Mrs. Jabril barely turned her head and gave her a cat smile. “Keep your wits about you, Ivy, or I may catch more than your ‘unaware’ someday.” She retrained her piercing gaze on me. “You have paperwork to prove you should have access to Mr. Purcell’s vault, miss?” She also pronounced it “PURSE-el” like Jakob had.
I offered her Edward’s limited power of attorney, which I took from my bag. “I’m Mr. Kammerling’s agent. Mr. Purcell gave me the key. He’s unable to come himself.”
She chuckled, and it sounded like the rolling of well-oiled but very old gears. “Of course he is.” She took the pages and read through them rapidly. “Have you identification proving you are Ms. Blaine?”
I handed her my passport, which she studied for a moment before looking up again. “This will do,” she added, returning the papers and passport to me. “I see you have the key with you. Come. We shall go down. Ivy, I shall let you know when we are done.”
“Yes, Mrs. Jabril,” the younger woman replied, relieved. I had the impression the older woman made her nervous.
Mrs. Jabril led me back the way she’d come, through the door and into a small office at the back of the building. An odd sort of platform lift formed the floor in one corner and we stepped onto it. My guide pulled a safety cage down around us, put one of her keys into a slot on the nearest upright, turned it, and trod on a button with her foot. The lift lurched and then sank smoothly below the floor. “There is only the one key and no other entrance,” she assured me. “Our vaults are very secure.”
“Why does a silversmith need a vault?” I asked as the platform continued down into a cold stone cellar.
“Before the rise of the great banks,” said Mrs. Jabril, pausing to raise the platform’s gates as we bumped to a halt, “goldsmiths were often the bankers and moneylenders of the day. But there was no place to store your valuables outside your own home or to get a small amount of cash for a short term. Silversmiths would occasionally act as. pawnbrokers of a sort to the gentry. It was not unusual for a bachelor to put the family silver into storage with a silversmith until he married and had a use for it again. If his pockets were to let, he might borrow against the weight value of the silver and pay it back when he was in brass again. The British pound sterling was tied to the value per weight of silver at the time, of course, so it was like you were trading commodities for cash. Not a word of gossip would attach to a gentleman, or lady, who paused on occasion to visit their family silversmith.”
She stepped down from the platform and made a directing wave at the stone-walled room and its ranks of metal-doored lockers of all sizes, lit by dim electric bulbs that were strung somewhat sloppily from the ceiling. “The first owner of the shop built these to store his patrons’ articles. Steel doors were fitted to replace the old iron ones in the nineteen thirties. They withstood the Blitz without so much as a buckle.”
“It’s impressive.”
“I shall not say it is as secure as the Bank of England, but unlike the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, we have never been robbed.” When she smiled, her teeth gleamed like sharp pearls.
I could see why any thief assaying this place might think twice. The stone walls supported a collection of mechanical contrivances that looked, at first glance, like a fantastic Rube Goldberg device for catching mice or fetching objects from the tops of the vaults. But as I studied the brass gears and levers and trails of tubes and wiring, the shape of the machine emerged as a gigantic, moving guillotine that could probably make a party of robbers into hash in seconds—after securing all the vault doors with supplementary grids and bars, of course.
The rather grim mechanical marvel glinted with polish and oil, but even looking as deep into the Grey as I dared, I saw no sign it had ever fulfilled its deadly purpose. The vault was remarkably quiet in the Grey, except for the occasional flicker of Percy the poltergeist, though I supposed that shouldn’t have surprised me: Magic and technology have an uncomfortable relationship.
Mrs. Jabril smiled again as she saw me figure it out. “Mr. Jabril was fascinated with mechanics and clockworks. Had his father not been a silversmith, he would no doubt have become a watchmaker. Come along,” she added, walking forward into the stone embrace of the vaults.
I wondered exactly how distant was the relation between Mrs. Jabril and her mechanically inclined namesake. Given the sinister oddities I’d already encountered in London, I thought it might be healthier not to inquire.
“When was the last time anyone accessed this vault?” I asked as she stopped before one of the larger doors.
There was a tiny pause before she spoke again.
“You have all the right papers and you do not appear to be. malign in any way. You are not like Mr. Purcell and Mr. Kammerling, but I can see you are not. like other people.” She paused again before she added, “I shall answer your questions.”
She went still as she thought about my query, her eyes looking off to the side and I imagined—no, I was sure—I could hear the muted whirring of minuscule gears. “Just over three weeks ago, Mr. Purcell sent his assistant, Jakob, to place a few things in the vault. An unpleasant creature, that one. He also left a letter for me which asked that I open the vault for him later that week at half an hour before closing time. I did so. Mr. Purcell arrived exactly on time and replaced several objects as well as adding a box of papers and a letter that I believe is intended for you.”
“Me?”
Mrs. Jabril nodded. “For whoever might come to open the vault after him, that is. He said that he might not return to open it again. And he forbade me to open it to Jakob without his presence.”
Purcell had been twisted to Alice’s purposes, but he hadn’t been entirely in the dark about the dangers. He had anticipated trouble and done what he could. I hoped the letter would give some indication of why he hadn’t spoken directly to Edward about it, though with the asetem in the picture, that may have been enough.
Mrs. Jabril cut short my mental wandering by opening the iron grille in front of the vault door. It looked too heavy for such a tiny woman to move, but I was becoming quite sure she wasn’t at all a normal person. She pointed to one of two keyholes—there was one on the top and one on the bottom of the door, an uncomfortable span for anyone other than an ape—and told me to put my key into the one on top. She slid hers into the keyhole on the bottom and we turned them together. The door loosened in its frame and sighed a little as a gust of air cooler than the air in the cellar leaked out. Mrs. Jabril took hold of the door’s handle and turned it with the sound of metal rolling on metal. The hinges made a whisper of protest as she opened the door.
Given the production of opening it, I expected the treasure of King Solomon’s mines, but the interior of the small vault was packed with various crates and wooden cases with a pile of plastic file boxes near the front. A large envelope had been taped to the top of the nearest file box and an open carton sat beside it.
“I shall return to the office above, if you like,” Mrs. Jabril offered. “There is a bell near the lift which you can ring for me.”
There was no way I had the time or temptation to go through the whole vault. I suspected that Purcell had left everything I needed in the box on top, and I was certain I could trust Mrs. Jabril. “I don’t think that’s necessary. If you don’t mind waiting while I read the letter, I’m sure I won’t be much longer than that,” I said, looking into the vault.
Mrs. Jabril said nothing and stood silently by as I reached for the envelope, which was addressed, “Edward, or his Agent.” A curious little symbol near the bottom of the address glowed red and then blue as I picked up the letter, and I thought it was probably some kind of ward. I wondered what would have happened to the letter if I wasn’t in possession of Edward’s power of attorney. Bursting into flames seemed likely. A gold wafer and two small blobs of blue wax held the flap closed. A little nervous, I broke them and opened the letter.