The Golden Specific (42 page)

“But in so doing you have admitted to a crime!” Inspector Grey said, exasperated. “The evidence against Broadgirdle is tenuous, at best, but the evidence of your transgressions and Theo's is incontrovertible. Come with me. You have made a fine mess of things.”

“What about Theo?” Winnie erupted. “Isn't anyone going to help him?”

Nettie, who to Grey's surprise was considering the grisly murder instruments with something like thoughtful scrutiny, abruptly chimed in. “Oh, yes, Father, we must help him.”

Grey shook his head, more irritated by the moment. “I cannot help him, my dear, until I have properly disposed of this evidence and taken in Mrs. Clay.”

“He needs help now,” insisted Winnie.

“I am sure he is merely pursuing his interfering investigation,” Grey said heatedly, “and will reemerge soon enough to make himself a nuisance once more. Come along,” he said to Mrs. Clay.

“Father, the arrest can wait! And this boy Theo cannot!”

“Henrietta, I cannot imagine why you care in the first place.”

“She cares because she's sweet on Theo,” Winnie burst out. “Otherwise known as Charles.”

The room grew still. Grey, carefully holding the bundle of evidence, looked sharply at his daughter.

For a moment Nettie stared at Winnie, and vexation flashed across her brow. Then she jumped to her feet with a scream. “Charles!” she cried. “Father, Father—we must help him!” She seized her father by the arm and shook him. “He could be hurt. We have to save him!”

“That's what I'm saying!” Winnie agreed.

“Oh, do please send someone to Broadgirdle's office!” begged Mrs. Clay.

Inspector Grey, standing in his dining room, listening to
the shrieks of his daughter and the appeals of his uninvited guests, felt that few mornings in his life had been as frustrating and inauspicious as this one. Fortunately for Roscoe Grey, he had principles, and when matters grew complicated, he could always rely on them. There was someone standing in front of him who had committed a serious crime. This necessitated action. It was his duty to take her in and deposit the evidence in its proper place. Where his duty was clear, Grey felt no uncertainty. “All right,” he said firmly, bringing the room to silence. “That's enough.”

“Father—” Nettie began.

“No,” he said, holding up his hand. “Do not meddle in what does not concern you, Henrietta. I am taking Mrs. Clay to the station, along with this evidence. And yes, I will send officers to seek out Theodore. As soon as I reach the station, I will do so. He is alleged to have committed a very grave offense, and he is a person of interest in the prime minister's murder. Believe me, I have every intention of finding him.”

 42 

Picking the Lock

A
FTER
THE
FRONT
door closed, Nettie stood in the dining room, fists clenched, hair wrappers trembling, fuming with anger. “Me, meddle!” she said furiously. “He said I
meddle
!” Mr. and Mrs. Culcutty knew better than to try to appease her. They watched with concern, hoping the rage would pass or perhaps end in a burst of tears.

Winnie, who perceived in Nettie's anger a possible advantage and even the opportunity to make an unlikely ally, decided to fan the flames and see what would happen. “No one's going to help him, then,” he said, crestfallen. “It's just like I thought.
I tried to get him help, and now he'll get no help at all.” He sniffled.

Nettie turned to him and glared. For a moment, Winnie feared that he might have miscalculated. “Oh, he'll get help, all right.” Winnie was a bit taken aback by her vehemence. “My father is going to deeply, deeply regret this,” she said bitterly. “I am going to find Theo myself.” She swung around to face the Culcuttys. “You will not even think of stopping me.” She swung back around to Winnie. “And you are going to help me.”

Winnie blinked. “All right.”

Nettie took a deep breath. Then, in a less dragonlike tone, she said, “I just need five minutes to change into something more appropriate. I can't go out in hair wrappers.”

He nodded.

Nettie turned on her heel and hurried upstairs. She took out all her hair wrappers, ran a brush quickly through her hair, chose her most sensible gray skirt and a white shirt with six pockets, pulled on gray socks and sturdy brown boots, and, finally, tucked supplies into the pockets of the shirt: string, a magnifying glass, a pencil, folded paper, a pair of gloves, and a handkerchief. Breathless and ready, she ran back downstairs.

Mr. and Mrs. Culcutty had somewhat recovered their wits, and they had decided that a united front would make the greatest impact. As Nettie ran into the dining room, Mr. Culcutty looked stern and Mrs. Culcutty said, “My dear, I don't think it is wise—”

“I'm sorry, but I just don't care what is wise at the moment,”
Nettie said brusquely. “Father was very unwise this morning, and you can tell him when he returns that any unwiseness on my part is a direct result of
his
tremendous, unaccountable, and offensive unwiseness.” She turned away from them. “Winston,” she said commandingly.

With a barely concealed smile, Winnie nodded.

“We're off.”

• • •

N
ETTIE
,
WITH
HER
impeccably ironed clothes, and Winnie, with his formidable layer of grime, made an exceedingly odd pair on the State House steps. Winnie hesitated at the entrance. “I can't go in there,” he said. “They'll throw me out.”

“They have no right to throw you out,” Nettie snapped. “You're a citizen of New Occident just like anyone else. And if they so much as look at you funny, I'll give them a piece of my mind.”

Winnie, rather enjoying the prospect of such a confrontation, hurriedly followed her into the august building that he had so often seen from the outside and yet never successfully entered.

But no confrontation ensued. No one took any notice of them as they walked through the corridors of the State House. There were too many things happening that morning, and the vigilant clerks, who under normal circumstances would have looked suspiciously at the two mismatched visitors, seemed to accept that secession, war, massive riots, and a molasses flood were bound to bring strange company.

Nettie examined the directory of offices engraved on a metal plate near the grand stairway. “Top floor,” she muttered. “Naturally.”

Winnie followed Nettie up the stairs, looking with reluctant awe at the ceiling of the rotunda. Normally, Winnie rather disdained the State House, for he had seen the uncharitable and unpleasant side of the people who worked in it, claiming power with apparent ease and yet doing so little with it. He had never told anyone, not even Theo, why he had first gravitated toward the State House.

After his mother's institutionalization, Winnie had been shuttled off to an orphanage, and when he had complained to the warden (by means of incessant shrieks and a desperate left-handed punch) that his mother was not sick and they had no right to lock them both up, the warden had recommended sarcastically that if he wanted to dispute his rights he should take the matter up with his representative in parliament.

Winnie had immediately stopped shrieking, grown thoughtful, and taken the suggestion seriously. It had cost him no small effort to procure the assistance of an older girl who could help him with the letter and send it to the correct address. But he had sent it, and he had waited for a reply, and when he finally received it, the note confused him.

Thank you for your inquiry. MP Riche listens attentively to the comments and questions of all of his constituents. Thank you for your support.

He had hung on to the cream-colored note card, though it was stolen twice, ripped in half once, and finally burned during a terrible showdown with Impy, the orphanage's resident bully. Looking at the ashes, Winnie had decided that it was time to run away and take matters up with MP Riche more personally. He had arrived at the State House a few days later, only to be turned out on his ear before he so much as crossed the threshold.

But to his surprise, he was not the only boy lingering by the steps. Jeff, Barney, Pet (short and furry), and the Eel (who could worm out of anyone's grasp) proved better company than the orphanage crowd. Winnie became one of them, picking up stray errands from the State House when they could be had.

He had expected the occupants to be as dignified and grand as the building, and indeed many of them were. But he learned very soon from his fellows and from his own observations that being grand was not the same thing as being great, and within a week his childish hope of finding justice by writing to MP Riche seemed like the most foolish thing he had ever felt.

But now, as Winnie ascended the grand staircase, he felt some of his old reverence for the place returning. The power of it was real; he could see that in the building itself and in the friction that charged the air around him. What would it be like, he wondered, to use that power as he had once imagined the MPs did? Winnie stopped for a moment, his dirty foot hovering above the burgundy runner of the top step. Was it really so impossible? The people around him were not so great, however
much they might be grand. Surely achieving that could not be so difficult.

Winnie smiled. He made a pact with himself, then and there, that he would accomplish it.

“Coming?” Nettie said. “It's this floor.”

“Right behind you, Henry.”

“Don't call me Henry,” Nettie said distractedly as she scanned the name plates beside the office doors.

They walked side by side along the corridor. Though the atmosphere had been hectic on the ground floor, here the halls were hushed and empty. No doubt, Winnie thought to himself, the members of parliament and all their staff were busily meeting with one another and scrambling to find a way to emerge unscathed from the mess Broadgirdle had created.

The door to Broadgirdle's office was open, but the front room with its two desks was empty. Nettie and Winnie looked at one another. “What now?” he asked.

“We look for clues,” Nettie determined. “You know that Theo came up here, so we try to find clues of what happened after that. You watch the hallway, and I'll look around.”

Winnie took up his post by the door. “Anything?” he asked after a moment.

“Nothing yet,” Nettie said, looking through the piles on Peel's desk. She tried the drawers and found them locked, then drifted over to the other desk. The papers there were mostly covered with doodles. “This must be where Theo works,” Nettie said in a low voice. “But there's really nothing here.” She
looked up. “Where do you think those other two doors go?”

“Other offices?”

The first one was locked, but the second opened onto a narrow, carpeted corridor with several closed doors. “Psst,” she said.

Winnie abandoned his post, closing the door to the outer office behind them.

“They're all locked,” Nettie reported in a whisper. “At least these four. The corridor winds back around that way,” she added, pointing.

Winnie suddenly became alert. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“Listen.”

They stared at one another in silence, and then Winnie heard it again: a series of loud thumps, as if someone was pounding a fist on a door. There were a few seconds of silence, and then, “Graves!” came a muffled shout. “Open the door. I want to negotiate.”

“It's Theo!” Winnie cried.

“Theo, it's us—Nettie and Winnie,” she called.

There was a moment's silence, and then a quick series of knocks. “Here! I'm here. Inside Broadgirdle's office, in a closet.”

“Which is his office?”

“First on the right.”

They tried it again, but of course the door was locked. Theo said from inside the room: “You'll have to pick the lock or break it down.”

“I don't know how to pick a lock!” Winnie exclaimed, exasperated.

“There's a letter opener in the front office,” Nettie ordered. “Run and get it for me.”

He scurried out to Peel's desk, took the letter opener, and ran back. Nettie deftly began working away at the lock. Winnie stood inches away, wide-eyed.

“Ah!” Nettie said, her face breaking into a smile. The lock clicked.

Winnie turned the knob and opened the door. “You did it, Henry!” he exclaimed.

“Lots of practice,” Nettie said easily. “And don't call me Henry.” She closed the door behind them and quickly surveyed the office. It was less luxurious than she had expected. Ample, with a good carpet and a fine leather chair, the office had pinstriped wallpaper and heavy curtains. The desk was spotless. A fine pen, a crystal ink pot, a stack of paper, and a clock were the only items on its surface.

“The closet door is locked, too,” Theo said, then added to himself, “obviously.”

“I can get it,” Nettie said confidently, crouching by the closet door.

She was already working at the lock while Winnie peered out the window. Suddenly, he stiffened. He had heard something. There was no doubt: voices, very nearby. “Nettie!” Winnie said urgently. “Someone's coming.”

They heard a door being opened, and the unmistakable boom of Broadgirdle's voice filled the corridor. “The curtains!”
Nettie hissed. She dove behind one of the thick velvet curtains and Winnie scrambled behind the other just as the door opened.

“Peel!” Broadgirdle roared. “Why is my office unlocked?”

“I—I don't know, sir. I haven't opened it this morning.”

“You will recall that we left it securely locked last night,” Broadgirdle said, his voice smooth.

“I'm very sorry, sir. Perhaps the cleaning staff forgot to lock the door. I will speak to them.”

“Do that. Officer, this way, please.”

Nettie felt a flood of relief. Her father had come after all. Then, just as suddenly, the sense of relief evaporated.

“With pleasure, Prime Minister,” was the oily reply. She recognized at once the voice of Manning Bacon, an officer renowned in the department for his appreciation for beer and his very compatible tendency to misplace evidence.