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mind.”
    Lestrade watched the three of them head off through the thickening snow toward the mouth of the alley. That should keep them all from getting under his feet for a while, all the scientists and adventurers and journalists. He turned back to regard the sheet-covered body of Emily Dawson. Get them all away, let him do what he did best without interference: good, old-fashioned police work.

 
    4
    “Y OU ’ RE THE H ERO OF THE E MPIRE , M R . S MITH ”
    Aloysius Bent declined the well-telegraphed offer to follow Professor Rubicon, the young constable, and the earnest bearded fellow from the scene of the crime, opting instead for a quick gin in the Golden Ball and a steam-cab back to Grosvenor Square. He would visit Rubicon, of course, but at his convenience, thank you very much, and not following the clumsy trail set by Lestrade and his boys as though he were some hound to be set after a rabbit.
    Besides, he thought as he paid the driver, I’ve had enough of standing out freezing my effing balls off for one morning, especially after the morning’s news. The snow was all well and good if you could find a nice, warm pair of titties to bury your cold nose in, for the price of a couple of farthings. This prostitutes’ strike … he didn’t quite know what to make of it, nor where his next tumble was going to come from.
    It was then he noticed the man, tall, in a heavy overcoat and with a bowler on his head, furtively lurking around the gate to the house.
    “Oi,” Bent shouted. “What you after?”
    The man, still a dozen yards away, looked up and squinted at Bent through the snow, then turned on his heel and hurried away. Some autograph hunter, no doubt, or a snooping reporter Bent didn’t know. He let himself into the house, stamping his feet on the rough mat and closing the door against the flurries of snow. As he unwound the muffler from around his bullish neck, Bent sniffed the air. Smelled like the housekeeper, Mrs. Cadwallader, had been baking. He could just taste one of her dainty little cakes—or maybe three or four, washed down with a gallon of tea. Or ale. He rubbed some feeling back into his spadelike hands. Oh yes, a big pitcher of ale, a plate of cakes, and his feet up in the study in front of a roaring fire, to mull over the events of the morning.
    “Mrs. C!” roared Bent from the beeswaxed, wood-paneled hallway. “Where’s young Gideon? And is Miss Maria back yet?”
    Mrs. Cadwallader, all bustle and apron and starched white blouse keeping her vast bosom in check, emerged from the door to the kitchen like the ruddy-faced figurehead of some proud ship, the sails of her skirts buoyed by the warm scent of freshly baked cinnamon cakes. Not for the first time, Bent thanked his lucky stars for the way he’d fallen on his feet the way he had. He wouldn’t have fancied another winter in the hovel in the East End where he’d spent the last ten years—wasn’t sure, to be honest, he’d have survived it. This little place, though … never in his wildest dreams had Aloysius Bent thought he’d ever have a Mayfair address. The place had belonged to Captain Lucian Trigger and Doctor John Reed, and as they were a pair of homosexuals, there’d been no family for it to pass on to once they took a dive off the top of that brass dragon hovering above Hyde Park, ready to rain fiery death upon Buckingham Palace and all in it. Bent found it hard to believe all that business—hooking up with Gideon and the mysterious mechanical girl, Maria, scrapping with mummies on the Embankment, discovering lost pyramids in the shifting sands of Egypt—was only five months ago. A lot had happened since July, and the best of it was when they all moved into the Grosvenor Square house, so that young Gideon was fully able to succeed that old fraud Trigger as the official Hero of the Empire.
    “By God, Sally, that smells effing good,” said Bent, taking off his battered derby and placing it on the coat stand beside his