Frank Tuttle - The Broken Bell

I beamed and smiled my widest.

“Weddings are indeed my business,” I said. I put a lot of cheer into it. “Walter and Walter, florists extraordinaire. We’ve managed to secure ten dozen of the eastern white roses Miss Fields requested.” I fished in my jacket’s breast pocket and withdrew the papers, which would free the Sprangs but wouldn’t pass for a flower bill on close inspection. “If one of you gentlemen could sign for this…”

“Not going to be any wedding,” offered one worthy.

“Third one she’s sent up here this week. Crazy broad,” offered the other.

“You’ll get paid,” added the first, to me. “Take the money and forget it. There ain’t going to be a wedding, you got that?”

I adopted an expression of concern. “But, sirs, I spoke to the bride last evening-”

They turned and threw open the door. “Like I said, the House will pay your bill,” said one, beckoning me inside. “But just this once. You show up here again and it won’t go so good for you. You understand?”

I slipped my papers back in jacket and nodded, deciding that the floral agents of Walter and Walter probably had little experience in trading tough talk with House soldiers.

The pair of toughs led me across a marble-tiled foyer and into a sitting room that could have used at least one window. I spent a few moments idling there, listening to the House, unable to do more than catch a few muffled footsteps and hear a snatch of conversation I couldn’t begin to follow.

An older gentleman ushered me wordlessly from the tiny sitting room, down a hall with oak-paneled walls, and into a larger sitting room that had not one window but two. Portraits kept me company, three to a wall, scowling at me from beneath the powdered white wigs and ruffled collars popular in the years before the War. None looked happy. A loud clock ticked on a mantel.

By the time I reached my third sitting room and a middling comfortable couch with dragons worked into the wood frame and claw feet, I was fighting off yawns and hoping the grumbles from my stomach weren’t audible all the way outside. I’d spent more than an hour just ambling from room to room, and I was no closer to a Lethway than I had been at home in my bed.

I wondered if I’d been forgotten, then decided the servants were merely playing a game of let the money-grubbing tradesman waste his day. I wondered how many of the caterers and reception planners that Tamar sent to Lethway just gave up and left before collecting their fees.

I listened. If anyone was moving around nearby, they were doing so in sock feet, and I doubted that.

I rose, made sure my Avalante pin was plainly visible, and sauntered out of my sitting room and into the perilous bowels of Lethway itself.

The House was quiet. If bustling was being done, it was being done elsewhere. I picked a hallway at random, ambled down it, found a flight of stairs leading up, took to them. I met an older gentleman clad in a butler’s black tails halfway up the first flight. I saw his eyes cut to my Avalante pin and then cut away.

I picked halls at random, left closed doors shut, ventured into a couple of open ones. The second floor was surprisingly empty, aside from servant’s quarters and a couple of unfinished guest rooms. I did find a family portrait-Mom and Dad Lethway, he much older than she, flanking a ten-year-old kid who must have been Carris.

No dirt on his face. No straw hat on his head. My, what a difference a few dozen copper mines make.

I ran out of things to explore, so I gathered my nerves and took to the final flight of stairs leading up.

At the top, voices and footfalls sounded. A woman laughed. Glassware tinkled. Knife and fork clattered on a plate.

Lunchtime. I headed away from the sounds and the smells, preferring to lurk a few more moments.

I wish I could claim I followed the pattern of wear on the floors or discovered Carris’s room by recognizing the patina on his doorknob as only a man his height would make. But the truth is I was guessing, and I opened every door that wasn’t locked, and his was the third one I tried.

Tamar’s picture, painted by someone with talent, hung on his wall. There was a pile of fabrics and fake silk flowers heaped on his dresser. Beside the pile was a notepad, just like the ones I use, and on it were scribbled notes.

Red fireflowers for grooms , read one entry. Yellow for rest.

Below that was Meet bev. supplier tomorrow noon.

I flipped through the pad, found more of the same.

“You missed that meeting, didn’t you?” I said. “I wonder why.”

I poked through the rest of the room, found nothing suggestive of a man planning a panicked flight away from the jaws of impending matrimony. What I did find, hidden in the far corner of the topmost sockdrawer, was a box that held a golden ring.

Tamar’s ring. I’m no jeweler, but I’m no infant, either. A man on the run could sell that ring for a quarter of its worth and still finance a very long trip. The fact that he hadn’t sold it told me he hadn’t planned on leaving at all.

I put the ring back where I found it, smoothed the bedcovers where I’d rumpled them, put everything as it had been. Then I put my ear to his door and listened for footfalls outside.

It was quiet. I opened the door and stepped outside and closed it behind me.

No one saw, shouted or rushed toward me with a club.

I was so happy I could have whistled.

But I didn’t. I patted my Avalante brooch and straightened my collar and decided that since Lady Luck was smiling I’d see if she’d join me for lunch.

I marched down the hall, all pretense of sneaking gone. Why sneak? I was a friend of House Avalante, and a lunch guest at Lethway. If any mere butler dared question my presence I’d show him the bottom of my nose.

I managed to locate the dining room by following the smells. The door was ajar, and from the hustle and bustle of servants and carts I gathered I’d nearly missed lunch.

I opened the door and stepped inside. A butler whirled to face me, his sudden expression of haughty offense marred by the full mouth of mashed potatoes he was struggling to swallow.

“I hope I’m not too late,” I said, before he could speak. “I was told downstairs there would be fried chicken. I prefer white meat.”

Lady Luck wasn’t just smiling but laughing and drinking straight from the bottle. A black-haired maid started filling a plate with chicken.

The butler fell into a fit of coughing. I breezed past him and helped myself to an empty glass and a pitcher of tea.

“Green beans, too, that’s a dear.” She smiled and piled them high.

Somewhere in the coughing fit, I suppose the butler spied my Avalante pin, because he tottered off to cover his mouth, waving the maids on as he turned. I grinned and grabbed a dinner roll. It was buttered and warm.

The maid pulled a chair out for me, and I plopped onto it.

“Too bad the meeting ran long. I was looking forward to lunch with the family.” I tore into the chicken.

“Oh, sir, the Lady never takes her lunch here anymore,” quoth the younger of the two maids. “Dines in her rooms, you know. Hardly leaves them, these days.”

“Hush, Margaret,” said the other, eyeing me with something like suspicion. “Fetch the gentleman a napkin.”

“This is good,” I said, between mouthfuls. “Someone here knows her business.”

“And what business brings you here, sir?” asked the suspicious maid. I pretended to wipe an errant crumb off my lapel, in case she hadn’t seen my brooch.

“Morris ram stabilizers,” I replied. Bits of Rafe’s conversation with Evis crept back to me. “Did you know that straight-bore mining drills wear out after only eighteen days? But not with a pair of Morris stabilizers on the forepins. They’ll go twenty-six days, or better. Factor that in with the savings in site idle time and wages spent on repairs, and you’ll see an overall boost to your profits of nearly one and a quarter percent over any six-month period. And I don’t have to tell you how much that means in profits over the life of a copper mine.”