Sheridan Bell: The Coachman and the Cook

As a librarian, Lash Baumann had a vicious, snarling, sharp-toothed hunger for knowledge. Their story was the same as any librarian’s: they’d been a terror as a child, too curious, too importunate for their own good. The grumpy old grandmother from upstairs, who’d watched Lash and their siblings while their parents were away at work, had taught Lash to read simply to stopper their endless stream of questions. Their family — poor but hopeful and so, so proud of their Lash — pooled money to get them an education, which had gone well until Lash challenged a tiresome professor to a duel and had subsequently gotten expelled for “conduct unbecoming.”

Everywhere they’d gone after, their hunger had followed close behind, always getting them in trouble: trouble with schools, trouble with the law, trouble with deep, ancient powers not meant for comprehension by mortal minds. They had learned everything they could about their world, and when that hadn’t been enough, they had moved on to the next.

A common story.

Establishing a lending library in the world of the sídhe had simply seemed the next logical step in Lash’s madcap trajectory. The sídhe, for their part, took more fiercely to the library than silly bedtime stories claimed they took mortal children in the night — but only once they’d finished balking at the concept of membership fees. They were more puzzled by the queer human knowledge keeper that came with it, but found they would pay any price (including tolerating Lash’s innumerable questions) for access to Lash’s books.

It was a sunny spring afternoon and Lash poured over a wrinkled old tome, caught in the dregs of one of their many research projects. They were attempting, with little success, to pinpoint where the myth of sídhe stealing mortal cattle first originated. They’d traced it back several hundred years and believed that they could trace it yet further, but as they turned the yellowed page, they noticed the glittering, flitting form of their assistant approaching their desk. They held up a finger, kept it up until they’d finished the paragraph, then finally looked at the sídhe girl standing before them.

“Yes, Niamh?” they asked.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Niamh said with a curious look down at Lash’s book. Her gaze lingered, like she might try to read the words upside down. “I finished cataloging the acquisitions.”

“Already? You work too hard,” Lash said in their slow, lazy way. They stifled a yawn. They’d been up all-night reading yet again. “If, at your age, I’d worked at a library, I would’ve finished my tasks early and snuck off to read until my boss expected me back. Or maybe I’d have a nap in one of the reading rooms. Hmm. That sounds rather nice, now that I think about it.”

Niamh’s eyes snapped up to Lash’s face, then widened when she realized Lash wasn’t joking. Her gaze dropped again as quickly as it had risen. “Oh, I — I couldn’t possibly,” she said, tucking a lock of hair behind a pointed ear studded with jewelry. “I mean, wouldn’t that be…rude to you?”

Lash shrugged. “Not if I never found out.”

This stumped Niamh. Her delicate brows furrowed, her nose wrinkled. “I…see…”

Behind her, a chair squealed as someone pushed it back from a table. It drew Lash’s attention, and they cast their gaze over the open reading floor of the library while they waited for Niamh to recover. Sunlight flooded in through the wide windows, dousing all the chairs, sofas, and mismatched tables Lash had amassed for their customers’ comfort. Between and beneath the windows, shelves lined the walls, each stuffed to bursting with the library’s newest books, its rarest books, the books Lash had personally curated throughout their travels all around the sídhe realm.

It being a Sunday afternoon, the place was quiet. A few sídhe nestled in corners and browsed the shelves, but business was slow — Lash’s gaze caught immediately, then, on the man striding with purpose toward the double doors that led to the stacks. He was human, with long dark hair that fell down his back and a crisp-but-dated pea coat draped over one shoulder. He clearly knew his business, passing by the information desk without so much as a glance and slipping quietly through the doors.

Lash sat up straighter.

“Oh! That was the other thing I meant to tell you,” Niamh said, having followed Lash’s gaze. “He arrived with a couple guests about half an hour ago.”

“Half an hour?! Niamh, you should have told me!”

“I know,” Niamh said. The girl, who usually tripped over herself apologizing for things Lash would’ve called minor inconveniences, surprised Lash by showing no remorse. “One of his guests was that human Inspector you don’t like, so I decided to wait to tell you until after he’d left.”

A strange bit of sídhe logic, Lash supposed. They’d lived on this side of Tamarley for years and still weren’t entirely used to it, but the girl was clearly trying to help, in her own way. And Lash did hate that Inspector. “…I appreciate that, Niamh. Has Inspector Zhou gone, then?”

Niamh quite literally glowed at the praise, her latent magic making stars shine in her dark hair. “Yes, Henry just showed him out.”

“Well, then.” Lash shut their book with a cloud of dust and a thud, the latter making Niamh jump. “Why don’t you take my place here for a while? I have a regular to attend to.”

Niamh’s stars dimmed. Though she looked as if she’d rather do anything else, she nodded and took her place at the front desk while Lash all but skipped to the stacks. Once through the double doors, the atmosphere changed drastically. The air cooled, stilled; the volume from the reading room cut off abruptly as the heavy doors swung shut. Unlike in the reading room, the ceilings here stood low, the walls surprisingly narrow, though you couldn’t even see the walls for the shelves.

Lamps made from magic replaced the cheerful sun; they hovered in the air, followed behind Lash when Lash delved into the labyrinthine array. Lash was rather proud of the lights, which they’d commissioned from Niamh’s father, a clever lightsmith: they dimmed when the room was still, followed movement when it was not. They bypassed the need for open flames and saved customers the trouble of having to carry lamps with them. Plus, thanks to these lights, Lash had caught more than a few couples canoodling in their stacks. That, without fail, ended with a lifetime ban.

Best of all, the place smelled of old books, of leather and parchment and cloth.

Lash wound their way idly through the empty aisles until they spotted their prey three steps up one of the courtesy ladders, stretching toward a book that remained just slightly out of reach. Lash approached as quietly as they could.

“If it isn’t the great detective, always hard at work!” they said suddenly, making the man on the ladder curse and fumble and grab at the shelves to keep from falling. Lash laid hands on the ladder to steady it and grinned up at their favorite customer even as he scowled back. “And always observant except when absorbed in a task.”

There was little heat to his glare, and his flushed cheeks made it rather hard for Lash to take him seriously. He sighed, seeming to guess as much, and climbed down. “Hello to you, too, Lash,” he said in resigned greeting. “I didn’t realize you’d returned from your trip.”

Detective Henry Sheridan Bell spoke softly, kindly — it was never anything less than kind, with Henry. Lash hadn’t seen him in weeks, but that mattered little. Henry was constant, unchanging. As always, his hair was a mess. As always, his coat simply sat on his shoulders, the empty sleeves hanging behind him. As always, a smile danced behind his wide eyes, knowing and gentle and sly all at once.

“And here I was afraid you were simply ignoring me,” Lash said with a heavy sigh. “I suppose I’ll forgive you your oversight, friend, but only if you tell me: why do sídhe steal cattle?”

Lash always looked forward to his visits, to his unique insight and the patient way he listened to whatever Lash had to say. Even better yet were the stories he brought with him, scandals and tragedies and heartbreaks. Though pulling them from him was harder than clipping a cat’s stray claws, Lash had gotten quite good at it over the years of their acquaintance.

Henry raised an eyebrow and glanced up, checking for lights hovering near them, conscious of who might be listening. “Do sídhe steal cattle?” he replied, lowering his voice to a whisper.

“No, of course not. At least, not any more than mortals do,” Lash said, slow and thoughtful. “But haven’t you ever wondered where those stories came from?”

“Hm,” Henry said, accustomed enough to Lash’s quirks to be able to proceed without context. “Perhaps some sweeping illness befell our cattle centuries ago, so we created a story to explain it in a time when science could not. We fear what we don’t understand, and all that. That seems to be a common origin for these kinds of misconceptions.”

“I think you have the right of it,” Lash said with an approving nod. Again, they sighed. “I only wish I knew when it began, what the illness looked like, whether it was regional or widespread…”

“A new project of yours?” Henry asked with an amused twitch of his lips.

“Oh, just an itch I’m trying to scratch,” Lash said. “But what brings you here, and with the pettish Inspector Zhou, no less? A new case? More mysterious beasts? Or did you simply come to return my compendium?”

“You refer to O’Dubhghaill’s Compendium of Intelligent Magical Beasts?” Henry guessed.

Lash rolled their eyes and pushed their glasses up their nose. “No, the other compendium.”

Henry frowned — just a small thing, a slight furrow appearing between his brows and the corners of his lips turning down into a pout. Lash always regretted teasing him in the immediate moments after; he was too sweet for it by far.

“Actually,” he said, “I borrowed an anthology on dream magic while you were gone. I thought you might’ve been referring to that.”

Lash blinked. “Really?”

“No,” Henry said, deadpan. He met Lash’s gaze, held it just long enough for Lash to realize the teasing had been turned on them, and then he returned to perusing the shelves. “I gave O’Dubhghaill’s Compendium to Niamh while you were away.”

Lash let out a loud snort. “And here I was, feeling sorry for teasing you again. I’m a fool,” they said. “So what was it, then? Your mysterious vanishing beast?”

“Ah,” Henry said, scratching his nose self-consciously, still not meeting Lash’s eye. In Lash’s experience, that meant it was a particularly compelling story, one full of clever secrets Henry didn’t know how to recount. “I’ll tell you about it later. For now, I’ll simply say that I had a close brush with the Uí Anghau.”

Lash whistled. Even more compelling than they’d thought, then. “That’s old sídhe folklore, older than stolen cattle or Myrddin the Wild. Older than all the things I research, actually. Perhaps as old as the White Dragon himself,” Lash said, talking more to themself than to Henry, now. They tapped a finger to their lips. “No, not quite that old. It was, what, the fourth century when he crossed to our world? The third?”

“You’re my consulting historian. You tell me,” Henry said.

“I know he tangled with the Uí Anghau at some point, but I can’t recall if that was before or after…Bah! I’d have to comb these shelves for hours to refresh my memory well enough. The further back you go, the harder it is to find information, but I’m sure you saw that with the Uí Anghau. There are some things the sídhe just won’t talk about, and their dragon and those shady dealmakers sit at the top of the list,” Lash said. “Or maybe they simply won’t talk to us because we’re human.”

“I had no trouble getting information on the Uí Anghau,” Henry said with another small smile, this one private, likely over some inside joke with himself.

“Of course you didn’t,” Lash groaned. “I don’t know how you do it, especially when you’re so bad with people. You should’ve come with me on my Myrddin hunt. Maybe I would’ve had some luck.”

“Is that where you were last week?” Henry asked, glancing at Lash out of the corner of his eye.

“Don’t look at me like that. You have all your little mysteries that keep you entertained; mine just happens to be half a century of wild gossip about a hermetic madman who speaks with gods and summons spirits.”

“Wishing you all the best in your search,” Henry said in a tone that plainly implied he wouldn’t be joining any future searches. He pulled a book from the shelves seemingly at random and examined the spine.

“You must despise me, to be able to help me and choose not to,” Lash said mournfully. They eyed Henry’s book, then belatedly looked around and realized what aisle they stood in. “sídhe physiology? This must be for another case. Is that why you brought Inspector Zhou here?”

Henry nodded. Dissatisfied with the book, he reached to set it back on the shelf. “I wouldn’t call it a case. More like a puzzle, but one that’s mostly finished.” He turned a sly smile on Lash, looking at them from under long lashes. “If I take it apart for you, do you think you can piece it back together?”

It was a sour challenge presented in a sweet wrapping; Lash recognized that much immediately. “I already know you’re clever, Henry. You don’t need to prove it,” they said, resting a hand on their hip. “But yes, I’m sure I can.”

“It began like this,” he said still in a whisper. “While I was on my way here this morning, I came across a body in the road.”

Lash’s eyes widened. “A promising start.”

“It was the body of one Lady Móirín Armagh, a wealthy sídhe widow with an estate in the human city. I went to inform the police, and while I was speaking with the Inspector, two men came in, each in a panic and each claiming to have killed Móirín Armagh.” Henry paused, then, to let Lash process. Before they could interrupt with any questions, he added: “Before you ask, they arrived independently of each other and were, in fact, both entirely unaware of the other’s existence.”

“Ah,” Lash said. “I begin to see the shape of the puzzle.”

“Indeed,” Henry said with an especially wicked little smile. “You can imagine how this vexed our dear Inspector.”

Lash matched the expression. “So, who were these men? What were their stories? How did they claim to have killed her?”

Henry held up a finger. “The first was the neighbor’s coachman, who claimed to have run her over.” He added a second finger. “The second was her cook, who claimed to have poisoned her.”

“But you found her in the road, so it was obviously the coachman.”

“Was it?” Henry asked, infuriatingly.

Lash made an impatient noise. “Well, had the body you found been run over, or had it been poisoned?”

When Henry’s smile widened, he very much resembled the proverbial cat that had gotten the cream. “That would make the game far too easy. Let’s say that any injuries she may or may not have sustained are irrelevant to our puzzle.”

“I should’ve known you’d make this harder than it needs to be,” Lash sighed. “Give me the rest of the pieces, then. I can’t very well solve the puzzle with only the edges.”

“I’ll begin with the coachman. Last night, he was called unexpectedly to pick his employer’s daughter up from a party across town. You wouldn’t know this, living among the sídhe, but the other side of Tamarley saw a terribly dense fog last night. Visibility was already low, and the coachman admitted to having had a few drinks. As he left in something of a hurry, he noticed a tall silhouette in the road ahead of him. He veered to avoid it, but not quickly enough: he hit something and heard a terrible, shrill scream ring out in answer. When he looked back in his mirrors, he saw a person-sized lump lying in the road. People were shouting, shadowy figures were flocking to the body.

“He thought to stop, but terrified of being arrested and more terrified still of being fired, he kept on. The carriage had been damaged in the collision, though, so he had to slow significantly — by the time he reached his destination, his employer’s daughter had moved on to another party with ‘an old family friend who would see her safely home.’ He returned to his employers to explain the situation; the daughter is a bit of a wild thing, so they’re used to this behavior. When, by morning, no one had come to arrest the coachman, he realized they must not have been able to identify his carriage in the fog. He covered it with a canvas, hiding the damage it had sustained in the hit, and returned on foot to the scene of the crime — it had all happened down the street from his employer’s estate, in front of Lady Móirín’s front gates. There was no body, but blood stained the cobblestone. He noticed a commotion at Lady Móirín’s estate, a flurry of people coming and going, and asked the gardener what had happened. When the gardener informed him that Lady Móirín was missing, he realized what he had done and went directly to the police to confess.”

As if the two of them were still in primary school together, Lash raised a hand.

“Yes, Lash?” Henry asked, amused.

“Did the coachman hit the daughter?”

Henry shook his head. “The daughter was across town at the time, and besides, she returned safely home while the coachman was at Lady Móirín’s.”

Lash shrugged. “It was worth a guess. Do we know for a fact that Lady Móirín was actually out that late? Isn’t that odd? Was she alone? What was she doing?”

“We do; Lady Móirín’s kind is nocturnal. She lives alone, aside from her staff, so she often ventures out on her own in the evening. May I please finish, now?”

“Yes, yes. Please continue.”

“The cook, then,” he said, pausing to see if Lash might try to interrupt again. “He claimed it was an accident. Since first entering Lady Móirín’s employ some three months ago, he’d found her rules frustrating. She’s very particular about what she eats and when and, more importantly, about how her food is prepared. As an example, she won’t eat professionally butchered meats. She makes the cook butcher everything himself. Last weekend, he’d gone out to the country to choose a pig for doing just that — he’d been expecting it yesterday, but for reasons outside of his control, it never reached him. Lady Móirín has high expectations for her Sunday breakfasts, so suddenly finding himself without a pig, the cook decided Lady Móirín wouldn’t notice the difference and bought some prime cuts from the local butcher. He made her bacon for her breakfast this morning, which the maid took up and left within her chambers — without disturbing the bedroom, mind you. Not a morning person, our Lady Móirín.

“Shortly thereafter,” Henry continued, “The butler entered the kitchen and found the cook with his platter full of bacon and his packaged meats. Horrified, the butler explained the reason for Lady Móirín’s rule: in the human world, butchers use salt to cure their meats. Lady Móirín, being sídhe, cannot consume salt. It’s the same as a human’s deadly food allergy. The cook and the butler hurried upstairs and found Lady Móirín’s chambers empty, her cat finishing off the half-eaten bacon. They alerted the rest of the house and, at the butler’s urging, the cook left to inform the police what had happened. He stopped back in the kitchen to dispose of the salted meats, first, but found the entire place in disarray, his platter of bacon upturned and scattered across the floor. Having no time to waste examining that further, he left for the police station.”

Henry watched Lash process the information. “So,” he began, after a minute, “Which of the men killed her?”

Lash considered the problem, then further considered Henry’s smug smile. Though it seemed too easy a question, they had to ask it: “Did anyone see Lady Móirín after the coachman’s accident?”

“No one at the estate saw her or even heard her return, no. But it isn’t unusual for her to be out until the early morning or even all night.”

“Where did you find her body? Was it near the estate?”

Henry hesitated, then shook his head. She lives in the north; I found her halfway between her estate and the river.”

“Was she coming back from Customs…? No, that wouldn’t make sense,” Lash mused, thinking aloud. “What happened to the body? Not the one that you found, but the one that the coachman hit.”

“An excellent question, Lash. What did happen to the body?”

Lash rolled their eyes. “You said there were people around, so it would make sense someone cleaned it up, I suppose.” Changing tactics, they said: “Clearly, there was some piece of factual information you needed to solve the mystery, otherwise you wouldn’t have brought Inspector Zhou here, of all places. What books were you looking at with him? Did it have to do with sídhe physiology?”

Henry’s smile widened. “A good thought, but I wasn’t looking at books with Inspector Zhou.”

“Then what—” Lash stopped, let out a frustrated sigh, then gestured around them at all the books on biology. “Ah, it had to do with the bacon. That’s why you’re here. You have a question about the salt. You said the bacon in Lady Móirín’s room was half eaten. Did the cat eat it all, or did Lady Móirín have some of it?”

Henry opened his mouth to reply, but Lash waved a hand to stop him. “I know, I know,” they said. “That’s a question I need to answer. How long passed between the maid bringing up breakfast and the butler and cook rushing upstairs?”

It was a small success in the face of Lash’s floundering, but Henry frowned, genuinely confused at how Lash jumped all around the problem. “Let’s say an hour.”

“Hardly an answer that instills confidence, Henry. Well, an hour. If its owner wasn’t around, we can guess the cat would’ve taken five or so minutes to finally choose to eat the bacon, assuming it’s a well fed and well behaved cat and not particularly clever.”

“Go on,” Henry said. He watched Lash through narrowed eyes, like he was trying to decide where Lash might be going with this.

“Depending what else was on the plate, it’s likely it would have gone for the bacon, first. There wasn’t sausage, was there?”

Henry shook his head, kept his expression carefully neutral. “Just the bacon, eggs, and some fruit.”

“Citrus?”

Again, Henry hesitated, trying to guess Lash’s thoughts. “Orange slices.”

“Well, cats hate citrus. If it had been strawberries, that would have been another story.”

“Would it?”

“Strawberries have a chemical profile similar to nepetalactol, the attractant in catnip,” Lash said, like it was obvious. “But back to the bacon. Cats are surprisingly slow at chewing and tearing dry meats like bacon or jerky; I think it unlikely a cat could have gotten through half a serving of bacon on its own in only fifty minutes. It was the cook.” When Henry opened his mouth to reply, Lash again cut him off. “Wait. How many slices of bacon?”

“Only two.”

“Ah,” Lash said, drawing the word out and tapping a finger against their lips. Above them, the lights began to dim, so Lash waved their arms until they lit again. “In that case, it might be possible. The coachman, then.”

Finally, Henry let out the laugh he’d been holding back. “No.”

“Damn. The cook, then. But how?”

“Come with me,” Henry said, putting his latest book back on the shelf and heading toward the stairs at the back of the room, the ones that led to Lash’s private reading rooms. “You’re not asking the right questions, Lash. What happened to the pig?”

“How should I know what happened to the pig?” Lash complained.

Henry shot an amused look back at them as they climbed to the upper landing. “Who was the daughter’s family friend?”

“Is that relevant?” Lash asked, rethinking the entire problem in light of this new information.

A hallway stretched on ahead of them, doors to the various small reading rooms lining the walls on either side. Henry took a few backwards steps down the hall, watching Lash as he asked, “Who tipped over the platter of bacon in the kitchen?”

Lash waved a hand to interrupt him. “Fine, if I’m not asking the right questions, how about these: Why did you bring Inspector Zhou here? And for that matter, Niamh said you arrived with a couple people. Who was the other?”

Despite having none of Niamh’s light magic, Henry’s face lit up with surprised delight. “Now those are the right questions,” he said, grinning as he knocked at one of the reading room doors. Lash found themself smiling back; it was impossible not to get caught in Henry’s excitement, even if they had no idea the reason for it. “I also would have accepted ‘Was the body you found dead?’”

Henry pushed open the door to the reading room and Lash peered inside. In the far armchair sat a middle-aged sídhe woman wearing a disheveled, muddy gown that may once have been elegant. Her face was red and blotchy, her eyes half-shut in her exhaustion. A newspaper sat in her lap, a steaming cup of tea at her side, and she smiled warmly up at Henry when he entered.

“There you are, Mr. Bell,” she called to Henry in a warbling voice.

“Lady Móirín,” Henry greeted. “How are you feeling?”

Lash stared. “Lady Móirín?” they repeated.

“Much better, thanks to you,” Lady Móirín told Henry. “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t helped me.”

“I assure you, it’s no trouble. Allow me to introduce you to my friend Lash Baumann; they run this library.”

“Oh! Then my gratitude to you as well, for your hospitality,” Lady Móirín said.

“Happy to help,” Lash said automatically, looking to Henry for explanations.

“Lady Móirín has had quite the day,” Henry explained cheerfully. “She was nearly hit by a carriage when leaving her estate last night, and then she found her neighbor’s young daughter all alone at a party across town. The girl dragged her all over and when she finally returned home this morning, she tried to grab breakfast from her kitchen only to have an accident with some salt.”

Lash raised an eyebrow. “Salt? I was told that could be deadly.”

“Oh, it can,” Lady Móirín assured them. “I only had a bite before I realized, then I tried to get to Customs as quickly as I could. But I lost consciousness on the way and would have surely died if it weren’t for Mr. Bell’s help.”

“She was trying to get back to this Tamarley,” Henry explained, “As it turns out, all she needed to recover her strength was to be back in her own world. Given that your library is so close to the Customs point, Inspector Zhou and I brought her here to rest. Given an hour or two more, she should make a full recovery.”

“So, what did happen to the pig?” Lash asked under their breath.

“Ah,” Henry said with a knowing smile. “It was hit by a carriage.”

“Oh. The shrill scream.”

Still smiling, Henry stepped toward Lady Móirín, who had begun to fall asleep even as they talked. She roused herself at his approach, then shook his hand when he offered it out. “It’s been a pleasure, Lady Móirín,” he said. “Lash here will keep you company and help you with anything you need while you recover.”

“I will?” Lash asked, then sighed. “Yes, I suppose I will.”

“You’re leaving again so soon, Mr. Bell?” Lady Móirín asked.

“I’m afraid I must,” Henry said. He patted his pockets, checking several before he finally pulled out a pen. He held a hand out for Lady Móirín’s newspaper, then when she handed it to him, scribbled something hastily in an empty corner. “The address of the butcher shop on my street. It’s owned by a sídhe man, so the place is kept meticulously salt-free. He freezes the meat with magic — everything’s a bit more expensive than you’ll find elsewhere because of it, but I think you’ll find the price worth it.”

“I’m in your debt, Mr. Bell.”

“Aren’t we all,” Lash murmured, quiet enough that only Henry could hear. When he shot them a petulant look, Lash smirked and winked.

“Do call on me if ever you need a friend,” Lady Móirín continued, oblivious to the exchange.

Henry gallantly kissed the back of her hand, then turned to Lash. “Before I go, I promised a friend that I’d bring her younger sister some books on magic. May I…?”

Lash waved a hand. “Borrow whatever you want, just see that Niamh makes note of it.”

“Thank you,” Henry said. “Now, I’ve got to go tell a coachman and a cook that they did not, in fact, commit murder. Inspector Zhou left the enviable task to me.”

Lash saluted him lazily, then waited until he was gone to drop into the seat beside Lady Móirín. “Say, Lady Móirín. By any chance, have you ever met a man named Myrddin?”

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