“What has he done this time?” she snapped.
Lenoir blinked, taken aback. “I am sorry, Sister—you misunderstand. I am looking for Zach.”
“I know who you’re looking for. What’s he done?”
Lenoir could not suppress a smile. “Any number of things, perhaps, but I am not here to take him away. I would just like to speak with him, if you please. He . . . owes me a favor.”
“I’ll bet he does,” she said sourly. “But he’s not here. Haven’t seen him since this morning.”
Lenoir frowned. “Is that normal?”
“I’m lucky if I see some of these kids three times a week. Zach’s usually around, though, at least at mealtimes.”
“Do you know where he might be?”
“You’re an inspector, Inspector. Why don’t you go and find Zach, and when you do, you can tell him that the next time he skips out on his chores, there’ll be a licking waiting for him when he gets back!” And with that, she slammed the door in Lenoir’s face.
He stood on the threshold for a moment, staring at the closed door in astonishment. Then he turned to go. He was halfway down the street when he heard the door open again, followed by the patter of bare feet against stone. He turned to find a small boy scampering after him wearing nothing but a nightshirt.
“Go back inside, boy. You will catch your death of cold.”
The child seemed not to hear. “Mister,” he said breathlessly, “are you looking for Zach?”
“Yes.”
“If you find him, can you ask him if I can come too?”
Lenoir looked pityingly at the boy. “Why do you want to go with him? You are well taken care of in the orphanage, no? Whatever Zach is doing, I am sure it is not as much fun as you think.”
“But I want to go with the rich people,” the boy whined. He gave an exasperated little stamp of his foot, wringing a corner of his nightshirt in his hands.
Lenoir narrowed his eyes. “The rich people?”
“The ones Zach went away with. I want them to take me too.”
“What do you mean? Who did Zach go away with?”
“I don’t know, but they had a carriage, the big fancy kind. He got into the carriage and they took him away.”
A strange feeling was creeping up Lenoir’s neck, the prickling sense he always got when something was wrong. “Did Zach know these people?”
The little boy shrugged his thin shoulders. Lenoir could see he was shivering. “Tell Zach I want to come too,” he said again, then turned and ran back to the orphanage.
A hand shot out of the open door and grabbed the little boy by the sleeve, dragging him inside, and the door slammed shut on stern words. Lenoir watched without really seeing. A cold weight had settled in his stomach. He could think of a hundred reasons why Zach would want to ride in a carriage with strangers. He could not, however, think of a single reason why anyone would want Zach in their carriage.
CHAPTER 8
By the next morning, Lenoir was convinced that something terrible had befallen Zach. He had passed a sleepless night thinking about the boy, turning the possibilities over and over in his mind. The rational part of him said this was paranoia, that drink and nightmares and sleeplessness were a potent elixir for fevered imaginings. But that same part of him, the part that had guided him through more than twenty years of police work, also told him that he would be foolish to ignore his instincts.
It was the carriage that sealed it. Few could afford such a luxurious mode of transport, and people like that did not go around picking up stray orphans—at least not with good intentions. Unlikely as it seemed, therefore, Lenoir had to treat Zach’s disappearance as a kidnapping.
The uncle was an obvious place to start. Thad Eccle had not even troubled to mask his ill intentions the other night; he had gone after the boy in full view of everyone at the Hobbled Hound, including an inspector of the Metropolitan Police. He could easily have followed Lenoir and Zach out of the tavern and trailed the boy back to the orphanage. Admittedly, the carriage was harder to explain. A man of Eccle’s means could not afford a horse, let alone a carriage. He could have stolen it, Lenoir supposed. Or perhaps, if Lenoir’s hunch was right, and Eccle was under the patronage of a wealthy crime lord, he might have access to a carriage that way. But why bother? If Eccle was tailing the boy, he could easily have snatched Zach without subterfuge. Why go to the trouble of procuring a carriage? For that matter, why snatch the boy at all? He could have dealt with Zach right there in the street.
Troublesome questions all, but Lenoir had always believed that motive trumped everything else when it came to solving a crime. Thad Eccle certainly had a motive; he had made that clear at the Hobbled Hound. So Lenoir grabbed his coat and a loaded flintlock and headed for Eccle’s last known address.
The poor district was a bustle of activity, even at this ungodly hour of the morning. Carts selling bread and hot pies were already doing a brisk trade, and butchers and greengrocers and fishmongers were busy laying out their wares in the predawn gloom. Lenoir kept to the center of the street, in spite of the mud. It was easier than jockeying for position with broomsticks and wheelbarrows and apple crates, and a little muck on his trousers was preferable to running the risk of being doused with a pail of slops from a window. He wended his way between slow-moving wagons, choosing his steps carefully to avoid horse shit and the occasional trickle of privy runoff. Odors both tempting and foul clashed for dominion over his nose. He threw an arm over his face to block them all.
He turned west onto Eccle’s street, a narrow canyon cutting a perfectly straight path between the sheer cliff faces of the tenement buildings. Washing lines formed a sagging canopy from one side of the street to the other, looking like bedraggled pennants at a fair. Lenoir passed beneath them, scanning the numbers at the top of each stoop until he came to number 56, a four-story rookery with a simple facade of gray stone. He climbed the steps and tried the door. Unlocked. Lenoir grunted in satisfaction and slipped inside.
Peeling paint lined the walls of a long, shadowy corridor stained with soot. The hallway was empty but for a jumble of sound and smells: pots clanging, bacon sizzling, babies crying, and the dry, stiff toll of bootheels crossing the floor. Snatches of conversation floated, disembodied, in the air, scarcely muffled by the thin doors of the flats. Somewhere on the second floor, a dog barked. Lenoir counted eighteen doors as he passed. Eighteen doors, but how many windows? Few, judging by the thickness of the air. Packed in like rats in the hull of a ship. Suddenly, his own flat did not seem so cramped.
He was out of breath by the time he reached Thad Eccle’s flat on the third floor. He paused to collect himself, positioning his flintlock so that its handle protruded obviously from his coat pocket. Then he rapped on the door and waited.
Nothing. After a long pause, he knocked again. This time, something shuffled on the far side of the door, and the floorboards beneath Lenoir’s boots creaked. A rough voice barked, “What?”
“Thad Eccle.”
“Who wants to know?”
“I am Inspector Lenoir of the Metropolitan Police. Do not make me force the door. It would not be fair to your landlord.” That was pure bluster. Forcing doors was Kody’s job; Lenoir had not attempted it in years.
Fortunately, Eccle could not see him through the door, or he might have called Lenoir’s bluff. Instead there was a muttered oath, and the sound of a bolt sliding out. The door opened a crack. An unshaven face loomed over Lenoir, bleary-eyed from sleep. “You,” Eccle said.
“Indeed.”
“What do you want?”
Lenoir considered the carved gargoyle before him. There was no point in trying to intimidate Eccle physically—that much was obvious. The man outweighed him by at least fifty pounds, all of it muscle, and the knuckles grasping the door were scarred from use. Lenoir could draw his gun, but that would only make him look fearful. He would not get
anything from Eccle that way. Instead he adopted an air of supreme boredom. It was easily done, for Lenoir wore that expression more often than not. “I am here for the boy,” he said.
The uncle did some appraising of his own before he replied. His gaze swept over Lenoir’s shoulder, noting the lack of backup, before taking in the flintlock slouching conspicuously in Lenoir’s coat pocket. “What boy?”
“Do not waste my time, sir. I am a busy man.”
“If you mean that little piece of rat filth I saw you with the other night, I haven’t seen him since.”
“Oh?” Lenoir arched an eyebrow. “You seemed to have some rather urgent business with him.”
The scar on Eccle’s left cheek was a deep pink trough, shaped like the f-hole of a violin. A bottle to the face, Lenoir judged, probably in the man’s youth. When he smiled, as he was doing now, the scar coiled like a serpent about to strike. “You could put it that way. He owes me.”
“He owes you, or you owe him?”
Eccle’s smile widened unsettlingly. “Both.”
“Have you collected?”
“Not yet, but I will.”
“You are remarkably frank for a man under suspicion. Has it occurred to you that I could arrest you on the spot?”
Eccle snorted. “For what? He’s my nephew—I got every right to discipline the little bugger. But as it happens, I haven’t seen him.”
“And if I were to search your flat right now?”
“You’re welcome to try, hound, but I’d ask myself if it was worth the bother.” He sagged through the doorframe, giving Lenoir a better look at his massive frame.
Lenoir debated drawing his pistol. To stall for time, he said, “I want you to understand something. The boy may have information on a case I’m working. Therefore, he has value to me. I would be very put out if he were . . . indisposed.”
“What’s that to me?”
Lenoir gave a thin smile. It would not be as threatening as Eccle’s gargoyle grin, but he hoped it would do the job. “I’m sure you are aware that I have the ability to make your life extremely inconvenient, if not a good deal shorter. You are on thin ice with the Metropolitan Police, Eccle. And I carry a great deal of weight.”
Eccle’s eyes darkened. “I told you, I haven’t seen him since that night. If I’d wanted to do for him, I’d have done it by now. I know the orphanage where he lives. I told him to stay away from me, and he didn’t listen. Looked to me like I needed to make my point again, so I did.”
Lenoir eyed Thad Eccle’s brutish face carefully. He found much to dislike, but no evidence of deceit. More importantly, what Eccle said was true—he could have gone after Zach at any time since his release from prison a year ago. Why do it now, especially when he knew a hound had seen him chase the boy out of a tavern the night before? Eccle would have to be incredibly stupid to risk it, and he did not come across that way. And then there was the matter of the carriage. . . .
It doesn’t fit, Lenoir concluded unhappily. He could not discount the possibility altogether, but it seemed unlikely that Eccle was involved. It was time to pursue a different thread. “Stay away from Zach,” Lenoir said in parting, “or you will wish you had.”
Eccle stabbed a finger at him. “Keep him away from me, or you’ll wish you had.” So saying, he slammed the door.
• • •
Lenoir’s next port of call was the orphanage. It was only a little after dawn, so he was not surprised when the nun he had spoken to the previous night answered the door in her nightgown. She squinted up at Lenoir with sleep-crusted eyes and a thoroughly disapproving expression. “This had better be important, Inspector. You’re waking the children.”
Lenoir was in no mood for chiding. “I trust you consider it important, madam, that a child in your care has gone missing. Unless you have seen Zach since yesterday?”
“I haven’t, but you obviously don’t know much about running an orphanage. These kids go missing all the time. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don’t. I’m not running a prison here. If they want to run away, I can’t stop them.”
“And it has not occurred to you to suspect foul play?”
She passed a hand over her face in a gesture that was more weary than tired, and when she spoke, her voice was gentler. “These children lead difficult lives, Inspector. They mostly do all right until they’re about Zach’s age. That’s when they start getting into trouble. They fall in with thugs, get to stealing and such. And then one day they walk out my door and never come back. Usually it’s because they fancy themselves all grown up. They resent the rules around here, having to account for where they’ve been and what they’ve done, and they figure it’s time to make their own way. But sometimes it’s worse. They get into something they can’t handle, or end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve buried more than a few of those children. So when a boy like Zach goes missing, all I can do is pray to the good Lord that he’s one of the ones who decided it was time to make his own way.”
“Alas, I doubt that very much. Zach has his schemes, to be sure, but he is too smart to give up a warm bed and a guaranteed meal to go off and live in a ditch somewhere.”
She grunted. “I’ll give you that.”
“I need to speak with the little boy from last night, the one who came outside to talk to me. He may have an idea where Zach went.”
The nun was shaking her head before he even finished speaking. “He’s asleep, at long last. Come back later.”
“Every hour is precious, madam,” Lenoir said coldly. “I need to speak with the boy now.”
“He’s four years old, and a teller of tales besides. What could he possibly—”
“Now.”
She flushed angrily, and for a moment Lenoir thought she was going to slam the door in his face again. But she spun and disappeared inside, returning a few moments later leading a whimpering little boy, the same child Lenoir had spoken to the night before.
“Well, Adam, I know you’re sleepy and confused, but the inspector here is very important, and he needs to speak with you right now.” She tugged the boy’s hand and dragged him into the sunlight. The child whimpered again, digging his small fist into his eyes, and the nun gave Lenoir a look that was both smug and scathing.
Lenoir squatted so that he was eye level with the boy. “Adam, do you remember me from last night?”
He shook his head.
“You told me you wanted to go with Zach, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you still want to go?”
Adam perked up a little at that. He nodded solemnly.
“I need you to tell me about the rich people you saw. What did they look like?”
The boy shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Try to remember, Adam.”
“I can’t,” he whined, his face collapsing into a scowl. The boy was cranky and tired; Lenoir sensed he was on the verge of tears. He tried a different tack.
“What about the carriage? Was it nice?”
Adam nodded.
“What did it look like?”
“Golden,” said the little boy, with something more like the enthusiasm he had shown the night before.
Lenoir eyed the child skeptically. A teller of tales, the nun had said. He did not need to look up; he could sense the smirk she was directing his way. “Are you sure it was golden, Adam?”
“Yep, and blue.”
“He means green,” the nun interjected. “He gets them mixed up. Don’t you, Adam? You mean green like your blanket?”
Adam furrowed his brow in thought. “Yeah,” he said doubtfully, “green.”
“Can you remember anything else about the carriage?”
“It had angels on it.”
“That’s good, Adam. What else?”
He shook his head. “I’m sleepy.”
Reluctantly, Lenoir rose. He did not even have a chance to thank the boy before the nun had dragged him inside and closed the door.
His next stop was the local wheelwright, and it proved to be an excellent move. Lenoir had not gone far in his description of the carriage before the wheelwright began to nod knowingly. “That’s one of them for-hire jobs, Inspector, the kind folks get for special events and the like. I’ve done a lot of work for that company—it’s not far from here, actually.” He walked Lenoir out of the work yard to point him in the right direction.
“And you’re certain that’s where the carriage is from?”
The man nodded again. “They paint all of their carriages that same green and gold, so as they’re easy to recognize. Sort of like advertising, I guess.”
When Lenoir arrived at the company’s front shop, he saw immediately what the wheelwright had meant. A green and gold carriage sat idle in the street, its coachman slouched casually on his perch. It was a distinctive enough contraption, for aside from the garish green of its hood, its faux-gilt frame was so elaborate—with great swooping wings and frescoed door panels—that it was clearly designed to be noticed. From a distance it might pass for something grand, and certainly it was enough to impress a small boy. But up close it was tired-looking and shabby; the cherubim on the panels were badly drawn, and the paint was peeling. The seat cushions looked old and worn. According to the wheelwright, this was the less expensive of the two carriage-for-hire firms in town, and Lenoir could readily see why.
As he approached, a couple was exiting the shop, accompanied by a man wearing the same livery as the coachman. The footman, for so he appeared to be, assisted the lady to climb into the carriage; Lenoir quickened his step to reach them before they departed.
“Hold a moment, please,” he called. The lady leaned out of the window with a quizzical expression, and the three men turned their heads to look at Lenoir.
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