“So, Edwin’s written back to this Grimm person, whoever they are, and in the meantime he and Robin are combing the office for previous Grimm letters—though, er, it sounds like everyone who had the job before Robin and Addy threw most of them in the bin—in case there have been other useful clues about the Last Contract. And nobody’s tried to break into the house in days,” she added, “which Edwin and Hawthorn are grim about, because they think it means Bastoke’s people are going to go ahead and legally challenge anyone holding a contract piece, so they don’t need to keep trying to get into the house and find it before us.” A gulp of breath. Occasionally Maud’s mind wrote cheques that her lungs couldn’t honour.
“I hear this house isn’t a shabby fighter on its own accord,” said Alan.
“No, indeed.” Maud turned her martial gleam onto him. “So it’ll be perfectly fine if you and I go for a little expedition, won’t it?”
Visions of menageries danced warningly through Alan’s mind. “What sort of expedition?”
“Edwin was digging up what he could find about Alfred Dufay himself—the magician who wrote the orrery song—and it’s said his ghost haunts his own grave.” Maud-the-medium gave Alan no time to react to this. “And I’m no use twiddling my thumbs here in the house, and after all, Robin had a vision of me standing at a grave, and I won’t let it be any of ours.”
“You want to go and ask the ghost of this dead magician about the Last Contract.”
“Yes! Or at least find out if he’s there at all, so that Edwin can come and ask better questions.”
“And if Bastoke’s people are watching the house and decide to corner you for information on the cup when you leave? I can hold my own in a back-alley fight, but not against magicians.”
“I don’t know where the cup is hidden.” Maud grinned proudly at him. “None of us do except Violet. We agreed. Spinet’s more protective of her than anyone, and she has the most magic anyway. And she’s a wonder with her illusion disguises. All she has to do is use the tunnel to the Underground, and she can step onto a train looking like someone else entirely. So, you see! If one of Bastoke’s people got their hands on me, I couldn’t tell them. Even under a truth-spell.”
“That’s … sensible,” said Alan. His wariness had been replaced by something more complicated. But Maud was quite clearly doing this with or without escort, and hell—it wasn’t like he wasn’t curious. “All right then. Let’s be off while there’s daylight.”
Maud attracted more glances than he did on the Underground. She wore the specific hat and blue coat that Robin had seen in his vision, and no doubt they were nothing special by her own wardrobe’s standards. But she looked as though she should be in a motorcar or a private cab, not down here where most of the men had the same shabby-respectable garb as Alan. A wizened woman in faded black gave Alan a gimlet of a stare when he took the seat next to Maud’s, as if suspecting him of being importuning.
Maud happily began to pass on to Alan some information—learned from Edwin, naturally—about the history of the London Underground’s construction. She learned the names of the young boy and girl sitting on the next row with their mother, and also learned their opinions on picnics （favourable） and ants （less so）。 Alan had never seen anyone strike up a conversation with strangers on the Underground. As usual, Maud was a law unto herself.
They came up onto the street into a hot summer afternoon. Alan felt more able to contribute to the conversation when he wasn’t being eyed from all sides as too common for his companion.
“How are the university plans, Miss B? Maud,” he amended at her playful frown.
“Suspended,” said Maud. “But Robin says I’ve stuck to the idea for long enough. He’s given his word that I shall go. And—Violet’s said she’ll loan me the fees.” She said it with only a short falter. The Blyths were happier than most toffs Alan knew to talk about money.
“Still a shameless trollop, I see,” said Alan.
Maud was a safer bet for teasing than Edwin. She laughed and hooked her cotton-gloved hand through the crook of his arm. “That’s me. No, I—I still want to go, desperately, but it feels less urgent than it did. Perhaps because I’m not running away from so many things now.”
Alan had the unkind wish to drag her to his own house to meet Bella, to show her what a girl looked like when she had real problems to run away from. Hell. He shouldn’t have let himself tease her, shouldn’t have invited this intimacy of manner, no matter the ease of Maud’s company. He didn’t fit into this world. He wasn’t there to fit in.
At first glance, the cemetery was nothing special. Alan would have walked right past it if he’d ever had cause to come to this corner of London. Apparently it was one of a few that were often used by magicians.
On second glance, it absolutely crawled with stray cats.
“That’s promising,” said Maud.
“Did Edwin say where exactly Dufay’s grave is?”
“It’s not too large, at least,” said Maud, meaning no.
They were looking for something from the last century, so Alan could skim his gaze past the ancient or fresh-looking stones. Most of them were of the former type. Flowers were scarce, and many graves well overgrown, their headstones shawled with moss.
Marco Rossi had faithfully paid his funeral insurance, so at least Maria had been able to hold her head up and bury him in a good Catholic cemetery. Alan visited the grave every year: a simple stone amongst a sprawl of crosses and angels. Less of that here. Very few stones above waist height, and only a handful of boxy aboveground tombs. Alan saw only one other person on the paths, a stout, white-haired man paused at a grave halfway along the row they’d just come down.
Beneath the unclouded sun Maud looked uncomfortably warm, even after removing her blue coat and carrying it over her arm. She kept rubbing at her forehead as if it ached.
Alfred Dufay’s grave turned out to be one of the grander ones. A rusted fence ringed the site at ankle height, and the stone had an elaborate border pattern. A tortoiseshell cat with a missing ear was asleep on the grave. Alan was more inclined to put that down to the warmth and angle of the sun than any ghostly presence.
“We are man’s marvellous light,” read Maud. It was engraved beneath the name ALFRED DUFAY and the years 1798–1861. No biblical homilies. Nothing about whose beloved son or husband or father Dufay had been. Just the lines from the song.
“It’s the right Dufay, then. Do you feel anything?”
“I feel like I’ve been plunged into the steam room in the Lyric’s Turkish baths. But I suspect that’s just the weather. Mrs. Navenby was anchored to the locket—I had to touch it.” She frowned at the gravestone and began to tug at the finger of a glove. “I suppose—”
And then she stumbled sideways and into Alan, as if she’d been pushed. Her coat fell to the ground and she tripped on it. Alan put out a hand to steady her but snatched that hand back again when he saw her face.
The wrongness of it lurched in Alan. Somehow Maud’s round-cheeked, friendly face was taking on menacing angles, as if glass objects were shifting beneath a piece of taut linen. It settled into a deep frown.