An Agent for Clara

by Nerys Leigh

  As if the matter was closed, he opened his book.

  He was undoubtedly the most somber person she’d ever met. She’d known him almost a full day and hadn’t seen him smile once.

  Well, she wasn’t putting up with it. She’d get him to loosen up if it was the last thing she did.

  “I’ll start,” she said brightly.

  With a visible sigh, he raised his eyes from the book.

  She grinned. He might never smile, but she had enough for the both of them.

  “My name is Clara Violet Lee and I’m twenty-five years of age. I’m five feet and four and a half inches tall and I was born on May 15th, 1846, in St. Louis where I still live with my parents. Until I came to Denver, that is. I have an older brother called Jasper and a younger brother and sister, Silas and Susanna. I’ve been good at solving mysteries for as long as I can remember, and since I read about Kate Warne, becoming a detective is all I’ve ever wanted to do. I’m very good at telling how people are feeling, so I know if they’re lying to me. And my favorite color is green. Your turn.”

  He stared at her. “To what?”

  “Tell me all about yourself. Go on.” She waved an encouraging hand.

  He appeared bewildered, and possibly a little nervous. Since her instruction was clear, she could only surmise he wasn’t used to people wanting to know about him.

  “Um… my name is Tobias Campbell, I’m twenty-eight years old, and I was born in Boston.”

  When he failed to add anything more, she said, “Do you have a middle name?”

  “No.”

  “Siblings?”

  “No.”

  “Birthday?” Maybe she could throw him a party, if it was close. She loved parties.

  “February first. Why do you need to know all these things?”

  “I don’t need to know, I want to. How tall are you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never measured.”

  She’d never met anyone who didn’t know how tall he was. “What about when you were growing up? Didn’t your parents ever measure you? When my brothers and sister and I were growing, our parents used to measure us every year, on our birthdays, and write it down in a book so we could see how much we’d grown. Didn’t your mother or father do something like that?”

  His gaze lowered to the book in his lap. “No, they never did.”

  Her shoulders slumped. She wanted to know more about him, but this was like getting blood from a stone. She’d have to be more subtle about it in the future. “Just one more question.”

  He looked up. “Is that a promise?”

  She smiled, even though she wasn’t sure he’d meant it as a joke. “Do you ever laugh?”

  “I have been known to laugh, on occasion.” He returned his attention to his book. “Now read the case file.”

  She stared at him for a few seconds before picking up the folder.

  It didn’t matter that he wasn’t forthcoming. She liked a challenge. It just meant that she now had three objectives for their trip to New York: one, solve the case; two, prove she would make an outstanding Pinkerton agent; and three, make her husband laugh.

  Chapter Five

  They reached Cheyenne four hours of reading later and, after an hour’s wait, boarded the train that would take them to New York.

  “The seat folds out into a bed,” Toby said in response to Clara’s confused look when they walked into their sleeper compartment.

  He placed their bags onto the leather seat and shrugged off his jacket.

  She watched him hang the jacket onto a hook on the wall. “Where are you sleeping?”

  He reached up and unfastened two bolts on a panel above the seat. It lowered into a platform with a thin mattress. “Here.”

  She glanced at the door behind her. “In the same room as me?”

  “Yes. I imagine that’s why Archie made us get married.” By the subtle tightening of his jaw as he said it, he wasn’t at all thrilled by that.

  She looked around the tiny compartment. The prospect of sharing a bedroom, if not a bed, with a man she wasn’t related to and had only met the previous day was a little disconcerting. However, it would give her more opportunity to get to know him. Maybe she’d even wrangle that laugh out of him.

  She affected an excited grin. “Sounds like fun.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “I take it you’ve never slept on a train before. It’s rarely fun.”

  Sidling up to him, she nudged his arm with her shoulder. “Then I’m sure we can find a way to make it more fun.” The smile melted from her face as she belatedly realized how that sounded. “I-I didn’t mean… I meant we could talk and… such. I didn’t mean we should…” Her cheeks felt like they were combusting. “It’s not that… I mean, I know we’re married, but we’re not married. Um…”

  To her astonishment, tiny wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. With his lips pressed together it wasn’t quite a smile, but his amusement nevertheless transformed his face.

  She lowered her gaze. “Stop laughing at me.”

  “As you’ve already pointed out, I rarely laugh. And don’t worry, your virtue is perfectly safe.”

  She raised her eyes to find his almost-smile had gone. She wanted it to come back. He really was very handsome when he wasn’t looking so serious.

  She looked up at him through her lashes. “But how safe is yours?”

  His eyes widened ever so slightly and, for a moment before he turned away, she was sure she detected the faintest hint of pink on his cheeks.

  He cleared his throat. “Which bunk would you like?”

  She envisioned getting up to the top one while attempting to maintain her dignity. “The bottom, if you don’t mind.”

  “I have no preference.” He took his bag from the seat and placed it onto the bunk.

  Maybe this journey with Toby wouldn’t be so bad. So far she’d had an almost-smile and now an almost-blush.

  She’d have him laughing in no time.

  ~ ~ ~

  Clara pulled the blanket up to her chin and stared at the underside of the bunk above her.

  Normally she liked new experiences, but sleeping so close to a man to whom she wasn’t related was a little unnerving. Not that she was afraid of Toby at all. Underneath his somber exterior, she could tell he was an honorable man, even in the short time they’d known each other. In fact, that was part of the problem. He was handsome and honorable and intelligent, three of the things that most attracted her to a man. Hence her vaguely unnerved feeling.

  It was a good thing he had no sense of fun whatsoever. If he had, she’d be well on the way to making a fool of herself over him by now.

  “Are you going to keep making that noise all night?” he said.

  She blinked at the bunk above her. She hadn’t been making any noise. She hadn’t even been moving. “All I’m doing is breathing.”

  “Yes. It’s very distracting. Are you planning to keep doing it?”

  “Am I planning on breathing all night?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was hoping to.”

  How could he even hear her breathing over the sound of the train’s wheels running along the tracks?

  He sighed and said no more.

  There was a minute of silence before she spoke again. “Toby?”

  “Tobias.”

  His correction made her smile. “What were you doing with those maggots?”

  There were a few moments of silence. “Do you really want to know? Or do you just want to mock me?”

  Was that a hint of hurt she detected in his voice? She wished she could see his face. She could read people much better when she could see their expressions.

  “Why would I want to mock you?”

  There was another short period of silence before he replied. “I’m recording the length of time it takes them from laying, through the three larval stages, to hatching, to pupation, to emerging as adult flies. I’m repeating the experiment once a month for a year so I can ascertain what
effect the temperature and day length has on their lifecycle, if any.”

  Clara thought about that. “So if you find them on a dead body, you can tell when the person died by how big the maggots are?”

  His reply sounded surprised. “Yes, exactly.” His tone took on a note of excitement. “Blowflies have a larval stage that lasts between three and ten days, depending on temperature, so by knowing the size a maggot will be at each stage of its growth at any time of year, I can accurately gauge how long has passed since death. And the best thing about this is, these flies are present throughout the country, so all I have to do is find the oldest maggot on a body, measure it, and I have a time of death. Of course, within the first hours, internal temperature is a more accurate gauge, and then there’s livor mortis and rigor mortis, but once the corpse has reached ambient temperature and rigor has gone, there’s no other reliable way to tell the time of death.”

  “Except for your flies,” she said, slightly queasy but nevertheless fascinated.

  “Yes. There are other species that will colonize a body too, given enough time and decomposition, but these flies are always first in. Knowing when a person died can affect the entire investigation.”

  Despite her slight disgust, she was impressed. “That’s actually very clever.”

  “Thank you.”

  She wished she could see the smile in his voice. She had yet to see her husband truly smile. “Good night, Toby.”

  “Good night, Clara.”

  Smiling, she rolled onto her side and closed her eyes.

  “And it’s Tobias.”

  Chapter Six

  After four days and three nights of more or less constant train travel, Tobias was more than ready to get his feet back on solid, unmoving ground. He hated long journeys.

  Marianne had wired ahead to book accommodation and they found a hansom cab outside the station to take them to the hotel.

  “I’ve never been to New York,” Clara said, craning her neck to look around them. She stared up at a five story building as they passed. “It’s all so tall.”

  “Too many people, too little land,” he murmured, watching the bustle of people they passed.

  As a rule, he preferred smaller, less populous places. People were intrinsically unpredictable, and the more there were, the less predictable they became, up to a point. Mobs were horribly predictable, but he fervently hoped he’d never have to face one of those again. He didn’t know how he’d protect Clara in a mob.

  He shook the thought from his mind. Everything would be fine. He had a plan for the investigation, he just needed to stick to it.

  She glanced at him. “Will we have time to do some sightseeing while we’re here?”

  He winced internally at her obvious excitement. “I don’t know. Perhaps.”

  She smiled her uncomfortably pretty smile and turned away again to look around them.

  He sighed and silently urged the driver to go faster. The sooner he was away from this woman who smiled too much and talked too much and kept calling him Toby and muddled his thinking, the better. Human emotions were the most unpredictable things of all, and evidently his were no exception.

  The Hamilton Hotel was in Midtown, one of the nicer areas of the city, by Central Park. It cost more, but Archie hadn’t quibbled when Tobias asked for the extra funds. There was at least one benefit to having a woman with him.

  “Ooh, this is fancy,” Clara said as they walked in.

  He glanced around at the painted walls and elaborate gas lighting fixtures. “Yes.”

  The clerk looked up as they approached the reception desk. “Good afternoon, sir, madam. May I help you?”

  Tobias placed their bags on the floor. “You should have a booking under the name of Tobias Campbell.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Campbell.” He checked a ledger. “You’re in rooms fifty-seven and fifty-eight.” He looked at Clara. “Miss…?”

  “Mrs.,” she said, wrapping her arm around Tobias’. “Mrs. Clara Campbell. We’re on our honeymoon.”

  Tobias blinked at her. They were?

  “My congratulations.” The clerk looked down at his ledger again and frowned. “Forgive me, but it says here you’re booked into adjoining single rooms.”

  Tobias opened his mouth to explain that they were married in name only and would be sleeping separately, but he didn’t get the chance.

  “Adjoining rooms?!” Clara exclaimed. “That can’t be right. Darling, you didn’t book adjoining rooms, did you?”

  He opened his mouth to reply that he had. Again, he didn’t get the chance.

  “There must be some sort of mistake,” she said. “We were supposed to have a suite. Are you certain it doesn’t say we’re in a suite?”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Campbell,” the clerk replied, “but these are definitely two single rooms.”

  She stared at him as if he’d just suggested they sleep on the street, and then turned a pout on Tobias. “Darling, what are we going to do?” She pressed herself against him and gave him a look that made his heart pound and his mouth turn to dust. “I believe I will simply burst if I can’t be in your arms all night.”

  It was a few moments before he could make his mouth work again. Swallowing, he looked at the clerk. “Uh…”

  He gave him a knowing smile, said, “Give me a moment,” and disappeared through a door behind him.

  Clara grinned.

  “Why did you do that?” Tobias whispered, glancing around them to make sure no one was close enough to hear.

  “Just wait.”

  “But…” He stopped as the clerk reappeared.

  “I’ve spoken to our manager and he would like me to convey our sincerest apologies for the error and to offer you a suite on the sixth floor at the price you were quoted for the two rooms. If that’s acceptable.”

  “Oh, that’s just perfect!” Clara exclaimed. “You’re such a dear. Isn’t he a dear, darling?”

  Tobias had no idea what was going on, so he just nodded. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll tell all our friends about this wonderful hotel,” she gushed. “Won’t we, darling?”

  Because it seemed to be easier to go along with her, he said, “We certainly will.”

  The clerk seemed genuinely relieved, although Tobias wasn’t sure why since they’d just cost them money. “That’s very kind of you, sir. I’ll just get you booked in.”

  There was an elevator to take them up to their floor, which Clara was clearly excited about. Although she didn’t say anything with the operator there. Tobias wondered if it was her first time riding in one.

  When they were finally in their suite, she turned to him with possibly the biggest smile he’d seen so far. Which was saying something.

  “Isn’t this wonderful?”

  “I had two rooms booked. They were perfectly adequate. Why did you say it was a mistake?”

  She heaved a sigh. “Toby, what am I going to do with you?”

  “It’s Tobias.” Correcting her had become purely habit by now. It wasn’t as if she ever listened.

  “Look at this place. Isn’t this better than two single rooms? And I got it for the same price.” She weaved her way around a settee and two chairs in the center of the living room and disappeared through a door on the far side. A second later, there was a squeal. “You have got to see this bathroom!”

  He followed her into the bedroom where a huge double bed dominated the room. “I guess I’m sleeping on the settee.”

  He didn’t try to keep the miff from his tone. He would have had a bed if they’d had two single rooms.

  She emerged from the bathroom. “But we have our own bathroom, and look at that view.”

  She indicated the window through which they could see across Central Park. It was indeed a lovely view, but he’d rather have had a bed.

  She strolled up to him and gave him a seductive smile. “I wouldn’t mind if we shared.”

  Four days had made a big difference in her behavior towards him,
from when her inadvertent suggestion they have some fun in their sleeper compartment had made her blush. In some ways, he missed the Clara who didn’t feel the need to tease him every chance she got.

  Although, confusingly, he didn’t hate the teasing. Sometimes he even quite liked it.

  “I assume you’re planning on breathing all night, every night?” he said.

  “I’d prefer to, yes.”

  “Then I’m sleeping on the settee.” Anyway, he knew she wasn’t serious about sharing a bed. It had taken him a while, but he could finally recognize when she was joking. Most of the time. “Let’s get unpacked. We have to meet our client in less than two hours.”

  Twenty minutes later he was just placing his empty carpet bag beside Clara’s in the bottom of the armoire when she rushed into the bedroom.

  “Look what I found.”

  He glanced at the hand she held out as he closed the armoire door. “A tape measure? Why would they have a tape measure in the room?”

  “Well, I had to go downstairs to ask for one, but that just meant I got to ride in the elevator again.”

  He’d wondered where she’d gone when she left the room, announcing she would be back soon. “What do you need a tape measure for?”

  “To measure how tall you are.” She beckoned him over to the door. “Come and stand against the wall. It’ll be more accurate that way.”

  After four days with her, he knew better than to argue. “I still don’t understand why you need to know this,” he said, walking over to stand with his back to the wall beside the door.

  “I don’t, but you do. Every man should know how tall he is.”

  “Why?”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “They just do. Stand up straight.”

  “I am standing up straight.”

  He was, in fact, standing up as straight as he could without lifting onto his toes. He was a little bit mystified at himself for that. Perhaps he really did want to know.

  She ran the tape up the door frame and stretched up to place her hand on his head to bridge the gap between him and the wall.

  Finally, she stepped back, taking the tape with her.

  “Well?” he said.