Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(67)

“So, imagine my surprise,” he said, his face full of boyish excitement. “Out swans the Dowager Lady Hamilton with her precious necklace, and I put on my special spectacles, and lo and behold, I find that at its heart, the light of her pendant—though seeming brilliant and as white as any luxorite I have ever seen—is very slightly—” he paused dramatically, “—green.”

I stared at him. “Are you sure?” I asked.

“On my father’s grave,” he said. “I have never seen its like before except in the hands of that Lani boy.”

“What does this mean?” I asked.

“I do not know,” he said, “but it is all very mysterious and very exciting.” His eyes got wide, and he grinned broad and mad as a doll.

“You think your father made the same discovery?”

His smiled faded. “I do,” he said. “I think he realized he had seen something unique and tried to find where the boy had gotten it.”

“You think that is why the dowager’s necklace was stolen?” I asked. “Because it was unique?”

“Or because the thief didn’t want anyone to see just how unique it was, yes,” he said. “Thievery,” he added wonderingly. “It is everywhere these days. It did not use to be so. I had one—a thief, I mean—right here in the shop two days ago. And he didn’t look the type at all. A white gentleman in a frock coat. Very civilized.”

“And he stole from you?”

“While I was helping another customer,” he said, nodding.

“Did you report it?”

“I did not,” he said. “Because what he stole was not mine to begin with.” He peered past me toward where I had been standing when I visited with Dahria, so that I turned and my eyes fell on an empty umbrella stand.

“The cane,” I said.

“You remembered!” he exclaimed, pleased.

“A cane with a silver top,” I said.

“Not just a cane, as it turned out,” he said. “A sword stick. I took the liberty of looking at it more closely after you had gone.”

A sword stick.

I heard it again, the slight metallic tapping between footfalls in the fog, the silken swish of steel coming out of a sheath, and now I saw the wound in Billy’s chest.…

I pictured the cane that had been in the umbrella stand, and something clicked into place like the tumbler of a lock. “It had a design on the handle,” I said. “An emblem containing the head of a one-horn,” I said.

“I did a little research, you know,” said Ansveld Jr., “and guess what I found out? That little emblem is actually the badge of—”

“The Glorious Third,” I said. “The King’s Third Feldesland Infantry Regiment.”

“Whose headquarters were, until very recently—” said Ansveld.

“In the Old Red Fort,” I concluded.

Another lock tumbler snapped into place. This was what Billy had seen, or part of it: someone from the Glorious Third in Ansveld’s shop. And he had known this was strange or important.

“The man who took it,” I said. “You said he was white, a gentleman?”

“Yes.”

“But you had never seen him before?”

“Never.”

“Could you describe him? How old would you say he was?”

“Well,” said Ansveld Jr, “I didn’t really get a good look at him. Sixty, perhaps, but virile. The shop was unusually busy that day.”

“And you were helping another customer,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“And did that customer make a purchase?”

“No. He browsed some illuminated clock faces—” he began, and then his eyes grew wide once more. “Oh, I see. You think the customer was a ruse to keep me busy while his accomplice stole the cane. Seems a lot of trouble to go to just to recover a sword stick.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of the wound in Billy’s chest. “It does. This customer was also an older gentleman?”

“Oh no,” said Ansveld. “He was quite—what’s the word?—strapping. Yes. Perhaps thirty. Athletic. A virile young black man with a pale scar just above one eye. An old cut.”

“He was black?” I said, taken off guard.

“It’s not unusual,” said Ansveld, very slightly defensive. “We do not discriminate here.”

“Not if they can pay,” I said.

Ansveld’s face clouded with indignation, but I cut in before he could say anything.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that to sound … Of course you don’t discriminate, and of course your customers—all your customers—have to be able to pay. Luxorite is an expensive commodity.”

Ansveld’s hauteur had drained a little, but he was still standing on his dignity. “My father was not an easy man,” he said. “Very strict in his ways. Conservative. But he did not believe in the old Feldesland lie about the hierarchy of peoples, and he had some feeling for what was taken from the Mahweni when our ancestors came here. In his own small way, he did what he could to restore balance, and in this, at least, I try to emulate him.”

“Of course,” I said. “I apologize. This is not my world, Mr. Ansveld,” I said, gesturing around the shop, with its beautiful, elegant merchandise, sparkling in its own light. “I am in it because it is my job to be so. But I am not of it, and at times it seems quite…”