Master of Plagues: A Nicolas Lenoir Novel Read Free Page A

carriage started up.
    The chief said nothing for the first several blocks, preferring to stare out the window, lost in the cares of his office. Ordinarily, silence suited Lenoir perfectly well, but he did not wish to arrive at the lord mayor’s without any notion of why he had been summoned. “There is a body, I presume?” he prompted.
    “If only it were just the one.” Reck’s reflection in the carriage window was weary. Lines crisscrossed his pale face, each one a journey, tread and retread, like game trails in the snow. He had been strong once, Lenoir judged, a heavy like Kody, but in the ten years Lenoir had known him, he had always seemed . . .
used
. Not for the first time, Lenoir wondered why the man did not simply retire. He had earned his rest many times over. And if there was no one around capable of taking his place . . . well, that was not going to change anytime soon. The Kennian Metropolitan Police had a few stray threads of competence, but they were tightly woven into a fabric of mediocrity. Unless the chief planned to cling to his post until he died, he was going to have to accept the fact that his successor, whoever he was, was most likely not going to measure up.
    In the meantime, Reck had more than one body on his hands. A serial killer, or a massacre? Sadly, the City of Kennian was no stranger to either. “How many dead?” Lenoir asked.
    “Over a thousand, at last count.”
    Just like that. A hard blow to the stomach.
    Lenoir stared. “I don’t understand. There cannot have been a thousand murders in the entire history of the Metropolitan Police.”
    “Who said anything about murders?”
    Lenoir frowned. “It’s not like you to be coy, Chief.”
    Reck scowled back at him. “I’m not the one being coy. All I know is what His Honor’s letter said, and that wasn’t much. There’s some kind of epidemic at the Camp, and he’s afraid it’s getting out of hand.”
    “I have heard the rumors, of course, but . . . what has it to do with us? It is unfortunate, but hardly unusual. Disease is the wildfire of the slums. You can count upon it razing the ground every now and then. It is not a matter for the police.”
    “Tell me something I don’t know.” Lendon Reck, like Nicolas Lenoir, was not a man inclined to sentimentality. “Look, there’s no point grousing about it. The lord mayor calls; we come running.” The chief’s tone left little doubt about his own lack of enthusiasm for this endeavor, and Lenoir decided it was pointless to press the matter further. He would have his answers soon enough.
    The walls outside the carriage window soon gave way to sloping lawns and manicured hedges, signaling their arrival at the mayoral mansion. Lenoir could not suppress a sour turn of his mouth. Emmory Lyle Hearstings had been lord mayor of Kennian for three years, and in that time, he had thoroughly distinguished himself as one of the most fatuous creatures on hind legs. Lenoir had never been endowed with a great store of patience, but few taxed his meager reserves more thoroughly than His Honor. The sole stroke of good fortune was that Hearstings was generally too thick to notice. Still, Reck was taking no chances: as the carriage shuddered to a halt, he leveled a finger at Lenoir and said, “On your best behavior, Inspector, or I’ll have you patrolling with the pups.”
    Lenoir might have declared such an activity to be preferable to the current enterprise, but he had no wish to antagonize the chief further, so he merely nodded.
    They were shown to a frilly parlor and offered tea. They both declined. The chamberlain invited them to sit,indicating a delicate-looking sofa upholstered with elaborately embroidered silk. Reck frowned at it dubiously, as though he had been invited to sit on a poodle. He opted for a more functional-looking chair instead. Lenoir perched on the proffered sofa, if a little gingerly.
    “A fine piece, newly commissioned,” the chamberlain said, his pride