Mallory stroked his beard. "That wouldn't be British professional envy talking, I hope."
"Not at all, sir! It's common knowledge that the Grand Napoleon suffered some dire mishap early this year," Tobias assured him, "and the great Engine has never spun quite properly since." He lowered his voice. "Some claim sabotage! Do you know that French term, sabotage" Comes from 'sabots,' the wooden shoes worn by French workers. They can kick an Engine half off its blocks!" Tobias grinned at this prospect, with a glee that rather disquieted Mallory. "The French have Luddite troubles of a sort, you see, sir, much as we once did, years ago!"
Two short notes were sounded on a steam-whistle, reverberating through the white-washed ceiling. The two studious gentlemen, who had been joined by an equally studious third, now closed their albums and left.
The bell rang once more, summoning Tobias to the wall-tray. The boy rose slowly, straightened a chair, wandered down the length of the table, examined the albums for nonexistent dust, and shelved them. "I think that's our answer waiting," Mallory said.
Tobias nodded shortly, his back to Mallory. "Very likely, sir, but I'm on overtime, see. Those two blasts on the horn "
Mallory rose impatiently and strode to the tray.
"No, no," Tobias yelped, "not without gloves! Pray let me do it!"
"Gloves, indeed! Who's to know?"
"Criminal Anthropometry, that's who! This is their room, and nothing they hate worse than the smudges from bare fingers!" Tobias turned with a sheaf of documents. "Well, sir, our suspect is one Florence Bartlett, nee Russell, late of Liverpool "
"Thank you, Tobias," Mallory said, creasing the sheaf of fan-fold so as to slip it more easily into his Ada-Checkered waistcoat. "I do appreciate your help."
One arctic Wyoming morning, the frost thick on the brown and beaten prairie-grass, Mallory had crouched beside the tepid boiler of the expedition's steam-fortress, prodding at its meager buffalo-dung fire, trying to thaw an iron-hard strip of the jerked beef that the men ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. At that moment of utter misery, his beard rimed with frozen breath and his shovel-blistered fingers frost-bitten, Mallory had sworn a solemn oath that he would never again curse the summer heat.
But never had he expected so vile a swelter in London.
The night had passed without a breath of wind, and his bed had seemed a fetid stew. He'd slept atop the sheets, a drenched Turkish towel spread across his nakedness, and had risen every hour to dampen the towel again. Now the mattress was soaked and the whole room seemed as hot and close as a greenhouse. It stank of stale tobacco as well, for Mallory had smoked half-a-dozen of his fine Havanas over the criminal record of Florence Russell Bartlett, which dealt primarily with the murder of her husband, a prominent Liverpool cotton-merchant, in the spring of 1853.
The modus operandi had been poisoning by arsenic, which Mrs. Bartlett had extracted from fly-paper and administered over a period of weeks in a patent medicine. Dr. Gove's Hydropathic Strengthener. Mallory, from his nights down Haymarket, knew that Dr. Cove's was in fact a patent aphrodisiac, but the file made no mention of this fact. The fatal illness in 1852 of Bartlett's mother, and of her husband's brother in 1851, were also recorded, their respective certificates of death citing perforated ulcer and cholera morbus. These purported
illnesses featured symptoms very like those of arsenic poisoning. Never formally accused of these other deaths, Mrs. Bartlett had escaped custody, overpowering her jailer with a concealed derringer.
The Central Statistics Bureau suspected her of having fled to France, Mallory assumed, because someone had appended translations of French police-reports of 1854 dealing with a crime passionel trial in the Paris assizes. One "Florence Murphy," abortionist, purportedly an American refugee, was arrested and tried for the crime of vitriolage, the flinging of sulphuric acid with intent to disfigure or maim. The victim, Marie Lemoine, wife of a prominent Lyons silk-merchant, was an apparent rival.
But "Mrs. Murphy" had vanished from custody, and from all subsequent French police-records, during the first week of her trial as a vitrioleuse.
Mallory sponged his face, neck, and armpits in tap-water, thinking bleakly of vitriol.
He was perspiring freely again as he laced his shoes. Leaving his room, he discovered that the city's queer summer had overwhelmed the Palace. Sullen humidity simmered over the marble floors like an invisible swamp. The very palms at the foot of the stairs seemed Jurassic. He trudged to the Palace's dining-room, where four cold hard-boiled eggs, iced coffee, a kippered herring, some broiled tomato, a bit of ham, and a chilled melon somewhat restored him. The food here was rather good, though the kipper had smelled a bit offsmall wonder, in heat like this. Mallory signed the chit, and left to fetch his mail.