“Hmm.” A pause. “Count on it in four days’ time, at the Palace Hjorth. Any sooner is out of the question. I’ll have to clear down all nonessential mail to get the announcement out in time—this will cost us a lot of goodwill and money. Can you guarantee you’ll be there? If not, then I can’t speak for what resolutions will be put forward and voted through by the assembled partners. You have enemies.”
“I will be there.” She hesitated for a moment. “If I don’t make it, it means I’m dead or incapacitated.”
“But you’re not, now.”
“Thank Brilliana and Olga,” she said. “They were good choices.”
“My Valkyries.” He sounded amused.
“I’ll see you in four days’ time,” Miriam said tersely. “If you need to know more, ask Olga, she knows what I’m doing.” Then she hung up on him.
Two days later, Miriam looked up from her office ledger and a stack of official forms in response to a knock on the office window. “Carry on,” she told Declan, who looked up inquiringly from his drafting board. “Who is it?” she demanded.
“Police, ma’am.”
Miriam stood up to open the door. “You’d better come in.” She paused.
“Ah, Inspector Smith of the Homeland Defense Bureau. Come to tell me my burglars are a matter of national security?” She smiled brightly at him.
“Ah, well.” Smith squeezed into the room and stood with his back to the cupboard beside the door where she kept the spare stationery. The constable behind him waited in the hall outside. “It was a most peculiar burglary, wasn’t it?”
“Did you catch any of the thieves?” she asked sharply.
“You were in New London all along,” he said, accusingly. “Staying in the Grange Mouth Hotel. Into which you checked in at four o’clock in the morning the day after the incident.”
“Yes, well, as I told the thief-taker’s sergeant, I dined in town then caught the last train, and my carriage threw a wheel on its way from the railway station. And I stayed with it because cabs are thin on the ground at two o’clock.”
“Humph.” Smith looked disappointed, to her delight. Gotcha! She thought. She’d set off from her office in Cambridge at midnight, floored the accelerator all the way down the near-empty interstate, and somehow managed not to pick up any speeding tickets. There were no red-eye flights in New Britain, nor highways you could drive along at a hundred five miles an hour with one hand on the wheel and the other clutching an insulated mug of coffee. In fact, the fastest form of land travel was the train—and as she’d be happy to point out to the inspector, the last train she could have caught from Boston to arrive in New London before 4 a.m. had left at eight o’clock the night before.
It had been a rush. She’d parked illegally in New York—her New York, not the New London the inspector knew—and changed into her rich widow’s weeds in the cramped confines of the car. Then she’d crossed over and banged on a hotel door in the predawn light. She’d been able to establish an alibi by the skin of her teeth, but only by breaking the New Britain land speed record on a type of highway that didn’t exist in King John the Fourth’s empire…
“We haven’t identified the Chinee-man who was asking after you,” Smith agreed. “Nor the unknown assailant who fled—who we are investigating with an eye for murder,” he added with relish.
Miriam sagged slightly. “Horrible, horrible,” she said quietly. “Why me?”
“If you turn up in town flashing money around, you must expect to pick up unsavory customers,” Smith said sarcastically. “Especially if you willingly mix with low-lifes and Levelers.”
“Levelers?” Miriam glared at him. “Who do you have in mind?”
“I couldn’t possibly say.” Smith looked smug. “But we’ll get them all in the end, you’ll see. I’ll be going now, but first I’d like to introduce you to Officer Fitch from the thief-taker’s office. I believe he has some more questions to ask about your burglar.”
Fitch’s questions were tiresome, but not as tiresome as those of the city’s press—two of whose representatives had already called. Miriam had pointedly referred them to her law firm, then refused to say anything until Declan and Roger had escorted them from the premises with dire threats about the law of trespass. “We will call you if we arrest anyone,” Fitch said pompously, “or if we recover any stolen property.” He closed his notebook with a snap. “Good day to you, Miss.” And with that he clumped out of her office.
Miriam turned to Declan and rolled her eyes. “I can live without these interruptions. How’s the self-tightening mechanism coming along?”
Declan looked a trifle startled, but pointed to a sketch on his drafting board. “I’m working on it…”
Miriam left the office in late afternoon, earlier than usual but still hours after she’d ceased being productive. She caught a cab home, feeling most peculiar about the whole business—indignant and angry, and sick to her stomach at what she’d done—but not guilty. The morning room was a freezing mess, the glaziers still busily working on the shattered window frames. The elderly one tugged his forelock at her as she politely looked over his shoulder and tut-tutted, trying to project the image of a house-proud lady bearing up under one of life’s little indignities.
She found Jane in the kitchen. “Is the dining room going to be ready by this evening?” she asked.
“No, ma’am.” Jane shrugged. “It is a mess. They broke two chairs and scratched the dining table!”
“Well, at least nobody was hurt. Piece of luck, sending you away, wasn’t it?” Miriam shook her head. She’d forgotten about the dining room. The windows were boarded up, but the furniture—“I think I’m going to have to hire a butler, Jane.”
“Oh good,” Jane said, startling Miriam.
“Well, indeed.” Miriam left the kitchen and was about to climb the staircase when a bell began to jangle from the hall. It was the household telephone. She stalked over and picked up the earpiece, then leaned close to the condenser and said, “Hello?”
“Fletcher residence?” The switchboard operator’s voice was tinny but audible. “Call from 87492, do you want to accept?”
“Yes,” said Miriam. Who can it be? She wondered.
“Hello?” asked a laid back, slightly jovial man’s voice. “Is Mrs. Fletcher available?”
“Speaking.”
“Oh I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Durant here. Are you well, I hope? I read about your little unpleasantness.”
“I’m quite alright,” Miriam managed through gritted teeth. Suddenly her heart was right up at the base of her throat, threatening to fly away. “The burglars damaged some furniture, then they appear to have fallen out among themselves. It is all most extraordinarily distressing, and a very good thing for me that I was visiting my sister up in New London at the weekend. But I’m bearing up.”
“Oh, good for you. I trust the thief-takers are offering you all possible assistance? If you have any trouble at all I can put in a word with the magistrate-in-chief—”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary, but I’m very grateful,” Miriam said warmly. “But can we talk about something else, please?”
“Certainly, certainly. I was telephoning to say—ah, this is such a spontaneous, erratic medium!—that I’ve been reviewing your proposal carefully. And I’d like to proceed.”
Miriam blinked, then carefully sat down on the stool next to the telephone. Her head was swimming.
“You want to go ahead?” she said.
“Yes, yes. That’s what I said. My chaps have been looking at the brake assembly you sent them and they say it’s quite remarkable. When the other three are available we’ll fit them to a Mark IV carriage for testing, but they say they’re in no doubt that it’s a vast step forward. However did you come up with it, may I ask?”