* * *
They pulled up at a tall, ornate row house at the corner of a well-kept street. The windows were dark. There were bollards blocking the pedestrian way, cobblestones shining in the brown gloom. Huddled figures hurried across the street. A small street-side entrance was visible, but Coulton led him through an iron gate, into a high dim carriage house, vacant, and across the cobblestones and up the steps to a set of grand oak doors. He did not ring, but simply turned the pull and entered, as if it were his own house, his own right to do so, and Charlie, nervous, followed. His eyes took in the elegant wainscotting of the entrance hall, the chandelier high above, the dense ferns around a clouded mirror, the empty hat stand like a skeletal watcher. Coulton’s shoes left half-moons in the soft carpet as he set down his traveling case, wiped the rain from his face with an open hand, and went through into the house.
“Here we are, then,” he said with a grunt.
A grand foyer, with stairs twisting up into the gloom. A tall clock made of what appeared to be bone was ticking loudly in the stillness. At the edge of the parlor Coulton paused, blocking the way, so that Charlie could not see past.
“What the devil,” he muttered.
Coulton crossed to a table under a big window. The gloom was filled with the heavy draped shapes of furniture. He’d picked something up in both hands and was turning it in the low light and then Charlie saw what it was. A specimen jar, holding a human fetus, malformed, in a green liquid. It seemed almost to glow in the gloom.
“Do be careful with that,” said a soft voice. “Aborted hydrocephalic specimens are not easily obtained. And where you go, Mr. Coulton, breakage tends to follow.”
A stout woman in a black dress was standing absolutely still in front of the window, with her pale hands clasped before her. She came smoothly forward. Her shoulders were rounded and soft, her neck overflowing her tight collar. A birthmark covered half her face, like a burn, complicating her expression. Charlie had not heard her enter; she seemed simply to have glided, ghostlike, out of the air.
“Aye, Margaret,” said Coulton, setting the jar heavily down. Inside, the fishy thing drifted and turned, drifted and turned. “I always did admire your taste.”
“You’d be interested to hear how I acquired it. It was in the possession of a rather unusual … collector.” She turned. “Who is this? This will be the boy from Mississippi? Where’s the other one, the one from the circus?”
Coulton took off his bowler, shook the rain from his greatcoat, grunted. “How about, Welcome back, Mr. Coulton. And how was your journey, Mr. Coulton? I trust everything was satisfactory, Mr. Coulton.”
The woman exhaled very slowly from her nostrils, as if long-suffering and put-upon. “Welcome back, Mr. Coulton,” she said. “And how was your journey, Mr. Coulton?”
“Plum as pudding,” he said with a sudden grin, laying his hat on the sofa.
“There is a hat stand in the hall. As there has always been.”
Coulton paused, one arm half out of its sleeve. Then, with a calm deliberation, he finished taking off his greatcoat and made a great show of folding it carefully, setting it too on the sofa. His yellow checkered suit seemed to glow in the dimness, like a moth at a lit window.
The woman sighed. “Charles Ovid,” she said, turning her dark gaze on him. “My name is Mrs. Harrogate. I am your good Mr. Coulton’s employer.”
Charlie tried not to look at her too closely. “Mrs. Harrogate, ma’am,” he said with a nod.
“Oh, I’ll have none of that,” she said sharply.
She crossed the parlor and took his chin in her fingers and turned his face so that he had to meet her eye. He was much the taller of them. He stared at the birthmark.
“There,” she said. “This isn’t America, Charles. Here, you will not be less than you are. Not in my presence, at least. Do I make myself understood?”
He nodded, alarmed, confused, afraid to look away. “Yes, missus,” he whispered.
“Yes, Mrs. Harrogate,” she corrected.
“Yes, Mrs. Harrogate.”
“Now,” she said, turning to Coulton, “where is the one from the circus?”
“Somewhere in the middle Atlantic by now.” Coulton sat on a velvet sofa and put his boots up, leaving wet brown heel stains like horseshoes on the lacework. “I left that for Miss Quicke to handle. I reckon she’s handling it.”
Mrs. Harrogate sucked in her breath. “On her own?”
“Aye, she’s capable. Is it a problem?”