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A Study in Redheads

Written by Bradley H. Sinor and Tracy S. Morris

"Paul, we need to talk!" Paul Kindred, managing editor of the Grantville Times, stifled a groan when he heard that voice. Betsy Springer came toward him at a dead run, her red ponytail bouncing like an excited rooster's tail, and would have collided with him had he not stepped aside at the last minute.

"Hello, Betsy," he sighed. Paul had been hoping for a quiet day. The political hijinks that fed both the front page and the dull ache just behind his eyes had been running at high tide lately, getting hotter as summer approached.

"Hello, Paul! Look, this is important: Rosebud and Watergate all wrapped up in one! We need to talk, but not in the street."

Paul couldn't count the number of times he had heard that phrase. Like the common cold germ, it would get under his skin, make his pulse race and leave him in a cold sweat, and before long he would have a major headache.

He gave Betsy a pleading look, hoping she would at least wait until he got into his office to pitch another hare-brained conspiracy theory story idea. But as Betsy hopped from one foot to another in excitement, he knew that there was little chance for peace.

"Indeed." Paul consoled himself with the thought that if this story turned out to be too wild for the Grantville Times, at least Betsy wasn't opposed to letting him "re-direct" it into the pages of The Inquisitor.

Paul also knew it would only be a matter of time before Betsy would start in on the movie quotes that were her trademark. It seemed like she could remember every detail of every movie she had ever seen.

One of these days he really needed to convince his father, the publisher of the Times, to send Betsy on a "Nellie Bly" style tour of the USE and surrounding areas, just to get her out of his hair. If sending her around the world were practical, he might have considered that.

As they neared the paper's offices, Paul could see Denis Sesma's gangly frame leaned against the front door. Denis was one of the artists he kept on staff to do woodcuts, one of the few who turned his work in on time, if not early. He should have expected that Denis would not be far when Betsy was around. They were a couple, though neither would admit it.

"Good morning, Mr. Kindred," said Denis, doffing his cap the moment he spotted his employer.

"Hi, Denis. Come on inside," Paul unlocked the door and gestured for the two of them to follow him. Betsy whispered something to Denis, who nodded and sprinted away. A few moments later he returned, followed by a skinny boy dressed in a typesetter's apron and a square paper hat.

"If you want to stop the presses, you need to hijack more backshop people than that, Betsy," Paul said. "So what's the story?"

In response, Betsy snaked her arm around the kid and pulled him forward. The boy seemed reluctant, like he would have preferred to hide behind Denis.

"This is Alessandrio . . . Alessandrio?" Betsy looked to the boy with a quizzical expression. "Alexandrio." She said firmly. The boy made a noise of protest but Betsy waved it away with a dismissive gesture. "I like that better. It's more American. Paul this is Alexandria, actually." Betsy began again. "She's from Venice" Hearing Betsy's words, Paul looked at the young typesetter again and realized this wasn't a scrawny young boy, but a girl.

She wore her red-blonde hair in a close-cropped, masculine style, but her overly large, blue eyes made her seem more like one of those Precious Moments figurines of a street urchin rather than an actual person.

"Alex here found something important," Denis said. The younger girl nodded and began to speak quietly in a string of broken English mixed with German, Venetian and Italian. Paul thought he heard the words reading and murder, and the name of a town not that far from Grantville: Hildburghausen.

"Okay, you've got my attention," Paul said. "Let's go in the office."

If it were possible for Alexandria's eyes to get bigger, they did at the prospect of going into Paul's office. Most of the time when an employee went in there it was to be fired.

"Come on, he won't bite," said Betsy, and then turned to Paul. "You better not!"

"Yes, ma'am." He led them into his office and slid into the high-backed chair that had been a gift from his father when he took over as managing editor. "Now, what the hell are you three talking about?"

"I read." Alexandria blurted out.

"Alexandria's father was a printer in Venice. His chief apprentice, Vito, turned out to be a lazy lout; unfortunately he couldn't get rid of him, because of the boy's family's political connections, so Alex had to help in the shop to take up the slack," said Betsy.

"Small fingers." Alex held her ink-smeared hands out so that they could see that she had the nimble fingers that were perfect for setting type. "Typesetting for Papa, that's how I learned to read English and German, besides Italian."

"Unfortunately, her father was killed in an accident a year or so ago and the family business was seized by creditors," said Denis.

Paul could almost finish the story himself. Even though she was trained as a printer and typesetter, there was no way any other printer would take on a girl, no matter how good she might be.

"Alexandria had two choices," said Betsy, waving away the girls protest about the Americanizing of her name "Become a prostitute or hope she could find a convent that would accept her, neither idea was to her liking; so she found a third choice. She sort of reminds me of me in that way."

"I heard about USE and how women have rights to work here," she said slowly, picking her English words carefully. "Only way I could travel was disguised as boy. Took me four months, walking mostly. I had gotten used to having my hair like this, wearing pants and even answering to the name Alexandro, so when you hire me I didn't bother tell you I was girl."

"I only found it out by accident," said Denis. "We were taking a wagon of supplies and the wheel broke. It threw Alex off and knocked him, er . . . her out. When I tried to see if he . . . she, was all right I opened his shirt and . . ."

"I get the picture," Paul said. "But how does this lead to murder?" Paul could feel his right eye start to tic. Betsy often had that effect on him.

"I read!" Alexandria cut in. "Always I read, books, pamphlets, even the type that I set. In library I find books about—what you call them?" She snapped her fingers as she searched for the correct words. Then her eyes lit up and she pointed at Paul. "Serial killers!" She said triumphantly.

"Wait!" Paul sat up straight. "Back up! Serial killers?"

"Yes, I see it in the type! I'm sorry my English not as good as I would like. I read it in the stories I set. I even read the other newspapers we get in here."

Betsy nodded and gave Paul an apologetic smile. "I guess she was reading about criminal profiling at the library, how she got on that I still haven't figured out. But she's been setting stories about a series of strange deaths in Hildburghausen, and began to notice things that look like deliberate arsenic poisoning to her."

As Betsy said this, Denis pulled out tear sheets of the stories and pointed to the pertinent passages. "The victims seem healthy. They eat enough to get fat—there's a clue right there. How many people do you see who are actually overweight anymore? And the poison stays locked up in the body fat. When the poison stops, they lose their appetite and as they get skinny—the poison works its way back into their body and kills them. By the time they die, the poisoner has gotten away."

"And she knows about poisons how?" Paul asked, a number of possibilities running through his head.

"Her uncle was an alchemist," Denis said. "But he was murdered by a client so that he couldn't give testimony before the tribunal."

Alexandria sniffed. "Typesetting is better. Nobody gets pissed at you, at least not that much."

"I saw this in a movie once," Betsy said. "I think it was about the Borgias and how they used poison."

Alexandria pointed to the article on top of the stack that Paul held. "Sickness in Hildburghausen." And here." She pulled a third article out of the stack. "Again and again."

Paul looked from the articles to the two reporters and the typesetter. "You think it was murder?"

"Yes," proclaimed Betsy. "The three of us spent a good while at the library. The symptomology matches."

"Some of them could have been accidental," Paul pointed out, though as he glanced over the articles there was something in the back of his mind that said there might actually be a story. "How do you intend to prove your theory?"

"We read up on a couple of tests, and scrounged what equipment we could. Alexandria thinks she can perform what's called a Marsh test if we can find tissue samples and bring them here to her."

"What tissue samples?" Paul asked pointedly.

Betsy gave him a blank look. "Swabs from dishes, or maybe leftover meals?"

Paul rubbed the bridge of his nose as he realized that the young redhead hadn't thought this through. "To prove anything, you need tissue samples from the actual victims. You do realize that the authorities, not to mention the families, would not be pleased to have you digging up their relatives?"

"That is just gross," said Betsy, "And I wouldn't even think about it unless it were absolutely necessary."

"You may be on to something here." Paul said slowly, "But I think that you three are going to have to be very careful, very circumspect in what you do and what you say. Do you hear me, Betsy?"

"Right!" Betsy grinned. "We won't let you down, Paul!"

"Excuse me, sir," said Alexandria. "You say 'you three'?"

"Yep, you're going with them," he said.

"B-b-but I'm supposed to work," she stuttered. "Mr. Kelly will fire me if I not there!" Kinkelly ran the newspaper's back shop and ruled it with an iron hand, though Paul knew that the man actually had a very soft heart.

"Don't worry about Kelly; his bark is worse than his bite. You're on full salary for as long as it takes to get this matter settled. No matter what happens, you will definitely have a job to come back to. On that you have my promise."

"Oh," she said in a little girl's voice and looked uncertainly at Betsy and Denis.

****

"You may have to be both a boy and a girl," said Betsy.

Alexandria looked up at Betsy with a start. "Pardon me?"

They had arrived in Hilburghausen that morning and gotten rooms at a small inn on the south side of town. It was the sort of place where strangers were the norm, so no one looked at them twice when Betsy, Denis and their "younger sister" checked in.

"It's just a matter of letting people see one thing while something else is going on," said Betsy. "It's a kind of magic."

Alexandria jerked back at the mention of magic, crossing herself and muttering something in Italian as she looked back and forth between Denis and Betsy.

Denis laughed and tore the corner off a piece of paper from the edge of the copy of The Inquisitor that lay on the table. He rolled it up in a ball, showed it to her, then holding it between two fingers, he passed his hand in front of it and the ball was gone. Alexandria's eyes grew even wider than they normally were. Denis smiled then reached across the table, touched her ear with one hand and seemingly produced the paper ball from her ear.

"How?" she stuttered.

Denis didn't say anything, he repeated the move, making the ball disappear, but then held his hand up and turned it around to where Alexandria could see the piece of paper hidden between two of his fingers.

"I let you see one thing, when something else was going on. That's what Betsy's talking about. It's just a little misdirection; you're expecting one thing while I'm doing another. Like they do it in the movies." Denis looked over at Betsy, smiled and ran his finger down the side of his nose; hoping that was the gesture she had talked about in that movie The Sting.

Alexandria laughed and picked up the paper ball rolling it over and over in her hands.

"The fact is that everyone saw us check in with a young girl, so. I doubt anyone else will be paying attention if a young boy is seen wandering around town, listening and maybe asking the occasional question," said Betsy.

"I see," Alexandria said with a mischievous smile as she waved the crumpled paper around. "I sneak around, quiet as mouse, and listen in dark alleys and back corners." She folded her hand over the paper ball, hiding it from sight.

"Exactly," Betsy said. "Do you think you could sneak into one of the victim's homes and get a look at the dishes?"

"It's probably been too long to even try," Denis said. "The first case was three months ago, and the second was a month later. Whatever possessions were left would have been distributed to their heirs."

"You don't suppose that's the connection, do you?" Betsy tapped her upper lip with her forefinger. "The people in the second case. The Fuchs, yes?" she looked to Alexandria for confirmation. "Maybe they bought something that had been in the first home."

"The home of Zedler," Denis said. "That may be the case, but we won't be able to find the connection that way."

"I'm just afraid that the trail, as they say in detective movies, has gone cold."

"They always made this look so easy on the detective shows," Betsy muttered. "Paul may be right. We may have to dig up the bodies, no matter what he said or how gross it might be. We could find out for certain that way."

"And even if this is the USE, our German hosts take a dim view on grave desecration," Denis shuddered. "I have no desire to face a hangman for the sake of a story."

"All right," Betsy said reluctantly.

****

"I hope Alexandria had better luck than we did," Betsy said moodily as she dug into her bratwurst. There were hardly any other people in the common room of the tavern. It was still relatively early; even the tavern girl had disappeared into the kitchen after dropping their plates in front of them. "Do you believe that those guys actually thought that breathing onions would stop the spread of ...