The priest supplied the answer: “About two-thirds, Inspector.”
“Perhaps seventy men,” concluded Lenoir, “and in a village of this size, no more than one or two shoemakers.”
“Just the one,” the priest confirmed.
“There we are. And do you suppose he could name which men in the village come to him for work boots of approximately this size?”
Kody felt the familiar flush of excitement as he realized Lenoir was right. It wasn’t much, but it was certainly a start, a way to narrow down the field of possible suspects to a manageable size. “Should we measure the boot print, Inspector, or bring the shoemaker here to see it for himself?” His limbs had already begun to tingle with the thrill of the hunt.
But no sooner had he picked up the scent than Lenoir hauled back on his lead. “There is no point, Sergeant,” the inspector said languidly, and he began to pull his gloves on, as though readying to leave.
Kody was momentarily too surprised to speak. The father, though, reacted immediately: he lurched forward, his hands balling into fists. “What do you mean, no point?” His voice trembled with anger, and Kody feared for a moment that he might hit the inspector.
But Lenoir faced him coolly, his expression without pity or shame. “Alas, sir, we cannot find the man who stole your son’s body. It is a fruitless endeavor.”
The father spoke through clenched teeth. “Didn’t you just say you would be able to track the boots?”
“I said you would get further tracking the boots. But not far enough, I am afraid. These boot prints are not of an unusual size, so at least a dozen or so men in the village might fit them. And that assumes that the thief even lives here, which your good priest has insisted is not possible.”
The mother started to weep again, half burying her face in her handkerchief. The father stood rooted before Lenoir, shaking with impotent rage. The priest, seemingly lost for what to do, just stared at the ground.
“But, sir,” said Kody, “maybe—”
“There is nothing we can do, Sergeant.” Lenoir’s eyes bored into him, demanding his silence, and Kody held his tongue. Anger smoldered inside him, but he didn’t dare let it show, not in front of others. That would be unprofessional.
Turning back to the father, Lenoir said, “I am truly sorry, sir, but unless you have some idea of why someone would want to steal the body of your child, we have no hope of finding out who did it. No hope at all.” To the priest, he said, “If you learn anything new, you know where to find me.”
With that, he walked past the still-shaking father and across the churchyard. Kody could do nothing but follow.
Their horses were tethered on the far side of the church, a good distance away from the graveyard. Satisfied that they could no longer be overheard, Kody dared a protest. “Inspector, I don’t feel right about just dropping the whole thing. Couldn’t we make some inquiries in the village?”
“It is a waste of time, as I have told you.” Lenoir tightened the cinch on his saddle; his horse exhaled sharply, expelling a frigid cloud.
“But, sir—”
Lenoir whipped around. “Enough, Sergeant! Use your head! What good is it to chase a dozen suspects without so much as a hint of motive? Would you have me engage the entire Metropolitan Police on the case? Assign one man to every suspect, trace their movements for weeks on end? Who will then patrol the streets of Kennian? You alone, perhaps?”
“Of course not. It’s just that—”
“It is just that you are using your emotions rather than your brain. Of course it is disturbing, what has happened. But it is also an insignificant crime. It is a theft, and a small one at that. It is upsetting to the parents, but what they truly grieve for is their child’s life, which we cannot restore. I will not waste the resources of the Metropolitan Police in what would almost certainly prove a futile effort to recover something that is fundamentally without value.”
So saying, he slung himself into the saddle and turned away, heedless of the cold glare Kody fixed against his back.
CHAPTER 2
Nicolas Lenoir strolled the main thoroughfare of Kennian, hands in the pockets of his long coat, moving at the leisurely pace of a man without purpose. This was not the same as not having a destination, for he had one: the Courtier, a rather grandly titled eating house that he frequented at least five times a week. It was not an overly convenient location; Lenoir lived more than two dozen blocks to the east, in a cramped and disordered apartment that he avoided as often as possible. But the portly cook who presided over the Courtier’s bustling kitchen was the only man in all of the Five Villages who could do a passable impression of steak serlois. Asking for still-bloody beef anywhere else was as good as putting oneself at the mercy of the superstitious butchers that passed for physicians in this city. And though characterizing the Courtier’s meat as filet was perhaps stretching the limits of credulity, at least one did not require a handsaw to cut through it.
Though Lenoir’s step bent to the Courtier, he was in no hurry to arrive there. In truth, he seldom moved with much urgency—had not for years—but especially not in the evening. Though he knew it was irrational, Lenoir could not help feeling that the sooner he arrived at the eating house and took his supper, the sooner his evening would be over, whereupon he would be required to sleep. And sleep was something Nicolas Lenoir avoided for as long as possible.
For one thing, there was nothing more depressing than the morning, and one was never more conscious of the morning than when one woke to it. At least when he did not sleep, Lenoir could imagine that one day bled seamlessly into another, an endless monotony he could plod through without really marking the passage of time. But when he slept, the day ended and thus began anew. And to wake without purpose, without desire or direction, was almost enough to drive a man mad.
On top of this, Lenoir had recently developed an even more pressing reason to avoid sleep. His dreams had become strange and vivid, and though he could rarely recall them in much detail, the quickening of his heartbeat and the moistness of his brow upon waking were evidence enough of their darkness.
When he could remember, Lenoir knew he dreamed of Serles. He would wake to lingering images of her elegant galleries and cobbled plazas, of stylish ladies with billowing silken sleeves and wide bonnets trimmed with lace. Sometimes he would recall a moment in time: his steps haunting the halls of the Prefecture of Police, or passing the grim facade of Fort Sennin. Once he even woke with the tantalizing scent of glazed strawberry tarts in his nose.
Those were the hardest mornings, when Lenoir was confronted rudely by his past. Usually it invaded subtly: the smell of lavender, perhaps, or a sauce that reminded him of caroule. These intrusions he could cope with, for they were fleeting and faded quickly. But when he dreamed, the past barged roughly into his mind and usurped his thoughts, and he would spend weeks in agony, struggling to cast out memories of the city of his birth. It pained him to remember Serles. He shrank from it almost as much as he shrank from remembering the man he had been when he lived there. Her beauty and his youth were lost to him both, and he had no desire to think on either of them.
Nor was Lenoir greatly more enthusiastic about contemplating the present. Kennian was an amiable sort of city, large enough to contain varied society and ample diversions, yet not so large as to overwhelm. But the surrounding hamlets that made up the remainder of the Five Villages were so backwater, so provincial, as to evoke the darkest days of the Cassiterian Empire. Lenoir thought it unaccountably bizarre that the villagers of Brackensvale, Denouth, North Haven, and Berryvine should exist so near the cosmopolitan capital, yet still retain the insular ways of small communities in the middle of nowhere. So when Lenoir grew weary of Kennian, as anyone must, he had nowhere to fly to for a change of scenery. There was simply no other city in Braeland worthy of the journey. He longed to leave this country behind, with its harsh accents and crude tastes, and return to his homeland. But he dared not.