Page 3 of Word of the Wicked (Murder in Moonlight #5)

S olomon was reeling. With Constance’s help, he had learned to accept that his brother was, in all probability, finally lost to him forever.

Which had been hard, for most of his life had revolved around looking for David.

And yet Constance was the reality who filled his existence, his presence, his future, his joy.

But when David walked into his office this morning, it was as if some lever had been pulled in his head. He felt the spark, a weak echo of that lost connection, because somewhere in this stranger was his David, not the distant Johnny his brother had become without him. David had begun to remember.

“I’m afraid I killed a man. But the funny thing is, he was already dead.”

The words made no sense, but they seized his attention and forced him to concentrate.

He held his brother’s desperate gaze. “What happened?”

“I was in a tavern—the Crown and Anchor,” David began.

“When?” Solomon asked.

David blinked, as though distracted from whatever images were filling his head. “Last night. It wasn’t late, but I’d been there for a while. Don’t know why—dismal kind of a place, but I know people who drink there. Only they weren’t around last night.”

He had been lonely, Solomon surmised. A feeling he knew well enough. “Go on.”

“I saw this fellow I knew. Couldn’t recall his name or how I knew him, but he was…

out of place , somehow. So eventually I couldn’t stand it, and when he was alone, I went up to him and asked him his name and where we’d met before.

He told me to—er…take myself off, in no uncertain terms. In fact, he was loud and offensive. ”

“What did you do?” Solomon asked with foreboding.

David’s lips quirked. “I took myself off.”

“Without a quarrel?”

“Oh yes. I’m the stranger here.”

And in the Crown and Anchor—a somewhat dangerous den of iniquity—a stranger who quarreled with one man quarreled with the entire public house.

“I had another drink and tried to think of something else, but then I began to remember, as if I were seeing it all over again.”

“Seeing what?” Solomon prompted him.

“How he died the first time, on the deck of a ship. Years ago. He was different, then, well dressed, with a big, gold watch on a chain. Not the ship’s captain but the owner of the cargo—and maybe the ship, too, I don’t know.

Some rich merchant, anyway. And he caught this poor sailor pilfering his spices.

Furious, he was, hit the sailor hard with a club.

But the sailor wouldn’t lie down. He turned on the merchant and fought back, seized the club off him and beat him to death with it. ”

“Did no one intervene?” Constance asked, appalled.

“Not at first. It was nighttime. There must have been someone on watch—maybe the thieving sailor, I don’t know.

Maybe me. The details are hazy. But the noise of the fight certainly brought people running, including the captain, who had the sailor disarmed.

Too late. The merchant was dead, and the thieving sailor locked up. ”

“And you believe this merchant was the man you thought you recognized last night?” Solomon asked.

David nodded. “It made me uneasy. So I stopped watching him, had another pint, and decided to leave. Only when I got outside…”

Solomon and Constance both gazed at him as he stared off into nothing, then swallowed hard.

“When I got outside,” David said, “there he was again. Lying on his back with blood on his chest. He was dead. Again. I know, ’cause I knelt beside him, felt for breath or a pulse.

Nothing. I tried to think who to tell, but I’d already been seen.

A shout went up of ‘Murder!’ I ran for it.

Some people seemed to be chasing someone else.

Others ran after me for a bit—at least one of them was a policeman, but I kept running. ”

“I can see why,” Constance said slowly. “You were the stranger, the dead man had insulted you, and you were seen kneeling over the body. Justice isn’t always fair. But your story doesn’t make any sense. How could this dead man be the same as the man you saw killed on the deck of a ship years ago?”

“And even more to the point,” Solomon added, “what makes you say you killed him, when you found him outside the Crown and Anchor already dead?”

David’s eyes were haunted, anguished. “Because I think I killed him the first time, too.”

Solomon leaned back in his chair, staring at the stranger who was his brother. “You think you were the thieving sailor? Why? You described it to us as though you had watched events unfold before your eyes.”

“That’s how it plays in my memory. Like on a stage. But why was I watching if I didn’t intervene? If I didn’t try to stop the fight or even bring help?”

“Maybe you did,” Constance said. “Maybe you brought the captain on deck.”

David shook his head, almost violently. “That’s not how I see it.”

“But with the best will in the world,” Solomon said, “your memory is not reliable.”

David licked his lips as though they were dry again. “My head is not reliable,” he said. “I see things, imagine things, and then I’m sure of none of it.”

“What things?” Solomon asked.

David tore his gaze free, staring instead into the empty teacup.

“For years, before my illness, I imagined I was two people. I did bad things and escaped to be someone else, to live better, happier, but I always came back to being me.” His eyes lifted suddenly.

“And then there was you. Exactly like me. And you are real. The bad things are real too. They appall me because of you. So, what if I talked myself into believing I didn’t do the worst of it? My evil twin did it.”

Solomon flicked a glance at Constance, seeing the pity and incomprehension that reflected his own.

David rubbed his forehead, his eyes. “I am a mess of a man.”

“You are a confused man in shock,” Constance said, and Solomon could have kissed her. “And if you have only just begun to remember what happened before your illness—”

“I haven’t,” David interrupted, his eyes meeting Solomon’s once more. “You know I haven’t. I began to remember almost as soon as I saw you. Just images at first, like dreams. On the island. Playing as children. Not being alone.”

Solomon’s throat ached for those times. And the loss that came after. And most of all, for whatever had happened to his brother.

“Bit by bit, it came back during that voyage after I left you here in November. In dreams and spurts, till I could make something of the whole. I remembered the idea of being someone else. Of being you. I was hiding from what I did.”

“What happened to you?” Solomon no longer wanted to know. He wasn’t sure he could live with it. But David had, and Solomon needed to shoulder his share of that burden. “Do you remember quarreling with me?”

David’s frown flickered. “Not really. I remember being alone on the docks and wishing you were there to see the man with the puppets among all that panic and chaos of people trying to leave the island. He said I could have a puppet of my own, since I liked them so much, and I said that I needed two, one for my brother. And he said I should come aboard and choose my favorites from all the puppets. I’d begun to go with him when I realized it was a bad idea, and the ship was almost ready to sail.

They were waiting to pull up the gangplank.

I tried to run, but he caught me and dragged me aboard the ship. ”

“Then it was true,” Solomon whispered. His father had pursued that rumor, and so had he. “I always feared that was you… Were you enslaved , David?”

Astonishingly, David shrugged. “In a manner of speaking. Not as you understand it. Not legally. But I was not free. And I had no choice but obedience…until I grew big and strong enough to fight. By then I had forgotten most of my old life. It felt like a dream, and for a time freedom was enough. I traveled the world.”

“So did I,” Solomon said. “And yet never once…”

“The world is big and I’m just an anonymous sailor.

” David shrugged impatiently. “Then I got ill and really did forget everything. Looking back, that was a good thing, but I didn’t know that.

It was frightening, starting again from nothing, like a newborn baby but one who can speak and read and knows enough about seamanship to get a job on any ship I took a fancy to.

Anyway, that’s no longer my most urgent problem.

The police are after me for a murder I may or may not have committed. ”

David paused, drew in a deep breath, and looked from Solomon to Constance and back. “And I need your help to find the truth. I can’t ask questions for myself because I’ll be arrested. I’m too perfect a scapegoat for this crime.”

“What will you do if we find out you’re guilty?” Constance asked, and Solomon’s blood ran cold.

“Turn myself in,” David replied. “I won’t run anymore. I’ll face the consequences.”

Oh, no. You’ve suffered enough… But Solomon would not go down that road, not yet. David’s story was so unsound it was ridiculous. The investigation needed cool, hard heads, and this, it seemed, was the one thing he could do for his brother.

“In the meantime,” he said briskly, “we have to find some means of hiding you from the long arm of the law. I suppose you could hide here in the office, but that would rather make Janey complicit.”

“And Mrs. Silver. And you.”

“We are family,” Constance said, “and don’t count. But as it happens, we also have the perfect disguise at hand. You, David, are Solomon Grey.”

*

While Solomon returned to his desk with admirable focus to write his report on the fraud case, Constance set about cutting David’s hair. When that was done to her satisfaction, she took him along the passage to their little cloakroom and brought him some warm water to wash and shave with.

“There’s a razor in the cabinet,” she told him. “And there is a complete set of Solomon’s clothes hanging behind the door.”