Death by Silver (18 page)

Julian took the heavy lock – a padlock, though he knew the basic mechanism could be installed in almost anything – and turned it carefully in its hands. It was enchanted, certainly, and he reached into his breast pocket, draw out the slim piece of ivory he used when a wand was too conspicuous. He leaned forward slightly, shielding it from sight, and quickly sketched a series of sigils. Light played across the surface, and he whistled softly. “Clever.”

Bolster nodded. He wasn’t a tall man, running a little to fat in his retirement. His gray hair was cut in a close fringe across his forehead. “So they tell me.”

“It’s a one-man lock, The key and the lock are sealed to the person – who first uses it? Or is there something more complicated?”

“I believe you can buy it both ways,” Bolster said. “Either the first one who uses it, and that’s the man who pays the money in the shop, or when you have it installed, there’s a metaphysician’s clerk comes round and sets the last sigils. Go on.”

Julian raised his eyebrows. “You’d need to get the key itself and make it a master – nullify the specific link to one person while keeping the affinity for the lock, because I’m sure Chubb has something like that in reserve in case the person who’s linked to it dies or disappears. Or of course there’s blood, you could probably do something with that. Or…” He paused, considering. It all depended on how the enchantment was cast, of course, but the lock was at least partly machine-made, and Chubb had to be able to seal them quickly and conveniently to the householder who wanted to use them. Which meant that the main body of the enchantment, the part the kept the key from engaging unless it was held in the correct hand, was more or less complete, with the modifier tacked on after. That meant that it might be possible to hook a second modifier into that place. And if this was based on a square of Saturn, the most logical correspondence… He reached into his pocket for his memorandum book, quickly sketched the table of Saturn. To gain access to the full magical alphabet, you had to imagine the table as existing in layers; each position was capable of holding four different symbols, depending on the plane chosen, and that meant…

The answer was obvious, the weakness in the grammar clear. He lifted his ivory stick and quickly sketched the addendum, feeling the magic tug at his guts. A spark flashed in the keyhole, and he reached into his pocket for the lock picks he always carried.

“Here,” Bolster said, and slid a larger array across the tabletop. “You’ll probably want the Iron Betty.”

Julian knew better than to argue with Bolster’s professional opinion. He accepted the ring of wires, found the heaviest one with its flat notched end, and slipped it into the mechanism. For a moment, he thought he’d failed, that the enchantment was still effective, but then the hook caught, and he eased the first lever into place. The others followed, and the hasp slid loose.

“You’d have made a devil of a cracksman,” Bolster said. “A square of Saturn, that was?”

“Yes.” Julian hesitated, knowing perfectly well that whatever he told Bolster would be passed on to the fraternity of burglars – but it hadn’t been that hard to figure out, and there were plenty of metaphysicians who’d be willing to tell them the same thing, as well as write the sigil. And he did need to pay Bolster for his help. “There’s a hook for adding the owner’s identity, and the tag is general enough to take a second identifier.”

“Very interesting indeed. To certain folks as are not retired.” Bolster grinned.

Julian smiled back in spite of himself, and slid lock and tools back across the table. “They’ll fix the problem soon enough, you know. Someone’s bound to point out the weakness.”

“Probably.” Bolster restored lock and picks to his various pockets, leaned back as the waiter brought their food and another round of drinks. “So, what did you want from me, Mr Lynes?”

“I’ve had some questions come up,” Julian said, around a mouthful of his pie.

“Oh, yes?”

“First of all, I’m interested in what you know about a mission school in Limehouse,” Julian said. “Mission for the Education of the Employable Poor, it’s called. A Reverend Mr Ellis runs it. Second, I’m looking for a mechanic who would be likely to make copies of a patent automaton – one with a racy subject.”

“That last would be Mick Murtaugh,” Bolster said. “For my money, anyway. He specializes in the sort of toys you wouldn’t want your children playing with, that’s for certain.”

That confirmed what Elisha had said, and Murtaugh’s name had been on Albert’s list. “And is he likely to break my head if I suggest he might not want to violate a particular patent?”

Bolster snorted. “Not if you offer him a few quid to lay off. He’s done that before.”

“Right.” Julian sighed. That was what Albert had said, had expected, in fact, but it still seemed like giving in.

Bolster had a similar look of disapproval on his face, but he shook his head. “Well, it’s his business, I suppose. What was the other thing?”

“Ellis’s mission,” Julian said. “For the Education of the Employable Poor.”

“The poor would all be employable,” Bolster said, “if there were jobs.”

Julian took another bite of his pie, waiting, and Bolster shook his head.

“But that’s neither here nor there, I suppose. It’s not bad of its kind – he’s not bad, for that matter, or so I’m told.”

“What exactly does the mission do?” Julian asked.

“It’s as advertised,” Bolster said. “He takes in kids, girls more than boys, teaches them to read and write a bit, and what they need to go into service. And he places them himself, with ladies that support the cause, so they’ve got a fair chance, that’s the best thing about it, to my mind. He’s got an older couple there to keep the school, both retired from service themselves, so I hear, and a man teacher for the boys and two or three young women graduates who stayed on to teach. Mind you, he only takes the ones that he thinks he can mold – ‘a broken and contrite heart, Lord, is thy sacrifice,’ that’s his motto. And if you give him cheek, or cause trouble, you’re out, first time. He loses half of the ones he takes in the first year. But the ones that stick it do all right for themselves.”

Julian nodded, reading his own distaste for the idea in Bolster’s face. “Is it a day school?”

“No.” Bolster reached for his pint. “They’ve got an old house, and part of what was a warehouse behind – looks like the workhouse, but I’m told it’s not bad inside, and they feed them proper. Only four kids to a room, and no sharing a bed after the first year.”

It sounded depressingly like Toms’, only with manual labor. Julian took a long swallow of his own beer to drown the thought. “So if I were to ask you if a girl from that mission was likely to have helped with a burglary –”

Bolster was already shaking his head. “Not bloody likely.” He paused. “Well, nothing’s ever impossible, but – Ellis has them so trained by the time they leave that they won’t hardly speak to their own mothers for fear of disappointing him.”

“Sad,” Julian said, the word startled out of him, and Bolster nodded.

“It’s better than what they had waiting, most of them, but – yeah. Sad.”

They paid their shot, each scrupulously paying for his own meal, and parted with a handshake. Julian made his way to the omnibus stop, his hands in his pockets, frowning over what he’d learned. Albert’s business should be easy enough to resolve: they’d pay a visit to Murtaugh’s workshop, and that should take care of it. And he’d definitely found out something useful to Ned, if he could just figure out the best way to share it. Perhaps a note, except he couldn’t think how to ask for a meeting without apologizing, and that brought him back to his original difficulty. It would probably be better to stop in at Blanding’s, and see if he could run across him there.

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Mrs Clewett brought up Ned’s Sunday dinner with a note tucked under the side of the plate. “A boy came round with this for you,” she said as she took the covering plate off, filling the room with the welcome smell of gravy. “I can’t imagine who’s wanting you at this time of a Sunday.”

Ned took up the note, his heart lifting despite himself. Julian didn’t observe Sunday as anything but a day when clients generally ceased to pester him. He turned over the envelope, feeling a stab of disappointment at the unfamiliar handwriting.

“Not the young lady, then?” Mrs Clewett asked knowingly.

“I’m afraid not,” Ned said. He slit the envelope and unfolded the note as she went out. With a sinking feeling he finally recognized the handwriting as Victor Nevett’s.

Sarah Doyle, the second housemaid, had been found absent from the house that morning, Victor wrote. At his mother’s urging, they’d given her the morning to return –
Mrs Nevett having some idea she might have taken herself to church without asking,
Victor wrote, with perceptible skepticism – but she was still nowhere to be found, and further investigation had revealed that her clothes were gone as well.

You’d better come take a look round before the police. We’ll have them in tomorrow morning, if I have anything to say about it.

Ned took that last to mean that Victor and Mrs Nevett were quarreling about it. And he’d be expected to step into the middle of it and try to investigate. For a moment he was tempted to go round and try to collect Julian first, but he still wasn’t sure what to say to Julian, and besides, it was unreasonable to feel that he needed armor of any kind to make a simple call on a client.

He turned back to his dinner, but found he’d lost his appetite for it. He managed to choke enough down roast beef to hopefully ward off a scolding from Mrs Clewett and then changed from the sack coat he’d hoped to wear all day into his frock coat and a better pair of trousers.

At the Nevett house, the other housemaid, Jane, let Ned in and showed him directly into the downstairs parlor. Victor and Mrs Nevett were both there, along with Ellis, somewhat to Ned’s surprise; Ned would have thought him still occupied with a clergyman’s duties on a Sunday, or at best just sitting down to his own dinner.

“Mathey,” Victor said at once. “I want you to take a look round the servants’ quarters for anything wrong.” He grasped Ned by the elbow, a bit roughly, and steered him out of the room before he could even greet Mrs Nevett.

“What are you expecting me to find?” Ned asked, freeing his arm with an effort.

“I wish I knew,” Victor said, frustration written in every line of his body. “The girl’s run off. She must be guilty of something, but Mother won’t see it that way. I wish she’d understand that if she did prove it wasn’t one of the servants…” He scowled and went on leading Ned up the stairs at a brisk pace.

“You suspect Sarah Doyle.”

“Well, hadn’t I better? She’s the one who found him, or says she did. And now she’s gone, and at this rate she’ll have a day’s head start before Mama will put up with having the police set on her. She could be in France tomorrow.”

Ned very much doubted that the girl he’d seen would have either the means or the courage to flee the country, but he held his tongue. “She slept in the attic?”

“With the other housemaid and the kitchenmaid.” Victor led him up the last flight of stairs to the attic door, and pushed it open for Ned to enter.

The long garret room was typical of its type, the ceiling sloping sharply with the pitch of the roof, with only narrow windows at the ends of the house for light. There were three iron bedsteads made up with thin mattresses and gray blankets, a clothes-press and tall cabinet, a washstand, and three ladder-back chairs. The walls were whitewashed rather than papered, and with the dim light through the windows, the room looked entirely gray.

“Was anything missing?”

“Her clothes are gone, I understand,” Victor said, but he sounded as if he would have no idea if any of the room’s meager furnishings had gone with her.

“I’ll take a look round. Would you send one of the other girls who sleeps here up? I’ll need to know which things belonged to Sarah in particular.”

“Fair enough,” Victor said. “If you can prove she’s been doing cursework up here, we’ll have her for sure.”

Ned prowled around a bit while he waited, but found himself reluctant to look under mattresses or rifle through drawers. It felt somehow indecent, although he was aware that he’d been granted the right. He waited, instead, until Jane arrived, opening the door with a nervous “Sir?”

“Do come in,” Ned said gently. “I wanted to ask you a few questions, since you’re the one in the best position to know. The missing girl, Sarah, she slept here?”

“With me and Mogs,” Jane said. “Margaret, that is, the kitchenmaid.”

“And she went to bed here as usual last night?”

“That she did. Mrs Nevett is in a temper that we didn’t hear her leave, sir, but we all sleep sound. There’s a bell to wake us if anything’s needed by the ladies or gentlemen, and if we lie in bed too long, Mrs Rule rings it to wake us in the morning. There’s a clock downstairs. But she doesn’t often have to do that.”

“Did she ring the bell this morning?”