Pearly Kings and Queens are amazing. I'm not sure London would be London without them, they are as much of the gestalt as the Tower Ravens. I chose to create a Pearly King that never existed to avoid the inevitable insult of writing about an existing one.

Thad Cooper had worn his uniform for six months. He thought he was getting used to it.

He was the son of a slain officer. He would get used to it.

The young man was a little bigger than his father but otherwise just the same. When he donned his uniform for the first time and stood before the mirror his mother cried. It wasn't just sadness, she assured him. It was just that seeing him made her think of too many things at once.

He thought he understood. His father's old coat still hung in the closet with the moth-balls and lavender. When he was a boy he would try to wear it but the weight of it sent him gasping to the floor every time, and his father would laugh, hard, in delight. He tried to put his feet into the gigantic boots; he couldn't even lift one foot.

But every year on his birthday, he tried again.

It got easier as he grew. One day the shoes began to close about his feet. Then his shoulders swelled within the coat. His fingers made it all the way through the length of the sleeves. The helmet still felt as though it were made of brick, but he could hold his head up and look around.

One day he was finally old enough to take his exams, and he did. His father's uniform still didn't fit him; he had his own uniform and it hung on the other side of the closet from his father's, their Church suits in between with his brother's.

He expected some sort of censure or attention for what he was, but it never quite happened. He was told on his first day that he was a man like any other, and he'd get no more nor less attention than the other men who were pulling an honest workman's wages. The grizzled-up old Sergeant in charge of his street training told him they were all the widowers and orphans and bereaved of London; all of them had lost fathers, sons and brothers to the Work. There would be no pampering or mollycoddling from himself or from anyone else in the Office.

For which Cooper was glad. He had a belly full of stories of his father and his mates—Big and bluff Bradstreet with his proud exhibit of moustaches; little Lestrade with the deadliest glare north, south and west of the Thames (legend had it he was working on the east); Gregson, who went to the same church as the Coopers and who feared nothing made of this world or the next, and had proved it time and time over. He vaguely knew these men, and grew up catching this story and that from the moments when their life-circles connected with his. That was all there was to it. They'd done their part and helped the family with Da's funeral and burial...they'd worn arm-bands in respect to his memory and somehow, just before they'd be forced into the street...Mum would find the money to keep going for another few weeks until her sewing wages came in. It wasn't just the police helping; the Costermongers watched out for their own and it satisfied Cooper to no end that his beats took him to his ancestral grounds at least four days out of his week.

They got by, bit by bit. His brother Gansler now ran a coffee stall within strolling distance of the Vic (and making the princely sum of 1/ a week). As long as his nightly customers didn't destroy the business in a fit of temper he stood to do well. Thad might not be making as much as Gansler, but he had the comfort of a pension upon retirement, and the pride of family tradition. He stood stiff and straight on his swearing-in day as they took his picture for the records, and signed his name fifty times upon endless papers.

And he walked.

He was on relief beats while the work-force recovered from the loss of manpower due to illness. This gave him precious little time to learn the ways of different parts of London. Not every man could do relief; he liked them. Of course he loved the Costermongers' areas, for they were his grandparents' race. They claimed to have known Henry Croft when he was a hungry orphan sweeping the streets. Cooper suspected this was true, for most Costers sold perishables. Granny Grice and her husband "Grandy" had an very nice side-business selling smoke pearly buttons with the extra service of on-spot threading. Pearl buttons helped the Costers identify each other, and they must have a thousand different codes in their styles and how they wore them. Among the Costers a person might suddenly need that bit of something for a special occasion. Buy a button and let them sew it right on for you—in the forty years the Grice plied their trade, they must have sold enough buttons to mosaic Trafalgar Square. Keeping true to their ancestry, they also sold whatever struck their fancy in summer, but from winter to March they sold the namesake of their profession, the costard apple.

Cooper believed one would have to look long and hard with a field glasses to find an unsightlier apple. It was a lop-sided and ribbed teardrop fruit. Its venomous gray-green skin blushed on the sun-side like an Irishman's cheek too long under daylight. For all its cosmetic flaws its flesh remained white and true throughout the winter and it forgive a cook's errors. And true to a Costermonger's profession, the fruit was cheap. The poor bought them in droves and swiftly, knowing the city disliked salesmen cheeky enough to ply their trade after the evening bells—for the day ended not with the bells, but when the last of the wares were sold.

Cooper had grown under the Grices while his widowed mother worked. He swept streets for valuables like Henry Croft, and like Croft, collected any cast-off buttons, bits and bobs he could find. His grandfather sold them again before the day was out, and often to the original owners. He'd dash about with the other Arabs as soon as he turned six, hawking cresses. Granny Grice taught him to find dandelions hiding in the park and he sold them as fresh greens. He and his mates went where they could, sold what wasn't pinned down, and stole what they could carry for times were hard. Theft was a way of life for the people; theft meant life. And if they had to steal to live...they stole. They left one less chestnut out of the bag; they put a few minnows in with the basket of fish. They pinched the flour or they tricked the weights (and tricking the weights was the most common theft of all).

It was because of the latter that Cooper was certain to carry his own tiny scale and weights in his belt-pouch. He never knew when he would come across another on-the-spot "debate" about light sacks or heavy leads and just the sight of him pulling out the machine was a guarantee of a hasty peace between both parties. If he didn't perform this small, voluntary act of public duty the quarrel would invariably turn to blows with the victor being the one who drew first blood. Cooper owed Gansler for the idea and was grateful for the continual peace it gave the restless streets.

Thad and Gansler were lucky; they didn't miss too many meals and their parents and grandparents had married in chapel and actually went to chapel when they had time. Families without marriage and children out of wedlock were common but they were all treated the same on the streets.

And just because they might steal from someone, didn't mean they didn't wish them well. The way they all threw in their help for the needy proved that.

Cooper turned his head just in time to catch a familiar glitter in the overcast world. It was tall and lean, clad in the blackest of black tuxedos and a stovepipe hat that dipped and bobbed as the head beneath the hat wobbled and peered back and forth and left and right. A glorious green neckerchief hung about a scarecrow throat, fastened with an elaborate knot to do a Chinese puzzle-maker proud.

The old man was hard to miss for the same way it would be hard to miss a ship sailing down the middle of a dry street. And that was before he sewed what he claimed were seven hundred and seventy-seven tiny pearl buttons upon his hat, coat, trousers, cummerbund, top hat and even his black leather shoes.

Cooper felt a grin rising to his face and it was with a life's worth of discipline that he kept it from showing. He did permit his weary spine to snap upright and he squared his shoulders within his coat and clicked his boot-heels together.

"Wellllllll, Mis-ter Cooper! Shall we sit and talk?"

"I'd be honoured, sir." Cooper tapped his brim respectfully. It would not be polite if he answered back in the street rhyme—best they all keep to the fiction that he didn't know the language. To the casual eye, the King was commanding one of the hated Constables.

And the King beamed brightly, flourished with his bejewelled sleeves, and together they went to the Pub chosen by His Highness: a neat little billiards-hall that swore to its keep of the most bitter of bitters in three countries.

Cooper had his own oasis when off-duty. It was a clean little place within five minutes of the Barracks: The Oil of Barley.1 But it was the corner of the police and hardly a fit place for a King to hold counsel.

On the same token, the King could hardly take him to his court. A Coster's preferred establishment would be full of illegal activities, from dog-fighting, drawing blood, fencing, card-marking, games with loaded tatts and (naturally) watering drinks and weighing the scales. The field of compromise demanded they meet in that questionable address, "Staggering Bob."

The name had nothing to do with drink. A staggering Bob was a new calf unable to stand, invariably eaten to offset the loss to the herd. As veal didn't get any younger, it was a popular dish of the house.

The King took a darkened corner with his penitent, and together they sipped their bitters. Cooper knew the business would open as soon as the last drop of the first round was drained.

"There you are." The King grinned easily, lifting a sleeve heavy with tiny round buttons. Each Royal had their own distinct pattern and style, sewn by the King himself for his Queen and their Princes and Princesses. This King preferred vines and leaves and made the young copper think of a Pearly Green Man. "Never did get our thanks for your help last month, Constable."

Cooper shrugged easily. "Just doing my duty, sir." Long ago he'd see the wisdom in referring to the Pearly Royalty as though they really were royalty—they took their responsibilities far more seriously than many Royals inside Buckingham. "And really, I wish I could have done more." There were scores of Cockneys—that didn't mean one could just up and vanish without someone paying attention somewhere. Cooper had taken the full report, interviewed the people closest, and personally gone to all the surrounding stations, but the girl had already found herself a quick end in the Thames. Cooper had helped the closest neighbors identify the remains.

"Ey, you did your duty, as a Bottle and a Grice's gran'son."

"May I help you with anything else, sir?"

"Well, now, you might," The King allowed with a purse of lips. "You might, young fellow. There's a bit of a problem with the Gipsies." (Cooper wondered what problem that could be—the Gipsies were all to a man camped out by the canals, and the nearest canal was hardly near the King's lands.) The King read his expression correctly. "It's a charitable concern, don't you see." He enunciated carefully.

"Of course, sir." Cooper agreed. "I'd be pleased to help." And even if he wasn't, Cooper would have cut out his own tongue before saying so. The Pearlies had helped his family stay out of Starvation Row; getting help from the Costers wasn't the same as getting a hand-out at a kip or dive. It was Coster money, freely given by their work to those who needed a bit of help. Even Big-Bellied Joe, who beat his wife every damned fortnight, wouldn't think twice about giving up twopence of his brandy budget to help a mother trying to feed her children.

The King grinned. "Good lad. Then I'll tell you."

And he did.

Cooper worked too hard to have the luxury of insomnia. Restlessness came the morning after at the canteen as he poked through a bowl of something that was probably a decent breakfast. His mind just wasn't on eating his one reliable meal of the day.

The barracks were as cramped as a dove-cote and just as noisy if much cleaner. The bachelors possessed little and what they did have was stamped with their names to prevent the inevitable petty theft (yes, it happened amongst the police too...at least until the guilty were caught and thumped). He was still a good thirty minutes from his duty-shift and that gave him time to address the burden of his new duty.

Station-master Grigsby was an hardy old islander from the unspeakable frozen sea off the east coast of Scotland. He didn't have shoes until his feet stopped growing, and for most of his life a 'window' was a sheet of pig's intestines, stretched thin to let through the light. In other words, he was as tough as he looked (which was tough indeed), and practical. If something worked, he didn't concern himself with details or if people laughed because it wasn't in style. He'd tell you to the penny how much his father saved in not buying him twenty pairs of shoes, or point out that no-one had ever been killed or maimed by the shards off a gut window.

He was going through his one life's indulgence, the newspaper, and judging from the scowl knitting the yarn of his bushy brows in the middle of his furrowed brow...was having a thrilling read. He glanced up as Cooper's shadow darkened the doorway.

"Bloody hell." Grigsby pronounced (accused). "You've got a problem, don't you."

"I was given a problem, sir." Cooper offered blandly. "But as it's like no other problem I've yet seen, I thought I should ask you what I should do."

"Did you write a report?" This collection of five words, strung together in this precise order, was the necklace upon which Grigsby hung his glory.

"I did, sir. The matter itself is out of our jurisdiction even if the matter was reported within't."

Grigsby rolled his eyes at the annoyance of matters that were so discourteous as to pronounce themselves in another department. "It's out of our hands if it happened on the other side of the border, you know that." A fishbelly pale hand shot out from the fence of newsprint. "Well? Give it here!"

Cooper hastily obeyed. Grigsby's gooseberry eyes2 flitted and flickered with the speed of a telegraph over the terse paper (Grigsby liked his reports terse and his men, terser).

After a long minute of thought, the old fellow made a harrumphing sound. "Your relief beat is Baker's today." He announced. "Go do two turns; Jacobs will replace you at the end. Go see Lestrade, Division A after. That's his area." Grigsby all but spat the last words out, implying a bad taste.

"Sir?" Cooper was startled, and hastily retreated at the glower aimed his way. Grigsby was already hoisting his newspaper for a final read. "Yes, sir. Right away sir."

He fled.

An early spring squall made a tin roof of his helmet halfway through his two-turn shift. Plink-pink; plink-pink. The water tried to soak through his shrunken woollen coat—Cooper sourly wished the weather luck. Under the skin of cold weather his blood boiled from futile rage at his orders.

Grigsby knew about Lestrade's history with the Coopers, he thought bitterly as he paused to halt the traffic at another intersection: Grigsby had to know. Those officers talked amongst each other; and they talked about each other. They probably knew more gossip than a bevy of Temperance Quilters.

Not that he resented Lestrade at all—if the idea had ever entered his head it had died a quick death. His Mum would have seen to it.

Uncle Geoffrey had taught the boys how to 'cheat' their shoelaces, and reminded their Da to bring home whatever Mum needed for the stewpot. His eyes had gleamed and glittered strangely in the light—the only brown-eyed man in a room of blues, and Da had joked about it with him, laughed with him, evening after evening as they crowded around their tiny room by the stove. Cooper remembered the laughter most of all for the two men seemed full to bursting with jokes and humour.

Lestrade had tried to help them when their father was killed in the line of duty, but there is only so much a young bachelor can do for his late friend. As small boys Thad and Gansler had been hurt and confused as Uncle Geoffrey stopped coming by. Not only had they lost their father, but they had lost a family friend too—one of the few outsiders that didn't mind they were copper's sons. They missed the warmth of the tiny rooms with five of them all together, telling stories about their day and moaning about endless grey days in the city.

But in that close-knit warmth the boys had not known there was another problem that had nothing to do with either man and everything to do with their borough.

Bad enough his Mum had gone heretic and married a copper—a species hated amongst the Cockneys with the fervency of a terrier against a rat. Policemen weren't even human. Killing or maiming one for life was grounds for free drinks and eternal bragging even if it mean time in gaol. And here she'd gone and married one in church, the same church that promised them hellfire eternal if they broke the Ten Commandments. Well, stealing kept them alive and kept their children alive. Hang the Church and hang the institutions it supported. The Cockney would live how they could, and if they were stingy or generous it was because it was their choice, not because they feared rules. The police grudgingly agreed with this reasoning, pointing out that valor in battle was fiction to the higher classes, but simple every day courage to the Cockney. There was no braver race within the city.

Thad Cooper had known his Mum was beautiful—she was his mother. But it hadn't occurred to him that his opinion was shared in an ugly way by people outside the family. "Not wasting any time," was a strange comment in their building and on the street, and Cooper grew to hate the way it turned his Mum's face pale and grey, how she froze up like a rabbit that didn't know which way to run. Then the children of those tongues took it as their duty to explain the meaning of that phrase, and the boys returned the verbal courtesy with the sort of manners that are much louder than words.

Uncle Geoffrey came by one evening before the bells and took one look at Thad. Without a word he took the boy to the public pump. The bells marked a rough curfew, but the 'mongers were out as long as there was something to sell, and Mum was still out with Gansler. It was just the two of them. He soaked his handkerchief in the flow, and showed Thad how to stop his nosebleed, even a bad one, if he put the icy cloth on the back of his neck and tilted his head up. He waited for the boy to stop sniffing and spitting out blood before he spoke to him for the last time. It was better, he said quietly, that he back away. He'd watch things from a distance, and he'd come if he was called, but it would be better for the sake of his Mamm if he stepped back and let...better people...see to them.

Thad listened to the quiet words over the roar in his aching head and stared at the only thing he could see: a brass button on PC Lestrade's sleeve. His organs shriveled dry and cold inside, until his belly glowed an icy coal of calm rage, and he agreed to call on him if they needed help. They both knew he was lying. He never would.

And he never did.

But he became a policeman.

And his mother never remarried.

His beat finished, Cooper took the remnants of his strength to Whitehall. The paltry drizzle had unimpressed his coat, but his shoes had been free and generous with the atmosphere. He squelched miserably through the catastrophe of Scotland Yard, struggling like a fish upstream through an airless sea of stinking, sweating bodies and the indoor fume of living factories smoking out their own form of London Fog in the form of tobacco. It was just as terrible as he'd remembered. Bored desk sergeants wrote down applicants. Bored Inspectors told the public to wait their turn and at long last, wrote down frantic accounts with a desultory pen. It reminded Cooper why his people avoided coppers in the first place. Better to be a man in a small force, like his little Division Station. He longed for the icy streets as he moved deeper and deeper within the unwashed masses, from which steam emerged like a full day at the laundress'. People wept and wailed without cease and once in a while there was a shout of rage or a flurry of foul language to break up the monotony of the dulled chaos. He had to get through a knot of flower-sellers, all of them sporting some sort of open bruise or mark from their menfolk as they waited for their sister's release. Cooper didn't bother asking them to report the crimes against themselves. Their pride was too firm and they would just speak the praises of their brutes.

Lestrade's door was half-open, which might have been an emblem of his willingness to hold court. Cooper devoutly hoped so, and put his report in his free hand as he knocked.

"Enter."

Mr. Lestrade was just lifting his head up from his desk, hand wrapped around a pencil and another flattening a crumpled paper. Cooper had not seen him up clear in ages; he was an older version of the man in his memory. Still no beard nor adornment of chin, but-shockingly-he'd let his hair grow out of the sheep-shearing style of his youth. Cooper almost smiled to see that Lestrade had permitted some expression of vanity in his hair; it was now fashionably longer, oiled and combed neatly back.

His mother had once told "Uncle Geoffrey" that his hair was too fine of a sable to be treated so cruelly. He'd sworn back to her that he would never let his hair grow longer than a half-inch; he couldn't be bothered with a gentleman's fine mane. Well, they all changed.

"Inspector Lestrade, sir? Police Constable Coop-"

Lestrade was already nodding, his dark eyes glittering. Cooper hadn't dis-remembered that eerie light. "It's good to see you, Constable." If the words came out a bit slower than they should, they were clear and not choked-up.

"Begging your pardon, sir." Cooper tapped his brim politely. "But I was directed to come here and deliver a report I took off my section."

"Cheapside? You're still patrolling the spare beats?" Lestrade absently dropped the shocking news that he'd been watching Cooper's career and reached with his left hand. Cooper obediently produced his report, safely sealed in a waxpaper envelope. "Sit you down, Constable. Tea's to your left."

Cooper turned his head to find mortal manna in the form of a small teapot steaming from its trip off the stove. He poured a cup with chilled fingers and let the heat sink through the skin as Lestrade read through.

"In this modern day and age, Constable, I thought we'd left the notion that Gipsies stole children." The little man (when did Cooper grow to almost twice his size?) was heavy with disgust.

Cooper hastily swallowed before replying. "It wasn't the impression I had from the King, sir, but he was trying to report only what he'd seen with his own two eyes and nothing else...before someone else did it for him."

"Hmn. Wise of him." Lestrade reached up and rubbed at his jaw. "What do you think of this?"

Cooper swallowed without tea. "The King is good man, sir." Both of them knew why he wasn't being called an 'honest' man. "He wouldn't report something if he didn't see it personally, or if he didn't feel there was a cause of concern." Because Cockneys never ask for help. They both knew that.

"Cockneys and the Travellers in the same case." Mr. Lestrade took a deep breath in wonder. "They are both the most jealous of London's jealous children." He rested the report on the sea of blotting-paper, where he could glance back down at the paper at any given time. "So he reports that one of his people saw a 'bevy of Gips' gadding about with a baby that looks, as you quoted, "not like a Gipsy" in their arms."

"Yes, sir."

"Your report did not say how exactly the baby looked like it was "not a Gipsy," Constable."

Cooper flared red about his cheeks and throat. "I was afraid it would make an...inflammatory case if I did so. In case the newspapers read the report."

"Inflammatory." Mr. Lestrade repeated evenly. His face never changed expression, and Cooper hoped that meant he was used to the foolishness of young Constables using words found in dictionaries. "In what way, Constable Cooper?"

"He said the baby looked like it was well-born."

Mr. Lestrade paled under his sallow complexion.

In for a penny...Cooper took a deep breath and rattled the words off: "It was free of lice and grime, clean, had a full head of hair bright as a new penny, plump and white as ivory. 'E said it was as unlike a Gip as it could be."

Lestrade's waxy colouring was retreating before a new theatre of pigmentation. Cooper watched, fascinated as the little man's demeanour struggled for calm beneath a vivid mask of volcanic rage.

"I see." The words were all but bitten out with teeth that looked extra-sharp and capable in the flickering white gaslight. "What do you think of the report itself?" He pressed.

"I think," Cooper answered slowly, "That he was right to report this concern before anyone else. Someone who might be less understanding...might see what he saw and jump to conclusions."

Lestrade almost smiled. Almost. "White as ivory with red hair...It is peculiar to see a child of that description amongst a troupe of Gipsies or Tinkers." He leaned back in his wooden chair, abruptly dropping his expression to one of dark thought. "I suppose they could always claim their lineage to King James."

"Sir?"

"There's half a hundred Gipsies—Irish Tinkers and Roman Gipsies—who carry blue eyes and gingery hair. Comes from Fat James' tastes for commoners, so they say." Lestrade tapped his fingers on his desk carefully. He snorted as if to himself, and caught that Cooper was gaping. "Drink your tea, Constable."

Cooper made haste to comply.

"For that matter, you'd best drink the whole pot." Lestrade said after another moment's thought. "You're coming with me, and we're going to be out in the wet. Do you have spare shoes?"

"Sir? No, sir."

"Finish that, and get to Supplies." Lestrade wrote something down in a loose shorthand and finished with a signature that was as clear as his message was not. "You'll need boots for mucking about. Make sure you get them slightly larger than you're used to you'll need two pairs of dry socks in there too; tell Jones I said to imagine you're heading to the soggy bits of the Black Country."

"Ah...yes, sir..." Cooper stammered, rising to take the paper.

"Finish that tea first, Constable." Lestrade reminded him. "We'll pick up a canteen of broth on the way out the door." Lestrade was tapping his fingers in an odd little rhythm. "You'll be going with me to the Tinker camp and take their version of the story. If all goes well that's all we need to do. Return the report and give you license to spread the summary to the public." Lestrade's lean, sallow face turned knowing and...sly. "That is why you were given the concern in the first place, isn't it?"

"I'm sure I don't know, sir."

Lestrade made a whispery sort of chuckle. "All right. If the case concludes properly, we'll send you back to the barracks before Grigsby starts yelling." Lestrade sniffed. "The bellowing old grampus."

Cooper hoped his delight would not show. "Yes, sir."

"He'll yell at me more than you, Constable." Lestrade pointed out dryly. "And if that wasn't bad enough, its the way he looks at you. Eyes like boiled gooseberries, that one." Cooper narrowly missed an ignominious end by strangling on his tea. "Right." That quickly, the humour vanished off the map of the Inspector's face. Lestrade rose and was out the door before Cooper could finish his latest breath.

This, he thought, might be a bit more of a bother than hoped.

Jones took the slip of paper, frowned and turned it in different directions until he could at least pretend to read Lestrade's joined-up letters, and produced proofed boots more typical of the Water Police. There were no available dry stockings; Jones blamed it on the season, gave him foot-wrappings, and was pleased that Cooper knew how to do up his feet properly. "Most people think they do when they dunna," he explained. "Or they don't know how to wrap 'em up for a day's march. Then the blisters start a-bleeding."

Cooper was just batting a blot of dried mud off his coat when Mr. Lestrade came to pick him up. The little man had changed into clothing for the open air of the country: dustcoat, a heavier hat, and boots much like Cooper's. Cooper followed just behind him and to his right side back through the smelly, steaming throng.

"Great Cesar's Ghost!"

Lestrade stopped so quickly Cooper nearly ran right into him. Two Inspectors were standing side by side by a mountain of opened files, eyes round with shock.

Lestrade sighed. "Forgive me my manners," he said in a tone of voice that promised death and ruin on anyone who felt obligated to frivolity. "Police Constable Thaddeus Cooper, meet Inspectors Bradstreet and Gregson. They knew your father." He paused. "Gregson's the one with fat hands, and Bradstreet's the one with the girl's moustache."

"They're not fat, they're square." Gregson growled as he recovered some of his composure. Being insulted could do that to a man.

"And how can I have a girl's moustache?" Bradstreet demanded as he reached up to touch his finely curling appendages (Cooper did think that was a reasonable question).

"You're talking to someone who goes to the Chapel of the Virgo Fortis, Bradstreet." Gregson said crossly. "Those Catholics think anything is possible."

"I'm not a Catholic." Lestrade said—wearily, Cooper thought.

"Yes, you are. You're just the worst Catholic in London." Gregson corrected helpfully.

Bradstreet had recovered. He slowly stepped up to the increasingly uncomfortable Cooper. "I'm sorry to react like that, Constable." He said quietly. He looked the young man up and down. "You look like your father...For a minute there it looked like he was there, trying to keep up with Lestrade, as usual."

"I-it's understandable sir." Cooper cleared his throat. "I'm a little slow to move."

"Just like him. Even sounds like him." Gregson marvelled. Cooper understood by reputation that Gregson did not startle easily and impressed never.

"Well since you're both here blocking up the natural flow of indoor traffic..." Lestrade snapped at them, and bobbed up on the balls of his feet, "did you get my note?"

"No, we didn't."

"I'm looking for any word on a missing child amongst the...the aristocrats. Infant, possibly a girl, gingery hair, white skin. The eyes are still blue."

"Good Lord, no, we would have heard about it!" Bradstreet protested.

Gregson's entire face collapsed inward into one of the most impressive glowers Cooper had ever seen—even Grigsby couldn't touch it. "Nothing in the Upper Echelons that I know of. Well, other than Jones wrestling with another job off Coburg. A maid ran off with her master's possessions."

"Huh. Jones is on Coburg Square again?" Lestrade blinked.

"I suppose he can't stay away...even if a dismissed maid is a step down from the bank job last October!" Bradstreet said with a smile. "What a brew!"

"Would've gone better if the toffee-nosed bourgeois bastard hadn't walked out of Newgate's noose." Gregson said uncharitably. "The City and Suburban Bank is still screaming "murder most foul!" and they aren't using the Bard's English either!"

"When are you going to stop acting as though every case that goes wrong directly affects your reputation?" Lestrade wanted to know, hands on his hips. Up against the much-larger Gregson he was a small terrier standing up to a brutish mastiff.

"When it's a fact." Gregson answered in cutting tones. "You may be happy with your rank, but some of us feel like promoting."

"And you're on a case of a missing babe?" Bradstreet bodily put himself between the two antagonists. "What is it—family, friend, or enemy?"

"The report says Gipsies." Lestrade shot back.

"In other words, Tinkers." Bradstreet shook his head. "Do give our love."

"I'll do just precisely that." Lestrade scathed. "Come on Cooper; we're running out of daylight and they hate night-time visitors."

1Street-slang for a very strong drink.

2Dull grey