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to be even more ostentatious.
    Blank remembered all too well the events of 1887, which seemed to him no more than a heartbeat before. He only hoped that the anniversary of the queen's sixtieth year on the throne cost him not as much, personally and professionally, as her fiftieth anniversary had done.
    Finally, the Tower of London hove into view, its ever-present ravens starkly black against the morning sky, and the police constable called for the drive to stop.
    As Blank helped Miss Bonaventure down from the cab, he noted that while the bascules of Tower Bridge were raised, the stairs leading to the elevated walkways overhead were closed to the public, blocked by one of their escort's brothers in arms. Blank could hardly imagine that it mattered, since in the short years since the bridge's opening virtually all of the foot traffic had remained on the ground while the bridge was raised, preferring to watch the bascules rise up and down to climbing the steps and crossing more quickly. But for whatever reason, the authorities did not want anyone to ascend, just now. He could only surmise that it had something to do with their summons from his house in York Place.
    With that in mind, Blank did not wait for their escort to finish clambering down from the growler, but set off across the pavement towards the guarded steps with a will. Miss Bonaventure followed close behind, her heels dogged by the police constable as quickly as he was able. As it happened, their escort did not catch up with Blank until he'd reached the bridge, made his way through the crowd, and stopped just short of the steps leading to the elevated walkway.
    â€œSorry, sir,” said the constable barring their way, “but there's no admittance to the stairs, just now.”
    â€œI shouldn't worry,” Blank said, smiling. “I expect you'll find your masters are expecting me.”
    Just at that moment their escort huffed up, coming abreast of Blank and Miss Bonaventure, panting. “S'alright, Cogsgrove. This'n is Sandford Blank.”
    The constable's eyes widened, and he took in Blank's appearance—gray coat, waistcoat, and trousers, bowler hat, and silver-topped cane, an orchid in his buttonhole—before finally stepping to one side. “Go on up, guv. They're waiting for you.”
    Blank couldn't imagine what the constable had heard about him to elicit that sort of reaction, but he hoped it was down to the cases in which he'd been called to assist Her Majesty's Government, and not for the less savory aspects of his past which he hoped would remain hidden and forgot.
    Miss Bonaventure in the lead, Blank following close behind, and their escort bringing up the rear, they mounted the stair.
    The warm June wind whistled in their ears as they stepped out onto the western walkway, blowing through the white-painted girders of steel that formed the walls, a crisscrossed thatch of sturdy steel beams with large open spaces in between the intersections. To their left, a short distance off, was the eastern walkway. To their right snaked the River Thames, the Tower of London on one side, Southwark on the other. Ahead of them, under a tarp stained dark by the blood seeping through, was clearly the reason that they had been summoned.
    Blank remembered another bridge, and other bodies. Watermen had loved “shooting the bridge,” riding under the old London Bridge at high tide, when the water level on one side could be as much as six feet higher than the downstream side. But it had been a dangerous pastime, to say the least. “The bridge is for wise men to cross over, and for fools to go under,” or so the popular saying of the day went. But old London Bridge had been pulled down long years ago, and Blank doubted that one in a hundred Londoners had ever heard that saying, or knew the stories behind it if they had.
    Whatever had befallen the body under the bloodied tarp, Blank suspected it wasn't something likely to engender quaint and