Emberverse Short Stories Read online

  There will be an investigation, but not here and, thank God, by the Special Branch, not me. Aloud he went on:

  “I don’t think any of you will be bothered further. Officially this will be simply a matter of a dead smuggler’s buried treasure being confiscated—sensational enough to satisfy village gossip. Provided everyone here is discreet.”

  There were smiles and handshakes all around; Rutherston firmly declined the Squire’s invitation to dinner.

  “My wife expects me back just as soon as possible, Sir James. Otherwise our first child might be born in the absence of his or her father, and I’d never hear the end of it.”

  “I could lend you a phaeton and some fast horses…”

  “Many thanks, but I think I can impose on the military for a pedalcab to Winchester along the line of rail. Miss Medford, shall I walk you home on my way to the Moor’s Head?”

  Bramble fell discreetly behind as they walked down the drive from Royston Hall. Casually, Rutherston drew an envelope from his jacket and handed it to her.

  “I suggest you burn these, Miss Medford,” he said. “I glanced at the first, but very briefly.”

  The spare handsome face of the nurse was calm as she accepted the package. “You don’t feel obliged to include them in your report?”

  Rutherston lit another cigarillo. “Why should I?” he said with a shrug. “There’s no indication of anything illegal… on your part; Jon Wooton was evidently a blackmailer, among his many other sins, but that will go with him to the grave. Nothing illegal, or in Winchester even cause for much remark. I’m a detective, not a priest.”

  “But Eddsford is my home, and where my work is, and I very much wish to continue living here,” she said. “Thank you very much, inspector.” She drew a breath: “About the money—”

  “Dear lady, I am a policeman. Intelligent blackmailers usually try to have as many strings on a victim as possible. It would be just like Jon Wooton to force you to accept part of his smuggling profits. If you feel you should donate to charity, that’s none of my affair either.”

  “Thank you very much, inspector.” They came to the door of the clinic. “And you should stop smoking those things. They’ll kill you.”

  Small children followed the two King’s Men as they walked toward the inn, and there was a ripple of nods and smiles from the adults; everyone was happy to have the murder settled so quickly and nobody in their tight-knit little world brought up before the law. The ostler of the Moor’s Head had his employer’s trap ready, with a good-looking horse between the shafts; it would be an hour’s travel to the semaphore station on the rail line, and then perhaps two back to Winchester. Rutherston smiled contentedly and drew the smoke into his lungs.

  “She scragged ‘im, of course, sir,” Bramble said quietly.

  “No names, no pack drill,” Rutherston said. “Yes, of course. At a guess, she gave him some worthless placebo and assured him it would protect him from the radiation, then told him to pick the pieces up and measure them against some part he’d ordered from Portsmouth, or something of that order. From someone who’d healed his illnesses since he was a child, he’d believe it.”

  “She’d have grassed him up before much longer, any rate,” Bramble said thoughtfully. “Don’t blame her for waiting ‘till the last minute, sir, either.”

  “Not at all,” Rutherston agreed.

  The two men turned and faced each other. The detective held out his hand; they gave a single firm grip, no squeezing nonsense, but a mutual recognition of strength.

  “You were of the greatest possible help, Corporal Bramble, and I will say so in my report.”

  “Thank you kindly, sir.”

  “And Bramble… have you considered what you’ll be doing after your current enlistment ends? Promotion is slow in peacetime.”

  Bramble’s square face went a little slack for an instant. “Hadn’t thought much, sir… might take up a farm in Spain, p’raps. Under me own vine and fig tree. Though farming’s a mite too much like ‘ard work, when you come to think about it.”

  “Have you considered the police? A good many ex-servicemen do… myself, for example.”

  Bramble chuckled. “Honestly, sir, I can’t see meself in a leather bobby’s ‘elmet, rattling the doors of an evening and chatting up housemaids.”

  “I meant the detective branch, of course. The pay and pension are reasonable, we can always use good men—and you’d be protecting King and Country just as surely as you would in that tin shirt.”

  He held out his card. “Take this, think it over, and drop me a line if you want to talk it over a bit more.”

  Bramble took the card, turning it over in his thick fingers. “I will give it a thought, sir.”

  Then he grinned. “It hasn’t been as boring as road patrol, inspector, I’ll give you that.”

  Rutherston put a hand on the side of the trap and vaulted into the seat. He tipped his hat to the corporal, and waved to the crowd of villagers. They were still waving back as the horse broke into a trot, hooves falling hollow as it trod the shadows of tree and cottage into the roadway.

  The detective settled back as the ostler whistled to his horse, smiling as the long peace of Eddsford fell behind and the blue-shadowed line of the Downs rose ahead. The church bell rang as they crested the first hill above the river, calling the villagers to give thanks for God’s protecting hand.

  And it’s no slight privilege, to share the work with Him.

  Something for Yew

  Halfway through the twenty-first century,” Detective-Inspector Ingmar Rutherston said, his breath showing as white puffs in the raw, chill air.

  It was the fifteenth of January in this year of Grace 2050 a.d., and a thin drizzle drifted down from a dark-gray sky to bead on the oilskin outer layer of their anoraks.

  “Hurrah. Sir.” replied Detective-Constable Joseph Bramble, with a distinct pause between the words. “‘Alfway through? I can’t wait to get out the other side, if the rest of it’s going to be like this.”

  They looked out from the entrance of the railway station over the rain-slick docks of Portsmouth amid the smells of silt and fish and wet cobbles and smoke, horse manure and pumped-out bilges. The bowsprits of scores of ships tied up at the quays speared into the dimness overhead, and masts and spars reached up into the mist like a spiky, leafless winter forest amid the tracery of rigging. Behind them the other passengers were scattering in a flurry of umbrellas, and the streamlined light-metal pedalcar they’d arrived on from Winchester was hitched to a team of British Rail Percherons and drawn away in a crunch of hooves on gravel.

  Gaslights glowed through the increasing murk of the winter’s early evening, blurred into smears of light by the wet, and nobody paid two more travelers much attention. The two detectives were in plain clothes. Rutherston had six feet of lean height, with a narrow, clean-shaven beaky face and yellow hair worn rather short, and level gray eyes. Bramble was the same height but stocky and with a longbowman’s thick shoulders; he was also very dark for an Englishman, blunt tan features and a mop of curly black hair.

  That might have made him stand out anywhere but a polyglot seaport like this … or in the Buckinghamshire parish he came from, where everyone knew the Brambles of Jamaica Farm who’d been there since the resettlement.

  “Detective-Inspector Rutherston?”

  Rutherston turned. A woman in blue police uniform stood there, with a rain-cloak around her shoulders. She was four inches shorter than him, somewhat older than his thirty-two, and had that look of bone-deep tiredness that took at least a week of inadequate sleep combined with hard work.

  “For my sins,” he answered, nodding. “Superintendent Arnarsson?” he asked, and went on to introduce Bramble.

  “Correct. Mary Arnarsson—”

  She pronounced it Arnson, changing the Icelandic patronymic into an English family name as many did. The process was often helped along by the second and third generations’ desire to fit in; from the slight emphasis
she put on it he thought that was the case here, and adjusted his mental file. She went on:

  “—general dogsbody and chief lion-tamer to this tide-water zoo, for my sins.”

  They shook hands all ‘round; Rutherston offered the superintendent his cigarette case; she accepted one of the Embiricos cigarillos and he lit for both of them.

  “Partial to rum, I see,” she said, looking at the product of Barbados with respect; the tobacco was flavored with it.

  “Just doing my bit to support the resettlement program over there,” Rutherston said.

  The local went on: “Let’s get you out of the wet. What’ll it be first, the Scottish corpse or dinner with a garnish of paperwork? Our medical examiner should be along to the murder site soon—delayed by his other hat as a GP.”

  “Alas, duty calls,” Rutherston said.

  “Like a crying brat you can’t ignore,” Bramble sighed. “I could fancy a bite, right now.”

  The pedalcar was the fastest form of land transport in the world, but British Rail charged extra if you didn’t do your share of the pumping at the pedals, and Chief Constable Tillbury in Winchester was notoriously unreasonable about travel-chits which showed you’d gotten your feet up for the trip. That was thirty-four miles of hard labor, and combined with the weather it was enough to give anyone an appetite. Rutherston’s lips moved in a quirk of agreement.

  Arnson gave a quick nod of approval at their choice, whistled sharply for a porter to carry their bags off to the hostelry, and led the way towards the scene of the crime. The rain was still drizzling down, and it was just cold enough to make cobblestones and paving blocks slippery with a thin film of half-ice. They walked as quickly as they could, the hobnails of their boots grating and their left hands on their sword-hilts, but they still had to be careful. It wasn’t very late yet—not more than seven—but winter’s early night had fallen hard, with cloud hiding moon and stars.

  The gaslights cast enormous flickering shadows on the upper stories of the buildings, and left the masts of the docked vessels to vanish into the misty darkness above; shipyards and workshops and the little factories and foundries had closed, and most of the retail trades, but the taverns and pubs and “pubs” with a suspicious excess of scantily clad barmaids were still doing a roaring business.

  “What was that?” Rutherston said quickly, stopping and turning on one heel.

  Bramble turned too, and a handspan of steel showed as his right hand closed on the hilt of his blade in the reflex of a soldier, which was what he’d been until last summer.

  “Didn’t catch it, sir,” he said quietly, his dark eyes scanning the alleyway to their right.

  “What are you going on about?” Arnson called over her shoulder.

  “Thought I saw something,” Rutherston said.

  He didn’t add that what he thought he’d seen was someone leaping across the gap between two roofs. That was impossible, in this weather.

  “It’s a busy part of town,” Arnson said as they went forward again.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Bramble said. “But I’ve got that nasty someone-is-watching feeling, roit enough.”

  Rutherston nodded. Though it was busy; dockers were still at work, too, a fresh shift coming off the horse-drawn tramcars, and carts rumbling to and from the warehouses. Portsmouth’s trade had been expanding fast of late, faster than piers could be refurbished and modernized. That meant berths were too expensive to sit idle merely because it was dark and dangerous to work; the navigation lanterns of ships waiting their turn glittered dimly from out on the surface of the Portsmouth Water.

  “Times like this, I wish I’d taken me mustering-out grant in land. Down Bordeaux way, or Provence, or in Spain, like those lucky sods,” Bramble said.

  He nodded at the colonists walking up the gangplank of an emigrant ship carrying bundles and children and leading toddlers by the hand. The brig had Cadiz Merchant on its stern, and sailors were chanting at the capstan as cargo-nets went by overhead.

  “Didn’t you say you took me up on joining the police because being a farmer was far too much like hard work?” Rutherston said.

  “Roit, sir, but those bastards will get to do it with orange trees an’ olive groves.”

  He grinned as he went on: “And I could tan better than the lot of ‘em together, thanks to my granddad Rasta Bob. They’ll be sorry they can’t, when they’re digging and reaping and sizzling and roasting up-country from Lisbon or Cadiz or Casablanca come July, the poor pink buggers.”

  “True enough,” Rutherston said; they both knew the power of the unmerciful southern sun from their Army days.

  Rutherston noted the awe on the fresh country faces of the emigrants as they gazed about at their first and last glimpse of Portsmouth.

  Probably they’ve never been out of sight of the steeple of their parish churches before, he thought.

  “Meanwhile, here comes another shipload of them,” Bramble went on, in a half-serious grumble.

  He nodded towards the Prinsessan Birgitta. The banner that dripped at her stern was yellow with a horizontal red cross, the flag of the friendly and civilized realm of Norland; probably out of the Ã…land Isles in the Gulf of Bothnia. The people coming down the ramp were fair enough, but not Scandinavians. Sheepskin coats and caps and baggy black trousers, calf-high felt boots or wrapped leggings, kerchiefs on the women’s heads and a general pungent odor of damp wool, garlic and old sweat—Poles, at a guess, they’d been trickling in for twenty years or more to take up hard-and-dirty jobs.

  “They do jobs in coal mines and clearing squads that Englishmen won’t, Constable,” Rutherston said, looking at the immigrants charitably; his mother’s parents had been immigrants, though that had been in the great influx from Iceland and fifty-one years ago. “And it’s not as if we’re crowded.”

  “Easy enough for you to say, Inspector,” Arnson said, coming out of her brown study. “They make half my work, even when it’s just getting homesick and drinking that vile potato gin and knifing each other. Or they break windows and heads over having to use Anglican Rite churches, as if they were more Catholic than the Holy Father. Not to mention every sodding other type of foreigner we get, all with something that gets them hot, bothered and bloody. Thank God they don’t let Moors settle here to live, and damn the … other party!”

  Bramble grinned and Rutherston hid a smile. Officially the police were neutral in politics; in fact, not many were Whigs, even in seaports where the current Opposition’s anything-for-the-sake-of-trade platform usually got a lot of votes.

  They turned into a narrow road lined by warehouses, dodging loaded carts pulled by damp, discouraged-looking horses, and handcarts and a long line of men wrestling with a huge roll of canvas from a sail-loft. There was a uniformed policeman standing outside the third building in line, and he was leaning on the haft of a billhook—a rarity for the police, issued to signal the gravity of the crime within. The broad steel head glittered wetly above his head in the gaslight, a chopping rectangle drawn out to a spike at the top and a cruel hook at the rear.

  On the wall over the doors was a sign: Vadalà And Sons, Wholesale Merchants.

  “And Sons?” Rutherston enquired. “One of the sons, in charge of their branch here? The report mentioned he was Italian.”

  Arnson nodded: “Well-established firm, and profitable—we check the books of foreign merchants regularly. No trouble on taxes.”

  “Superintendent,” the man on guard said, straightening up and rapping the butt of his polearm on the pavement in salute.

  “How is he, Angus?” she replied.

  “Still dead, ma’am, if you mean the kiltie. But Vadalà showed up just a minute ago, and his secretary, and Jock.”

  “What a happy chance.” To the two detectives: “Vadalà ‘s the owner; he lives two streets north, him and his family and clerks and so forth. The secretary actually found the body. We took the initial statements and asked them to drop by later for
you. Jock McTavish is our medic, and doubles for forensics work.”

  They dropped the stubs of their cigarillos, ground them out and went in through one of the great wagon-sized double doors that was open slightly. The interior didn’t have gaslight, but the Portsmouth police had lit some of the big alcohol lanterns that hung from rope-and-pulley arrangements on the ceiling. That was high up, iron support beams resting on concrete pillars shaped like giant golf tees, both left over from the old days and reused here.

  The isles between the pillars were crowded; there were bundles of carpets, and a rip in the burlap sacking showed they were colorful frazzate, done in geometric shapes. There were bundles of rawhides too, but under the odor of the uncured leather were hints of a dozen other things from boxes and bales and sacks stacked high in the gloom and from pyramids of barrels; pickled tuna and artichoke hearts and olives, sweet Marsala wine, brandy, raisins, dried figs and apricots, Deglet Noor dates, flowers of sulfur …

  “Don’t tell me; Signor Vadalà is from the Kingdom of Sicily,” Rutherston murmured.

  “Nose like a fox, Inspector Rutherston has,” Bramble said.

  “Trapani,” Arnson said. At their blank looks: “Port on the west coast of Sicily; that’s where he comes from. His firm does a lot of business here in the Empire.”

  They moved over to the open space in the middle of the building; there was a square hole fifteen feet on a side in the ceiling above, with a cargo-hook and pulley system hanging down through it and a geared windlass bolted to the floor. The body lay face-down in the center of the clear space, in the unlovely sprawl they all recognized. Rutherston leaned forward. The dead man was certainly wearing a kilt, the genuine pleated article though the tartan wasn’t one the detective knew, a russet jacket with pewter buttons, a saffron-colored shirt of some rough fabric, and buckled shoes and knee-socks.

  There was a young red-haired man bent over the corpse. An older, shorter, portly, black-haired one with a tuft of chin-beard and mustachios waxed to points stood at a discreet distance—too far away to eavesdrop—looking anxious and fingering a hideously lurid purple silk cravat. Standing next to him was a younger woman with long dark hair and carrying an attaché case, wearing a smart outfit of dark skirt and jacket and a hat with a slightly damp ostrich feather; at a guess, a secretary or accountant, possibly a mistress as well. Rutherston dismissed them for a moment, focusing on the corpse.