I drew the solitary blanket tight about me but otherwise did not move a single, aching muscle as the lock clunked over and, with a juddering thud, the door swung heavily open.
The speaker was a uniformed white officer with a barrel chest and a broad mustache. He was perspiring heavily. As he stepped to the side, two more white men came in, both in suits. One was, I assumed, another policeman. The other was Willinghouse. His scarred face, always unsettling, was rigid, and I felt his anger. He did not look at me.
The plainclothes officer addressed me. “I am Detective Sergeant Andrews. You are Anglet Sutonga, former steeplejack?”
“Yes,” I managed. The look on Willinghouse’s face had hit me with the full weight of my predicament.
“And you are in the employ of Dahria Willinghouse as a maidservant?” said Andrews.
I started to look at Willinghouse in surprise but caught myself. “Yes, sir,” I said.
“And can you explain what you were doing in the opera house this evening?”
I thought fast. Insofar as I had prepared a defense, it was predicated on telling the truth, something Willinghouse apparently did not want me to do.
“I went with Lady Dahria to the opera,” I began cautiously. “I had to go to the bathroom. When I got there, I found a lady. She said she had been attacked. Robbed. The man was getting away. I went after him. I couldn’t catch up with him and fell.”
“So you went to the rest facilities with no sense that the Dowager Lady Hamilton would be there?” said Andrews. He was hawkish, with keen eyes and an almost unnatural stillness.
“That was the lady on the bathroom floor?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“No,” I said. “I just…”
“Needed to use the facilities,” said Andrews.
“Well, partly,” I said.
Andrews leaned forward. “Yes?” he prompted.
“I’d never been to an opera before,” I confided. “I was kind of bored. Needed a break.”
A tense watchfulness in his face seemed to unwind, and he took a breath. “I see,” he said, drawing a fold of paper from his pocket. “So you have never seen this before?” He handed it to me.
It was not written by hand, but typed on one of those machines like the one in Ansveld’s shop. It read, Lady Hamilton,
We have your nefew, Arnold. If you want to see his safe return, go to the end stall in the lady’s toilets half an hour after the opera has begun. Bring your necklace. Tell no one and come alone or the consiquences will be dyre.
I looked up.
“Well?” said Andrews. “What can you tell me about this?”
“It’s badly spelled?” I said.
“I mean,” he persisted, with an effort at composure, “did you write it?”
“No.”
“Do you know who did?”
“No.”
“Have you seen it before or heard anyone refer to it?”
“No.”
He stared me down for another second, then glanced at Willinghouse. My employer, if he still was that, said nothing. “The man you pursued,” said Andrews. “Did he say or do anything that might suggest he was … foreign?”
“Are you asking if he was black?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“He’s asking if he was Grappoli,” said Willinghouse. He sounded annoyed.
I shook my head. “He never spoke,” I said.
Andrews frowned. “What happened to the necklace?” he asked.
“I didn’t see it,” I answered.
“Not at all?”
“It was gone when I got there,” I said.
“And you didn’t see it on the person of the man you say took it?”
“Well, he wasn’t wearing it, if that’s what you mean,” I said, looking up for the first time.
“Well, no,” he said, irritated. “But you didn’t see him pocket it or something?”
“He could have had it in his hand the whole time and I wouldn’t have seen it.”
“You saw no sign of its light?”
“Light?”
“It had a luxorite stone in it,” he said, clearly disappointed.
“No. Where is my mistress?” I asked, trying to sound concerned. “Is she angry with me?”
“Well,” said Willinghouse, his voice low and hard, his eyes flashing green fire. “At very least, you disrupted a major society event, causing her great personal embarrassment and leading to her being escorted from the building—in front of Bar-Selehm’s elite—in the company of a police officer. Whether you stole anything or not, your conduct was rash and unseemly.”
“Will she—?” I began, then retooled the question, acutely aware of sitting in no more than a blanket and borrowed underwear. “Am I to be dismissed? From her service, I mean.”
Willinghouse pursed his lips. His scarred cheek flexed as he clamped his teeth together for a moment, as if he was seriously considering the possibility; then he breathed out and shook his head briefly. “Not this time,” he said.
I relaxed—doubly so when, after a nod from Andrews, the uniformed officer squatted at my feet and unlocked my shackles.