Page 84 of Ghost in the Garden
“But Gregg would already have been dead by then. Maybe his state was due less to grief than to shock at committing murder. Solomon, I don’t like that idea at all.”
“Well, as you say, there’s absolutely no evidence of it. We need to find out what the Frasers did with their keys.”
Constance hesitated, glancing over her shoulder as though she could thus make sure of her mother’s safety. Distant, half-forgotten childhood memories prickled, times when her mother hadn’t come home, when other women had taken Constance in, fed her the odd scrap and not let her see her mother for several days. She had come to understand that her mother had been hurt or sick in those times. The awfulness of that was still unbearable. It was surely the root of everything she had done since…
“Constance. He won’t hurt her.” Solomon’s familiar, soft voice penetrated the sudden bleakness. “I don’t truly believe he killed Gregg or Lambert.”
“Then why mention it?” she snapped. She knew why. It was how they reached the truth, throwing possibilities around to discard or disprove or investigate further.
“Do you want to go back?” he asked patiently.
She focused on him once more, on the concern in his face, and somehow it soothed her, warmed her. She drew in a breath. “No. No, I’m being silly. Let’s beard the Frasers in their den.”
The Frasers, however, did not at first answer their door. Constance could hear them arguing as soon as she stepped into the passage from the street, even over the noise of the women fighting in the muddy street outside and the thundering feet of filthy, ragged children playing on the stairs out of the rain. She had had to stop Solomon from interfering in the women’s fight—they would only have turned on him—by dragging him inside.
“It’s all noise, no claws,” she told him, having learned the difference long ago.
He looked doubtful, but appeared to bow to her greater knowledge. The raised voices in the Frasers’ room cut off instantly at his first knock. On the other side of the door, nothing moved. At least they weren’t climbing out of the window.
On the stairs, a male voice swore at the children, who paid it no heed whatsoever. They thundered back down the stairs, the tiny boy at the front clutching a large key in his grubby little fist.
On impulse, Constance strode to the foot of the stairs and caught him. They others piled into his back, swearing as fluently as the man who’d just told them off, and trying to wrestle the key from the boy at the front, who held on grimly.
Constance solved that argument by plucking it from him herself and holding it too high for any of them to reach. It felt rather like the garden door key to the Lamberts’ property.
“Oi!” said the largest child, who might have been all of seven. “That’s his! Give it back!”
“It’s treasure,” said the tiny boy earnestly. “They’re trying to get it off me. Pretend, like.”
“So give him it back,” the biggest commanded.
“Not until you tell me where you got it,” Constance said. “In fact, I’ll give you all a penny each if you tell me truth.”
The children exchanged glances. “Found it,” muttered the largest boy.
“I thought you did. Where?”
“Out the back.” He jerked his head toward the door at the other end of the passage. One of the planks was missing. From the stink that drifted in, a sewer ran right through the backyard.
“When?”
“This morning.”
“Good for you.” She doubted many of the miserable rooms here had keys, apart from the Frasers’. Delving into her reticule, she retrieved a handful of pennies and gave one to each child. They snatched the coins with awe. “See if you can find any more out there, and I’ll pay you again.”
They looked at her, their eyes suddenly old and hard, well beyond their years. She could see they were considering rushing her and just snatching her reticule and all its contents.
“Really?” she said, gazing back.
Solomon materialized beside her, large and solid.
The biggest boy shrugged philosophically. “All right. We’ll look. Cost you twopence, though. Each!”
“Done,” Constance said. “Wait for us here if you find anything.”
They dashed off again toward the back door, children once more. Constance met Solomon’s gaze.
“They threw the keys out the window?” he suggested.
