Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

“And you?” she asked.

“First, to know who else is searching for her. I know the agents—the officer, the ‘sister’—but not who they represent.”

“And after that?”

“That will depend. Obviously they have already been here asking questions—unless you are involved in this business yourself.”

She cocked her head slightly and, after a moment of thought, sat down behind the desk. She reached over for another sip of tea, took it, and kept the cup, holding it between her breasts with both hands, watching him evenly across the desk top.

“Very well,” she began. “To begin with, I do not know the name, and I do not know the woman. No person of my household—or of my household’s acquaintance—appeared in the early hours of this morning displaying any quantity of blood. I have made it a point to ask, and I have received no such answer. Next, Major Blach was here this afternoon. I told him what I have just told you.”

She pronounced the name unlike Jurgins or Wells, as if it was foreign…had he spoken with an accent? The others had not mentioned it.

“And the sister?”

She smiled conspiratorially. “I have seen no sister.”

“A woman, scars on her face, a burn, claiming to be Isobel Hastings’s sister, a ‘Mrs. Marchmoor’—”

“I have not seen her. Perhaps she’s still to come. Perhaps she does not know this house.”

“That’s impossible. She has been to two other houses before me, and she would know this one before all the rest of them.”

“I am sure that’s true.”

Chang’s mind raced, sorting quickly—Mrs. Marchmoor had known the other houses, she had bypassed this one—to a swift conclusion: she did not come because she would be known.

“May I ask if any women of your household have recently…graduated to other situations, perhaps without your consent? With light brown hair?”

“It is indeed the case.”

“The type to be searching for a blood-soaked relative?”

“Hardly,” she scoffed. “But you said burns across the face?”

“They could be recent.”

“They would need to be. Margaret Hooke has been gone four days. The daughter of a ruined mill owner. She would not be known at any lower house.”

“Does she have a sister?”

“She doesn’t have a soul. Though it appears she’s found something. If you can tell me what that is—or who —I’ll be kindly disposed.”

“You have a suspicion. That’s why we’re talking.”

“We’re talking because one of several regular customers of Margaret Hooke is presently in my house.”

“I see.”

“She saw many people. But anyone wanting to learn what might be learned…as I said, there’s little time to talk.”

Chang nodded and stood. As he turned to the door she called to him, her voice both quiet and more urgent at the same time. “Cardinal?” He looked back. “Your own part in this?”

“Madam, I am merely the agent of others.”

She studied him. “Major Blach did ask for Miss Hastings. But he also sought any information about a man in red, a mercenary for hire, perhaps even this bloody girl’s accomplice.”

He felt a chill of warning. The man had obviously asked Mrs. Wells and Jurgins too, and they had said nothing, laughing at Chang’s back. “How strange. Of course, I cannot explain his interest, unless he had been following my client, and perhaps observed us speaking.”

“Ah.”

He nodded to her. “I will let you know what I find.” He stepped to the door, opened it, and then turned back. “Which lady of your house is entertaining Margaret Hooke’s customer?”

Madelaine Kraft smiled, her thin amusement tinged with pity.

“Angelique.”

He returned to the front of the house and collected his stick, then so armed—and untroubled by the staff who seemed to understand that it had been arranged—approached the man in white. Chang saw that he held another small piece of blue paper, and before he could speak the man leaned forward with a whisper. “Down the rear staircase. Wait under the stairs, and then you may follow.” He smiled—Kraft’s acceptance smoothing the way for his own. “It will provide the additional benefit of allowing you to leave unseen.”

The man went back to his notebook. Chang walked quickly past him into the main part of the house, along wide welcoming archways that opened onto variously entrancing vistas of comfort and luxury, food and flesh, laughter and music—to a rear door, watched by another burly man. Chang looked up at him—he was tall himself and found the immediate density of so many taller, broader figures a little tiresome—waited for the man to open the door, and then stepped onto the landing of a slender wooden staircase leading down to a narrow, high passageway of some twenty yards. This basement passage was significantly cooler, moist-aired, and lined with brick. Directly beneath the staircase was a hutch with a door. Chang pulled it open and climbed inside, bending nearly double to fit, and sat on a round milking stool. He pulled the door closed and waited in the dark, feeling foolish.

The interview had raised more questions than it had answered. He knew his conversation with Rosamonde in the map room had been unobserved, so Black must know of him independently—either from some other informant, from seeing him at the Vandaariff mansion, or, he had to admit, from Rosamonde herself. If Mrs. Marchmoor was also Margaret Hooke, then Angelique was in danger of disappearing as well—though Madelaine Kraft’s suspicion had not stopped her from accepting the regular client who might have been the cause. Perhaps this meant that the client was not as important as some other party, or some other power, yet hidden in the shadow—information she hoped Chang could provide. Chang rubbed his eyes. In the course of a day he had placed himself in the shadow of one murder, performed another, and set himself against at least three different mysterious parties—four if he counted Rosamonde—without any real knowledge of the larger stakes at hand. Further, none of this had brought him a step closer to finding Isobel Hastings, who grew more mysterious by the hour.

Despite his racing mind, it was only a minute before he heard the door open and the descending weight of footsteps on the stairs above his head. A man was speaking, but Chang couldn’t make out the words over the noise—to his best guess there were at least three people in the party, perhaps more. Finally they were off the stairs and walking away from him down the passage. He cautiously opened the hutch door, and peeked out: the party could only walk single file in the narrow space, and all he could see was the back of the rear figure, an unremarkable-looking man in a formal black topcoat. He waited until they reached the far end of the passage before slowly pushing the door open and extricating himself. By the time he was once more standing at his full height, they had rounded a corner and disappeared. Walking as much as possible on his toes to reduce the sound of his footsteps, he followed at a trot to make up the distance.

At the corner he stopped, listening, and again heard the voice—low and strangely muttering—but not the words themselves, obscured by jingling keys and their fumbling at a lock. He silently dropped to a crouch and then risked edging one eye around the corner—knowing that anyone looking would be less likely to notice an eye at a less-than-normal eye height. The party was some ten yards away, standing in front of a locked, metal-bound door. The man in the rear still stood with his back to Chang, the closer view revealing him to be younger with thin, oak- colored hair plastered flat to his skull. Beyond him Chang could see parts of three other people: a small man in an ash-grey coat bent over the door, attempting to find the right key, a tall, broad-shouldered man in a thick fur, impatiently tapping a walking stick on the floor and leaning down—he was the one muttering—to the fourth person, tucked under his arm like a flower in a grenadier’s bearskin: Angelique. Her dress was deep blue, and she did not react to whatever the man was saying, gazing without expression at the elegant grey man’s hands as he sorted through keys. The lock turned—he’d found the right one at last—and he opened the door, looking back at the others with a trim twitch of a smile. It was Harald Crabbe.

At this the man in the fur snapped open a pocket watch and frowned. “Where in hell is he?” he said, his voice an iron rasp. He turned to the third man and hissed balefully, “Collect him.”