Ghostly Echoes (Jackaby #3)(8)
Chapter Four
The afternoon air was thick and hot as Jackaby and I left Augur Lane and made our way into the center of town. I had been introduced to a snow-swept New Fiddleham earlier that year, a New Fiddleham where baroque buildings glistened with frost and chilly winds whispered through the alleyways. With the summer sun now beating down on the cobblestones, the city did not whisper so much as it panted heavily, its breath humid and cloying.
Jackaby, still draped in his bulky coat, swam through the mugginess with his usual alacrity, stubbornly unaffected by the swelter.
“Sir,” I said. “With all due respect, I don’t think that Lieutenant Dupin is likely to be very forthcoming about this case, our having stolen what little we already know from his blotter.”
“Borrowed,” corrected Jackaby. “We borrowed what little we know. But I agree. I doubt that Lieutenant Dupin will be of much further use to our side of this investigation. Dupin is merely an artery.”
“He’s a what?”
“An artery,” said Jackaby. “And a good one. But he isn’t the heart. No, we need to speak directly to Commissioner Marlowe. If anything unseemly has landed on the streets of this city, Marlowe will know of it.”
It was still hard to believe that this was my life—murder and mystery in the gritty underbelly of New Fiddleham. Not all of it was as beguiling as it sounds on the page. Truthfully, for all of its intrigue and excitement, adventuring was a most unglamorous career. I grew up on the other side of the Atlantic, a proper English girl. By the time I was ten, I could tell with pinpoint accuracy where I was by the accents around me. I was beginning to develop a similar sensory map of New Fiddleham based on odor. It was not a map I enjoyed filling out.
The industrial districts to the west smelled of coal fires and wood pulp, and the docks to the east of salt spray and fish. In between lay the sprawling, pulsing heart of New Fiddleham, along with every aroma its inhabitants could make. Savory spices of frying, baking, and boiling food would mingle with the whiff of pig slop and chicken coops, only to be shoved aside by the thick, nearly tangible stench of outhouses and steaming sewer drains. A bucket of foul wash-water would evaporate in minutes on the hot paving stones, but its essence would linger for days, wandering the rows of the tenements like a stray cat.
Jackaby and I skirted past a street sweeper whose horse and cart took up most of the narrow alleyway. The man barked a few words at us that I don’t care to record and made a rude gesture.
I loved New Fiddleham. I still do. New Fiddleham had been very kind to me since my arrival—it had only tried to kill me once—but there are two New Fiddlehams: one that knows the light and another that keeps to the shadows. Some corners of the city, I was coming to find, were always dark, as if to spite the sun. At the bottom of a steep hill, I saw a clothesline hung with wash that looked as though its ground-in stains might be the only things holding the tattered fabric together. Between the rags hung a little burlap dress sized for an infant. It was stitched with care, but the words “Gadston Golds” and a picture of a potato were still visible on the side of the skirt. The fabric looked itchy. A pang of sympathy ran through me. I had been raised in privilege, always looking up a little wistfully at the aristocracy, hardly aware that there were people lower down on the social ladder who did not know the bother of having a maid put too much starch on a day dress. I had never thought about the children born in the dark.
Jackaby pressed forward up the hill. He rarely took the same route twice, but I had come to know the landscape well enough to tell we were not bound for the police station.
“Sir,” I called after him. “I thought you said we were going to talk to the commissioner.”
“We are, though we will not find him behind his desk this afternoon. Commissioner Marlowe has scheduled an impromptu meeting with Mayor Spade. He has postponed all other matters and explicitly forbidden any of his subordinates to interrupt, so I gather their conference is of a sensitive and urgent nature.”
“I don’t suppose we’re going to wait patiently for that meeting to conclude?”
“Given the news Lieutenant Dupin delivered him this morning, the news which I relieved the good lieutenant of before leaving the station, I think it is safe to assume we know the topic at hand. Our business is one and the same, so they will have to pardon the intrusion.”
“I suppose it won’t be the first time you’ve needed a pardon from the mayor.”
“Some cases go more smoothly than others,” he confirmed with a wink. “Not everyone appreciates my methods.”
As we climbed the hill, the housing improved visibly with each block. We came to neighborhoods whose properties were spaced more and more comfortably apart, until it became a bit of a misnomer to call them neighborhoods at all. Proud white houses—houses that looked as though they might prefer to be called manors—were bordered not by their neighbors’ walls, but by sprawling, elegantly manicured gardens. Here we found the mayor’s home, a stately colonial building. Marble pilasters framed his broad front door, and the whole structure was a testament to right angles and symmetry. It could not have been less like our abode on Augur Lane.
Jackaby rapped the knocker soundly. A long-faced man in a starched collar and black necktie opened the door. “Oh dear,” the man moaned.
“Bertram!” Jackaby patted him on the arm affably as he bustled past him into the front hall. “It’s been ages, how are the kids?”