Page 62 of The Business of Blood
“That’s confidential.”
“No, it isn’t,” I protested. “All I’d have to do is ask Aidan what he told you, and I’d have every detail you do. Why not save me the trouble?”
“When have weeversaved each other trouble?”
I whirled on him, nearly dropping my umbrella. “We could, you know. As they’ve mentioned, Aberline and Phillips and every other officer of my acquaintance finds me most solicitous. Helpful, even. Why not you, I wonder? Why do you have to insist that our relationship remain so acrimonious?” By the time I’d finished dressing him down, my face was inches from his.
He reached his hand out to the wainscoting in the tight hallway as though he might rip it away from the wall.
He didn’t, though. He merely gestured for me to accompany him.
We climbed the winding stairs to the third floor, where the offices ofTheLondon Evening Examinerresided. Croft took one step to two of mine, and I quickly became winded by my determination to keep up with him.
I’d be damnedif I let him into the offices first to control the interaction with Comstock.
“You let me do the talking,” he ordered as we passed through the etched-glass doors and into the sanctum of the fourth estate. “All you need do is listen and confirm whether or not he is the man who accosted you in Crossland Alley that night.”
I’d. Be. Damned.
“How aboutyouletmedo the talking?” I sniped back, louder now that I had the clack of Smith Premier typewriters and masculine conversation to compete with. “He has a lot to answer for, and I know exactly what to say.” I’d been practicing all morning.
“Dammit, woman. For once, would you—?”
“May I help you with something?” A rather studious-looking clerk approached us with a cautious but friendly expression. We adjusted our spectacles at the exact same time, though he could look down his patrician nose at me due to his height advantage.
“Yes, thank you. I’m Miss Fiona Mahoney, how do you d—?”
“We’re here for Thaddeus Comstock,” Croft interrupted without the requisite pretext or pleasantries. “Which office belongs to him?”
“Do you…have an appointment?” Alert now, the clerk glanced toward a specific closed door indistinguishable from a line of them along the back wall.
Comstock’s office, I guessed. “I’m afraid we don’t have an appointment, but I’m certain he—”
“I’m Detective Inspector Grayson Croft, Criminal Investigations Division of the London Metropolitan Police. I don’t need an appointment.” He thrust his badge beneath the clerk’s nose. “I’m here on a murder inquest and will speak to Mr. Comstock now.”
He turned toward the unmarked door, having made the same assumption I did about who worked behind it.
The clerk fell into step with Croft, forcing me to walk along the lone isle behind them, lest my thighs bang into any of the several desks crammed into the wide room. I might as well have not been there for all the attention the men paid me. “H Division? What’s a Whitechapel inspector doing in Knightsbridge? Care to comment on the Sawyer murder? Or on the rumors that another Ripper victim was found in the Bilkington tenements yesterday?”
So, not a clerk, then, I surmised. Just a poorly kempt journalist with dreary taste in suits.
“That’s not your article, is it?” I chimed in, narrowly avoiding a collision with a distracted man deciphering messy notes. “Mr. Comstock is the one who broke the story, and our business is with him.”
The man glanced back at me as if just remembering I existed. As if I weren’t the only female in the room, let alone the solitary individual draped in something other than black or beige. “And who are you again, darling?” He took my measure from the top of my violet velvet hat to the ivory handle of my umbrella, then down to the lace on my dainty Berk & Kessler boots, making it expressly clear how unimpressed he was by me. “Scotland Yard doesn’t employ women, and you’re too posh for a Whitechapel street doxy.”
Croft’s face was suddenly mere inches from the startled journalist. “Piss.Off.”
“See here!” the man blustered. “I’m Mr. Stanley Leventhorpe, the associate editor of the crime beat here atTheLondon Evening Examiner. Thaddeus Comstock is my subordinate, and anything he’s published has been read and edited by me. So, in essence, his stories are my stories.”
Blimey. I couldn’t have been more wrong in my initial estimation of Mr. Leventhorpe. Not only was he not a clerk, or even a journalist, he was an editor. And possessed of big enough stones—as my father called them—to stand up to a glowering Grayson Croft.
Say what you will about the press, they were often very brave. Or reckless.
“What did I just say?” Croft inched closer. Were Leventhorpe a woman, one would surmise that as close as Croft’s nose was to his, they were about to kiss. However, anyone with eyes could see that the editor was in imminent danger of learning just how hard-headed Grayson Croft could be.
As he squared off with Mr. Leventhorpe, I sidled past them both and let myself into Thaddeus Comstock’s office.
“You won’t find him in there, miss,” Leventhorpe called after me. “He’s yet to come into the office today.”
