“All of them had torches?” Caulfield asks. “Or just some of them?”
Jack can’t even bring himself to listen to Placide’s answer.
There is no way the troupe is going to be able to keep a story like this straight. The actors have a hard enough time delivering their lines when they’ve walked around, for days beforehand, with scripts in front of their faces. Once Ritchie begins interviewing them, they are bound to contradict each other, to conflate events, to color in their own details. Jack can’t blame them—it’s who they are. None of them would have gone into the theater if they didn’t—at some level—like to hear themselves talk.
GILBERT
Gilbert’s jawbone is sore tothe touch, and when he takes the stairs from the loft down to the shop on Saturday morning, he feels a sharp, stabbing pain in his side.
The Common Council’s decree is still in effect—no businesses are to operate until after the burial. But Kemp’s outburst the previous evening has set everyone on edge, so they are all in their places, tools in hand, at the regular time.
Gilbert has barely begun to rake the coals in his forge when he hears the sound of a horse in the alley and, a few moments later, a pounding at the door of the smithy. “Are we meant to answer it?” Ned asks the room.
“What if it’s someone trying to shut us down?” says Nick.
“That’d be more than all right,” Gilbert says as he limps toward the door.
The knocking continues, and when Gilbert finally gets the door unlocked, he is surprised to find himself face-to-face with Elliott Price Jr.
“Can I help you?” he asks.
Mr. Price seems agitated, and when he speaks, the words tumble out of his mouth. “Is Kemp around?”
Gilbert has run into Price, on visits to Della’s, at least a half-dozen times, but he’s fairly sure Price doesn’t recognize him. “I’m afraid he ain’t. Anything I can help you with?”
“When do you expect him in?” Price asks.
“I couldn’t tell you. Master Kemp’s been staying busy with the patrol ever since the fire, but I would assume he’ll check in here first before he rides out this morning.”
Price seems uncertain of his next move.
“Do you have a card?” Gilbert finally asks. “I can be sure he gets it.”
Price eyes the shop’s interior and tells Gilbert he’d rather wait, so Gilbert has no choice but to offer him a seat at the table in front of the fireplace.
The man has a hard time sitting still. “Do I know you?” he asks Gilbert at one point as he runs his hands along a rack of tongs.
Gilbert sees no advantage to telling Price he is Della’s brother. “I worked at Pete Goode’s before I came here. You a customer of his?”
Price sucks air through his teeth. “That’s not it.”
At one point, Price walks out into the alley to watch for Kemp’s arrival. “What do you think he wants with him?” Marcus asks as they peer at the man through the window.
“It’s anybody’s guess,” says Gilbert, but before they can get around to doing much guessing, Kemp gallops down Locust Alley on his horse.
“Mr. Kemp?” Gilbert hears Price say, after Kemp has dismounted. “I was talking to John Gamble, and he said to come see you. Says you’re now the captain of the first class of patrol?”
Kemp stands up a little taller. “I am.”
Gilbert and Marcus move closer to the window, where they can get a good look at the two men. “I need the patrol’s help finding a runaway.”
“Who?” says Kemp.
Gilbert’s body stiffens. If Elliott Price is looking for a runaway, there’s only one person it’s likely to be.
“It’s a house servant named Cecily Patterson.”
“That your family name?” Kemp asks. “Patterson?”
