Matteo was facing the wall. Embracing the drainpipe with both arms, he swung one leg, then the other, to rest on the windowsill, pressing his body flat against the brick. One hand let go of the drainpipe and latched on to the brick. It made Sophie giddy to watch. Then the second hand swung across, and Matteo stood upright on the windowsill, balanced on his toes. Slowly he bent his knees, gripping the windowpane with his fingertips, until he was crouching. The windowsill was thick, but even so, his back half was sticking out over nothing. His face, though, was as calm as a Sunday afternoon.
He attacked the window latch with his penknife. “It’s open!”
“Good! Oh, please be—” Sophie caught herself just in time. “Wonderful!” she called.
He hitched his nails under the sash and heaved. There was a ripping noise, and Matteo said, “Ach.”
“What? Are you all right?”
“Nothing. Just a little blood.” The window opened. “We’ll wipe it before we go.” He rearranged himself so that he was sitting on the sill with his legs dangling inside the room. “Okay!” He patted the sill. “You can come down now.”
Sophie copied his movements as exactly as she could. Matteo guided her feet with both his hands. She forced herself to think of cellos, and mothers, and not of the noise her skull would make on the street if she fell. “Mothers,” she whispered to herself. “Mothers are worth hunting for.”
Sophie ducked in through the window. The archive room was chill and dark. It felt secretive, and wary. She said, “Are you coming in?”
“Non. I never go inside.” Matteo kicked his heels against the wainscoting. “I’ll be fine like this.”
Sophie pulled the candle from her pocket and struck a match. “Right.” She wrapped her hand in her jersey so that the wax wouldn’t drip on her fingers. “Where do I start?” She peered at the labels on the cabinets. “Matteo, they’re in French!”
“Of course they’re in French. Read them out to me.”
“This one says ‘meurtre.’ ”
“That’s murders.”
“Incendiaire?”
“Firebombs. Probably not.”
She crossed to the far end of the room. “Assurance?”
“That’s insurance. Try that one.”
Sophie tugged at the cabinet door. “It’s locked.”
She couldn’t believe she had forgotten. But Matteo’s face, framed in the window, was excited.
“Of course it’s locked. Do you have a hairpin?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now—”
“Wait a second.” Sophie fumbled at the pin holding back her coil of hair. Her fingers were shaking, and were somehow fatter than usual.
“Okay,” he said. “Bon. Now you have to concentrate. A lock has cinq pins inside.”
“Sank?” It was the one word she was trying not to think. That, and “drowned.”
“Oui, cinq. Oh! Ach . . . five. Numbers are ugly in English. A lock has five pins, oui? And the key moves the pins and opens the crossbar. Where’s that match you used? Did you drop it on the floor?”
“No. It’s here.”
“So, you put the match in at the base of the lock—like that, yes—and you push a little, left or right.”
Sophie licked her fingers to calm them and inserted the match into the fat part of the keyhole. “Which one?” she whispered. “Left or right?”
“You can feel it. It’s like water. It has a flow. One way is upstream.” Sophie wriggled the match. She couldn’t feel anything.
Matteo said, “Stop! You’re trying too hard.”
This is one of the most annoying things anybody can say. Sophie glared at him, her tongue still sticking out between her teeth. “That’s not terribly helpful, Matteo.”
“I mean, you’re forcing it. You’re poking it like it’s a sausage. Imagine it’s alive.”
“It’s not.”
“How do you know? Imagine it is.”
And it was true. To the right, it stayed stiff; inched to the left, the lock gave a shift. It was as soft as a whisper, and she repeated it a few times until she was sure.
“Now what?” she said.
“Hold it there. You mustn’t move it a millimeter.”
“Right.” Sophie rearranged her grip so she could hold the match in place with her left hand. “And now?”
“So, you push in the hairpin at the top of the lock.” He was watching her carefully, squinting through the dark. “And you start at the back with the fifth pin. You slide the hairpin under it and you push upward until it sticks.”
“How you do you mean, ‘sticks’?” Sophie’s hands were wet with sweat. She licked the palm of her free hand and dried it on her front.
“I don’t know how to explain. It’s easy. You just—”
“Couldn’t you just come in and do it?”
“Non. But you wriggle the pin until it feels . . . more solid. You just feel it. You hear a click sometimes. But so quietly, if the lock is oiled. Like an ant coughing.” His mouth was slightly open, as though he were listening to music. “That lock is oiled, I think.”
“And then?”
“Then you do the fourth pin, and the third. And then the—”
“Second, yes, I understand.”
“Can you feel the stick?”
At first, Sophie couldn’t. She wriggled the hairpin up and down, feeling increasingly furious. And then, quite suddenly, she could feel it. It was the smallest possible shift, but suddenly the pin felt stiffer. It no longer wobbled.
“I think that’s it! Now what?”
“Good. The first is the hardest. Now you pull the hairpin toward you—less than a millimeter—and wriggle the next pin.”
Sophie held her breath and pulled the hairpin back a hairsbreadth. She made tiny digging movements with the hairpin to hitch it under the pin. It was easier, once she had gotten into a rhythm. “That’s the third,” she called. “Second.” The final pin was the hardest. “Done, I think!”
If she had expected congratulations, she would have been disappointed. Matteo gave a curt nod.
He said, “Right. Now you keep hold of the hairpin—your hands are shaking; you must stop that—and you jerk the match sideways.”
The lock clicked open. Sophie hefted the files to the window, and the two of them sifted through the papers. Sophie’s fingers were quivering. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but she thought that Matteo’s were too.
“There’s nothing here on the Queen Mary,” she said. “It’s all from the last two years.”
“Don’t worry,” said Matteo. “We have time.”
“But there’s thousands of files in this room!”
“We have time,” he said again. “Don’t panic.” His voice was gentler than it usually was.
“Maybe I should try the older filing cabinets?” said Sophie. “The green ones. They look rusty. They look less honest.”
He nodded. “Put this back first, though. They mustn’t know you were here.”
Sophie read the labels out to him. Pickpockets, theatre fires, beggars. But nothing that sounded promising.
“Divers,” she said. “What’s that?”
“It means ‘a jumble.’ Misc . . . miscellaneous, you know? Try it.”
This lock was bigger, and the pins were easier to feel. It took Sophie and her hairpin less than five minutes to open it.
The files inside were fat, and the dates on the outside went back twenty years. Feverishly Sophie found the right year. Then her whole body quivered and burned.
“ ‘Queen Mary, paquebot Anglais.’ What is ‘paquebot’?” she asked.
“I think—a large ship?”
The file was marbled cardboard; Sophie ran with it to Matteo’s windowsill and handed him her candle. There were about two dozen sheets of paper in all. She split them into two piles and handed half to Matteo. “Don’t let them blow away,” she said.
Sophie flipped through the papers as fast as she could. There were printed lists of nam
es, and handwritten letters. There were photographs of the waiters, staring unsmiling at the camera with napkins over their arms, and their names and addresses inked on the back.
“Ha!” cried Matteo. “This is the passenger list, I think.”
Sophie took it from him. Under M, there was “Maxim, Charles.” But there was nothing under V, no Vivienne Vert. Sophie ran one shaking finger down the staff list with the same result. No Viviennes.
“Look!” said Matteo. He held up a photograph. “Sophie! The band! Is she there?”
“Let me see!” Sophie almost tore it from his fingers. “But . . . ,” she said. “They’re . . . they’re all men.” The darkness in the room was suddenly terrible. “The cellist is a man.”
“Oh,” said Matteo. His smile dropped downward. “Oh, Dieu.”
Sophie turned over the photo. “It says the cellist is ‘George Greene, 12, appartement G, rue de l’Espoir.’ ”
He was young and handsome, staring out at the world on the brink of laughter. He might just as well have been one-eyed and potbellied for all she cared. Sophie licked a tear off her nose. She hadn’t realized she was crying. “It’s a man,” she said again.
“It’s odd, though. Because George Greene looks very much like you,” said a voice.
Sophie nearly fell off the window ledge. A shadow was hanging from the drainpipe, watching.
“Move over, please,” said Safi. “I want to sit down.”
Sophie ducked back into the archive room to make space on the sill for Safi. Sophie gripped the girl’s wrist. “I don’t see it. He doesn’t! Does he?”
“He has your eyes,” said Safi. Her voice was deeper than Anastasia’s, and more French. “People never really see their own eyes, so you wouldn’t notice.” She turned to Matteo. “I’m surprised you didn’t see it, though. You talk about her eyes enough. Do you think it could be her father?”
Matteo flushed, but Sophie was busy looking at the picture. She held it up to the moon.
“My God,” she whispered.
A prickling started in Sophie’s neck and ran down her back. She said, “He’s wearing a woman’s shirt.”
“What?” said Matteo.
Sophie said, “Women’s shirts button right over left.”
“What?” said Matteo. “How do you know that?”
“Of course I know. Buttons,” said Sophie, “are important. Matteo, that’s a woman’s shirt. Why would a man wear a woman’s shirt?”
“And,” said Safi, “look at the shoes. Only women lace their shoes crossways like that. See!”
Sophie did see. And she saw too that the trousers were black, and worn grayish at the knee.
“And,” said Sophie, “look at his mustache!”
Matteo and Safi looked. “What about it?”
“It’s too short. It should come over the lip, surely? Look at all the other mustaches. They’re huge! But this is just the hairs that women have, painted darker.”
Safi took the photograph. “I don’t think that’s a man,” she said. “It’s just a very clever woman.” She studied the picture, and then she reached out to Sophie and pushed the hair away from her face. “She looks like you.”
27
SOPHIE WAS STILL staring—at matteo, at Safi, at the photograph—when there was a scuffle, and a thump, and a voice called from above their heads.
“Sophie? Are you down there?”
“Who’s that?” said Safi.
Matteo said, “The police! Run!”
Sophie gripped them each round the wrist. “Wait! I think it’s—”
“Would you mind coming back up?” said the voice. “I have no doubt it’s unintentional, but you are, metaphorically, scaring the hell out of me. Come back, please.”
It was Charles.
Sophie jammed the papers back in the cabinet, and the three of them scrambled up the drainpipe. Matteo wiped a patch of blood off the sill with his elbow as he went, and slammed the window behind him. Sophie carried the photograph in her teeth.
Charles was leaning against the chimney pot, watched warily by Gérard and Anastasia. He held Sophie’s cello in one hand, and his umbrella tucked under his arm.
“This young lady,” he said, pointing at Anastasia, “very properly tried to kill me, until I explained I was your guardian. This young gentleman convinced her I was harmless. I believe your cello convinced him.”
“You brought my cello?” Sophie stared blankly at him. “Across the rooftops? How? Why?”
“I tied it to my back.” He looked ruminatively at the cello. “I rather thought you might need it, if you discovered something . . . something gray.” He crouched down and studied Sophie’s eyes. “From the look on your face, that is not the case.”
“I’ve got an address,” said Sophie. She was still shivering from head to foot. “It might be her. I don’t know.”
Matteo took the address from her. “Rue de l’Espoir. That’s garier country, near the Church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul. It’s east of where we were last night.” The other three nodded.
“How do you know?” said Sophie.
Gérard shrugged. “Rooftoppers have maps in their heads.”
Anastasia said, “They’ll be angry, Sophie. The gariers. Rue de l’Espoir . . . that’s like going into their front hall and singing Christmas carols.”
“I don’t care,” said Sophie.
“You don’t understand,” said Anastasia. “Rue de l’Espoir is their headquarters. They carry knives.”
“You can stay here if you like. I’m going.”
Matteo said, “Sophie, we never go there—”
“I don’t care,” Sophie said again. She meant it. She had never felt less afraid. Perhaps, she thought, that’s what love does. It’s not there to make you feel special. It’s to make you brave. It was like a ration pack in the desert, she thought, like a box of matches in a dark wood. Love and courage, thought Sophie—two words for the same thing. You didn’t need the person to be there with you, even, perhaps. Just alive, somewhere. It was what her mother had always been. A place to put down her heart. A resting stop to recover her breath. A set of stars and maps.
Charles had been politely silent while the others were talking. Now he said, “If we’re going anywhere, Sophie, you and I should go at street level. I don’t want to accidentally smash your cello on a chimney pot.”
“No,” said Sophie. “I’m staying up here.”
“Why?” said Matteo. He was kicking at splinters of slate. His face was clenched tight.
“The police. If they caught me now . . .” She didn’t finish her sentence. Instead she said, “Charles, I’ll meet you there, all right?”
“No,” said Charles. “That is very far from all right.”
She looked up at Charles. “Please,” she said. Her gaze took in his long legs, and sharp bones, and the kindness of his eyes. “I promise not to get hurt. You said to do extraordinary things. This counts as an extraordinary thing.”
Charles sighed. “That is not untrue, perhaps.” He tried to raise his eyebrows, but they only flickered, and sank down. “I can’t think what Miss Eliot would say, but yes, that is certainly true.” His smile was strained. “I suppose I will see you at rue de l’Espoir, then. If you’re not there in an hour, I will . . . I don’t know what I’ll do. Just be careful.” He hitched the cello onto his back and turned to the drainpipe. His nails screeched against it as he slid down, and there was an uncomfortable-sounding thump as he reached the bottom.
“If you’re going,” Matteo said to Sophie, “you’ll need us. You don’t know the way.”
“I know,” said Sophie. “Yes. Thank you.”
Anastasia said, “Mais, non! Rue de l’Espoir—” She launched an angry stream of French at Matteo.
Sophie uncurled her spine. She had not realized how often she slouched. At full height, she was taller than Anastasia, and almost as tall as Matteo. Sophie raised her eyebrows, and Anastasia and Matteo fell silent. “You don’t have to come,” sh
e said. “But if you’re coming, let’s go.”
28
THEY WERE TWENTY minutes past the river when Matteo’s back began to tense. They were walking single file along the wide roof of a hospital, with Gérard bringing up the rear and humming to himself. They were going more slowly, more carefully than usual. Sophie and Matteo were in the lead, and she could see the hairs rising on the back of his neck.
“They’ve been here,” he said. “Smell that? Tobacco.”
“Lots of people smoke tobacco,” said Sophie reasonably.
“But they smoke the butts of other people’s. It has a twice-burnt smell.”
“I can’t smell anything. It just smells like chimneys to me. Can you, Anast—” Sophie turned. Anastasia was on the far side of the rooftop. Her face was yellow with terror. She was surrounded.
The boys had come noiselessly up the walls and across the neighboring roof. They were tall, and pale. Their faces were arrogant, and as sharp as acid. There were six; four of them had encircled Gérard. Nobody was moving.
Matteo backed toward Sophie. Sweat had flattened his hair against his face. He bent, snapped a piece of slate from the roof.
“They’re angry,” he said. “This was a bad idea.”
Nobody was laughing, nobody was jeering. The gariers held piping, broken shards of iron. A wolf pack, thought Sophie.
“Where’s Safi?” she whispered.
Matteo shook his head. “Je ne sais pas,” he said. He pushed Sophie behind a chimney stack. “Sophie, stay here. Don’t move, or I’ll kill you later, d’accord? And if Safi comes, hold her down if you have to. You understand? Don’t let her fight.”
Matteo pulled a pigeon bone from his pocket and snapped it in half. The broken end formed a jagged edge, like glass. He handed half to Sophie. “If they come for you, go for their eyes.” Matteo switched to French: He shouted something raw and bitter into the night, and then he hurled himself at the gariers.
The moon was covered and it was dark, but Sophie’s eyes had grown accustomed to it. Sophie saw Anastasia catch sight of Matteo and shout. She seemed to grow taller. One of the gariers had turned to meet Matteo, and Anastasia threw herself at the other. Anastasia didn’t fight nicely. She hacked at his neck and chest with her nails, with her teeth. What terrified Sophie was how little noise was made. They fought in grunts and spits. Matteo saw Anastasia struggling, and he pulled a chimney pot from the roof and threw it, straight at the back of the boy’s head.
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