Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights? Page 5

  Qwerty sighed. “The library is gone,” I heard him admit, “and the book is destroyed. Villainy can win against one library, but not against an organization of readers. I have the information that can stop Hangfire.”

  More murmuring, more rattling. “… a good evaluation,” Theodora finished, in the same voice she’d used to make me go to bed early.

  “You haven’t earned a good evaluation,” Qwerty said sharply.

  “I’ll tell you what I’ve earned,” Theodora said, and then she said something else I couldn’t hear, in the quiet tone. Qwerty heard it, though. The librarian now sounded less steady and precise and more frightened and anxious, or perhaps I was hearing my own fright and anxiety.

  “What are you doing?” he cried, and then there was a loud, shattering noise that sounded so close I thought the bottle had broken against my ear. Qwerty screamed, a wild, loud sound he never would have allowed in his library, and then I don’t know exactly what happened next because I dropped the bottle.

  “What is it?” Moxie asked me. “What’s going on?”

  “Let’s find out,” I said, moving to the door.

  “I can’t,” Moxie said. “I need to lie low, remember?”

  I remembered and said so, then hurried out of the compartment and found myself in a narrow corridor, clattering with the noise of the train and full of nobody but me. At either end were sliding doors to the neighboring train cars, and above me were little star-shaped lights set in the sad ceiling. One wall was lined with the doors to the two compartments, and the other with wide, clear windows looking outside. The scenery was slowing, and I felt the clattering of the wheels get slower and slower on the bridge beneath me. The Thistle of the Valley was making its unscheduled stop.

  I rushed to the end of the corridor, each footstep shaky on the shifting floor, and reached a set of sliding glass doors that separated our train car from the next. I expected the sliding doors to be locked, and perhaps they had been. But now the doors were wide open. Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s two police officers, Mimi and Harvey Mitchum, were standing in the prison car, a darker, sterner version of the passenger cars. There were two cells, labeled CELL ONE and CELL TWO, each with a door that looked heavy and difficult to open, but Harvey had opened one, and was now staring grimly into Cell One. I slipped past the officers so I could step into the cell. I did not know what I would find, of course. I wish I had. I wish that trains that are going to become derailed were painted with warnings, or that black dots would appear on the faces of people who were soon to die. I wish the covers of books that I would not enjoy were printed with suggestions to read something else, although the names of certain authors are often warning enough. I wish I always knew when something dreadful was going to happen, because then I would not step into rooms where dreadful things could surprise me.

  The train screeched to a jolty, awkward halt just as I entered the cell. The jolt almost threw me against the wall, but there was something else surprising, too. A smell. Metal, I thought. It smells metallic. Cell One was not much different from an ordinary compartment, with two benches and two racks and a table and, out the window, the dark scenery holding its breath. But there was something else, too. Anything with enough iron in it, I told myself, can smell metallic. Broccoli, for instance. Mackerel. Blood.

  Death was in the room with me, like a bad guest. Dashiell Qwerty lay on the floor, amid the shiny fragments of a broken window. The checkered handkerchief he always carried was next to him, fluttering in the cold wind. His hand was clutched to his throat, where I could see blood spreading in a terrible stain. The librarian’s face had already turned stark white, like the blank pages sometimes found in the back of a book. He did not move, of course. He would never read or move again. Dashiell Qwerty was dead, and standing over his body, trembling in a gray uniform, was the tall, wild-haired figure of S. Theodora Markson.

  We invited villainy aboard, I thought. And now its terrible mess was everywhere I looked.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  This is my story, Officers. I boarded The Thistle of the Valley to take a trip with my friend Moxie Mallahan. I seem to have lost my ticket. I was unaware that either my associate S. Theodora Markson or the librarian Dashiell Qwerty was aboard the train. My friend and I were talking of this and that when we heard a commotion on the other side of the wall. The source of the commotion turned out to be Mr. Qwerty being murdered in his cell. Yes, I noticed that the window was broken. Yes, I noticed that Ms. Markson was in the cell standing over him. I do not know why she was there. I do not know why she was dressed as a train conductor. I do not know anything else that might help with the case. I do not know anything at all. Thank you. You’re welcome.

  The Officers Mitchum took down all this story with a pencil and a lot of frowning and nodding. I felt sick about the whole thing. We were in the corridor of the prison car, with the door to Cell One still hanging open like an arm bent the wrong way, and Cell Two locked up tight. At the very back of the car was a small dull door marked OFFICERS’ LOUNGE in irritating letters, and out the dirty windows the landscape was still halted. The rocky bottom of the drained sea wasn’t any help to me, and neither were the Mitchums.

  “I don’t like it,” Harvey said, when I was done.

  “I don’t like it either,” I said quietly. “The death of a librarian is a terrible thing.”

  “It’s not just a terrible thing,” Mimi said. “It’s a crime.”

  Harvey frowned at her. “Mimi, a crime is a terrible thing.”

  “Not always. Jaywalking is a crime, but there’s nothing so terrible about it.”

  “Jaywalking?”

  “Jaywalking is walking across the street when you’re not supposed to.”

  “I know what jaywalking is, Mimi. But only a dumbbell would bring up jaywalking in the middle of a murder investigation.”

  “Only a ding-a-ling would call me a dumbbell!”

  Now I looked at them. The Officers Mitchum were not good at enforcing the law, but they were very good at arguing with one another. Normally I had no patience for it. With a librarian murdered I had less than no patience for it.

  “Can we please,” I said, “continue with the investigation?”

  Harvey Mitchum wanted to give me a stern look, but couldn’t quite look me in the eye. “There’s nothing to investigate, lad.”

  “Harvey’s right, for once in his life,” said Mimi, who was also looking someplace else. “It’s still too early to make assumptions, but it seems your chaperone will go to jail for a very long time.”

  In silence the Mitchums and I looked over at the only other person in the corridor. Theodora’s head was down and her strange, lengthy hair hung over her face so I couldn’t see it. My chaperone had been this way since the murder had been discovered. She had no more to say than Qwerty did. She just sat there, like a sulking child, while the bickering officers rushed to judgment, a phrase which here means “thought of her as a murderer.” I didn’t know what to think myself.

  “You should at least talk to Moxie,” I said. “She was with me in the next compartment.”

  “That girl won’t be any help,” Harvey scoffed. “You said yourself she couldn’t have heard anything, so she’s not a real witness.”

  “Well, then we’d better find some real witnesses,” I said. “The Thistle of the Valley is full of passengers. Surely somebody knows something about Qwerty’s murder. We’ll canvass the neighborhood.”

  “Canvass the neighborhood” is a phrase which means “ask questions of everyone nearby,” and it is a common practice among law enforcement officials, but the Mitchums frowned like they’d never heard of such a thing.

  “This is a train, not a neighborhood,” Mimi said, “and our uniforms are one hundred percent polyester.”

  “Good point, Mimi,” Harvey said. “We don’t need to be wasting our time with canvas.”

  “Well, I’m going to knock on a few doors,” I said, “and see what I can find.”

  The knock came
right then, at the sliding doors, and over the sound of the knock was another sound. I recognized the sound and I knew who was making it and I didn’t like either of them. Mimi reached over my head and opened the doors for her son. Stew Mitchum had the ability to make the piercing noise of a police siren and was taking loud advantage of this ability now. He cut the siren when he met my gaze, and then just stood for a moment rocking back and forth on his heels and hating me with his eyes. His hair was a mess and his smile was nasty. Last I’d checked, Stew Mitchum had joined up with the Inhumane Society at Wade Academy, and I wondered if Stew had boarded the train just now, when it stopped at Offshore Island, or if he had been with his parents all along.

  “Lollipop Licket,” he said. “Who let you in here?”

  “Stew Mitchum,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “That’s an old question,” Stew said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about my education. I’d worry about your chaperone. She’s trapped, like a spider caught in a web.”

  “Spiders make webs,” I said. “They don’t get caught in them.”

  “I meant a fly,” Stew growled.

  “How in the world could a spider get caught in a fly?”

  “Make all the jokes you want, Snicket. The librarian got dead, and we’re going to make sure your old lady pays for her crime.”

  “She’s not my old lady,” I said, “and she’s no murderer.”

  “Then why was she standing over Qwerty’s body?” Harvey demanded, and I saw Theodora shudder beneath her conductor’s jacket. This would have been a good time for Theodora to speak, instead of shudder. It would have been a good time for my chaperone to clear her name. It would have been a good time for truth, and for justice. Instead she just shuddered, so it fell to me to do the things it was a good time to do.

  “We need to investigate further,” I said.

  Mimi looked at me, and I saw something in her eyes I could not quite define, like a word you’ve heard a myriad of times that you still don’t quite know. It was not the usual look of bickery annoyance I saw from the Officers Mitchum. It was something shaky, or perhaps nervous. “I guess it’s nice you want to help Theodora,” she said. “You’re fond of her, so you can’t believe she’s a criminal.”

  “I’ll believe she’s a criminal if the facts say she is,” I said. “Right now we don’t have the facts.”

  “We don’t need the facts when we have the murderer,” Stew snarled, and pointed a thick, sweaty finger at my chaperone. “In a few minutes this train will be back on its way to the city, where the authorities are waiting. Theodora will be sent to prison for murder, and that’s that.”

  “That’s not that,” I said. “That’s not even half of that. The authorities will want proof that the right person has been arrested. An investigation will provide that proof.”

  Harvey Mitchum gave his family a nervous glance, and then looked at me. “Investigate if you want to,” he said, “but we’re keeping Theodora with us until we sort things out.”

  “Things will be sorted out soon enough,” I said, firmly and incorrectly.

  “They’re already sorted,” Stew growled. “They’re as sorted as dirty laundry.”

  “The authorities will want more than your grubby clothing,” I said. “I’m canvassing this train and I’ll find the truth.”

  “The truth,” Stew muttered, and snorted. One of the truths of the world is that the world often snorts at the truth. It is an ugly sound, even uglier than Stew Mitchum imitating a siren, but still I was not relieved when the siren sound began again and the three Mitchums escorted Theodora to the back of the prisoners’ car, through the door marked OFFICERS’ LOUNGE, leaving me alone in the corridor.

  First I went to the door of Cell Two. It was locked, of course. It’s not a cell if the door isn’t locked. I listened, but without a bottle to help me I only heard my own heartbeat and nothing else, so I went through the open door of Cell One and returned to the scene of the crime. The night air rustled at my jacket as I stepped carefully across the broken glass on the floor. Dear Kit, I am standing in a cell and looking at Dashiell Qwerty, covered in a sheet. I hope your evening is going better than mine.

  Outside the window the dark landscape lay quiet and still, and I remembered that the train had stopped so that another passenger might come aboard and be caught, as Moxie had predicted, like a rat in a trap. I could not help but think that a rat was already on board. Certainly I smelled a rat in the way the investigation of Qwerty’s death was proceeding. Get moving, Snicket, I told myself. Canvass the train. You’ve seen a librarian somebody wanted dead, in a room covered in broken glass. That’s all you need.

  I left the cell. The car was clear. I stepped back through the sliding doors and stood for a moment looking out the window of the train. Offshore Island had no proper train station, just a wide wooden platform from better days, when students would take The Thistle of the Valley to get a top-drawer education at Wade Academy. Now the platform looked cracked and done, with one dim light on a bent pole showing me what was there. What was there was nothing. There was no sign of any passenger, villainous or otherwise.

  I walked past the door to Moxie’s compartment, where she was still lying low, and rapped my knuckles on the neighboring door. There was a scuffle and a metallic clang! as if someone had dropped a soup pot.

  “Who’s there?” came a voice. The sound was muffled, and slightly buzzy, a sound I recognized from my apprenticeship. The citizens of Stain’d-by-the-Sea occasionally wore strange silver masks, with small slits for eyes and a metal filter where the mouth should have been. Some said the masks were absolutely necessary for medical reasons, and others said they were merely superstition. I had my own ideas. People usually donned these masks when a bell rang from the tower of Wade Academy, but I hadn’t heard that signal. Perhaps it had been drowned out by the noises of the train.

  “I asked who’s there?” the voice repeated, and this time I thought I might recognize it, although it was difficult to tell, through a mask and a wooden door.

  “Kenneth,” I replied, thinking quickly.

  There was a short pause.

  “Kenneth who?”

  “Kenneth Grahame.”

  The Scottish author Kenneth Grahame and the title of his most famous and second-best book, The Wind in the Willows, had come to serve as a code between my associates and me. During our investigation of Wade Academy, we had used the name of the author, Kenneth Grahame, to identify who was with us and who was against us. The code worked, and the door opened. My associate was removing a mask and putting on an astonished expression as I stepped into the compartment.

  “Lemony Snicket,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Kellar Haines,” I said. “I have the same question.”

  He closed the door behind me, and looked around the compartment as if a villain were hiding in the luggage rack. He was wearing a long, loose raincoat, like one you might borrow from your uncle or bodyguard, and his hair as usual was tilted into a spike. He put the mask down on a bench, and I wondered why he had been in disguise when I’d knocked. “I don’t think I should tell you,” he said. “You’re the one who said we should be keeping quiet and working against Hangfire in solitude.”

  “Well, you’re not in solitude,” I said. “Moxie Mallahan is on board The Thistle of the Valley. She’s the reason for this unscheduled stop.”

  Kellar fiddled nervously with his spiky hair. “Moxie’s here?”

  “She’s in the compartment next door.”

  “What is she doing?”

  “You’d better ask her yourself, Haines. I’m on an investigation of my own.”

  His eyes searched mine, which I hoped looked less nervous. He put his hands deep in the pockets of his raincoat, like an anxious puppeteer. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it, Snicket?”

  “Did you hear or see anything suspicious,” I asked, “right before the train came to a stop?”

  Kellar shook his head
slowly. “I’ve been lying low since I got on board,” he said. “I’ve hardly heard or seen a thing besides the noise of the train and the landscape outside.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “You look afraid of more than that, Snicket. Something bad happened. I can tell by your face.”

  “My mouth will tell you the rest of it, Haines, but I’ve got to move quickly. You should, too. Hurry up and go to Moxie.”

  “I’m hurryupping,” he said, using a word I’d never heard until I’d met Kellar. He and his unusual raincoat were both out the door in seconds, so I was alone in the compartment when a long, shrill sound startled its way through the night. It was the sound that had interrupted my early bedtime and begun the last chapter of my days in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. It was a train whistle, and with great grinding and complaining The Thistle of the Valley began to move again. I stepped out into the corridor and watched the platform roll out of view. Offshore Island was the last chance, I thought, before The Thistle of the Valley took us all to the city. It was another thing I was wrong about. But the platform was still empty. Has anyone come aboard, I wondered, or was the train stopping another trick of Hangfire’s?

  I was getting curious. I’d almost forgotten. I’d remembered to be sad, at the death of a noble librarian, and I’d remembered to be angry, at the way the Officers Mitchum were handling the case. I’d even remembered to be annoyed, when Stew had imitated a siren, and when Gifford and Ghede had clogged up the corridor. But you cannot solve a mystery simply by being sad, angry, and annoyed. You need to get curious. You need to get curious the way you get curious when you find a piece of something—a coiled metal spring, a scrap of torn paper, a smooth white bone—and you want to know the rest of it. My hand crinkled the paper train in my pocket, and the paper train crinkled back. What is it? I thought. What is the rest? Ornette’s message was part of a mystery. Theodora stealing a uniform was part of the mystery, and it was part of the mystery that she boarded the train. Sally Murphy was part of the mystery, back at Stain’d Station with the strange porter. Sharon Haines was part of the mystery, suddenly appearing in the station, and Kellar Haines was part of it, suddenly appearing on board, and even Moxie Mallahan was part of it, with the cardboard Bombinating Beast that would or would not lure Hangfire to his defeat. Were Gifford and Ghede part of the mystery too? Were the Officers Mitchum? And what about all the other passengers, Snicket, all the doors you need to knock on to find the truth? It was a great number of questions, scattered around my mind like books that had fallen to the floor and needed to be shelved and cataloged. But the librarian is dead, Snicket. That’s the saddest and most terrifying part of the mystery, the part as dark as the landscape outside the windows. Dashiell Qwerty had the information to stop Hangfire. He said so himself, right before he was murdered. He’d learned the truth, and now you’re looking for the truth yourself. But the truth is like a doorknob. You can stumble around in the dark, and when you finally grasp it, you may end up someplace terrifying.