To Live and To Breathe (Could Be #2)

Chapter 36

In the absence of anything else to do, Timothy suggested that they go to the book shop owned by Mr. Cohen. He was in desperate need of something to take his mind off of the pain he couldn't do anything about, and Sam leaped at the idea after learning that Mr. Cohen would allow them to browse as long as they liked if Timothy only swept the shop. He might find a way to help Mr. Webb.

When the cab deposited them near the shop, Timothy realized that he was already beginning to feel the soreness in his right knee and it wasn't even noon. But the revelation only garnered a passing feeling of annoyance because he'd already felt too many things today to feel much of anything about such a reoccurring complaint. He was tired.

Mr. Cohen was glad to see him—and that he'd brought a friend. As soon as they stepped into the musty little shop smelling deliciously of untold adventure, he got up from behind the counter and smiled at Timothy. "I was beginning to wonder when I'd see you again!" he said, then frowned a little as he read his expression. "It's been a difficult week for many. My wife said to me, 'Ezra—I really did not think I'd ever live to see a time when a rash of murders broke out in Thameton, I really did not!' Some of my customers have even begun to complain that I sell penny dreadfuls."

Timothy looked at Sam, and shook his head. He didn't want to broach that topic here; this was where he went to escape the inescapable. "It's a shame," he said vaguely, then limped to the counter and asked if Mr. Cohen didn't have any sweeping that needed to be done.

"As a matter of fact, I do," he said, disappearing into a room in the back. When he returned he handed Timothy the broom and nodded. "Mazel tov."

Timothy mustered half a smile and set to work. Customers came and went, most only stopping at the counter to inquire if Mr. Cohen had the publication they desired. Sam disappeared in the medical section of the shelves. There was something therapeutic in the rhythm of sweeping; the simple was calming. As he swept the dirt into a dustpan he wished he could do the same with all the dirt in the city.

When he was done, he sat down in a well-worn armchair at the end of an aisle and sank into a book whose ribbed red spine had caught his attention. Within moments he was absorbed in the theft of an enormous yellow diamond, and far, far away from the sordid streets of Thameton.

"Timothy," Sam appeared at the end of the aisle, an enormous tome cradled in one arm. Timothy looked up reluctantly. "Do you suppose the murderer is in need of a bloodletting?"

Timothy frowned. "I believe it's the court that will decide that."

Sam disappeared, and Timothy went back to his book. A while later he returned, a slightly dustier and smaller volume in hand. "It says here that martyrs have sometimes changed the course of history."

Timothy looked at him in silence, biting back every cross-grained feeling that pulled him back to Mr. Betteredge's charming adoration of Robinson Crusoe.

"What if we focused on Mrs. Armstrong's death—"

Timothy shook his head, going back to his book. "Unless time brings us a way to see that she was a martyr, all we'll be doing is repeating what everyone else has already said before."

Sam looked as if he didn't appreciate Timothy's practicality, but he disappeared for half an hour more before reappearing with yet another book in hand. Something green this time. "'Cyanide is a well-known poison, with deadly effects within minutes," he read. "Symptoms of cyanide poisoning include spasms of the muscles—'"

Timothy shut the book. Miss Rachel had just begun to express a suspicious disregard for the unknown Mr. Franklin, but that couldn't be helped. "Sam," he said, shoving down his annoyance. "Sam, listen to me."

Sam stopped reading and thumbed to another page as if he hadn't heard. "I was just thinking about Mr. Basken's death, and Mr. Hund described him as having a fit of apoplexy right before he died. Do you suppose—"

"Samuel Paine!" Timothy exclaimed, and finally earned his attention. "It is obvious to me that I am not going to get any reading done so long as you are near books of science, so tell me how I can help."

For a moment Sam looked as if he didn't comprehend what Timothy had just said to him, but then he ducked his head and grinned. "Come on then, if you can tear yourself away from whatever it is you're reading."

Timothy tucked the book under his arm and lurched to his feet. "Something called The Moonstone—a novel. I think I rather like it."

Sam arched an eyebrow as he followed. "I never cared much for fiction."

Timothy stopped, staring at the back of Sam's head like he'd told him he didn't care for breathing. Not like fiction! "I want you to know that you have severely fallen in my estimation," he said, joining Sam at a little table located at the end of the aisle containing science books.

Sam just grinned. "That means I have a higher estimation to fall from."

Timothy hid a smile by turning the page on an open book showing squeamish diagrams of human organs so he wouldn't have to look at them. "If I don't take a mental holiday to the seaside now and then I will explode," he said, trying to figure out what the book on organs had to do with an atlas lying open across from it.

"That sounds messy," Sam replied in a tone that meant he was already absorbed in another scientific conundrum.

"It is." Timothy paused, examining the spines of a stack of three books on another corner of the table. "So tell me what you're thinking of. The seaside was lovely, but it's time to come home now. Make me useful."

Sam pointed vaguely to a set of law encyclopedias occupying the bottom row of a nearby shelf, and Timothy set to work. Together they pored over stacks and stacks of books, attacking Mr. Webb's position from every angle. Sam researched every possible side of the medical question, and Timothy gave himself a headache trying to make sense of Solarium's laws. At the end of the day the only result of their well-intentioned industry was for Timothy to realize he had the spare fifty pence necessary to purchase The Moonstone. But not even that victory tasted as sweet as it should have with the remembrance that Mr. Webb would be tried on the morrow and found guilty.

When Timothy went home, he didn't even try to write.

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Penny dreadfuls were cheap paperback serial stories, and in the late nineteenth century they were blamed for increasing violence in the same way that video games are sometimes blamed today.