The Fatal Flame (24 page)

Val dragged a disbelieving thumb along his lower lip. “Neither you nor Mr. Villers is remotely hocused I’ve set myself against Symmes?”

Seating himself, Kane crossed his legs and took a mouthful of gin. “No. We are not. And we don’t have to explain ourselves to you.”

“Of course you—”

“But I will anyway,” Kane decided, eyes dancing with intrigue. “Robert Symmes as a tycoon alderman has proved of use to the Party in myriad ways. But Mr. Symmes owns so very
many
holdings, you see, and in so very
many
locales, that he of late has felt it safe to conceal certain information from us regarding his earnings. I prize loyalty above all else, as you know, gentlemen. It has been most distressing to learn we have been deceived by one of our own.”

Chief Matsell turned his needle-sharp eyes to the ceiling. “He’s meant to cut the Democratic Party in no matter what the venture? In short, you have a deal with the man, and you’ve found his mathematics lacking.”

“Chief, your insights are as astute as ever.”

Casting my mind back, I remembered the way Villers and Kane had treated the alderman of Ward Eight when I’d been in a position to observe them. Not having anything better to do, tied to a chair and all. The silences following Symmes’s speech, the answers that didn’t address his questions. The oblique way they’d looked at the man, as if he were a silhouette of Robert Symmes—property owner, alderman, textile manufacturer—and his actual self had never been there at all. Kane’s explanation of just why they wanted me to betray my firmest principles, delivered in an almost sympathetic tone.

Loyalty is important to us, Mr. Wilde. It might even be of primary importance to us. Well, to me, anyhow.

A soft knock sounded. As I glanced up, Silkie Marsh entered, trailing a cloak of rose-hued velvet over her unadorned black satin skirts. She swept it off, revealing its crimson lining, and hung it next to the door.

I glanced at my brother.

He was already eyeing me, a single brow raised in sincere distaste. And severe alarm.

“Ah, Madam Marsh,” Kane said cheerfully, pulling up a fourth chair before the desk. “Right on time. Do sit down.”

“Many thanks, Mr. Kane. Chief Matsell, Valentine.”

Her voice was plumb-line-straight, determined—not the girlish tone she employs when she’s flamming you. A worm of disquiet commenced burrowing down my spine even as the faint aroma of violets spread.

I’ve mentioned that Silkie Marsh is a death trap waiting to spring. But as any man of science would tell you, there’s a long, lonesome mile between comprehending the nature of a powerful force and proving it. Anyway, her breed of lawbreaking isn’t the sort Tammany minds overmuch, it being the variety that rakes in hard cole, which she then showers over all and sundry as if she were a captive djinn. So somewhere in the depths of her Greene Street brothel, Madam Marsh probably has a small collection of Democratic trophies with her name engraved—as opposed to written warnings that vice, conspiracy, and murder aren’t generally considered virtues.

Meanwhile, her arrival sent my teeth scraping.

Chief Matsell’s face presented an unstudied blank. Abraham Kane pulled out a cigar from a carved ivory box, perfectly at his ease. Of those assembled, he was the only one who
might
not have known her soul to be tissue-thin.

But then again, he might have known and failed to care. It wasn’t as if Kane was a stranger to killing things.

“Valentine, my word, are you unwell?” Silkie Marsh exclaimed.

It was honestly asked. She might not care for humans, but as Val’s ex-mistress she does at times treat him as a regrettable piece of lost property. I imagine she’d have looked so if a prized necklace had been stolen from her to be cut up piecemeal and fenced. Anyway, Val had been dragged through wet ash and manure and worse earlier, so the query was a sound one.

“Fit as a fiddle,” he answered.

I delivered a particularly savage dot of a period to my report.

“You seem a bit . . . fatigued,” she continued, pulling her gloves from her fingers.

“Too much business to be done and scarce enough hours to do it in,” he answered brightly.

“Yes, I can only imagine that your campaign must weigh heavy on your mind so soon before the election. And despite my other Party obligations, including those owed to my own landlord, I entirely support your cause, Valentine.”

My brother smiled. The one that’s all canines and no humor whatsoever.

“You really must take better care of yourself in the meanwhile,” she insisted.

“He had a short rest. I’m sure that revived him,” I muttered.

Valentine would have glared daggers at me. Had he been alert enough to focus his eyes.

“Oh! Mr. Wilde,” Madam Marsh said to me affectionately. “Apologies, I didn’t see you behind so large a desk.”

My eyes didn’t so much as lift from the page.

“Now that what passes for pleasantries are out of the way,” Kane announced, amused, “the chief and I need a word about the Symmes situation.”

“I thought you didn’t care if he’s reelected,” I mentioned, puzzled.

“We don’t,” Chief Matsell said icily. “We care that his buildings keep burning and you lot have failed to prevent the occurrence.”

It was fair. It cut, though.

“Not for lack of trying,” I shot back, abashed.

“Of course not, Mr. Wilde. Though I take it you wouldn’t mind overmuch seeing my brothel and its residents go up in flames.” Silkie Marsh displayed the line of her slender neck as Kane delivered her a glass of gin. “Your sole investigative copper star here has the oddest notions about me, Chief Matsell.”

Matsell’s grey eyes sparked in a flinty fashion. “Madam Marsh, I’m a Party man to the marrow. Note I didn’t say ‘Party puppet.’” The deep lines along the chief’s mouth twitched at the sides as he studied her, as if the fact of her ignorance amused him. “There’s more between my ears, and between my legs for that matter, than cotton stuffing. So you’d best watch yourself. I’ve been watching you for years.”

Amidst the chorus of amens in my head, I caught a small sigh from Silkie Marsh. It was the sound a cat makes when it feels greatly appreciated and curls up to bask in the sun.

I tapped my pen against the inkwell and soldiered on.

“This is about firedogging, then, pure and simple,” Val theorized. “You’re ketched that your landlord’s buildings are under attack. Can’t say as I blame you on that count.”

“Shall I, Mr. Kane?” Silkie Marsh asked the politico. “They’re busy men. I’d hate to waste their time.”

“By all means,” he allowed.

Silkie Marsh marginally straightened her posture. “I knew Robert as a landlord well before he was involved with the Party. He was always a decisive man—my rent for the building was due quite implacably on the first of the month whether that was comfortable or not. I saw at once that he’d the makings of a determined leader if not a particularly benevolent one.”

Her tone was a queer combination of ease and practice. It betrayed nothing.

But that’s in itself peculiar. Isn’t it?
I thought.

I’d been in the midst of writing:

—Why should Alderman Symmes confide so deeply in Ellie Abell, assuming she warned the Neptune 9 company?

But interrupted myself to jot down in the margin:

“a determined leader if not a particularly benevolent one”

“You told me you learned of Symmes’s potential incendiary troubles from his property manager, Ronan McGlynn,” I said. “Was that the truth, or did you just mean to draw him to my attention?”

I wanted an answer to that query. Something ticklish was running along the edges of my thumbs.

Madam Marsh’s brow tilted as if she were smiling at me. “What an intriguing question. Did you speak with McGlynn yet?”

“I did. He said he’d run the Queen Mab—and as the very worst sort of brothelkeeper regarding whether or not the employees
volunteer
for the job, as will doubtless disgust you to learn, Madam Marsh—but it remained Symmes’s property. And he gave our firestarter a pretty sparkling motive.”

“What motive could possibly justify firestarting?” she asked. Breathless, leaning with her collarbones taut as sails under a heavy wind and her queer hazel eyes alight.

“None. But the chief and I spoke with the alderman thereafter and confirmed that Symmes’s relationship with his attacker was . . . intimately personal.”

I resumed scribbling. If there’s one thing I’m not afraid of, it’s telling Silkie Marsh the truth. It baits her, tempts her to revelations both rich and slight. And I was beginning to hear a small, shrill note of discord in our conversations—both with Symmes and about him. So I wanted Madam Marsh to keep talking. She can feign being personable from dawn until dusk, but generally when listening to her I smell greasepaint and clockwork. This wasn’t the same. It felt as if she
wanted
me to understand something.

It was highly alarming.

“Ronan McGlynn gave you nothing helpful?” Chief Matsell asked.

“He seemed terribly shocked. He pegged Sally Woods. But helpful? No,” I replied.

“Your sources and your Tombs cronies have dug up nothing of use as to where we might find her?” my brother surmised darkly.

“You know how easy it is to disappear in this warren. My men and I’ve been searching for Pell Street survivors as well—we’re to meet tomorrow morning and discuss findings. But so far? Nothing.”

“You’ve seen this Miss Abell and this Miss Duffy, and you’ve questioned them gently?” Mr. Kane tapped his index fingertips together.

“Yes.”

“And you’d not like, I take it, someone
else
questioning them . . . in a less gentle manner?”

I thought of young Miss Duffy’s almost poetic perception of the world she could see so dimly, of Miss Abell’s innate sweetness. I even thought of how, when I recalled Miss Woods, I wished she weren’t a murderess and the woman who’d put an egg on my pate. I wished she were an eccentric who lived in a greenhouse. “No, I’d not.”

“You’d not like, for instance, if Cornelius were to take an active interest?”

Rumor has it Cornelius Villers once cut out a man’s tongue, fried it like a cutlet, and ate it before his victim. It’s not a rumor I’ve any stomach for investigating further.

“I’d not imagine Mr. Villers would want to spare the time, not when we’re so close to a solution,” I said slowly, pretending to consider when I could as well have shrieked,
For God’s sake keep him out of this
. “I have the best of the star police working with me, and my instincts say this needs delicacy, not intimidation. I’d be obliged if you’d let me see it through.”

Please don’t collect all the many molls to do with this ugly, ugly thing and make them bleed for the parts they played in it.

“Of course, Mr. Wilde,” replied Abraham Kane. With considerable benevolence.

“Yes,” Silkie Marsh said softly, beaming at us all. “Yes, Mr. Villers needn’t be troubled. I trust in Mr. Wilde’s capacity to work it out and to see justice done.”

The chief eyed her with unselfconscious surprise. Val’s throat tightened. I can’t imagine how I reacted to this unprecedented display of camaraderie, being riveted to Abraham Kane—who sat there sipping gin as if he were reclining in a porchfront rocking chair. Utterly unperturbed.

“Symmes is both your alderman and your landlord. You knew Miss Woods personally,” I realized.

Silkie Marsh flashed pearly teeth at me. I’d pleased her. “I did, Mr. Wilde.”

“How well?”

“Not at all well.”

“What’s she capable of?”

“Practically anything, in my opinion.”

“Something terrible happened. After the strike ended. It involved Miss Woods and Miss Abell, but no one will tell me anything. Do you know what it was?”

Madam Marsh set her gin down. She interlaced her fingers, the picture of a serene, judicious, and—though she repels me—beautiful woman. The blue ring at the center of her eyes darkened to an ocean-deep ribbon.

“Mr. Wilde, you are really rather clever from time to time,” she said quietly. “Something terrible happened, yes. I cannot say what, precisely, for I’ve only suspicions as to the nature of Robert’s punishment of Miss Woods for defying him. But I can tell you that he is a pitiless man. He said to me one night at my brothel, and I quote him,
I am going to make that bitch so sorry for humiliating me that she’ll wish she was never born.
He did just that, or so I gather. I never knew Miss Abell, and Miss Woods has vanished. So you see, Mr. Wilde, this all has to end very quickly, or there will be hell to pay.”

“It really is just about revenge, then,” I said numbly. “I couldn’t credit it was so simple.”

Silkie Marsh walked to the desk, leaning over me. Generally when I look at her, it’s like staring into the soapstone eyes of a bust. But this was an oracle’s gaze, and a grim one.

“It is about nothing whatsoever save for revenge, Mr. Wilde.” She spoke in a low murmur that vibrated through me as if she’d screamed the words. “This matter is
only
and
always
about revenge. Now, see it through, please, before more people are killed.”

Silkie Marsh ceased speaking, but her lips remained open, her breaths warm and even. I could see the name
Bird Daly
writ plain as anything across their rosy surface.

“Recall what I said,” I advised her softly, with a murder of my own on my mind. “Or you’ll come to regret it.”

Silkie Marsh was close enough to kiss me, close enough to bite, both of which prospects were equally nauseating. Instead she laughed fondly, straightening as she trailed artistic fingers along the desk’s gleaming polish. She went to the door and retrieved her cloak, draping it over her white shoulders. “Good night, gentlemen. Thank you for having me. Oh. Mr. Wilde?” she called back.

“Yes?”

“I can’t help but feel you’re not through talking to Ronan McGlynn,” she concluded just before shutting the door behind her.

The next few minutes, as I hunched over my report and the other men spoke lowly, were hazy. A windstorm had formed in my cranium in which
Symmes-Abell-Woods-Duffy-McGlynn
whirled about like so many scraps of newsprint.
Newsprint.
There was a thought. I needed to find William Wolf, who’d been there just before the close of the strike, who might have heard something, might have left it out of his article, might have smelled danger the way I can smell the faintest traces of smoke.