The Golden Specific (18 page)

“Almost half the shops on the streets sold maps. I chose one simply because I liked the sign hanging above the doorway; there was a bird on it that reminded me of a warbler. Inside, there were low counters on three sides, and behind the counters the walls were entirely covered with tiny drawers,
each one the size and round shape of a Seville orange. Standing at the till was a man with a long beard and bright eyes who smiled at me as I entered.

“I had not realized until that moment that I would not be able to explain what I needed. How could I request a map to find my voice if I had no voice? But the man simply smiled again, seeing my expression of consternation, and said, in Castilian, ‘Have no fear, Rosemary.' He leaned forward, his elbows on the counter. ‘You have lost your voice, and you seek to find it. But I believe you seek something else as well, do you not?' I looked at him in bafflement. ‘Your mother's resting place,' he said gently. I felt my eyes filling with tears. I nodded. ‘Well, child,' he said kindly, ‘there is a map here for you, waiting only to be read.'

“He walked along a drawer-lined wall, running his fingertips along the labels, until he found the one he wanted. Opening the drawer, he pulled out a sheet of paper that was curled into a tube and tied with a piece of white string. I weighed it in my hand—this was a famed map of Ausentinia? ‘Doesn't look like much, does it?' he remarked with a smile. ‘Don't worry. It will contain what you need.' I reached into my purse to pay him, but he stopped me. ‘No, no. We don't accept that kind of payment. Instead, you must guide someone else, like yourself, who is out in the world, seeking just as you are seeking. Here,' he said, handing me a second roll of paper, this one tied with a blue string, ‘is your payment. Your map will explain for whom it is intended.'

“Giving him thanks—although I did not wholly
understand him—I left the shop, and once I was out in the street I quickly unrolled the scroll with the white ribbon. There was a map drawn upon it. Below, it said,
A map for the little warbler.
My tears overflowed, and the page became a blur. When I had composed myself and was able to clear my eyes, I saw something that made little sense. It bore the appearance of a map—but where did it lead?

“In the corner, a compass pointed an arrow toward ‘The Future.' There were ‘Mountains of Solitude,' a ‘Forest of Regret,' and other strangely labeled regions. But a clear path stretched across it—or, rather, one clear path with many branches. The path began at Ausentinia. And on the back of the map were several paragraphs written in a fine hand. The opening read:

Soundless, we scream in the heart; silent, we wait in the shadows; speechless, we speak of the past. Find us at either end of eleven years.

Taking the Trail of Uncertainty, accept the guide who arrives under the full moon. Travel with him into the Meadow of Friendship, and when the cart breaks, go to the Goat's Head. Your traveling companion is falsely accused. Speak then, and speak the truth, for both truth and falsehood lead to the Steep Ravine of Loss.

“The map went on, explaining how I might navigate the branching paths and strange landscapes to find, at the end, my mother's remains. Despite the many incomprehensible
markings on the map and equally incomprehensible directions, I understood the beginning, and I understood the end. Tucking the scroll in my pocket, I opened the second one. It was very much like my own, but written in a language I could not read.

“And so, with the maps I had sought, I returned home to wait.

“At the next full moon, as the map had promised, I heard someone making his way along the path to my house. Sound carries easily on the dry plain, and while he was still at some distance, I heard not only his footsteps, but also his voice. He was singing. His voice was low and gentle, and he sang something in a foreign tongue that sounded merry and full of laughter.

“I went to the door and opened it, watching the moon shine down upon him. When he arrived, he looked upon me with a broad smile. His sweet-sounding song was still in my ears. Of middle years, with a dark beard and a round belly, he was, I fancied, like the father I had never had, arriving at last in my hour of need. ‘My name is Bruno Casavetti,' he said in Castilian, giving a slight bow, ‘and the monks in Granada suggested I might find lodging here. I can pay in gold, or in melodies,' he added, with a wink. ‘Or both. Any chance you might spare a bed for an aging traveler with a heavy pack?'”

 19 

Winning Nettie

I
NSPECTOR
R
OSCOE
G
REY
lived not far from East Ending Street, in a neighborhood called “the Little Nickel” after a counterfeiting scandal that had taken place decades earlier. The inspector kept a small but orderly household: a pair of servants, Mr. and Mrs. Culcutty, who ran things so smoothly that it was almost imperceptible when one of Grey's long cases kept him on the street for days at a time; and the inspector's daughter, Nettie, who was sixteen. The three adult members of the household doted on Nettie, in part because she had lost her mother when she was only an infant, and in part because she was such a sweet and charming young person.

The inspector, who by some accounts had become a severe
man after the death of his wife, considered Nettie his sun, moon, and stars. When he returned at the end of a long day, his spirits were lifted by the sound of his daughter at the piano, and his angular face, with its sad eyes, narrow nose, and close-trimmed brown beard, seemed to lift along with them. Mr. and Mrs. Culcutty, the gentlest and most amiable couple in the Little Nickel, worshipped the very ground she walked upon. The pair had their few disagreements over matters involving Nettie, principally when one of them was thoughtless enough to disappoint her and the other was compelled to righteously champion her cause.

There had been one such disagreement the night before, when the inspector was out very late attending to his new case, the terrible murder of Prime Minister Bligh. Nettie had wished to seek some companionship and comfort at her friend Anna's, and Mrs. Culcutty had felt obliged to point out that it was nearly nineteen-hour and her father would not want her to leave the house, and Nettie had consequently cried, and Mr. Culcutty had indignantly told his wife that he would accompany Nettie to Anna's house or to the end of the earth, be it nineteen-hour or not.

There were some in the neighborhood who found Nettie Grey perhaps a little too sweet. The dressmaker two doors down, Agnes Dubois, had been known to roll her eyes when Nettie walked down the cobbled street, carrying a basket laced with ribbons and singing a sweet little tune. And the dressmaker's friend, a music teacher named Edgar Blunt who
instructed Nettie at the piano every Friday, had difficulty understanding why everyone thought he should consider it such a privilege to teach a student who was, to his ear, quite mediocre and a trifle too earnest. And the dressmaker's neighbor, a librarian named Maud Everly, could not bring herself to admire a girl who spent so much time on her appearance and so little time on reading. But apart from these exceptional cases, the neighborhood and the Greys' circle of acquaintances were generally inclined to think very highly of Nettie, with her broad smile and her bright blue eyes and her cascade of brown curls and her sweet, high voice.

Theo's first impression was rather different. From the moment he saw her through the window, dutifully practicing her scales with a look of contented self-satisfaction, he thought,
What a princess.
He smiled to himself.

Theo had made his plan as soon as Inspector Grey left 34 East Ending Street the previous evening. It was simple: He would keep track of the inspector's investigation by befriending Nettie Grey. He would prove Broadgirdle had planned Bligh's murder. Once he had evidence that Broadgirdle was guilty, he would make sure Grey got hold of it. Shadrack and Miles would go free. Everything would return to the way it had been, and he would never have to hear another word about Gordon Broadgirdle.

It had required patience but no ingenuity to avoid the officers at East Ending Street. The library window had provided the means, and the boredom of the police officers had offered the opportunity. Theo waited for them to drift toward one
another, as they inevitably would, so that they could converse idly on the corner. They each had their respective doorways in sight, but from the corner they could see nothing happening at the rear of the house. Theo swung out into the narrow garden bed, hopped two fences into the yard of a house on East Wrinkle Street, and emerged well out of sight. It took him an hour to discover Grey's address in the Little Nickel.

He watched the house for another hour to make certain the inspector was not home. Then, after Nettie had been practicing scales for some twenty minutes, he knocked on the window. Nettie stopped her playing at once and turned. She blushed and gave a tentative smile.

Theo returned the smile with a friendly wave. Finally, after several seconds of pink-cheeked hesitation, Nettie made her way to the tall casement window and opened it.

“Hi,” Theo said, widening his smile.

“Hi,” Nettie replied. She brushed a brown curl out of her eyes.

“I heard you playing,” he continued, “and I couldn't help myself; I had to see where such beautiful music was coming from.”

Nettie batted her eyelashes. “Oh, I was just playing scales. It's nothing.”

“Really? Just scales? Can you play anything else?”

Nettie nodded happily. “Of course.” She returned to the piano bench and settled in, riffling nervously through a stack of music sheets until she found the one she wanted. With a quick smile back at the opened window, she set her choice
on the stand and began to play. It was a Chopin waltz, and a rather long one. The piece clearly strained the limits of Nettie's technical abilities and affective range, but she blazed through it bravely, leaving the misplayed notes behind her like a trail of debris.

As she played, Theo quietly climbed up through the casement window and seated himself on the upholstered chair beside it. He did his best to ignore the destruction of the Chopin waltz and studied the room. It was clearly decorated to suit Nettie: poppies on the upholstery, lace on the curtains, and porcelain figurines on the delicate side tables. In one corner was a worn leather chair and a footstool piled with books: Inspector Grey's outpost. Grey did not keep his work here, Theo surmised, but hopefully it was all neatly stored in Nettie's silly head.

Nettie finished the piece and turned to Theo with a look of triumph. She seemed a little startled to find him sitting in the chair rather than leaning in through the window, but she recovered as Theo applauded loudly.

“That was just amazing!” he cried. “Wow! You must give concerts, don't you?”

Nettie smiled happily. “I'm glad you liked it. I would love to give a concert someday,” she confided. “Although,” she added, her brow wrinkling slightly, “Mr. Blunt says I do not have the soul for it, whatever that means.”

Theo shook his head. “Ridiculous. You must give a concert, even if the first is only a small one for your friends. Once they hear you, the word will spread.”

“That's a very good idea,” Nettie said, her eyes opening wide.

“I'd be happy to help you organize it,” he offered, extending his scarred hand. “I'm Charles, by the way.”

“Nettie.”

As they shook hands, the distant sound of the front door opening reached them. “I'm home, Nettie,” a woman's voice called out. “And I brought you a maple cake.”

Nettie's face flickered with momentary aversion.

“Must you stop practicing now?” Theo asked with some concern.

“No,” Nettie said, shaking her dark curls and frowning. “That's just Mrs. Culcutty.”

“How kind of her to bring you a maple cake.”

“It is not especially kind of her,” Nettie said airily, “because she is making life very difficult for me at the moment, and the maple cake does not help one bit to make it easier.” In the end, Mrs. Culcutty's concerns the previous evening had overridden Mr. Culcutty's indignant chivalry, and Inspector Grey had even thanked the housekeeper for not letting Nettie out so late. Now, Mrs. Culcutty was attempting to make it up to Nettie for being strict and being right.

Theo was the very picture of sympathetic concern. “And how is she making life difficult?”

“She wouldn't let me go see my friend Anna last night, even though it was a terrible night and I needed desperately to speak with her.”

Theo shook his head with a sigh. “I completely understand. It
was
certainly a terrible night. Learning of the prime
minister's murder. Discovering that he'd been living with a foreigner, of all things. It is shocking.” He blinked, as if struck by a sudden realization. “Forgive me—perhaps you had a terrible night in some other way.”

Nettie seemed touched by Theo's thoughtfulness. “I did mean about the prime minister.” Her expression shifted from gratified to appalled. “Isn't it simply ghastly how he was found?”

“Horrifying.”

“Did you happen to hear any of Broadgirdle's speech?” Nettie asked in a low voice, leaning in.

“I did not. But supposedly he made rather clear that Minister Elli, Miles Countryman, and the foreign woman were responsible for the murder.”

Nettie gave a little sigh, no doubt overcome by the wickedness of the world.

“I also heard,” Theo continued, “that the best police inspector in Boston had taken the case. I'm sure he'll discover the truth of it.”

Nettie gave him a sly smile. “Did you hear that?”

Theo paused deliberately. “Someone named . . . Grey, I believe.”

Nettie's smiled widened, her eyes bright. “As it happens,” she said confidingly, “Inspector Roscoe Grey is my father.”

“No!”

“Yes! He was called away in the afternoon, and he was gone for hours, and then when he finally returned he said it would be better to tell me the details, because they were so gruesome that I would probably faint if I read them in the paper.”

“That would certainly be worse,” Theo agreed. “And did he tell you?”

“Certainly. I did not faint,” Nettie said with some dignity. “Even at the most disturbing aspects of the case.”

“What were those?” Theo asked, his eyes wide.

Nettie leaned in and spoke in a stage whisper. “He said the prime minister was absolutely
coated
with blood.”

“Monsters,” Theo replied, widening his eyes as far as they would go. “I hope they confess.”

“They are not likely to, since there was no murder weapon found on the scene.”

Theo urged his face into an expression of amazed stupidity. “What does that mean?”

“It means that someone took the weapon. Someone else helped Elli and Countryman commit the murder.”

“The Eerie woman!” Theo exclaimed.

“Precisely.” Nettie sat back with a complacent air. “The Eerie woman. Who mysteriously vanished the day Bligh was found dead.”

Theo shook his head and eyed Nettie with frank admiration. “Astounding. Well, he certainly knows what he's doing. I have no doubt your father will find her in no time.”

—10-Hour 31—

T
HEO
LEFT
THE
home of Inspector Grey in high spirits. He had learned little new about the murder, other than the fact that Goldenrod had disappeared, but he had learned everything he had hoped to about the detective's progress. He felt certain that
any new development would be passed along to him by Nettie with alacrity. Grey was certainly on the wrong track. Perhaps with a little time and a few discreetly planted ideas, the investigation might find itself on the right one.

Theo was grinning as he passed a street corner where a boy was selling the midday paper. His grin froze and then evaporated when he read the top headline.

MP BROADGIRDLE VOWS TO CLEAR MINISTER ELLI'S NAME