winter. It was Garrett's job to be concerned with justice and the dead. And this particular case seemed to be falling together more or less neatly—but, so often, they did. Murder was usually quite simple and solving it routine.
Unlike politics, which were typically messy, she mused, her attention drawn by the unusual number of redcoats and even a few of what the Frogs would call grasshoppers—green-coated riflemen—in the streets. Garrett wondered whose homes they'd been garrisoned in, and whether they were New England men, or troops sent from the old country in anticipation of continued trouble along the border with Quebec.
She was home by teatime, and Mary, bless her heart, had it waiting. Doubly fortuitous, because Mary also refused to let Garrett see any of the paperwork until she'd eaten. Mike at first spurned her, sulking in his basket, but eventually Garrett's groveling and bribes of tea-cake moved him to resume his post on the chair beside hers.
He was about the color, shape, and size of an ostrich-feather duster, and suited Garrett much better than either of them suited the décor in her townhouse. She'd bought it furnished; it ran to Oriental carpets and perfectly nice carved cherry. Garrett was far more attached to the dog than to the needlepoint chair cushions.
Mary laughed, though, when she came in with fresh cream and found Mike sitting upright on the chair, determinedly ignoring the proffered le-
mon cake.
"Just like a man," Mary said. She was a thin middle-aged mulatto, her fingers so spare of flesh as to seem rectangular in cross-section. "Never let them know they have the advantage, or you'll be running after them all the rest of your life."
Garrett laughed too and ate the lemon cake herself, licking her fingers for the icing. She stretched inconspicuously. Her leg ached, but no more than normal. The food set aside the last of her lightheadedness, which she almost mourned. She pushed her plate away and swept the crumbs into her palm. "May I have those papers now?"
Mary huffed, but brought them. Telegrams from London, on the undersea cables. She laid them on the table while Garrett dusted her hands over the empty plate, pretending not to notice when Mary set another cup of
tea with cream and sugar to hand. The surprising thing was, Mary approved of Sebastien.
Garrett wondered if that would continue if she knew about Mr. Jack Priest.
The telegrams were written in a thaumaturgic code, keyed to the oath and useless to anyone but a Crown Investigator. They contained more information than their size would indicate, and while it took some time to extract it, Garrett had her answer in no more than a quarter hour.
The useful telegram came from the archivist of the Enchancery at Christchurch Greyfriars on Newgate Street, the main London headquarters of the Crown Investigators. The Shambles, the Crown's Own called it, for the slaughterhouses that had given the parish its previous name: St. Nicholas Shambles—as discrete from the Bridge, which was their shorthand for the laboratories, safely isolated over and insulated by running water in the mansions of Old London Bridge, now closed to traffic as a safety precaution.
The Shambles was the administrative and archival anchor of Crown Investigators scattered to the corners of the Empire. And Goodwood's fingerprint and aura pattern were on file.
He wasn't Emmett Goodwood—if any such person had ever existed. Colm Sheridan, on the other hand, was the son of Owen Sheridan. And Owen Sheridan's was a name Garrett knew well from her time in London. The old Fenian bastard, an Irish hedge-sorcerer, had been the special project and the bane of the Crown's Own for close to fifty years, until he was felled by nothing more mysterious than a heart attack.
It didn't tell Garrett who had killed Sheridan, of course. But the available evidence was falling into a satisfying pattern. This might even be an easy case.
And if the case proved as straightforward as it seemed, there would be a certain pleasure in bringing down a Fenian sorcerer who used his power
to kill.
She was setting aside the last yellow flimsy when the doorknocker thumped. Reflexively, she glanced at the window. The sun was still above the horizon; it would not be Sebastien.
Garrett's dining room had long ago been converted into a laboratory. She took tea in the library, and so she clearly heard the voice that greeted Mary when she opened the door. Richard, the Duke of New Amsterdam.
She closed her eyes and hurriedly finished the sweet, rich tea, wishing there was