“Yes. I lost my dagger in the river, though,” she said softly enough that he had to lean closer to hear. “The man who dove in after me wrestled it out of my hand.” She glanced down at her right palm, covered by her mitt. “I need to replace it.”
The traffic on the Street of Flowers flowed all night, although there were far fewer carriages at this hour. Pedestrians kept their distance, moving along the line of fences in clumps. Duilio watched them, unwilling to risk her safety. “I’ve got a couple of spares. A gun?”
“I know how to use a gun, but the trigger guard can be tricky, so a blade is more reliable.”
He almost stopped walking, puzzled by that claim, and then realized that her webbing would make getting her finger through the trigger guard difficult. That prompted a dozen other questions in his mind, most pertaining to her people’s military—surely they had a navy—but this wasn’t the right time to be asking. Instead he went back to an earlier question. “This man who dove in after you. How did he catch you? Did he outswim you?”
“I’d hit my head on the side of their boat,” she said, sounding embarrassed by that fact, “and I was exhausted by then. I just wasn’t fast enough.”
Her face turned toward him, but he was watching a group of apparently drunken young men stumbling in their direction. He maneuvered Miss Paredes over until they walked next to the fence and made sure he kept between her and the young men. Fortunately, the revelers were too busy insulting each other to bother Miss Paredes. Their chatter faded as they continued down toward the river. “And the other man,” Duilio said. “Silva? Did he say anything?”
She turned onto Souto, the narrow street that would cross Bainharia. It wasn’t much more than a cobbled alleyway, not wide enough for a carriage. A feeble glow came from a streetlamp affixed to the side of one of the buildings that closed in on either side. “He seemed to think he was rescuing me,” she said. “He claimed he’d had a vision about me being in the water and came to save me.”
Duilio pursed his lips. He didn’t like Silva, but he didn’t want to bias her perception of the events of that night. He didn’t want to put ideas in her head.
It had been an unpleasant shock when she’d told him his bastard uncle had been the one to draw her out of the river. At first Duilio had assumed the boat was rowed by a collaborator of hers. When he’d realized Miss Paredes was a victim, Aga’s mention of the two men in the boat had gone from understandable to baffl ing. How had the small boat gotten out there, past the patrols? Hearing that it was Silva in the boat made it less improbable. The man had access everywhere, and could probably talk his way past any police patrol. But Duilio found his entry into her story disconcerting. “Did you see any other boats on the water nearby?”
“If you’re thinking of the boat that dropped the house into the water, it would have been long gone,” she said, shaking her head. “Silva and his man must have rowed out from the city.”
The City Under the Sea was positioned out of the lanes of traffic, nearer the southern bank of the Douro River. It inhabited an area dredged out in the past decade, ostensibly to create harbor space for naval vessels, but the navy had chosen to dock their vessels at the unfinished Port of Leixões, north of the Golden City, instead. That dredging had created a perfect situation for the artwork. It was just past a curve in the river, so the river’s outward current didn’t pull too hard on the houses, and protected from the incoming tidal currents by the southern breakwater that kept the sea at bay. It was about a mile from the quays of the Golden City over to that spot, giving it privacy. One had to be going there to end up there, so Silva’s appearance could not have been an accident. “Did you believe Silva? About his vision, I mean?”
She walked on for a moment without answering, her heels clicking against the cobbles. “To be truthful,” she finally said, “I am not a believer in seers, Mr. Ferreira. I’ve always suspected they simply pretend to know what will transpire and only point out the times they happened to be correct. Anyone would be right half the time, don’t you think?”
Well, I’ve been put in my place. Duilio smiled ruefully. “Logic tells us that is the case, Miss Paredes. So what do you think led him there, then?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But he said we’d meet again. That does concern me.”
It worried him too. Silva was the showy sort who would create a great fanfare when he revealed that he’d saved a young woman from drowning. Miss Paredes did not need her likeness in the newspaper. He only hoped that it took Silva some time to locate her.
They’d reached Bainharia Street and she gestured toward the dark windows of a druggist’s shop in one of the first buildings. “This one. We’ll have to go upstairs.”
Beyond the wrought-iron guarding a narrow balcony, a light still burned in the second-floor window. Someone was waiting for Miss Paredes. She opened the door and slipped inside. A plain lantern hung from the ceiling, casting the yellow walls in a sickly light. Duilio followed, climbing the narrow stair behind her. She knocked on the door of the apartment above the store.
An elderly woman opened the door and peered out. “Ah, good. You’ve come. I’ve had word.” She caught sight of Duilio waiting a couple of steps down the stair. “Who is this?”
“My new employer—” Miss Paredes began.
The woman opened the door a bit wider and held up a wrinkled hand. “Don’t tell me, child. Heriberto came by this afternoon, trying to find out where you went, so I’d better not know any more. Give me a moment.” She closed the door, leaving them in the hallway.
Miss Paredes glanced at him, an apologetic expression drawing her brows together. Duilio shook his head. “I don’t need to know.”
The worry fled her features then. “Thank you.”
He didn’t need her to tell him. Heriberto was, without doubt, the name of Miss Paredes’ superior. That the man had visited the elderly inhabitant of this building hinted that the woman must also be a sereia, despite the evidence that Duilio hadn’t seen webbing between her fingers. That raised questions he would love to explore, but they could wait until Miss Parades trusted him more.
The door opened again, and the elderly woman passed out a square envelope. “She left this for you.”
Miss Paredes took it. “Thank you. I truly appreciate your help.”
The elderly woman waggled one finger at her, a finger that had an ugly scar running up each side. “Be careful out there, child.”
“I will,” Miss Paredes promised her.
The woman nodded and closed her door, an end to the interview.
Duilio heard the key turning in the lock. “Is that it, then?”
Miss Paredes chewed her lower lip for a second, cast a glance at his face, and then opened the envelope and withdrew a fine, deckle-edged card. She read the words, her dark eyes flicking across the page. “I’m supposed to meet her at the Carvalho ball Thursday night.” Her eyes lifted to his face. “Do you know a way I could sneak in?”
Duilio didn’t ask whom Miss Paredes was expected to meet. Not yet. But if she’d asked his help, then this meeting was important to her. “Sneak in? No, Miss Paredes. You and I will walk in the front door. I’m invited.”
“I can’t accompany you,” Miss Paredes protested, her spine straightening. “I’m not . . .”
When she trailed off, he realized that she’d misunderstood his intention. He could escort a young lady to that ball uninvited—he knew the Carvalho family well enough to get away with it—but that would attract more attention than he wanted at the moment. And it might prove awkward, since Mr. Carvalho had approached Duilio earlier in the year, hoping to arrange a marriage with his eldest daughter. But Duilio had a different plan in mind. “My mother is invited as well,” he clarified. “As her companion, your attendance would be unexceptional.”
“Ah. I see,” she said, her face lowering as if she might be blushing, although Duilio didn’t see any flush staining her cheeks. “Is she well enough to go?”
“Despi
te her distraction, my mother is made of steel, Miss Paredes,” he said. “She can do anything once she makes up her mind. Shall we discuss it with her in the morning?”
Miss Paredes slipped the card back into its envelope. “Yes. Thank you, sir.”
Duilio offered her his arm. “Then let’s go home.”
CHAPTER 12
WEDNESDAY, 1 OCTOBER 1902
By the time Duilio made it downstairs in the morning, he’d already thought of a dozen things he needed to get done and about a hundred more questions he wanted to ask Miss Paredes. He found his mother and Miss Paredes in the dining room, already eating breakfast. His mother looked more alert than she had in some time, able to concentrate enough to greet him this morning. He went and kissed her cheek before sitting down. Having a companion might suit her after all.
For her part, Miss Paredes looked far more rested than she had the day before. She wore a white shirtwaist with a vest in royal blue that flattered her pale complexion. Her black skirt wasn’t the one she’d worn to make her late-night visit, but a finer woolen that looked well made, if not in the most current fashion. Recalling her statement that she’d hit her head against the boat that night, he noted the faint bruising on her temple. She looked serene despite the difficulties of the past several days. That might be a facade. He didn’t know her well enough yet to be sure.
Miss Paredes held one of the newspapers in her mitt-obscured hands, stubbornly keeping her eyes on the printed words. Duilio wondered if she was the sort of woman who read the gossip pages, but decided that if she did so, it was only as a part of her job. She seemed too serious. The paper she currently held was his mother’s trade daily. He would love to know whether Miss Paredes enjoyed reading that. Personally, he found it a dead bore.
While waiting for the footman to bring his customary breakfast, Duilio sipped at his coffee. “Are you settling in well, Miss Paredes?” he asked.
His mother actually appeared interested in her answer, a good sign.
Miss Paredes folded the paper and laid it down. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”
Duilio turned to his mother then. No time like the present. “Mother, do you recall that the Carvalhos are having a ball tomorrow night?”
She appeared to consider his query for long enough that he feared he’d lost her attention, but finally said, “Isn’t their youngest daughter turning seventeen?”
“Yes.” None of the three Carvalho girls had managed to find a husband yet, despite their father’s best efforts. Duilio only hoped his mother’s attendance at the ball—her first outing in years—wouldn’t be misinterpreted as interest in Carvalho’s eldest daughter on Duilio’s part. “Miss Paredes and I need to speak to someone there. A police matter. Would you be willing to go, Mother, as a favor to me?”
His mother sighed. “Am I out of mourning now?”
His mother hadn’t attended a social function of any sort for three years, but mourning wasn’t the reason behind it. “You’re in half mourning, Mother. It shouldn’t cause too much comment as long as you don’t dance,” he said, “or run off into the gardens with some young swain.”
His mother didn’t respond to his joke, but the preposterous comment drew a dry glance from Miss Paredes. He rather enjoyed seeing that expression on her solemn face.
“If it will help,” his mother said, “I’ll manage, Duilinho.”
Despite being made to feel about eight years old in front of Miss Paredes, Duilio couldn’t help smiling at his mother’s long-suffering tone. She had never enjoyed the fripperies and gossip of the social set. “So, Miss Paredes,” he asked, “you and my mother have two days to prepare for a ball. Is that feasible?”
Miss Paredes cast a glance at his mother, but nodded shortly. The paper apparently captured her attention after that, for she said nothing else to him. She began reading one of the articles to his mother instead, something about steam trawlers, a type of fishing boat banned from the area. A portion of the family’s money—his mother’s money—was invested in the boatbuilding industry. Apparently Miss Paredes already knew of his mother’s interests there.
Duilio would give anything to have his father and brother back. Among other things, then he wouldn’t have to oversee the family’s investments. While his grandfather had amassed a decent fortune buying up fabric mills in the north of the country and building a shipping fleet to get those goods to markets, Duilio didn’t know a great deal about either; he’d always believed Alessio would inherit. His father had shifted his funds to investment in those industries rather than active participation, removing some of the stench of trade from their hands. Fortunately his man of business kept him apprised of the pertinent news, saving Duilio from reading the trade papers every morning.
After breakfast, Duilio asked Felis to join them in the front sitting room to read to his mother. He hoped that eschewing privacy would stem any gossip about himself and Miss Paredes in the household, so he directed Felis and his mother to two ivory-brocade armchairs set by the window. A few minutes later he was ensconced on the pale leather sofa before the hearth. On the low table before him he laid out the timeline, a sheet of foolscap on which Joaquim had drawn a long dateline across the top, with each pertinent event written perpendicular to that in his tidy hand.
Miss Paredes nodded toward it. “What is this?”
Duilio pulled the sheet of foolscap closer. “We’ve done our best to put together a chronological chart of every event pertaining to The City Under the Sea.”
She nodded her head slowly, eyes still downcast. “I found much of this information in the newspapers. I just didn’t think to lay it out this way. It’s clever.”
Duilio shifted closer to her on the couch. “This starts just over a year ago, when the first house, the Duarte mansion, was discovered in the water. And this,” he said, pointing, “in early September, was when we put together the reports of missing servants with the timing of the appearance of the houses in the water. Then we were ordered to close the investigation.”
“And then it was the Amaral house,” Miss Paredes said softly.
Duilio sat back. “Espinoza is the only person we definitely have connected to this,” he said, “so several of these entries pertain to our efforts to find him.”
She touched a date shortly after the fifth house was placed. “Espinoza stopped giving interviews about this time. The papers said he tired of being hounded by the writers.”
“Yes,” he said. “That sounds right.”
“He lived in Matosinhos before he became famous,” she said, naming a town only a few miles north of the Golden City. It was on the Leça River, the site of the unfinished port of Leixões. “He must have come to the Golden City about two or three years ago, I think, but I didn’t find anything about where he lives or works now.”
“He was renting a flat in Massarelos parish,” Duilio said, “but moved out about a year before the first house was placed. We’ve not been able to trace where he went from there. Not so far. He had to have had space to build the houses and a way to get supplies. But he’s essentially building small boats, and there are dozens of boatbuilders in this city and the neighboring ones. He could be hiding among those.”
“They’re not boats,” she pointed out. “The house continued to float after it filled with water. The newspapers say there’s a charm on the top of each that keeps them floating. Could you hunt for the person who made those?”
Duilio frowned. “The charms are of questionable effectiveness. They do nothing more than make sailors feel safer. And anyone can put together a charm, I’m afraid, Miss Paredes.”
“Oh.” She looked back down to the timeline. “How many people do you think it takes to build these . . . things and submerge them? The newspaper articles said there must be dozens.”
“I don’t think so. Keeping a secret with that many people is nearly impossible, and Espinoza has managed. I think we’re talking about one dozen at most. Unless there’s some cause they’re espousing,” Duilio added. “If th
ey have a cause, they’re more likely to keep their mouths shut.”
“What cause could this possibly serve?” Miss Paredes’ lips thinned, her eyes taking on the same hurt look he’d seen in the submersible. She’d shifted away from him, her black-clad hands clenched tightly in her lap. “What is the point of killing so many, and in such a manner?”
She, more than anyone else alive, had the right to ask that question. Duilio just wished he had an answer. “Perhaps your meeting tomorrow night will give us that information. Did you not tell me that you had a sketch of the table?”
“It’s not much,” she said. “I couldn’t remember any of the symbols in the inner ring, so what I have may not be useful.”
“It’s more than we had yesterday morning,” Duilio assured her. He wanted to set her at ease, talk about something trivial, but he suspected this was better done swiftly. So he asked her questions about the coachman who’d accosted her and drugged her, about the man who’d drawn her into the boat with Silva, about the voices she’d heard from inside the replica, and even the rattling of the chains she’d heard. He tried to recall everything she’d said the day before in the bathroom, so as not to make her repeat herself.
“How did you get out of the replica?” he asked. “Was there a door?”
“No,” she said. “I kicked at the upper corner of the roof—well, the floor, since it was upside down—and it gave eventually. I managed to squeeze out. The damage wasn’t visible from the submersible, just a line of light from inside. From the table.”
He hadn’t seen that damage, but he hadn’t known where to look either. “And you were wearing the housemaid’s costume.” That would be the “black and white” that Aga had reported.
She nodded jerkily. “I’d lost the cap but I still had the apron on. I tore up the apron to bandage my hand once I was on the quay.”
Bandage her hand? “Then what did you do?”
“I don’t know how long I stood there.” She was being careful not to look at him, he noted, perhaps trying to keep her words impersonal. “Eventually I made my way to the Amaral house. I went in through the back. The butler found me there and sent for Lady Amaral. I told her that Isabel had been grabbed by someone, but I couldn’t tell her what had actually happened.”
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