Or, Gustav and the Swede Talk . . . and Neither One Makes Much Sense
Old Red didn’t wait for the McPhersons to rope us like a couple of steers. He started toward Emily, and I followed.
“Fetch His Grace—quick,” my brother barked at the startled maid as we swept past. “Mr. McPherson has important news!”
“Don’t you—” Uly began, but Emily was already scurrying away. From behind us came the sound of quick footsteps and the opening of a door—undoubtedly the one to Perkins’s office—and then the Duke’s booming voice.
“What now, McPherson?”
“Well, sir. . . uhhhh. . .you see. . .,” Uly stammered as we hurried up the hallway.
We found the Swede rolling dough in the kitchen.
“Oh, boyce!” the old fellow moaned, looking miserable. “Peer-kens dead, Boo-de-row dead. Aront here iss getting planty bed, hey?”
The Swede’s accent was molasses-thick even under the best of circumstances, but now it was as if someone had left the jug outside on a cold day. I was still trying to strain some meaning from the syrup when Gustav replied.
“Plenty bad indeed. Got a minute to talk about it?”
“I ken be speaking mit yew boyce unteel dat leetle kronjon Eem-ily iss returning.”
Fortunately, the Swede nodded as he spoke, which cut out the need for a word-for-word translation.
“So tell me—did you notice anything out of the ordinary last night or this mornin’?” Old Red asked.
The Swede nodded again. “Dere iss in de hoose downstairce a dooble-oo kay, but Eem-ily says it iss too much in de murning mit de noice. Not for herself, you know, but for the . . .” The Swede crooked a thumb at the ceiling—and the bedrooms above it. “So I em going always to de oothoose when I am to be making with the plop, yes? End I—
“Wait, wait, wait,” Gustav said. “A ‘doo bell oo kay’?”
“Yes, a dooble-oo kay.”
Just to show how profoundly befuddled my brother was, he actually turned to me for help.
“Oh, come now, Gustav. Don’t tell me you don’t know what a ‘dooble-oo kay’ is,” I said. “Why, every modern home’s got one.”
“So what is it?”
I shrugged. “Damned if I know.”
Old Red turned back to the Swede with a snort of disgust.
“Dooble-oo kay,” the Swede repeated, making symbols in the air with his fluttery, flour-covered hands.
The symbols couldn’t mean anything to my brother: They were letters, which left the deciphering to me.
“WC—water closet.”
“Oh,” Gustav said, looking chagrined.
“Well, that sure was a good use of time,” I said. “At this rate, it shouldn’t take more than a month to find out what the Swede had for breakfast. If you’d like, I could go ask Uly and Spider to wait to kill us until we’ve—”
“So,” my brother said to the Swede, “you went to the outhouse early this mornin’.”
The Swede nodded, and I noticed Old Red’s eyes narrow just the slightest bit. Anytime wasn’t lying, he was no doubt thinking.
“Boot someone iss to it before me,” the Swede said. “It iss still dark mostly, so I em not seeing who. But ass I come closer to de hoose I voot-stops end maybe voices em hearing. End den slak! De door is shut slammed.”
“You heard movement by the outhouse?”
“Vootstops, yes.”
“And voices?”
“I tink maybe.”
“And then the door slammed?”
“Yes. Slak!”
“Slak?”
“Slak!”
“And after the slak?”
“I em knowing Eem-ily eef I em too early de dooble-oo kay using iss complaining, yes? So I em knocking on de oothoose door end I em saying, ‘Hallo! Will you soon be done?’ ”
“And. . .?”
“End nothing. I em getting no answer.”
“Had you tried the door?”
“Yes. It wass locked.”
“And this was about what time?”
“Four thirty maybe, I tink.”
“Four thirty,” Gustav repeated.
He pointed a cocked eyebrow at me for the briefest flash of a moment. It looked like the Swede was backing up Anytime and Swivel-Eye’s version of events: The gunshot was fired just before dawn, not just after midnight. Before I could sink my teeth into that for a thoughtful chew, Old Red was pressing on.
“And then what?” he asked the Swede.
“I em no choice having. I go inside de hoose end I em de dooble-oo kay ussing. Den I get to work. Eem-ily, she tells me yesterday de Duke sausages iss wanting. Sausages! Where em I sausages getting unless my own hands I em making dem with? So dat’s what I do. I em making de fat kukhuvud hiss sausages—chopping, grinding, chopping, stuffing. End den. . . skrall!”
“Skrall?”
“Skrall!”
“The gunshot.”
“Yes. Only maybe I shouldn’t skrall! be saying. It wass more maybe of a . . .” The Swede lowered his voice and put his hand over his mouth. “Poop.”
“A pop?”
“Yes. A poop, not so very loud.”
“Did you step outside to take a look?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I em in sausage up to my elbowce, end I em tinking, ‘Ahhh, dat Brackwell. One day he is shooting soomebooty when with those fancy gunce he is playing.’ ”
“Had you seen Brackwell?”
“Well, no.”
“Had you seen anybody when you were outside?”
“No.”
“How about in the house? Any sign folks were up?”
“Not yet. Dat Eem-ily—always overlate she iss sleeping. Never em I seeing her out of her room before de sun. End den de—” The Swede hooked a thumb at the ceiling again. “Dey are not getting up fur anoother hour.”
“Now this is very important, Swede,” Old Red said, speaking extra-slow to drive home his seriousness. “How much time passed between your knockin’ on the outhouse door and your hearin’ that gunshot?”
“Five minutes, I em tinking.”
“Five minutes?” my brother mumbled. “Five minutes. Just enough time for someone to—”
Just who might be doing what I didn’t learn, for some other who came barging through the door behind us. My hand shot down to the hogleg at my side, bringing it up and cocking it as I whipped around.
What I found at the end of the barrel wasn’t the steely-eyed McPherson I’d expected. It was a wide-eyed, terror-stricken maid.
“Jesus, I’m sorry, Emily,” I said, holstering my .45 before she could scream.
The girl had been so shocked to find a peacemaker jammed in her face, for once she couldn’t put words together. “B-bloody. . . h-hell. . .,” she panted.
“Hold that thought,” Old Red said. “I’ve got one more thing to ask our friend here.”
He was talking at a streak, as if he had to hustle out the most important question of all before Emily grabbed us by the seat of the pants and tossed us from the castle.
“Swede,” he said, “did you pack a picnic for Mr. Edwards just now?”
I had to clinch my jaw to keep it from dropping to my chest. Here we were tracking a killer, the McPhersons on our tails, and my brother was curious about Edwards’s lunch?
The Swede nodded and shrugged at the same time, looking as perplexed by the question as I felt. “He iss coming into the kitchen soon ago, fur bret end cheece asking. So I em giving him dese things.”
“But not packin’ ‘em yourself? Just puttin’ ‘em out for Edwards to take?”
The old cook nodded again. “He is de food in hiss basket putting, yes.”
Emily cleared her throat. “Your presence. . .,” she began, taking on the stiff, brittle tone she used when she was talking like a nobleman’s maidservant and not a giggly girl.
Old Red spun around to face her almost as quick as I had a moment before. “You told us you heard the shot around midnight or one o’clock. You sure about that?”
The snap in Gustav’s voice—or perhaps the chance to trade in more gossip—seemed to drag the real Emily out of her servantish shell. “I’m sure,” she said. “I should think I know what the dead of night looks like, and this was the dead of night.”
“No, no,” the Swede butted in. “It was mooch later.”
“Oh, don’t listen to him.” Emily rolled her eyes, then leaned in closer to Old Red. “And I’ll tell you something else, Mr. Detective—that dead darky wasn’t just creeping about outside last night. He came right into the house.”
My brother perked up like a hound catching the scent of something rotting and ripe. “How do you know?”
“Because I went into the linen closet upstairs not ten minutes ago, and an iron and some pillows were missing.”
Gustav squinted at Emily as if she were a mirage shimmering in and out of view. “Pillows and an iron?”
The girl nodded. “And that’s not all. He also took Lady Clara’s—”
As those last words left her lips, Emily sighed and sagged. She quickly straightened up again, and I knew what was coming next. She’d remembered what she’d been sent after us to do—throw us out.
“Your presence. . .,” she said, launching back into the sentence she’d begun a minute before.
. . . will no longer be tolerated in this house is what I expected to hear. What actually came out was very different indeed.
“. . . is requested in the parlor. Lady Clara wishes to speak with you.”