She may have made great sandwiches, and she may have had small feet, but at least I could console myself that Holly Munro was deskbound. She didn’t wear a rapier. She didn’t do what I did, going out nightly and risking her life to save London. This knowledge enabled me to hold it together when I got home to discover she’d been in my bedroom and, in a spasm of brisk officiousness, tidied all my clothes.
I meant to mention it to her (calmly, politely, in that way we had) the following morning, but it slipped my mind. By the time I got up, there were a lot of other things going on.
When I came into the kitchen, Lockwood and George were clustered around the table like it was a pretty new assistant, reading a copy of the Times. Holly Munro, cheerfully immaculate in a cherry-red skirt and crisp white blouse, was doing something with the salt bin behind the kitchen door. She’d had it installed to replace the usual mess of bags and canisters we kept there. I eyed her skirt as I came in; she eyed my saggy old pajamas. George and Lockwood didn’t look up or acknowledge I was there.
“Everything all right?” I said.
“There’s been trouble in Chelsea overnight,” Ms. Munro said. “An agent killed. Someone you know.”
My heart jerked. “What? Who?”
Lockwood glanced up. “One of Kipps’s team: Ned Shaw.”
“Oh.”
“Did you know him well?” Holly Munro asked.
Lockwood stared back down at the newspaper. We’d known Ned Shaw well enough to dislike him, with his close-set eyes and unkempt mane of curly hair. He’d had an aggressive, bullying nature. Our hostility had even brought us to blows, though Lockwood had fought alongside him in the ‘Battle in the Graveyard’ at Kensal Green Cemetery. “Not really,” he said. “Still…”
“It’s awful when that happens,” Holly Munro said. “Happened to me at Rotwell, more than once. People I’d seen in the office every day.”
“Yeah,” I said. I shuffled around to the kettle. The kitchen was too small with Holly in it. It was hard to move about. “How did he die?”
Lockwood pushed the paper away. “Don’t know. It’s only mentioned at the end of the article. I think word had just come in. The rest of the news is no better. The Chelsea outbreak’s getting worse, and there’ve been clashes, people protesting about being forced to leave their homes. Police on the streets are having to deal with the living now, not the dead. The whole thing’s a complete dog’s breakfast.”
“At least our case is going smoothly,” Holly Munro said. “I hear you did very well last night, Lucy. It sounds like a terrifying ghost that badly needs destroying. Would you like a whole-wheat waffle?”
“I’m all right with toast, thanks.” Our case. I pulled back a chair, scraping it across the linoleum.
“Should try one,” Lockwood said. “They’re yummy. Okay. The plan for today: our aim is to all get back to Hanover Square after lunch and hunt for the Source before it gets dark. Our client is impatient. Believe it or not, Luce, Miss Wintergarden’s already been on the phone, ‘requesting,’ in her own delightful style, that I personally update her about what we’ve discovered so far. I’ve got to nip over to the hotel where she’s staying now and give her that briefing. Meanwhile you, George, are going to head back to the Newspaper Archives to get more details on the murder. You reckon there must be more info out there.”
George had been scribbling with a felt-tip pen on our Thinking Cloth, writing out a list of names: Mayfair Bugle, The Queens Magazine, The Cornhill Magazine, Contemporary Review…“Yeah,” he said, “there were loads of magazines in late Victorian times, and some of them carried sensational stuff, about true crimes and all that. I bet there’s an account of the Little Tom murder there somewhere, though it might be tricky to find in the time available. It could give us a clearer sense of what happened and help us find the Source.” He threw the pen down. “I’ll get going shortly.”
“We’ve got big deliveries of iron and salt this morning,” Holly Munro said. “I’ll monitor that, and get your bags ready by early afternoon. You’ll want more candles.”
“Great,” Lockwood said. “You can help Holly, if you like, Lucy.”
“Oh, I’m sure Lucy doesn’t want to do that,” Holly said. “She’ll have something more important to do.”
Lockwood chewed a piece of waffle. “I’m not sure she has.”
The kettle boiled.
“Actually,” I said brightly, “I do. I think it would be much more useful if I went down to the Archives—and helped George.”
It wasn’t often that George and I went out together during the day (in fact I’d almost forgotten what he looked like when not surrounded by shadows, ghosts, or artificial light), and you could count the times I’d volunteered to help him at the National Newspaper Archives on the fingers of no hands. If George was surprised by my decision, however, he gave no sign of it. A few minutes later, he was strolling placidly through London at my side.
We walked south through the streets of Marylebone in the general direction of Regent Street. Though the Chelsea containment zone was a mile or two distant, the effects of the outbreak could be felt even here. There was the smell of burning in the air, and the city was quieter than usual. The cafés and restaurants of Marylebone High Street, which like all other commercial establishments closed at four thirty, were only ever busy at lunch; today their interiors were mostly gray and empty, with forlorn waiters sitting idly at tables. Trash bags lay uncollected on the sidewalks; litter blew across the street. More than once we saw orange DEPRAC tape blocking the entrances to buildings, and ghost-crosses daubed on windows: the signs of live hauntings, as yet undealt with by any of the agencies. They were busy elsewhere.
Outside a seedy Spiritualist Church on Wimpole Street, a scuffle was going on. Black-clothed followers of the Ghost Cult that worshipped inside were grappling with one of the local Neighborhood Protection leagues, who’d been trying to strew lavender on the church steps. Middle-aged men and women, gray-haired, outwardly respectable, shouted and screamed at one another, snatching at collars, twisting arms. As George and I drew near, they broke apart and stood in panting silence as we walked between them. When we’d passed, they closed up and began fighting again.
They were just adults. They were all equally clueless. When nightfall came, they’d all stop squabbling and scurry home in sync to bolt their doors.
“This city,” George said, “is going to hell in a handcart. Don’t you think so?”
For the first few blocks we hadn’t talked at all; I wasn’t in the mood for it. But air and exercise had partially roused me out of my gloom. I stamped my boot heels on the pavement. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means everyone’s getting frantic, and no one’s asking the right questions.”
We zigzagged down to Oxford Street, where the flea market iron and silver stores, palm readers, and fortune-telling booths stretched for miles in both directions; crossed over at Oxford Circus; and started down Regent Street. The Archives were not far away.