Chapter 12

# Chapter Twelve

## Every Name in the House

Ms. Doe gave Harrow the address.

He read it under the nearer desk lamp, folded the paper and slipped it inside his coat. His abandoned potatoes went into a drawer with a stack of arrest forms.

“You intend to eat those later?” she asked.

Harrow locked the drawer. “I intend to decide later.”

He took Constable Neris from the charge desk and told the night sergeant where they were going. Welfare inquiry. Possible abduction. He declined a wagon; Neris would be the only uniform. Nobody was to contact Saint Wythe parish until Harrow had seen the house for himself.

Ms. Doe waited beside the door, dripping onto a notice that threatened a fine for dripping there.

“You are being very careful with an address you did not possess five minutes ago.”

“You made me search the burial register before you would give it to me.” Harrow pulled on his coat. “That suggested care.”

Outside, the rain had worn itself down to mist. The last tram for Linnet Row had gone, so they hired a cab whose left wheel complained at every turn. Neris sat beside the driver. Harrow took the rear seat opposite Ms. Doe, knees nearly touching hers whenever the cab dropped into a rut.

“Does the landlady know the employment card belongs to a dead woman?” he asked.

“She knows the identity is false. I don’t yet know how much more she knows.”

“How many residents?”

“Six, according to her. Seven, according to the supper table.”

“You had no authority to promise them secrecy.”

“I did not promise it.”

“Will Mrs. Thorne remember the conversation that way?”

Ashgrove saw Sabine again with both hands locked around the bedpost, asking her to keep police out of the house. “Probably not.”

The cab wheel struck another rut. Harrow caught the burial certificate before it slid from his knee.

“If you already knew what answer you wanted,” Ms. Doe said, “you might have saved the city sixpence.”

“The city is not paying.”

Ms. Doe let that answer pass.

Harrow watched the wet shops slide past and did not force the last word from her. She liked him better for that, although she would have denied liking him at all if asked before breakfast.

The kitchen curtains at Thorne House were shut. Mrs. Vale admitted them through the rear door and drew the bolt behind Neris. She examined the four of them as though someone had delivered an order with the wrong number of parcels.

“Sabine knows you went to the station,” she told Ms. Doe.

“How badly?”

“She has assigned bedrooms, hidden two ledgers and boiled the same kettle dry.” Mrs. Vale took Harrow’s wet hat before he could object. “You may judge.”

From the dining room came a chair dragging across bare boards.

“No,” Sabine said to someone. “Upstairs, please. Take your blanket.”

Harrow entered while she was still speaking.

The residents crowded around the long table in various states of dress. The youngest wore a night robe beneath her coat and held a pillow against her ribs. Nobody was eating. A skin had formed across the stew in Nella’s bowl.

Mara Fen rose so quickly that her chair went over backward. Lio jumped at the crack. Mara did not turn to pick it up.

“Out.”

Harrow stopped well short of her. “Inspector Elias Harrow. This is Constable Neris.”

“The door didn’t ask.”

Neris, halfway through taking out his notebook, put it away again.

Mrs. Vale set Harrow’s hat on the dresser. “There is a burial record.”

Sabine stood beside the range with her keys crushed in one fist, shoulders squared for an argument with police. At the word burial, her fingers opened. A brass key struck the stove rail and skittered beneath the table after one sharp bounce.

Lio turned first to Sabine, then to Ms. Doe. “Whose burial?”

Sabine bent after the key.

Ms. Doe took the certificate from Harrow before Sabine could answer for Lio. She placed it beside Nella’s bowl and turned the page toward her.

Lio read standing up. Her metal-grey fingertip stopped under the burial date.

“No. She would have been—” Lio counted again, lips moving. “She’d have been a child.”

Mara kicked her fallen chair aside and came around the table. “Let me see.”

“It isn’t her,” Sabine said from the floor.

Lio’s head came up. “What?”

Sabine emerged with the key. Dust clung to one knee of her skirt. “It isn’t our Nella.”

“There’s another one?”

“There was.”

“The first Nella,” Lio said.

Harrow stayed near the doorway instead of advancing on the table. “Mrs. Thorne, I am trying to find a living woman. The name she used here is enough for tonight.”

“Tonight,” Mara said.

“Yes.”

“And tomorrow?”

“If another name matters, I ask why before it goes into a report. I can’t promise an offense disappears because the reason for it was decent.”

“Decent according to whom?”

“You people always find time to settle it after you’ve taken somebody away.”

The night-robed woman hugged her pillow tighter.

Sabine put the dusty key into the pantry lock.

“You want to know who Nella Card is?” she said. “Move the onions.”

Mara righted her chair with unnecessary force. Harrow carried the onion crate out of the pantry. When Neris lifted the flour tins, Ms. Doe reached for a shallow drawer of account slips. Sabine slapped her hand away and removed it herself.

Behind it, two brass catches held a narrow panel between the studs.

Thirteen document boxes stood inside.

They were the length of account books and thin enough to be hidden under a coat. A woman’s name had been written on each spine, followed by dates in Sabine’s compact hand. Several names had one line through them. Two had been crossed out twice.

NELLA CARD had three dates.

The youngest resident leaned over the table. “Is mine in there?”

Sabine did not turn.

“Mrs. Thorne?”

“Go upstairs, Ruth.”

“That isn’t my name either, is it?”

The pillow slipped from under her arm. Mrs. Vale caught it before it landed in the stew.

Lio backed into the passage. “Every name?”

“Every name used in this house belonged first to a woman who no longer needed it,” Sabine said.

“Dead women.”

“Usually.”

“Usually?” Mara swung toward her. “Sabine.”

“Some left the country. One entered a convent. I verified what I could.”

Questions broke across the room. Ruth wanted to know which box was hers; Mara demanded what usually meant. More voices crowded in until Sabine had to repeat herself, louder each time and to nobody’s satisfaction.

Harrow did not shout over the room. He pulled out a chair for the woman in the night robe and waited until she sat. “Constable Neris will examine the yard and the street entrance. He doesn’t need anyone’s name for that.”

Neris left through the kitchen. Ruth sat. Mara remained standing.

Sabine brought the Nella box to the table. Harrow left it where she placed it.

“What do the dates mean?” he asked.

“The first Nella’s death. Then the name was issued again. It came back, and four years ago I gave it to the woman you are looking for.”

“Issued,” Lio repeated. “Like a library book?”

Sabine pinched the rent book hard enough to bend its cover. “No.”

“It came back.” Lio’s voice shook now, which made it louder. “You just said it came back.”

“The papers came back.”

“The women don’t?”

Mrs. Vale moved a cup out of Lio’s reach before her hand struck it. “Let Sabine finish badly, if badly is how she must do it.”

Sabine pulled out a rent book, an employment character and a parish copy soft at the folds.

Harrow asked, “Who made the later copies?”

Sabine closed the box halfway.

“A copyist.”

“I’ll need her name.”

“No.”

“Mrs. Thorne—”

“No. She has children.” Sabine pushed the box away from him, though he had not touched it. “She has never met our Nella and she does not know where these papers go.”

Harrow opened his notebook. Mara swore under her breath.

“Inspector,” Ms. Doe said.

He waited, pencil lifted.

She addressed Sabine rather than him. “The Agency will not carry a name from those boxes outside this house without speaking first to the woman using it.”

“Not to an employer?” Sabine asked.

“No.”

“A registry?”

“No.”

Harrow said, “A court may not give you that choice.”

“Then we return and tell the woman what is happening, if the law allows us to.”

“That isn’t what I asked for,” Sabine said.

“No,” Ms. Doe said.

Theo appeared in the passage with his instrument case and damp hair falling across his forehead.

“What are we not writing down?” he asked.

“Birth names,” Lio said.

“Good.” He set the case on a chair. “I wasn’t using them.”

Harrow asked, “If an identity becomes relevant to your findings?”

“Ask me then.” Theo unfastened one buckle on the case. “It isn’t relevant yet.”

Mara retrieved the cold teapot. She poured for Theo first.

Sabine showed them the first Nella’s papers. The employment character called her steady, quiet and grateful, in handwriting large enough to fill the page. Her rent book contradicted the gratitude by recording six weeks of unpaid illness.

“She worked for a physician,” Sabine said. “Lung fever left her unable to climb the servants’ stair. She collapsed carrying his breakfast, and he dismissed her.”

“Who witnessed her death?” Harrow asked.

“I did. A parish nurse came after. Nobody claimed the body or the wages.”

Mara leaned both forearms across the back of a chair. “Mrs. Thorne claimed the wages.”

“How?” Ms. Doe asked.

“She threw a brick through the physician’s breakfast-room window.”

“Mara.”

“He came to the door after that.”

Ms. Doe considered the dimensions of breakfast rooms she had known. “Was it an expensive window?”

“Very,” Sabine said.

“Did he pay?”

“Every penny. Then he charged me for the glass.”

Harrow began to write. “That will not be in your report,” Sabine said.

He drew a line through something.

By the time Sabine continued, Ruth had put the pillow on her chair instead of holding it against her chest.

Years later, Sabine explained, a scullery maid came to her owing five more years to a household that had stopped paying her. The dead woman’s papers opened a wage account and gave her an address the former employer did not know. When she was established elsewhere, she returned the documents.

“So you used them again,” Harrow said.

“Someone else needed them.”

“And you taught each woman the dead woman’s history.”

“Only what an employer might ask.”

“You decided when they were ready.”

Lio stood in the passage. While everyone had been looking at the box, she had put on her outdoor coat. The top button occupied the second hole, pulling the collar sideways against her throat.

Sabine reached to correct it automatically. “You cannot go out dressed like that.”

Lio barked a laugh. “There. That.”

“Your collar is choking you.”

“Then let it!” She tore the top button loose and held it up. “Did you decide Esther was ready to leave? Did you decide Nella could speak to that clerk? When were you going to decide I was old enough to know I’m borrowing a dead woman’s name?”

“I told everyone to stay away from him.”

“You told us not to worry.”

“Because panic would have—”

“I was already frightened! I could have been frightened with the facts.”

Sabine reached for her. Lio stepped back, and Mara moved between them before either appeared to understand that she had done it.

Ashgrove knew the argument gathering in Sabine’s mouth. She had used pieces of it on Theo before: I needed to understand the danger first. Let me handle it. She had believed both.

“The clerk,” Ms. Doe said. “Show us what he left.”

Sabine did not answer Lio. She went to the account drawer and returned with a grey paper wrapper sealed along one edge in red wax. The front requested access to an old lodging declaration under Nella Card’s name.

“I refused,” she said. “He left that behind as though it proved he could come back.”

Harrow carried it beneath the lamp. “Saint Wythe stopped using this stamp two years ago. The handle cracked across the saint’s face.” He tilted the seal. A hairline split ran from brow to chin. “Old records are still valid. New requests are not made with it.”

Theo finally opened his case and took out a flat magnifier. A pair of ivory-tipped tweezers lay beside one sealed alchemical leaf. He left the leaf strapped in place while he examined the wrapper.

Lio noticed. “Aren’t you going to use the card?”

“No.” Theo turned the paper under the lens. “Alchemy costs money. Paper runs in a direction for free.”

He asked Mara for a scrap from the account drawer. He tore it once along the fibers; the edge separated cleanly. Across them, it dragged and feathered.

“Parish wrappers are cut so the fold follows the grain. They are opened for years without breaking at the hinge.” He passed the false wrapper to Harrow. “This was cut from a larger sheet by someone copying the shape. The seal may be genuine. The wrapper isn’t.”

“Could a parish clerk make it?” Lio asked.

“A clerk could. So could anyone who had the seal and a knife.” Theo returned the unused leaf to its strap.

Neris came back through the kitchen, rain shining on the shoulders of his uniform.

“The yard is washed clean,” he reported. “No useful marks. The bakery’s street door still has the municipal seal across it. Its loft loading door is locked.”

“Intact?” Harrow asked.

“Intact.”

Theo closed only half his case. “Show me how people leave this house unseen.”

Sabine named the rear door.

“That is how we entered.”

“The front, then.”

“You misunderstood,” Theo said. “If Nella needed to avoid the street, where would she go?”

Ms. Doe rose. “The linen stair.”

Mara braced one hand on either side of the passage.

“That way belongs to the house.”

Lio tugged her ruined collar away from her throat. “So did Nella.”

Mara’s left hand came off the frame. Then the right. She stepped aside.

The linen stair began behind a cupboard door and climbed above the second-floor ceiling. Sabine went first with a lamp. Ms. Doe followed too quickly and caught the veil of her hat on a nail. She backed down one step, detached the hat and handed it to Neris.

“Madam—”

She was already climbing again. Neris followed with the hat held away from his wet uniform.

At the top, folded blankets filled shelves beneath the sloping roof. The air tasted of soap and dry timber. Rain moved softly over the tiles, close enough to touch through the plaster.

Sabine removed the blankets from the lowest shelf. Four screw heads showed in the panel behind them, their slots bright from use. A flat key opened the edge no wider than a coin.

Cold air pushed into the attic.

Beyond the panel ran a timber crawlway between Thorne House and the condemned bakery. Lime dust lay over the boards. Tar bulged black between repairs in the opposite wall. The passage turned after six feet and disappeared.

Harrow took the lamp from Sabine and lowered it until the light skimmed the floor.

“How often?”

“When an employer watches the front. When a contract collector brings help.”

“Did Nella know?”

“Everyone knows. That was the point.”

Theo knelt beside the opening and bent close without touching the dust. “Two tracks. Both recent.”

Neris still held the hat. “Can one of your leaves tell us when?”

“If I had a sealed sample of this dust from before the rain, I could compare the moisture.” Theo pointed to the roof. “I have only what is here now.”

“So no.”

“No.”

He indicated a narrow heel pressed into the lime, then a broader tread that had driven dust into the grain. Both continued around the turn.

Ms. Doe lowered herself onto the boards and took the lamp.

Harrow caught the back of her coat. “Not farther than I can pull you out.”

He kept hold while she stretched into the opening. Six feet ahead, a bent nail protruded from the bakery frame. Something yellow-brown trembled on it whenever the wind entered the passage.

“Thread,” she said.

Theo leaned closer. “Don’t touch the board beneath it.”

Ms. Doe hooked the nail with the curved end of the lamp handle. Rust grated over wood as she drew it within reach.

Lio came up the attic stair at a run. Mara caught her around the waist on the last step.

“Let go of me!”

“When you stop trying to crawl through three people.”

Theo lifted the thread with his tweezers. Wax darkened one end. The other had frayed where it was pulled from a wound card.

Lio stopped fighting Mara.

“Ochre,” she said.

She ripped open the torn edge of her cuff. Nella’s repair gleamed in the lamplight, the same strange color between yellow and brown.

“She put the card in her pocket after supper. I saw her.” Lio reached toward the tweezers and checked herself. “She said she’d finish mine properly in the morning.”

The thread had caught beyond the hidden panel, on the bakery side. The smaller heel entered beside the broad tread. Neither track returned before the passage turned out of sight.

Sabine sat down hard on the blanket shelf.

Nella had not slipped into the street with Esther’s trunk. She had gone through the roof of the house that was meant to hide her.

Someone had gone into the bakery with her.