Page 49 of Disturbing the Dead
“What is the world coming to when you can’t even trust your mummy powder to be actual mummy.”
“The same as when you cannot trust your sugar to be actual sugar or your coffee to be actual coffee,” he says dryly. “If it can be adulterated, it will be.”
I’d never given much thought to food regulations until I came to this world where, as Gray says, adulteration is rampant, whether it’s medicine or food.
“So there’s no market for mummia now?”
He gives me a hard look. Isla only shakes her head.
“Right,” I say. “Dumb question. If it was a recognized medicine in the past, there will still be a market for it. You just won’t be able to find it in a chemist’s shop.”
Isla nods. “Whenever a medical ingredient goes out of fashion, there are still those who will cling to it and clamor for it, that knowledge having been passed down through generations.”
“Like people in my world who still think you can catch the common cold—or catarrh—by going out in cold weather, despite the fact we’ve known for generations that it’s caused by a virus.”
“Catarrh is caused by… what?” Gray says.
“Whoops. Sorry. Spoilers. Moving right along. I get your point. Just because mummia is no longer a common medicine doesn’t mean there won’t be a market for it. The next step, then, is to investigate that. Do we talk to Selim Awad first?”
“I agree we should speak to him at some point,” Isla says. “But for now, it might be better to exhaust our own resources first. Give the police time to retreat from the Christies’ house and allow the family a brief respite.”
That’s not how we’d do things in the modern day, but I understand her thinking. Here, if someone of Sir Alastair’s caliber told McCreadie to come back and question his family tomorrow, he’d have to do it unless he had enough evidence to push the point.
“Our own resources first then,” I say. “Do you know someone?”
“No, but you do, and I’ve been rather eager for the excuse to meet her.”
I frown.
“Queen Mab, of course,” Isla says. “While her expertise is in preventing—and ending—pregnancies, she is known to deal in rare and illicit ingredients that I cannot obtain myself. I do not expect her to sell powdered mummy…”
“But she might know someone who does. The problem will be contacting her. We know where she lives but showing up there would be rude, even threatening.”
“Then you approach her the same way you did the last time.”
“The last time, we sent a message…” I look over at her. “Through Jack.”
Isla smiles and takes a bite of her biscuit.
“Jack,” I say, “whom we already want to talk to—about these detective stories—but we can’t afford the time to do that while we’re on the case.”
“And now the two purposes have cleverly intersected.” She smiles again. “How convenient. I will allow you and Duncan to tackle Jack—literally, if necessary—as it is your story she seems to be writing. Then Mallory and I will pay a visit to Queen Mab.”
SIXTEEN
To find Jack, we need to go to Halton House. That sounds very proper, as if we’re visiting a lovely manor for tea. Halton House is a fight club. Oh, it’s supposed to be a rooming house, but management doesn’t make more than a token effort to pretend. Just enough, really, that the police can claim they had no idea what’s going on there, and they certainly aren’t being paid to look the other way.
Isla and I discovered the truth of Halton House on our own, in search of a mysterious young woman with connections to a broadsheet writer known only as “Edinburgh’s Foremost Reporter of Criminal Activities.” The young woman is Jack. I also suspect she’s the person writing those broadsheets and these accounts of our adventures.
As for Halton House, McCreadie already knew about it because, yes, it’s one of law enforcement’s worst-kept secrets, secrets that are kept through payoffs. I don’t begrudge the police that money. They’re poorly paid, and they’d already be expected to turn a blind eye to fight clubs for the upper classes. It’s a time-honored system for dealing with so-called victimless crimes.
Gray and I set off on foot. While I doubt we’ll find anyone at Halton House so early, it’ll be an excuse to convince Gray that we really should pay Selim Awad a visit, propriety be damned.
We reach Princes Street. As in my time, it’s a major thoroughfare, and probably just as wide, which makes it practically a superhighway for coaches. On this side, it’s mostly shops, with colorful awnings to attract customers and tourists. There’s a streetlight-lined sidewalk wide enough to walk four abreast, and it’s actually—by Victorian standards—clean… because it’s a major shopping avenue for the wealthy New Town and those aforementioned tourists.
We continue across the street and down to where a boy sells newspapers.
“Good morning, Tommy,” I say as we walk up.
