TAURUS

28

THOUGH THOMAS HAD COOKED DINNER, his doing so did not make it a dinner party, or even a sit-down meal. Upon smelling food people came in and out, taking plates and returning with empty ones later. Even Oliver ate, though to Rosie’s disgust he returned to the cellar with his plate and made little conversation with anyone else.

Benjy, however, did not get a plate. At some point in the evening he’d started working on the cipher. According to Darlene, who was the first to emerge from the study, it was not going well. This fact was supported by Rosie and Sy, who escaped soon after, both with accounts of Benjy threatening to toss a book at them for some innocent remark.

Rosie had been driven nearly to tears, as she’d never seen Benjy like this before. Hetty took a moment to assure the girl she had done nothing wrong.

Sy, however, looked thoughtfully at the closed door.

“How does he know the cipher isn’t a fake? Or that all of it isn’t a story?”

“That’s not the part he cares about,” Hetty said. “He’d be working on it anyway, but it seems to be tied to the case, so he’s trying harder, which means all the little frustrations become much bigger.”

Sy nodded, understanding. “You want me to ask around to see who else was working on it? With all the chatter around there’s sure to be news. Or maybe someone was killed for nearly solving it.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say,” Rosie said.

“But not entirely unlikely,” Hetty mused. “Maybe you two should ask around.”

Although she didn’t think they would find a connection, seeing how Sy’s face lit up, she wasn’t going to say otherwise. Who knows, maybe there was a connection.

The siblings were the first to leave, but they were not the last. Darlene, Penelope, and Thomas soon followed one by one, once the sun started to set.

It was only then that Hetty found the time to pile what was left of dinner into a bowl to force Benjy to eat something.

As she headed to the study, Oliver emerged from the cellar, yawning and spotted with ink.

“You were down there for a while. Thomas already went home,” Hetty said. “Is everything done?”

“Yes. Everything’s ready for the funeral.” Oliver started to say more, but he saw the bowl in her hands.

“This is for Benjy,” Hetty explained. “He’s in one of his moods.”

“I see,” Oliver said. “Maybe then you can look at my notes later. I found something interesting.”

“No hints?” Hetty called as he headed out.

“My notes will be enough,” he said, waving a hand over his shoulder. “Good night.”

Hetty almost went to see what these vague words were in reference to, but decided against it as she opened the study’s door.

Hetty half expected a storm of books and papers flying around in the room. But none of that was there.

The boxes that Sy and his sister had brought were gone, but the books remained. They were stacked in three towering piles against the wall, squeezed between the bookshelf and the window.

The map of the tunnels Darlene had made was pinned next to their map of the city. No pins were stuck in this map, but there were circles drawn in a few spots. Most were on the tunnels they had gone through, but there were others that weren’t.

Raimond Duval’s set of checkers were scattered across the surface of the desk, arranged in small piles that probably only made sense to Benjy.

As for her husband, while he was nowhere to be seen, he had left a trail of papers floating in the air from the desk through the window.

The papers continued up to the roof, and Hetty followed, one hand weaving a spell to gently lift her skyward as she clutched the bowl to her chest.

Hetty’s telescope was turned toward the horizon instead of skyward, but he wasn’t looking into the scope. Instead, Benjy sat on the roof surrounded by more floating papers, muttering under his breath.

At first she thought he was rambling to himself, but he was addressing the trio of fledgling crows perched on the roof next to him. They had their heads tilted toward Benjy as if they were sincerely listening. But they must have only been indulging him, for the moment Hetty’s feet landed on the roof, the birds jumped up and flew to her, going for the bowl in her arm.

“This is not for you.” She shook a finger at them. “Go find your own dinner.”

The crows flew off then, leaving them alone.

The papers swirling around Benjy dropped to the roof then, stacking themselves into a tidy pile.

“Were the crows helpful?” Hetty asked as she sat down next to him.

“I just needed someone willing to listen to me without interruption.” Benjy eyed the bowl Hetty held. “Is it that late?”

“You didn’t notice the sun setting?”

Benjy just blinked at her, and Hetty firmly placed the bowl into his hands.

Sluggishly, he moved to eat, as Hetty picked up one of the papers scattered on the roof. It was a copy of the cipher that Benjy had written out, with letters placed on top as if he was figuring out the message.

Hetty only knew the simplest and most common ways to unravel ciphers, so anything she could suggest had been long considered by many other minds.

Still she wanted to help, if only because it was alarming that Benjy was having a hard time with it. He had brute forced codes before, but this just seemed to send him around in circles.

“Why are you out here on the roof?” Hetty asked.

“I thought maybe I could see something through the telescope that would help.” He scraped at his bowl. “It didn’t help, of course. I think I just came up here because it’s so calming. I always forget how much of the city you can see from here.”

He gazed off at the distance for a bit, before he continued:

“I can’t organize my mind. I was trying to connect it all together, to see if there’s something we missed. I know we have. There are so many small parts to this case. But I don’t know what it is.”

There was that strained note in his voice again. Fear that he had about missing something obvious when it could lead to their deaths or worse. This was, Hetty recalled, their first major case in a while, and with so many different moving pieces, it was no wonder that he’d sought the comforting quietness of the roof.

Very gently, Hetty said, “You don’t have to worry about connecting everything together. If you miss something, it’s fine. No matter what happens.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’ll make that promise.”

Benjy blinked, recognizing his own words thrown back at him. “One thing at a time,” he said softly.

“Yes. Shall we look at the books? Rosie and Sy did go through all that trouble to bring them here.”

Returning to the study, they settled in for the evening. Hetty brought an armful of books to the couch, while Benjy set up at the window seat with several books floating around him.

After flipping through dozens of books, Hetty lost interest in reading more than a few words until she found a leather-bound book without a title printed on it. The fine handwriting inside told her it was the old man’s journal, but not the one they had taken from Olmstead. She flipped through the pages, looking for dates, but her eye caught an odd scribble of a bird in a corner of one, and the words next to it:

 

With a single letter that horrible night comes back to me. What was V thinking?

 

The obvious answer was sometimes the best one. There was only one possibility about who V was. He was talking about Valentine.

Hetty flicked back for a date on the entry. April.

What happened then to cause such an entry? The entries ahead were from February and early March, and contained nothing of great importance. Once April started, Valentine’s name appeared constantly. And that abbreviation was not the only one. Many shortened versions of names and places peppered the pages. Hetty shouldn’t be surprised​—​Raimond’s journals were not meant to be read by anyone but him, but it made for slow reading. But eventually Hetty understood enough to recognize most of the references Raimond made.

 

V says no harm will come from the pamphlet’s printing. I’m amazed after all this time he fails to understand the powers of the written word. Men killed for that treasure, and they will do so again. Both mortal men and ghosts taunt with ciphers. I thought he understood what happened back in ’53, but it’s clear I was wrong. Did I fail him?

 

Ciphers and pamphlets. That could mean only one thing. The Clarke Cipher. But what about it made Raimond so mad?

And 1853? What happened then?

Hetty reached over to the stack she’d pulled this book from. It was too far away to comfortably reach, so she snapped her fingers, sending the book through the air. It flew into her grasp, but not without first dropping a thick packet of papers.

Hetty picked them up only to find it was a bundle of letters.

The oldest letter was a response from someone named Dora Reynolds, from the middle of March. It looked like something an old student sent, so Hetty put it aside.

The next letter underneath it was dated around the same time, and the sender’s name made her forget everything else.

The letter was signed by Emily Jacobs.

Not Sarah Jacobs, but Emily, her daughter.

Hetty remembered the little girl who they’d rescued all those years ago. Emily must be close to Rosie’s age now, or a bit younger.

Why was Emily writing instead of her mother? Had something happened?

It didn’t seem like it. The letter consisted of simple pleasantries, nothing that spoke of anything of interest.

But that name was all that mattered.

“Benjy!” Hetty spun around on the couch to face him, but she only thrust the letter at empty air.

Her husband had moved to the bookshelf, the journal floating next to him.

“Benjy,” she repeated. “This letter is from Emily! Sarah Jacobs’s daughter. She wrote to Raimond!”

Expecting him to be taken aback, he merely shrugged. “I’m not surprised. I have a letter here from Sarah dated five years ago, thanking him for making some arrangements.”

“Have you found any others?” Hetty asked.

“No, because I picked it up by chance. I don’t want to blame Sy, but everything’s out of order. The journals I can arrange easily. But the letters. So many people and so many dates.”

“But it explains why Valentine asked us about Sarah Jacobs. He must have known about these letters. Valentine did drop all these things off at the bookshop. Wait, do you think Emily wrote to him as well?”

“There’s a question we never had answered.” Benjy leaned over the back of the couch, peering down at her. “The reason a bounty hunter was chasing after Sarah Jacobs all those years ago. We never found out why. But does it connect to the deaths of father and son?”

“Maybe Sarah and her daughter killed them for revenge?” Hetty suggested.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Benjy said as he stared at the map on the wall.

“I’m just tossing out the idea. Everyone’s a suspect, right? Valentine asked us about Sarah Jacobs,” Hetty said, circling back to what she felt was a key. “Why he did is something we don’t know yet. Could it be in one of Raimond’s journals?”

Benjy shook his head. “Not in what I read so far. He kept mentioning ghosts. It’s hard to say if they’re another code, or references to what he saw in the living flesh.”

The doorbell rang.

Hetty jumped at the sound, and from the way Benjy grabbed on to the couch, she was not alone in being startled.

“Shall I get the door?” Hetty asked.

“I’ll get it.” Benjy straightened up, casting a wary eye about. “It can’t be anything good at this hour.”

It wasn’t.

Their neighbor stood on the front steps, clutching a beaded shawl around her shoulders as she complained about noises coming outside her windows.

“At this time of night I know it has to do with you.” Blythe glared in particular at Hetty, who made the mistake of lingering in the hall. “Your friends are always coming around through my yard, and don’t forget the miscreants that come to you about murders and terrible things!”

“Mrs. Holloway,” Benjy interrupted her. “Why don’t I take a look? It might be an animal.” With such soothing assurances, he gently guided their neighbor back into her own home.

Having wisely decided against following, Hetty shut the door and she headed back to the study.

Settled as she was on the couch, it was in this silence that made the thump beneath her feet seem even louder.

No, thump was the wrong word. It was a bang. A bang that rattled against a door. A bang that sounded like a person trying to get in.

Even if Benjy had locked himself out, he would have rung the doorbell first. But Hetty’s racing heart told her it wasn’t him.

That bang had come from the cellar.

Her protection spells had not activated. But when she’d touched that desk at Valentine’s home, her spells hadn’t reacted then, either.

Preferring to face trouble head-on instead of waiting for it to find her, Hetty slipped out of the room. As she walked into the dark hallway, she removed the sharpest of her hairpins and clutched it between her fingers. Although this was a reliable weapon, she wished she had something a bit better. Both the spare elemental pistols, along with all the knives, were in the kitchen. While the curtains were closed, the light she needed to see would alert whoever was still in the yard.

No, the hairpin would have to do, and of course her magic. But it would have been nice to have a knife in hand too.

Hetty opened the cellar door and descended the stairs. She summoned a small ball of light to float near her head, and carefully crept down, avoiding the spots where the wood was known to creak. No more strange thumps greeted her as she entered the cellar.

Outside her little light, it was still completely dark downstairs. The familiar lumps and shapes in the corners greeted her. The only person down here was Valentine Duval, lying in an open casket.

Although her light didn’t reveal everything in the room, she could tell Oliver had finished his work. Valentine had been dressed in his suit, and a thick layer of preservation spells surrounded him, keeping the body frozen in its current state for the funeral in three days’ time.

The more interesting sight was the mess Oliver had left behind. On the nearby table was a stack of papers and newspapers, and the satchel that Adelaide had given Hetty was half hanging off the table.

This was unlike Oliver. He was very neat when it came to his work.

Hetty was just reaching for it when something banged against the cellar door.

Not just banged. It sounded like something was dropped. Like a massive stone against the wood, attempting to break it. And then a faint green light ran along the door, starting from the top and working its way down like scissors. But the moment it touched the bottom of the door, the star sigil Benjy had carved into the wood lit up.

Orion stepped out from the door, drew his sword, and then charged through the door into the yard.

She expected to hear a yell or an outraged cry, but Hetty didn’t hear anything.

All she felt was the pressure from magic clashing around her, and faintly, very faintly, she heard a voice.

Knowing for certain meant opening the cellar door. While she was brave enough for the task, caution stayed her hand.

Still, she approached the cellar door, pressing a hand along the wood.

It was warm from the magic, and it thumped like a heartbeat under her palm. Hetty breathed in time with this gentle thump, her worries floating away.

All the doors and windows in their home had protection spells. Spells of protections done in the way only Benjy could have done, resolutely, sternly stubborn, and with a promise to remain as long as he still breathed.

Hetty liked to think that last bit was just a boast, although she knew it was the truth. She just didn’t want to think of the day she’d place her hand against a door and find no magic brimming under the surface.

The cellar’s lights turned on, and her husband’s voice carried down into the cellar before his footsteps.

“Hetty, are you down here?”

Hetty turned away from the door, going to the side table where Oliver had left his notebook.

“Yes, I heard strange noises. Were you out in the backyard?”

Benjy said yes, and started to explain, but even before he did, Hetty had stopped paying attention.

The papers scattered on the table were copies of inquest paper­work. They weren’t recent, but they were all under six months old. Raimond Duval’s name was on one. So were a few other names that Hetty recognized parts of. Sullivan. Yates. Sam. Roderick. John Roberts. Names of the people who’d worked with the Vigilance Society. Some had not been active when Hetty had worked with the group, but they were all friends of Jay and Cora.

Then there were the newspapers: obituaries or articles with each name circled.

But it was the topmost paper, placed prominently so it couldn’t be overlooked, that caused Hetty to stop paying attention to anything else, including Benjy coming to her side.

It was a short note, written quickly and clearly in Oliver’s handwriting:

 

Check on Pastor Evans​—he might be the next victim!