25.
IN WHICH MR. ADELSTEIN’S
BEDTIME READING IS
INTERRUPTED

Casebook of Matthew Adelstein

Pertaining to – oh, there’s no neat delineation

If written records are what’s wanted now, permit me to add mine to the evening’s fray. Not that I was anywhere near my casebook when everything began to unfold at a newly hectic rate. Nicholas and I had retired to bed early, night-clad and curled up with two cups of his most soothing chai. He was reading one of his chirpy novels aloud – specifically one that was very much not Life and Limbs – to distract us from the imminent horrible need to thwart the trust of the town’s most famous resident. I had attempted to compose, and subsequently burned, no less than six drafts of the letter that would resign me from Edwina Nettleblack’s commission, and I still wasn’t happy with the contents of the seventh.

We both heard the knocker, even three floors up, bludgeoning the silence out of the evening. Nicholas was in favour of ignoring it, and initially I was of the same opinion. How could I be otherwise, after the events of that ghastly afternoon, which his desperate caresses and relentless good cheer were only just beginning to soften? The butler would have dealt with it, perhaps, but the butler had been dispatched on half-holiday, and the cook and her skivvy knew not to answer the door. And here was Nicholas, his curly head warm through my nightshirt, with a thumb’s width of his novel still to read.

But the hammering only continued, louder and more relentless than ever. I began, I confess, to tip back into panic. If Rosamond Nettleblack had been expecting me to break with her elder sister immediately – if she had taken my hesitant silence as disobedience, and arranged her counter-attack accordingly –

This line of thinking left me somewhere poised somewhere relief and incredulity, when the voice came shrieking up the housefront.

“Figs! Mr. Adelstein! I quite know you’re in there!”

I recollect myself spluttering, whilst Nicholas gazed at me in equal stupefaction: were the family dispatching sisters here purely to torment us now?

But as my options in that immediate moment seemed to be either let her in and take the consequences, or let her scream the streets awake and take the consequences of her siblings, I had little choice but to spring out of bed and clatter down the stairs at triple-pace, candle in hand. I would, unsurprisingly, have greatly preferred to have strode into a confrontation with Henry Nettleblack in something more substantial than a nightshirt and dressing-gown, but by the time I reached the door she was actually kicking it, leaving me rather no alternative.

Of all the peculiar states I had seen the little wretch in, this was by far the most perplexing. I could only observe her in dimly-lit glimpses, as she shoved past me and sprinted up the stairs to the drawing-room, but her every step left crusts of mud trampled into the carpet. She appeared to still be flaunting her Divisionary disguise, but the uniform was damp and filthy, and now seemed to include an incongruously expensive cravat trailing limply from her neck.

My first instinct, naturally, was to assume that the straits of the Division had finally got too much for her. By the time I’d followed her back up the stairs, Nicholas already had the gaslamps sputtering to life, and she was slumped on our chaise, breathlessly oblivious to the havoc her clothes would wreak on the material, her head tipped forward into hands streaked black with ink and bicycle-grease. Nicholas was on his knees beside her, admirably unfazed by this public disclosure of his novelty rat pyjamas, his questions undeservedly gentle: was she alright, what had happened, could he get her anything (could he get her anything!) –

“What are you doing here?” I demanded, in a more appropriate tone. Nettleblack the youngest jumped like a starling.

“You – erm – ” – and she swallowed hard, presumably to amend that clockwork-trick of a stammer – “You don’t seem – especially pleased – to have me turn up on your doorstep – ”

At which, it became patently obvious that the chit had no idea what Rosamond had done, that she still believed herself to be the ill-fated object of my unshakeable pursuit. If it kept her on edge, and sufficiently wary of me not to wreck any more of my furniture, I wasn’t especially inclined to correct her.

Nicholas would have done it regardless, in his mollifying way, had I not glowered him to silence. It was more than enough for now to reiterate to Nettleblack that she hadn’t answered my question.

She regarded me a moment, her wide eyes the uncanny spit of her sister’s, evidently assessing the situation for herself. Her paltry intellect apparently didn’t disappoint. Having worked out that any overt request for my time, help, and patience would have resulted in her instantaneous ejection, through door or window, she flung a new gambit at me, even more insane than the last.

“The Director needs you – there’s a plot – erm – against the Division – ”

What, I was on the verge of snarling, did I care about the Division – ?

But Nicholas caught my eye, and shook his head. “Listen to the fieldmouse, Matty. Can’t tell you why she’s here if you don’t let her finish the sentence, eh?”

The reprimand was so gentle, so solemn, yet so much firmer than his usual wafting cautions, that it silenced me on the instant. Nettleblack proceeded –

“Forget you’ve resigned – erm – and help me – something’s happening in the building – and the Director has some kind of plan – and – I can’t get to her – or Cassandra – and Septimus hasn’t got back yet – and Gertie and the others are gone – and you’re the only one left in Dallyangle who can assist – so you have to – ”

“I don’t take orders from you,” I snapped. Nicholas waved me frantically to silence again, an absentminded rodent on his wrist flicking its tail across his knuckles. I stared at him: twice in one evening?

“Pretend he’s not still sulking, Henry,” he blurted, without so much as a wince for my incredulous splutter. “And give him all the facts you’ve got. Matty enjoys facts, eh, Matty?”

Only sheer love for the man kept me from strangling him.

“Cassandra’s deduced something,” Nettleblack declared wildly, as if she thought Mrs. Ballestas’s scatterbrained author-child in any way capable of doing my job. My former job. Regardless. “As far as I – erm – understand it – there was only so much time to explain – Cassandra seems to think that Lady Miltonwaters and Adelaide Danadlenddu have some connection – erm – to a plot against the Division – and now Adelaide is keeping people out of the Division on false pretences – with the Director inside – and very probably Lady Miltonwaters too – and – the Director – she – she wants me to – figs, I don’t know! – to get into the Division – and do something for her – but I can’t work out what – and – and – quite!”

Nicholas patted her shoulder, glanced over to me with the same infectious panic glinting in his eyes. “Matty, we have to help – ”

But we had, if anything, to remain within the perimeters of reason, even dishevelled and half-dressed as we were.

“Do you have any proof of this so-called plot?” I demanded. “Or, indeed, proof that anything remotely untoward is happening inside the Division building? Or – most pertinently of all – a sensible and thorough explanation from Cassandra, that sounds less like a semi-devised melodrama and rather more resembles an actual strand of deductive logic?”

Her pale face twitched, evidently with an impatient desire to injure me in some not insignificant way. “I can’t get to Cassandra without giving the game away to Adelaide – and I don’t want to do that until I know what the Director needs! Can you not simply believe me? You have my word!”

I was about to inform her with justified viciousness that, even if what she said was true, yelling at me was not going to make the mystery clearer – but the moment she finished her sentence, her whole expression changed. Where she had been pinched in a glare, she was now startlingly slack, gaping at some unfixed point inside my eyes. Nicholas darted closer; he assumed, reasonably, that she was on the verge of toppling down senseless again.

“My word,” she gasped. “That’s – that’s it! That’s her plan! Not the journal! My written word – written tonight – now that they’re all at the Division – and she can trick them into explaining themselves – and I know the back way in! She’s seen how quickly I can transcribe – how much I can remember – and she wants to catch them with it! Figs! Of course!”

“Whose plan?” – but I asked purely, at this stage, for confirmation of what I already suspected. If anyone could quietly deduce Nettleblack’s identity, store it up in her mind until it proved useful, then summon a way to weaponise it against whatever threat happened to arise – of course it would be Keturah Ballestas.

Unsurprisingly, Nettleblack blurted the very same name. “And Septimus said that Adelaide and Lady Miltonwaters just walked in – demanding to speak to the Director – whatever they’re saying, I – I need to write it down – merciful peaches, and she must be running out of time!”

Nicholas snatched this moment to ask the question I really ought to have thought of: namely, why had Nettleblack not enlisted her admirer to assist her? At this stage of the evening, it hardly came as a surprise to discover that Septimus was in some sort of danger too, from which she may or may not have extricated herself, but which nonetheless posed a threat to her immediate ability to join the campaign –

“Of course it does,” I muttered, until I caught Nicholas glaring at me.

And how, pray tell, did Nettleblack want our help? Her answer to the aforementioned came with an accessory, in the form of a battered little notebook produced from her pocket and proffered in a shuddering hand – which, for the moment, I pointedly ignored. If we – she was evidently planning this on the spot – could stir ourselves to locate Septimus and the other missing Divisioners through strategic use of the marked-up map in the notebook, we could make sure they were protected, acquaint them with the swirling situation, and prepare our next move, all whilst she snuck back into the Division and transcribed whatever sordid conversation was taking place between the Director, her daughter, and whoever (for these wild claims of a conspiracy between an aristocrat and a governess still seemed alarmingly speculative to me) happened to be with them.

“This plan is patently insane,” I informed her curtly, when her spluttering had reached its illogical conclusion. She actually gritted her teeth.

“I quite don’t see that there’s anything insane about making sure Septimus and the others are safe – do you?”

I coloured then, for to be swatted with the righteous wrath of this little matchstick was rather more than I wished to endure. My retort was set in the sharpest possible terms: she still had no guarantee that I was even willing to assist her, given that I had made my resignation from the Division as clear as I –

“That’s unfortunate, Matty,” Nicholas remarked suddenly, his gaze solemn, his resolution unsettlingly absolute. Before I could stop him, he reached out and clasped hold of the notebook she held out to us, squeezing her hand as he took it from her. “Given that I’ll be giving them all the help I’ve got.”

I’m fairly sure that I gasped his name, that I snatched him by his elbows and readied myself for a fruitless attempt at chastising him. The impulse was involuntary, the last flash of anger from Nettleblack’s admonishing tone – I knew, as he must have, that there was no more substance left to flesh my retorts. He lifted his hands, tobacco-stained at the fingernails, and laid them against my cheekbones, until all I could breathe was the smell of him. He was smiling gently, his voice soft as his fingers on my skin.

“Matty. This is the Div. They gave you the job you dreamt of, and they’re some of the only folk who’ll still look me in the eye now I’m waifed and disowned. I can’t make you, but – if I can do anything to help – to stop Ballestas and the rest going the way of everything in Dallyangle that’s ever been different – I’m going to be doing it.”

With that stare, that quiet fervent murmur, the warmth of his hands and the tang of his tobacco, he could have talked me into anything. And – I readily confess it – he was right. Is right. Insufferable as it can be (and has been), I cannot simply sit back and let the Division crumble, not with all it has done and might yet do. I could not forgive myself for that.

Perhaps my cooperation would have been entirely unreserved, had that wretched tincture-heiress not seen fit to add a gloss.

“So – erm – I – we don’t have much time – ”

I flicked her a glower so severe she started out of the sentence. “You. What do you intend to do with yourself? If you have any sense left in you, you’ve doubtless realised it’s your status as Miss Nettleblack that the Director wishes to call upon for your transcription, not your feeble efforts as Henry Hyssop.”

She blinked. She was tremendously pale, even for her. Evidently the logic had occurred to her in the abstract, if not yet the actual. “I – I suppose you – you want to be the one to hand me in – when I – erm – when I have to – ”

Change back? I thought, rather nastily – but didn’t voice, for which Nicholas must have been tremendously grateful. She really was an absurdly twisted fairytale: the clock would strike midnight, and transform her from a filthy skivvy to the youngest heir of Dallyangle’s wealthiest family. The clock, at any rate, hadn’t had Rosamond Nettleblack snarling at it all afternoon, and doubtless had far less to lose than Nicholas and I.

“How you unearth yourself,” I told her evenly, with a swift glance to Nicholas to ensure that he followed my drift, “is entirely in your hands.”

Nicholas, delighted to the point of pure recklessness, tugged me towards him and dashed his lips against mine. Perhaps he was relieved to find me so graciously abandoning the case and vendetta he’d disliked from the start. Or perhaps – to consider every possibility – perhaps it was affection, earnest and simple, and there was no point in trying to decipher every potential nuance in the twitch of his mouth and the taste of smoke on my tongue.

Nettleblack, of all things, looked desperately relieved. Her elaboration wasn’t unwelcome in this instance, stammered rather sheepishly to my bewildered stare: “I – just – pleased that you – and Nick – that neither of you – erm – that there’s never been – anything of the sort – between you – or you – and Septimus – ”

“Oh, for goodness’s sake,” I groaned, whilst Nicholas sniggered triumphantly at my shoulder. I knew it, he was muttering to me, his eyes glittering in the gaslight, I could just tell with this one, I detected it way before you, I knew it, I knew it!

But enough of this. One way or another, during the remainder of this interminable night, Septimus has to be found, and the Division has to be prioritised, and we all have to take up our parts in the Director’s half-legible plan. If we emerge, I hardly dare imagine the contrition with which I shall be forced to pen Keturah Ballestas a tentative request for my reinstatement.

And Nettleblack? What can possibly be left to happen to her?

That’s a matter for tomorrow. Nicholas is calling me.