minutia_r

A Matter of Life and Death, chapter 2

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Fandom: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci

Rating: PG-13

Word count: 2700

Summary: The summer following The Lives of Christopher Chant, Christopher
meets an old friend while investigating a mysterious death.

Note: After rereading The Lives of Christopher Chant, I was somehow left with the impression that Christopher's father took him out of school immediately after he got killed. It has since been pointed out to me that Christopher actually went back to school for a few days. Until and unless I think of some way to harmonize this story with canon, I'm going to fall back on Nan Pilgrim's "stripes of the rainbow" theory of slightly-alternate universes.

Thanks to:

dracutgrl,

daluci, and

murmbeetle

For the next hour, Christopher, Tacroy and Rosalie read police reports, coroner's reports, and sworn statements signed by Richard Bede's widow and several people who worked at Pugh's. At least, Tacroy and Rosalie read them, and Christopher stared at them until his eyes swam and he realized that he had been seeing cricket matches for the last ten minutes instead of the words on the page.

At noon, a footman arrived from the castle by way of the pentagram, with lunch. Rosalie helped unload it and arrange it on the desks, while Tacroy cleared away papers. "Christopher," said Tacroy, "will you go down and make sure Oneir finds his way here all right?"

Christopher would rather not have. But he knew that Tacroy was giving him a chance to talk to Oneir in private, so he went.

Oneir had a different way of walking than he used to, head down and shoulders hunched forward. Between that and his dark raincoat and cap, Christopher nearly let him walk right past before he recognized him. "Oneir," he said.

"Hello, Chant," said Oneir. He looked Christopher in the face this time, but his expression was still spooked.

"I'm not a ghost, you know," said Christopher. "I've got nine lives."

"Yes, Miss Lovelace explained that part to me," said Oneir. "Still, you've got eight now, haven't you?"

"Well, no," Christopher said. "I've been rather careless with them."

"Careless," said Oneir. "Like standing next to a maniac with a cricket bat."

"Look, Oneir, that wasn't your fault," said Christopher. But he didn't know how to explain about the Anywheres, and the Wraith, and everything. "It was bound to happen."

Oneir laughed shortly. "Do you know what the odds against that sort of thing are?" he said. "I do. Two and a half million to one, roughly."

They walked into the building where Gabriel's office was. Christopher was thoroughly exasperated. He was trying to explain, and Oneir wasn't listening. "Are you angry with me for not being dead or crippled?" Christopher demanded.

Oneir's eyes went very round. "No!" he said. "God! I'm glad you're all right, Chant, really."

And Christopher had to be satisfied with that, because they had reached the office. Tacroy and Rosalie were waiting, and so was lunch. Christopher could smell it all the way down the corridor. It seemed like it had been years, rather than a week, since lunch had smelled good to Christopher. For a while, everyone ate, and no one talked.

"Well, Mr. Oneir," said Rosalie, when they were down to cake crumbs. "What makes you think that Richard Bede was killed by magic?"

Oneir shook his head. "I don't know anything about how Mr. Bede died," he said. "But I know—Last Tuesday, Mrs. Bede, the widow, came to the office to claim her husband's insurance. She talked to Mr. Godwin, and Mr. Hartwell, and Miss Larch. It was just the regular routine; signing papers, swearing that she knew of no reason the policy shouldn't be honored, and so on. And there was a clerk there, a fellow I work with named Sachs, running back and forth and fetching the relevant files and forms."

Oneir looked down at his hands for a moment, and Rosalie nodded encouragingly. "Here's the thing," said Oneir. "Sachs drinks. He comes in in the morning with a flask full of whiskey, and by teatime he's got a flask empty of whiskey. Then he goes down to the pub and drinks some more. The fellows all know it, but he's a good clerk, so nobody says anything."

Oneir took a swallow of his tea. "And here's the other thing," he said. "Mr. Godwin and Mr. Hartwell wouldn't have signed those forms if things hadn't been in order. But Sachs told me that Vesta Bede never took her oaths. So who would you believe? Two sober gentleman and a lady? Or one drunk clerk?"

"I have to say," said Tacroy apologetically, "that all else being equal I'd be inclined to believe the ones who hadn't been drinking."

"Exactly," said Oneir. "But I believe Sachs."

"Why?" said Tacroy.

"You know how you can test whether someone's drunk by making him say the alphabet backwards?" said Oneir.

Tacroy nodded.

"Not Sachs you can't," said Oneir. "He may be seeing pink elephants, but he does his job."

Rosalie, who had been leafing through the papers, frowned. "I think I believe your Sachs, too," she said. "The statements that Mr. Godwin and Mr. Hartwell and Miss Larch gave the police match rather closely."

"That's the trouble," said Oneir.

"But people who witness the same event will usually contradict each other when describing it," said Rosalie. "People who have been bewitched by the same sorceress, on the other hand—I think we should have a word with Vesta Bede." The dimples flashed in her cheeks for a moment. "It's too bad you didn't bring your Sachs along. We could have done his soul a good turn and pursued our investigation at the same time."

"How?" said Oneir warily.

"The Temperance Society is having a meeting outside a public house a few blocks from here," said Rosalie. "If she runs true to form, we'll find Vesta Bede there. Would you like to come along? We're here at your instigation, after all. And there may be hymns."

"No, thanks," said Oneir. "I'd better be getting back. But thank you for listening to me. And . . . take care of yourself, Chant, eh?"

"You, too," said Christopher. Oneir turned left when they left the building, and Tacroy, Rosalie, and Christopher turned right. After a block, it became clear that there was a disturbance up ahead; the pavements were crowded and the carters and cab drivers on the street jostled and shouted, but didn't actually move. Another half-a-block, and Christopher could hear singing, ragged and not quite on-key.

He recognized the song from music at school, all about the walls of Jericho and waging war against the mighty hosts of sin. Fenning used to replace the line "for He could burst the gates of brass" with words that Christopher had to have explained to him, and then explained to him again, in smaller words, whereupon he had humiliated himself by turning scarlet.

The crowd of women blocking the pavement and spilling out into the street were, if possible, worse at singing than Christopher's schoolmates had been. But what they lacked in skill they made up for in appalling enthusiasm. There was one stout, lion-voiced lady in a prim bonnet and shawl who looked like she was ready to dismantle Jericho with her bare hands.

On the fringes of the crowd stood two small, skinny girls and an enormous black pram. The girls were also dressed in black, stiff and shiny dresses with lots of flounces and puffs that still managed to seem somehow shabby. The smaller of the two girls was practicing a bored look nearly as good as Christopher's own, but the bigger one was singing. Her voice was clear and high, and, Christopher was shocked and enchanted to discover, she knew Fenning's words.

The ladies concluded the hymn, two or three at a time, and started another. "We always used to sing this one, 'I will make you vicious old men,'" Christopher supplied helpfully, under his breath.

The girl startled, and looked over her shoulder. Her teeth flashed and her face lit up for a moment, and then she was earnest and wide-eyed once more. "I've never seen you at a meeting before," she said. "What's your name?"

"Christopher," said Christopher.

"I'm Temperance," said the girl. "My sister's Patience, and the baby's forty."

Christopher looked into the pram, alarmed. There was a perfectly ordinary baby lying in it, bald and sucking on its fist and sleeping in spite of the drizzle and the hymns. "It can't be more than three," Christopher said.

"Stupid," Temperance said. "Forty-one."

Christopher fell back on silence and a baffled expression. The smaller girl, Patience, giggled. "It's the baby's name," she said. "Forty."

"Ah," said Christopher.

"It's short for Fortitude," said Patience. "She's one."

"You have to explain everything, don't you?" said Temperance, sourly.

The rain picked up. Christopher conjured an umbrella from the castle, and the girls edged closer to him. The baby stirred in the pram. The lion-voiced lady at the front of the crowd, who was saying a prayer, rushed through to her Amen in record time, and the women began to disperse. Christopher spotted Tacroy and Rosalie, accompanied by a small, thin, and severe-looking woman, making their way towards him.

"I never sign anything unless I'm forced to," Tacroy was saying cheerfully. "Professional habit."

"But surely, the temperance pledge—" said the woman.

"I imagine you've had quite a bit of success bringing poor sinners to the light," said Rosalie.

Christopher, catching her emphasis, looked at the woman again with his witch sight. Persuasive magic eddied in the air all around her, slewing around Tacroy and Rosalie, but catching the interested glances of people as they passed. This must be Vesta Bede.

"Temperance, dear," said Mrs. Bede sorrowfully. "It isn't nice to talk to strange boys, is it?"

"No, Mum," said Temperance.

Stiff new black dresses, right. And one of the reports had said something about Richard Bede leaving behind three daughters, hadn't it?

"It's just Christopher," said Tacroy. "There's no harm in him." Christopher did his best to look harmless.

"That's as may be," said Mrs. Bede. "But Temperance knows I rely on her to set a good example to her sisters, don't you, dear?"

"Yes, Mum," said Temperance.

"Good girl," said Mrs. Bede. She frowned. "However, now that we all know each other, I see no reason why you should not continue to entertain Christopher. He, Mr. Roberts, and Miss Lovelace are going to be our guests for tea. We have things to discuss."

Christopher opened his mouth to protest being shuffled off with a pack of small girls, but Rosalie glared at him and he shut it again. Consider it part of your training in investigations. Fine, then. Vesta Bede led the way down the street, Tacroy and Rosalie followed her, and Christopher trailed after, small Patience on one side, and Temperance pushing a pram bigger than herself on the other.

The only trouble was, now that they were—not suspects, surely, how old had the reports said Temperance was, eight?—but anyway, now Christopher had no idea what to say. "Er—I'm sorry about your father," he started lamely.

"It doesn't matter," said Patience. "It wasn't Real Dad."

"Shut up, stupid," hissed Temperance.

"What do you mean?" said Christopher.

Patience looked at Temperance, then at the puddles around her shoes, and didn't answer.

"What did she mean?" Christopher asked Temperance.

"Nothing," said Temperance, giving the pram a hard shove. "She's just a stupid little sister."

The baby in the pram gave a surprised yelp, and then began to wail. It made it hard for Christopher to think, but he tried anyway. He looked from Patience's frightened face to Temperance's stormy one. See things from the other person's point of view, Tacroy had said.

What if it had been Papa who'd died? There'd be a funeral, and it would be boring, and solemn, and uncomfortable. Mama would be there, and she'd cry—twice as uncomfortable—and expect things from him. And . . . he'd be sad, surely?

This was no good. He was no closer to understanding what Patience and Temperance had said than before. Maybe Flavian was right, and Christopher had no proper feelings.

With no further conversation, and the baby's crying preventing Christopher from hearing anything Tacroy, Rosalie, and Mrs. Bede were saying, they came to a row of long, thin houses bunched together like books on a shelf. He helped Temperance trundle the pram up to the third story of one of them, and they all came dripping into the Bedes' flat.

Tacroy and Rosalie sat politely on a sofa. Mrs. Bede bustled about getting tea, and Temperance bustled about getting food for the baby. Patience sat in a corner and talked softly to what looked like a ragged scrap of fabric, but was probably actually a doll. Christopher stuck his hands in his pockets and looked around the parlor.

It was a tiny parlor, especially when you compared it to the ones in the castle, and everything in it was old, but painfully neat. There was a glass-fronted cabinet, full of the sort of hideous bric-a-brac that glass-fronted cabinets tend to be full of. A cut-glass vase, a painted china plate, a ship in a bottle, a wooden model of a church. There was something about the church—Christopher looked at it with his witch-sight, and saw that the tiny church door really was a door to somewhere else. Not an Anywhere, a different sort of somewhere else. Somewhere Christopher knew, but couldn't remember . . .

Christopher shook his head. The bell in the little church-tower was silver, so that was no use. He tried not to take personal offense every time something was made of silver, but sometimes he couldn't help it. Frustrated, he used his regular eyes again, and that was when he noticed the really odd thing. In this spotless parlor, there were crumbs in front of the church.

Dark crumbs and light crumbs. Bread and salt, for welcome. A door, and a bell. Christopher remembered Flavian's lessons, and swallowed hard. He was acutely relieved when Patience appeared at his elbow and interrupted his thoughts, although less enthusiastic about being offered a piece of cake.

"I really couldn't," said Christopher. "We had an enormous tea at the office—" But Tacroy and Rosalie were eating theirs, so Christopher supposed he'd better. "All right, then. Please," he said. He found a chair. Mrs. Bede and Tacroy and Rosalie were still not paying any attention to him, so he practiced his bored and stupid look, and listened.

"But why did your husband decide to take out an insurance policy then?" Rosalie was saying.

"He had just signed the pledge," Mrs. Bede explained. "It was the first time he was able to put money by, and not spend it on filthy drink . . . My Richard was always a good man, you understand. But weak. The flesh is a burden."

"Mm," said Tacroy.

Just then Patience came back with Christopher's tea and cake. She had a cup and saucer in one hand, and a plate and fork in another, and her doll tucked under one arm, so it wasn't surprising that everything fell to the floor with a smash somewhere between her hands and the table. Mrs. Bede looked up sharply, and Christopher was just about to put it right with magic, but Patience was quicker.

"It's all right," she called. "Nothing happened."

It was obvious which of Vesta Bede's daughters had inherited her talent for sorcery. And it was just as well that Patience had put the cake into the teacup, and the tea on the cake plate. Christopher didn't want more tea anyway.

After a few minutes, Tacroy and Rosalie got up to go. "Please let me know if there's anything else I can do," said Mrs. Bede. "We'd all like to get this unpleasant business over with as soon as possible, wouldn't we?" Another gust of persuasive magic followed them out the door.

"What a horrible woman!" said Rosalie, when they were back on the street. The rain had stopped, but they still had to step around puddles in the pavement. "Does she think Chrestomanci's department employs Elementary Magic students?"

"I'm not sure she even realized she was doing it," said Tacroy. "We've been assuming that she had a reason for deceiving the people at Pugh's. But if she does it habitually, she may be completely innocent." He frowned. "Of murder, anyway. Bewitching people isn't a nice habit, of course. Did you find out anything, Christopher?"

"Yes," said Christopher. He told them about the model church. "Someone in that house is doing necromancy."