Chapter Five #2
Isla has carved out a spot by the window, which allows me to eat breakfast, gaze out onto the street, and pretend the room isn’t a disaster area behind me. I appreciate that. But it also means that we’re both turned toward the window and don’t notice Jack come in.
Jack’s wearing her maid’s outfit. We aren’t in the era of uniforms for domestic staff, but Isla provides a standard work outfit of a dark blue dress and apron.
As for Jack’s interest in our discussion, she’s the writer of those chronicles Lady Adler mentioned.
Our Jack has many trades, and one of them is journalism.
She cut a deal with Isla that allows her to take over my old housemaid job while also taking over from—by putting out of business—the hack who’d first penned Gray’s stories.
“There’s a case?” she prompts again.
“I’m not certain,” I say carefully. “We were called out last night by someone who wishes Dr. Gray to investigate a disappearance. I wouldn’t call it a case. More of a favor owed to an important patron.”
Jack eyes me. “So there’s nothing interesting about it?”
“Not really.”
More narrow-eyed scrutiny. “Perhaps I ought to be the judge of that, after you and Dr. Gray decided that your readers—primarily women and children—would have no interest in the disappearance of a beloved dog.”
“We were wrong about that, which we admitted, and you are currently finishing the installments of that case, which means you will have no time for—”
“I’ll make time. We must strike while the iron is hot, and after you two found Greyfriars Bobby, it is red hot.”
I sip my coffee. “This isn’t really a case.”
“No? Nothing at all interesting about it?” she repeats.
“Mallory,” Isla murmurs. “There is no harm in telling Jack. She writes under my supervision, and both you and Duncan have the power of veto.”
I look at Jack. “One of Dr. Gray’s most important clients summoned him last night. We went, thinking someone had died, and it turned out they were having a séance. They accidentally contacted the ghost of the client’s missing maid, who asked for Dr. Gray by name, wanting him to solve her murder.”
Jack blinks at me. Then she turns to Isla. “Please tell me that Mallory is joking, and she did not honestly believe her audience wouldn’t be interested in that.”
“I’m not joking,” I say as I lift my coffee cup again. “I know they’d be interested, but it isn’t a case. There is no dead maid.”
“And how do you know that?”
I open my mouth. Then I stop. “All right. I really hope there isn’t a dead maid. I just mean that her ghost didn’t reach out, because ghosts don’t exist.”
“And how do you know that?” she repeats, one brow arched.
Then she perches on the windowsill. “I’ve heard enough stories that I do not discount it.
I also recognize it is unlikely that is what happened here.
However, it could have happened. Someone claimed it happened.
That is all you need for a proper reporting. ”
“‘Proper’ is doing a lot of work there,” I mutter.
“Fine. It is all that is needed for an entertaining reporting. I am a professional. I know how to mold the story so that neither you nor Dr. Gray needs to outright say there is a ghost. You just can’t outright say there isn’t either, or you risk offending those who believe.”
“So we start publishing installments, and then next week, we find the maid happy and healthy and utterly humiliate Dr. Gray’s patron. When we only took the case to avoid insulting her.”
“I will hide the patron’s identity in the early installments. Then, if it becomes public knowledge and the case is not embarrassing to the family, we will identify them in the chapbook edition.”
When I hesitate, Isla clears her throat.
“May I make a suggestion, as the editor of these chronicles? I propose that Jack begins writing installments, but that we do not publish them until the case is otherwise reported on. Or, if it is never reported on, they can form a small side story where the participants are heavily concealed.”
“So I can have the installments ready to publish, should the case appear in the papers or pamphlets or broadsheets?” Jack asks.
“Yes. Put your ear to the ground and listen for rumblings. If you hear them, we will be ready to launch simultaneously, with our story countering fictions in other versions, as well as ensuring Duncan’s patron is not humiliated.
” Isla is being careful not to name Lady Adler in front of Jack.
She looks at me. “Does this patron know about the chronicles?”
“She does, but I’ll want to mention this to her. Be sure she understands the implications.” I take my last gulp of coffee. “Hell, if we’re lucky, maybe that’ll convince her not to pursue the case.”
“Lucky?” Jack says, giving me a hard look. “You’ve forgotten what that word means, haven’t you.”
I shake my head.
“Let me get my notebook,” Jack says. “You can give me all the details.”
“Uh?” I lift the breakfast tray.
“You are offering to take that down to the kitchen for me? Splendid. Thank you.”
I shove the tray into her hands, and wave her off.
Jack doesn’t get a chance to interview me, because I’m already gone when she returns. So is Isla. We don’t get ready that quickly—impossible with Victorian women’s wear—but Mrs. Wallace must have set Jack on other tasks, and we leave before she’s finished.
Isla is accompanying me to speak to Lady Adler. I’m not doing an end run around Gray. We’d discussed this last night. Since Isla knows Lady Adler personally—and Lady Adler is very fond of her—it makes sense to pull her in.
Isla is also concerned about Nellie, which makes me feel shitty for being so cavalier about the case.
I say as much as we head across town. We’re in the coach with Simon driving.
It’s not a long distance—maybe two miles—and normally, we’d walk, but it would look odd to Lady Adler.
So we take the coach, Gray having gone on foot to speak to McCreadie.
“Do not feel bad,” Isla says when I tell her. “I completely understand why you would not wish to pursue the case. Because my brother does not wish to pursue it.”
I scowl at her, and she only gives me a satisfied smirk.
Then she says, “Fine, it is because the spiritualism makes my brother uncomfortable. If you were truly intrigued and he were truly disinterested, you would persist, hopefully after giving me the opportunity to join you instead. But the only thing less appealing than a case without my brother at your side? A case where he is reluctantly at your side.”
There is nothing worse than a newly non-single friend.
Isla has teased me about Gray for about as long as I’ve teased her about McCreadie.
So I guess I deserve this. Not that I’ve ever confessed to having feelings for Gray.
It’s one thing to tell a friend you like a guy; it’s another when that guy is her brother.
“You do realize he feels the same way, yes?” she says.
“About me taking on cases without him? That’s the problem. No matter how uncomfortable he is, he’s going to join me.”
She opens her mouth, as if to say something, but only shakes her head. “He will be fine. And you will rest easier if you can prove Nellie is unharmed.”
“You suspect she’s been hurt,” I say. “Or worse.”
Isla turns to look out the side window. “I do not know. I am unsettled.”
“You don’t think she’d leave of her own accord?”
“I understand why it seems the obvious answer,” she says, looking back at me. “The life of a domestic servant is not easy, even with a good employer.”
“I—”
“I take no insult at that, Mallory. You have said there are people in your time who do similar tasks. Clean homes. Take in laundry. Care for children. Tend gardens. You would still hire them, yes, even knowing it is hard work?”
“They can be decent jobs if people are paid fairly and treated well, which is what you do with your staff.”
“Also what Lady Adler does with hers, which is why I felt confident placing Nellie there. I understand that the work will be different, and that the hours and expectations make it more restrictive than factory work. But Nellie’s factory was truly horrible, and she is not a flighty girl—at all.
She would not decide she misses the relative freedom of factory work and sneak off in the night.
If she found preferable employment, she would tell Lady Adler.
Also, when I placed her there, she wanted the job. ”
“So her leaving in the middle of the night would be out of character.”
“Completely.”