Cold blood (first Draft)

Whispers of Corruption

The following day started off relatively calmly, as I was awoken by my wife at the normal time, around 6:45 and walked downstairs to enjoy Breakfast. My wife, due to the mysterious absence of Wilfred, had made us bacon, eggs and a delicious, if slightly overcooked, fish. Mary sat on the opposite side of the table, as per usual, and made herself a clearly noticeable amount more than me.

"Did you sleep well?" She asked, still chewing her food. I responded by saying,
"No, I couldn't stop trying to identify the victim from yesterday. Stop doing that, you're making me sick." From the way her face lit up I could only assume it was someone she hated with all her heart. Then a similar smile appeared on my face, followed by a barely audible chuckle, "it wasn't that Dalton guy was it, you do hate him." I didn't hear her response because Harry knocked on the door with a scene of urgency.

Upon opening the door I saw his face, it was red with little beads of sweat on his forehead. "What is it now?" I asked impatiently. I expected him to be drunk, but he wasn't as he spoke in clear English. "We need you at the station." After that, he was too out of breath to speak. So I invited him inside, "I will go when you go inside and catch your breath." I heard no objections so I welcomed him into the house, sat him down in the living room, and offered him a drink. He only had one drink before refusing the rest as he saw the case as too important to be drunk for." that's unusual normally you would have said yes before I even said the first letter and had at minimum five."
"I'm trying to quit, as you can tell it's going well. Plus this wine tastes off."

So we sat down. I had a glass of red wine and put the fire on as it was a surprisingly cold morning even in the middle of winter. "The entire city is angry. They don't think we want to find the killer, some of them even think we are helping him. Just look at this week's headline!" He showed me a newspaper, which the headline was," Are the police really your friend?" That was one of the stupidest headlines I have ever read. Harry seemed to agree, saying, "I already had low standards for the news, but this?" He followed this up with a question of a more paranoid nature, "You haven't been helping the killer have you?" I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, so I hesitated, choosing my response carefully. "No, I want to see him brought to justice same as you, probably a bit more."

"Hey," I yelled into the kitchen "where's Wilfred?" Both changing the topic of discussion and ending my curiosity as he hadn't returned. "He's at his house" but that was odd.
"He lives here?"
"Not anymore, I gave him the money to buy the house next door and told him to be here at ten am, he should be here in about an hour."
After that little chat was over I stood up, kissed Mary goodbye, went out of the house, and into the fog covered streets.

As I slowly opened the door to the station, I was reminded why I never go here unless absolutely necessary. The reception was a small red room, in the centre was a small wooden desk attended by a barely awake employee just passing the time inside his own head. The rest of the station were desks, the whole room smelled of desperation, but I made my way through the building past the tea stained walls and sick officers.

Harry's desk was in the corner, a small wooden desk made of a dark oak. He picked up a brown file from his desk and started to uncontrollably cough like he was ill, sounds very painful. His face was a deathly pale showing no sign of life an empty soul. In the file was a name is well known throughout all of London, a man who rose to power about three years ago in 1882.

"This will make a lot of noise and, I fear the loss, such a death might hold." The name in the file was indeed William Dalton as I suspected before. He was a reclusive gentleman so I had not spoken to this man except when I went to one of my wife's friend's house for a light bit of reading. He was there, but he spent most of his time in the kitchen doing God knows what.

From what I could tell from that encounter he was tall, had short grey hair, black sunken eyes, and a face that made him look older than he actually was, but any conversation I had with him was cut short and unpleasant, if not depressing. From what I remember I think he was sixty-five years old and a factory owner. He made shoes. From that Harry's suspicion grew, "This was your wife's boss, wasn't it?" Recently, he had hired my wife for help. He treated her as you would expect, but he did something to make her angry.

One day, about two weeks ago, she marched into the house, she was angrier than she had ever been in her entire life. After about four hours of work, it was a rainy day with thick grey clouds blocking the sun. She was called to his office with an important matter according to him. When she arrived, he was making preparations to pay everyone for their work when, just glancing up from his work, he saw my wife in her work clothes. "Do you know why I called you here?" He asked in a strangely excited tone, his grip on the desk tightening with every word. "You have worked for me, for this company, for about three months now. You know the ins and outs of how this organization." Then he paused for a brief moment and opened the top drawer in his hand was a custom-made dagger with a metal dragon climbing the hilt and his initials on the blade. "But I can't have that, you know a lot about us, but what you know is too much."

Or at least that's what she told me.