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“Leave? I can’t leave, I—”

“Leave,” Mr. Merkin said. “You seem to be stomaching the smell all right now, but this is nothing. You’ll have to be out of the house tomorrow morning and not come back til the day after, Yer Grace. And that goes for all the maids and everyone else as well. The butler can stay with me, and make sure that the silver stays in its place.”

Simeon heard a little groan from Honeydew’s direction.

“We’ll open the house up and pipe all the gas out. It’ll take a day and a night, maybe two days. We’ll go down there, empty it out, and wash it. Then I’ll replace the pipes, but that’s a different matter.”

“Will you go down in the hole yourself?” Simeon asked, unable to imagine the gaudy Mr. Merkin making his way down into a pit.

“No, no,” Merkin said impatiently. “I’ve the Dead Watch for that. In the normal run of things I use a couple of mud larks. Now I need to take my leave, Yer Grace. If you’d be out of the house by morning, I’d be obliged. As you can imagine, the Watch may well be needed in the city any day, so I need to start.”

He paused and hauled down his waistcoat so that it covered his stomach better. “Now I’ve one more thing to tell you, Yer Grace. The Dead Watch ain’t my servants, and I can’t speak for their behavior.”

“What worries you about them?” Simeon asked.

“Thievery worries me. I know my mud larks.”

“Mud larks?” Simeon interrupted.

“Lads who grow up in the mud of the Thames,” Merkin said impatiently. “I pick the best of the lot and my lads don’t thieve. But the Dead Watch are pirates. They go where no one else in the city will go. They do the tasks that no one else will do. They think themselves as outside the law, see?”

Honeydew made a groaning sound.

“You need them, Yer Grace, cause I ain’t going to get anyone else down there to clean out that muck. They’re the only ones.”

“Even if we paid—”

“There ain’t enough money in the world. Besides, chances are if I sent one of my larks down there, the poor fool would die and then I’d have to cope with a dead body on top of it all, if there ain’t one down there already. That’s a worrying smell you have down there, I don’t mind telling you.” He swung about and peered at Honeydew. “Anyone missing from the household in the past few years? A housemaid run away without notice, that sort of thing?”

Honeydew drew himself upright. “Absolutely not.”

“Good. There’s gas down there, understand? Not air. The Dead Watch, now, they have lungs made out of steel. I’ve seen them in action and they go where no one can go, down in the Thames, for example, holding their breath longer than a man should.”

“Honeydew,” Simeon said apologetically, “we need that pit cleaned out, no matter how much it disturbs the household.”

“They’re used to going into a house where a man has been dead for a month or two,” Merkin continued, hooking his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and rocking back and forth a bit. “They take whatever money’s on the corpse, and see it as their due. Same for a floater. If they pick up a knickknack or two in a house of that type, who’s to bother? There’s no relatives, see? Otherwise they would have found the poor dead soul before he moldered away.”

“Absolutely,” Simeon assured him.

“I’ll move everything to the barn,” Honeydew said. “And guard it.”

“That’ll do it,” Merkin said. “They’re not really robbers.”

“Just thieves,” Honeydew put in.

“They might pick up a thing here or there, something left before their eye, but as I say, Yer Grace, they’re doing a job as no one else will do.” He turned. “Now, if you’ll forgive me, I’ve got to make arrangements. Mr. Honeydew here showed me where the pipes come out on the hillside. We’ll be pulling them from that direction, at least till they break in our hands, while the Dead Watch is doing their job.” And with that, he left.

“I’ll stay in the house, Honeydew. You can put the silver in my study. I’m just turning the tide with my father’s papers.”

“There’s a nice desk in the Dower House,” Honeydew said soothingly. “I’ll have all your papers transferred there immediately. If Your Grace would excuse me, I have a number of arrangements to make. I don’t trust those miscreants anywhere near the silver. It must be removed from the house. That and everything that could be fenced.”

Simeon walked back into his study and sat down. He had left a complicated letter from Mr. Kinnaird open on his desk. He tried to return to its detailed description of the state of the townhouse on St. James Square. Water had broken through the roof and seeped into the attics; rats had made nests in the kitchen…

The smell of the sewer seemed to cling to his skin. He sniffed his sleeve, but it was his imagination. Or—

He stood up. He had had a bath two hours ago, but it was time for another.

Chapter Twenty-one