Doktor Glass by Thomas Brennan Page A

and tried to picture the men living there. Two narrow beds of pine, with chamber pots beneath and worn quilts on top. A washstand with a white china jug and bowl, both covered in fine cracks like spiders’ webs. Floorboards dark with wax and age, with a threadbare rug of red and yellow in the center. Behind the door, fixed to theyellowing wallpaper with a brass tack, a framed embroidery typical of those produced by young girls as they learned to sew:
Be Thankful Unto The Lord.
    The room did not encourage much thought of gratitude, but many lived in conditions far worse than these. Far worse.
    “Has the landlady much to say of her lodgers?” Langton asked.
    McBride shrugged. “Said they were quiet, sir. Kept themselves to themselves, caused no trouble. The only complaint she had was the hours they kept.”
    “How so?”
    “Well, sir, they sometimes came in three or four in the morning, and this is when they was on their day shifts and had to be up early. Stinking of ale, too, she said, although they never seemed drunk. Neighbors complained, as neighbors do. Got so she was about to throw them out, but they offered to pay a shilling each extra a week. Seems that made her a bit more tolerant.”
    So the two men had joined on the same date, lived in the same house, worked in identical jobs although on different shifts. One had been murdered, the other had fled. No doubt Chief Inspector Purcell would jump to the obvious conclusion, that Durham killed Kepler. And motive? That would no doubt appear as the case unfolded.
    Langton mistrusted the obvious. “Did the landlady see any visitors? Any letters or telegrams?”
    “Nobody called on them, sir, but they had more than a few telegrams, she said. Sometimes one a day.”
    Before Langton could ask more, the stairs echoed to the heavy tread of boots. Another constable appeared, saw Langton, and saluted. He carried a sheaf of stained papers. “Sir, I found these in the rubbish.”
    The crumpled yellow telegrams bore questionable and pungent stains but were still legible. Langton spread them out on the top of the chest of drawers. Optimistically, he’d hoped to find some of thetelegrams received by Durham and Kepler; instead, the pages seemed to be unsent drafts prepared by the men. Some of the words had been crossed out and rewritten, or moved to another position.
    The contents seemed banal:
Aunt Agnes well. Fever gone. Hopes to visit soon. Asks for news of Mother.
    Another:
Uncle Toby pleased with gift. Sends best. Weather bright but unsettled.
    McBride shook his head. “Just family gossip, sir. Boring.”
    Langton compared the different drafts of the messages. A penny a word soon added up, especially for men on poor wages, but whoever had composed the telegrams had gone to ridiculous lengths to get the text in a certain order.
    He smiled. If he were a Boer plotting something, he’d take care with his communications. A straightforward code would result in gibberish being transmitted, and the GPO clerks always notified the police of any suspicious transmission. Family news would arouse no suspicions or queries.
    “Sergeant, find the nearest post offices and check their ledgers against these serial numbers; obviously, we’re looking for ones in the sequence. Find out the destination address. We need to know who Durham and Kepler were in contact with.”
    “Sir.” Instead of taking the crumpled pages, McBride began noting down the serial numbers imprinted at the top of each sheet.
    Langton let Naylor go downstairs to use soap and water and told the other constable to wait outside for a few minutes. Langton wanted to think for a while, to absorb the surroundings and the discovered facts. He sat on the edge of the bed beneath the window and looked around. The smell of boiling cabbage and wet laundry wafted up from below and mixed with the kerosene from the cockroach traps.
    Was there really a Boer plot afoot? Langton had some difficulty believing it. Queen Victoria had the