The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati Read Free Book Online Page A

with—”
    “Mr. Comstock—”
    “Inspector Comstock! Inspector!” he roared, spittle flying. “You will give me my title!”
    “Inspector Comstock,” Baker said, coolly. “Allow me to answer your questions one at a time. I find it hard to believe you don’t know what’s happening on Fifth Avenue tonight. The Vanderbilts’ costume ball begins in a few hours. A third of the city’s uniformed officers will be there to control the crowds, and more than half these detectives will be patrolling the area in plain clothes. Those orders came to us by order of the mayor, the governor, and the senators of the state.”
    Comstock’s fleshy mouth jerked and puckered. “Where are your priorities, sir? Do you put the petty concerns of the dissolute rich above the welfare of the youth of this city? These men are not needed on Fifth Avenue, I can assure you. Where are your morals?”
    “My morals are as sturdy as your own,” Baker said dryly. “And mypriorities are set by my superiors. I suggest you take this up with them, because I cannot accommodate you or your society.”
    •   •   •
    I N THE DETECTIVES ’ squad room Maroney sat slumped, his legs stretched out before him like felled trees. A cigar was anchored beneath a mustache as glossy and thick as a badger’s pelt.
    Jack said, “Sometimes I regret the captain’s sangfroid. I think with very little effort he might have caused Comstock’s head to explode just where he stood. An opportunity missed.”
    “I would have liked to see that.” The cigar jerked with every word.
    Jack sat at his desk to contemplate the stacks of paper needing his attention.
    “I’m sure we could sell tickets at a premium to see that baboon’s head fly apart like a pumpkin,” said Maroney. “Set up chairs for the audience. Parasols, for the splatter.”
    “The man has friends,” Jack reminded his partner.
    “Not true,” Maroney said. “He has lackeys. He has compatriots. He even has admirers. But if he didn’t carry that pistol in his vest and the postmaster general in his pocket, he’d be easy enough to squash. As it is I wait daily for someone to put a bullet in his noggin.”
    Jack said, “You’re forgetting about the Young Men’s Christian Association and his Society for the Suppression of Vice.”
    Maroney waved his cigar like a magic wand that could make short work of such pallid adversaries. He was hoisting himself up and out of his chair when the door flew open and Michael Larkin dashed in, Comstock’s box of confiscated dirty pictures clamped under one arm. Without a word to either of them he leapt onto a desk, unlatched a high cupboard with one hand, and shoved the box in with the other.
    Larkin was sitting at the same desk bent over a piece of paper when a patrolman came in, not a week in uniform. The kid ducked his head apologetically.
    “Baker wants the whole station house searched,” he said. “Can I come in?”
    He made a quick and superficial job of it, only glancing in Michael Larkin’s direction before he excused himself again and left.
    There was a long silence.
    Maroney cleared his throat. “Michael, my friend. Not on duty tonight?”
    “No,” came the answer. The eldest of the Larkin brothers looked up at them and winked. “All of a sudden I’ve got quite a lot of reading to do.”
    “Just out of the blue,” said Jack.
    “Fell into my lap,” Larkin agreed amiably. “So to speak. Would you care to have a look yourself?”
    Jack leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the desk. It had been a long day, starting at dawn in the greenhouses at home. He thought of the ferry, of ferocious Sister Ignatia and the orphans, of the lady doctor. Savard, they had called her.
    He bent over the report in front of him but his mind stayed focused on that unusual face, Elizabeth or Mary, Ida or Edith or Helen. He fished the city directory out of a drawer and flipped through the pages until he found two listings: Sophie E. Savard and