Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(66)

He said nothing.

“And was it?” I said.

“The paper said you killed a man,” he said.

“I didn’t, and the police believe me,” I answered. “But the man who died had wanted to tell me something. I’m trying to make sure he did not die in vain.”

Ansveld considered me seriously, and I took his silence as acceptance.

“So,” I continued. “The dowager’s necklace. Did it contain the luxorite the Lani boy showed to your father?”

“No, but it came from the same source.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked.

“Who are you really?” he said. “The boy’s mother?”

“Gods no,” I said. “That’s one disguise I couldn’t pull off.”

Which is why Kalla is at Pancaris.…

“But you are also not a thief, unless the police are even less competent than I thought.”

I gave him a rueful smile and shook my head. “I may have snagged the occasional crust when times were hard—well, harder than usual—but no, I’m not a thief. I really do work for the Willinghouse family, but not as a maid.”

“I thought as much. You are a private investigator, are you not?”

“Yes,” I said.

He clapped his hands together, pleased with himself. “I knew it!” he announced to the empty shop. “And this is somehow all about the Beacon?”

“I think so,” I said.

Ansveld smiled, satisfied.

I pressed my advantage. “In the days before your father died,” I said, “did an elderly black man, a bush herder, come here?”

The question seemed to surprise him. He pulled a face of utter bafflement and shook his head.

I rubbed my temples, feeling the tenderness of my fall from the tower.

“Sorry,” he said. “That was clearly the wrong answer.”

I tried a different tack. “Am I the only Lani, other than the boy, who has been in your shop in the last few weeks?”

He screwed up his face in thought as he cast his mind back. “I can’t think of any others, why?” he said. “Do you have someone in mind?”

“A gang leader by the name of Morlak,” I said. “Big man. Wears his hair long and tied back. You’d know him if you saw him.”

“Never been in here,” he said at last and with finality.

“Or visiting any of your competitors? Mr. Macinnes, for instance?”

Again the comically furrowed brow followed by a head shake. “I’m afraid not,” he said with a sigh. “Much as I would like to incriminate that old fraud across the street, I fear I can tell you nothing.”

“Or Billy Jennings,” I tried. “The man who died. Did he ever come in here?”

“I recognized him from his picture in the paper,” said Ansveld. “I used to see him in the street from time to time, and I believe I saw him with one of the girls who works for Macinnes, but he never came in here.”

Bessie.

This was getting me nowhere. I changed course. “So. The luxorite in the dowager’s necklace…”

“Yes!” he said, slapping his hand on the counter. “The reason I think it was a sister to your young friend’s piece is not just because the light was unusually bright. It was—and pay very close attention to this because it is most singular—the same color.” He said the last word like he was unveiling something magical, then stepping back to let me see it in all its glory.

“Is that unusual?” I asked, baffled.

“The color,” he said, touching the side of his nose, “was. Very.”

“I don’t follow,” I said.

“When I saw the boy’s piece, something about it struck me not just as impressive, but as very slightly odd too. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but it nagged at me. So when I went to see the dowager flaunting her pendant at the opera, I went prepared.”

“Prepared? How so?”

“You are familiar with these?” he said, showing me a selection of goggles and spectacles with smoked-glass lenses.

“Of course,” I said. “They protect your eyes from the glare.”

“In part,” he said, “but they are subtly shaded to screen out different colors of light as well. Combining these lenses helps me to get a precise sense of the luxorite’s color and therefore its age. Here. Try these.” He handed me a pair of wire-rimmed glasses with an array of lenses and produced a tray of tiny luxorite fragments from a drawer in the counter.

“Now,” he said as I scanned each piece, “luxorite when first mined blazes with a hard, white light whose heart, if properly screened, shows distinctly bluish. See?”

He flicked a couple of lenses into place, and in one of the jewels, I saw a chill blue, like summer lightning.

“As luxorite ages, the mineral’s light follows the same pattern as metal taken from a hot fire. White heat gives way to yellow, then to gold and amber, then red, and finally dulls to black as the piece spends the last of its energy. This takes decades, of course. Sometimes even centuries.”

I took the spectacles off because they felt strange on my nose, and considered him. He was clearly preparing another magical revelation.