Phoenix Rising (16 page)

Doctor Sound's expression remained stoic. “Why, Agent Campbell, I had no idea how poetic of a man you were. I suppose it is not out of the ordinary to have agents keeping a few secrets for themselves, now is it?”

A sweat started to form at the small of his back, but he shrugged and replied, “I suppose not, Director.”

Bruce went to return to Books' and Braun's shared desk when he noticed a suitcase tucked in the aisle behind Doctor Sound. “Is that yours, Director?”

“Oh?” Now it was Doctor Sound's turn to fidget. “Oh, that—yes, I, uh, have an unexpected call to attend to tonight so I brought my suitcase with me. I will be taking the first airship leaving at the end of our day.”

Bruce gave a nod, and then returned to the desk, picking up his paper. “Well a safe travel and bon voyage to you, Doctor Sound. I'll be getting back to it.”

“Just a moment, Campbell,” Doctor Sound called, his suitcase rattling lightly as he approached.

If this were it for Bruce and his deception, maybe Sussex would understand him having to punch the Fat Man in order to get away clean, without revealing Sussex's intentions.

“Is that this morning's paper?”

Bruce blinked, and then looked down at the newspaper in his hand. “Yes, Doctor. Do you have a need for it?”

“I do,” he said, his smile pleasant and affable.

The newspaper unfolded with a snap, but never opened. Apparently what Doctor Sound was looking for was the headline; and as he read the accompanying story, Bruce heard a soft grumble come from the Fat Man.

Sound shook his head slowly. “So, here's where it starts. Interesting. Not quite what I anticipated, but very well.” He then turned his attention back to Bruce, as if he was just bumping into him in the office upstairs. “Do you mind if I hold on to this?”

“No,” Bruce answered, the hammering in his head finally subsiding. “Not at all, Doctor.”

“Capital,” he said with a nod.

They both headed for the staircase leading back up to the main offices, but Bruce stopped just short of the first step and called out to the Director. “Pardon me for asking, Doctor Sound, but . . .” His eyes jumped to the massive, heavy, and—its most notable characteristic—
noisy
iron hatch and then back to Doctor Sound. “. . . I didn't hear you come in here.”

“No, you didn't.” Doctor Sound stood there for a moment, saying nothing but keeping his gaze locked with Campbell. As he was a few steps ahead, he was now looking down at him. “But
I
heard
you
arrive.”

Sound was down here the whole time? And it took the Director that long to confront him about digging through the Archives?

“I should have that hatch tended to,” Doctor Sound said, casting a glance to it.

“So, Doctor Sound,” Bruce said, leaning against the staircase railing, “mind if I ask what
you
were doing here in the Archives, unattended, before I got down here?”

“The same as you, Agent Campbell,” Sound answered, his voice never faltering. “Research.”

The Ministry Director resumed his walk up to the hatch, leaving Bruce at the bottom of the staircase.

“Guess you are right, Fat Man,” Bruce muttered to himself. “A few secrets kept to yourself isn't out of the ordinary, now is it?”

CHAPTER TWELVE
Wherein the Agent and the Archivist Uncover
Nefarious Goings-on in a Somewhat
Less Than Salubrious Factory

E
liza adjusted her Ministry-issue bullet-resistant corset, and her hands absently came to rest on where her weapons were concealed. Glancing out the window, she ascertained that they were nearly at the site of the foundry—the place she had never wanted to return to. In addition to her usual array of throwing knives, she had made sure to strap the
pounamu
pistols into back holsters, concealing them further with a loose men's jacket specifically tailored for her. (After all, pistols holstered in the small of the back were nothing more than absurd fashion statements unless you could reach said pistols.) Usually she hated to combine male and female attire, but today, this investigation warranted the benefits of a corset and the freedom of male pants.

A smile crossed her lips.

“Miss Braun,” Wellington spoke, “I fail to see amusement in this situation.”

Eliza concentrated on cladding her hands in black silk opera gloves. “Perhaps it is your abrupt change in attitude I find so funny.”

Wellington opened his mouth a couple of times, then closed it with a snap and turned his attention to the journal on his lap, but not for long as their transport lurched for a few more feet on the cracked pavement before coming to a sudden stop.

The carriage window framed where, in her first case with the Ministry, she and Harry had stood over the exsanguinated body of a young woman. This place had looked very much different then. The chunky brick building of the Ashton Foundry with its great chimneys bellowing out thick smoke was now reduced to abandoned ruins, consumed by the elements it lived on.

“It appears,” Books flicked open his own notebook, “That the foundry caught fire just over seven months ago. By the time the fire brigade reached it, the conflagration had taken hold.”

“Very convenient,” Eliza muttered as she opened the door and stepped down. “Thank you,” she said to the driver, “We would be grateful if you would wait.” She passed up enough firm currency to hold him to it. They had no chance of finding a hansom or any other kind of carriage in this industrial wasteland. As far as they were from the bustle of London, they might as well have set foot on the surface of the moon. The silence of abandon embraced them, consumed them, the screams of distant crows shattering the unnerving quiet. New Zealand had none of those evil creatures, and for that she remained eternally grateful.

“Miss Braun?” Wellington asked, his voice seeming out of place.

Eliza looked down and realised she was holding his hand, her grip tightening when one of the crows cawed.

She yanked her hand up away from his as if his touch burned hotter than the tingling in her cheeks.

“Sorry, Welly, it's—” She had to get ahold of herself. They were just birds. Nothing but scavengers with feathers. “Not much to look at, is it?” she suddenly quipped to the Archivist. “This paragon of the era?”

One raised eyebrow was the only reply she received, as he continued to scan the journal. Eliza wasn't sure how comfortable she was with him being so calm. She much preferred him prickly—at least she knew what he was thinking then.

Well, at least today she had made one good choice—this was not the time to be weighed down by skirts.

Not that skirts weighed down that other woman yesterday
, she thought bitterly to herself.

Annoyance gnawed at Eliza's exterior, the assassin continuing down the alleyway and disappearing from view clear and vivid in her mind's eye. Over a hearty breakfast that morning she had contemplated the facts. Skirts. Those had definitely been skirts disappearing into the death coach. That had to mean a woman—or perhaps a man dressed as a woman? It wouldn't be the first time she'd run across that in the field, but it was not the greatest possibility. A blind man would have seen that the figure was hourglass in nature, hardly the stock and build of a man, and one harder to mimic when cross-dressing. So, a woman then. Like her. One with a fondness and skill for the art of the black powder, now pitted against her.

Eliza didn't dare tell Books this new adversary made her blood race.

The Archivist let out a great huff, a sound she was used to hearing in the Archives when his work was disturbed by her presence. Closing the little black book with a snap, he peered over the rims of his glasses, this time his ire directed at the scene of Harry's unsolved case. Eliza swore that the Archivist was disappointed the coachman's notations were not in code. Closer inspection of the book revealed it was merely a list of dates and locations, along with a series of initials—presumably people that the coach had been scheduled to pick up.

This one address had immediately caught Eliza's eye—leaping forth as both familiar and out of the ordinary in amongst the very high-class residences and usual destinations such as tearooms, theatres, and arboretums. Ashton Foundry was not a place she was ever likely to forget.

“Over there,” Eliza gestured towards the distant river, “that was where we found the last victim—drained of every drop of her blood. The killer was just unlucky. One more tide and the body would have been carried away by the Thames, but fortunately some mudlarks found her.”

“Mudlarks? Reporting a dead body in the Thames?” Books' eyebrows shot up at that. Scavengers on the river regularly found corpses, usually stripping them and letting the river carry them away.

“One poor old widow. Told us the corpse reminded her of her own dead daughter. So she pulled her up above the high-tide mark.”

“Strange.”

“Even the poor, destitute, and forgotten can have feelings, you know,” Eliza snipped.

Wellington frowned and, like a good gentleman, disregarded her with a quick sniff and walked ahead of her to get a closer look at the remains of the foundry's massive chimneys, which continued to tower over the scene. “I read in the report that you questioned workers at the foundry. How thorough were you, would you say?”

Eliza chose not to bristle. What kind of agent did he take her for? “As thorough as could be expected,” she said, proceeding even deeper into the rubble. “They didn't have very much to say—only one step away from slaves. Poor things.”

“And the owners?” Books followed gamely in her footsteps.

Eliza snorted. “As if Harry and I could ever get that high up. It didn't seem worth the bother since the owners left the place in the hands of some truly cruel managers. Naturally, they claimed to never have heard a thing.”

“Which was probably true. I imagine when it was working, this place made quite a din.”

Eliza paused. The faces of the workers, reflected red in the light of the furnaces, grimy and flat with hopelessness, had made more of an impression on her than the dead girl's pale one. “It certainly did.”

Glancing over her shoulder, she noticed Books seemed a little unsteady on his feet. “You should have joined me for breakfast, Welly. Alice makes the best scrambled eggs in London, would have fortified you for this sort of hike.”

“Alice?” He stopped and stared at her. Did he imagine she had some female companion—what was going on in his mind?

“My housekeeper.”

“You have—” And then Books' brow furrowed. “Ah, well . . . I see.”

Eliza twisted her mouth into a smirk and picked up her own pace over the broken brickwork, suddenly desiring more space between herself and Books. Charming as he could be, and there were moments she wouldn't deny, Wellington Books was severely lacking in diplomatic skills. Naturally Books didn't expect her to have a servant. “Pauper colonial” had obviously been what Books had cataloged her as, and yet he had no clue of her childhood, her upbringing. Perhaps her own polish suffered a few tarnished spots, but the assumptions he made truly rankled her.

Then again, she was finding great satisfaction in surprising him. How she wished she could have been conscious when he first laid eyes on her apartments.

They made their way to the heart of the factory ruins. Here the bottom storey of the once towering foundry works hugged the earth like an upturned and broken red hand. Remains of machines and equipment lay scattered about, while great furnaces to the rear of the building could be seen lurking in the shadows, their doors hanging off or missing entirely.

“Must have been quite the impressive burn,” Eliza said in a flat tone, thinking of the hundreds of workers who had laboured here. “Some of these ironworks melted. You wouldn't imagine one fire could do so much damage.”

Wellington asked, “Could it?”

“Depends on the chemicals involved, what was the incendiary, and the skill of the arsonist.”

“You suspect arson?”

“When I heard about this place going up in flames so close to Harry's disappearance, I found it suspicious. On attempting to follow in his footsteps and investigate on my own time, crushers were everywhere and guarding the scene around the clock.”

“Guarding a burned-out husk of a foundry? Around the clock?”

“That's when I started to think that maybe Harry's assumption of ‘something bigger' could have credence. Doctor Sound, on my return to the Ministry, then started sending me on more remote assignments. Good bit of sidetracking, that was.” Eliza looked to either side of her and motioned ahead. “Let's poke about a bit.”

“Quite a lot of ground to cover,” he observed. “I'll look around the back, you check the front.”

She would give Books this: as immaculately dressed as he was, he didn't even give one complaint at the idea of mucking about in soot-covered remains. A gentleman who didn't mind getting dirty? Eliza chuckled at how attractive she found that in him.

Setting her mind to the task at hand, Eliza focused on the remains of the foundry's interior surrounding her. Wellington was right: a lot of ground to cover. Overwhelming as it appeared, goose pimples prickled along her arms and chest. Something was here. Instincts insisted she had to be looking right at it. She continued to a small clearing on the factory floor, and that tingle was now a burning. It was right in front of her. Eliza paused here, and closed her eyes. This was no accidental fire. Her experience with dynamite and flame told her that almost immediately. She told Wellington as much just now, but Eliza couldn't see what she needed to see. What was throwing up a stone wall between her and the next step forward?

I'm too close
, she thought, her eyes flicking open.

Those words made her stomach tighten, but the truth was evident. She was too close. Both in the crime scene, and in the reasons behind her investigation. With a deep breath and her epiphany coming to roost, she turned back towards Wellington to suggest returning to the Archives.

Eliza now saw what he could not: a panorama of where the foundry's furnaces had been, this area scorched more severely than where she stood. That was the foundry's incendiary: the furnace. That was where the fire had started. The plant's power source had not reacted to the fire, but had been its origin. Someone had wanted to make very sure that the place went up. Her hand traced in the air the scorch patterns in the brickwork, their long ribbons serving as the accelerant's signature in where it all began.

The weather had long washed away any smell that could have helped her identify exactly what that accelerant might have been, but Eliza wanted the other clue that could unlock details of a fire: its flashpoint.

Industrial accidents were rarely investigated—not when the right families knew the right words to put in the right ears. It was how the world worked. Apart from this evidence of foul play, there was nothing but destroyed and charred equipment, most of which she wouldn't have been able to identify even when it was whole.

Eliza was just craning her neck to find Books, when she heard him call out. The note in his voice caused her to start running. With a racing heart she heard him again.
“Miss Braun!”

He must be in one of the large storage rooms. The door was charred and hanging at an odd angle. With a deep breath, Eliza reached through the slits cut in her coat and produced her pistols, cocked them, and kicked the door open.

Books blinked at her and the weapons in the half-light. He was alone, and crouched at the far wall with an excited grin on his face.

“Do me a favour, Welly.” She released the hammers on the pistols and holstered them once again. “Only use that tone if you are in imminent danger.”

“But look what I have found.” He gestured her over to the wall, scorched like everything else in the building.

“Another burnt surface of brick?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not—do you have a mirror?”

Eliza knelt next to him while fishing out her compact. “What sort of woman would I be without one?”

Wellington's excitement diminished for a moment as he pondered the square accessory of Eliza Braun's: gold and pearl with the initial “E” encrusted in diamonds.

“A gift from a handsome Texas rancher turned oil baron,” she said with a sigh. “That was a very special assignment, so do have a care.”