Ministry Protocol: Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences
Page 45
Our Lady of Monsters
By Delilah S. Dawson
Paris, France
1889
When the shop girls screeched that a gorilla in a bowler hat was eating all the croissants, Anne-Marie fetched her gun…
As usual, she was disappointed by reality. He was just a man, albeit an enormous one, hunched over the boulangerie’s single table beside the baguettes, slathering croissants with jam and butter and shoving them into his maw with fingers the size of sausages. The shop girls cowered behind the counter. But not Anne-Marie Bouvier, for she was more than the average baker. And she hadn’t put away her pearl-handled revolver yet.
Anne-Marie pushed sweaty, blond curls out of her eyes, settled her spectacles firmly on her nose, and rounded the counter to face the brute. Her arms were crossed casually, the gun held firm in floury fingers. He simply had to leave; he clashed horribly with the lavender walls and Anne-Marie’s matching lilac gown.
“Je suis a vous, monsieur.”
The gorilla looked up and grinned, an unsettling streak of intelligence in his coffee-coloured eyes. Dabbing his lips with his cravat, he stood and loomed over her in his cheap, brown suit, ignoring the gun.
“If you’re really at me, love, I’ll take a pot of tea. These Frogs can’t seem to pull it off. Dunno what’s so hard about it. Water and leaves, roight?”
His accent was rough and lower class, utterly East End and a fair match for his scarred knuckles, grotesquely crooked nose, and dark-haired wrists. She’d known bruisers like him when she’d lived in London as a child. They’d tried to kiss her, and she’d run them all off. Crying.
“You’re speaking to a half-Frog, monsieur. And this is not a restaurant. Time to settle up.”
“Already paid. But maybe this’ll even things out, love?”
He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a familiar-looking ring. Anne-Marie gasped, her heart clamouring against her corset. Was it finally time?
“Where did you get that?”
His grin widened. “From Doctor Sound of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, of course. These are the latest model so you might want to replace that antique you’re wearin’ currently, love.” When he held it out to her, she noticed a matching but much larger one digging into his own pinkie finger. He knotted his brow. “Well, supposed to be wearin’ anyway.”
“Dropped mine in the dough.” Heat rose in her cheeks as she snatched the ring and shoved it onto her finger. “Is there something more? He could’ve sent it by pigeon.”
“No need for par avion since I’m here, now is there?” He leaned in too close for comfort, and she caught the scent of cheap shaving lotion and Earl Grey lingering in his lapels, plus the smoke of a hypersteam train journey. “Time to wake up, Miss Bouvier. Ministry’s finally changing your status to active. It’s been twenty years since your agent training. Have you stayed sharp?”
Anne-Marie struggled not to shriek with joy. She’d been waiting for this moment, hoping for some message from whomever was in charge—Doctor Sound, he said the director’s name was—that would justify half a life spent languishing beside a hot oven, eating too many éclairs and hoping to someday follow in her mother’s footsteps as a field agent. Finally, she had her chance.
And this walking caveman wanted to know if she was still sharp?
Quick as a blink, her fist shot out and popped him in just the right place to knock the wind out of his gut. He doubled over, goggling like an eel.
“I’ve stayed sharp enough,” she said, a smirk bending her mouth
He stood, rubbing his ribs. One arm shot out in a blur while the other whipped across her so fast, all she felt was a rush of air and a stinging sensation against her opposite arm. She blinked, and her gun was suddenly in his hand.
“Rule one: Hold on to your gun,” he grunted. “Rule two: Don’t punch your partner.”
“Partner?”
He spun the tiny gun around a thick finger and held it out, butt-first. “The Ministry don’t expect you to handle your first investigation alone. You got the lay of the land and the language; I’ve got the brawn, the experience, and the assignment.” He stuck out his hand, and she reluctantly let his huge mitt envelope her smaller one. “Agent Joseph Tipping. Call me Joe.”
“Anne-Marie Bouvier.”
“I know.”
She smiled so wide her cheeks hurt, giddy as a girl. “Just give me a moment to get ready.” With a little skip, she turned to head for her upstairs apartment—and the rooftop hutch that held the passenger pigeons with which she conducted Ministry business.
He caught her wrist, but gently. “We don’t have time. Got to hurry. It’s about to rain, and all the blood will wash away.”
“What blood? Wash away from where?”
“From the cobbles under Notre Dame. Turns out gentlemen have taken to leaping off the cathedral’s roof to their deaths.”
Joe held open the door to the bakery and waggled his eyebrows at her. Anxious to please, Anne-Marie tucked the gun away in her skirt pocket, untied her apron, rolled down her sleeves, grabbed her hat and lavender umbrella, and all but skipped outside. With those few quick changes, the jovial baker became a field agent, ready for action.
“Deaths at Notre Dame? I read the papers every day and haven’t heard a thing to that effect.”
He eyed the thunderheads and hailed a cab.
“That’s because all three of the lads was British and the Frogs covered it up. Let’s go.”