than any room I’d ever seen in any English inn. He must have wiped the dust from all the furniture and moldings, and swept the floor, either as an expression of his fastidious nature or as a means of destroying some evidence of his guilt. I wondered what he’d done with all the blood he’d taken from the victims.
Angus shook his head. “I suppose it will be me who will have to go to London to tell poor Lord Whippleby his daughter’s killer slipped away from us.”
“I’ll do it, if I can keep the rifle,” I said.
“That’s a murder weapon. You want no association with that.” We stepped back into the hallway and Angus locked the room.
“It’s such a nice murder weapon, though.”
Angus stuck the keys in his pocket; he didn’t seem to think the disposition of Knifing’s rifle was a matter open for discussion. “I could do with some breakfast,” he said as he started back downstairs.
“I could do with a drink,” I said. But I stopped; a thought had occurred to me. “When you said the stink of death was in this place, did you mean that in a metaphorical sense?” I asked.
Angus turned, smushing his ample belly against the walls of the narrow stairwell as he did so. “No. It smells in here.”
The blood was concealed someplace nearby.
“We’re not done searching,” I said.
Chapter 38
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass’d;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax’d deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
Angus paced up and down the hallway and decided the scent was strongest right by Knifing’s door, so we searched the room again. We tugged on the floorboards, tapped on the walls, and moved the furniture around. There wasn’t anything in there. We stepped back into the hallway and locked the door again.
“The smell is stronger in the hallway than it is in the room,” the constable said.
I turned slightly, and regarded the door opposite Knifing’s; room number 5. According to the paper I’d copied from the innkeeper’s ledger, the occupant was one Colin Underhill. The name meant nothing to me.
Angus turned his key in the lock and pressed the door slightly open. I hadn’t been able to smell it before, but I was buffeted now by a thick, meaty, rotten stink; the sheer power of it made both of us take a step backward.
“We should flee from this place,” Angus whispered. “We should send for soldiers, or a magistrate.”
“If we leave, whatever is in there may be gone by the time help arrives,” I said. “We must summon the fortitude to investigate now.”
Angus let out a soft, strained laugh. “I will say, in this situation, I am deeply sorry that we are not accompanied by your Professor.”