The Golden Specific

by S. E. Grove

  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—

  THEO 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

  He snatched the paper.

  “Hey, you have to pay for that,” the boy protested.

  Theo ignored him and read quickly, his eyes flying over the page.

  IN A SURPRISE move, the minority leader, MP Gordon Broadgirdle, has recanted and declared himself the incarcerated minister’s champion. Before a silent and rather nonplused parliament, Broadgirdle made a seven-minute speech on the morning of June 5, insisting that he was now convinced Minister of Relations with Foreign Ages Shadrack Elli and the explorer Miles Countryman had been wrongly accused of murder. He vowed to find the foreigner mentioned in his speech, an Eerie woman by the name of Goldenrod, whom he accused of being the true perpetrator of the crime.

  Broadgirdle’s speech astonished many in his own Western Party, who consider Minister Elli more of an adversary than a candidate for support and sympathy. Having been appointed by the murdered Prime Minister Bligh of the opposing New States Party, Elli frequently pursued policies directly against the Western Party’s stated principles. Yet MP Broadgirdle contends that such partisan concerns cannot influence the pursuit of justice. “I know Minister Elli to be an honest, reliable, and patriotic man,” he said near the end of his speech. “He would never commit such an atrocity and we owe it to both him and Bligh to find the real criminal.” Broadgirdle’s actions were immediately lauded by all and sundry as magnanimous and worthy of a great political leader.

  “Pay for it or give it back,” the boy growled at Theo.

  Wordlessly, Theo returned it. He continued on his way, but his euphoric mood had been obliterated. What might have looked like good news at first glance was undoubtedly bad news. Theo knew what Broadgirdle’s sudden and spirited defense really meant. It meant that he had used his leverage, and Shadrack had ceded. He had agreed to Broadgirdle’s terms.

  20

  Stalking Graves

  —1892, June 5: 12-Hour 39—

  The Western Party was founded in 1870, with an acquisitive eye on the northern Baldlands. Always considered an unrealistic pursuit by the New States Party, expansion into the northern Baldlands was first proposed as a means of reining in the excesses of raiders, slavers, and ranchers who flourished in that region as lords in their improvised fiefdoms.

  —From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident

  IT HAD TAKEN Theo more than two hours to climb the six blocks up Beacon Hill. The thought of setting eyes on the man known in Boston as Gordon Broadgirdle made him want to run and run until he could run no farther. Realizing he would see Broadgirdle—and that Broadgirdle would see him—turned his legs to stone. He stopped, wheeled his stolen Goodyear around, and walked slowly back down the hill. Then the thought of Shadrack and Miles in prison brought him to a halt once more. He considered that they had no way to discover the truth while they sat behind bars. He reminded himself of Grey’s misguided investigation. Punching his leg, furious at
his own unforgivable weakness, he turned and climbed two blocks uphill. He stopped again, overcome.

  And so it went, for more than two hours, until he arrived at the corner, already exhausted, his palms sweating. But he arrived determined. I’m here to prove he’s guilty, Theo told himself firmly. I know he is, and I know there’s evidence. I just have to find it. And once I find it, Shadrack and Miles will be let free.

  Broadgirdle owned one of the largest homes on Beacon Hill: a brick mansion on a corner lot. Most of the others crowded the curb, but his flaunted a long front yard protected from the street by a low, black fence of wrought iron. The curtains were open in every room, as if to declare that the occupant had nothing to hide from anyone.

  Theo stood on the opposite corner, watching the mansion with a bitter smile. He could remember when the man known as Gordon Broadgirdle would not have been fit to appear on the sidewalk in Beacon Hill, much less inhabit one of its mansions. In those days, he went by “Wilkie Graves,” and every piece of his tattered clothing was hung with silver bells. His teeth were long, jagged slivers of iron. He even wore gloves with iron claws, the better to make his point when someone disagreed with him—which was often.

  It was quite a transformation, Theo admitted, as he watched Broadgirdle alighting from his coach and striding up his front drive. His hair and teeth and beard were new; even his walk was new—he carried himself with a kind of easy imperiousness that suggested a long life of privilege. Theo remembered a more urgent, aggressive posture to his old adversary. But the eyes and the voice had not changed. Those were the same: terrifying.

  Watching Broadgirdle in his fine suit, Theo thought involuntarily about the day he had met Wilkie Graves. The memory was one he had long ago tried to bury, along with everything else that touched upon Graves in the slightest. But it returned now, unbidden, fiercely vivid despite the years it had spent hidden away.

  It had happened in a town very mistakenly named Paradise, a town as dry and dusty as any Theo had ever seen. He’d been on his own for two weeks, and food had been scarce.

  The wagon was tied outside a tavern, and it was not the usual kind of wagon. Most travelers in the Baldlands used cotton canvas that would let the light through but block the worst of the heat and cold. This one was closed, made entirely of wood, with a door at the back. The door was chained and locked. Theo calculated that the wagon had to be full of valuables. Gold bars? Paper currency? Food. He began to imagine the links of sausages hung on hooks, the bags of grain, the barrels full of apples and potatoes. He was so hungry he would have eaten an onion raw and found it delicious. So alluring was the vision that he was drawn inexorably to the wagon, even though there were many easier marks in Paradise.

  In retrospect, he always chided himself for not paying attention to the condition of the horses. If he hadn’t been so hungry, he would have thought for a moment about their mistreated hooves and the lines of dried blood on their haunches. But the vision of what lay inside the wagon drew him onward, and he slipped his tools from his pouch and began working at the lock, the imagined feast becoming more fantastic by the moment.

  That was how Graves found him: with his pick still in the lock and a stupid look of dreamy anticipation on his face. Graves had grinned, showing all his jagged teeth. He was holding a black guard dog on a leash, and the dog looked as hungry as Theo felt. “Take him, Sally,” Graves said, in that booming voice Theo came to know so well. The dog leaped at him, and Theo put out his hand with the iron bones, knowing it would not be enough to stop the dog but hoping it would be enough to save his life.

  Theo flinched at the memory. His heart was pounding. He raised the open newspaper he was holding as Broadgirdle paused in his doorway and turned to survey the street. Truly, he was almost unrecognizable. Only the voice really gave him away, for there were many men with cruel eyes. He said a brief word to his butler before passing into the foyer. The butler waved to the driver, who headed for the coach house.

  But Wilkie Graves wasn’t the only one who had transformed over the years; Theo had, too. He hadn’t changed his name, but he was many years older and many years wiser. He’d last seen Graves when he was a boy of eleven: a lot shorter, a lot dirtier, and a lot sorrier. He wouldn’t recognize me if I stood right in front of him in full sunlight, Theo told himself resolutely.

  This thought, wrested out of the barest sliver of confidence, gave him the boost he needed. Wheeling his Goodyear away from the corner, he circled Broadgirdle’s property. The mansion and its surrounding property took up a large portion of the block; its back garden bordered the street, instead of another yard. At either side of the house was a high brick wall covered with ivy; a door in the wall was firmly shut. But there was a decorative pattern—the silhouette of an owl—cut into the door, and it allowed a clear view into the garden.

  Theo crouched down and peered through. He saw a shovel stuck into the ground beside a recently turned flower bed. Theo shifted to the right. Now he saw two pairs of men’s legs. They stood on either side of the door to Broadgirdle’s garden shed. Theo stood back up. What are you up to, Graves? he thought. Why do you have men guarding your garden shed? Is this one of your old tricks, or something new? Stepping up on one of the pedals of his Goodyear, he peered in through the owl cutaway higher up on the door.

  With a muffled exclamation, Theo abruptly dropped down. He gave a low exhalation, long and slow. Well, Graves, he thought, this is new. This is definitely new. He swung his leg over the seat of the Goodyear and pedaled away as fast as he was able. Soon the steep descents of Beacon Hill had carried him far from Broadgirdle’s house, but Theo’s heart was still racing. He had seen the two men guarding the shed quite clearly. They were dressed in nondescript suits, they wore grappling hooks on their belts, and they had unmistakable scars along their cheeks: long lines that stretched from the corners of their mouths to their ears; scars that had been made by wires pulled tight against the skin.

  21

  Quarantine

  —1892, June 28: 6-Hour 00—

  The Order of the Golden Cross is among the most militant. It has built its wealth by collecting property abandoned by victims of the plague. Some have criticized the Order for benefitting from misfortune, but the Order argues that it functions as custodian for the plague, clearing the land of contagion and overseeing the houses of quarantine.

  —From Fulgencio Esparragosa’s

  Complete and Authoritative History of the Papal States

  SOPHIA FOLLOWED CAPTAIN Ponder through the ship and down into the hold. Dark and low-ceilinged, it was filled with crates stamped CANNED COD and JARRED MOLASSES and PRESERVES. The captain led her along a circuitous route through the piles of crates until they reached the very back of the hold. He held his lamp aloft. There, a tall box on wheels stood waiting. It was difficult to make out much beyond its shape. It was made of wood, and the lid, which presumably opened on hinges, had evenly spaced holes for aeration. She stood on tiptoe and tried to peer in, but the holes were too small and the hold too dark. A flutter of something green and brown was all she could see. The lid was held in place with a formidable padlock. Experimentally, she pushed her weight against one end of the box, and it rolled easily across the wooden floorboards.

  Sophia was taken aback. She had been imagining something smaller: a letter or some precious packet. The planter looked less valuable and more cumbersome than she had expected. “Remorse left me a planter?”

  “This is it.”

  Sophia considered her alternatives. They had arrived in Seville safely and in good time. In fact, they had arrived a few days early. The person sent by Remorse would not be expecting her yet, and Burr and Calixta would not arrive until July. She could not remain on the Verity; it would sail on for several months before returning to Boston. If this is what I have to do to get the diary, she said to herself, then this is what I will do. “I guess I will take it,” she said reluctantly.

 
“I expect it will be difficult to move single-handedly,” Captain Ponder said. “But I will ask the crew to roll it up while the plague cleric questions you.”

  “Thank you.” As Sophia followed him back through the hold, she asked: “Do they take long? The plague clerics?”

  “It will depend on whether there has been a recent outbreak. At times they are excessively meticulous, considering that we come from a foreign port. The threat is from within, not without, but the plague clerics are not ones to overly rely on logic.” He stopped on the stairs and turned to her. “You don’t have the cold that has afflicted some of the others, do you?”

  “No—I’m fine.”

  “Just as well. A cold is a cold, but, as I said—the clerics are not renowned for their sound logic.”

  Sophia considered this. “Have you ever known someone who suffered from the plague?”

  “Once I almost stopped in a port farther north, where the plague had struck years earlier. As far as I could tell there was no one left alive. Even from a distance, I could see the bones of the inhabitants littering the dock.”

  —9-Hour 42—

  THE ENTRY TO Seville was by the Rio de Guadalquivir, which divided the city into one greater and one lesser portion. The long harbor along the riverbank was almost deserted. One ship near the Verity was casually guarded by a sleeping mariner and a brown dog. Three more ships lay abandoned, their masts sagging wearily toward the murky water. Dusty orange trees lined a road to a great stone archway, beyond which a slow traffic of people and horses made its way along the cobblestones. The buildings near the river, with chipped white walls and red tiles, had a faded aspect, as if they had been exhausted by the sun.

  Sophia had been waiting on the dock for more than an hour. The pealing of bells from the cathedral sounded, echoed by bells from smaller chapels throughout the city. For a moment Seville seemed a lively place, filled with cheerful cacophony. Then the chiming faded, and the silence seemed all the more mournful and ominous.