Chapter Four
"Tell me what you notice, Miss Baker," Cordelia orders, hands tucked behind her back and chest squared. She's sobered up a bit, though she's so consistently stoic it's difficult to tell how much it impacted her in the first place.
"The smell," Annette complains, waving a hand in front of her nose. Rusting metal and coal and soot mix deviously with the scent of rotting fish and putrid water.
"What then?"
I thought you were the detective,
Annette mutters inside, though she bites her tongue. Best not to poke at her ire any more today.
Annette surveys the scene further, turning and strolling about for a few seconds. The gravel creaks under her boots as she walks along the riverfront, a small shoreline just down from the stone walls that separate and guide the Fennes river through Bellechester. Alongside the railyard it's filthy, the water corrupted by the industrial runoff and the sewage of the city. On hot days the smell could be unbearable.
The locomotive groans and squeaks as the river current pushes back against it, dangling down from the tracks and into the water like a fallen log caught in a stream. Annette is struck by how massive the beastly machine is, and how much force it would take for something like that to be thrust off of the tracks.
"It's huge," she supplies.
"Never seen one up close?"
"Not like this," Annette sighs. She'd spent plenty of time near the railyards, it was comparatively safer than some other places in the city, but the cops and Bembrook's guards were careful to keep potential train-hoppers away from the tracks.
"So... it smells wretched and it's large?" Cordelia scoffs. "We'll solve this in no time, Miss Baker." Her voice drips with condescension, though Annette can hardly complain if she's taken up the case just on her behalf.
"Have they found his body?"
"Cop said it was pulled away by the river current," the detective frowns, gazing across the scene with the first hint of compassion Annette has seen from her in days. "But according to all of his coworkers, Henry was in the cab when it went over."
"Poor Henry," Annette sighs, hearing another loud creak from the machine in the waves.
"Please continue with your observations, Annette," Cordelia directs. "It smells bad and it's big, as it were."
Annette glances back up at the tracks, just on top of the wall above them, no more than ten feet higher than the river and twelve feet from the shoreline. The tracks themselves are only minorly damaged, slightly bent and scraped up, but they've somehow survived the brunt of the accident.
"It would take a great deal of force to derail this machine," she muses. She looks down the tracks, seeing the primary railyard is less than a quarter mile away. "This early out of the yard... the locomotive couldn't possibly have been going very fast."
"It could be a through-line train. Didn't need to stop in the yard."
"Where's it's cargo, then? It's just the engine and the coal truck, no other cars attached."
"Astute," Cordelia nods, though prevents a smile from creeping to her lips. "And of the tracks?"
"If they're hardly damaged... I can't imagine such small bends in the metal would be enough to derail anything."
"Therefore?"
"Fault of the machine itself. Henry was right."
"My conclusions as well, Miss Baker," Cordelia lifts her hands out of her pockets, stepping closer to the capsized locomotive and inspecting it closer. "Do you know anything about steam engines?"
"Simply that they exist, Miss Jones."
"Impressive contraptions," Cordelia muses. "Yet if there were to be a fault with the engine, what might we see as a result?"
Annette thinks quietly to herself, trying to gauge where Cordelia was trying to lead her. She stares at the locomotive, laying on its side so that the top of it faces the two of them. Coal is scattered all around from the cab overturning, and yet despite the crash the machine looks surprisingly well intact. Its metal has bent slightly from the force of the drop, but there's remarkably little signs of anything wrong with it from a careful glance.
"Is a steam engine combustible? Would it explode like gunpowder?" She asks.
"Indeed it can. Those boilers are especially dangerous."
"And yet there's no signs of such an explosion. Other than the force of the impact, the engine itself looks unharmed."
"And what does this tell us?"
"I'm not entirely sure..." Annette scratches the back of her head, stretching her neck slightly to relieve some of the tension of her collar. "The actual engine itself wasn't the problem?"
"Seems probable."
"So Henry was wrong?"
"There's plenty of pieces of machinery that could fail that wouldn't qualify as the engine, Miss Baker."
"So it would be something smaller than the engine. A few bolts or bars or some tiny detail that caused the train to fail?"
"Let's go have a work with Mister Bembrook, shall we?"
"B-Bembrook?" Annette croaks. "He's not likely to cooperate with us, Miss Jones."
"I have a way with people, Miss Baker."
- - -
"And what have we here?" Bembrook leers, sitting back in his chair as the two of them enter his office. "Two fine women in a place where there aren't many fine women."
Annette furrows her brows, entering the room behind Cordelia, who seems entirely unphased by his impunity. She's seen Bembrook in passing a few times, only from a distance. He's a large man with wide shoulders and a full belly, held at bay by a crisp collared shirt and heavy suspenders. His graying beard is less well-kempt up close than it had seemed, covering a thick neck and broad jaw. He's balding, and clearly decided that hardly matters in the privacy of his own office, leaving his top hat unused on the side of his desk.
"Investigating," Cordelia replies simply. She strolls around his office, gazing over the heavy wood panels and full bookshelves. It's certainly the product of a man known for garnishing wages and driving costs up, and Bembrook has hardly spared any luxury.
"On whose orders?" His voice growls, dropping low as his eyes flick past Cordelia to hungrily scour over Annette. She frowns, stepping closer to the detective.
"My own," Cordelia putters, turning to face him and resting her hands in her coat pockets. "We've heard you lost another mechanic in that derailed locomotive."
"Lost three, actually," he sighs, taking a sip from a whiskey glass. "Horrible tragedy. Breaks my heart."
"I'm sure it does."
"Tell your collar to flash me a smile," he chuckles, continuing to glare at Annette.
"She's not the happy sort."
"Tell her anyway," he shrugs, a perverse grin on his lips, "or get out of my office."
Annette looks at Cordelia, waiting for her response, only to be surprised to find the detective scowling incredulously back at her. Her eyes seem to guffaw, as though asking in disbelief:
You won't talk back to
him? Annette shakes her head slowly, staring down Bembrook and keeping her expression as flat and neutral as possible.
"She'll smile once you answer some questions for us," Cordelia offers, grabbing the chair in front of his desk and plopping herself down into it. Annette steps forward, hovering just over her shoulder.
"Why would I bother?" Bembrook snorts, taking another sip of whiskey. "No statement from me."
"Henry Rosen was a lead mechanic," Cordelia supplies, "he's likely to have filled reports on the upkeep he does. We'd like to take a look at them."
"Fat chance."
"Is it more or less profitable to derail a train?"
He chokes on his drink. "Excuse me?"
"I couldn't care less about Henry," Cordelia confesses, ignoring the glare from Annette behind her. "But, I imagine it isn't great for business to keep losing machines left and right. We'll find what took the locomotive down, you'll pay me for my services, and everyone's happy."
"I don't need any help from you," he growls. "I'm not showing you any damn papers."
"Annette," Cordelia turns over her shoulder. "Give us a smile, would you?"
Annette crosses her arms and scowls angrily at Cordelia. She huffs, shaking her head and wondering if she was always to be used as a ploy for Cordelia's interrogations.
"Never seen a collar refuse an order like that," Bembrook mocks.
"Dear Miss Baker's simply devastated by the loss of her cousin," Cordelia nods towards Bembrook, spinning a lie that leaves her lips as easy as breathing. "She'd be ever so grateful if you were to help put her dear aunt's heart at rest and help us."
Annette takes a deep, tense, frustrated breath and faces Bembrook. "I would be, Mr. Bembrook, sir. Henry was like a brother to me growing up. I just want to put his work right. That's all he cared about, was doing his work right. That'd let him rest in peace." She hopes her words don't feel too disingenuous, taking another breath and plastering a weak smile on her face.
"She Kerish?" Bembrook leans in and whispers to Cordelia. "I thought Rosen was a Jew? Only one in this yard, far as I know."
"Mom's brother converted when he married," Cordelia answers quickly. "Miss Baker is as Kerish as the best pickled Haddock."
"Wish she had the accent," he mutters. "Such a feisty way of speaking, don't you think?"
"Couldn't agree more, Mr. Bembrook," she utters, shooting a surprisingly apologetic look at Annette while he takes another drink.
"Christ, why not?" Bembrook grunts, loudly setting down his empty glass on the desk. "If her cousin kept any of his papers anywhere, he'd leave it in the shed back behind the water tower. You can have a look, but I'm not giving you a cent."
Stomaching her pride, Annette gives him a proper smile, happily replying, "Thank you ever so much, Mr. Bembrook. They've always said you were the reasonable sort."
"I am," he declares proudly. "I am."
"We'll be off," Cordelia rises, strolling out of the room.
"Miss... Baker, was it?" Bembrook asks as Annette steps into the doorway to leave. She stops and nods slowly. "Bummer you took your service with Miss Jones, you'd be such a doll at the Gallery."
Annette resists the urge to spit at him, closing the door behind her and catching back up with Cordelia, a few strides ahead of her.
