Author Note: I wrote the following short story in high school. Let’s see how it holds up!

November, 1885.

“I do not pry, Miss Frances.”

Priscilla Finch folded her hands, knuckles bared under fuchsia lace glovelettes.

Eastern, Maude noted. Far and fashionable for an off-again-on-again camp. Since she stepped off the train two years ago, Maude Frances found the miners’ lifestyle unsettling—piecemeal and haphazard. It took after a colonial era Indian tribe’s, with Old World baubles and American commodities. Ore-smeared gentlemen in silk waistcoats tunneled through the dirt while their wives scrubbed pots in ski jump bustles and Antionette shoes. There was no balsam for the blisters; the rain hit in dirges; but the profits lured prospectors from all over—Nevada rejects and California nuts, men who inherited their father’s muskets and Rottweiler instincts and, lacking a war of their own, put them to use blasting and shoveling rocks in an underground factory instead of Confederates in the bayou. Everyone profited off the Stough’s mine. Or, rather, the Aikens, Pearsons, and Stoughs. Cable, Montana had its own trinity. A shrine, too. Called, Atlantic Cable Quartz Lode.

“I didn’t imply anything, Priscilla,” Maude snapped. As the dame topped off her tea, Maude jabbed Meyer in the ribs. “Why don’t we speak to the servant? Who actually saw the crime?”

“Shh. He’s unavailable at this time.”

And there was Priscilla. Frilled, powdered, available.

Black thumbprints like ringed spruce stumps pocked the paper. She wiped her fingers on the white lace tablecloth. No great sin—it was already pitted with evergreen splinters from the still-shedding ceiling so it didn’t help much. But she wouldn’t worry over a little grit. Priscilla would, she huffed.

Maude and Meyer were sinking into the parlor divan. Maude was a burly brunette whose corset was more square than heart-shaped, Meyer an inspector with a foxtail mustache and baby’s breath eyes. She was the mucker, he the gentleman. Across the table sat the house mistress, Priscilla. A slender twig of a woman with Victorian curls and shoulders that scooped as if stuck mid-shrug. Lumber rollers stacked for the walls, sawmill fresh and stinking of milk paint. A stove with a door of stained glass roses crackled by the mantle, where mounted stags and rifles kept vigil.

Detective Cullen Meyer flipped the page on his notepad. He always wore those brown leather gloves, even inside. “We don’t mean to insinuate anything, Mrs. Finch. My colleague simply shares my employer’s zeal,” he said, gulping, “to bring closure to the Stough family.”

Priscilla nodded, folding her arms. “Benjamin Stough. Can’t imagine the salary.” The sparkle in her eyes meant she could. Benjamin was the deceased’s older cousin, likely to inherit whatever gold Stough might have shoveled from dirt to vault.

Maude took over. “So you’re familiar with the family?”

“Again, I never pry. I’ve lived on the plot adjacent for the past few years. My husband Frederic followed the nugget trail on Cable’s last boom—the ’73 to ’78? He said Stough—Jonas, the father—had grown to admire Frederic’s work ethic. He was expecting a promotion before the tragedy.”

“And with Stough dead,” Meyer cut in, “his wife Lillian wasted away.”

Priscilla sighed. “I made a few house calls, though Lillian and I were never friends. Frankly I didn’t pleasure in her company or her son’s. An arthritic Southern belle and a petulant rugrat. If I’d known the severity of her health, of course I would’ve sent for our physician. As I was made unaware of her condition, I had my housemaid deliver some Sunday platters. Treats and stews. By the last few weeks, however, she wasn’t even allowed to the doorstep. Lillian resigned to die alone.” She sipped her tea.

Browsing the morning’s notes, Meyer nodded. “Now Lillian passed of liver failure three days ago.”

“Tragedy.”

Maude leveled Priscilla with a sneering gaze, eyes like twin shotgun barrels.

As a professional woman, Maude had fixed herself on the virgin Northwest, where man’s foothold in the wilds still faltered. Nothing like an ironfisted woman to bolster him, even shoulder ahead. Back East, she’d have to kill for employment. But the mineshafts and winters here culled the labor force for her.

Detective’s assistant wasn’t her ambition. But it beat holding court in drawing rooms. Her mother and sisters ruled these social frivolities, while Maude entertained them with portraiture and jested at dreams of becoming an artist.

Priscilla would’ve meshed well with the Frances girls. Finch sported the ringlet bangs of a Greek sprite, but that was one of few charms allowed for housewives. Especially in Cable. True, the gold rush had its own perks. But the lifestyle wasn’t a vision for the wax museum. Wildlife. Isolation. Blizzard season. Montana was no country for women who lacked resolution or character. They expired like lilies. Maude knew her own downfall had yet to come, but at least she was her own victim. These women, they traded their native throne for a miner’s lap and died of head colds and sniffles, mewling about how their husbands had killed them. She hated these women, and they hated her.

Meyer recovered with a prod to his spectacles. “We don’t think it a coincidence that Lawrence, Stough’s heir, was found dead so soon after him and Lillian. Would you mind telling us what you told the constable, about last night?”

Priscilla screwed her lips at Maude. “My husband Frederic and I were returning from town in the sleigh coach. We passed the Stough gates. You know,” she drawled, waving her hands. Everyone knew. Jonas Stough had cut and painted the gates as mock Indian totem poles when he first built the house. Neighbors thought the display a joke. Still more believed Stough was paying tribute to the pioneer chiefs who had colonized before him. But the totems faced South, and Sitting Bull had hookah piped up to Canada. Whatever remained of the Indians was ghosts.

Maude decided it was the ore dust. Too much could turn a man, even Jonas Stough, crazy.

“So I heard the gates open and turned to see the Stough’s buggy pull in,” Priscilla said. “I didn’t think the chauffeur, Marvin, was driving, what with the way the buggy veered through. Something wasn’t right, so I thought I’d keep watching.”

Meyer peered out the iron-latticed window. “Now, Miss Finch, there’s a line of trees separating your property from the Stough’s.”

“It’s thin, I assure you. Their front door is visible from ours. Frederic and I were ascending the front steps when I saw Lawrence emerge from the buggy. He was covered in blood and bruises. Ghastly sight, though not unsurprising.” Priscilla’s nose wrinkled.

Maude’s temples throbbed to the surface. Priscilla was describing a dead man. A nineteen-year-old boy. What right did she have to sneer?

“About an hour later, I looked out my window and—Well, it was dark,” she conceded, thumbing her chin. “I’m used to watching the sun rise, not picking out folks in the dark. I saw Lawrence walking—staggering—from the house to the side complex, the garage and stable. His clothes were still soiled, and it appeared he had made no effort to clean his face. He left the complex, leading a horse toward the gatepost, and halfway there he mounted. The beast didn’t make three paces before the rider keeled over.”

Meyer pencilled that in and leaned forward. Maude growled as the cushion plunged. “What did you make of the sudden fall?”

“Drunk. Lawrence was notorious for drinking and scuffling. Always yelling about his childhood, summers on the water. His poor mother died only two days prior. I’m sure the loss roused his memory, drove him to the tap. You should check his tab, Miss Frances—the last binge could be telling. Now. I sent Frederic’s man outside to see if the boy was all right. The servant returned with the verdict. That’s when I had him telegraph you.”

Maude sliced a finger through the air. “Earlier you told Detective Meyer that your servant had seen someone.”

“Fleetingly, Miss Frances. A large man in white, walking in the other direction. The man turned for an instant into the lamplight.”

Maude grabbed her charcoal and sketched a hulking human frame. She bobbed her head, tongue in teeth, for Priscilla to continue. The only time in her life she’ll ever be useful, she thought.

“The man, I’m told, had rather dark hair and a fur kerchief tied about the mouth for warmth.”

The charcoal rasped and crosshatched.

“Eye color?” Meyer prompted.

“Too far to discern.”

“Any distinguishing facial traits? Anything unique?”

Priscilla crinkled her skirts—green muslin drapery. “It was the frenzy of the moment. My servant saw little.”

The drawing was a blur of half-jointed blank splotches. The lower half of the face remained a mystery. A wormhole in an apple. And Maude had had to estimate the upper half, knowing only the dark hair color, which was everyone’s hair color in charcoal. She used generic features—medium proportions, smooth contours—to guess the rest. A mannequin stared back at her, human but faceless. Not her worst. The public never saw the face on the poster anyway. They saw the people they wanted locked up.

“In what direction did the servant say this man was walking?” Meyer asked.

“Toward the stables. A large man with dark hair by the stables.”

Maude burst out laughing.

Meyer shot her a searing glance, but she crumpled her paper.

“Then the case is solved. Mrs. Finch, I’ll draw you the man your servant saw. If your husband can spare his absence for an hour, send him to the station this afternoon.”

Slapping her leather portfolio shut, Maude got up and walked out. Meyer made proper pleasantries and left the house groveling to make up for her leave. She waited in the buggy, knuckles blackened like a miner’s.

“What the hell was that?” Meyer asked.

She beamed. “A positive identification. Smile, Detective. You may get to turn in early.”

* * *

She set to work as soon as they reached the station, a yellow shanty in the middle of town. She had her own nook beside the sheriff’s office—rather, the constable’s; the sheriff was dead—where she drew up Wanted posters and illustrations for the newspaper.

Oafish nose. Hoary knuckles. Curly beard—which explains the bandana. To conceal it, of course. Wide gray eyes with girlish lashes. Perpetual fever from labor, always reeking of the stalls. Everyone knew him. He was Stough’s idiot groom, a boy-man named Joseph.

She’d had the displeasure once, her second week in town. She was leaving the apothecary’s, when Joseph bumped her off the gangplank, into the muck. Shaking out her bundle of soaps and herbs, Maude panned him to be more of a gentleman. He dribbled like a gorilla into his beard. She waved her dirtied hem, and he must have understood—he lunged to brush it off. But Maude divined his true intentions and stomped him away from her skirts. He whimpered, the noise like a bog sinkhole, until she was out of earshot.

Men scorned him. Wives feared him. Children adored him. He had a pet cat named Mr. Goochers (or was it Gerblers?) that escaped its hatch and terrorized the town at least once a week day. No one had ever seen the cat, but the bellows Joseph rose over it, how he pawed through the butter churns and slobbered through carriages in pursuit, had warranted a home for the thing in everyone’s imagination.

Maude didn’t understand how so grotesque a creature was evolutionarily possible, let alone socially patronized. He had no place in a world of impressionism, steamboats, fireworks. Jonas was a cruel man to entertain a Quasimodo, to inflict it on the rest of Cable. In the lulls between gold rushes, when Cable was a ghost town, Joseph was the poltergeist.

“Maude,” Meyer beckoned her into the conference room. She rounded the constable’s desk and pulled the drapes on her way in.

A mousy man trembled in his seat before the detective. Maude slumped into the chair at his left as Meyer reassured him with gentle introductions.

“We know this is difficult. That’s why my assistant Miss Frances has prepared a sketch of the suspect in advance. All we need is a Yes or No and you’ll be home for tea.”

The servant bobbed his head. Maude opened the portfolio before him.

He shook his head.

“No,” Meyer affirmed.

“No?!”

“I don’t know,” said the servant, eyes flitting like weasels. “It was late. I barely saw the upper half of his face, and he was wearing—”

“A mask, yes, we know! Is that it?”

The servant bit his lip.

Maude stood. “I’ll show you out, sir.”

When she returned, Meyer was bagging his notebook. The usual magnifying glass, tweezers, measuring tape, etc. glittered from inside the satchel. “Come on,” he said.

“I don’t think so. Unless you want to finalize, print, and post this perp sketch.”

Meyer flashed his badge, one more than she had. “We’re going to Stough house.”

* * *

The gates jeered at them, high as a battery terminal. Walls of midget timber stumps flanked both sides of the property and curved around the front, squaring off the main road. They ascended in height to their summits, the two totem poles on either side of the drive. Eagles with eyed plumes and spread wings capped either pole, stacked atop coyotes and snarling war chiefs. By now fungus strung their necks and seeped between their teeth, and the paint had dwindled to sodden chips of blue, green and red. Maude bristled.

She barreled toward the totems, but Meyer detained her.

“You’ll ruin it.”

He pointed. The tracks, of course. Last afternoon saw mild snowfall. The night had been windless, this morning cold and dry. For once it seemed the elements indulged agendas, for the crime scene lay frozen—literally—as it was at Lawrence’s death.

“The entrance is useless,” Meyer pointed. “The force mussed it last night. But you can see the outlines of the buggy.”

They followed the tracks toward the garage—the side compound that housed the buggy in front and horses in back. Maude paused halfway between the totems and stables. “That’s where the servant said Lawrence fell.” A flurry of iced foot- and hoofprints glittered in the snow. A broad packed scoop indicated where Lawrence fell. Stray flakes had dusted over the red smudges.

Meyer raked a glove through them and sniffed. “Consistent color and thickness. Sudden bloodshed here. Let’s backtrack.”

They followed Lawrence’s last steps to the garage. The police hadn’t made it as far last night, so the crime was…discernible. Faded buggy tracks and hoofprints from Lawrence’s arrival; fresher hoof- and footprints from Lawrence’s excursion after. Nothing more.

So what made Lawrence drop dead?

Meyer jotted down as much.

“What if Lawrence was done by a projectile to the head? A small blow in his drunk state would topple him, break his neck.”

Meyer shook his head. “His neck wasn’t broken. And the constable concluded there were no instruments within a fifty foot radius of the fallen body.”

“Tell that to the snow. The officers didn’t breach a ten foot radius of the body, else the tracks would show. Now I’m not one to complain about a mint condition crime scene, but the constable didn’t investigate as he should have.”

Meyer scanned the surrounding evergreens, as if appealing to their better sense. “Maybe the body said it all. No signs of projectile injury, just blunt force trauma from man-to-man combat, notably on the face and neck, and the wound to the right lung. I’m betting that one was the killing stroke, but we’ll see at the morgue this afternoon.”

Maude shrugged and pointed to a seesawing plough of tracks from the side door of the house to garage. “No blood there that I see. Joseph followed in the tycoon’s tracks and, when Lawrence mounted, skewered him to death.”

“The kerchiefed man,” Meyer corrected. “Joseph would’ve been dismantling the buggy. He was already in the complex when Lawrence went back out. Besides, you say Joseph’s such an oaf. He wouldn’t walk footstep for footstep in Lawrence’s tracks, he’d—what, swing from vine to vine?”

They made it to the garage and looked inside the buggy, a red wagon on sledges. Meyer opened the carriage door and swiped a white linen from his satchel over the leather seat. A few pinhead splatters showed on the cloth, dark brown. “Blood from the casino brawl,” he reckoned. “Before Lawrence came here.”

Then he crouched on his hands and knees and swept through the straw. Maude noticed a cluster of shovels in the corner, picked a hoe, and went to hand it to him.

Something quivered in the dark.

Eyes slitted, she crossed to the garage door and yanked it open. White light jetted the garage, blasting the stranger. In his white uniform, cowering at the foot of the horse’s stall, he looked like a spook. She advanced. “Show yourself.”

The man wouldn’t. She trudged forward, hoe in hand. He curled into a ball and teetered on his side with a thwack. Scrambling upright, he whined like a pup. There—weepy eyes, craggy nose, beard.

Maude beckoned the dog-man with her hoe. “Good morning, Joseph.”

Meyer scrambled up, ignoring her. “My name is Detective Cullen Meyer. You may have seen me in town before. We want to know about last night.”

His lower lip rolled out, like a slug.

“You must have been here when the buggy returned,” Meyer said, nodding slowly. Joseph’s stare remained blank, so Meyer continued, “To unhitch the horse? We’ve all heard of your intimacy with Stough’s horses.”

Joseph perked up. Maude sidestepped, cussing, as he stomped past. She patted off her dress and watched him fling two bear arms around a chestnut horse in the back. Its coat shined like liquid, and it rubbed its muzzle on Joseph’s face, licking the moaning idiot smile.

Meyer leafed through his notes. “I have down that Lawrence often rode an American Warmblood. He was probably riding it last night. Is that the warmblood?”

Joseph kissed the horse’s cheek. Meyer reached for the animal, but the groom’s eyes turned rodent. He growled.

“Detective,” Maude hissed. Meyer backed up.

Joseph resumed stroking the warmblood, murmuring, “Yum yum,” as the horse licked him. The other animals whickered in their stalls.

“Yes, pretty,” Meyer mused, scribbling.

Maude smiled through her teeth. “Don’t indulge him. He’s senile.”

“My question is, why would it stay? When riders are unhorsed, especially attacked, the animal spooks and runs. I’m thinking Joseph here trained Stough’s horses to return to the stables. But the darker alternative—”

“Is the sole possibility. This man is an idiot! He’s no trainer, and spooked horses don’t just trot home.” Maude crossed her arms. “At best he can summon them. If he did coax the warmblood back to the stables, then he must have been the man in the mask.”

“If he can’t train animals,” Meyer retorted, “he can’t kill a tycoon!”

Maude rolled her eyes, glimpsing a tool shelf. Stirrups, reins, crops, leaders, and brushes sagged like butcher’s pigs on the wall. She snatched a riding crop, what looked more like a crowbar, from the display.

The core morphed from twangy leather at the tip to metal handle. She pinched. What should have been a pliable shaft was a solid cylinder. More cane than whip, it could break a man, let alone a colt.

She rolled the crop into the back folds of her skirt and returned, smiling sweetly, to the stalls. A few paces from the idiot, she staunched her pride and stumbled full into him.

Joseph cried out as she caught his arms for support, smothering him. But she got what she needed. Under his furs, he was stiff and brawny. Able to pike a man with a leather-topped stick. Meyer pulled her off.

“Damn, Maude. What the hell?”

The warmblood kicked and brayed as Joseph trembled into its mane. That’s how they left him, Meyer dragging her to the back door.

“If this is how you treat witnesse—”

“I told you,” she snapped, flicking him off. “The ape did it. He’s a bona fide Goliath under those furs. And,” she added, extracting the crop, “He did it with this.”

Meyer pinched the crop between thumb and forefinger. “Stough must’ve used this to break the foals.” He stowed it in his coat. “I’ll consider this. Now let’s try the other staff.”

They came to the threshold of the stables when he stopped her again. Ahead, the East side of the house sprawled at a ten o’clock angle. Between the side door of the house and the garage backdoor was a diagonal tunnel in the snow. She’d seen it outside, Lawrence’s bloodless tracks. Up close, they looked like the rampage of a drunk shovel. A stampede of them.

Meyer squatted.

“Footprints.”

“Of elephants, maybe.”

“No. One man’s, and that’s Lawrence.” The detective rose and wrapped his scarf over his face. “For warmth,” he added acidly, and stepped in a distinct groove in the snow. His foot fit. He processed awkwardly across, buffeted by the wind, but Maude saw that he was right. While the tracks were laid at staggering intervals and the snowbanks around them uneven—a leering gait—the footprints were singular and rhythmic. Joseph couldn’t have followed Lawrence.

Meyer hopped onto the wraparound deck and entered the house. Rolling her eyes, Maude hiked up her skirts and followed through the drifts.

Ankles numbed so they cracked like toothpicks, she swung through the side door. Voices lilted in gooey cadences somewhere ahead. No doubt Meyer’s smalltalk. A bearskin—of course—sagged underfoot. To the side was a parlor of leather chairs and a billiards table of crimson felt rigging. The cues glinted in file, not a mote of powder to the tips. There was a pine-plank desk, over which shelves of calfskin ledgers rotted. Nothing struck her in particular about the room, so she followed the sound of feigned—fine—manners.

Navigating squat rooms and shoulder-width halls, she found her partner in the kitchen, chatting up the red-haired cook in white, who was mincing root vegetables by the hearth.

“I always knew he was a special boy,” the cook was saying, punctuating his sentences with the thump of the cleaver on the cutting board. “Knew him his whole life. Just nine years old, Stough brought him to the mine, had him watch the steam engines at work. Well the kid, he asked ‘How come that gear goes that way and not like this?’ and got Stough to reconfigure the whole thing better than it were before. Little Lawrence was real smart.”

He pinched his eyes, sniffling.

Meyer made a note and signaled Maude. “Oliver, this is my assistant, Miss Maude Frances.”

The cook turned and greeted her with watery eyes. Meyer rejoined with more questions about the deceased while Maude scanned the kitchen.

Again, nothing unusual. The fire was well-stoked. A pot of beans simmered over it, ticking every so often as bubbles vented little pockets of pepper steam into the kitchen. A two-tiered table held saucepans and kettles on the low shelf and various ingredients on top—cuts of beef still thawing, turnips, potatoes, leeks, garlic, onions, a bowl of marinade. She sniffed and decided not to sniff again.

“So,” Meyer said, “We heard earlier that the driver hasn’t been in?”

“Marvin? He retired,” Oliver said, plopping a metal spoon into the pot. “That was last July. Never got much use. Town’s so small and Stough—Jonas, mind you—never took caddies or footmen. Like a real miner. Later Lawrence would get Marvin to drive to and from the lake. Stough had a dock on the Yellowstone, twenty miles out. Marvin would spin the kid in the family dingy every summer while Stough managed the mines. He’s—”

“Already telegrammed,” Maude said, picking a nub of carrot off the table and chucking it. “The constable’s to pick him up by afternoon.”

Swabbing his eyes, the cook returned to his work. By the wash basin were crumpled napkins, white doilies, table cloths. She picked through them, wondering if one of the linens was Lawrence’s, and why she might at all care.

Red. The napkins were smeared red.

She flagged one in the air for Meyer to see. He squinted, then stared. The cook turned. He laughed.

“I see you’ve discovered my secret. I’m a very untidy man. Still haven’t delivered those to Florence—the housemaid. I guess those are stale and stiff by now, past washing.”

“Care to explain the blood on these napkins?” Maude asked.

“Don’t gloat,” Meyer mouthed. “He isn’t the killer, and if he is…don’t gloat!”

Oliver thumbed the stains. “Could be blood. Lawrence got himself in another brawl before dinner. His nose was only half together, bleeding all over the place. Florence would’ve tried piecing him back together, he would have told her ‘Go to hell.’ You know how boys are.” He paused. “Else it was cow’s blood and beets, the beef stew from last night. Or red wine. Lawrence was fond of his wine. Or—”

“That’s enough,” Maude sighed, balling the napkin. She tossed it with the others. “You mentioned this Florence woman. Where can I find her?”

Meyer’s Grin of Affability chipped. “I think Miss Frances means to thank you for your time.”

“She’s probably boxing Lawrence’s room,” Oliver said, meditating on her as she walked out. “Wait!”

A damp, meaty hand caught her elbow. She jerked away and turned.

The cook was cringing up the stairs. “Florence can be difficult. Served and governed the Stough family for generations, came from East to keep with Jonas and Lillian. They three got along, but she doesn’t take to outsiders.”

Maude squirmed under his breath. “I can handle an old bag.”

“Just—” He knuckled his mouth and glanced furtively side to side. Lowering his voice, “She and Lawrence fought. Day and night. Fixed those shudders there to keep the sound in.” He nodded.

She saluted.

Up the rickety stairs was a hallway. Balustrade on the left, overlooking the living room and foyer, and bedrooms on the right. All doors shut. Maude paced the hall, admiring the carpentry, the antlered sconces of styles olde, and found an opening at the end.

A ghost was packing laundry inside.

No—it was a gaunt humpback woman, gray tufts spurting through her white drawstring cap. Trunks splayed over the black hardwood and mock oriental. Boots and furs crammed one, books another. Her fingers puffed at the joints like fat white spiders.

The woman kept loading. “Young Miss,” she croaked, “I don’t believe you’re the inspector. Which means you’re trespassing on Stough property.” She yanked off her apron and made as if to whip Maude with it.

The latter held up her hands. “I’m the lucky assistant. I’m sweeping the upstairs while the real attraction makes his debutante in the kitchen. You’re Miss Florence?”

The maid harrumphed and clawed the sheets off the bed.

“I have some questions for you,” Maude said, tapping her foot.

“I don’t take breaks,” she grumbled. “You see, the master, mistress, and master junior are all dead. Means I have to pack up this shitshow myself so your employer—Benjamin, is it not?—can make his quaint little nest in the wake of their corpses. So, by your leave.”

Staring down her nose, Maude crossed over to the writing desk. Frost covered the iron lattice, but she could still see the fringe of firs and pines between the Stough and Finch properties. Ahead of her lay the totem gates and below her five o’clock would be the Stough front door.

“Lovely view,” she mused. The maid jostled her, crumpling papers from the desk into a spare briefcase.

“Master Lawrence would watch the sunrise where you’re standing.”

Maude craned her head to the left, toward East. Through the fog of her breath, she was staring directly at Finch property. “Sounds familiar,” she muttered. An upstairs bay window on the side of the Finch house peeked over some baby pines, to Lawrence’s window. Directly West. “Liar,” she breathed, and pulled away.

“Pardon?” Florence rose, hand on hip. “Miss, I have work to do. Kindly leave me to it.”

Maude held up a finger. “One question. Your alibi for last night.”

“You think I waited up for Lawrence?” Florence stood as upright as her hump allowed. “His mother isn’t cold in the ground, and he’s gambling away the late master’s fortunes! I heard him come in, hollering and banging the furniture. I was still gathering the mistress’ belongings.” She slapped her hips. “Now I’m packing up Lawrence’s.”

“How did you like working for the Stoughs?”

Her shoulders slumped. “I watched Jonas grow up. Then he married Lillian and moved out here. He discovered the mine, sent for her. I followed and helped raise Lawrence.” She continued to her work, this time softly. As if more fragile than the baubles she wrapped in tissue.

Maude closed the door as she quit the bedroom. In the kitchen, Meyer and Oliver were yucking over a stew that seemed to loose all the pepper in India into the air.

“Meyer, I—”

Joseph barreled in, sucking his lungs full. “Yum yum,” he roared, grinning.

“So,” Meyer continued, sobering at Maude’s entrance, “seeing as you served Lawrence in his last hours, what was he like then?”

Maude sneezed. Were they not discussing anything while she was gone?

Joseph scampered by with a wooden bowl, bumping her. She glowered.

“I might’ve been surprised at all the blood and bruises,” Oliver replied. “But Lawrence was always drinking and fighting. Especially the last few days, after his mother’s death. I served him some soup—this recipe, actually.” He dipped his fingers into the swill.

“That’s tasteless,” said Maude.

“Are you kidding?” Meyer mouthed, eyes watering.

“I mean scavenging a dead man’s leftovers.”

Oliver laughed. “The Stoughs were wealthy, but you can never indulge wastefulness in these parts.

“Anyway, Lawrence came back from the casino pretty banged up. I cleared his first plate and returned with second helpings, but he was gone.”

“I’d love a spoonful,” Meyer said, tipping off Maude. She inched forward and tasted. Greasy and gritty, like chicken fat and gravel.

“It was Stough’s favorite. Miner’s taste,” Oliver said sheepishly as she spat into the wash basin.

“Yum yum,” Joseph said, wolfing and slurping down chunks.

* * *

When they left in the coach, she relayed her discovery about the Finch house. “This morning Priscilla mentioned watching the sunrise. But the only window of the Finch house that directly oversees the Stough plot faces West. If Priscilla actually watched Lawrence that night, then she was watching for him. Only perps spy like that.”

“Please,” Meyer laughed. “Priscilla? She wouldn’t hurt a fly. Besides, weren’t you listening? Her husband was up for a promotion from Stough. Prospectors take what they can get, it’s a compulsive thing. First you point a finger at Joseph, now Priscilla!”

Maude watched the cabins reel past. Tucked under the snow, they looked like burial mounds. “I’m citing oddities, is all. You haven’t identified anyone.”

Meyer looked ruffled at that. “How about Florence? No one likes her. She’s terse and mean.”

“I’m terse and mean. Florence is more dour and lumpy. But she had a connection to Jonas. She might not have played well with Lawrence, but I wouldn’t if I shared a rhyme scheme with that pantywaist. Plus, Finch described a large man. Even if the figure by the garage had been a woman, Florence is too old and small to fit the description. She didn’t do it.”

Meyer cocked an eyebrow. “Fine. So we have…”

“Blood on the napkins. Priscilla’s lie. The crop.”

“I won’t ignore those, but they’re silly. I’m not sure Oliver had anything to do with the murder, or that it even was a homicide.”

“How is it that every time we dig into a case, you get more clueless as we go?” She slammed the plush seat. “You at least got the recipe, right?”

“Hmm.” Meyer chewed his tongue. “What is that, that extra… hmm.”

Maude licked her teeth and spat over the side. “Leeks. God. Just because they have to clear the house doesn’t mean they have to put it all in the pot.

* * *

Benjamin Stough was waiting at the precinct, a lanky young dandy at twenty-three, with brassy suspenders, orange furs, and lady hands.

“Meyer, my man. Mauve, lovely as ever.”

Maude retracted her hand and mopped it on her bodice. Meyer nodded for her to recess while he briefed Stough on their advances so far.

As local law, they were obligated to catch all killers. But Benjamin wanted things wrapped like a haberdasher—deft, with a bow. If anything he was less agreeable than Lawrence, for the latter had been raised off his father’s manual labor. Both boys reaped the fruits of privilege, but Benjamin’s was old money and brassy skylines. He’d trained to Cable after the telegram of Lillian’s death reached his Chicago flat. He was staying at the ramshackle boarding house in the square and had come straightaway with local law to the crime scene last night. Otherwise, Maude would’ve dragged him straightaway into lineup. He was innocent of foul play, if only this time.

But she wouldn’t wait to hear him prattle. She had an investigation to shoulder.

* * *

The casino was empty. A few day drinkers hunched over the counter, gulping like trout at the light that played off the liquor bottles. A couple card and roulette tables scattered the floor and a raised stage with a yellowed piano and crates for chairs ran the back wall. In all, the building pitted cozy saloon with table diversions, so men could unwind then whore their savings, leaving giddy and penniless.

“You,” she said, beckoning the nearest busboy. Cable was small enough that any given miner or gent could spot her in a crowd. She told herself as much as he scampered through the shudder doors. He returned from the back with a squat, bald man in a checked waistcoat.

“Miss Frances,” said the owner.

“Please. What business did Lawrence Stough have here last night?”

Leo’s head twinkled, wet as a porpoise. “I don’t know about business, Maude.”

“Then let’s talk debt. How much did he owe?”

“Talk to the acting bartender, Joe. Or Gerard, better yet.” He gestured a man with a black eye, slouched over a whiskey canter, holding a stack of cards before his cronies.

“He the high roller?”

Leo nodded. “He and Lawrence were all-time rivals. Lawrence owed Gerard money, kept racking up the tabs every night. Gerard kept threatening to collect, but Lawrence was the only fellow who’d ever play with him.” He lowered his voice. “Gerard’s known for cheating, but Lawrence had the money, was addicted to the games. Odd sort of codependency.”

Eyeing the gamblers, Leo led her to the back. A dumpster squatted out the alleyway door. In it were splintered cylinders of wood. Maude picked one of the pieces and brushed the frost off. It was a varnished dowel. “Bar stool?” she guessed.

“What’s left of it. Gerard claimed his due, as usual, and Lawrence—must’ve been the booze or the wake of his mother—lost it. They put this place in shambles. Gerard and his buddies busted up Lawrence pretty bad. Joe pulled the fight and cut everyone off. Then Lawrence walked off and got himself killed, I guess.”

“Eloquent. And Gerard?”

“He stayed.”

She spun the dowel. Funny, the hard cherry lacquer and brittle pine interior. A sleek façade to a coarse thing. “How long’s he staying?”

Leo glanced over his shoulder. “I can keep him here if you want.”

She patted her hair in the back, smiling grimly. “He’s not going home to anything, I can see that. I’ll come by if we need more. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

She returned to the precinct conference room and barged in without knocking. “I’m off to the morgue. You coming?”

Meyer disengaged from tête-à-tête mode and gestured toward Benjamin. “I’m in the middle of business with Mr. Stough.”

“I’ll help you with that. In the morgue.”

The morgue stood off the station, a nook of log walls with a surgical table in center. Rip and repair tools rattled in their drawers with each draft of wind. She unlocked the door to the resting place of the last true Stough.

He lay on the metal bier, the broken, welted bits of him that they’d found. His face resembled a rotted pumpkin—the lantern face once chiseled and notorious, now an imploded purple sore. His lips, cheeks, and tongue swelled in dark pox marks like scar tissue, and his neck and chest were bruised sickly shades of black and green.

Meyer came in with the crop. While he reviewed the medical examiner’s chickenscratch deductions, Maude snatched the instrument and held it tip-first over the rib wound. She stuck it into the dark gummy crater. It squelched easily through the gap.

Meyer sighed and yanked it back out, nose wrinkled. “Let’s measure diameters.”

While he ninnied away with numbers, consulting the trusty seamstress’ tape measure. Maude returned to the deceased’s head. Something intrigued her about the marks. Where the jawline sprouted from the neck was a bloated mess of bruises that, upon closer scrutiny, was a hairline abrasion. A stripe of rug burn. Easy to overlook, seeing as the entire face was its own oozing lesion, but a susceptible area not to be dismissed.

“Where are they keeping his effects?” she asked.

“What?”

“Lawrence’s clothes. I want them.”

“I want them too. They’re both fashionable and tailored for the climate. But…”

She tweaked a hair off his mustache just for the hell of it and poked her head back into the station to call for the evidence. Moments later, an officer jogged over with a crate that was stuffed over the brim.

She pulled out a fur coat and upturned the collar.

White needles flecked the black mink. She picked one off and cringed as it slivered her skin. Must have been some kind of bristle…What was it?

“What did the cook say to the detective?” she mused.

Meyer coiled his measuring tape with extra care. “Riddles are for children.”

“Wrong. I seem to recall something about a chauffeur, a drunk boy, and a boat.” She proffered her finger, the hemp bristle sticking out like a porcupine quill. “Bring over the saddlebag.”

* * *

“Thank you all for meeting us.”

Maude stood at Meyer’s height, eyeing the lineup of white uniforms. She cursed herself for not noting the uniforms before. It would’ve saved a few hours to have registered that the man in white must have been Stough staff.

They awaited Meyer’s verdict. Joseph, zoned out, Florence at his hip, Oliver in the middle, and—

“Who is this?”

Maude nabbed a petite eggshell of a man in travel suit. He gaped. “I’m Marvin. The chauffeur. Retired? I was halfway to Helena when they dragged me back.”

She nodded to the constable. “Is that correct?”

“Affirmative.”

She let Meyer say it: “Bring him in for questioning.”

Now all three Stough men—the cook, the idiot, the he-crone—froze.

It was Maude who pointed. “Marvin.”

* * *

First the officers questioned him. They always opened, leaving more stumped than enlightened so that the detective could sweep in and tweeze clarity, truth, and all the Sunday school virtues out of the suspect. It was intermission now, Marvin waiting in the conference room. He quivered on the plankboard stool while Meyer prepared his interrogation.

Maude watched the driver from her desk, brooding. Marvin was too small to match the servant’s description. And even if Marvin had been at the Stough’s last night, how did he return to his residence to receive the constable’s telegram, leaving behind no tracks, and double back today, unruffled? And if that were possible, how did he navigate the unplowed snowbanks, heave Stough off a moving horse, and strangle the poor bastard mano a mano without contracting hyperthermia or heart failure?

She returned to the morgue. Meyer soon found her brooding over the corpse. “Thought you’d want to see a criminal put away, then turn in early. What are you doing here?”

“Working up a miracle,” she said. “I’m doubting myself.”

It was the face that struck her. The dozens of other victims she’d seen—miners with botched skulls, brawlers knifed down—never bruised the way Lawrence had. The lips weren’t puffy, but stretched and grey like sardines. And the discolored marks looked less like sub-skin watercolors and more like an overt rash. A purple crust.

Maude prodded it with the butt end of a scalpel. “These aren’t bruises. They’re hives. Lawrence was exposed to foods he’s allergic to.”

Meyer skimmed the examiner’s notes again. “I don’t think so. You can’t even tell hives from bruises, he’s such a mess. And Oliver’s known the kid his whole life.”

“So why would he serve the late master an allergen?”

Meyer’s eyes paced their sockets, mulling her words over. Maude waited for it to crack on Meyer’s face—the truth. She lifted a dead arm and spit on it for effect. She waited for fission, corrosion, something. Nothing happened.

“Corpses don’t react to allergens,” Meyer said. He was slowly understanding.

“Have it your way.” Maude rounded the table, stuck a kerchief in the corpse’s mouth and plied the jaw down. “Smell.”

“Yum yum,” he echoed, cringing. “I’m not doing that.”

Then he snapped upright, grinning ear to ear. Maude felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. They knew who killed Lawrence, and they weren’t the first to find out.

Second place to the idiot. Fancy how he never found that tomcat Mr. Gooblers, but instead sniffed out a killer. Maude’s shoulders flattened. “I’ll take down the posters.”

“What, the Joseph posters? We ruled him out—”

“You did,” she muttered, storming out.

* * *

Joseph gurgled into his mug. The staff were seated in the dining room, minus Marvin. The force had left him at the casino for dinner. Florence was scraping what appeared to be congealed gravy off the naked table while Oliver stoked the fire.

“So,” he said, jabbing a poker into the coals, “What’s to become of Marvin?”

“That’s up to him,” Meyer returned. “He’s a free man.”

The poker froze.

That’s when Maude ducked  behind the attending officers and into the kitchen. She could hear Meyer’s soliloquy as she rifled through drawers of rags and cleavers.

“We realized we hadn’t accounted for a motive. A motive for Lawrence, that is. Why leave the house? Well, a drunk mind dreams up marvels and memories, and endeavors to live them. Why, your neighbor Miss Priscilla Finch has attested to Lawrence’s tendency to recollect on a rampage. It’s possible that, in his reminiscent inebriation, young Lawrence decided on a winter sail. My assistant—” Maude frowned— “discovered haphazard provisions in the deceased’s saddle bag. Among them, a spare hemp jib sheet.

“First we thought the impalement wound, from what appeared to be a riding crop, had done the deed, so to speak. But maybe Lawrence didn’t bleed out to death—maybe all that was a fluke. See, after Miss Finch mentioned Lawrence’s boyhood summers, the rope burn on Lawrence’s neck was only too relevant. While all previous evidence made Joseph the villain, now Marvin was to blame.

“But what about Oliver?”

The cook straightened. “What about Oliver?” he echoed to the fireplace.

“First,” said Meyer, gauging his notepad, “Let’s review Lawrence. He was followed footstep for footstep in the snow. Felled by the crop, accounting for the bloodshed. Killed by the jib sheet. But weakened first by the stew. Lawrence Stough was dead the minute he sat at Oliver’s table.”

The cook turned, scratching his apron pocket. The constable squared him off. Meyer swung a set of cuffs. Maude was leaning on the threshold, having returned from her excursion. She flexed a swatch of hemp rope, the twin of the coil she’d found in Lawrence’s saddlebag. It had faded orange spatters. “It was Oliver in the front yard with the rope.”

Meyer stepped up. “You’re coming with u—”

The pistol whipped into the open. Meyer seized Oliver’s hand and wrestled it high. Plaster exploded as the bullet ripped the ceiling. The men grappled under the shower.

“Get them out of here!” screamed the constable, pointing out the rest of the staff.

Maude found Joseph clutching his armrests. She pried him loose and shooed him through the door, ushering Florence to join in the foyer.

The dining room crashed with grunts and orders, the blasts of shattered furniture and porcelain. Back in the kitchen, Maude nicked a saucepan off the trolley table and, licking the ooze off an apple tart, waited by the adjoining door. She listened for the scuffle to make its way toward the door and, when it did, she rammed in swinging.

Strapping on cuffs was much quieter business once the cook lay drooling on the carpet. When they wrenched him up, twist-tie tassels sticking his forehead, Maude picked up the detective’s soliloquy.

“Who knows if he’s been poisoning Lillian, too? I mean, liver failure? Please. How about history of alcoholism and bulk cases of vodka in the pantry.” She shrugged. “Food for thought.”

“You can’t prove anything,” Oliver slurred, coming to.

Maude challenged him. “Florence,” she called.

The old maid came in, towing Joseph. Maude signaled the constable, who produced a small box. In it, the rag they’d stuck in Lawrence the Corpse’s mouth. She wafted it under Joseph’s nose. “Yum yum?” she asked.

He perked up and nodded in spasms.

She placed a handful of leeks from the kitchen under his nose. “Yum yum?”

“Yum yum.”

She turned to Meyer. “A case closed in only two words? I think I should work for this guy.”

“What I don’t understand,” interjected the constable, “Is why he did it? And what about the false leads, like Priscilla’s strange vigil? Any thoughts, Cullen?”

The detective screwed his lips. “Not tonight.” He winked at Maude. “I’m turning in early.”

The assistant smirked. “Justice is a terse virtue, Constable.”