Doktor Glass by Thomas Brennan

that Langton had no doubt.
    He topped up the stove with coal and left his office, which still bore faint odors of Sister Wright’s scent, the memory of white flowers. Hefound Forbes Paterson’s room empty; a detective in the main office told him that Paterson would return that afternoon. Langton left a message and decided to follow McBride out to Bootle.
    A Victoria Street tram took him from the city center, along Scotland Road and Stanley Road. Langton sat on the top deck among the smells of wet cloth, leather, and arcing electricity from the flexing pantograph above him. He watched the streets unfurl through smudged windows. Even though the royal procession would pass nowhere near this area, many of the houses and shops bore bunting and streamers; empire flags hung from windows next to special commemorative duotones issued by the popular newssheets, so that Queen Victoria’s severe gaze watched Langton from a hundred or more vantage points.
    The poorer streets seemed the most fervent; as the tram waited outside Stanley Hospital, Langton looked down the flower-themed roads opposite—Holly Street, Daisy, Rose, Ivy—and saw garlands of red, white, and blue strung between the houses. As the tram pulled away with a lurch and a crackling hiss of sparks, he saw men on ladders affixing more streamers to the gas lampposts.
    Then, lulled by the soporific motion of the tram, Langton half-closed his eyes and drifted away. Images formed in his mind: the faceless man, Professor Caldwell Chivers, the mad leap over the dock gates, Sister Wright unfastening the jet buttons. Sarah.
    He awoke as the tram jolted to a stop. He looked around, blinking in confusion, and recognized Trinity Church on Merton Road. He clattered down the spiral steps of the tram and jumped onto the cobbles as the conductor rang the bell. Still drowsy, Langton walked up toward the church; if he remembered correctly, Gloucester and Worcester roads lay to the left.
    Most of his fellow pedestrians were reasonably well dressed, their clothes clean and pressed if a little worn. Mainly working-class families occupied the simple two-up, two-down terrace houses, which represented a foothold on the ladder of respectability. Langton’s own grandfather had lived in Worcester Road until his determination andhard work in engineering had lifted his family to Everton Brow and beyond.
    Langton found Durham and Kepler’s address on Gloucester Road and saw a police hansom waiting outside. A sinewy woman in a blue apron opened the front door and pointed Langton upstairs, where McBride and another constable rummaged through clothes laid out on a narrow bed; two beds’ legs stood in small pots of kerosene, to stop cockroaches from climbing up them in the night. The smell of the viscous fuel mixed with the smells of damp plaster and tobacco.
    “Any luck, Sergeant?”
    “Some, sir.” McBride led him to an oak chest of drawers in the corner. Laid out on the top were two General Post Office telegram pads, each with less than half of their blank forms remaining; stubs of train tickets for the Liverpool–Southport overhead electric railway, and for the Great Western line to London Euston; copies of the
Liverpool Echo
going back four days; assorted pens and pencils.
    Langton picked up the blank telegram forms and crossed to the window. Enough light came through the dusty glass to reveal indentations on the pads’ surfaces. “We should be able to decipher the last message, back at the station. But people sometimes make mistakes when they compose a telegram; they rip out a page and start afresh.”
    McBride grinned. “I’ve got Constable Naylor going through the landlady’s rubbish in the backyard, sir. The corporation dustmen don’t come until tomorrow, so we’ve the best part of a week’s offerings to sort through.”
    Langton didn’t envy the constable his task, but he’d had to perform similar duties, if not worse, at the start of his own career. He looked around the room