The Devil's Evidence Read Free

hand backward to halt the emergence of the other Information Men he had brought with him.
    The canister had arrived that morning wrapped with tangled red and two yellow threads, one bright and the other paler. As near as he could make out from the guide to thread colors in the
New Information Man’s Guide to the Rules and Offices of Hell,
ten fat leather-bound volumes filled with dense, tightly packed script setting out the rules in a layering of clause and sub-clause and counter-clause that had been issued to him to replace his old
Guide
as part of the growing of the Information Office, it meant that several murders had taken place and that the deaths were quick rather than prolonged—no torture or eating of the corpses, at least. He had nodded to himself then, almost relieved to be back investigating murder rather than one of the increasing number of fires that had been burning recently and slightly disgusted at himself for the relief, and put on his uniform jacket and buckled the holster and the gun it contained to his leg. This was murder, and murder he understood.
    Out of the vehicle, he could smell the blood. The scent of it was baking in the day’s growing heat, thickening into veins drifting through the air that Fool felt like he could touch if only he reached out and pressed his fingers together. He moved through it, going first to the corner of the building. There were fresh scratches on the wall, scrabbles under the window that meant…what? Something had clambered up the side of the building to the window, broken the glass, and entered that way. Several somethings, he thought; there were similar marks below each of the three windows on this side. When he crossed the front of the building and looked at the three windows on the other side, he found the same things there. At least six, then, he thought, and finally waved his troops from the transport.
    “You,” he said, pointing to a demon whose name he couldn’t remember but who he knew could sketch, “go and draw the marks under the windows.” He could look at them later, set them side by side to look for hints about what might have made them.
    “You and you,” to two other demons, “go and see if there’s anyone about, anyone who saw anything. Marianne and the rest of you, with me.” Then, taking a deep breath, he led the woman and the remainder of his troops inside, to where the dead were waiting for him.
    Inside, the stink of blood was far stronger, curdled like overboiled soup. It was dark despite the six windows and the gas lamps strung along the wall in fixed brackets. The flames, sputtering, added the scents of burning tallow and wick to the miasma. The glow the lanterns gave out was sallow and weak, even with the flow of gas set at its highest, giving shape to the shadows filling the room rather than banishing them.
    The space that lay before Fool was long, stretching back from the entrance, and he realized that the building was cut back into one of the hills, its rear end burrowing into the earth like a grub. Down the center of its length were two long rows of trestle tables, surfaces scarred and pitted. Wooden racks lined the walls, simple frames filled with folded clothes and piled bolts of rough linen. Needles and threads and large bobbins of twine on stands were spaced regularly down the center of the trestles, knots of frayed twine like old snakeskins gathering dust on the floor under them. Chairs were pushed up under the tables, the spaces in front of them neat. Fool saw that the needles were connected to the table with thin chains, delicate locks threaded through the needles’ eyes and the chains’ links.
    It was a Seamstress House. His uniform came from a factory like this one, all the uniforms did, all Hell’s inhabitants’ smocks and trousers and thin underwear did. Working in a Seamstress House was considered to be a good job because it was generally warm and safe. He wondered if the dead had had a chance to appreciate the irony