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“Disconsolate? Something mournful, I imagine. Probably ‘sad.’ Lieutenant Dupin is nothing if not frugal with his adjectives.”
    â€œThose poor people,” I said. “A single puncture wound and a rounded bruise—that’s Pavel’s dirty work and no mistake. There can be no question that this whole mess is connected, then.”
    â€œWhat about Cordelia Hoole?” Jenny’s soft voice caught both of us by surprise. I spun to find that she had rematerialized by the window, the sunlight slipping in sparkling beams through her translucent figure.
    â€œJenny,” I said. “How long have you—”
    â€œI’m sorry, Miss Cavanaugh,” Jackaby cut in. “We really ought to follow up on these leads more thoroughly before we trouble you with the details. I don’t wish to—”
    â€œJackaby, ten years ago my fiancé vanished and I was murdered. Yesterday that McCaffery man vanished and Alice McCaffery was murdered. Their mentor, Hoole, vanished, and now we know he was murdered as well, and you’re—what? Waiting for the pattern to complete itself? You’re ten years too late to save me, detective. You’re a day too late for Alice McCaffery. The question is, what about Cordelia Hoole?”

Chapter Four
    The afternoon air was thick and hot as Jackaby and I left Augur Lane and made our way into the center of town. I had been introduced to a snow-swept New Fiddleham earlier that year, a New Fiddleham where baroque buildings glistened with frost and chilly winds whispered through the alleyways. With the summer sun now beating down on the cobblestones, the city did not whisper so much as it panted heavily, its breath humid and cloying.
    Jackaby, still draped in his bulky coat, swam through the mugginess with his usual alacrity, stubbornly unaffected by the swelter.
    â€œSir,” I said. “With all due respect, I don’t think that Lieutenant Dupin is likely to be very forthcoming about this case, our having stolen what little we already know from his blotter.”
    â€œBorrowed,” corrected Jackaby. “We borrowed what little we know. But I agree. I doubt that Lieutenant Dupin will be of much further use to our side of this investigation. Dupin is merely an artery.”
    â€œHe’s a what?”
    â€œAn artery,” said Jackaby. “And a good one. But he isn’t the heart. No, we need to speak directly to Commissioner Marlowe. If anything unseemly has landed on the streets of this city, Marlowe will know of it.”
    It was still hard to believe that this was my life—murder and mystery in the gritty underbelly of New Fiddleham. Not all of it was as beguiling as it sounds on the page. Truthfully, for all of its intrigue and excitement, adventuring was a most unglamorous career. I grew up on the other side of the Atlantic, a proper English girl. By the time I was ten, I could tell with pinpoint accuracy where I was by the accents around me. I was beginning to develop a similar sensory map of New Fiddleham based on odor. It was not a map I enjoyed filling out.
    The industrial districts to the west smelled of coal fires and wood pulp, and the docks to the east of salt spray and fish. In between lay the sprawling, pulsing heart of New Fiddleham, along with every aroma its inhabitants could make. Savory spices of frying, baking, and boiling food would mingle with the whiff of pig slop and chicken coops, only to be shoved aside by the thick, nearly tangible stench of outhouses and steaming sewer drains. A bucket of foul wash-water would evaporate in minutes on the hot paving stones, but its essence would linger for days, wandering the rows of the tenements like a stray cat.
    Jackaby and I skirted past a street sweeper whose horse and cart took up most of the narrow alleyway. The man barked a few words at us that I don’t care to record and made a rude gesture.
    I loved New Fiddleham. I still do. New