Amberlough(95)

The three of them got their burden up the stairs and into Aristide’s flat with no small amount of cursing. He directed them with jerks of his chin to the parlor, where they set the basket down.

“Did you have any trouble,” panted Aristide, “getting here from Pellu’s?”

“Did we?” One of the men wiped his forehead with a striped kerchief. He had a cut over his eye. “Had to fight our way through like it were a war.”

“Thank you,” said Aristide. “Wait here for just a moment.” He went to his office and came back with two fat envelopes. “You were never here, understand?”

“We know the routine.” The second workman tucked his payment into his canvas jacket. “In, out, and nobody the wiser. Good luck with ’im, whatever you’re planning.”

Together, they wrestled the linen-wrapped contents of the laundry basket onto the sofa. Then, the two men left and Aristide was alone with … well. He pulled back the sheet and stared into a face almost like his own, slack with death.

About a week ago, a friend in the Royal Arms Paupers’ Hospital had tipped him off to an anonymous Chuli corpse, which he’d claimed and passed on to a colluding undertaker, one Mr. Pellu. The dead man matched Aristide’s height and weight, roughly, and his bone structure was similar. Charred beyond recognition, that was all they’d need. He didn’t have the same charming gap in his teeth, but Aristide’s dental records were not on file anywhere the Ospies would find them, and neither Amberlough’s coroner nor her assistants had intimate experience with his smile.

Though Pellu had kept the corpse on ice, a week of death had done its work. The flesh around the man’s eyes had sunk into his sockets, and a faint smell of corruption clung to him like rank cologne. But the fire would take care of that, and burn away the gaping knife wound in his gut.

He arranged the dead man on the sofa and, when his body was propped upright, paused to touch his cheek.

“Thank you,” he said, feeling only moderately foolish. The poor creature had probably been stabbed anonymously in an alley and dumped for the night nurses to find. A senseless death, but at least now it wasn’t entirely without purpose.

Aristide slipped out of his dressing gown—Niori silk embroidered with explosive peonies—and wrapped it around the dead man’s shoulders. His slumped body was otherwise naked, stripped of any identifying clothes or effects. If anything remained after the fire, it would be scraps of Aristide’s robe.

In the kitchen, Ilse was washing the breakfast dishes. Aristide almost laughed. He started opening drawers, shuffling through foreign implements. Finally, she put down her rag and rounded on him.

“You’re making a mess,” she said. “What are you looking for?”

He bit the inside of his cheek. “Shears.”

“Why?” She wiped her hands on her apron, leaving wet splotches.

His hand moved, unconsciously, to the braid hanging over his shoulder. He forced it back to his side, but she’d seen him.

“Ah. I’ll get my sewing kit.”

She passed him on her way out, and he caught her arm. “Thank you. And … I’d avoid the parlor.”

In less than a minute, she was back with a comb, a pair of bright silver shears, and a smaller set of thread snips.

“You should’ve asked,” she said. “If you try to do it yourself, it always comes out crooked.”

“I don’t need anything fancy,” he said. “Just … take it all off.”

She lifted the braid and he shut his eyes, as if that would stop him feeling the bite of the scissors. But it didn’t come.

“You’re sure?” she asked. His scalp prickled as she hefted the weight of his hair.

“Just do it, Ilse. I haven’t got much time.”

She tched. “No need to be so snappish.” Then, without ceremony, she sliced clean through his plait.

*

He sent her home after that, with another one of the dwindling stack of fat white envelopes from his safe.

“It might be for the best if you got out of the city for a while,” he told her. “You have an aunt who lives in the weald, don’t you?”

She nodded, and pocketed the cash.

“Go to her. Don’t come back if you don’t have to, not for a month at least. Are all your things out of the flat?”

Lifting a voluminous handbag, she said, “This is the last of it. Most I took home on my night off.”

“Good girl.” He looked around the office once more and squeezed her shoulder. “Now, stroll off. Do you have a gun?”

She shook her head.

“Do you want one?”

She shook her head again, more violently.

“Well, be careful. Take a hack if you can find one. There’s more than plenty in there for the fare. Now, go.”

And she did.

Left alone under the high ceilings of his flat, Aristide changed into a cheap suit of itchy brown wool—the kind of thing a farmer might wear, on his one big trip to the city—and secreted a snub-nosed revolver in his pocket.

In his scuffed white canvas duffle, there was a heavy overcoat, because the nights in Currin would already be cold, and getting colder. An oilskin, for the relentless rain and mist. Other clothes and sundries. And at the very bottom, sewn into the lining, a rope of golden pearls he couldn’t sell but couldn’t bear to burn. The rest of his jewels had been converted to more liquid currency.