Murder at the Kinnen Hotel Read Online Free Page A

that someone other than the cook had possibly killed Viscount Brezé. And he’d had his investigation taken right out from under him. He went to the door and stopped there, staring at his hat.
    “Adamat,” Hewi said, “you said that was only the first part of your theory. What was the second?”
    Adamat turned around and gave her a tight smile. “That the success of framing Ricard Tumblar depended in part on the incompetence of the police of the First Precinct.”
    “I see.”
    “I’m thinking now that they depend on a little more than just incompetence.”
    Hewi tapped the bowl of her pipe in the palm of one hand. “Adamat.”
    “Yes, ma’am?”
    “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
    Adamat ducked his head. “Of course, ma’am. Would never dream of it.”
    Adamat left the precinct building and made his way to his favorite cafe just off the public square. He needed someplace he could think, and oftentimes the buzz of a busy cafe gave him just the right amount of useless noise that allowed him to focus on the task at hand.
    What task at hand? he asked himself as he was seated at one of the window tables on the second floor. He had no task. Just a few days at his newest assignment, and he had already been kicked off one investigation by the leading officer and another by the commissioner himself. He should be focusing on how his career could recover from this whole debacle.
    Adamat ordered his tea and stared out the window. He found himself wondering about Melany, Ricard’s mistress. A beautiful girl and, knowing Ricard, intelligent and witty. Who was she? Did she have friends or family in the city, or was she a foreigner, as suggested by her dark skin? In the rush of the afternoon he’d overlooked sending someone to notify her next of kin. Clumsy and inconsiderate of him. He would have to rectify that in the morning.
    Adamat could see out the window and down the street where a city worker was clearing the snow off a scaffold in the center of the square. The middle of the scaffold was dominated by an immense guillotine—a tool of the Iron King that reminded both his friends and enemies who held the power of life and death in Adro.
    The guillotine saw use almost every day for all manner of crimes, and Adamat recalled reading that this particular guillotine had been in service for almost nine years straight. The blade was removed and polished regularly, the mechanisms replaced to account for rust, but the main frame was the original.
    He still remembered reading about the first guillotine in the newspapers when he was a boy. The Iron King claimed it would bring dignity to and remove suffering from state executions. The newspaper had called it “industrialized death.”
    Thanks to the commissioner and whoever was pulling his strings, Ricard would face that blade within the next few weeks. And Melany, his mistress, would be a byline in the scandal that would ruin Ricard’s dreams of unionization.
    Adamat, ever the good public servant, would be expected to bury his powder mage theory and quietly follow orders. Perhaps in a few years his obedience would be remembered and he’d receive a promotion. Granted, of course, that he not stir up trouble between now and then.
    That was the system. That was how it was supposed to work for the men and women who held power. Everyone was expected to fall in line behind them.
    Adamat considered himself a quiet man. Even at his age he preferred to spend his free time with his wife than late nights playing billiards at the tavern. He didn’t like attention, and he considered it the duty of the police to do their work with discretion.
    There were times, he decided as he drained the last of his tea, that discretion wouldn’t get the job done.
    This might be the stupidest idea he’d ever considered. This might end his career, or even get him killed. But then what was one man’s career against the life of another? Or against justice for a slain woman?
    He held his hand