pretend to know how I do what I do.”
“How do they suppose you do it?”
“Satanic rituals; clairvoyance; doppelgängers; a network of criminals doing my bidding by setting up innocent people; lucky guesswork through a web of false evidence; and other such nonsense. Oh, and my personal favourite, a magic mirror.”
They both chuckled.
“So how do you do it?”
“How did Mozart write entire symphonies without a single correction? How can a dog find its way home from a foreign country, even stowing away on a ship across the sea, entirely on its own? How did a spider manage to spin a geometrically, infinitesimally perfect web in an underground Yucatán cave a few years ago?”
“I haven’t the foggiest.”
“Instinct, Julia. Inspiration. They did it by tapping into something that cannot be measured, something beyond their knowledge. Deduction ought to be governed by hard work. A to B to C, following a linear trail of clues. But my mind works differently. Let me give you an example.” Lady Law’s gaze rested on a slim, middle-aged woman reading a bible across the aisle to their left. From her pocket she retrieved a pair of odd-looking brass goggles that extended in segments, as though each lens was a telescope in its own right, with several magnifications. She put them on and fiddled with tiny knobs on the sides of the frame, adjusting the magnifications. After several moments of studying her subject across the aisle, she began, “That woman is a notary’s widow. Very recently. She has rheumatism, but her new beau, the pharmacist, has given her a fresh medicine to try. She lives nearby and makes her living selling bibles door-to-door. Either her husband’s or her new beau’s name may be Stephen.”
Julia’s pensive frown focused on the goggles. “Admit it, you made most of that up,” she challenged. “Notary’s widow! Now I’ve heard everything.”
“You heard a smattering, a trifle of what I could infer from a closer study. Observe the paper cuts on her finger and thumb, how she turns the pages not with those digits but with the nail of her forefinger; paper cuts are sore for a while after the wound is made. Then there is the darkening of her fingertips and the faint ink stains on the waist of her dress, mere spatters now, washed and washed again. The letter in her shopping basket has a smudged letterhead. She has lately sorted paper, and has touched ink consistently over a long period, but she is not a notary. Her husband was.”
“How—”
“She has recently switched her wedding ring to the opposite hand—observe the depression in her wedding finger. Then she looked up and swallowed when the choir sang “ …on the feast of Stephen. ” An emotional reaction. Either she misses her husband or it is a pang of guilt for her dishonourable liaison with the pharmacist. Stephen.”
Julia shook her head in mock disbelief. Of course, Lady Law couldn’t prove any of this. It was all supposition. But given enough time and resources, a mind this observant might very well best any problem by virtue of sheer deduction. With a woman like this on her side, she had nothing to fear.
“And the pharmacist?” she asked for fun.
“Oh, that one is a little trickier.” Holding her parasol at her side, Lady Law turned for a fraction of a second, then, without warning, yanked the butt of the handle. To Julia’s shock, the action unsheathed a two-foot-long blade, rapier-sharp. “Do not move. Two men entered the church, but only one remains. He wears a dark green bowler hat and is standing near the holy water trough.”
“You know him?” A surge of dread petrified Julia.
“No. The second man may or may not be waiting outside—a straightforward ambush.”
Ambush? Straightforward? “Eh?” Julia gasped. This was a church, not a Whitechapel back alley! What the heck was going on?
“They may be here for you, but I doubt it,” Lady Law suggested, her soft whisper sharpening for emphasis. “It will not