by Alex Grecian
On Sunday, he chose the two biggest and smartest of the children at the corner and made arrangements with them. He gave each of them a cigar and they shook hands. He spent the rest of the day combing gutters and alleyways, gathering butts and drying them in the sun. When he returned to the corner, his young business partners had sold the cigars and they each gave him half their earnings: four pennies. Walter ate another meal that night before getting back to work repurposing the used tobacco he had found. By the time he went to sleep, he had five new cigars hidden in his left boot.
3
The vast majority of London had failed to note Walter Day’s disappearance and had gone about its business without marking his absence. But, even a year later, there were still people who woke up each morning with the expectation that they might see him again, perhaps that very day.
Among that select group was the former Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith, who because of his headstrong and reckless manner had been let go from Scotland Yard. He had opened his own detective agency, which he now operated in a headstrong and reckless manner. His offices were housed in a compact two-room suite in Camden, and a plaque outside the door read simply HAMMERSMITH. Beneath that, in smaller script, were the words DISCREET ENQUIRIES.
The outer office lacked privacy, but the inner office lacked furniture, aside from a small table and a bedroll in the corner where Hammersmith often napped when sleep overtook him. Every other inch of floor space was occupied by stacks of notes and newspapers, sketches and blurry photographs, witness reports, location descriptions, and a record of every step Hammersmith had taken in the year since his closest friend and colleague had vanished.
One thick file folder was dedicated to the other cities and countries where men matching Walter Day’s description had been seen. Hammersmith had traveled to Ireland and France and even as far as New York in his search, but being cooped up aboard a ship for weeks on end had frustrated him and made him wary afterward of any leads that might take him away from London.
Hammersmith knew he was not the detective Walter Day had been and he felt he had to work twice as hard to make up for his lack of skill. For every dead end he encountered in his search for Day, he redoubled his efforts until his determination became an end in itself.
Hammersmith (the agency) had few clients, and they labored under the false impression that Hammersmith (the detective) worked for them. He did not. He worked for Claire Day only, and he cared about little other than finding her husband. He had two employees, both of them young women he had met in the course of a previous investigation.
Eugenia Merrilow sat behind a desk just inside the front door and screened potential clients. If a case was simple enough and if she judged that the agency was close to running out of oil for the lamps and therefore needed money, she would take down pertinent details and promise to pass the information on to Mr Hammersmith. In fact, she gave nearly all their new cases to Hatty Pitt.
Hatty had become a widow when she was seventeen years old. A murderer called the Harvest Man had escaped prison, tied Hatty to her bed, and butchered her husband, John Charles Pitt. She had been unhappy in her marriage and was pleased to have got her freedom back (a selfish thought that never failed to cause a twinge of guilt and sorrow for poor John Charles).
Hatty had no training as a detective, no training in anything else, either. But she had been interested and available when Mr Hammersmith had announced he was opening his own detective agency. When he had taken her on, she’d assumed she would be his secretary or clerk and the thought had been acceptable, but not really very exciting. She had a new lease on life, and she had decided early on that she didn’t want to do the same sorts of things her friends were all doing, the same sorts of things she surely would have done if she’d remained married to poor John Charles. (“Poor” was beginning to seem like John Charles’s first name.) And so she had persuaded Mr Hammersmith to hire Eugenia Merrilow as well, suggesting that it might take more than two people to manage the task of finding anyone in a city the size of London. It was her way of paying Eugenia back for taking Hatty in when she had first lost John Charles and had nowhere else to go. Eugenia had not asked for a salary (she was wealthy and bored), but wanted interesting work, which meant Mr Hammersmith could afford her. With Eugenia to take up the secretarial duties, Hatty had been free to begin insinuating herself into Mr Hammersmith’s investigative work. He had been too distracted to object or even to notice what she was doing. Within a few months she had created a satisfying occupation for herself.
The cases Eugenia gave her were simple enough: follow a wandering husband on the train and note where he disembarked, deliver a note of foreclosure to a small business, hunt down a missing pet, etc. She thought the fact that detective work was not commonly performed by women actually gave her an advantage. No one suspected her of following them, no one viewed her inquiries as suspicious. She was nearly invisible. Eugenia did not accept cases that involved any hint of serious danger, and Hatty consulted with Mr Hammersmith, who seemed always to be under the impression that Hatty was asking hypothetical questions. He would generally give her an hour of his time before she could see his attention wandering back to the case of the missing Inspector Day. She was often frustrated by his single-mindedness, but admired his sense of purpose and his dogged determination.
She also admired his long eyelashes and his long fingers and the way his uncombed hair flopped down into his eyes at inconvenient moments. She suspected Eugenia Merrilow harbored similar feelings, but the two of them had never discussed the matter.
Most days, when Eugenia unlocked the door and brought the post to the desk, Hammersmith would emerge from the inner office rubbing his red-rimmed eyes. He would greet her absently, take his hat from the rack, and leave. Some days he would go to Scotland Yard and pester Inspector Tiffany or Inspector Blacker. They were sympathetic, but never had any new information for him about Day’s disappearance. The men of the Murder Squad had finished moving to a new headquarters on the Victoria Embankment, and their search for Day was necessarily interrupted by the minutiae of daily life, by other cases, by other crimes.
Some mornings Hammersmith would visit Claire Day and they would discuss the investigation. Walter Day’s wife was now caught up in her own routines and distractions, the demands of four children, a busy household staff, and a new career. It was a poorly guarded secret that Claire had written a popular book of children’s rhymes under the pen name Rupert Winthrop. But a series of unfortunate events in the previous year had traumatized her to the extent that she rarely went anywhere in London alone. She still wrote her poems and had begun to think she might like to write a prose story for children. In the evenings after the dishes had been cleared, she would compose a new rhyme and read it to her adopted boys, Robert and Simon (they had been orphaned by the Harvest Man, the same madman who had widowed Hatty Pitt), before tucking them into bed. Then she would work until dawn, or sometimes she would lie in her bed and watch shadows move across her ceiling. She did not sleep much, and her eyes were generally as bloodshot as Hammersmith’s. The sales of Claire’s poems, and the advance she had received for her next book, had paid for the Hammersmith Agency’s office.
The blizzard of that March had kept most people inside, where they didn’t get into the sorts of trouble that might require detecting of the private variety. But the sun had begun to come out sporadically and snow had melted and become slush, which was now beginning to disappear as well. People were leaving their homes and, after being pent up for so long, were getting into all manner of mischief, both minor and calamitous.
On the first warm day of spring, fog had lifted off the Thames and invaded the neighborhoods north of the river. Hatty stood in the outer office, watching grey nothingness roll by outside the window, obscuring the fish-and-chips shop across the street. She held a pencil and a small notebook of the sort preferred by her employer. Eugenia sat behind her desk, sorting papers into piles that Hatty
suspected were entirely random. Eugenia had provided (and was prominently posed in) the many framed photographs of tableaux vivants that lined the agency’s walls. Across the desk from her, draped across the client chair like an empty suit, was a bespectacled older man with a silver fringe of hair and an untidy mustache. He had carefully arranged two long hairs across the gleaming pink expanse of his scalp. Hatty felt pity and a touch of admiration for the futile vanity of her new client.
“I would like to speak directly to Mr Hammersmith,” the man said. “This is a matter of some importance to the family, as you may imagine.”
“I’m afraid,” Hatty said, “that Mr Hammersmith is busy elsewhere at the moment, but he will review my notes the moment he returns.”
“I’ll wait for him.”
“It may be some time.”
“Then I’ll find another detective.”
“You should certainly feel free to do so, sir, but Mr Hammersmith asked me to tell you how much he appreciates your confidence in him. He wanted so very badly to meet you himself.” In fact, Hammersmith had said no such thing. He had probably forgotten all about the meeting and the potential client, who was now drawing himself up in the chair and adjusting his waistcoat.
“Then why isn’t he here?”
“He’s with the commissioner of police,” Eugenia said. “You can’t very well say no to the commissioner of police when he sends for you.”
Hatty frowned at Eugenia, but Eugenia didn’t notice, didn’t even look up from her busywork. It was the standard lie they always gave and it made Mr Hammersmith seem very important indeed, but Hatty didn’t care for it. As far as she was concerned, the business of the Hammersmith Agency was the uncovering of lies, not the propagation of them. When Eugenia didn’t note her disapproval, Hatty gave up and turned her attention back to the client.
“Mr Hammersmith had to go immediately to see about the details of another case.” It was not entirely a lie.
“Called on by Sir Edward himself?”
Now the client was impressed and Hatty knew they had him on the hook. She just wished she’d been able to impress the man herself, instead of invoking Sir Edward’s reputation in order to secure this new piece of business. She glanced at the first page of her tiny notebook.
“Your name is . . . ?”
“I never gave my name when I made this appointment,” the man said. “I didn’t want the family’s reputation to be jeopardized.”
Hatty made an impatient gesture at Eugenia, who glared at her for a moment before rising and retreating to the inner office. Hatty took her chair and set the notebook on the desk in front of her. She couldn’t very well stand against the wall and question their new client.
“Surely you don’t mind telling me your name now that you’re here, sir,” Hatty said.
“I’d rather—”
Hatty interrupted him. “Then what is the nature of your trouble?”
“My brother is missing. I wouldn’t say he’s disappeared so much, only that I don’t know where he is.”
“Of course. Well, you’ve come to the right place. We specialize in looking for missing people.” True enough, although Hatty didn’t mention their lack of success in actually finding missing people. “But we can’t begin to search for your brother unless we know his name.”
“I don’t doubt it, but see here, young lady, this is a very delicate situation.”
“A business matter hinges on his availability?”
“Something like that.” He sat up even straighter now. “In fact, his position has been given to someone else in his absence, and I have every hope that the situation might still be reversed. But how did you know?”
“I told you. We do this sort of thing all the time.” Hatty had made an educated guess based on the client’s pomposity. She leaned forward over the desk and lowered her voice. “Anything you tell us will be held in the strictest of confidence. Just as it says on the sign outside. We are extremely discreet.”
The man cleared his throat and looked around the tiny room as if to assure himself that they were alone. His nostrils needed to be trimmed, and Hatty noticed a dried yellow nugget clinging for life to the wiry grey hairs. She absently rubbed her own nose. It had been broken a year before and had healed with a slight bump halfway down the bridge. She thought it gave her a worldly appearance and she took perverse pride in this exotic imperfection.
She waited, her pencil poised over a blank sheet in the notebook, and finally the man cleared his throat and spoke. “If . . . I mean to say, once you find my brother, I would like all notes and records of your inquiries turned over to me so I may burn them.”
“As you wish,” Hatty said. First, get the man to talk, then worry about keeping promises.
“Good. Well, then . . . I say, this is awkward.”
“How so?”
“I’ve never had occasion to employ your sort before, you know.”
“Ah. My sort.”
“It feels a bit . . .” The man left off as if there were too many adjectives to choose from.
“Your brother’s name?”
“Yes. Just so. His name.” A deep sigh, and the man straightened his shoulders, ready to take the plunge. “His name was—pardon me, his name is Joseph Hargreave.”
Hatty wrote this down. “And your name?”
“You need my name as well?”
“It would help us when it comes time to make out the bill for services.”
“Of course. My name is Richard Hargreave. Doctor Richard Hargreave.”
“And what’s happened to your brother?”
“He left the flat—we share an apartment in the city—three mornings ago very early, straight after breakfast, and was headed for the store, but he never arrived. The first day he was gone I became mildly concerned, because he usually tells me if he has an engagement and needs me to allow for his absence. By that evening I was distraught and have remained so ever since.”
“You say he sometimes has engagements? Business affairs?”
“He manages the bulk of our parents’ estate, which keeps him just busy enough, I suppose, in addition to his duties at Plumm’s. Occasionally he has to meet with a banker or with our solicitor about one thing or another having to do with our investments. I don’t trouble myself with all that, but he’s quite capable.”
She had written the word Plumm’s in her notebook and underlined it, but she decided to wait a moment before following up. She didn’t want the client to lose his train of thought. “And you think he would have told you if he had a meeting of that sort? With an investor? Is it possible he’s had to leave town for some reason and it slipped his mind that he hadn’t informed you?”
“No, no, no. His money is also my money, after all. He always keeps me up to the minute about everything. He wouldn’t have . . . Well, he would have told me, that’s all.”
Hatty looked up from her notebook. “You’re afraid he’s met with foul play?”
“I certainly hope not. But the thought has occurred to me, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“I’d say you’ve done it already. You’ve come to us and put the matter in our hands.” She smiled at him, and he managed some sort of a sneer in return. “Now,” Hatty said, “I need details. Tell me everything you can about his habits, his appearance, his acquaintances, everything you can think of that might be helpful.”
“And you’ll relay this information to Mr Hammersmith straightaway?”
“Absolutely.”
“Very well.” Dr Richard Hargreave cleared his throat, adjusted his spectacles on his nose, and began to talk about his brother. The nugget of snot dropped to his lap, and Hatty looked down at the desk and wrote as fast as she could.
4
A two-wheeler pulled up to the mouth of a narrow alley in Saffron Hill. Two people alighted, a man and a woman, both dress
ed head to foot in black. Their fashions indicated they were not native to England. The man took a bag from the floor of the cab and tipped the driver, who sped away as fast as his horse could move. The couple in black stepped into the alley and walked slowly along, looking all round them at the stalls of stinking fish and yesterday’s vegetables. The man held his elbow out to the woman, who slipped her arm in his. A pickpocket circled and came up behind them but the man in black casually swung his bag, without looking, and the pickpocket went down in a heap. They walked on as if they hadn’t noticed him.
The alley wandered on, and they followed it through the fog, their boot heels clacking on broken stones, awnings above them dripping on the woman’s umbrella, held above them both. They did not speak, nor did they look at each other, but they stopped together when they reached a small home with no garden and a stinking garbage pile against the front bricks. One shutter was painted with the notice: LOGINGS FOR TRAFFELERS.
The man led the way to the front door and, without knocking, opened it for his companion. She nodded to him as she passed over the threshold. Inside, the place was small and damp and reeked of old sweat and gin. A tiny old woman came rushing from some back room to greet them.
“Yer in luck,” she said. Her voice was thick, both with liquor and a Cockney dialect. “I’ve two beds left.”
“We’ll take a room to ourselves,” the man said.
“Oh, you’d be wantin’ a posher place ’n this, then. We goes by the mattress here, and you’ll be furnishin’ yourselves when it comes to linens.”
“A room,” the man said again. His companion did not speak, nor did she look at the landlady. She stared straight ahead and worried her thumb along the handle of her umbrella.
“That’d come dear, sir,” the old woman said. “I can’t be givin’ out a whole room to just two people, can I?”
