The Chemickal Marriage

Besides, lacking Chang’s knowledge of the remote corners of Stropping, the harried lawmen would assume that any fugitives must return to their cordon sooner or later, when their capture would be far less strenuous.
    Svenson slithered from under the last train, smeared with soot.
    ‘You spoke the truth about
unrest
,’ Chang called.
    ‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ huffed Phelps, just behind the Doctor.
    ‘Who could order such measures?’
    ‘Any number of utter fools,’ Phelps replied grimly. ‘But it means the Privy Council.’
    Cunsher emerged after Phelps, holding his soft hat in place as he crawled. Chang took Miss Temple’s hand, proud of how well she had managed. Despite her outburst on the train, this was the same Celeste Temple who’d kept her wits on the airship.
    ‘This way. There is a climb.’
    The side exit to Helliott Street from the railway tracks had always felt like Chang’s private possession, discovered on a pillaged Royal Engineering survey years before and employed sparingly. But now, mounting the metal staircase, his boots scuffed into newspapers, wadded fabric and even empty bottles. Miss Temple pulled her hand free to cover her nose and mouth.
    ‘Are you not choked? The stench is horrid!’
    Chang’s own sense of smell scarcely existed, but as he squinted above them he perceived a huddled shape blocking the way. He climbed and gingerly extended a toe to the pile of rags. It was a man: small, old, and dead for at least a week.
    ‘Step carefully,’ he called behind, and then to Miss Temple, ‘I should not let your dress drag.’
    Two more corpses cluttered the top of the stairs, propped against the iron door like sacks of grain – women, one gashed across her forehead. The wound had suppurated, and bloomed in death like slashed upholstery. The second woman’s face was wrapped in a shawl save for the hanging mouth, showing a line of stumped brown teeth. Chang heaved at the bolt, then kicked the door open. The two bodies toppled into the cold light of Helliott Street. Chang stepped over them onto the cobbles, but as always Helliott Street was abandoned. Cunsher helped him shove the door closed again, sealing the corpses back into their tomb. Chang wiped his hands on Foison’s coat and wondered what had happened to his city in so short a time.
    ‘At the end of this street is the Regent’s Star,’ he explained, ‘as nasty acrossroads as this city holds. Any of its foul lanes will offer rooms to hide …’ Miss Temple had been scraping something from her boot, but now looked up to meet his gaze. ‘Unless anyone has another suggestion.’
    ‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ she replied. ‘I did not think – or rather thought I could find our enemies only by their own clues – in any event, I am a goose for not perceiving the significance of my dressmaker, Monsieur Masseé. As you may imagine, a woman known to have money is besieged like Constantinople: she must submit to this fashion, that fabric, this fringe, or, if you please, a perfectly unnecessary
toque
. And so used am I to this beseechment, even from dear Monsieur Masseé, that I did not mark a suggestion some days ago to avail myself of an elegant bolt of fabric sworn to have arrived straight from Milan. Indeed, I rejected the offer out of hand – crimson silk is not only beastly expensive, but also unseemly for anyone not in an Italian opera. And yet I thought only of myself, not of who
would
buy that rarest, exquisite silk, in that colour, demanding a specific complexion and temperament.’
    She raised her eyebrows expectantly, waiting.
    ‘You think the Contessa desires new dresses?’ asked Phelps. ‘Now?’
    ‘All
her
things are lost at the St Royale. It was an
entire bolt of cloth
. A woman of fashion wanting any of it would buy
all
of it, to prevent anyone
else
from duplicating her prize. We need only find who
did
buy the fabric, and where it was delivered.’
    ‘So you do not
literally
know where she is?’ ventured Svenson.
    Miss Temple rolled her eyes. ‘Monsieur Masseé’s salon is directly down the Grossmaere. Shall we?’
    ‘Of course not,’ broke in Mr Phelps. ‘Look at us! We cannot dream to enter such an emporium – and you yourself could only do so by presuming upon a very established familiarity. Miss Temple, you have been immersed in a
canal
. You offer to expose yourself gravely for our benefit, but whatever information you hope to acquire will be more dearly bought, if not rendered beyond