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Of the seven alleged “trysts” with Lady Bolderwood, Joshua could recall his whereabouts for five. So he, Sir Gordon, and Isaac tramped across London, getting sworn, verified statements from the people he had been with at the time: A trio of scientists—A pair of bankers—Head of the girls’ orphanage—Head of the boys’ orphanage—Mrs. O’Dea.
Hardly an odyssey, but this was London at its busiest, and by the third day, they were still only on the fourth call.
“This will be the final nail in Bolderwood’s coffin,” Sir Gordon said as they approached the heavy doors of the boys’ home. Sir Gordon had been excellent throughout: another good suggestion from Cassandra.
Sir Gordon lifted the door knocker and rapped sharply.
“We’ve dismantled Bolderwood’s case so effectively that I expect the court will refuse even to hear it,” he said. “By next week, this will be over.”
By next week, it would all be over. The court case. The Duchess of Sherbourne’s ball. Joshua’s stay in London. His relationship with Cassandra.
Then life would go back to normal. It had been so thoroughly disrupted that Joshua hardly recalled what normal looked like. He’d done almost no work recently, but Das seemed to be managing everything in his stead and said the other secretaries were making decisions without him too. Perhaps he would visit Cassandra after all. Sunne Park was almost on the way to Birmingham. He could travel with her and Emily, stay there a few days, admire her roses, meet her pigs, and be on his way.
The door swung open to reveal Mr. Clopstow, who ran the home, blinking earnestly in his black suit. Clopstow’s mouth fell open at the sight of Joshua, and he pulled his chin back into his neck.
“I fear you did not receive our note, Mr. DeWitt,” said Clopstow. “This is not a good time to visit.”
“Too bad if my visit is inconvenient,” Joshua said. “Get out the guestbook so Sir Gordon can verify my presence here on…whatever day it was. Sir Gordon has the details.” He looked past him, into the dark hallway. “Where is young Martin? I’d like a chat with him. I’ve not been at the warehouse for a week.”
Clopstow blinked some more. “Sir, we intended to inform you of the details once it had passed.”
A cold breeze slithered out of the hallway and under his coat. “Once what had passed?”
“I’m sorry to say, sir, that Martin was one of the boys who died.”
The chill spread over his shoulders, stiffening his neck, disrupting his pulse. “Died? What do you mean, died? I saw him a week ago. He was perfectly healthy. How do perfectly healthy little boys go about dying?”
A hand landed on his shoulder. Isaac. He jerked away. He was not upset. He had a valid point. Of course, Clopstow could make a valid point too, which was that perfectly healthy little boys did go about dying on a daily basis. It was their chief design flaw.
“There was an outbreak of fever, in the neighborhood,” Clopstow blathered on, wringing his hands. “And with all the boys here…”
Martin. Bright-eyed Martin, with his red cowlick and clever mind. Martin, who observed seagulls to learn how they flew. Who studied Italian so he could read DaVinci. Who designed his own kite and cried tears of joy when Joshua took him to see a hot air balloon.
Martin couldn’t be dead. He was going to invent a flying machine. Now who would invent a flying machine?
“How many?” His voice sounded hoarse. Dust from the house, perhaps. So much dust. In their lungs, their little-boy lungs.
“Six died, sir. The worst has passed, we believe.”
Six little boys, just up and died, all unnoticed. What the blazes was the point of it all, anyway? At least Clopstow didn’t feed him all that claptrap that people fed him when Samuel died. Not that this was the same. Samuel was his son and these were orphans to whom he gave training and jobs. He wasn’t grieving for them, not personally, because he wasn’t attached to them, not personally, because only a fool would get attached to little boys who would just up and die.
“What kind of bloody incompetence led to that?” He welcomed the anger, for it chased away his chill. “Thought you were competent and decent, Clopstow, but you’re a blinking muttonheaded nincompoop, to let half a dozen children die.”
“Sir, we did what we could.”
“Clearly not enough.”
He spun and marched away from that blasted door, that blasted house. He glanced back to see Sir Gordon enter the home with Clopstow, while Isaac came after him and leaned on his cane while Joshua paced.
It wasn’t easy to pace. April was doing a good impression of November today and his boots sank into thick, cold mud. A band of ragged children raced by, calling good-natured gibes at each other as if they weren’t half-starved and half-frozen and halfway to being dead too.
“It never gets easy, does it?” Isaac said quietly. “I was eleven when I lost my first friend in a battle, and the other one to illness a few months after that. I didn’t have a lot of friends.”
“I don’t know what you’re blathering on about,” Joshua snapped. “And you should cut your hair.”
“You got attached to the boy.”
“Did you fall off a horse and get a blow to the head?” He had to stop. He needed someone to stop him. Cassandra would stop him. “I did not get attached,” he said, through clenched teeth.
