My Clockwork Muse by D.R. Erickson

on
murder?"
    "Not a trick of the light," Coppelius said,
"but a trick of the mind." The doctor gave his temple a few taps
with a twisted forefinger and fixed me with a grave look. "A fever
of the mind. A fever that produces not murderous corpses, but
hallucinations and—"
    "Somnambulism," I finished for him.
    Coppelius nodded. "Somnambulism," he agreed.
"Triggered by trauma. The death of your wife ... This business with
the police ... I understand this condition of yours, Edgar. The
police do not, and will not be as forgiving, in any case."
    "I have done nothing that requires
forgiveness," I said feebly. The drug was beginning to cloud my
mind. "You think I boarded a train to the city in my sleep?"
    "If asked, that is precisely what I intend to
say." Coppelius took the vial I had drunk dry and replaced it in
his black bag. When he was finished, he turned and patted my hand.
The clammy feel of his leathery palm made my stomach turn. "For
your own good."
    "For my own good? You mean to tell the police
that I am mad? And that is for my good?"
    "The police think you intended to burn the
entire building down."
    "They think what ?" The drug must have
been affecting my hearing, making it sound as though the police
suspected me now of arson. Perhaps there was more than laudanum in
Coppelius' glass. "For what reason would I be suspected of
intentionally starting a fire?"
    Coppelius stood, bag in hand. "To destroy
evidence," he said. "It is lucky for you that I managed to spirit
you away before you started babbling to them about this ... this
fiend of yours. This dead man you speak of—"
    "Billy Burton."
    "Yes." Coppelius thrust his top hat onto his
head. His coarse gray hair jutted from under its brim like sheaves
of dry wheat. "This dead man should remain our secret." He tapped
the side of his great purple nose. He may have been winking, but I
couldn't see his eye under his overgrown brow. His bulging
vulture's eye merely stared.
    "But—" I started to say, thinking to tell him
that it was Burton who would now be my salvation. The dead one, who
had started the fire, would exonerate me of arson. The living one
would exonerate me of murder.
    I would have attempted to explain this, but
there came to my ear at that moment the familiar sound of tapping.
I did my best to ignore it. It was coming from the sitting room,
beyond the door. When Coppelius gave no indication of hearing, I
smiled at him in my most casual manner. He smiled back. At the best
of times, the tapping was maddeningly insistent. In the company of
others, I found it was all but unbearable. A line of sweat broke
out on my forehead.
    Coppelius scrutinized me closely. "You look
flushed, Edgar."
    I waited to see if the tapping showed in his
expression, that if by some twitch or prick of his ear he might
reveal his awareness of the sound. But he gave no sign. I felt as
though he was having me on, that we were locked in a contest to
which neither of us could admit.
    My eyes never wavered from his. "It is this
business of the evidence that has me agitated," I said.
    I looked around again for my trousers and
finally found them hanging over the back of a chair within arm's
reach of my bed. Grasping handfuls of the fabric at a time, I soon
felt the shape of the laudanum vial concealed within the pocket. It
was still there!
    "Far from destroying evidence," I said with a
burgeoning sense of triumph, "I have preserved some."
    I was about to produce the vial when I
suddenly8212 \f "Times New Roman" \s 12and without any solid reason
known to me—thought better of it. I let my hand fall away and
instead told him about the trowel. I concocted some nonsense on the
spot about how it could be examined to ascertain ownership and
usage. Coppelius was unimpressed.
    " Found a trowel?" he asked in a
mocking tone. " Retrieved a trowel is what the police will
say. In any case, the city is full of trowels, most of them smeared
with brick mortar. Unfortunately, the one you speak of is now