The Chemickal Marriage

mine? We all shut our eyes in the dark.’

Miss Temple’s voice dropped to an icy snarl. ‘I will tell you your business, Mr Pfaff – and if I choose to straddle twenty sailors in succession in St Isobel’s Square at noon, it is nothing you need note. I have paid you good money. If you think to defy me, or if you think I care a whit about your leers or the threat of scandal, you have made a very grave mistake.’

Only then did Pfaff realize that Miss Temple’s hand was in her bag and the bag now tight against his abdomen. Very slowly, he raised both hands and met her eyes. He grinned.

‘It seems you’ve answered me after all, miss. Forgive my presumption – a fellow acquires worries. I understand you now quite well.’

Miss Temple did not shift her bag. ‘Then you are for the glassworks?’

‘And will send word, however late the hour.’

‘I am obliged to you, Mr Pfaff.’

In a show of bravado she dropped her bag onto the side table and snatched the last tea biscuit, snapping it between her teeth. Pfaff took his leave. When she heard the door close, Miss Temple sighed heavily. Her mouth was dry. She spat the biscuit back onto the plate.

Miss Temple looked up at the clock. She still had time. She found Marie in the maid’s little room, mending buttons, and explained what to tell Mr Pfaff on the unlikely chance that Miss Temple did not return. When Marie protested this idea, Miss Temple observed that the thread Marie was using did not exactly match the garment. After Marie had promised for the third time to relock and bar the door behind her, Miss Temple tersely allowed that the girl might avail herself of a glass of wine with supper.

The corridor was empty, and Miss Temple met no other guest on her way to the kitchen. Ignoring the looks of the slop boys and tradesmen, she walked to the corner, peered into the street, saw no obvious spy and hurried from the hotel, keeping her head low. At the avenue Miss Temple hailed a carriage. The driver hopped down to help her to her seat and asked her destination.

‘The Library.’

Miss Temple had never been in the grand Library before – it held no more natural attraction than a barrelworks – and in its stiff majesty she saw a monument to a high-minded struggle interminably waged by others. She approached a wide wooden counter, behind which stood waxy, bespectacled men whose dark coats were dappled with grey finger-swipes of dust.

‘Excuse me,’ Miss Temple said. ‘I require information.’

A younger archivist stepped to serve her, eyes dipping down the front of her dress. The counter drew a line just below her breasts, making it appear, to Miss Temple’s chagrin, that she had jutted herself forward.

‘What information is that, my dear?’

‘I am searching for a piece of property.’

‘Property?’ The archivist chuckled. ‘You’ll want a house agent.’

On his upper lip swelled a pale-tipped pimple. Miss Temple wondered if he would pop it before next shaving, or leave the work to his razor.

‘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 attache 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.