The Chemickal Marriage

by Gordon Dahlquist

  ‘Do you keep property records?’

  ‘By law we collect all manner of records.’

  ‘Including property?’

  ‘Well, depending on what exactly you want to learn –’

  ‘Ownership. Of property.’

  The archivist grazed her bosom one last time with his eyes and sniffed diffidently.

  ‘Third floor.’

  The third-floor clerk was on a ladder when Miss Temple found him, and she pitched her question loud enough to hurry him down in haste to lower her voice. He marched her to a wide case of black leather volumes.

  ‘Here you are. Property registers.’ He turned at once to go.

  ‘What am I to do with these?’ Miss Temple gave the bookcase an indignant wave. ‘There must be hundreds.’

  The soft dome of the clerk’s head was bare, black hair dense around each ear in vain compensation. His fingers shook – did she smell gin?

  ‘There does happen to be a great deal of property, miss. In the world.’

  ‘I do not care for the world.’

  The clerk bit back a reply. ‘Every time property changes hands, there must be a record. They are arranged by district …’ He looked over his shoulder, longingly, to the ladder.

  ‘Why don’t you have properties arranged by the owner’s name?’

  ‘You didn’t ask for that.’

  ‘I’m asking now.’

  ‘Those records are organized for taxation and inheritance.’

  She raised an eyebrow. He led the way to another case of black-bound books.

  ‘The letter p,’ she said, before he could leave.

  ‘The letter p encompasses five volumes.’ He pointed to the top shelf, high above them both.

  ‘You’ll need a ladder,’ observed Miss Temple.

  It had been the Doctor that spurred her thought. Her last vision of Svenson had been in Parchfeldt forest with Mr Phelps, corrupt attaché of the Privy Council, peeling back the Doctor’s gashed tunic and attempting to staunch the blood with his own coat. Like everyone else at the Ministry, Phelps had been under the sway of Mrs Marchmoor, her mental predations eroding his health and sanity. At the end he had been set free by Svenson’s suicidal duel with Captain Tackham. Phelps had not returned to the Ministry, yet who knew what secrets he possessed? She opened the first of the five volumes and sniffed at the dust. Phelps could also tell her about the Doctor’s final moments, when she herself had fled. She thrust the image from her mind and licked her finger. The fragile page caught, leaving a damp mark, and Miss Temple began to work.

  After twenty minutes she sat back, noting with displeasure the grime on her fingertips. The sole address for any ‘Phelps’ was a tannery on the south side of the river. This could not be where a Ministry official lived. It had been a fool’s errand anyway – how many in the city took rooms, like she herself, at some hotel or block of flats, without leaving any record of ownership? She would delegate the task of finding Phelps to Pfaff. She stood and looked at the scatter of black books, wondering if she was expected to reshelve them, before deciding that was ridiculous.

  But then Miss Temple hurried to the ladder and shoved it loudly to the volumes marked r. It took her two trips to get them to the table, but only five minutes to find what she wanted. Andrew Rawsbarthe had been Roger Bascombe’s direct assistant. Another drone sacrificed by Mrs Marchmoor, Rawsbarthe had perished in Harschmort House. Through Roger, Miss Temple knew that Rawsbarthe was the last of his family, living alone in an inherited house. If Phelps sought a place to hide, there would be few better than the abandoned home of an unmissed subordinate. Miss Temple scribbled the address in her notebook.

  The pleasure of her discovery bled easily into confidence and Miss Temple decided to return on foot. Her path kept to avenues lined with banks, trading houses and insurance firms, yet Miss Temple was not large, and the crowded walkways became a gauntlet of bumps and jostles, with never an apology and often an oath. This was the discontent she had seen in the Circus Garden, but further inflamed. She turned at a knot of men storming out of the Grain Trust, shouting insults over their shoulders, and was nearly flattened by two constables swerving towards them, cudgels ready. Chastened, Miss Temple veered to the tea shops of St Vincent’s Lane, where one could always find a carriage. The city felt unmoored, a reactive writhing that brought to mind only unpleasant visions of beheaded poultry.

  As she crossed the lobby, the desk clerk caught her eye and raised an envelope of whorled red paper.

  ‘Not ten minutes ago,’ he said.

  ‘Who is it from?’ The envelope bore no writing she could see. ‘Who brought it?’

  The clerk smiled. ‘A little girl. “This is for Miss Celeste Temple,” she said, and so directly! Her hair was near your colour – brighter, though, quite nearly crimson, and such fair skin. Is she a niece?’

  Miss Temple spun behind her, the sudden movement attracting the attention of other guests.

  ‘She is gone.’ The clerk was now hesitant. ‘Climbed into a handsome black brougham. Do you not know her?’

  ‘Yes – of course – I did not expect her to arrive so soon. Thank you.’

  It had to have been Francesca Trapping. But how could the Contessa be so confident as to send the child in by herself – was she not afraid the girl would run? What had been done to her?

  Miss Temple walked calmly to the rear stairs, beyond any eyes. She took out her revolver and began to climb.

  The door to her rooms swung silently open at her push before stopping against the broken leg of the chair Marie had propped against the knob. Miss Temple glanced at the extra bolt: sheared away.

  She eased into the foyer, not daring to breathe, her eyes – and the pistol barrel – darting at every piece of furniture. The maid’s room door was open. Marie was not there.

  To her own bedchamber door a second red envelope had been affixed with a knife. Miss Temple tugged it free. At the sound, a cry of fear echoed from within.

  ‘Marie?’ Miss Temple called. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Mistress? O my heavens! Mistress –’

  ‘Are you hurt, Marie?’

  ‘No, mistress – but the noise –’

  ‘Marie, you may come out now. They are gone. You will be safe.’

  Miss Temple pushed the front door closed, no longer bothering with the chair. She turned to the sound of her own bolt sliding back and Marie’s pale face peeking out.

  ‘We will call for supper,’ Miss Temple said. ‘And a man to repair our lock. Corporal Brine will be back directly, and I promise, Marie, you will not be left alone again.’

  Marie nodded, still not prepared to step into the parlour. Miss Temple followed her maid’s gaze to the two red envelopes in her hand.

  ‘What are those?’ Marie whispered.

  ‘Someone’s mistake.’

  The lock had been replaced and Miss Temple’s inevitably frank talk with the manager, Mr Stamp, concluded. Stamp’s mortification that his hotel had been so effortlessly penetrated by criminals was exactly balanced by his resentment of Miss Temple for having attracted said criminals in the first place, and it had taken all of her tact – never amply on supply – to settle the matter, for she knew his truest wish, finance notwithstanding, was to turn her out. Mr Brine appeared in the door some minutes later, out of breath, for the tale of the attack had reached him in the lobby and he had run all the way up the stairs. After Brine had asked to see for himself that Marie was well – which Miss Temple allowed only on the hope that such attention might persuade the maid that much sooner to effective service – she received his own report, a tale that eased her mind not at all.

  He had indeed found the brown-coated man, who had not only eluded Ramper at Stropping, but had looped around and followed Ramper to the Boniface. Upon Ramper’s departure, the man had trailed him to Worthing Circle, where Ramper had hired a carriage. The brown-coated man hired a carriage of his own, but Mr Brine had not been able to engage a third carriage in time and had lost his quar
ry. With a shake of his head – the square nature of which made the gesture more like the swivelling of a wooden block – he described the man as ‘weedy and queer’, with a large moustache. The brown coat was out of fashion and too large for its wearer.

  At this point Mr Brine burst into another apology, but Miss Temple abruptly stood, forcing Brine to stop speaking and rise with her.

  ‘The fault is mine alone, Mr Brine. You warned me. If you would let me know when Mr Pfaff sends word.’

  She sat on her bed with the two red squares upon her lap, turning each in her hands for any hint of what they might contain. That the envelopes came from the Contessa seemed clear: the first to trumpet her command of Francesca Trapping, the second to make plain Miss Temple’s mortal weakness. Neither fact could be gainsaid. She plucked the knife from her boot and sliced open the first envelope. The red paper was stiffer than it appeared. Inside was only a snip of newsprint, by the typeface recognizably from the Herald.

  –grettable Canvases from Paris, whose Rococo Opulence languishes in a mire of degenerate Imagination. The largest, abstrusely entitled The Chemickal Marriage, happily eschews the odious, irreligious Satire of Mr Veilandt’s recent Annunciation, but the only Union on display is that of Arrogance and Debauchery. The Composition’s Bride, if one can bear to thus describe a Figure so painstakingly degraded

  Miss Temple had seen the artist’s work and did not dispute the assessment, though she did not know this particular piece. That the decadent artist Oskar Veilandt and the Comte d’Orkancz were one and the same was not widely known, for Veilandt was supposed to have died in Paris some years before. If she could acquire the entire article from the Herald, she would certainly learn more.

  Miss Temple took up the second envelope, heavier than the first, and cut along its seam. She peeked inside and felt her breath catch. With delicate care she drew the blade around the next two sides, peeling it open as fearfully as if it were a box that held a beating heart.

  The envelope had been pinned to the door quite deliberately to avoid damaging the small square of glass it held – no thicker than a wasp’s wing, and the colour of indigo ink pooled across white porcelain. She glanced at the door. This had come from the Contessa. The glass might hold anything – degrading, deranging, unthinkable – and to look inside would be as irrevocable as leaping from a rooftop. Her parched throat tasted of black ash … the Comte’s memories told her that the thinness of the glass allowed only the simplest inscription, that the memory must be brief.

  The skin on the back of her neck tingled. Miss Temple forced her eyes around the room, as if cataloguing its reality might give her strength. She looked into the glass.

  Two minutes later – she glanced at once to the clock – Miss Temple had pulled her eyes free. Her face was flushed, yet her transit of the glass fragment had not been difficult: the captured memory was but the viewing of a roll of parchment … the architectural plan of a building she did not know.

  The Contessa had wasted her strategic advantage to acquaint Miss Temple, an enemy, with an unhelpful newspaper clipping and an equally pointless map. Obviously each might be useful, if she knew what they meant … but why would the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza desire Miss Temple to become even more entangled in her business?

  Taking into account the curiosity of maids, Miss Temple hid the clipping and glass square beneath a feathered hat she never wore. The red envelopes were left in plain sight on her desktop, each now containing arbitrary swatches of newsprint.

  The night brought only a terse note from Mr Pfaff: ‘Glassworks engaged, following on.’ Because Ramper and Jaxon passed messages through Pfaff, she heard nothing from either man, and Pfaff himself sent no further word that morning nor the next entire day. Miss Temple strode through the hotel, to her meals, to the cellar, even once on a whim to the rooftop in hopes of spying the brown-coated man in the street. She saw nothing, and clumped back to the red-flocked corridor of the topmost floor, where Mr Brine stood waiting.

  At her chambers the evening editions had arrived and lay on the sideboard. Miss Temple took the pile in both hands and retreated to her writing desk, holding the papers on her lap without looking at them.

  The journey to Harschmort House was a matter of hours by train, somewhat more by coach, and perhaps as much as an entire day on foot. Mr Jaxon had been gone five days, and Mr Ropp above a fortnight. That both had vanished into the mystery of Harschmort confirmed that Robert Vandaariff had survived. If the brown-coated man served Vandaariff, did it not mean, upon his trailing Ramper, that Ramper would disappear as well?

  The Contessa had found her. She was wasting time. Her enemies were moving.

  Miss Temple shoved the papers onto the floor. The sun was setting. She sorted through her bag. She could wait no more.

  ‘Marie, my travelling jacket.’

  The maid had been safely installed in the room Miss Temple kept for business, the hotel’s footmen within earshot of the door. Miss Temple again left through the kitchens, Mr Brine at her side. With no idea whether they were being watched, she had to assume they were.

  The art salon where the Comte’s paintings had been shown was locked and its windows dark.

  ‘I don’t suppose you can open the door?’

  ‘Not without breaking the glass, miss.’

  Miss Temple cupped both hands around her face and pressed her forehead to the cold surface. The gallery walls were bare. She sighed. From her previous visit she knew there was no room for a very large canvas in any case. The Chemickal Marriage must be at Harschmort.

  She whispered for Brine to look as well. When his face was nearer she spoke evenly and low. ‘Behind the gallery agent’s desk is a mirror. In that mirror – do not turn, Mr Brine – is a figure crouching in the shadow of that dray-cart. Would that be your brown-coated man?’

  Brine sucked breath through his teeth in a hiss.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Miss Temple. ‘We will walk away without a care. I doubt the man’s alone, and until we locate his confederates, we cannot act.’

  They kept to well-lit avenues. At the next intersection Mr Brine leant close to whisper: ‘If he’s got fellows, they haven’t shown. If you’ll allow me, miss, perhaps we can trap him.’

  Brine took her elbow in his massive hand and guided her to a smaller lane of darkened markets, the cobbles strewn with broken boxes, paper and straw. Once around the corner, Brine skilfully folded his own bulk behind three empty barrels. She walked ahead, pulling the pistol from her bag and then making a show of waving into the glass door of a shop, hoping it would appear as if Mr Brine had gone inside and left her waiting.

  Silhouetted against the brighter avenue, a figure crept into view … head darting to either side like a snake. Miss Temple continued her performance with impatience. The shadow came closer, straight past the barrels …

  Mr Brine rose, but the brown-coated man was warned by his shadow and avoided the swinging cudgel, fleeing back into the crowds. Miss Temple dashed towards them both, pistol raised, but it was no use. Their quarry had been flushed, and they would not trap him so easily again.

  Mr Brine blamed himself bitterly, well past Miss Temple’s patience, and she was driven to change the subject, making conversation when she would have preferred to think. They had engaged a carriage and every time the man peered out of the window he was reminded of his failure and began to mutter.

  ‘I say again, Mr Brine, it does not signify – indeed, I am happy to be rid of the man, for now we may engage in our true business of the evening.’

  Brine kept looking out, his large head mocked by the lace curtains bunched against each ear. Miss Temple cleared her throat. ‘Our true business, Mr Brine. Do attend.’

  ‘Beg pardon, miss.’

  ‘There will be ample opportunity to demonstrate your skills. Albermap Crescent, No. 32. As its occupant has died, I shall rely on you to make our entry – preferably nothing to attract the neighbours.’

  They left the coach and waited for the sound
of hoof beats to fade. No. 32 lay in the centre of the Crescent’s arch, and entirely dark.

  ‘I expect there is a servant’s entrance,’ Miss Temple whispered. ‘Less on view.’

  Mr Brine clutched her arm. The topmost windows had been covered with bare planks, but from one of No. 32’s three brick chimneys rose a wisp of curling smoke.

  They hurried to the side door. The stones around it were smeared with a grainy paste, like mortar, and Miss Temple looked to see if the house next door was being repaired.

  Mr Brine squared one shoulder near the lock and drove the whole of his weight against the door with a resounding crack. Miss Temple shut her eyes and sighed. She followed Mr Brine in and shoved the broken door shut. In the silence of Andrew Rawsbarthe’s pantry they waited … but no answer came.

  She slipped the wax stub from her bag, struck a match and led them to the kitchen proper, the grit on her shoes rasping against the floorboards.

  ‘Do you smell … cabbage?’ she whispered.

  Brine shook his head. Perhaps the ghostly trace lingered from Rawsbarthe’s final meal. She motioned Brine on with a nod. They must find the third chimney.

  The hearth in the main room was cold, and Mr Brine’s index finger drew a line of dust across the sideboard. The front door was locked and barred. The staircase was steep, the wood reflecting the candle like a dark mirror. The old steps creaked, thin complaints at their intrusion. When Miss Temple reached the empty landing, she pointed to the ceiling with her revolver. Brine nodded, his cudgel ready. But the staircase did not continue up. If Mr Phelps was using the house to hide, it must be in an attic …

  Far below them, quite unmistakably, came the creak of the pantry door. Miss Temple blew out the candle. At once her heart sank. Behind them shone a double line of smeared footprints, glowing palely with the moon. She looked down at her boots and saw them rimed with the mortar from the doorstep – some phosphorescent paste? It had been a snare. Their location would be plotted for the man downstairs as neatly as a map. She desperately scuffed her boots across Rawsbarthe’s carpet, then pulled Brine’s head to her ear.