A Novel

by A. J. Hartley

  “It is the best I can do,” he replied. “Listen, Miss Sutonga, I came to you because I thought you a person of talent, ingenuity, and dedication to the truth. If my faith was misplaced, you should let me know so that I can seek someone more suitable.”

  I felt stung, as I had when Florihn said I wasn’t a real Lani. For a moment, I wanted to run away and climb the highest chimney I could find and stay there. But I also felt that this was a defining moment, that if I said the wrong thing, I would not be able to take it back.

  I drew myself up. “There is no one more suitable for the job than me,” I said.

  “Then I do not know why we are having this conversation,” he replied. “Do your job in the ways that seem best suited to your abilities, and I will get you what information I can from the police investigation. And please, try to act with a little discretion.”

  I produced a folded paper on which I had written an address and a few short sentences in pencil. “Could you see that this gets mailed?” I said.

  He glanced at it, and his gaze seemed to linger over Vestris’s name. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Just … catching up,” I said. “Family stuff.”

  He considered me, and I sensed both his desire to read what I had written and the certainty that he would not. “Again,” he said, “I hope you will act with discretion.”

  “Of course,” I said. I had shared with Vestris nothing beyond the fact that she should write to me at Willinghouse’s town house.

  For a moment he looked as if he was going to say something significant, but thought better of it. “Now, if you will excuse me,” he said.

  I was waiting to be driven back to Crommerty Street when I caught the unexpected sound of music drifting down the hall: not the raucous, folksy music of the Drowning or the sensual, drum-heavy music of the Mahweni. This was music from countries north of Feldesland—precise, layered, and complex music played on a keyboard and a tenor viol, over which came the voice of a woman, high and exquisite, touched with melancholy so piercing that it stopped me in my tracks and made me strain to catch the words. It was music like Willinghouse’s porcelain through which you can see the sun, music like filigree or finely cut crystal, like luxorite. It sounded like longing, and I who was not born to such elegant sophistication, such poignant and heavenly reach, was suddenly overcome by images of Berrit, of the child I had left with my sister, of Papa, whom I needed now more than I ever had. I moved quietly to the door through which the sound was coming, fighting an urge to weep.

  The song—if that was not too inadequate a word—ended in a patter of polite applause. Suddenly there was animated conversation from within, women’s voices, though I could not catch what they were saying.

  As I leaned closer to the door, it opened.

  It was Dahria, Willinghouse’s rude and haughty sister. The sight of her burned off all my tender feelings in a heartbeat.

  Her hazel eyes were large and surprised, and as she took a startled step backwards, the conversation in the room behind her ceased abruptly. There were two musicians, young, white, and male, and the woman I took to be the singer, who was older and fuller in the body. Seated on a sculpted couch were two other girls, both white and blond, who, with Dahria, I took to be the audience. All three of them wore pale tea gowns with bustles and low necklines in delicate fabrics with ornamental trim, and they looked less like people than like elegant confections made of spun sugar.

  Their eyes raked my drab and dirty appearance, and one of the seated blondes put a hand to her lips as if alarmed, but Dahria recovered her composure quickly.

  “Is there something I can help you with?” she demanded, chin elevated so that she looked down her nose at me. She gave no suggestion she had ever laid eyes on me before.

  It was a withering look, and I, badly out of my element, flushed and shook my head. I took a couple of hurried steps back along the hall, and the girl watched me before going back into the room and closing the door. There was a momentary rush of whispers and then the unmistakable sound of badly stifled giggling.

  I moved as far away from the room as I could, feeling stupid and awkward, and was relieved when another door opened and Stefan Von Strahden appeared in the hallway, his arms full of papers. The politician gave me his decidedly unpolitical smile, blue eyes flashing with unabashed delight.

  “Miss Sutonga!” he said amiably. “You do have a way of cropping up, don’t you? How wonderful! Is Josiah keeping you busy?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Please don’t call me sir,” he said with a mock grimace. “Call me Stefan. We are all equals under the skin.”

  It could have been patronizing, but his manner was welcoming. After my run-in with Dahria and her society friends, I was glad of it, though I could manage only a nod.

  “Here to work?” he asked.

  “Waiting for the carriage.”

  “Then our plans align perfectly!” he exclaimed delightedly. “I have to be at Parliament in an hour. You shall ride with me. Give me ten minutes to gather my fusty, bureaucratic nonsense, and we shall be on our way. I don’t mind telling you that Willinghouse’s coach was refurbished last month. Unlike mine, which makes one sore in ways I cannot, with propriety, describe, it’s like sitting on a drawing room sofa all the way. You’ll barely know you are moving. What do you say?”

  He gave me that expansive smile, so direct and hearty, so unlike Willinghouse’s shrewd, shadow-play caution, and I couldn’t help smiling back.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Yes.”

  He tucked the papers under his arm and held up both hands, fingers splayed. “Ten minutes,” he said. “Less if I can find Josiah’s seal without having to summon the undead butler. Wait for me in the kitchen and we’ll sneak out the back.”

  I grinned, and he bounded off down the hall. I followed slowly, moving to an open area with a staircase and on down a plain corridor to the kitchen, where a servant was washing dishes noisily at one of the great sinks.

  I had been there only a minute when the kitchen door opened and Dahria entered, alone. She stood there, considering me, and when the servant at the sink caught her eye, she gave the tiniest nod, causing the girl to shut the water off, dry her hands, and bustle out with a speedy curtsy.

  “I do not think my brother would want you seen by everyone who visits the house,” she said. “A little discretion goes a long way.”

  “That is how you spend your time?” I answered, made bold by anger. “Drinking tea and listening to music?”

  My defiance amused her. “There are worse ways to pass the time,” she said.

  “Before what?” I asked.

  She gave me a quizzical frown. “I’m afraid I don’t follow,” she said.

  “Passing the time suggests you are occupying yourself between events,” I clarified. “What are the events?”

  “Balls, dinners, galas of one kind or another,” she said without much enthusiasm.

  “More time passing,” I said.

  “You think like my brother,” she said, sitting at the notched kitchen table, turned slightly sideways to avoid wrinkling her dress. “He would have me do Great Things with my time. I don’t think I am cut out to be a steeplejack, do you?”

  “Are you cut out to be a socialite?” I asked.

  Her elegant eyebrows rose and the corner of her mouth twitched. “You are a feisty one, aren’t you?” she said. “I can’t recall the last time a purebred Lani even looked me in the face, let alone reprimanded me for my lifestyle, excepting Grandmamma, of course.”

  Her grandmother was Lani! That explained Willinghouse’s coloring, his impeccable accent, his knowledge of the Lani way. And now he was a politician, a man of prestige and power. It was remarkable. I wondered why he had not told me at our first meeting, but Dahria was watching my expression shrewdly, so I went on the offensive.

  “Purebred?” I said.

  “Oh, don’t take offense,” she remarked with a casual flick of her wrist. “That’s ever so
tiresome. You know what I mean.”

  “I’m not a racehorse.”

  “Not, I assure you, what I meant,” she said with a half bow of mock apology.

  I considered her pale face, which was much lighter than her brother’s. I would never have guessed she was part Lani. The thought prompted an idea. I had no government seal, no detective papers, no police badge. But there was more than one kind of authority.

  “I am going into the city in a moment,” I said. “With Mr. Von Strahden. Just waiting for the carriage to be ready.”

  “And I hope you have a fine day of it,” she answered with a slight smile.

  “Come with me.”

  “I beg your pardon?” she said, caught between amusement and actual shock.

  “Come with me.”

  “Why?” she said, still dryly amused. “I think Mr. Von Strahden can be trusted to travel with you unchaperoned.”

  “I don’t need an escort,” I said, waving away her sly innuendo.

  “So, again, why?”

  “Better than sitting here all day,” I said. “You might have fun.”

  “With you?”

  “With what we will be doing.”

  “Which would be what?” She was trying to sound disdainful but there was something in her eye she couldn’t keep out. Curiosity.

  “I’ll explain as we ride,” I said. “On one condition.”

  “Which is?”

  “We don’t tell your brother,” I said.

  And with that, I had her. Her eyes flashed and something passed between us, the thrill of adventure stripped of consequences, so that for a moment I forgot the woman’s snide superiority.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked, very slightly breathless.

  “We’re going to solve a murder,” I said.

  CHAPTER

  16

  I HAD DAHRIA PUT me hurriedly into one of her maid’s outfits, the kind with a demure coal-scuttle bonnet that shaded my face from all sides, so that I had to turn my head to look at anything not right in front of me, something Dahria found unreasonably amusing. Under the frock I wore a long chemise, drawers, and wool stockings with tightly laced high-heeled shoes on which I wobbled precariously. For her part, Dahria replaced her tea gown with a corset and crinoline that supported a vast frippery of a dress trimmed with lace and ribbon that she thought was more appropriate for outdoors, and I was conscripted into helping her get into it all. I scowled and sneered throughout the process of lacing her into the rigid, formal attire, and told her that she looked like a walking lampshade, but a tiny, idiotic part of me was envious. She could barely sit down, but that just reminded me that her birthright was to be a kind of butterfly, while mine was to hang by my boots and fingernails from chimneys. She donned a broad-brimmed hat with a gauzy white veil and a parasol, and was done, a vision in mauve.

  “Walk behind me,” she said as we went downstairs to the kitchen. “And speak only when you are spoken to.”

  It had been my idea, but she was already in charge.

  Von Strahden was waiting for us, checking his pocket watch. He turned with a look of comic exasperation, but it stalled abruptly as he took us in. “I was about to berate you for making me late,” he said, “but beauty, I see, cannot be hurried. Lady Dahria, you will be joining us, I take it?”

  “If my presence doesn’t make you too uncomfortable,” she said, smiling icily. “We could pick up a bootblack along the way if it would help redress the balance.”

  Von Strahden beamed good-humoredly and turned to me, speaking in a mock whisper as I walked unsteadily out to the carriage. “Lady Dahria is making fun of my egalitarian principles,” he said.

  “And what are your plans for today, Mr. Von Strahden?” I asked, mustering what confidence I could and putting on a demeanor I thought matched my costume.

  “Dull stuff, I’m afraid,” he said. “Survey teams to dispatch, results to examine, more teams to dispatch, more results to examine. Endless, and undeserving of our conversation.”

  Willinghouse’s driver paused when he saw us emerge from the house. “Miss Dahria,” he said. “I didn’t know you planned to go into town today. Your brother must have forgotten to tell me.”

  “Quite,” she answered. “And you will forget to tell him too.”

  I loitered in her shadow, offering an arm when she climbed up into the carriage. The driver did not give me a second look, and I don’t think he realized who I was. Von Strahden watched her, eyebrows raised.

  “Miss Sutonga thinks I should have more adventure in my life,” she remarked.

  “Quite right too,” said Von Strahden as the carriage rolled off. The seats were, as he had said, remarkably comfortable. “It isn’t good to stay cooped up in the house with those insubstantial friends of yours.”

  “My friends have as much substance as you or I,” she returned.

  Von Strahden snorted derisively. “Gossip and fashion and which spoon to use on the grapefruit,” he said dismissively. “Not exactly the stuff of life, is it?”

  “I just don’t understand why some people are embarrassed to acknowledge their own class,” Dahria purred.

  “Embarrassment has nothing to do with it,” said Von Strahden. “I just don’t happen to think it healthy to mix exclusively with people of your own social standing. Sometimes our betters have less than we do.”

  “I will agree,” Dahria said, still smiling dryly, “that class is not entirely about income.”

  Von Strahden gave me a knowing look and spoke sotto voce. “A dig, I fear, at my humble origins. Unlike the lady here and her brother, I was not born to wealth and fortune. My father, when he was my age, was a factory worker in a flax mill on Deans Gate. Worked his way up to foreman and eventually to shareholder. Spent what he had on my education. I was never dirt poor,” he confessed, returning Dahria’s smile, “but I know what it is to work, to want, even to go hungry, and I don’t intend to forget those things now that I have a little power and influence. Indeed, it’s because of those things and those people that I sought that power, and I intend to use it for their benefit.”

  “Hear! Hear!” said Dahria, parodying the voice of an elderly backbencher.

  “Yes, yes!” said Von Strahden with a self-deprecating smile. “I’m an absurd and naïve political windbag, but I am at least sincere.”

  “And you would have my vote if I was allowed to cast one,” I said, emboldened by his speech.

  “And that will happen in your lifetime,” said Von Strahden, earnest again. “When we are in power—”

  Dahria cut him off, speaking through a theatrical yawn. “If you are going to discuss politics all the way there,” she said, “I will throw myself under the wheels. I swear, Von Strahden, you are worse than my pious brother.”

  “I will take that as a compliment,” he said.

  “And while Mr. Von Strahden luxuriates in that,” she said, turning deliberately to me, “perhaps it’s time you told me exactly what you plan to do with me today.”

  * * *

  VON STRAHDEN DROPPED US on the corner of Crommerty Street and drove off with a smiling nod and a “ladies” addressed equally to us both.

  “It seems you have made a friend,” said Dahria. “But don’t get your hopes up. Mr. Von Strahden has love in his life already.”

  I bristled. “I’m not here to hunt for a husband,” I said.

  Dahria smirked and said nothing. It struck me as strange that someone with more than a drop of Lani blood in her should be so much more at home as an aristocrat than a white, male politician who might one day have a hand in leading the country.

  Crommerty Street, which had been largely deserted when I last visited it, was now a fashionable pedestrian bustle: white ladies of all ages promenading from shop to shop, pausing to admire the window displays and to gossip. It seemed that everyone knew each other, though those who recognized Dahria were surprised to see her “out and about at this time.” The shops themselves were quieter, and very little money
was changing hands, but the prices were so high that the establishments might stay comfortably afloat if they made a sale only once or twice a month.

  I was anxious about being recognized in Ansveld’s shop, but I needn’t have been, and not only because the bonnet almost completely concealed my face. I was a servant, and as such, I was as close to invisible as it was possible to be. So long as I kept still and quiet, all eyes would stay on Dahria. The idea was somehow both a relief and an annoyance.

  Ansveld’s son was behind the counter, wearing a pair of heavily smoked lenses through which he was studying a tiny piece of aging luxorite set into a gold ring. He nodded to Dahria as we came in, but said nothing. The shop was full of an oppressive and musty silence, broken only by the stentorian ticking of a grandfather clock. Those luxorite pieces that were unshaded produced a hard, constant light that made the barred window on the street look dim in comparison. At the end of the counter, now under a shroud, was the great typewriter. It looked not so much discarded as dead.

  I wasn’t used to shops, doing most of my purchasing at stalls in markets and in street-corner deals, but the extent to which we were left to browse at our leisure seemed unusual and deliberate. I didn’t know if it was because people couldn’t be harassed into spending vast amounts or because in such a place, discussing money was considered vulgar. But no one spoke to us for ten minutes, and when they did, it was a primly dressed maid offering tea.

  Dahria declined for both of us, and began a desultory conversation about the standard of workmanship in the jewelry settings and how tastes had changed over the last decade. Ansveld Jr. was polite but bored and just this side of irritated. Dahria changed that by asking for a hand mirror so that she could try out some earrings. The luxorite grains set in their crystal pendants were small but bright, an almost white light that, with a matching pin to be worn in the hair, gave her a halo. It would have been an arresting effect on anyone. On Dahria, it created an angel. Even Ansveld Jr. stopped what he was doing to admire her.

  “How much?” she asked simply.

  Most of the merchandise was not priced. If you needed to ask, you couldn’t afford it.