Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City by Meljean Brook Read Free Book Online Page A

halfway through our shift and was out until . . .” She shook her head and looked to the others for help. “What time was it?”
    “Half-past eight.” The gray-haired woman’s hands and arms were skeletal prosthetics, made from steel and configured like bones. Instead of using pliers to bend the metal strips, she simply pinched and rolled. “We’d just come off dinner bell and were having a nip outside when his cart came into the yard.”
    Given the time it would take to travel from Westminster to St. Olave in heavy traffic, that was consistent with the butler’s statement that Foley had left Redditch’s at seven-thirty—and it meant that Foley had arrived only fifteen minutes after Redditch had been killed. Even Rhys’s engine-powered two-seater balloon could barely cover the distance in that short time.
    So Foley might have arranged the murder or unlocked the gate, but he hadn’t been in Portman Square when the wheel had entered the garden.
    “Thank you.” Mina started for the stairs, aware that conversation had begun again, quiet and quick over tables and workstations, full of speculation. What had Foley done?
    Nothing, yet. She knocked at the door to his quarters. The bounder who answered was only a bit taller than Mina but probably weighed twice as much, stout and thick with muscle. Dressed in shirtsleeves and trousers, he’d pushed his suspenders from his shoulders and let them hang in loops at the sides of his legs. Short-cropped brown curls were shot through with gray, and lines of exhaustion bracketed his thin mouth.
    Holding the door open, Foley looked at her for a long moment without expression, but he must have been thinking her presence through, searching for a reason. “You’re that Wentworth woman.”
    “Detective Inspector Wentworth, yes. May I speak with you, Mr. Foley?”
    “Yes.” He stepped out onto the stair landing, his gaze searching the work floor below. “In the newssheets, you’re always investigating murders. Is it one of mine?”
    One of his laborers killed, or one of his murders? “May we speak with you inside?”
    Nodding, he turned and led her into the small quarters that served as residence and office. A single chair sat in front of a desk. On the surface, a ledger lay open, the ink in the columns fresh. She’d interrupted him in the middle of work, then. A small amount of amber liquor remained in a glass beside the adding machine, and Mina spotted the bottle on the shelf—new, imported from the New World. Too expensive for most manufactory owners.
    At the desk, Foley pulled up his suspenders and reached for the jacket hanging on the back of his chair. “Is it one of my workers?” he asked again.
    “I am not aware of any death involving your employees, Mr. Foley. We understand that you had dinner with Lord Redditch tonight.”
    He frowned a little, sat. His gaze landed on the liquor bottle. “I did.”
    “Was that a gift from his lordship?”
    “Yes. Or you might call it a bribe, maybe.”
    “For what?”
    Bitterness laced his reply. “His attempt to persuade me not to install automatons.”
    “And you didn’t appreciate his attempt to bribe you?”
    “I was appreciative enough not to leave the bottle there.” He shook his head. “But no, I wasn’t appreciative of what he had to say. He sits in that big house of his, sits on his ideals. He can shove them up his ass.”
    “Did you argue?”
    “You could say that. He tried to make me see reason. I told him what reason was.”
    “What is it?”
    Foley settled back in his chair, laced his fingers over his stomach. “He tells me I’d be doing all of my employees a disservice if I bring in automatons. He says I’ll be putting them out of work, taking food out of their bellies.”
    “Isn’t that true?”
    “Some of them would lose their jobs, yes. I’ll still need hands to load the machines, to wind them. Not all of them will go, but some of them.” His jaw set briefly. “But they would have gone