“Not for him, Mr. Ipcar. For you.” His jaw dropped. “Of course we’ll have to teach you about infant care, speech development, environmental enrichment, the importance of a consistent routine, sleep training, nutrition, and emergency aid. I mean,” I said, “you did say you intended to be a responsible guardian?” He gave a nod, a bare, anxious jerk of his chin. “So then you’ll have no trouble with the weeklycheck-up visits, either. Just to make sure the child’s home is comfortable and hygienic.”
Every word seemed to be a new pin, deflating his paternal enthusiasm. “You might pay for a professional cleaner,” he put in. He was trying, but he was wavering.
“Oh, we wouldn’t dream of being so officious,” I purred. “We will of course be setting up a trust for the child, along with any royalties due him for adaptations of his story, which monies will be his when he reaches legal age. And not a second before.” I lowered my voice, as if imparting a great secret. “You may rest assured we will guard his trust with everything the Board can bring to bear, Mr. Ipcar. Many of us on board and on the Board are parents, grandparents, relatives, teachers, and guardians. We have not had a child to protect in several centuries, but we do not intend to let that make us less than fully diligent in our responsibilities.”
“So I see.” His glance had begun flicking to either side, as if he were an animal trapped and looking for escape. “So I. So—when? Listen, Miss Gentleman, if I could just ask you a few—”
I raised a hand. “Mr. Ipcar.” He froze, mouth still open around the syllables of a word I didn’t need or want to hear. “Let me set your mind at ease. You have no child.”
“But—but…” He slumped back, wanting but not daring to believe me. “But Flora and I—”
“The baby is not yours. You have no strong claim tocustody, any more than any other ordinary passenger—though of course you may petition for it if you wish.”
“No!” he squeaked, and cleared his throat. “No,” he said. “But if it’s not mine—then whose is it?”
“The father has been informed and is taking the steps he feels are appropriate,” I said. “That is all I can say at this time. But rest assured that the child will be well cared for—”
“Good, good,” he said, and shot up from the sofa as though gravity had briefly ceased to restrain him. “I appreciate the Board taking on this Herculean task, and trust that—as a disinterested outsider—”
“Goodbye, Mr. Ipcar,” I said, merciful as a hanging judge, and the man saw his chance and all but fled the Bureau.
It didn’t bring me any closer to our kidnapper, but I felt heaps more cheerful about the case all the same.
I SENT Anote to Melodie Chee at the Rococo—a delightful woman, an absolute gem of a cocktail mixer—to confirm Mr. Ipcar’s alibi, and gathered my things. The solar lights were beginning to shade into twilight’s lavender; it had been a long, exhausting day, and I was grateful for it to be over.
When I made my way home, every inch of my soulbruised from too many kinds of pettiness—as though I’d been trampled by the feet of a million furious ants—it was only to find an official summons from the Board. They were demanding a hearing on what they were calling the Infant Incident, and they wanted it two days from now in the Star Chamber. With witnesses.
Most of the time a detective could simply submit their report in paper form and never hear a thing about it again. Truth found, questions answered, wrapped up neatly with a bow and put away in a box somewhere like a grandparent’s love letters. Occasionally one of us unearthed the kind of iniquity that required convening the Crime Committee for a trial, which was a long drawn-out process that moved very slowly and in which everyone spoke very carefully through a phalanx of legal representatives.
This was neither of those things: A hearing was called when there came an event whose mystery the Board felt they needed to understand, and whose complexity they wanted me to answer for firsthand. Perhaps a trial would come later—certainly I had been planning to recommend one in my full write-up of the case—but at present the Board wanted to be able to ask questions and receive answers and feel as though they were doing their duty as governors of the ship and its passengers.
I generally approved of meddling and nosiness—except, of course, when it was turned against me. Alas, answeringto the Board was a part of the job, and I could see little use in fighting it.
I whipped up a hasty dinner for myself from the autochef and began laying out the facts of the case. Timelines, names of witnesses, loose ends still in need of tying, and, for that last one, a lengthy dive into some very specific, uncommon databases. John and Ruthie’s custody petition, too, since this would be my best opportunity of seeing that addressed with due speed. Otherwise that kind of paperwork could take a year or more.
Hours later, swimming in text, my head snapped up as someone knocked softly on my door.
A flash of panic, hastily tamped down. A kidnapper was not, I told myself, likely to knock before entering. And anyway the baby wasn’t here.
I rubbed the crust from my eyes and opened the door—only to find Violet St. Owen there on the threshold, looking like all my weaknesses made flesh. Her hair was up, her smile was shy, and the solar-lamp evening made her skin glow gold. She was wearing a blue knit dress she’d no doubt made herself, festooned with bobbles, and it looked so soft and touchable it made me want to throw myself into her arms and weep. “I came to see how your baby blanket was coming along,” she said, and then—stars help me—dimpled. “But I suppose you haven’t had much in the way of knitting time today.”
“Come in and have a drink,” I said, stepping back and yielding to the inevitable. “I’ll tell you all about it.”
Sexual temptations were easy to resist—it felt noble somehow to lust and pine in romantic silence. But I’d been buffeted by a thousand passengers’ very loud fears and nightmares for the past several hours, as I defended the well-being of a tiny human who had no idea what kind of chaos he’d accidentally set off by merely being brought into the world. I was in desperate need of some kindness and a listening ear.
I couldn’t trust Violet in everything, but I could trust her for this.
I went to the autochef for drinks while Violet pulled a spare chair up to the table. The surface was littered with my notes and outlines, not to mention the forms I’d been filling in to officially notify the people I was calling as witnesses. It was a dismaying amount of paper, white and suffocating as a snowbank.
Violet clearly thought so, too, frowning as she nudged things just enough to make room for the glass I brought her: a double pour of starlight sparkling on the ocean. “Is the case going well or not? I can’t tell by looking.”
“Put it this way,” I said, sitting down hard and taking a long pull of mostly gin with a hint of winter’s first snow. “I’m almost at the part where I seriously consider putting out my own eyes with a pair of fountain pens.”
Violet raised her glass in a sardonic toast. “Paperwork seems a shabby reward for the preservation of law and order.”
“Paperworkislaw and order,” I countered. “The papers are what make us a society and not just a gaggle of desperate people sharing a geography. We set up a system because a system can be permanent, where human beings are not.”
Violet’s mouth flattened. “You’re presuming the system is supposed to serve the people, rather than the people serving the system.”
