Authors: Jordan Reece
“You need to take
what
?” Merlie asked in bafflement.
Once they were back in the carriage, Jesco said, “Why don’t you want me to touch it yet?”
“Because it will land you in bed for days,” Scoth said. “How old is this knob? Eighty years old or more? How many hands have touched it? How long would Tallo ever have touched it except for opening and closing the door? Let’s look at the other information we’ve received before you land in my bed again.”
“Your spare bed,” Jesco corrected.
He loved that waning smile. “My spare bed,” Scoth amended. “Drool on yourself later. I think we went about this the wrong way at the start. This isn’t about Hasten Jibb but peripherally. This has more to do with Kyrad Naphates, even though she’s innocent of the murder.”
“Should we see her again?”
“Not yet. I want a little more background on her, more specifically, the people around her. Who would have a need to involve her in a police investigation?”
. . . they hated her . . .
“They wanted to take the mines away from her,” Jesco said. “It was a fleeting moment in the thrall. She inherited her husband’s company and refused to sell it to the heads of the other companies, or to marry their sons so they could gain control that way. She broke the wall they had set up to government regulation . . .”
“And she’s trying to gain a Parliament position that would further her reach,” Scoth said. “Then look at that article to appear all of a sudden, just days before she gets voted on. Someone wants to bring her down.”
“What is the next step?”
Scoth sat back in his seat. “We need to speak with the journalist who did it.”
It did not take long to get in contact with Noran Gordano, nor was it difficult to get information from him. Meeting with them at a pub near his publication’s office, he motioned to a booth in the shadows at the back. He was an older man with a large gut packed impeccably into a fine suit, and his eyes were livid. As they sat down, he said, “That was not my article.”
“But it was your name,” Scoth said as the server delivered three ales. Since the place only carried one kind, there was no need to ask what they wanted.
“And that’s a damned
crime
, but that’s how it has been these last years,” Gordano spat once the server was gone. “Word comes down from on high about how they want the stories skewed, and if our articles don’t come across skewed in just the right way, then up top rewrites them and publishes them with our names. I’ve had six articles mutilated beyond all recognition of what I’d written, and this is the second time something has been published under my name without any of my input whatsoever. South Press used to be a respectable publication. Now it’s becoming as trashy as the Freetie. But no more. I’ve accepted an editorial position at the Cantercaster Bulletin. I’m a trusted name in journalism. I’ve been around a long time and written a lot of big pieces. I’m respected. But I won’t be for much longer if it goes on this way, and I’m not going to stand to the side and watch my legacy be ruined.”
Before Scoth or Jesco could inquire further, he burst, “I’ve always done society-related pieces for South Press. Not that society always is appreciative of what I write. Running charities that can’t account for donations since the money’s gone into their pockets, their overindulged, demonic children who get legacy bids at Nuiten and University of Archangels even though they can hardly read and are drunk from morning to night. Yes, they were very upset about that last piece, especially Lord and Lady Mascoll. Their five children are the bane of Ainscote.”
He grinned evilly as he remembered the dust-up from that article, and cut off Scoth’s question. “The paper changed ownership and it took a nastier turn. I could write what I pleased before, but it had to be accurate. Fact-checked. So we didn’t get a fleet of solicitors pound-pound-pounding on the door with court dates in hand. Oh, yes, the Mascolls wanted to sue, they threatened fire and brimstone, but I had the police records on each of their children, I interviewed everyone connected to those cases and I had admissions officials from both schools talk to me anonymously about how the legacy applications of fire-breathing, ale-swilling, money-burning, dog-kicking brats are given a wink and nod. The universities get huge donations for accepting them. Lord Dollar who fails every test will beat Polly Pennypockets and her perfect grades every time. Not a single word of my piece was imaginative, if you follow me, and they had to live with it.”
“You said it took a nastier turn-” Scoth said.
“Yes, yes, I’m getting to that. It used to be owned by the Armex family, but they sold it to the Tralonn Corporation. A good lot of the employees were let go; I weathered the turn and the desks filled up with new people. And then I started getting suggestions on what to write. Go after Mr. Pom Fanli, the superintendent of schools. Go after Lady Collia Rotham. The problem I had was that there wasn’t much for stories there in the way the paper wanted. I chase real news. I write stories about matters that impact people’s lives. What I
don’t
do is give an angel’s fart about a superintendent who wears women’s undergarments beneath his suit, or a lady whose true parentage puts her title in question. That’s the kind of news you’d find in the Freetie, scurrilous, scandalous, stupid, a waste of ink and paper.”
“Were you ever told to go after Kyrad Naphates?” Scoth asked rapidly as the man paused to breathe. Jesco poured his ale into his own personal cup and sipped it.
“Of course I was!” Gordano roared, taking in Jesco’s cup swap without interest or comment. “There’s a whole list of people that we’re supposed to go after any chance we get. I wanted to write a piece about her trying to get that liaison position just a month ago and my editor said not to bother since it wouldn’t get published. Why not? It’s newsworthy. Other journalists in other cities wrote about it, but not here where she lives. He said it wasn’t of interest. But a man wearing silk drawers is? I can’t fault a fellow for liking a bit of silk against his skin. The reason an article about her going for liaison was deemed not of interest was because it was positive. The paper’s gone negative as can be, and especially on all those people it doesn’t like. She’s just one of a bunch and that article to come out days ago . . . I won’t make nice about it. I saw
red
. I didn’t write a single word of that article. I don’t know where it came from. I haven’t ever written an article about her. I actually refused two years ago when they asked me to do a little piece about her getting drunk and dancing on a table at a private party, and how it isn’t dignified at her age and someone saw her brassiere when her dress slipped off her shoulder.”
He slapped the table with great offense. The cups bounced. “
That isn’t news
. Somebody else did it. And Kyrad Naphates herself wrote a letter to the editor saying there’s no age limit for a woman to get drunk and dance on a table, and she’s only sorry there weren’t photographs of it because she has on good account since she can’t remember it that she did a hot cha-cha.” He waved away their questions to finish his story. “That didn’t work out how the up top was hoping, I’d wager. She laughed, so all of Rosendrie laughed with her. The paper wanted to make her look like a fool, but she made the paper the fool for reporting on it. Of all the letters we got about that article, nine out of ten took her part and told the paper to get back to reporting real news.”
He sighed gustily. “But that’s what they’ve reduced me to: underwear stories. And that’s why I’m going. If I wanted to write underwear stories, I would be at the Freetie.”
“How does one get on this list of the hated?” Jesco asked.
“The Tralonn Corporation is headed by a board of rich old men who take a spite to certain people for various reasons. I don’t sit in on their meetings and I don’t know. But the superintendent was embroiled in a controversy about allocating more money to the poorer schools. It’s been put off for years and those children sit in termite-ridden shacks while people dither about the budget. Fanli cut some things to fund it and all hell broke loose. The pampered, preening little princes and princesses at Ford could make do without the newest whirly-gigs in science class for a year while those schoolhouses went up. That was what got him on the list, I daresay, and Rotham was on it for fighting a gentlemen’s business club to gain admission and winning. Naphates is probably on it for her style of mine practices and she made S. Pecost & Sons look like the greedy demon seeds they are in that great collapse a decade ago. Remember that?”
Jesco shook his head and the man said, “They had gotten what they wanted from the area and walked away before the bodies were even cold. She swept in with all of her charity agencies to bring food and start funds for the orphaned children, and to see if they could pull out the bodies. They couldn’t, not more than a few nearer to the surface, but at least they tried and she paid for the funerals. Every last one. That meant the world to people. She’s made good in life but they still see her as one of them. She
is
one of them. She did that same work long ago. She can pull up a chair right at their sides and share stories with them about relatives lost in collapses, downed by mine dropsy. She treats people like they’re human beings, not cogs in a machine, and there was a huge backlash against S. Pecost & Sons. Every bit of kindness she showed to those miners and their families who weren’t even her problem made stark how vicious and cold S. Pecost & Sons was being. They had to come back and make some recompense to save face, and there’s still egg on it all these years later. South Press reported on that, back when the paper was reputable. It wasn’t my story, but I remember it very well. Excuse me a minute.” He got up and went to the lavatory.
“Well?” Jesco asked Scoth, who was scribbling in his pad of paper. “It doesn’t sound like this is anything. Any one of her servants or escorts could have walked into that office, asked to speak to a journalist, and talked all about our visit. They would publish it without caring if it was the whole story, or even true.”
“No,” Scoth said as he wrote. “Why didn’t that journalist publish it under his or her own name? Why use this man’s instead? Someone who couldn’t admit to it wrote this article, and slapped the name of a respected journalist atop it so people would give it more credibility.” Underlining so fiercely that he almost punctured the paper, he looked troubled. “This may be nothing. But I’m curious about who is on the paper’s board and the nature of the spite against her. I also want to know what man Tallo Quay was so desperately seeking.”
“We don’t know what play it was, or which theater, or even a firm time period.”
“But we do know that this man worked for a mine, and in a significant position. He was significant enough as a person that his social engagement was printed in a newspaper. A regular fellow would not be of note.”
Gordano returned to the table and resumed speaking without delay. “I’ll tell you something that gets my goat about how the paper has changed. Go after a fellow for his underwear choices, but don’t go after a fellow who skimmed money off the poor twenty-five years ago to build up the empire he has today. Celebrated as a man of the people when he used them up and spit them out, when he beats prosties, when he has a dozen children off a dozen women and refuses to acknowledge or support them . . . oh, no, don’t look into him! There’s a list of people we’re supposed to go after and a list of people we aren’t, most of them top drawer in business. I know for a fact that a member of the board is a friend of Selef Bly and he’s the biggest criminal on the wrong side of the bars in Ainscote. If I were to write a word about him, it would never see the light of day.”
“Naphates aside, are there any mine owners or mine workers upon either of those lists?” Scoth asked.
“It’s not a physical list but a mental one that you hit time and again when you try to write about people. I don’t usually write about the mines, so I don’t hit it. Davia Oard, she’s hit that wall repeatedly in trying to write about Corey Wiffleman and his shambles of an operation that’s got more citations than ore. But no, better to spend time smearing Naphates! It’s a shame. She’s a decent person, and there are scant few of those.”
“Perhaps someone doesn’t want her to get that liaison position,” Jesco said.
“Who cares if she gets it?” Gordano said in exasperation. “In the end, it isn’t going to make much difference. She broke the wall decades ago when she made her mines have standards. The other mine owners were mad at her then, mad that the government pressed harder and made them comply. It isn’t going to hurt them to make a few small changes now. The big changes are long in the past. That cabal of old men is going to the grave as we speak, the mines passing on to their feckless, pompous, spoiled, soft-handed progeny that have servants wipe their arses and chew their food for them.”
Scoth was out of questions, and they parted. The autohorse clopped faithfully away from the pub as Scoth said, “It did not seem prudent to mention to him that I grew up in a wealthy family.”
“I didn’t know there was any humor in you for years,” Jesco said in amusement.
“I’m a riot,” Scoth said flatly. “And I’m taking you to the asylum. I’m going to be in various Halls of Records doing legwork tomorrow and you can’t help with that. If it all comes up dry, we’ll resort to the doorknob.”
Jesco was rather sorry to be returning to the asylum. This had been a most interesting trip, and if he was honest with himself, a most interesting companion. “Will you keep me up to date if you can?” he asked once the carriage was parked in the asylum’s driveway and his belongings were unloaded. “I know I’m not truly your partner, but I’d really like to-”
“A fair sight better of a partner than Ravenhill’s been,” Scoth grunted. Calling to the autohorse, he swung the door shut and nodded to Jesco as the carriage pulled away.
Jesco’s disappointment at a reprieve from the case could not be sustained for long. He was swarmed with shouting children upon his entry, smiles and greetings from the nurses and attendants, and Matron Beebee called over the hubbub that he’d received a letter from Isena and to stop at the nurses’ station so someone could read it to him. Older othelin invited him to join a game of chess in the garden later on, and though this was a very odd family to have, it was Jesco’s and he loved it.
His dirty clothes were borne away for special cleaning. Two of the children had tried to enter his room in his absence to play with his whirly-gigs. They’d been soundly scolded at the time, and scuffled their feet in embarrassment as a nurse gave them a second scolding in front of Jesco. “But we’d brought our winter gloves!” one protested when the indignity became too much. “We weren’t going to touch them barehanded. We know!”
So then Jesco took a few of the whirly-gigs to the drawing room and any child who wanted to could wear gloves and partake in a demonstration. Sfinx had a short thrall at one. It did not scare him but make him smile, and he said, “Sir! Sir! This one is going to be in a museum! Property of the late Mr. J. Currane, seer of the Cantercaster Police Force, it says on the card, and people are looking through the glass to marvel at it.”
“But it’s new!” someone exclaimed. “New whirly-gigs don’t go in museums.”