Elsie might as well have bled out on Agatha’s doorstep. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The same time, the same place, the same magic . . .
She had disenchanted those water staffs.
Which most certainly meant the Cowls had started the fire.
CHAPTER 21
Elsie stumbled back from the porch.
“Miss Camden?” Agatha followed her. “Are you all right?”
She couldn’t breathe. It couldn’t be true. It simply couldn’t be. Ogden was one of them, after all, and he didn’t have a foul bone in his body! And she . . . all those deaths . . . she . . .
“Just . . . too much today,” she muttered, sure she sounded intoxicated. “I need a moment.”
“There’s beds just upstairs—”
But Elsie shook her head and fled from the house. Fled so fast she was tripping over her skirts. She stumbled all the way to the well by the road, then gripped its sides and leaned over the dark pit, cool air from between the stones whispering against the sweat on her face.
It’s a misunderstanding.
“Oh dear, you look sick. Don’t turn up your stomach in there, though.” An older woman approached, hair pinned messily under a threadbare cap. “Take a sit here. You’re Agatha’s visitor, ain’t you?”
Elsie numbly allowed the woman to guide her to a nearby stump. To draw up some water for her to drink. Elsie swallowed the stale liquid until her belly hurt and she had to stop or suffocate. She spilled some on her dress, but couldn’t bring herself to care.
“There.” The woman set the bucket aside. She, too, had black on her, though her dress was a simple brown. She offered a soiled handkerchief, but Elsie waved it away. “Did you get some bad news, dear?”
Elsie cradled her aching head in her hands. “You could say that.” She could still feel the end of the pistol against her forehead. The touch of the weapons beneath her hands in Colchester. The Cowls had offered such a compelling explanation in their letter.
But who else would have disenchanted the water staffs?
She felt a hand on her shoulder. It tightened in reassurance, then lifted. “It’s all bad news around these parts. Might help to get it off your chest.”
Elsie could have laughed at the notion were her body not so heavy. “I doubt that.”
She picked at the black scarf tied around her left sleeve. “One of our own lost a boy.”
“I heard. I’m . . . sorry.” She had to croak out the last word.
“Just yesterday we got a telegram saying his sponsor had passed, too.” The woman’s voice squeezed tight, and she coughed. “So terrible.”
Lifting her head, Elsie asked, “Professor Clive?”
She nodded. “Agatha must’ve told you.”
Elsie sighed.
“It’s all a mess, what’s happening in London. All those stolen opuses. It’s terrible.”
Sitting up straight, Elsie said, “His opus was taken?”
“The report claimed as much. He didn’t just go missing; there was vomit on the library floor, full of poison. Someone broke right into that atheneum and did him in.” She wiped her wrinkled eyes with the handkerchief. “One less good man in this world.” Managing to smile, she added, “At least your ails can’t be as bad as that, hmm?”
But Elsie’s body felt cold in the afternoon heat. “Which atheneum?”
“The London one.”
Elsie stood, nearly knocking her head on the edge of the well’s roof. “There are two in London.” She knew she sounded forceful, but she had to know. “Physical and spiritual.”
Don’t say physical. Don’t say—
“Well, he was a physical aspector, so I suppose the first.” She eyed Elsie like she was half-mad.
Maybe she was. She was ready to scream, or weep, or . . . she didn’t know. Her thoughts were retreating from her, almost to the point where she forgot to breathe.
Too much of a coincidence. She had been in Colchester. She had disenchanted security at the Physical Atheneum just before leaving for Juniper Down.
“I need to talk to your constable,” she croaked. Gossip was well and good, but she needed solid information, not hearsay.
The woman stood. “What’s wrong? I . . . We don’t have one just for us. You have to go to Foxstone.”
Elsie swallowed, blinking rapidly until her unshed tears sank down into a hard ball in her throat. “I will pay a florin to whoever will drive me.”
“I don’t know, miss,” the young constable said when she, with the help of a man from Juniper Down, stopped him outside a small millinery. The shop had already closed for the day. Without the patience to introduce herself properly, Elsie had immediately barraged him with questions about the recent sequence of murders and opus thefts.
Adjusting his hat, he continued, “We’re just small folk, even here in Foxstone. If you want to know more, you’ll need to head to a city. Reading, perhaps?”
And so Elsie did.
Elsie was tired yet restless as she rode a mail coach to Reading. Her urgency had not been enough to convince someone to take her so late on the Sabbath. At least the constable had been generous in letting her take a room in his home, but she’d returned to the streets before dawn, eager to travel at the first opportunity. It took every bit of control she possessed to keep from weeping in the privacy of the cab.
She clung to the notion of a misunderstanding. It couldn’t be her. It could not be Ogden.
She went first to the police station on Friar Street, but the constable was not in, and the only other officer available was young and uneasy with her request, so Elsie got directions to the constable’s home from the post office. She went on foot and, after finding it, knocked incessantly on the door. A nearly grown child answered, looking perturbed, as Elsie had apparently interrupted their luncheon. Their table was set, food barely touched. A woman leaned forward to get a better view of her, but the man rose and came to the door, dismissing his son.
He was tall and broad shouldered, with a severely receding hairline. He wore a blue peelers coat, so Elsie had no doubt she’d found the right house. The lines on his forehead suggested he was annoyed by the disturbance, yet his eyes were quizzical.
“Mr. Theophile Bowles?” Elsie asked, heart hammering.
“I am.”
She took a deep breath. “I know I am interrupting, but I badly need to speak with you concerning the recent crimes regarding aspectors and their opuses.”
He drew back. “The journal is hiring women now?”
Normally Elsie would have bristled at the comment, but she didn’t have the strength to be indignant. She might as well encourage the assumption. “I assure you, the story is crucial. My own employer was nearly a victim. I’m ready to pay you for your time.” Her life savings might as well go to some use.
Mr. Bowles paused, then glanced back at his family. Rubbed his eyes. “Come in, Miss . . . ?”
“Camden. Thank you.” She stepped inside, tripping over her own relief that he was inviting her in. She knew the records were public if they were in the papers, but she wouldn’t know where to go next to access them if he turned her away.
To his wife, Mr. Bowles said, “Just a moment,” and gestured toward a back room, barely large enough to be a bedroom. It had within it a desk, a bookshelf, and a small harp in the corner. Mr. Bowles sat behind the desk. Elsie remained standing.
He pulled out a thick book from a desk drawer and flipped through it, silent enough to make Elsie feel awkward, before pausing near the center of the pages. “Which are you concerned about? Only one occurrence happened in my jurisdiction.”