Gold Bugs

The following morning, Miriam awakened early. It was still semi-dark outside. She yawned at her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her hair. “Hmm. They wear it long here, don’t they?” It would just have to do, she thought, as she dressed in yesterday’s clothes once more. She carefully sorted through her shoulder bag to make sure there was nothing too obtrusively alien in it, then pulled her boots on.

She paused at the foot of the main staircase, poised above the polished marble floor next to the front desk. “Can I help you, ma’am?” a bellhop offered eagerly.

She smiled wanly. “Breakfast. Where is it?” The realization that she’d missed both lunch and dinner crashed down on her. Abruptly she felt almost weak from hunger.

“This way, please!” He guided her toward two huge mahogany-and-glass doors set at one side of the foyer, then ushered her to a seat at a small table, topped in spotless linen. “I shall just fetch the waiter.”

Miriam angled her chair around to take in the other diners as discreetly as possible. It’s like a historical movie! she thought. One set in a really exclusive Victorian hotel, except the Victorians hadn’t had a thing for vivid turquoise and purple wallpaper and the costumes were messed up beyond recognition. Men in Nehru suits with cutaway waists, women in long skirts or trousers and wing-collared shirts. Waiters with white aprons bearing plates of—fish? And bread rolls? The one familiar aspect was the newspaper. “Can you fetch me a paper?” she asked after the bellhop.

“Surely, ma’am!” he answered, and was off like a shot. He was back in a second and Miriam fumbled for a tip, before starting methodically on the front page.

The headlines in The London Intelligencer were bizarrely familiar, simultaneously tainted with the exotic. “Speaker: House May Impeach Crown for Adultery”—but no, there was no King Clinton in here, just unfamiliar names and a proposal to amend the Basic Law to add a collection of additional charges for which the Crown could be impeached—Adultery, Capitative Fraud, and Irreconsilience, whatever that was. They can impeach the king? Miriam shook her head, moved on to the next story. “Morris and Stokes to hang,” about a pair of jewel thieves who had killed a shopkeeper. Farther down the page was more weirdness, a list of captains of merchantmen to whom had been granted letters of marque and reprise against “the forces and agents of the continental enemy,” and a list of etheric resonances assigned for experimentation by the Teloptic Wireless Company of New Britain.

A waiter appeared at her shoulder as she was about to turn the page. “May I be of service, ma’am?”

“Sure. What’s good, today?”

He smiled broadly. “The kippers are most piquant, and if I may recommend Mrs. Wilson’s strawberry jam for after? Does ma’am prefer tea or coffee?”

“Coffee. Strong, with milk.” She nodded. “I’ll take your recommendations, please. That’ll be all.”

He rustled away from her, leaving her puzzling over the meaning of a story about taxation powers being granted by The-King-In-Parliament to the Grand Estates, and enforcement of the powers of printing rights by the Royal Excise. Even the addition of a powerful dose of coffee and a plate of smoked fish—not her customary start to the day, but nevertheless remarkably edible on an empty stomach—didn’t make it any clearer. This place is so complex! Am I ever going to understand it? she wondered.

She was almost to the bottom of her coffee when a different bellhop arrived, bearing a silver platter. “Message for the Widow Fletcher?” he asked, using the pseudonym Miriam had checked in under.

“That’s me.” Miriam took the note atop the platter—a piece of card with strips of printed tape gummed to it. MEET ME AT 54 GRT MAURICE ST AT 10 SEE BATES STOP EB ENDS. “Ah, good.” She glanced at the clock above the ornate entrance. “Can you arrange a cab for me, please? To Great Maurice Street, leaving in twenty minutes.”

Folding her paper she rose and returned to her room to retrieve her hat and topcoat. The game’s afoot, she thought excitedly.

By the time the cab found its way to Great Maurice Street she’d cooled off a little, taking time to collect her thoughts and begin to work out what she needed to do and say. She also made sure her right glove was pulled down around her wrist, and the sleeve of her blouse was bunched up toward the elbow. Not that it was the ideal way to make an exit—indeed, it would wreck her plans completely if she had to escape by means of the temporary tattoo of a certain intricate knot—but if Erasmus had decided to sell her out to the constabulary, he’d be sorry.

Great Maurice Street was a curving cobblestoned boulevard hemmed in on either side by expensive stone town houses. Little stone bridges leapt from sidewalk to broad front doors across a trench which held two levels of subterranean windows. The street and sidewalks had been swept free of snow, although huge piles stood at regular intervals in the road to await collection. Miriam stepped down from the cab, paid the driver, and marched along the sidewalk until she identified number 54. “Charteris, Bates and Charteris,” she muttered to herself. “Sounds legal.” She advanced on the door and pulled the bell-rope.

A short, irritated-looking clerk opened the door. “Who are you?” he demanded.

Miriam stared down her nose at him. “I’m here to see Mr. Bates,” she said.

“Who did you say you were?” He raised a hand to cup his ear and Miriam realized he was half-deaf.

“Mrs. Fletcher, to see Mr. Bates,” she replied loudly.

“Oh. Come in, then, I’ll tell someone you’re here.”

Lawyers’ offices didn’t differ much between here and her own world, Miriam realized. There was a big, black, ancient-looking electric typewriter with a keyboard like a church organ that had shrunk in the wash, and there was an archaic telephone with a separate speaking horn, but otherwise the only differences were the clothes. Which, for a legal secretary in this place and time—male, thin, harried-looking—included a powdered wig, knee breeches, and a cutaway coat. “Please be seated—ah, no,” said the secretary, looking bemused as a tall fellow dressed entirely in black opened the door of an inner office and waggled a finger at Miriam: “This is His Honor Mr. Bates,” he explained. “You are … ?”

“I’m Mrs. Fletcher,” Miriam repeated patiently. “I’m supposed to be seeing Mr. Bates. Is that right?”

“Ah, yes.” Bates nodded congenially at her. “If you’d like to come this way, please?”

The differences from her own world became vanishingly small inside his office, perhaps because so many lawyers back home aimed for a traditional feel to their furnishings. Miriam glanced round. “Burgeson isn’t here yet,” she observed disapprovingly.

“He’s been detained,” said Bates. “If you’d care to take a seat?”

“Yes.” Miriam sat down. “How much has Erasmus told you?”

Bates picked up a pair of half-moon spectacles and balanced them on the bridge of his nose. His whiskers twitched, walruslike. “He has told me enough, I think,” he intoned in a plummy voice. “A woman fallen upon hard times, husband dead after years abroad, papers lost in an unfortunate pursuit—I believe he referred to the foundering of the Greenbaum Lamplight, a most unpleasant experience for you, I am sure—and therefore in need of the emollient reaffirmation of her identity, is that right? He vouched for you most plaintively. And he also mentioned something about a fortune overseas, held in trust, to which you have limited access.”

“Yes, that’s all correct,” Miriam said fervently. “I am indeed in need of new papers—and a few other services best rendered by a man of the law.”

“Well. I can see at a glance that you are no Frenchie,” he said, nodding at her. “And so I can see nothing wrong with your party. It will take but an hour to draw up the correct deeds and post them with the inns of court, to declare your identity fair and square. Erasmus said you were born at Shreveport on, ah, if I may be so indelicate, the seventh of September, in the year of our lord nineteen hundred and sixty nine. Is that correct?”