‘I’ll do that alone.’
‘Why? Is it not appropriate for a lady to see?’
Dubois laughed softly. ‘You don’t have to make a point for me. I am well aware of the things you have never seen in your life.’
Alkmene halted. ‘I find your attitude patronizing and unjust. You have never even tried me. How do you know what I would do, how I would react, if I was part of an investigation with you?’
Dubois surveyed her a moment. Then he nodded and hailed a cab.
Wait a minute. He was agreeing to take her along?
Just like that?
Her persuasive powers had to be greater than imagined.
The cab halted, and Alkmene got in with a sense of excitement, but also a slight feeling of impending doom, throbbing in her hurt finger.
She had about as much an idea of investigative work as she had about laundry.
She’d better make sure she didn’t interfere with Dubois’s handling of it, or he’d never again take her anywhere.
The cab dropped them off on the corner of two streets full of small shops and peddlers trying to sell off their wares. Dubois led the way, her clinging to his side, to avoid the grubby hands reaching out for her.
Loud voices screamed from all sides, and a scruffy dog on a rope snapped at her ankle.
Fortunately, the rope was just too short for him to get a nibble. His teeth just shut with a vicious clang that echoed as they pushed on.
On the corner was a tall building of four storeys. The door was open, and in the hallway was a sweet stench of decay.
Or was it something cooking?
If it was, it was disgusting.
Alkmene pretended to rub her face while keeping her nose shut against the stench.
They had to walk up an endless amount of steps spiralling to the top floor. Here and there the steps were so worn she was worried she’d tread right through them and plunge down. Her heart pounded with exertion, and her lungs struggled for air.
At the top, at last, Dubois knocked on a battered door. A voice from inside called, ‘Who are you?’
‘Three for the fisherman and two for the priest.’ Dubois leaned his hand against the door as if he expected this magic formula to open it.
It did open a crack, and giving full pressure, Dubois pushed his way in.
A small man, hunched forward so his chin rested on his chest all the time, sat on a tall stool at a table, covered in parts. Parts of watches, clocks. Cogwheels and tiny springs and bit and pieces Alkmene had never seen before.
He was holding a gentleman’s pocket watch in his hand and trying to take some part out or put it in with tweezers.
Alkmene stared in awe at the mess around him. The floor was covered with piles of old books, while the shelves on the left wall held stacks of yellowing papers. A kid no older than six had opened the door, and then scurried back into a corner where he was playing with something…
It took her a few moments to realize they were actually tin soldiers, but all the paint had rubbed off. The child squatted on the floor moving his hands with the soldiers up and down and muttering something in his play. His hair was matted with dirt, and his clothes could better be thrown out with the trash. Trying to mend them would be no use as on the knees and elbows the fabric had gone so thin it would tear again the moment it was pulled together with needle and thread.
The old man looked up at them. ‘Got catch for me?’
Dubois shrugged. ‘Just something for identification.’
The old man shook his head. ‘You should bring me things I can use, not ask me questions I cannot answer.’
Then his eyes focused on Alkmene. ‘Who is that fine lady? Another client?’
‘Ah,’ Alkmene said, ‘so you are some sort of consulting detective.’
The old man laughed, so loud the boy looked up from his play, with wide eyes. Apparently he didn’t hear this sound very often.
The old man said, ‘The police are there to restore order, or at least so they say. They are like these – cogwheels in a bigger whole. They churn because they are put into motion from the outside and they grind to pieces whatever they catch between them.’
Alkmene shivered, not just because of the bleak reality he painted, but also because of the desolate acceptance of it as a fact of life. This man here had no hope at all that things could be different, better, from what he expected.
‘Now our friend here,’ the old man continued, ‘creates his own world of cogwheels and he thinks he controls them. He digs up dirt and then he is surprised he is finding dead bodies. But when you overturn stones, you find critters creeping out from underneath them.’
‘Enough platitudes for one day,’ Dubois said gruffly and he tossed the precious brooch at the old man.
Deftly, he caught it between his weathered hands.
Alkmene winced as she imagined the sharp stab again that the pin had put in her finger. But the old man didn’t seem to feel anything. He studied the work with a gleam in his eyes. ‘Very good. Highest level of craft. Certainly not English. Eastern. Russian maybe.’
‘Russian?’ Alkmene took a step forward.
‘I have to look up the mark in a book,’ the man said and dropped himself off the stool. He limped over to the piles of books and began to run a finger down the spines, muttering to himself.
Alkmene glanced at Dubois, who mouthed, ‘He has got a system.’
Alkmene nodded, not convinced it would actually work. She scanned the room some more. Her gaze kept coming back to the child, playing with the worn-down soldiers. So intently like they were brand new. Probably because he didn’t have anything else.
She bit her lip. If Dubois had brought her here of all places, to make a point, he was succeeding better than she had thought possible. As a child she had had so many toys and been bored soon with most of them. She had always wanted a pet, but her father had deemed it caused too much trouble with the servants who would have to clean away hair or worse.
Out of spite she had immersed her best doll in the bathtub so the body was ruined, having soaked up too much water. Not to mention the time when she had cut off the beautiful brown curls to give the doll a more fashionable short do. Her nanny had wailed about what such a china doll cost, with her hand-painted face and nails and clothes of real velvet and leather shoes with little laces. This boy had probably never even owned wooden toys.
‘Aha.’ The old man had found the volume he wanted and pulled it out of the stack. It collapsed against another. He leafed through the pages, again discussing his attempt with himself. ‘No, that is not it. No, further. Or maybe… No, not that either.’
Alkmene shuffled her feet.
‘You can sit down,’ Dubois said, nodding at a couch in a corner that looked like it would collapse as soon as anybody sat on it. She wasn’t quite sure about bugs either.
Glancing down, she was glad her skirt’s hem was not touching the ground. Maybe she should clean her shoes thoroughly tonight.
What had Cook said that helped against critters? Petrol?
The old man returned the brooch to Dubois. ‘Most certainly Russian, made by one Sergejev of Saint Petersburg.’
‘You