Mrs. Barrett’s boardinghouse is a short walk from both the tavern and the theater, which is one of the reasons, Jack assumes, that Placide and Green have never looked further for accommodations. The house isn’t particularly grand, but there is plenty of space—so much space, in fact, that in addition to taking in boarders, Mrs. Barrett runs a girls’ school on the first floor.
While they walk, Ritchie asks Jack how long he’s worked for Placide & Green, and when he learns that the company hired him two and a half months ago, he has more questions about what Jack’s been doing with himself since his father died.
Jack tells him about the brief stint with his uncle and about how Professor Girardin offered him a place to stay when things got bad. Atsome point—maybe after explaining how Girardin got him the job—Jack wonders if he’s said too much and if it might have been wiser to keep his mouth shut.
Mrs. Barrett’s boardinghouse is quiet when Jack leads Ritchie through the front door and into the entryway, where Ritchie wipes his boots and stows his cane. “If you wait here,” says Jack, “I’ll go get him.”
“Them,” Ritchie says, correcting him.
It takes Jack a minute to remember he means Green, too. “Right.”
He takes the stairs two at a time, but in the upstairs corridor, he comes to a quick halt. He isn’t sure which rooms belong to Placide’s family and which belong to Green’s, and—despite Ritchie’s request—he has no desire to stumble into the Greens’ rooms by mistake. Not at a time like this.
He listens at the door of one room, then another, and thinks he hears the soft sobs of Lydia Placide. He knocks gently, and when the door opens to reveal Lydia’s tearstained face, he sucks in his breath. Even distraught, she is stunning. “Sorry,” he says, “I don’t want to interrupt, but do you know which room your father is in?”
She throws the door open to reveal Placide, still in his costume, passed out on the bed behind her. “He’s out cold,” she says, not even bothering to lower her voice.
“With drink?” asks Jack, horrified.
She shakes her head no. “He takes something to help him sleep.”
“And Mr. Green?”
“He stays in the room next door. But no one’s seen him since last night.”
“Christ.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Thomas Ritchie’s downstairs. He’s leading the inquest and wants to talk to someone in charge.”
“Now?”
He tips his head in the direction of the bed. “Can you wake him?”
“I think so. If you can help me get him downstairs.”
Lydia and he are a good team, and together they get Placide—who is heavy on his feet and having a hard time keeping his eyes open—out of bed and into the hall. It’s hard for Jack to look at this man, who can barely stand on his own two feet, and see the man Anderson is, apparently, so enamored by. In this condition, Placide doesn’t seem like much of a man at all.
As they make their way slowly down the stairs, Jack summarizes everything that happened at the capitol—the speeches, the committee assignments, even Anderson’s rumormongering. He leaves out the bit about Anderson threatening to kill him, in case it should give Placide any ideas.
“They really believed the story about the slave revolt?” says Lydia, but before Jack can answer her, Placide does it for him, in a slightly slurred voice. “Why in the world wouldn’t they?”
“Is he drunk?” Ritchie asks them after Jack and Lydia have guided Placide into the parlor and settled him on the settee.
Placide doesn’t confirm or deny the accusation, so Lydia apologizes on her father’s behalf. “I’m so sorry. He took a sleeping tonic a little while ago.”
“I’m fine,” says Placide, but he comes off sounding like a petulant child, and Jack prays he hasn’t just made a huge mistake, delivering him to Ritchie in this condition.
“Where’s Green?” Ritchie asks Placide.
“Indisposed.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ritchie says, and Jack, who is perched on the arm of a chair, squirms in discomfort. Things would go so much better for Placide, Jack has to believe, if he started giving Ritchie straightforward answers.
Placide asks if anyone would like coffee, but makes no move to call for it.
Ritchie will not be distracted. “I said I wanted to talk to Green, too.”
