London

Colchester Building (Gregson Residence):

If any philosophy summed up the weather in London it was the simplest dictum:

"Man wastes energy fretting over what he cannot control."

Thus, Inspector Tobias Gregson did not deign to whine when a perfectly ghastly wind threw a wet storm of sopping cinders from the factories up against his tiny window, jolting he and the wife out of bed a good five minutes before the alarm was set to shrill. He blinked in the confusion of the early hour and tried to make sense of his surroundings.

Next to him, Mrs. Gregson managed to make a long, slow exhalation through her fine nostrils (a habit he had unconsciously picked up for his own), and crawled out of the warmth of the five quilts. She reached for their wrappers and handed him his, shrugging her own over her slender shoulders in the same motion.

If Gregson could be likened to a shambling bear, his wife was a heron with delicate step and a dancer's co-ordination and the nose of a perfumer and a bright alert eye for events, be they as insignificant as a minnow in a pool. She was the entire reason why Gregson couldn't complain about the loss of five minutes' sleep.

"Five minutes, Pet!" Gregson protested his much-faster helpmeet (for this he could whine), but he was already talking to the thin air. The precious space occupying her mass was now concerned with occupying molecules of the atmospheric order.

The big man took a deep breath and wished for a cigarette, knowing it would have to wait until he was well out of the building. A woman who could tell if bread had risen with spring or city water was not impressed with burning bitter leaves inside her house.

A fresh gust sent wind against the glass; cinders clattered and slid greasy grey tracks on their way down to dirty the whitewashed sill even as the air of the room bent inward and outward from the strike. Glass rattled like dried peas in a child's rattle. Gregson was reminded of Sherlock Holmes' (in)famous left in the boxing match the Yard was not supposed to know about.

Whump. Hair-Trigger Holmes' Elemental Counterpart gave the Colchester another left-cross. Gregson sourly hoped the building had it coming.

He grabbed up his elderly timepiece and glared at it, but the silver turnip had all the respect the inanimate gave the inanimate. "Bloody Hades Across the Styx," he growled (softly, out of his wife's considerable powers of earshot), "It's still Blue o'clock in the morning!"1

Judging by the lack of sympathy that failed to manifest with the building's alleged resident boggart, the Powers that Be didn't care. That was just as well for Gregson. He didn't believe in boggarts or any other physical representations of the un-orderly world of mediums and mentalists.

He was still grumbling as he crawled out of bed and stumbled to the table. There would be hot tea, just the perfect tint of brew (the color of his wife's hair) and it wouldn't take more than a wink to toast the bread over the fire...a perfect start for a chill spring morn.

Fortified for activity if nothing else, Gregson stepped outside his building and pressed his back into a familiar nook to shield his hands as he lit his cigarette. With the first take of strong blue smoke he felt his spine shift to friendlier realms. With a deep breath he blew a cloud, then a ring. Fantastical. He smiled and did it again even as the storms raged over the roof-tops of the beleaguered city. The light lavender-blue ring floated through the coarser atoms of rain and cinder, melted gently into the hammering curtain that was February's last gasp of discomfort to London.

Another day, another duce, he grinned in his customary defiance, glad he was early; he'd need the extra time to get through the storm.


Paddington Street (Lestrade residence):

"I see."

The voice did not compliment her husband.

Clea Lestrade nee' Cheatham whirled out of the back room, arms still full of sorting-laundry, to find him standing stock-still before the tiny thing that was his writing desk. A Constable with a face as red as a new beetroot stood with his helmet tucked smartly under his arm. Smelly steam curled from his shoulders and head; it must be a damp day outside.

Geoffrey had been caught in the midst of dressing by the door-knock. He was still in the stage between pulling his waistcoat over his braces and his good brown coat still hung upon its hook by the fire. He looked up at her with the telegram crushed in his fingers. His face was drawn tight, like paper watered and then left to dry too quickly.

Clea thought fast, aware that she should not say or do anything that would make the Constable think her husband's loyalties were in any way conflicted. She didn't know the youth just yet—but she was certain she would soon. That shock of red beard would be hard to forget.

"Mr. Lestrade," she requested, "Would your man like a cup of tea before you leave?"

Geoffrey instantly looked to the hapless Constable. "Conniff?"

"Sir." Conniff stammered. "I'm fine, sir. Thank you for asking sir. I mean, Missus Lestrade."

"Well, I am going to have a cup of tea." Lestrade informed him sharply. "If I don't have at least that before I cross the door-way, I'll have to explain myself to the P.S. And I for one, wouldn't like to tell Dr. Roanoke that I know his job better than Himself."

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir." Conniff gulped hard, shifting his awkward leather collar about his thick throat.

"So I advise you to go back downstairs and tell Mrs. Collins I told you to get a cuppa." Geoffrey was already standing, his palms pressing down on the scanty flat surface of the desk. "Once we leave, it'll be hard to say when we'll next stop for any bit of a rest or bite to eat."

That last was said directed at Clea, and she kept a sober face in the room even as she smiled on the inside. Geoffrey was still growing into his confidence as a married man. She didn't envy him the struggle. It was a fine line to keep one's loyalty with one's hearth and home and at the same time stay to the duties of the Yard where the least glance out of line could spell disaster.

"If you'll be out that long, you should take more than tea." Clea had disposed of the laundry and went to the back shelf against the window where a box rested, chilled inside and out from an unstoppable crack at the sill. She pulled out a wax-paper packet and a frosted metal flask.

"You've thought ahead." He murmured under his breath, and his mouth was smiling.

"I try." But she didn't like his countenance. "What is it?"

The direct approach with Geoffrey worked best. He glanced over his shoulder to be certain Conniff was long-gone first. "They think they've found Browne's mortal remains."

Clea felt herself turn into a block of ice. "Oh." She breathed.

"The case was turned over to the River Police almost as soon as I was pulled above ground." Geoffrey still sounded tired and befuddled at the memory. "So finding him dropped clean out of our hands—the Rail Police weren't at all pleased about it!"

Clea nodded. She understood by now that the mad levels of competition between the different divisions were birthed from the government's policies of jurisdiction. A policeman simply could not infringe upon another's territory unless they had permission (usually written and approved) first.

"I wanted to find him. I did. They wouldn't let me go back under." He admitted. "The rat-catchers and the usual tunnel-men who poke about in those lost places...they said that whole section was too dangerous for anyone, and they wouldn't go in at all...that was the last I'd heard of it till now."

Clea watched as Geoffrey turned to the narrow fire-board above the burning coal and lit up his everyday pipe. He was agitated; his hands were shaking a little and that meant he was trying not to be angry. Geoffrey wasn't fond of his temper, and when he felt threatened by his control he started doing little repetitious things, such as flicking his watch-case open and shut over and over, or checking his cufflinks...this time he was running the fingers of his right hand up his left arm, then down the wrist-bone, and up again to the reinforced elbow stitching.

Even as she wondered what was in his thoughts, he absently moved his hand to the watch-chain. Ah.

He stopped when she passed him his tea-cup and his held to cup and saucer as though they would crack under his touch.

"I doubt I'd even know that place now." She heard him mutter. "It was bad enough but I had the nightshade, and-"

"Ey up." Clea told him tightly. "No more, not ever. I won't wring you into a promise, l know you can't think that way. But as long as my voice counts, I don't want you to ever take that poison ever again."

He didn't argue. With Conniff safely out of witness, he managed to go through the intricate dance-steps of dressing and gulping down his tea at the same time. Clea found his new gloves and smiled as he grinned at her forethought. They were still new in their marriage; she wondered if she would ever take that smile for granted but a part of her doubted she would.

"You'll be careful," she admonished. "There's still a madman running through London!"

"There's several if you count the likes of us," Geoffrey muttered wryly with a scowl to the flurried elements against the window, but his growl was subdued. The string of deaths plaguing the western side was puzzling and worthy of headaches. No one as yet found a common ground between the victims, and there were no witnesses (even unreliables), to describe the killer.

Geoffrey poured out one last cup, stared at the mess blowing by the glass, and shook his head in defeat. It would be a dirty day. "I thought March was supposed to go out like a lamb." He saucered and blowed through his final tea quickly.

"In wild March weather, white waves break tether," Clea recalled the verse. "Be sure you stay put on the earth-" Remnants of a newspaper went sailing by their window at that moment, and they both laughed wryly. He paused long enough to see that the streets fifteen feet below were clear, and kissed her on the top of her smooth blue-black head.

They lingered together for a moment, breathing in the mingled scents of her kitchen lemons and cinnamon teas and his beloved myrtle wash—spicy and astringent. It suited him.

He was gone a minute later, but their rooms smelled like London street-rubbish and heavy North Sea rains long after he left.


Three hours later, Lestrade was ensconced within his small office with a stack of papers at his left, and a writing-tablet at his right. Grains of cinder and soot had gotten inside his coat and hat and it seemed as though every damned time he blinked, shifted or coughed the fog out of his lungs, black grains scattered across his desk.

Only three hours on duty. It felt like ten.

Knuckles rang on the door-frame, and Sgt. Galliwick leaned his head in.

"Begging your pardon, Mr. Lestrade," he said respectfully. "But-"

"But it doesn't serve the Yard's wise use of time to see to the body at this time." Lestrade cut in wearily and rudely.

Galliwick (Lestrade often wondered if that was really his name), made a face. "Very sorry, sir."

Lestrade grumbled a little. "Not your fault." He grumbled some more, and celebrated Galliwick's hasty departure by leaning his head into his hand, staring at wobbling line of print.

Damn it to hell.

Why wire him about Browne, then hastily give the case to Gregson instead of himself, when he was the last man on Earth to see Browne alive? For that matter, he was the first man to see him dead. Lestrade wasn't crowing about one of the worst times of his life; but didn't he just have the luck?

Gregson coming into the Yard first, an hour ahead of his usual duty-shift. Wasn't that just the bloody luck too. They probably couldn't wait to fob this on him, figuring if his worst rival got the case, he'd avoid him like the plague.

There was something fishy about all of this. Seeing as how Browne had been murdered by an inside agent for London's secret organisation of crime... a murderer who'd operated as a law-abiding and loyal officer for the Rail Police up until that awful day...Lestrade drew angry designs into the blotting-paper with his fingernail as he thought. He knew a cover-up when he smelled it! Something was going on with the Home Office and the Foreign Office. When those two had to be brought in on the same case of theatre...well they'd be lucky to know what their shoe size was at the end of the day!

At least the War Office wasn't involved... Lestrade was smart enough to take his blessings where they were.


1 Blue o'clock: Victorian slang for the early hours when the night is purple. Very early indeed!