The Hexologists: A Tangle of Time

by Josiah Bancroft

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

From one of the most exciting and original voices in fantasy comes the second book following the adventures of the Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, as they tackle a case that could redefine the nature of magic itself.

As the nation’s foremost investigators of the paranormal, Isolde and Warren Wilby are accustomed to bumping up against things that go bump in the night. They have made quite a name for themselves as the Hexologists: detectives of the uncanny, the monstrous, the strange. After a decade of wedded bliss and dozens of fantastical adventures, there is little in the world that can still surprise them.
 
But when a famous artist dies under suspicious circumstances, Isolde finds herself investigating a murder that may not have happened, and a crime scene that seems to shift beneath her feet. Not one to be easily thwarted, Isolde is compelled to take greater and greater risks in pursuit of her elusive answers. Meanwhile, the laws that govern magic appear to be breaking, and those cracks are spreading to the everyday world.
 
The mystery will carry the devoted duo to seedy underworlds, enchanted gardens, and subterranean military zoos. Old friends will come to the Wilbies’ aid as they infiltrate secret societies, battle vicious imps, and flee from a pack of venomous wolves. Equipped with Isolde’s hexes, Warren’s muscle, and an enchanted bag full of magical relics, the Hexologists will have to risk life and limb to unravel the riddle at the heart of A Tangle of Time.

 
For more from Josiah Bancroft, check out:

The Books of Babel

Senlin Ascends
The Arm of the Sphinx
The Hod King
The Fall of Babel

The Hexologists
The Hexologists

Release date: September 9, 2025

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 368

Sample

While this wasn’t the first time Isolde Wilby had broken into a shop, it was perhaps her most spontaneous invasion. Typically, she had a plan, a goal, and an urgent reason to flout the law. But on this occasion, she was being propelled by feelings that were far more potent than discretion or self-preservation or common sense. She was acting out of guilt, a punctured conscience that was, tellingly enough, unpricked by the present felony.

Isolde tried to rationalize her recklessness. The unlocked door could be taken as tacit invitation. It was a place of business, after all—a public showroom. Although presently unlit, it seemed only reasonable to assume that guests were generally welcome. The doormat said as much. Legally, they were on sound footing. “A breeze could’ve just as easily blown it open,” she assured her husband, even as she struggled to suppress a smirk.

Isolde was as slender as an exclamation mark and made a similarly emphatic impression. Her short, dark hair, which she had squandered hours styling, was taking advantage of the rain to pursue its natural preference for quirking tangles. She held the shop door cracked in a manner that might suggest to the uninitiated that she was still making up her mind about whether or not to proceed. But her spouse was under no illusions in that regard. Warren knew his wife well enough to recognize when a decision had been made. She was not vacillating; she was merely giving him a chance to prepare.

And if Isolde were a punctuation, then Warren was a page of unbroken text: a sizable block of a man whose physique discouraged casual inspection while also secreting surprising depths. Warren’s ponderous auburn brows arched in amusement. “Already outlining our legal defense, I see. ‘We weren’t trespassing, Your Honor. We were invited in by a sociable wind.’”

The hour was late. Both floors of the narrow storefront were dark. Behind them, a milky-gray summer downpour berated the streets. A jaunt plowed down the flooded lane, lashing the parked sedans with ashy mud like slip flung from a potter’s wheel. The Wilbies huddled beneath a sign that read RAULT’S FINE ARTS. The gold leaf that had once trenched those letters had flaked away, leaving behind colorless ruts.

In an effort to keep the rain from running down his spine, Warren pinched together the lapels of his tuxedo jacket, holding them cinched under his chin, a pose that he suspected only made him appear more roguish, as did the conspicuous carpetbag that was tucked under his arm. A flash of lightning splashed their shadows across the entryway, completing the tableau of a burglary.

He sighed, the broad yoke of his shoulders first rising, then rounding with acceptance. “All right. We’ll have a look. But remember, we have a dinner reservation at nine. Let’s try not to dawdle.”

“Right you are, dear. Just a quick poke about, then we’ll be on our way.”

Warren chuckled. “You always say we’ll be quick.”

Iz rose onto tiptoe to kiss him on the chin. “And you always convince me to linger.”

Before the storm had drenched her in rain-suspended soot, Isolde had looked like a flapper on her way to a jazz club. Her short dress, comprising tiers of black tassels, embellished each twist and turn of her hips. While primping for the evening, she had flitted about their bedroom, hunting after stockings, trying on headbands, and walking through spritzes of scent. With each step, she animated the fringe of her dress like a matador flares his cape.

Still fiddling with his bow tie, Warren observed the hypnotic swishing of her hem with casual delight that soon grew into a more pressing desire. Warren’s charge was considerably more gentle than a bull’s, and Iz made no effort to elude him. For the Wilbies, a simple change of costume was often as effective as a wedding veil at refreshing their awe for familiar sights.

There was a moment when it seemed they might not make it out the door in time to attend the play. Neither had been particularly troubled by the prospect.

But having satisfied their ardor, they collected themselves, found a hirable car, and settled into their seats in the off–High Street playhouse with enough time to inspect the program before the evening’s entertainment commenced.

Warren swatted the illustration of the show’s star, a handsome man with an aquiline nose and a divot in his cheek. “Oh, I always wanted dimples as a lad! Why, there was a boy at school, Nathaniel Demeray, who had the most mesmerizing dimples. How the girls swooned! I used to bite the inside of my cheek trying to make a dent. It didn’t work, of course. Just made me look like I had something stuck in my teeth.”

Patting her husband’s leg, Isolde answered, “Your cheeks have beautiful dimples; they just aren’t on your face.”

“Ms. Wilby!” Warren chuckled. “You know, Felivox said that the critic from the Berbiton Times, Ms. Annalina Eustace, absolutely castigated the production.”

Isolde fanned herself with her program. “Oh, Eustace would give her own mother one star. And be right for once.”

“Well, Johnny, my veg man, loved it. Took his missus. Said he laughed so hard an usher came and shushed him. Which is fair, because Johnny laughs like a—” Before Warren could finish, the houselights dimmed and the orchestra launched into a lively overture.

Warren had been pleasantly surprised when Isolde had agreed to take in a show. As a rule, she disliked the theater, loathing in particular anything that brushed against the genre of mystery. She found the whodunits and hair-raisers beyond tedious. They always relied on cheap narrative devices and unlikely conveniences to deliver what the author could not: namely, a compelling twist. Warren had assured her the show he had in mind was without even a whiff of intrigue, though it was chock-full of mischief. The Crooked Croaker had been widely praised for its memorable melodies and giddy antics. The story centered upon a charming surgeon who was secretly afraid of blood and who fabricated increasingly elaborate excuses for having peers and nurses (and in one case, a custodian) perform his operations in his stead while he tap-danced around with a drip bag stand for a partner.

Though a merry farce, the play still did an admirable job of exploring the lengths that certain persons were willing to go to—undersigning suffering and even the loss of life—just to preserve a fragile but psychologically essential facade. Isolde had particularly liked the fraudulent doctor’s solo, performed on the roof of the hospital in front of an immense full moon. The lyrics of that composition had given a glimpse into his motives, which were predictably self-pitying but amusing nonetheless. Indeed, by the end of the play, Isolde found herself guffawing right along with everyone else when the charismatic surgeon was forced to operate on a wounded prince under the watchful eye of his royal entourage. The sham surgeon, after failing to pass the scalpel to the prince’s bodyguards, high-stepped out an open window and plunged to his death with a droll yodel.

The curtain call went on for a quarter of an hour, as the standing ovation inspired an encore, during which the lead reprised the song “Hand on Heart, Heart in Hand” while a chorus of his mutilated patients sang behind him, still dressed in their gory hospital gowns. Roses were thrown. Someone in the orchestra pit opened a bottle, launching a cork and a plume of sparkling wine into the air. The communal euphoria was palpable and seemed destined to carry on late into the night.

Then Isolde casually proposed a short detour before dinner.

There was an art gallery not far out of the way that she’d been wanting to visit. Isolde had only begun to explain her desire to freshen up some of the flatwork in their home, when Warren surprised her by voicing his ready agreement. He confessed that in recent months he had found one of the paintings in their powder room increasingly distasteful. The illustration in question, which featured a rather lurid vision of a black dragon being lanced by a silver-clad knight, had belonged to Isolde’s grandfather, James Vernon Wilby. The patriarch had called the dragon “Morto Bog Watcher,” claiming that the beast marked young children who failed to wash their hands for a nocturnal visit and summary consumption. Warren had been vaguely amused by the piece and its backstory until he made the acquaintance of a real, living dragon himself. Ever since Felivox had become his cooking companion, his eager taster, and his unlikely friend, the fact that Warren’s privy included a depiction of a dragon being run through had felt increasingly crass.

As the jolly stampede of the dispersing audience carried them to the sidewalk, Isolde asked her husband, “So, what would you like to see in old Morto’s spot?”

“Maybe something with ducks,” Warren suggested.

“Why ducks?”

“I like ducks,” Warren replied and, freed from the press of the crowd, offered her his arm.

But the universe appeared to disapprove of the impulse because the rain began to sheet the moment they left the marquee’s protection. Warren’s bow tie wilted and his receded copper pompadour turned flat as an old penny. The delicate fringes of Isolde’s dress clotted into something that might’ve been pulled from a bathtub drain. They’d only trudged a block before Warren suggested they abandon the quest, hail a cab, and make for the restaurant, posthaste.

But Iz would not be so easily dissuaded. She answered at a shout over the drumming rain: “It won’t take a minute. We’re almost there. Just another block or two. Three at most.”

Warren squeezed the carpetbag under his coat. The cumbersome heirloom was more or less indestructible, but also slow to dry when it got wet. “All right, Iz. This obviously isn’t a whim. Why are we drowning in our glad rags? What’s going on?”

Isolde dashed the sodden hair from her eyes, paused to consult a street sign, then hurried on. “A few weeks ago, I brushed someone off, and I regret it. It’s been gnawing at me.”

“I see.” Warren followed her leaping lead over a swamped culvert. “Would you care to let these regrets nibble at me for a while?”

Isolde talked as they tramped, beginning an explanation that she would finish on the stoop of the gallery. Margit Rault, the proprietor of the studio in question, had recently corresponded with Isolde asking for help. Specifically, she had wished to know if working in close proximity with hexes was dangerous. As the city’s foremost investigators of the paranormal, the Hexologists received hundreds of such letters, usually from persons who had inherited a quilt, headboard, or plaque that included a worrisome ward. These concerned citizens wished to know how they had been cursed and what they could do to salvage the tatters of their immortal soul. In an effort to improve the national opinion of hexegy, Isolde had always taken pains to soothe these fretful individuals, promising them that the charmed sigils that puckered their duvets or hung over their pantries most likely promoted pleasant dreams or the freshness of fruit and were not, in any case, demonic bull’s-eyes. And so Isolde had answered Ms. Rault’s letter with well-rehearsed reassurances. It was only as a postscript that she offered to vet the troublesome hex, should the artist wish to provide her with a rough sketch of it.

Isolde’s interest had been piqued when Rault replied that the design was part of a work commissioned by a private citizen who did not wish to see its content nor their own identity disclosed to the public. Feeling a touch annoyed, Isolde had answered the rebuff with a Ward of Disseverment, which she said would temporarily thwart minor hexes. In truth, the hex was about as effective as a no soliciting sign at discouraging unwanted intrusions, but Isolde had hoped its presence would at the least have a placebic effect. Isolde then filed Rault’s letters under a couch cushion, rendering the matter closed.

That should’ve been the end of it, and it might’ve been for a less obsessive mind. As it was, Iz found her thoughts returning, again and again, to the identity of Ms. Rault’s enigmatic patron. While it was true that most hexes were broadly innocuous, some of the more involved sigils were quite powerful and could be hazardous to uninitiated practitioners. The energic reciprocation of some hexes could suck the breath from a person’s lungs, snatch the sight from their eyes, or drain the blood from their hearts.

When Iz relayed these fears to her husband on the sopping gallery stoop, he said, “You described it as a brush-off, but it seems to me you answered this woman’s request promptly and respectfully. I think you might be taking on more than is your due, dear. I mean, do you really think it likely that she would be able to produce a dangerous hex?”

“No. It would be like a first-year piano student sight-reading a concerto and landing every note.” Isolde seemed to be attempting a symphony of her own on the shop’s doorbell. They could hear the buzzer jangling through the plate glass. “What’s more likely is that Ms. Rault’s secretive buyer is some tycoon who has commissioned a Hex of Vigor to hang over his headboard. That’s a pretty straightforward, mild hex, but it’s understandable why her client might not wish to be widely associated with a sigil that originally was used to expediate animal husbandry, and I doubt Ms. Rault is in any rush to be known as someone who subsidizes her art with decorative aphrodisiacs. This could just be a case of people being squeamish about sex.”

“Then why are we here?”

“Because the rats in my head don’t care about possibly maybes. They won’t be happy with questionable odds; they want answerable ends. We’re here so I can sleep at night.” She quit torturing the door buzzer long enough to try the handle. When the latch clicked and the door broke open, Isolde looked to her husband with an impish smirk that made him wish for a sleep aid that was not quite so felonious.

“Perhaps she went home for the evening and forgot to lock up,” Warren said as he followed his wife into the darkened gallery.

Isolde considered the possibility with a quirk of her lips. “Or there could be an intruder.”

“Perhaps there are two!” Warren replied.

The basal lights of the city sky cast the showroom’s hardwood floor in a murky orange light. The deeply framed pieces of art on the wall were widely set, their contents obscured by shadow and protective glass. The air reeked of unhappy plumbing. Folding chairs lay in a chaotic heap against the back wall. A pair of dead potted figs drew the Wilbies’ attention to the placard near the entrance that introduced the collection in blocks of exuberant text that seemed at odds with the warped photograph tacked above. Years of sunlight had bleached the portrait, turning it the color of old bones. The youthful Margit Rault, whose features had been reduced to stark, masklike vacancies, seemed to dematerialize even as they pondered her.

The nature of the art itself, what little they could see of it in the gloom, appeared to blur the distinction between landscape and abstraction. The pieces were generally composed of layers of painted glass, stacked and sometimes interspersed with objects: leaves, dried flowers, preserved insects.

At a whisper, Isolde said, “Rault wrote in her letter that she was ‘just trying to keep her head above the clouds.’ It struck me as a funny mangling of the idiom. Surely, you either keep your head above water, or you try to avoid getting your head stuck in the clouds. But look…” She hiked her chin at an oil painting that was comparatively unassuming among the pieces of layered glass that made up the majority of the gallery’s collection. The somewhat dreamy vision of Berbiton’s skyline had been accomplished with dry brushstrokes and a limited palette. Centered in the sky was a round, pale moon. The spires and penthouses of the capital’s towers peeked up from dense clouds that ran to the edges of the canvas, giving the piece an unfinished look.

“The fog sort of makes the city look like a bride, doesn’t it?” Warren whispered back. “Funny to think it’s just pollution. Then again, a dash of volcanic ash makes a sunset all the more fabulous and a bit of charcoal painted around the eyes makes them shine all the brighter. Perhaps filth is the spice of beauty.”

“A pleasant thought.”

“Don’t see any ducks, though,” Warren replied, and his wife snuffled a laugh.

Finding little to explore in the neglected gallery, Isolde turned her attention to the straight flight of stairs. She drew upon the air with the tip of her finger the circlet of a sigil. When she closed the finishing stroke on her Hex of Radiance, a floating disc of pale blue light appeared before her outstretched palm. She pushed the magic luminary before her as she tiptoed up the stairs, following an arrow-headed sign on the wall that read STUDIO. Warren trailed behind her, his shifting weight enlivening a musical squeak with each step.

The door at the top of the stairs swung into a darkness the streetlamps did not reach, an inconvenience that became a hazard when Isolde’s guiding light went out like a blown match. Isolde cursed at the unexpected failure of her hex as her husband bumped into her and they both staggered into the murk.

She groped the nearest wall in search of a switch while Warren shuffled farther into the dark. He could just make out the edge of a workbench, and beyond it a vertical sliver of light. “I’ll open the curtain,” he said, and rounding the table, slipped on something. With an aborted shout of surprise, he pitched forward, throwing out his arms to catch himself. The accompanying crash sounded like someone had tipped over a dish rack: a commotion full of clatter and violent shattering.

Isolde found the switch. Brass-capped pendant lights revealed an airy workspace, a maze of tables cluttered with tubes of paint, curled like shrimp, and jars or muddy solvents. A pile of colorful rugs hung over the top of a changing screen, one crook of which formed the backing for the posed subject of a still life: a vase full of drooping lilies. The Ward of Disseverment Iz had mailed the artist days before was taped to the wall beside the light switch. Iz had dispelled her own hex. It was an irony she hardly had time to appreciate before seeing what Warren had tripped over.

Or rather, who.

Margit Rault lay sprawled upon a floor that was lashed and speckled with decades of paint, a colorful aggregation to which she now added the tint of her own spilled life.

Her short ashy hair clotted about the mortal wound that deformed the side of her head. Her eyes were open, but unlit by sentience. Her black, sleeveless dress appeared new. A strand of pearls pooled in the notch of her neck.

There had been a struggle. Stools had been overturned. The legs of an easel stood in the air behind a well-worn sofa. In one of Rault’s clutched fists was a trophy: a shirt collar and a tuft of hair.

The puddled blood around her had been broken by Warren’s slipping passage, tracks that recorded the path of his spectacular fall, which had swept from the nearest table crocks full of brushes and a large glass palette. It seemed a miracle he’d not been cut by the debris, which rained from his coat as he pulled himself to his feet. He gasped at the dead woman and his accidental stirring of the tragic scene.

But Iz saw that his were not the only gory footprints. The apparent killer had tracked Rault’s blood about the studio. They were searching for something.

Warren stooped to confirm what he already knew. Touching the woman’s neck, he found her cold. “Dead. A few hours, I should think. We have to call the police.”

“Yes, I suppose so.” Isolde hopped nimbly over the trail of blood, following the red crescent moon of the killer’s heel to the tipped-over easel. The tripod included an affixed backing board, which faced the floor. Isolde lifted the easel just enough to see whether it concealed a mounted work in progress. Observing only a vacant surface, she continued to follow the bloody tracks toward the storage rack at the rear of the room.

“I don’t see the murder weapon,” Warren said, glancing under the nearby benches.

“Perhaps the killer took it with them.” Isolde counted six tall cubbies, each containing several panes of painted glass, leaning one upon the next. The squares of felt that separated the pieces had done an admirable job of collecting evidence. Blood clotted upon the edges of those sheets. The killer appeared to have searched each compartment. “She was dressed for an occasion—a night out. I wonder where she was going, and who with.”

Straightening, Warren discovered that he, in his tumble, had gotten blood on his shirtfront. The lurid stain stood out bright as a traffic light. “Please, tell me you’re looking for a voxbox. Do you still remember Detective Smud’s number?”

Rather than answer his question, Isolde continued to pursue her own line of thought. “She still has her pearls. This wasn’t a burglary. The killer was searching for something in particular… a piece of art—something new. Yes, that’s why they went to the easel first. But they didn’t find what they were looking for, or they did and there was something else, something more.” She again inspected the bloody tracks underfoot. “See here, the footprints go from the end of the shelf back to the start. Foiled again. Then they went to the desk—quickly, urgently. Look, you can see where they came to a halt, shuffled a bit. The killer bent over.” She reproduced the pose herself, throwing her arms out over the bare top. “They swept everything onto the floor.” She considered the strewn receipts, envelopes, and sketches that littered the mottled floorboards around the desk. “They were frustrated. Angry.”

“I suppose murderers aren’t usually known for their levelheadedness.” Warren was having more trouble than his wife overlooking the dead woman. Her expression was so placid, so full of acceptance, and yet the attitude of her body, the gory wound, the fistful of someone else’s hair all seemed to shout, to battle, to rage. The terrible contrast of violence and quiet filled him with a lurching sense of revulsion. He found holding his hand out as a visual shield helped a bit.

When he did, his eye naturally fell to the shrouded bell on a pedestal near the window. Gingerly, he removed the handsewn coverlet, revealing a pair of blue-breasted budgies nuzzled together on a perch. They began to vocalize at once, like children rushing to unburden themselves of an urgent story, one that Warren, sadly, could not understand. He crouched to make himself look as unassuming as possible as he answered them in gentle tones, “Oh, of course, of course. Yes, I know. You poor dears! You must’ve been scared out of your wits. And who’ll take care of you now? Oh, I’ll make sure you find a good—”

A heavy clump interrupted him. Recognizing the slam of a jaunt door, he crept to the long curtains that blocked the front windows and wedged one aside. With his face to the crack, he said, “Well, that saves us a call, I suppose. The police are here.”

On her hands and knees, Isolde looked up from her scouring of spilled pages. “You’re joking.”

“Afraid not. Maybe a neighbor overheard the commotion. But dispatch didn’t exactly send a brigade. There’s just one of them. Quite a fancy ride, though. Those new squad cars look like racing jaunts. He’s looking around, getting wet… Oops! He’s dropped his keys. Now he’s fishing around in a puddle. Oh, he’s found them. Now he’s kicked the puddle. That’ll teach it. My god, is that Broxburn? Rats!” Warren dropped the curtain, sucking a rueful breath through his teeth. “I think he saw me. Of course, it had to be Broxburn. You know I try not to speak ill of people, but that man is an ambling cancer.” Warren trudged back to the spot where he’d lately toppled. He stooped to retrieve the carpetbag.

Though humble in its appearance, that piece of luggage was a portal to a vast storehouse that contained an immense collection of charmed artifacts and magical relics, wonders that had been assembled decades prior by Isolde’s father, Professor Silas Wilby. The satchel, dubbed the portalmanteau, was Isolde’s principal inheritance, left to her after her father had vanished, probably into an unmarked grave. The fantastic repository was guarded by a serpentine red dragon named Felivox, who Warren had bonded with over a shared love of gourmet food.

Opening the satchel, Mr. Wilby spoke into its deceptive recesses. “Felivox? Are you there?”

The dragon’s voice rumbled distantly like a passing underground train. “Time for dinner?”

“No, there’s been a murder.”

“I didn’t know you had it in you!” Closer now, Warren could feel the bass of the dragon’s voice run like a zipper up his spine.

“No, not like that. Though, I admit it doesn’t look good for us. Or our dinner reservation. You may have to console yourself tonight with a leg from the Infinite Goat.”

Below them, the shop door banged. As Warren set the portalmanteau down by his feet and raised his hands, adopting a posture of preparatory surrender, Isolde’s muttering quickened. “Our killer was in a hurry. Perhaps they didn’t have time to finish their search. They might’ve missed something. Where the devil do artists hide their latest work?”

Listening to boots clomp up the stairs, Isolde suffered a questionable epiphany. With no time to deliberate, she seized the wastebasket from under the workbench, carried it to the portalmanteau, and stuffed it roughly inside, saying, “Hold this, please. And best to keep mum. Broxburn has a knack for picking fights, and I wouldn’t want to see you baited into biting off any arms.”

“As if I’m so easily tempted!” Felivox rumbled softly, sounding hurt.

“If I had your teeth, I would be.” She raised her hands a scant moment before the soaked detective stamped into the room, panting like an overexerted dog.

Detective Robert Broxburn looked as if he had recently fallen off a barstool. His eyes were bloodshot, his khaki raincoat stained at the sleeves, and his shirt half-untucked and draping from the cleft of his swollen gut—which seemed an addition recent enough to not have been addressed by the gentleman’s tailor.

Though Isolde would never have called Detective Broxburn a gentleman. She watched him with simmering irritation as the detective blearily absorbed the scene. He squinted at the corpse before turning his attention to her. A nasty expression of delight bloomed on his ruddy face. His sunken chest puffed out like a cock preparing to crow. “Wilby! Why am I not surprised?”

Isolde answered, “I suppose because you have no imagination, and every day is like the last because you peer at it from the monocular of a gin bottle.”

Warren coughed in surprise at his wife’s sniping. He offered his hand to the detective, though the officer gave no sign that he intended to shake it. Converting the bid into a salutational wave, War said, “We’re glad you’re here, Detective. There’s been a murder. We were about to call.”

“I’m sure you were.” Broxburn began to kneel next to Rault’s body, then some kink in one knee seemed to change his mind. Gripping the table edge, he leaned awkwardly over the corpse. “Why’d you do it, Wilby?”

Isolde laughed. “You think I killed this woman, stuffed someone else’s hair and shirt collar into her hand, then tracked her blood everywhere wearing someone else’s shoes? I suppose I must’ve also borrowed their fingers when I left bloody fingerprints just there, also over yonder, and here as well.” She pointed as she spoke. “And then, having thoroughly pollinated the room with the evidence of someone else’s crime, I waited here for the body to cool and the police to arrive.”

“I expect you did.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not as smart as you think you are. You killed this woman, heaven knows why, then staged it to look otherwise. But you needed help to move the body.” Broxburn straightened with a grunt, and hitched up his drooping trousers as he waddled closer to Isolde. “You left and came back with your husband because you needed muscle. You expected him to do the dirty work. That’s why he’s got blood on him.”

Isolde, having quickly abandoned a posture of surrender, now crossed her arms. “He fell.”

The detective’s bottom lip jutted wetly. “That’s what all the battered spouses say, Wilby. But all right, I’ll play along. Why don’t you tell me what you’d like me to believe happened here.”

“Oh no. That’s why I left the service. I got tired of doing your job for you.”

“Is that one of yours?” Broxburn pointed to the pinned sigil near the light switch.

Isolde sighed. “Yes. I sent it to Ms. Rault. We exchanged a few letters in recent weeks. I expect they’re around here somewhere.”

“Letters? What about?”

“She was afraid. Seems like she had every right to be. I was dismissive of her fears. I consider myself partly responsible for this terrible result.”

“If it’s guilt you’re feeling, we can certainly help with that, Wilby.” The detective produced a pair of handcuffs from one pocket of his trench coat. “You know how this goes. Hands behind your back.”

Isolde arched an eyebrow. “The question is why are you here? Dispatch doesn’t send a de