The Chemickal Marriage

before next shaving, or leave the work to his razor.
    ‘Do you keep property records?’
    ‘By law we collect all manner of records.’
    ‘Including property?’
    ‘Well, depending on what exactly you want to learn –’
    ‘Ownership. Of
property
.’
    The archivist grazed her bosom one last time with his eyes and sniffed diffidently.
    ‘Third floor.’
    The third-floor clerk was on a ladder when Miss Temple found him, and she pitched her question loud enough to hurry him down in haste to lower her voice. He marched her to a wide case of black leather volumes.
    ‘Here you are. Property registers.’ He turned at once to go.
    ‘What am I to do with these?’ Miss Temple gave the bookcase an indignant wave. ‘There must be hundreds.’
    The soft dome of the clerk’s head was bare, black hair dense around each ear in vain compensation. His fingers shook – did she smell gin?
    ‘There does happen to be a great
deal
of property, miss. In the world.’
    ‘I do not care for the
world
.’
    The clerk bit back a reply. ‘Every time property changes hands, there must be a record. They are arranged by district …’ He looked over his shoulder, longingly, to the ladder.
    ‘Why don’t you have properties arranged by the owner’s name?’
    ‘You didn’t ask for that.’
    ‘I’m asking now.’
    ‘
Those
records are organized for taxation and inheritance.’
    She raised an eyebrow. He led the way to another case of black-bound books.
    ‘The letter
p
,’ she said, before he could leave.
    ‘The letter
p
encompasses five volumes.’ He pointed to the top shelf, high above them both.
    ‘You’ll need a ladder,’ observed Miss Temple.
    It had been the Doctor that spurred her thought. Her last vision of Svenson had been in Parchfeldt forest with Mr Phelps, corrupt attaché of the Privy Council, peeling back the Doctor’s gashed tunic and attempting to staunch the blood with his own coat. Like everyone else at the Ministry, Phelps had been under the sway of Mrs Marchmoor, her mental predations eroding his health and sanity. At the end he had been set free by Svenson’s suicidal duel with Captain Tackham. Phelps had not returned to the Ministry, yet who knew what secrets he possessed? She opened the first of the five volumes and sniffed at the dust. Phelps could also tell her about the Doctor’s final moments, when she herself had fled. She thrust the image from her mind and licked her finger. The fragile page caught, leaving a damp mark, and Miss Temple began to work.
    After twenty minutes she sat back, noting with displeasure the grime on her fingertips. The sole address for any ‘Phelps’ was a tannery on the south side of the river. This could not be where a Ministry official
lived
. It had been a fool’s errand anyway – how many in the city took rooms, like she herself, at some hotel or block of flats, without leaving any record of ownership? She would delegate the task of finding Phelps to Pfaff. She stood and looked at the scatter of black books, wondering if she was expected to reshelve them, before deciding that was ridiculous.
    But then Miss Temple hurried to the ladder and shoved it loudly to the volumes marked
r
. It took her two trips to get them to the table, but only five minutes to find what she wanted. Andrew Rawsbarthe had been Roger Bascombe’s direct assistant. Another drone sacrificed by Mrs Marchmoor, Rawsbarthe had perished in Harschmort House. Through Roger, Miss Temple knew that Rawsbarthe was the last of his family, living alone in an inherited house. If Phelps sought a place to hide, there would be few better than the abandoned home of an unmissed subordinate. Miss Temple scribbled the address in her notebook.
    The pleasure of her discovery bled easily into confidence and Miss Temple decided to return on foot. Her path kept to avenues lined with banks, trading houses and insurance firms, yet Miss Temple was not large, and the crowded walkways became a gauntlet of bumps and jostles, with never an apology and often an oath. This was the discontent she had seen in the Circus Garden, but further inflamed. She turned at a knot of men storming out of the Grain Trust, shouting insults over their shoulders, and was nearly flattened by two constables swerving towards them, cudgels ready. Chastened, Miss Temple veered to the tea shops of St Vincent’s Lane, where one could always find a carriage. The city felt unmoored, a reactive writhing that brought to mind only unpleasant visions