I’d had my suspicions about Temisk but hadn’t had information enough to work it all out. Maybe if I hadn’t been sick all that time.
We would not have discovered the truth without bringing Mr. Temisk here. There is no evidence outside his mind. He has been clever about leaving no traces. Miss Winger has been on Mr. Temisk’s story for days and has yet to find anything even circumstantial. Mrs. Claxton was his sole loose end. Which he has had no opportunity to tie up. He felt he did not dare leave Mr. Contague alone with the Ymberians.
“He’s a lawyer. They’re naturally crooks.”
The Dead Man was not amused. Maybe he was a lawyer in another time and place.
“So Brother Temisk was behind the burning deaths? And he did it for his pal?”
In essence. But it is a bigger story. Mr. Temisk, despite protests to the contrary, has solid contacts inside the Contague household. Which could be true for Mr. Sculdyte as well. Mr. Temisk suspects that Mr. Rory Sculdyte knew the truth but was abiding an opportunity to make best use of the information.
“I’m guessing Chodo’s been drugged. Systematically and continuously. I’m thinking he would’ve recovered by now otherwise.”
True. He has been drugged regularly. But he would not be in command now if he had not been fed those drugs.
I grunted. Tinnie had her back to me. She was bending over the subject of our conversation, spoon in hand. I couldn’t concentrate.
Mental sneer. Mr. Contague’s interior is scrambled. He is mad in a deeply sinister way. Ultimately, he is more responsible for the combustion deaths.
“Can you get to your point?”
No. More amusement.
I dragged my attention away from Miss Tate long enough to pull the kitten off my plate. There were several of those in the room now, all over everybody. Including the scary people. One perched on the Ymberian deacon’s shoulder, washing a paw. The deacon knew. He was apoplectic.
The Dead Man noted my interest and was amused yet again. That should crack the final barriers in his mind. If his heart does not explode first.
“The combustion deaths, partner?”
Mr. Temisk’s agents in the Contague household told him they thought Miss Contague might be poisoning him.
“Might?”
There is some ambiguity. Someone else might be guilty.
“Doesn’t Chodo know?”
He was drugged.
“Gah!”
Wait! There is madness there, as noted. Extreme and dark. Worsened by the drug. Mr. Temisk’s contacts identified the poison. Mr. Temisk searched for an antidote.
“Which he found. And which has something to do with people catching on fire.” I was making intuitive leaps left and right. Maybe the fever left me psychic.
Yes. Be still. Mr. Temisk’s contacts informed him that Miss Contague came to town once or twice a month, and more frequently in times of crisis. Her father accompanied her. Always. She would not trust his care to anyone at home.
“With good reason, obviously.”
Obviously. When she did come to town Miss Contague secreted her father in a tenement her family owns on the north side, on the edge of Elf Town. Mr. Temisk knew the building because he handled its acquisition and management. Mr. Contague operated his early business out of there. Once he knew Miss Contague’s routine, Mr. Temisk acted.
To conceal his role, he hired alcoholics to sneak in and medicate the man in the wheelchair with the antidote. These men received one-quarter payment beforehand and the balance afterward.
Sounded risky. The drunk would brag about his score. “But the drunk turned into a human torch. Right?”
Not the first few times. Not until Mr. Contague began to shake the influence of the poison. Once he was able to understand his situation, frustration at his helplessness drove him mad.
“Temisk turned Chodo into a mass murderer by trying to help him?”
Essentially.
“I’ll bite. How?”
The antidote is a crushed form of the stone hurled at you at Mr. Dotes‘ -
“That causes fires!”
64
Harvester provided his cat’s-paws with a flaked form of the stone, which resisted powdering. He acquired it from the A-Laf cult, at an extreme price. The cult obtained a hoard of the stones when it took over the temple of A-Lat. Numerous stones went astray before being inventoried. A-Laf’s sextons were not as devout as their superiors desired.
Bittegurn Brittigarn wasn’t wrong when he connected the stones with rocs. The Dead Man said they originated in rocs’ gizzards. The phoenix legend came about because roc chicks, like kids, will swallow anything. Which sometimes makes the stones ignite. That chick goes up in flame while its nest mates bail out, possibly giving a distant observer the impression that he’s watching a rebirth.
The stones were priceless because they could start fires. Anywhere, anytime, in most any material, from a distance, if you knew how to trigger them. Using sorcery. Or a mental nudge after the manner of the Dead Man.
Chodo discovered that he could spark residual fire-stone flakes on the hands and clothing of Harvester Temisk’s alkies. Not being suicidally mad, he eliminated them only after they left him.
Harvester Temisk’s crime was that he kept hiring disposable people after Chodo began killing them.
“He tried to burn Whitefield Hall down with everybody inside?”
He did. Doctoring the oil in the lamps. Mrs. Claxton was targeted specifically. She received a pin because she had seen Mr. Temisk at work. It ignited much earlier than Temisk planned. Mr. Contague was in a rage. It was chance that the doctored lamps were out of his range by then.
“So the mystery of the human combustions is solved.”
More or less. There have been incidents that cannot be traced back to Mr. Contague and Mr. Temisk. But we are not interested in those.
“I’ve got a lot of questions, Smiley. Who slung a rock at me? Why? How come it took so long for Morley’s door to catch fire? What about Rory Sculdyte? And Belinda? These damned cats and Penny Dreadful? And what do we do about Temisk and Chodo?”
I owed Chodo. I had to discharge that debt. Which clunked me right into a bubbling pot of moral quandary.
The Dead Man knocked the Ymberian deacon out so he could free up enough brainpower to show me the nightmare inhabiting Chodo’s head. A nightmare as bad as that of a claustrophobe trapped in a coffin and unable, ever, to die. It was just a glimpse. Just a little teasy peek, secondhand, of a seething black hell haunted by genius. Supreme ugliness under only the most primitive, selfish control.
The madman was imprisoned in an herbal cage. Though the cage had created the madman, the madman now belonged there.
The kittens seemed fond of him, though.
“What do I do, Old Bones? We can’t turn that loose.”
Worry about something else. Concentrate on Mr. Temisk, whose own madness is gaining momentum. His conscience is withering. He is no longer troubled about what he might be unleashing. Though he is not blind to the possibility that he might be its immediate victim.
“He’s like me, then. Obligated to good old Chodo. Wanting to believe that this is the same old Chodo. He just can’t walk or talk.”
Worry about something else.
So I watched Tinnie feed the Ymberians. Beauty and the beasts.
Singe leaned through the doorway. “Do we have a plan for dealing with the people out front?”