TGIF! Here’s my latest snippet from A Most Malicious Murder — Eddy and Charles are puzzling over a mysterious clue left on the chambermaid’s body (and starting to get on each other’s nerves). Enjoy!

The undergraduates of Christ Church were housed in small but attractive rooms, a far cry from the catch-as-catch-can housing Eddy remembered from his time at the University of Virginia. “A pleasant space,” he said, fighting down a surge of jealousy as he studied the paneled walls and leaded windows.

Dodgson shrugged. “I’m more ap-preciative of the solitude, to be truthful,” he said, waving Eddy to a seat at an ancient oak table that doubled as a desk. “Now, if you can show me what needs to be translated?”

He pulled the paper from his breast pocket, smoothing it on the tabletop. “Does this make any sense to you?”

Dodgson studied the scrawled letters. “Hm. The alphabet is indeed Greek,” he said after a moment. “But the words are nonsensical. It’s as if someone simply c-copied down Greek letters in no particular order.”

Eddy felt his hopes sink. “Damn it all.”

The young man glanced at him, mouth pursed in disapproval. “Really, Mr. Poe, there’s no need to curse.”

Just his luck that he’d attracted an Oxford bluenose. “Dodgson, if you’d had the kind of morning I had, you’d be cursing like a sailor as well,” he said, rubbing his forehead. The hangover, held in abeyance by the need to find a translator, was making itself felt once more. “So this note is nothing but arrant nonsense?”

“I’m afraid so,” Dodgson agreed. “Unless someone is in the habit of sending c-coded messages in Ancient Greek, of course.”

A thought bulled through his headache. Coded messages, hidden meanings secreted behind a cryptological wall. “The words themselves may be nonsense,” he said slowly, “but could the arrangement of them form the pattern of a proper sentence, or whatever served as such in Ancient Greek?”

“Possibly,” Dodgson murmured. “You’re suggesting that this could be an anagram?”

“I am indeed. Can you try unscrambling it?”

“I believe so.” The undergraduate bent further over the desk, rapidly scribbling out combinations. “Yes, I think you’re right,” he muttered, writing out a revised version of the original code. “It appears to be a simple enough sentence—”

He stopped. “Oh, dear.”

“What does it say?” Eddy demanded.
Slowly, Dodgson took up the pen again and wrote five words in English underneath the revised Greek symbols. The two men stared at the translation, then at each other.

Catch me if you can.

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Happy Thursday! Here’s my latest snippet from A Most Malicious Murder from now until release day, just to whet your appetite. This snippet follows on a few minutes after the last snippet, and features Eddy trying to figure out how the heck he’s going to get out of Oxford in one piece. Enjoy!

I’m caught, like a rat in a cage.

Eddy rested his forehead against the door’s smooth wood, his gut aching from more than old wine. It was bad enough that he’d passed out in the same room as a corpse. Now he was trapped in Oxford until the police caught the murderer. Gossip flew on the wind; if the other stops on his tour caught word of what was happening, they could very well cancel his appearances, putting an end to his dreams for The Stylus and his career.

Elmira. He closed his eyes, thumping his forehead against the smooth oak with some force. For two years he had remained faithful to his temperance pledge, the only thing she’d required of him. If she learned of the shameful scene in the pub last night, he might lose his marriage as well as his career.

Or worse. They could arrest him for the chambermaid’s murder, and he would hang.

Eyes still shut, he stared at the pulsing starbursts in the darkness as if they could tell him what to do. Should he throw himself on the mercy of the local constabulary? Admit that he’d staggered dead drunk into the room opposite and passed out on the bed? Could he prove without a shadow of a doubt that he had nothing to do with that poor girl’s murder?

On the other hand, if he did stay quiet and they found out where he’d slept, he might as well sign a confession and march into the jail cell. He wanted to curl into a ball and weep. Tomlinson was useless, Ponsonby was in London and might as well be in Timbuktu, and he didn’t dare call on Elmira. Dear God in heaven, he was truly alone in this.

A hysterical laugh bubbled up in his throat. Not alone, no. How could he forget his looming guardian angels Collin and Furnow? His reputation, his marriage, his very life depended on the wit of two provincial police officers, when what he really needed were the services of—

Dupin. His eyes popped open. One of his greatest literary inventions, C. Auguste Dupin was a detective who had starred in four spine-chilling tales of mystery and murder. In each story Dupin had used ratiocination, or the process of logical thinking, to winkle out the killer.

Granted, Dupin was merely a fictional creation. But the brilliant detective was a product of his own imagination, and thus gifted with certain of his own characteristics, wasn’t he? If he used the same process of ratiocination, surely there was a chance that he could solve this crime himself, thereby clearing his name and saving his life in the process?

Returning to the room’s wooden chair, he dropped onto it. So what would Dupin do?

The answer was immediate—he’d start with the body. But I can’t go back and look at it—her.

Then again, perhaps he didn’t need to. Deliberately he closed his eyes again. The horrible image of the girl’s flayed belly with those crimson symbols carved over it came into view. Blindly, he scrabbled for his quill, dipping it into the ink pot by feel and scribbling the glyphs over his partial poem.

Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes and studied what he’d written. To his surprise, he recognized the symbols he’d scratched out; Ancient Greek letters, arranged in five groups. As if they formed a sentence.

He chewed his lip, trying to puzzle out out the letters. While some of the symbols were familiar, he had no idea what the actual words said. He needed a translator to work out the message. Surely in this center of learning, Tomlinson would know of someone fluent in that classic language—

Tomlinson. Eddy groaned. Ponsonby’s man was supposed to arrive at noon to escort him to the train station for the second leg of the book tour. But if Furnow had already interrogated him about the events of last night, Tomlinson was undoubtedly telegraphing London for instructions on how to handle a writer under suspicion of murder.

Grabbing his coat and hat, Eddy folded the paper and stuffed it into his coat pocket on the way out the door. He had to find Tomlinson, and quickly.

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I’m going to be posting snippets from A Most Malicious Murder from now until release day, just to whet your appetite. This snippet is set a few hours after Eddy has discovered that not only did he drunkenly stumble into the wrong hotel room, but there’s a dead chambermaid on the floor. Enjoy!

“Could you inform me of your whereabouts the previous evening, Mr. Poe?” the watchman asked.

Eddy licked dry lips, trying to think. The discovery of the dead chambermaid would be forever branded on his brain; the gutted figure sprawled at his feet, the metallic odor of old blood heavy in the air, wine-flavored bile filling his mouth as he staggered back, fighting not to vomit it all over the corpse.

He forced himself to calm. “I was an invited guest at a lecture at Christ Church College, where I spoke about the state of American poetry. After which I was taken to a pub. I think it was called the Saddler’s Arms—”

“By whom?”

“By—oh. A Mr. Tomlinson. He’s an employee of Ponsonby Publishing in London.” He watched while the constable jotted down the information. “While there, I’m afraid I may have, uh, overindulged myself, and Mr. Tomlinson helped me back to the Mitre. After that, I don’t remember anything until I was awoken by that poor woman’s scream this morning.”

Memories crowded into his head, making him cringe. The chambermaid’s expression of utter despair, eyes dull and milky. Reddish hair disarrayed from its neat bun, and bruises ringing her throat. He’d edged past the sticky red pool, not wanting to look any longer at her body and the destruction wreaked on her lower abdomen, which had been flayed open like an anatomical illustration.

But his gaze kept returning to the gory opening with sick fascination; the killer had left her skirt flipped up, as if to show off his butchering artistry.

And the glyphs carved into the freckled skin of her belly.

The image had seared itself into his memory. Gorge rising, he’d lunged for the door. It was the purest of luck that no one was in the hallway as he darted across to his own room, especially as it took precious minutes to fumble the key from his pocket and shove it home into the lock.

Once inside, he had sunk onto the bed, shaking like the proverbial leaf. No time at all seemed to pass before he’d heard the first shrill scream from across the hallway. Someone, another chambermaid by the sound of it, had discovered the grisly scene. He knew he should act the part of the innocent bystander; throw open the door, demand to know what was going on. But his body had rebelled, keeping him cowering on the bed until mid-morning.

It wasn’t until someone knocked at the door that he’d managed to force himself off of the bedclothes. The visitor was an Officer Collin of the Oxford City Watch, who explained that there had been an unfortunate occurrence in the hotel that morning and it was his task to investigate the death of one Jane Billings, chambermaid.

Collin was a tall, florid man with pale hair and hard eyes who reminded Eddy unpleasantly of his in-laws. “Hm,” the watchman now said, peering at a small notebook where he had been jotting down the story. “And you heard nothing, you say? No struggles, no shouts or screams before the one that woke you up?”

Eddy dredged up a sorrowful look. “As I’ve already explained to you, I’m afraid I was well in my cups by the time I returned to the hotel.” His imp’s reedy voice piped up, and before he could stop himself he added, “I suspect the girl could have been murdered in my very room, and I wouldn’t have noticed a thing.”

Collin frowned at that. “Odd that you should say that, Mister—” he studied his notebook again, “Poe. Your room is the closest to the room where the murder took place. It strikes me as rather strange that you didn’t hear a thing, even in spite of your, hem, condition.”

Shame caused his face to warm. “As I said before, I was not at my best last night,” he said defensively. “As a result, I heard nothing.”

Before Collin could continue his questioning, another knock sounded. Muttering an apology, Eddy went to the door and opened it.

A portly man in a plain but serviceable black suit and bowler hat stood in the hall. Belatedly, Eddy remembered Tomlinson pointing out the sartorial combination as the uniform of the university’s private police force, referred to as bulldogs.

“Mr. Poe, I believe?” the man said, tipping his hat politely. “My name is Constable Furnow. I’m with the Oxford University Police. May I come in?”

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