Blackwhit, winter 1863-1864
The night of 29th December
Night fell and Father Grace locked the doors of the church. It is unlikely that anyone would want to drag himself into the temple of God in such a cold as to mumble something in confession. However, the parishioners were not eager to talk with Father Grace even in the summer afternoon. Frankly, for all his forty-eight years, the Reverend could recall from the strength of two people who liked to communicate with him.
He put the keys into his pocket and thought of a few pleasant hours all alone and finally in silence. The greater was the disappointment when, emerging from a deep portal, Father Grace saw a tall thin gentleman in a cloak, hat and long cane in front of the altar. The Reverend was never distinguished by a soft and meek disposition, and the man, encroaching on the legal hours of rest, caused him an acute attack of irritation. Pater like the kite rushed at the visitor, on the move fiercely crying out:
"Hey you! You there!"
A shout swept under the high arches of the temple. The gentleman did not move. Father Grace could not bark, "What the hell did you get here?!" therefore he cried out:
"You! Bare your head in the house of God! What do you allow yourself!"
"And you?" The gentleman asked quietly. He turned and measured the priest with an oblique look from under his hat. "What do you allow yourself?"
The Reverend stopped in surprise, bewildered. Usually grazing sheep did not allow themselves to do this and generally preferred to keep their distance from the shepherd.
"In what sense?"
"You're not the first who comes to serve the church in order to get rid of your sins, and you're not the first who does not succeed. But even you could behave yourself!"
Father Grace flashed indignantly. For many years he had not allowed anyone to reprimand himself, and the gentleman's voice, quiet and muffled, infuriated him more than a creak of a nail on glass.
"What the he... What are you talking about?! Are you drunk? Get out of here!"
"Don't pretend you don't know what is hidden below," the gentleman tapped his cane on the floor. "You should at least feel, even if your parishioners hear their voices."
Grace backed away. He did not like such hints, although this critter clearly did not realize what he was saying.
"You are sick?" Pater stared suspiciously at him. Maybe he is crazy? "What kind of voices? What are the parishioners? Get out of here before I call the police!"
The gentleman turned away to the altar.
"What are you only taught at your seminaries now," he said through set teeth. "Previously, priests at least understood that they should not only graze the herd, but also protect them from wolves. Otherwise, there will be no one to cut."
"What are you talking about? Do not dare to talk any heresy..." it sounded ambiguous, so Father Grace left his words and resolutely went to action: he stepped to the night visitor and grabbed him by the elbow. "Here is a temple, not a shelter for the crazy! Get out of here while I..."
"Children," the gentleman said just as muffled. "Eleven children. Do you remember?"
The Reverend staggered back. His neck and forehead got wet in a flash. The stranger half-turned looked at him from under the brim of his hat, and his face was not visible in the shadows. Father Grace discerned only the gleam of his eyes in the wrong light of the altar candles.
"Who are you?" He finally whispered.
"However, there were more than eleven, right?" calmly continued the gentleman. "A little more than necessary. It's hard to stop when you've already started, right?"
The priest backed up.
"Liked to kill?" The gentleman asked sharply.
"I did not want…"
"Like it or not?"
"You prove it first!.." the Reverend squealed.
"I am not proving anything," the visitor answered with a mockery, "because you already know."
Father Grace darted to the door, forgetting that they were locked, pulled the shutters, bounced off, was to feel in panicky in his pocket in search of keys. The gentleman, inaudibly approaching, drew his smallsword from the cane. Pater recoiled from him, turned his back, and a blade whistled shortly behind. Grace's legs folded like a grasshopper, and he screamed fell to to the floor. Blood trickled abundantly across his trousers.
The priest got up on his elbows and, whimpering, somehow crawled to the door a few feet, until he buried in the dark boots, and pressed himself into the granite slabs when he saw the bloodied tip of a smallsword lowered to the floor.
"But even you must understand," the gentleman continued quietly, "whom you call by such actions."
"I don't..." Father Grace scratched his fingers at the stone; legs did not straighten and glided in a pool of blood. "I do not understand!"
"It doesn't matter," the gentleman answered melancholy, "now you will meet," he wiped his smallsword with a handkerchief and threw it on the floor. "You will not have time to bleed to avoid meeting. But you will have a few minutes to repent."
"Repentance? What are you speaking about!" the priest tried to catch his leg. The stranger moved squeamishly away.
"Spend this time to good use."
Father Grace finally dared to raise his head and met the deep, attentive gaze of very dark eyes. The gentleman studied him like an animal.
"But here is the house of God!.." the pastor wheezed in his last attempt.
"Not for you."
The gentleman with the tip of his smallsword picked up a bunch of keys, pulled it out of Grace's pocket and sheathed his blade.
"Do not leave! Wait a minute!"
"So you will meet," came the reply. "You wanted that."
... the gentleman slammed the door of the church and locked it.
"This does not mean that I will let you go," he muttered. He pushed from a cell on his belt a little bottle with a thick green liquid and with a brush glued to the cork. He circled the lock on the door in the circle and wrote two short phrases crosswise over it. A reddish glow crept out from under the door.
"Don't try to get out. Soon they will come for you," he put the bottle in its place and walked quickly along the Evlenn Rhode.
29th December
"I hate fires," Nathan muttered; the police carriage shook toward the southern quarters of Blackwhit.
"Why?" Longsdale was interested.
"That is why. I do not know a single policeman who likes it. First, the fire burns to hell with everything that it reaches; then they extinguish it with water, sand and all that they can; and in the end, the police can only say that something was burned out here, and probably someone died."
The hound made a sound midway between a sympathetic grunt and a snarky snort. It was vigorous and full of strength, unlike the two-legged. The commissar was raised at the beginning of the sixth, and he intercepted Longsdale when he returned from the cemetery. The consultant looked tired and battered. Nathan chose not to ask what he was doing at the cemetery at night.
"Why do you need me?"
"The fire happened in the church of Saint Helena. A man burned out, and I want you to exclude all ... all otherworldly rotten."
The consultant nodded, sat back and closed his eyes.
"You do not look very well."
Longsdale sighed.
"Did you chase ghouls and ghast?"
"No."
"And whom?"
"Can I take a nap?"
"No," Brennon answered vengefully. "I'm not take a nap. So there's nothing for you," he opened the notebook. "The fire started supposedly at midnight. In any case, residents of neighboring houses noticed a fire and smelled smoke at this time. They called firefighters, began to extinguish on their own. It was flaring darn good - the whole block saw the glow. It managed to put out only by four in the morning. The church burned out completely. When the chief of the fire brigade went inside, the first thing he saw was a charred corpse," Brennon turned over in mind. "Well, essentially a soot-covered skeleton. The guys are combing the block in search of the one the neighbors missed out on dinner. Kennedy should be here by now. And now he's probably inventing a lot of new curses, trying to scrape off the remains from the floor. Are you sleeping?!"
Longsdale twitched his whole body. The hound turned around in a cramped carriage with difficulty and began to scratch his neck with pleasure, filling the space with red hair.
"Paw, stop it," the Commissar said threateningly. The hound froze, looking incredulously at Brennon.
"What else paw?" Longsdale asked.
"This one, red. Your hound must have some kind of nickname."
The hound snapped his teeth thoughtfully.
"Paw?" Muttered the consultant stupidly. Nathan thought with some gloating that this tough was still not iron, and that a sleepless night would backfired on him even worse than a mere mortal. Though it was comforting.
Church of St. Helena burned to the ground - there were only black walls from soot. Steps slippery from a mixture of snow, sand and soot led to the dark lancet failure of the entrance. Near the porch, Brennon noticed the door leaves lying in the snow - one burned almost all but the middle, the other was charred black.
"Where's the corpse?" the commissar asked the nearest policeman; he nodded at the entrance:
"Still there, sir."
"Is Kennedy in place?"
"He already doing it, sir."
"Survey of neighbors?"
The young man denial shook his head:
"Nothing yet."
"Okay. Longsdale, where are you there? Did you fall asleep again? Longsdale..." the Commissar turned and found that the consultant was standing in the carriage, clutching the door firmly with one hand, the wall with the other and keeping his eyes on the church. His hound clung to the ground and bared his fangs, wool on the scruff of his neck stood on end. Brennon's heart sank.
"No, no ... no, no, no, damn it! You cannot tell me!.."
"All out of there," the consultant ordered muffledly. "Have you heard? Get all alive out of the church! Immediately!"
"No, no," the Commissar hissed. "Damn it all! Get out of there! Out! For five... For seven yards from the temple! Quickly!!"
Firefighters, policemen and onlookers rushed scattering. Longsdale jumped out of the carriage and, with the dog, dashed to the church. Brennon out of the corner of his eye noticed the green triangular blade in the consultant's hand.
"The cordon!" growled Nathan. "Not a step inside, you are all clear to you?! Sergeant, in charge!" he turned on his heels and rushed after Longsdale.
In the middle of the scorched main nave, Kennedy sat and thoughtfully studied the skull of a charred, twisted skeleton in a magnifying glass. Longsdale, shouting "Get out!", rushed to the left, his hound - to the right. Brennon hurriedly walked over to the old man and squatted down.
"Have you heard him?"
The answer came in the form of an annoyed grunt. Having rummaged around in the tool case, the pathologist fished out the tongs and began to scratch something on the chest of the skeleton.
"I would be in your place..."
"Fortunately, you are not in my place, young man," Kennedy replied. "Our victim thoroughly caked on the floor, there is no evidence, so do not bother to work."
Nathan first looked at the tall figure of the consultant, tossing about in the left nave, then - the red hound in the right and sighed.
"What do you have?"
"Nothing yet. I can say with certainty that this is the skeleton of a man, and something was clinging to his sternum. The rest..."
"He died here?"
"How should I know? Do you anywhere see the marks of stabs by knife and the bloody streak leading to the church?"
"No."
"Me too. I can't stand the fires," Kennedy leaned over the ribs.
"Could he suffocate in the smoke?"
"Could. And he might not suffocate. His lungs would tell us this, but they burned to the ground, as did everything else. But this thing remained... It looks like molten metal."
"I hope he was already dead," muttered Brennon. "Longsdale thinks it's dangerous here."
"It's dangerous in any conflagration."
"Not in that sense."
The old man straightened up, rubbing his lower back tiredly.
"Are you again?"
"He was right with the utburd."
"Do not start, for God's sake! All this had the simplest explanation..."
"What is the explanation?"
The pathologist took out a metal hook and tried to catch the molten object from the side. Nathan looked down at the corpse, remembering the location.
"You didn't move him?"
"In what way?" Kennedy answered irritably. "And if you do not want to drag this whole stone slab to my morgue!.."
Longsdale approached from the side of the altar. The hound lingered there, sniffing at the floor.
"What's the panic about?" the commissar asked. The consultant shook his head and rubbed his eyes tiredly.
"Whatever it is, while it is hiding. But it's better not to take risks - please, try to finish as soon as possible and not let people in to this place."
"What do you think?"
Longsdale stared gloomily at the corpse.
"This is evil spirit."
"This?!"
"No. This is its victim. How long are you going to sit here with him? Separate the skeleton from the stone slab and take it away as soon as possible."
Kennedy snorted.
"And how do you propose to do this? Water and soap?"
"Sodium hydroxide solution and putty knife. Send to my house - I had a stock just in case. Just be careful - the hydroxide will even corrode the tissues baked to the stone. There is no sense from them anyway, but the bones must be preserved," Longsdale knelt down and touched the skeleton with the tip of the dagger several times. "Maybe there's something left on the bones."
"Do you think he was killed?" Nathan asked. The consultant nodded frowningly. "Here? They could have killed him elsewhere, and thrown the corpse here and burned to cover their tracks."
"Look around," Longsdale answered. "What do you think the heat should be to weld the body to the floor?"
"Big," the Commissar decided carefully.
"Exactly. So what could burn with such force here?"
***
"The only one who didn't return home that night, sir, is Reverend Father Adam Grace," Regan put the report on the interrogation of residents on the commissioner's table. "His housekeeper, Missis Evans, said that he did not come after Vesper. He usually spent several hours in the church after the end of the worship and returned sometimes at eleven, sometimes at midnight. But yesterday he never showed up."
Brennon slowly flipped through the folder and read Mrs. Evans's statement.
"So, if we still don't find anyone missing, we will assume that our victim is Father Grace. Go Regan, take a poll of residents. Someone burned the church and, judging by the fact that it burned for at least four hours, thoroughly worked on the fire. Such a quantity of firewood and kerosene is difficult to smuggle unnoticed."
"Yes, sir," the young detective had already grabbed the doorknob, but hesitated uncertainly at the threshold. "Are we looking for an arsonist?"
Brennon raised an eyebrow.
"Do you think it was a water carrier?"
"N-no, sir, but... maybe the reverend himself..."
"Yeah. He bathed in a kerosene barrel, slapped down to his native church, and struck a match. What a brutal suicide.
"Well, one don't know..."
Brennon gave the subordinate a long look. Sometimes it seemed to him that Regan was too young and impressionable for this work. The detective swallowed and whispered inaudibly:
"But this man... also thinks that no human didn't make that."
"Go to work, Regan, and stop the hell out of distributing womanish superstitious around! It doesn't adorn you like a policeman."
"Yes, sir," the young man muttered, and closed the door behind him. Brennon looked after him, patting his hand by the report, shook himself, and headed in the coffin.
The first thing the commissar felt was an extremely strange smell. So strange that Nathan was delighted at the lack of breakfast this morning. Cautiously tucking over the threshold, Brennon discovered a some vat in which something was either boiling or steaming. Longsdale stirred the brew with a stick or spoon - he could make out nothing in the thick liquid.
"What is it?" The commissar asked, suppressing the gag.
"We're clearing the bones," Kennedy replied with sprightly enthusiasm of the twenty-year-old student. "A solution of soda..."
"Do you brew a corpse in a soda solution?!"
The consultant looked at him with absolute seriousness:
"This is a good way to clear the bones of the remnants of the flesh."
"Why?!"
"The only thing that can give us a hint is the skeleton. On the bones there was a trace of the murder weapon. Perhaps we can even get a cast."
Brennon leaned against the wall, fanning himself with a report. The hound looked sympathetically at him through the poisonous fumes, and the commissar wondered what is it like for a hound with its sense of smell.
"You would at least let Raw out onto the street. Torment the animal how much in vain."
The consultant glanced over the hound with an indifferent gaze, took the wooden tongs and caught something from the vat with them. Examined, sniffed and loaded back.
"We have an alleged victim," Brennon said, trying not to breathe by his nose. "Here. Reverend Grace did not return home. Priest in the church of St. Helena. Then the metal on his chest is a molten cross."
"It's logical," Kennedy scratched the whiskers, "maybe the reverend put a robbery, the thief inadvertently killed him and decided to start a fire to..."
"Sorry," the commissar hissed, and flew up from the laboratory up to the reception room. The back of his head he felt the triumphant gaze of the pathologist.
***
Brennon fled from the department in a stampede - he did not want to explain to his boss why the stronghold of law and order was turning into a cesspool. Despite the rebellious stomach, the commissar ran into the "Shell" cafe for a takeaway pie - who knows when he gets to dinner. Although Longsdale demanded that people be removed from the church, Nathan could not do this until the crime scene was fully examined. And the church of St. Helena was rather big.
" Why the hell he didn't like in this place?" - the juice in the church was really heavy, but this is not surprising after a fire. On the other hand, how can evil spirits crawl into the temple of God? Isn't that the place from which they will definitely stay away?
"Did you hear?" Mrs. Van Allen asked him quietly, sneaking up to the commissar when he had already reached the door. Brennan jerked in surprise.
"My God, ma'am! You walk so quietly..."
"Have you heard of the church?"
"Yes. I'm from there. That is there. I'm coming back."
"Is it a fire? The glow was visible even from our windows."
"Yes, ma'am," Brennon looked at her worriedly: the widow looked tired and not very healthy. "Are you feeling all right?"
"A little tired," Mrs. Van Allen smiled. "Take courage. About this half a city already speaks. Is it true that a man died there?"
"I can't talk about it, ma'am."
"Oh yes, sorry. I forget all the time ... Perhaps you should not detain you, right?"
Brennon smiled too and put on his hat. The widow, saying goodbye, disappeared into the depths of the cafe, from which deliciously smelled of dough, cinnamon and coffee. The commissar went down the steps, but then he was hailed. Turning around, he saw Mrs. van Allen's eldest son.
"Sir, wait!" the young man hurriedly caught up with the Commissar and blurted out in a half-whisper: "May I... Will it be on my part... Could you tell my mother..."
"Tell your mother what?" Brennon asked in surprise. Victor van Allen looked back at the cafe.
"She's not feeling very well. We are afraid that she got sick. We persuade her to leave for a week or two to the sea, to relax. Marion and Immanuel will completely cope with the cafe after the holidays, but she does not want to."
"And what do I have to do with it?"
"Maybe she will listen to you," Victor answered thickly reddening. Nathan gave him a long look. The young man looked down.
"Is everything so obvious?" The commissar thought woefully. "Even some kind of snotter — and he is able to notice..."
"I do not think this is appropriate. Your mother has the right to be outraged if an outsider begins to poke his nose into your family affairs."
"But you are not an outsider!" Victor exclaimed fervently. "She considers you our friend. She may not listen to us, but you..."
"I'm not sure," Brennon said softly, "that I am not an outsider to your family."
"You saved her life," the young man answered stammered.
"However, I agree that she should have rest after that night, so if we had a conversation..."
"Sir!"
A gasping scream saved Brennon from an awkward muttering, all the more so since the young van Allen, seeing the policeman who was rushing to the Commissar with all his legs, immediately said goodbye and disappeared into the cafe.
"Well, what is it?"
Kelly put his hands on his knees, panting. Brennon unfolded the cake and dug his teeth into a juicy side. There's nowhere to hurry anyway.
"Sir," the policeman hissed, "they found more bones in the church."
***
Brennon lit a lantern. In the daylight that flooded the church through the window openings, the light seemed pale and weak. Kennedy puffed displeased nearby.
"There, sir," murmured Finnel, "we found down in what's-her-name..."
"Crypt, young man," the pathologist grumbled, "this is called crypt."
"Yeah, sir. Well, sort of a cellar, in short."
The crypt was cruciform in plan, with a vaulted ceiling that rested on eight columns. These supports separated deep niches from four sides from the central platform. In one of them stood Detective Dwyer, bent over in twofold, and the chief of the fire brigade. The detective raised the lantern to the ceiling, and a wide circle of light grabbed a gap in the wall, small fragments of brick and there, in the depths - a pile of bones, half covered with dust, mortar and brick chips.
"They've been here a long time," said the firefighter chief to Nathan. "No trace of fire on the bones. People did not die in this fire."
"Thanks sir. Wait upstairs."
The brigade chief wiped his forehead with his sleeve and departed with obvious relief.
"Kennedy, will you crawl there?"
"What else remains for me," grumbled the old man, took off his hat, coat, frock coat and scarf, handed them to Finnel and crawled on all fours into the break. Dwyer shone over his head, trying to direct the lantern so that the shadows did not fall on the bones.
"What do you think, sir?"
"I don't know," Brennon turned around the crypt by the lantern. "It hardly suffered from the fire, which means that the fire did not spread from here. Did our arsonist even know about the crypt?"
"And the bones?"
"I think some kind of old burial. Maybe monks or priests buried their brothers here."
"Give me the bag, young man," Kennedy ordered. Finnell cautiously, with the toe of his shoe, pushed to the pathologist his property.
"Indeed, boy," the old man hissed irritably, "these are just bones, and they won't do anything to you!"
Just in case, the policeman crossed himself, and Brannon caught it out of the corner of his ear a mumble about all sorts of deadly dirty tricks.
Kennedy spread a clean cotton cloth across the floor, took the tongs and began to lay one bone after another on it. He took them from above, without touching the blockage. But the more the pathologist took out the bones, the more anxious the commissar became. Judging by how Dwyer tensed, he also noticed.
"Kennedy," Nathan asked quietly, "why are it so thin and small?"
"Because it's baby bones," the old man answered. "They belong to different children, aged about nine to eleven."
Dwyer breathed heavily.
"For f**k's sake," the Commissar hissed.