by William Ray
Head swimming, he squinted up at his office; the pale walls caught the light, although they were broken by the occasional framed something or other. Looking down was no better, with his dark wooden desk surrounded by that hideous orange carpet he had somehow been talked into. Emily thrust a glass of water at him, and with a grateful grunt, he tossed it back.
Between his thirst, his headache, and what seemed to have been a night of blessedly dreamless sleep, it was clear last night’s drinking had been accomplished. Apparently, he had failed to pick up any girls. If he had been successful at the latter, then he probably would have taken them home and awoken there, rather than at his desk. It was a little disappointing, but at least a hangover didn’t usually want money from him in the morning.
“Oh, you’re a mess,” Emily complained as she brushed at something on his sleeve, “Try to pull yourself together; she’ll be here any moment, and you need to look the part.” He scowled up at her, but she just watched him expectantly. She was worse than an army sergeant—or at least worse than he had been as one. Surely he had never kicked awake tired, hungover men and demanded they ‘look the part’.
With a defeated sigh, he pushed to his feet and grimaced at both the familiar pain in his left calf and the realization that as a sergeant he had, in fact, done that exact thing several times. He had at least always shown them the courtesy of drinking with them the night before though, and thus shared their morning lament. He assumed he had offered Emily a place in his revels last night, but she was too prim these days.
The entire situation seemed grossly unfair, as he was long since out of the army, and she was his employee, not the other way around.
“Sure enough,” she replied, making him realize he had spoken at least some of that aloud, “but not if you don’t make any money.”
A retort bubbled up from the back of his mind—that maybe she should just settle down and get married. It was the sort of thing people said often enough amid the recent surge of women seeking office employment, but in his more wakeful moments, her actually doing so was an inevitability he dreaded. Fortunately, he had recovered just enough presence of mind to keep his mouth shut.
Emily swept her hands over his jacket, trying to smooth it out, then sighed and said, “Your pants are rumpled too—no, don’t take them off! Missus Phand will be here any moment.”
Gus rubbed at his eyes, searching his memory for any appointments he had made for today, but could not think of any. Usually he immediately stopped looking for more work once he had been paid for the last job—there didn’t seem to be much point in working until after he had spent the money from their last bout of employment. Emily clearly expected he should know who Missus Phand was, however, and was just waiting for him to embarrass himself.
Finally, although he hated giving her the satisfaction, he asked, “Who is Missus Phand?”
Emily gave an exasperated sigh, possibly having already explained this, moments earlier when he was paying less attention. “Alice Phand. She’s the wife of that famous engineer. The one who made that bridge near Oulm? It was in all the papers last year.”
He dimly recalled the bridge being in the papers but not why. His family was from Oulm, so he had carefully avoided it in the past twenty years. In his childhood memories, Oulm was a sleepy industrial city that completely lacked Gemmen’s vibrant night scene. At least, he assumed it was still vibrant, based on what little he remembered of the night he had just spent enjoying it. On the other hand, given that he had awoken in his office instead of his flat, he wondered if perhaps the Verin capital’s late-night charms had finally begun growing stale.
Even if it had though, the haze of alcohol always did wonders for blurring out his memories of the army, particularly the war against Gedlund’s armies of grasping dead and the chilling laughter of its Everlords as they descended from the sky. His faculties were returning now, which did him no favors, so he did his best to push those memories behind his throbbing headache.
The glass of water Emily had given him had been mysteriously refilled, and he sipped at it again. Eventually that would start to address the headache, at which point he supposed he’d need more alcohol.
“I don’t remember meeting her before. Is this something you set up?” he asked with a scowl, not appreciating the imposition of Emily’s client selections. Occasionally she would decide they were not making enough money and bring in clients herself when his business tapered off. He found those efforts on his behalf vaguely insulting and, in this case, inconvenient; he had enough to drink away another week, perhaps two if he didn’t hire female companionship as often as usual.
He groaned at the burst of sunlight when she opened the drapes wider, which had not only kept out the worst of the sun, but also pleasantly muffled the sounds of traffic on the street below. Judging by both, it was still quite early in the day, and he wondered what sort of horrid client would schedule an appointment at a time like this.
Squinting at Emily, he grumbled, “This is another one of those you met at the temples, isn’t it?”
Her newfound piety was a nuisance, and the clients she brought by from it tended to be boring small cases that pulled in very little money individually, which meant he needed to do more of them. Gus’s own clients offered a much bigger return for his troubles. After his testimony before Parliament about the war in Gedlund, Gus had won a brief moment of celebrity and had managed to rub elbows with more of the right sort. They, seldom meeting trustworthy men of low character, had found him quite useful.
It turned out the upper echelons often needed someone to discreetly investigate things that they could not manage themselves for various social reasons, and they paid well for the favor. A titled gentleman could hardly stroll down to meet the local fences in his effort to recover a stolen heirloom or spend the afternoon watching a business rival in the hopes of finding some bit of leverage upon him. Satisfied patrons had told their friends, who had told their friends, and thus his career as a private inquiry agent had begun.
Gus’s pension from the army was enough to live on, if not comfortably, so the extra money he earned mostly impacted how much he could drink. Emily’s income, however, now depended entirely on his continued employment. Perhaps those finances were the real source of her newfound temperance—she probably spent far less on tithes than he did on alcohol.
Emily sighed, waited for his eyes to refocus, then shook her head and said, “No. She came looking last night, just before I closed up. I told her you were on a case. Her husband is famous, and the papers were saying he’s starting another big project soon, so it’s probably good money.”
With an unseemly familiarity he had long since grown accustomed to, she tucked his shirt back in and tugged his collar straight. She was treating him like a child, and he had to fight off the temptation to sulk like one.
He really wanted a strong thick coffee to help clear his head, but some charlatan had recently convinced her that coffee was somehow sinful or perhaps just unhealthy. Before that, he hadn’t cared which drink he took in the morning, but now the forbidden beverage seemed infinitely more desirable. Without that, in his current state he felt he shouldn’t be expected to remember anything about famous engineers.
“Why is she coming here, though? Why me and not Drake’s?”
Emily shrugged, apparently without an answer for once.
For the past two years, Drake’s had been slowly stealing away his clientele, or he never would have let Emily bring in clients in the first place. Drake’s Detectives were from out east and huge and organized and worst of all had presented a menu of standard rates for their services.
Until Drake’s came along, rates were fluid, based on an agent’s ability to guess how much the client could pay and balanced on the back end by the bonus of anything they found that made suitable blackmail material. Most of his competitors held on to particularly lush discoveries as plans to finance their eventual retirement, but Drake’s was too big and too prominent to pull off that s
ort of thing. He’d yet to come across something like that of his own but didn’t consider himself above the usual approach if an opportunity presented itself.
Word would get around if one of Drake’s ever stooped to it, and since word hadn’t gotten around, their services were beginning to seem almost genteel compared to unfranchised inquiry agents like Gus.
Emily grabbed at the sleeve of his jacket, batting at his arm as she tried to clean away something that had gotten caked there. Her ministrations ceased a moment so that she could pull back and eye him critically, and Gus took that moment to pull open a desk drawer where he kept a small mirror, hoping to straighten his mussed hair. As he did, there was a glint of gold as the morning light reflected off the elfsteel blade carelessly left stuffed in that drawer, and he quickly replaced the mirror, willing to let his hair be a little mussed rather than sink into another melancholy recollection of friends lost.
Seeing he was awake enough to start tending himself, Emily looked him over in one last critical review and then headed through the door back towards her desk in the foyer to await Alice Phand.
When he set up here, the room between the hall and his office had been entirely superfluous—having a receptionist to greet clients had really boosted his professional image, even if that receptionist was just a woman. The wall between his office and the foyer was pointless since anyone sitting outside could hear everything within, but closing the door seemed to reassure clients of their privacy.
Gus scratched absently at the stubble on his jaw but knew there wasn’t time to shave. His light brown hair usually let him skip a day or two, but it had been at least two days, so he just hoped Missus Phand wouldn’t notice. He slicked back his hair and tried to straighten his jacket. Women of the upper crust often disdained the very idea of women in offices, so he might already be on shaky ground with Missus Phand and wanted to look his best.
At the sound of footsteps in the hall, he knew time was up, and with a wince at the stiffness in his injured leg, he walked over to the framed medals on the wall; Adelaide had done that for him before he broke her heart, or perhaps it was the other way around. Either way, he fixed his attention on the framed collection, hoping his melancholy study would seem more like grim reflections on an exemplary military career rather than a middle-aged man’s musings on romantic failures.
In the front room, the two women exchanged cool, professional greetings, and with a light rap of unnecessary warning, the door to his office slowly swung open. Emily looked relieved to see him standing and looking the part as he turned to welcome their new client and said, “Missus Phand, please come in. Have a seat. Can we get you something? Coffee perhaps?”
Emily ushered the tall blonde woman inside and then said, “I’ll bring in a pot of tea,” giving him a parting glare for offering coffee he knew they didn’t have.
Looking over his shoulder at the framed medals, Missus Phand ignored his question and asked, “Is that the Queen’s Stars? You fought the Lich King in Gedlund?”
Gus grinned and said, “Well, it wasn’t much of a fight—he was already dead when we got there.”
In the years since his return from the army, that line had earned him many drinks, although by now it was long since stale from overuse as every veteran of Gedlund made the same crack. Missus Phand was unamused.
For her part, Missus Phand was a remarkable looking woman. She was younger than he had expected, perhaps even still in her twenties. She was handsome enough, if a bit too sporty for Gus’s taste—most women of her class were willowy in youth and plumped quickly with age, but Missus Phand was unusually athletic of build.
Her slippers were flat-heeled, but she still stood several inches taller than he. An unbustled frock of blue, in the modern cut, did little to flatter her fit physique, although Gus could not object to the curves it did manage to emphasize. The black fur around her shoulders said she had money though, and there were few things Gus found more attractive than that.
Beneath a broad-brimmed, flower-strewn, yellow hat, her eyes were cold slate, and despite the inquiry about his medals, she regarded him with the barely disguised contempt that women of her class often held for the working man. She glanced at his unlit fireplace with a frown and pulled her fur stole out of the way as she took a seat in one of the chairs across from his desk.
“Mister Baston, I require services of a discreet nature,” she began. He walked across to his own chair, trying to disguise his limp, but Missus Phand’s eyes darted down, and she seemed to take it in as another distasteful element of his character. War heroes were to return unscathed or not at all—no one wanted the injured lingering about disrupting visions of the Empire’s martial glory. With a chiding tone, as if he’d had the poor taste to interrupt her with a burp, she continued, “I’ve had some friends ask about, and they say you might meet my requirements.”
Gus nodded and did his best to emulate the professional seriousness that often comforted her sort, replying, “Of course, Missus Phand. We pride ourselves on our discretion. I take it this is not something you care to trust to Drake’s?”
The competition were actually surprisingly discreet, but hinting the worst about them in front of potential customers often helped when it came time to haggle over prices. Given her initial reaction to his limp, he stood by his chair, rather than further embarrass himself with the awkward display required of easing into it.
She regarded him suspiciously for a moment, then slowly nodded and said, “My husband is Edward Phand, the well-known engineer, and I could not afford this going to the papers before things are settled.” Missus Phand hesitated again before going farther, “As you might imagine by our age difference, I am not satisfied in our current situation.”
It began to grow clearer, and Gus gave her what he hoped was an understanding smile. The law-and-order types that Drake’s pompously referred to as their ‘detectives’ were sometimes less than zealous in these sorts of cases. Sanctity of marriage and all that. “You’d like out.”
The woman frowned at him but nodded and said, “We’ve been married for many years, but now a younger fellow has caught my interest.” Gus had no idea how old the engineer was but doubted that was a career where wealth and fame quickly accrued. Hard work had probably kept him from seriously courting until he was more settled, so she was probably quite a bit his junior.
If Phand had an eye for younger women, it would be easy enough to find, or manufacture, the evidence Missus Phand would need for a good accounting in the dissociation. His earlier distress at being interrupted mid-binge was entirely washed away by the potential of easy money.
Emily entered the room bearing a tray with a pot of tea and some sweetened biscuits she only ever produced for clients. Gus loved the biscuits and resolved for the umpteenth time to figure out where she hid them; even with all the other mysteries he had resolved, the answer to that one continued to elude him.
Missus Phand glanced back and frowned at the secretary, confirming Gus’s expectation of her reaction. With Emily’s dark hair bound into a simple bun, her plain white blouse, and simple dark blue skirt, she was the very image of the modern career-minded woman, but such women were little respected in proper society. Missus Phand’s elaborate blonde coiffure and expensive clothes marked her as Emily’s complete opposite, and he supposed antagonism between the two was only natural.
Gus grinned and waved his hand as if to fan away Missus Phand’s concern for the case. He leaned casually against his desk and said, “Of course, of course. This happens all the time, and I completely understand. We can set something up.” He plucked a biscuit from the tray as Emily frowned at him from behind Missus Phand, clearly having taken a dislike to the woman, and he took a quick bite as he ignored Emily’s concerns and smiled down to his client.
Gesturing to Emily, he said, “Miss Loch is quite charming when she dresses the part, and we’ve done this sort of thing before. It’s important that you have some reliable witnesses to accompany you when you catch them in
the act.”
The stately blonde looked over at Emily, then back to him in obvious disgust, and shook her head. Gus took a breath, ready to explain his experience in such cases and how common these sorts of arrangements really were, but she held up her hand to forestall him. “That is not necessary. He’s been cheating on me for years, Mister Baston.”
Gus did his best to look sympathetic, although Emily quite outdid him in that regard—she laid a comforting hand on Missus Phand’s shoulder. Missus Phand brushed away that comforting hand with a look of distaste, and Emily frowned at the reproach, immediately suspicious. Gus trusted her instincts on other matters, but Emily always seemed that way with clients seeking to escape the banns.
A wealthy woman who wanted to leave her husband for a younger man but keep the wealth of the one she had—it seemed completely understandable to him. The announcement that Phand was already cheating was disappointing since that news seemed to render Gus’s more expensive services somewhat superfluous. She would probably pay less if she just wanted him to find more details about something she already knew.
“What makes you think he’s cheating?”
“Women can tell these things, Mister Baston. Time is important to me, but I do not wish too big of a scene. Find me someplace he is taking her but nothing too crowded—some place out on the street where my witnesses and I might surprise him.”
Gus smiled confidently and said, “I believe we can help you. Miss Loch, will you get the paper for Missus Phand to sign?” Producing a pen, he smiled at Missus Phand and asked, “He lives and works here in town? That being the case, our expenses should be low, and you will only need to cover that plus the usual rate of … uh ….” He paused for Emily to call back the amount since usually she was better at guessing how much a female client would pay, but Missus Phand would not wait.
She stood, imperiously tossing her fur back around her shoulders and announcing, “Yes, yes. I will pay you two hundred and fifty peis. Half now and half when you report back. Flat. I don’t care about your expenses.” She slapped down a handful of gold peis on his desk and looked to Gus as if daring him to refuse. Startled by the gesture, he glanced at Emily, who stood in the doorway still looking suspicious about the whole arrangement.