The Fatal Flame

by Lyndsay Faye

  Chief Matsell’s face presented an unstudied blank. Abraham Kane pulled out a cigar from a carved ivory box, perfectly at his ease. Of those assembled, he was the only one who might not have known her soul to be tissue-thin.

  But then again, he might have known and failed to care. It wasn’t as if Kane was a stranger to killing things.

  “Valentine, my word, are you unwell?” Silkie Marsh exclaimed.

  It was honestly asked. She might not care for humans, but as Val’s ex-mistress she does at times treat him as a regrettable piece of lost property. I imagine she’d have looked so if a prized necklace had been stolen from her to be cut up piecemeal and fenced. Anyway, Val had been dragged through wet ash and manure and worse earlier, so the query was a sound one.

  “Fit as a fiddle,” he answered.

  I delivered a particularly savage dot of a period to my report.

  “You seem a bit . . . fatigued,” she continued, pulling her gloves from her fingers.

  “Too much business to be done and scarce enough hours to do it in,” he answered brightly.

  “Yes, I can only imagine that your campaign must weigh heavy on your mind so soon before the election. And despite my other Party obligations, including those owed to my own landlord, I entirely support your cause, Valentine.”

  My brother smiled. The one that’s all canines and no humor whatsoever.

  “You really must take better care of yourself in the meanwhile,” she insisted.

  “He had a short rest. I’m sure that revived him,” I muttered.

  Valentine would have glared daggers at me. Had he been alert enough to focus his eyes.

  “Oh! Mr. Wilde,” Madam Marsh said to me affectionately. “Apologies, I didn’t see you behind so large a desk.”

  My eyes didn’t so much as lift from the page.

  “Now that what passes for pleasantries are out of the way,” Kane announced, amused, “the chief and I need a word about the Symmes situation.”

  “I thought you didn’t care if he’s reelected,” I mentioned, puzzled.

  “We don’t,” Chief Matsell said icily. “We care that his buildings keep burning and you lot have failed to prevent the occurrence.”

  It was fair. It cut, though.

  “Not for lack of trying,” I shot back, abashed.

  “Of course not, Mr. Wilde. Though I take it you wouldn’t mind overmuch seeing my brothel and its residents go up in flames.” Silkie Marsh displayed the line of her slender neck as Kane delivered her a glass of gin. “Your sole investigative copper star here has the oddest notions about me, Chief Matsell.”

  Matsell’s grey eyes sparked in a flinty fashion. “Madam Marsh, I’m a Party man to the marrow. Note I didn’t say ‘Party puppet.’” The deep lines along the chief’s mouth twitched at the sides as he studied her, as if the fact of her ignorance amused him. “There’s more between my ears, and between my legs for that matter, than cotton stuffing. So you’d best watch yourself. I’ve been watching you for years.”

  Amidst the chorus of amens in my head, I caught a small sigh from Silkie Marsh. It was the sound a cat makes when it feels greatly appreciated and curls up to bask in the sun.

  I tapped my pen against the inkwell and soldiered on.

  “This is about firedogging, then, pure and simple,” Val theorized. “You’re ketched that your landlord’s buildings are under attack. Can’t say as I blame you on that count.”

  “Shall I, Mr. Kane?” Silkie Marsh asked the politico. “They’re busy men. I’d hate to waste their time.”

  “By all means,” he allowed.

  Silkie Marsh marginally straightened her posture. “I knew Robert as a landlord well before he was involved with the Party. He was always a decisive man—my rent for the building was due quite implacably on the first of the month whether that was comfortable or not. I saw at once that he’d the makings of a determined leader if not a particularly benevolent one.”

  Her tone was a queer combination of ease and practice. It betrayed nothing.

  But that’s in itself peculiar. Isn’t it? I thought.

  I’d been in the midst of writing:

  —Why should Alderman Symmes confide so deeply in Ellie Abell, assuming she warned the Neptune 9 company?

  But interrupted myself to jot down in the margin:

  “a determined leader if not a particularly benevolent one”

  “You told me you learned of Symmes’s potential incendiary troubles from his property manager, Ronan McGlynn,” I said. “Was that the truth, or did you just mean to draw him to my attention?”

  I wanted an answer to that query. Something ticklish was running along the edges of my thumbs.

  Madam Marsh’s brow tilted as if she were smiling at me. “What an intriguing question. Did you speak with McGlynn yet?”

  “I did. He said he’d run the Queen Mab—and as the very worst sort of brothelkeeper regarding whether or not the employees volunteer for the job, as will doubtless disgust you to learn, Madam Marsh—but it remained Symmes’s property. And he gave our firestarter a pretty sparkling motive.”

  “What motive could possibly justify firestarting?” she asked. Breathless, leaning with her collarbones taut as sails under a heavy wind and her queer hazel eyes alight.

  “None. But the chief and I spoke with the alderman thereafter and confirmed that Symmes’s relationship with his attacker was . . . intimately personal.”

  I resumed scribbling. If there’s one thing I’m not afraid of, it’s telling Silkie Marsh the truth. It baits her, tempts her to revelations both rich and slight. And I was beginning to hear a small, shrill note of discord in our conversations—both with Symmes and about him. So I wanted Madam Marsh to keep talking. She can feign being personable from dawn until dusk, but generally when listening to her I smell greasepaint and clockwork. This wasn’t the same. It felt as if she wanted me to understand something.

  It was highly alarming.

  “Ronan McGlynn gave you nothing helpful?” Chief Matsell asked.

  “He seemed terribly shocked. He pegged Sally Woods. But helpful? No,” I replied.

  “Your sources and your Tombs cronies have dug up nothing of use as to where we might find her?” my brother surmised darkly.

  “You know how easy it is to disappear in this warren. My men and I’ve been searching for Pell Street survivors as well—we’re to meet tomorrow morning and discuss findings. But so far? Nothing.”

  “You’ve seen this Miss Abell and this Miss Duffy, and you’ve questioned them gently?” Mr. Kane tapped his index fingertips together.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’d not like, I take it, someone else questioning them . . . in a less gentle manner?”

  I thought of young Miss Duffy’s almost poetic perception of the world she could see so dimly, of Miss Abell’s innate sweetness. I even thought of how, when I recalled Miss Woods, I wished she weren’t a murderess and the woman who’d put an egg on my pate. I wished she were an eccentric who lived in a greenhouse. “No, I’d not.”

  “You’d not like, for instance, if Cornelius were to take an active interest?”

  Rumor has it Cornelius Villers once cut out a man’s tongue, fried it like a cutlet, and ate it before his victim. It’s not a rumor I’ve any stomach for investigating further.

  “I’d not imagine Mr. Villers would want to spare the time, not when we’re so close to a solution,” I said slowly, pretending to consider when I could as well have shrieked, For God’s sake keep him out of this. “I have the best of the star police working with me, and my instincts say this needs delicacy, not intimidation. I’d be obliged if you’d let me see it through.”

  Please don’t collect all the many molls to do with this ugly, ugly thing and make them bleed for the parts they played in it.

  “Of course, Mr. Wilde,” replied Abr
aham Kane. With considerable benevolence.

  “Yes,” Silkie Marsh said softly, beaming at us all. “Yes, Mr. Villers needn’t be troubled. I trust in Mr. Wilde’s capacity to work it out and to see justice done.”

  The chief eyed her with unselfconscious surprise. Val’s throat tightened. I can’t imagine how I reacted to this unprecedented display of camaraderie, being riveted to Abraham Kane—who sat there sipping gin as if he were reclining in a porchfront rocking chair. Utterly unperturbed.

  “Symmes is both your alderman and your landlord. You knew Miss Woods personally,” I realized.

  Silkie Marsh flashed pearly teeth at me. I’d pleased her. “I did, Mr. Wilde.”

  “How well?”

  “Not at all well.”

  “What’s she capable of?”

  “Practically anything, in my opinion.”

  “Something terrible happened. After the strike ended. It involved Miss Woods and Miss Abell, but no one will tell me anything. Do you know what it was?”

  Madam Marsh set her gin down. She interlaced her fingers, the picture of a serene, judicious, and—though she repels me—beautiful woman. The blue ring at the center of her eyes darkened to an ocean-deep ribbon.

  “Mr. Wilde, you are really rather clever from time to time,” she said quietly. “Something terrible happened, yes. I cannot say what, precisely, for I’ve only suspicions as to the nature of Robert’s punishment of Miss Woods for defying him. But I can tell you that he is a pitiless man. He said to me one night at my brothel, and I quote him, I am going to make that bitch so sorry for humiliating me that she’ll wish she was never born. He did just that, or so I gather. I never knew Miss Abell, and Miss Woods has vanished. So you see, Mr. Wilde, this all has to end very quickly, or there will be hell to pay.”

  “It really is just about revenge, then,” I said numbly. “I couldn’t credit it was so simple.”

  Silkie Marsh walked to the desk, leaning over me. Generally when I look at her, it’s like staring into the soapstone eyes of a bust. But this was an oracle’s gaze, and a grim one.

  “It is about nothing whatsoever save for revenge, Mr. Wilde.” She spoke in a low murmur that vibrated through me as if she’d screamed the words. “This matter is only and always about revenge. Now, see it through, please, before more people are killed.”

  Silkie Marsh ceased speaking, but her lips remained open, her breaths warm and even. I could see the name Bird Daly writ plain as anything across their rosy surface.

  “Recall what I said,” I advised her softly, with a murder of my own on my mind. “Or you’ll come to regret it.”

  Silkie Marsh was close enough to kiss me, close enough to bite, both of which prospects were equally nauseating. Instead she laughed fondly, straightening as she trailed artistic fingers along the desk’s gleaming polish. She went to the door and retrieved her cloak, draping it over her white shoulders. “Good night, gentlemen. Thank you for having me. Oh. Mr. Wilde?” she called back.

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t help but feel you’re not through talking to Ronan McGlynn,” she concluded just before shutting the door behind her.

  The next few minutes, as I hunched over my report and the other men spoke lowly, were hazy. A windstorm had formed in my cranium in which Symmes-Abell-Woods-Duffy-McGlynn whirled about like so many scraps of newsprint. Newsprint. There was a thought. I needed to find William Wolf, who’d been there just before the close of the strike, who might have heard something, might have left it out of his article, might have smelled danger the way I can smell the faintest traces of smoke.

  “Well, I think that’s as much as we can accomplish this afternoon,” Kane said to my brother, who stared in an unfocused fashion at his trouser leg. “Dinner, Captain? We’ve matters Democratic to discuss, and the chief and I have a table at the Astor. You may want a change of collar first.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” he agreed as they rose.

  “I want that police report when he finishes,” Kane added to George Washington Matsell.

  Hastily, I resumed writing.

  “Assuming he ever does finish, it’s all yours,” the chief returned with a martyred sigh.

  Then they were gone, and it was only my brother and me, Val now sitting at the edge of the desk reading upside down as I finished the goddamn buggering police report.

  “I don’t hate you,” I said tightly.

  He raised his eyebrows, skeptical.

  “Your apology is accepted,” I added through my teeth.

  My brother’s response to this was a derisive snort.

  “The scar, I . . . I’d help it if I could,” I stammered, furious with myself. “You know I don’t mind when you rag me about my size.”

  “Of course you don’t mind that.” Val sounded surprised. “Your size is my fault, after all.”

  Bewildered, I looked up from my writing. “What?”

  “Your size.” He scrubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw. “It was my doing, so it was my job to make you used to it.”

  These sounded like plain American words, but the sequence made no sense. “What the devil can my size have to do with you?”

  A weary ripple of impatience crossed my brother’s brow. “Have you honestly not cottoned to this? Christ. How old were you when we met the Underhill family?”

  The mystery deepened. “Fourteen.”

  “We dined there plenty often afterward, didn’t we? When the reverend took a liking to us, asked us to supper or tea three and four times a week?”

  “Yes. I don’t savvy a word you’re saying,” I protested, shoving the pen and paper aside.

  “Timothy,” Valentine snapped, exasperated, “what exactly do you think the effects of severe malnutrition between the ages of ten and fourteen are?”

  Time slowed to a tortuous trickle as I stared at him. Recalled all the many ways my brother is capable of making a moldering potato palatable, remembered cast-off bread like clay bricks and rare, precious stolen beefsteaks and the memorable occasion the cat that haunted the halls of our wretched boardinghouse went missing and that we ate a passable stew the next day.

  Val’s eyes drifted sidelong as he coughed into his fist. “I tried. While I was still proving myself to the Party, it didn’t always fadge, but. I tried. Anyhow. Enough of this, fill in the gaps over the Symmes debacle for me, I didn’t quite savvy everything we just palavered over. I’ve been busy.”

  Dead silence. I shook my head, floored. I didn’t want this information, didn’t want it, didn’t want any part of knowing my brother considered himself responsible for my runty stature nor that he was probably correct. It hurt unbearably in locked places I couldn’t afford to open just then.

  “You napped a crate of oranges off the back of a wagon once,” I offered hoarsely. Desperate for any way to fix the pair of us and knowing the task impossible. “We were kings for a whole week. Remember?”

  After a silent, pained laugh, Val shook his head. It didn’t mean he didn’t recall. It meant he’d no wish to speak of it. “You dwell on the oddest things. Come on, some of that just now was a surprise to me. Chant the rest of it.”

  With an effort that just about cracked my skull open, I numbly reached for the pen and drew the paper back to myself. Returned to the subject at hand.

  “It was phosphorus both times,” I told him. “That doesn’t quite explain what the Neptune Nines were doing there earlier, though Symmes paying them to save his holdings is plausible, since they’re based in Ward Two near his biggest commercial ventures. They certainly seem convinced you’re not inclined to douse Symmes’s properties.”

  “That’s a pile of political rat droppings,” he said calmly. “Next?”

  “Miss Abell is plenty keen to prevent fires, but I wonder why Symmes trusts her so far.”

  “I wonder that too.”

  “I’m after
a reporter named William Wolf, who I hope can shed light on the strike.”

  “It all started there, or seemed to. Can’t hurt us. And?”

  “Bird Daly thinks I told her she’s not pure enough goods for a beau.” My already tight throat was sore after that admission.

  “You what?” Val demanded.

  I took a deep breath, rallying. “I didn’t. I was trying to tell her that falling in love with James Playfair would prove a bit of a wrench.”

  “You . . . oh,” he concluded lamely. “You could . . . ah, make that argument.”

  “Mercy Underhill is back and living in a boardinghouse off Broadway.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “How about send her a welcoming meat pie and leave her the hell alone?”

  “I’ve been visiting her. My landlady is furious with me.”

  “Your landlady is not alone, you bottle-head. You should be giving Miss Mercy the berth of a pox ward.”

  My brother is one of several men who have engaged in casual relations with the love of my life. That fact makes me want to rip my own skin off, so I refuse to ruminate over it. Meanwhile, he’s less than fond of her. Seems to think she unduly influences my moods.

  “That’s not going to happen. You’re right, though.” Dropping the pen, I pushed my knuckles into my eyelids, seeing multicolored blood pulse starkly against the bone. “I can’t think. Or not about . . . any single thing for long enough to make sense of it. I’ve never felt this rattled. Val, something terrible is going to happen, I know it.”

  “Look at me.”

  I did. His lips were pushed into a concrete line.

  “Not to us, all right, my Tim? I know you’re ketched over this Symmes business, but I won’t let it touch us. Keep your nets in the water and send me word if you snag anything. Now, finish that blasted police report. And I’m dead serious—stay clear of Mercy Underhill if you know what’s healthy for you. Which you obviously don’t.”

  I’d have said, That makes two of us. But I hadn’t the strength.

  He fetched his hat and his heavy stick from his chair. Gave me a brief nod. Quit the room and presumably the building.