Marie O'Regan - The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books)

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Did you resent Mr Wishart’s distraction? You were waiting for safety devices to be finished, and he was working on some project of his own.”

“It was no good getting impatient with Jamie, Inspector. He’d just give you that smile and show you some wonderful new thing he was working on. He was like a boy, really. And you’d have about given up, and then he’d come running in with whatever you’d asked for, often better than you’d asked for, and barely stop to show you how it worked before he’d be off to do something else.” Lassiter looked down at his hands. “I’m good with machines, I’ve learned to be, but I had nothing on Jamie. He had a kind of passion in him. He talked about his devices in such a way . . . as though they were real before he’d even made them, as though they were just waiting for him to find the right way . . .” Lassiter blinked. “Did you …”

“What is it?”

“I thought I heard something. There it is again.”

Now he was listening, Gairden could just make it out, the faintest silvery shimmer of sound, winding through the thudding rhythm of the machines.

“That’s what I heard, sir, that night,” Lassiter whispered. “Like that, only stronger, with more of a beat to it.”

It was barely a sigh, Gairden thought, among the brutal clangour of the machines, not so much music as music’s shadow. A voice without strength or words, yet so sad, so terribly mournful. Barely had he heard it before it faded.

Now there was only the blunt endless thudding of the steam hammers audible. Lassiter was staring into the distance, like a man who had caught a glimpse of a sorrowful memory. Gairden cleared his throat. “Was Jamie working on something like an instrument?” he said. “Mr Rheese mentioned a mechanical orchestra.”

Lassiter blinked, and came back to himself. “Oh, there were a dozen and one things, sir, but recently he’d been keeping whatever it was to himself. He’d promised to show me when he was finished. He said it would be the most wonderful thing. It always was, of course.” Lassiter rubbed his forehead.

“Mattie Drewrey thought she saw someone up there – someone dancing with Mr Wishart.”

“She did? Well, no one passed me sir, as I said, but it’s a rambling place. I suppose there could have been someone up there. It doesn’t sound like Mr Wishart, though. He wasn’t one for that sort of thing, hanging about stage doors and such. He worked a great deal. Slept up there as often as not. Don’t know when he’d have had time to meet young ladies.”

“No. Oh, one last thing . . . what are those marks on your hands?”

“Oh, dyes, varnishes, such like. They fade, sink into the skin, you know, but there’s always the next thing, and you’re covered again.”

“Thank you, Mr Lassiter.”

Gairden went back up to the workshop. There was still a stain on the floor; a fine layer of the glittering dust that hung in the air of the manufactory was beginning to layer itself over everything, making the room with its closed secretive drawers, its miniature limbs and tools and eyes, look like some uncanny half-remembered dream.

Gairden stood in the middle of the floor, avoiding the stain, turning slowly; letting his gaze travel.

Something glittered; something seemed to fall through the air. He glanced up, thinking there was a leak in the roof, but the ceiling was unmarked. He looked down, and there, by the door, was another of those tiny cogwheels – this one of a silvery-blue metal. He moved, and picked it up.

Out in the corridor another faint glittering fall, almost too fine to see; in the glow of the wall lamps it fell like a tiny burning star, landing outside the door of Rheese’s office.

It was locked; he was sure it was locked, but under the touch of his fingers the lock snicked back and the door swung open.

Gairden walked in. He would have some explaining to do if Rheese turned up. He stood with his head cocked, waiting, but it seemed that whatever had led him here had run out of steam.

There were papers on the desk again. One quick glance, and he would be gone.

Designs. Toys. A doll, a metal bird. Drawings in a swift, meticulous hand; another hand, heavier with the pencil. Thick lines scored through notes. Half-legible scrawls in the margins. Nonsensical. How can this work?

A brown, crinkled stain on the edge of the paper. Gairden sniffed. Brandy.

And beneath the desk were a pair of shoes. Waiting for the bootboy to pick them up for cleaning? They looked very clean already. Polished to a gleam.

Gairden glanced behind him, then picked up the shoes and turned them over.

The soles were smooth, grimed with the dust of the factory floor. If they had trodden in blood, it was no longer there. But something glimmered where the sole met the shoe. Something small and bright. With the tip of his pencil, he levered it out from the seam.

A tiny golden arrow, the weapon of a miniature Cupid. Gairden bounced it on his palm, put the shoe back where he had found it, and left.

The patent office was a great, brown, shuffling, rustling wasp’s nest of a place; off the central hallway with its noble domed ceiling and tall imperious counters were dozens of tiny rooms, crammed and choked with paper. Inspector Gairden, after a number of increasingly wearisome enquiries, misdirections, and misunderstandings, found himself in one of these, confronted by a small, tweedy, harassed man with thinning hair and a sore-looking nose. “You wish to examine a patent?” The man rubbed his nose and sneezed. “Excuse me, sir. It’s the dust. Which one would you wish to see?”

“I wouldn’t,” Inspector Gairden said. “I merely wish to be informed about any new patent applications. Should they arise.”

“Oh, I see. Well, if you’ve the authority …”

“I have, yes.” He pointed to his authorization papers which were, in fact lying on the man’s desk; Gairden was tempted to snatch them back up before they disappeared in the great forest of paper that lay all about them. He found himself wondering how many trees had died, to provide these birth certificates of yet more machines.

“The thing is, Inspector, we can get more than a hundred a week. You want to know about all of them?”

“As many as that?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Anything from a new type of propelling pencil to a flying machine.”

“Ah.” Gairden tapped his chin. “Mannequins, then. Dolls, automata, things of that nature. And anything with the name Lalika.”

“Lalika?” The patent officer shook his head. “Fanciful.”

“Oh, and while I’m here, I’d like to see any recent applications in the name of Wishart. J. Wishart.”

“That would be with the Ws,” the patent officer said. He sighed, and got up from his chair with the air of a man much put upon, and disappeared among towering stacks of paper, muttering: “Doubleyou, doubleyou . . . How recent, Inspector?”

“The last six months, say.”

“Hmm. No . . . no, there’s nothing. Oh, that’s odd …”

“What’s odd?”

The patent officer reappeared, clutching a brown manila file. “Well, there’s one application, at least five years old. Nothing after that. Looks like old Frobisher’s handwriting – he retired last month. Came into some money, unexpected, and moved abroad.”

“Did he indeed? Then I’d like to see all the applications he worked on before he had such an unusual stroke of good fortune.”

“But …”

Gairden looked around at the tottering piles of paper. “I’m sure you don’t throw anything away, do you? Find them. I’ll wait.”

The sound of the machines thrummed through Rheese’s office, like a heartbeat. The level of brandy in the decanter had fallen; the levels in all the others stayed the same. They gleamed like great flaunting jewels. Gairden stood by the table; Rheese sat, as usual, behind his desk.