Chapter 38

Saffron and Alexander made their way along the line of trees blackening the east side of the lot under construction. The next plot was nothing more than a patchy field with a handful of trees they darted between until they reached the edge of Number 28's property. Saffron's breath came out in tight little bursts of white from her mouth, more from anxiety than exertion.

She led them forward until they were crouched in the darkness of the shrubbery of the dead garden that bordered the patio of the lab. Saffron couldn't see anything within; the curtains were drawn.

Alexander's low whisper sent shivers down her spine. "This is familiar." It was familiar, she realized with a smile. They'd crept around gardens together before.

She darted across the garden and winced when her shoes crunched on the gravel path surrounding the patio. She slowed to hop gingerly across the path, which brought her to the French doors. She attempted to press the handle and push the door, but it was locked. She hadn't hoped it might be somehow open—she was aware of the additional locks on the interior of the doors—but it would have been foolish not to check. She went window to window next, but they too were locked.

The windows on the rest of the house were too high or too small for them to enter through, so they made for the kitchen door, protected from the eyes of passersby by the unoccupied mews that housed only a cart and crates of supplies for the laboratory and greenhouses.

The kitchen door was locked, naturally. But Saffron had come prepared for that. Slipping a hand into her pocket, she pulled out a pair of hairpins and went to work.

Alexander kept himself pressed to her side, facing outward to the path leading to the greenhouse and the mews. Their breathing and the subtle scrape of metal on metal were the only sounds; the night didn't breathe even a whisper of wind.

She pushed and pulled, turned and twisted the slender metal picks. She removed her gloves after realizing how much harder it was to pick locks with them on. One pin broke, and she retrieved another from her pocket. Her fingers grew stiff in the cold as she struggled. All her senses told her that she and Alexander would be caught at any moment, and her heart raced as if it might head off a chase.

Alexander's elbow nudged her. He breathed, "Someone is coming."

Saffron inhaled sharply. Hand on her arm, he guided her away from the door and into the nearest pool of shadows, a few dozen feet from the door. They eased back into it, their dark clothing hopefully doing its job to hide them.

The sound of approaching footsteps grew louder. Someone wasn't bothering to avoid the gravel as they had. A figure of a man rounded the corner a moment later. His head was covered by a cap and angled down, but Saffron recognized his uneven gait.

It was Joseph Rowe. He walked to the kitchen door, planted a key inside the lock, and swung the door open. He wasn't making any effort to be quiet. He shut the door, and a flickering light caught within the kitchen window a moment later.

Suspicion and surprise flared. Joseph had already proven he had no problem breaking into Wells's house, but he'd just been caught doing so—by the police, no less. Why would he do so again? Perhaps this was a last-ditch effort to get whatever he'd been looking for. But if so—why was he being so obvious about it?

To Alexander, she whispered, "That's Joseph Rowe. I'm going to look in the window for a moment."

She slipped away. Her toe caught a rock, sending it pinging away, and she froze. No sound came from the kitchen.

The window revealed a stub of a candle flickering next to Joseph, who stood, knife in hand. Sudden, primal fear gripped her, until she saw what he was doing. He was working the blade into a loaf of bread.

Saffron blinked. He was eating. Had he broken into the Path Lab to eat?

Saffron shrank from the glass as Joseph looked up and over at the window. Knife in hand, he walked purposefully forward. Her mind screamed at her to flee, but she found herself unable to do so. Her fingers clung to the brick of the windowsill as she crouched down. He paused, silhouetted by the meager flame of the candle at his back. He set the knife down on the counter, then filled a mug with water and gulped it down before returning to his loaf of bread.

She was to Joseph's left, where his missing eye prevented him from seeing her. She eased back until he was no longer in view and crept back to Alexander.

"He ate bread and drank water," she reported.

"Does he live in the house like the director?" he asked.

"I've never heard of it, but I suppose he might. Joseph said Dr. Calderbrook gave him a job, brought him out here to continue on when the lab moved. It seems he's fond of him."

They waited in silence until the candle in the kitchen went out.

Saffron rested her forehead on Alexander's shoulder, sighing. "How long should we wait to try to get in?"

"Not long enough for him to recall he hasn't locked the kitchen door," Alexander said. "He'll likely be getting washed up for bed, making noise. Best get into the lab before he settles down."

They waited two more minutes, Saffron bouncing on the balls of her feet, before entering the house. The kitchen smelled like smoke and fresh bread, a scent that faded as soon as they stepped into the hall. The rest of the house smelled like soil.

They crept down the long hall. She used her own keys on the double doors leading into the main lab.

It was black as pitch inside. She had to resist the sensation of being swallowed whole as she led them to her workstation by feel; Alexander's hand light on her shoulder. She managed a full breath only when she'd found the gas lamp on the counter and lit it.

It flickered to life, and Alexander whispered, "What first?"

"Missing records," she said. "I've looked over Horticulture. I'll check Botany, and you can check Entomology."

"I ought to check Mycology first. If we have to get out of here quickly, that's more important."

Saffron nodded hesitantly. She hadn't a key for that room. She took another lamp from the counter to light it. "I'll come do the door."

"No need," he replied, slipping a hand into her pocket. For some reason, it made her heart leap when he held up a pair of hairpins. "I practiced."

Her mouth fell open. "When?"

"Not much to do on a long voyage from Brazil."

Baffled and charmed, she stammered, "And you let me struggle with the kitchen door?"

"I had to let you try it." He brushed a kiss on her forehead, took her lamp, and was gone.

She shook her head slowly. Alexander was forever surprising her. At least this time, it was a good thing.

Mycology fell into a strange no-man's-land between botany and zoology, in Alexander's estimation. Fungi were not plants, not animals, and were far too large to be included in his own personal realm of study, bacteria, but they shared a great many similarities. For one, the labs that studied them looked more or less the same.

The microscopes, glass plates, petri dishes, dozens of bottles and jars of liquids, and everything else made Alexander feel right at home. Every surface was covered in equipment and rows of dishes of growths in various stages of development. He wished for daylight, for he was sure there would be a rainbow of color contained within those plates.

But records were his priority, not the growths.

The filing cabinet wedged into the corner next to an incubator was his first destination. He set the oil lamp on the top and found that the lock had not been engaged. Saffron had mentioned a date in October. He pulled open the cabinet drawers until he found the correct time period and set to searching.

He'd read up more on mycology since Nick had come to town, talking of fungi. Still, unfamiliar terms filled his vision as he flicked back page after page. He kept his eyes on the dates instead, pausing whenever days were skipped. Some notes had numbered pages, which was useful, but others did not. Some reports were written in four or five different hands, others were typed.

He paused, hand ready to push the first drawer closed. Joseph Rowe had been found in Jeffery Wells's house with actual lab reports, not copies. If Alexander were stealing information from a laboratory, he would copy the reports, not take them. Someone would notice—had noticed—that they were missing. Yet Wells had taken the papers themselves.

Then he remembered Saffron's story from the previous evening. Alfie Tennison might have been the one receiving the reports, for use … in something. He could have worried Wells would copy them wrong, leave something out or get a measurement incorrect. He'd want the most accurate information possible.

Three files contained information from the two weeks or so in October. He saw a series of reports on a strain of Alternaria alternata and its effect on pyrethrum, the flower the laboratory was studying. That genus of fungi was familiar; he'd seen it in the other files. Those files were complete, from what he could tell.

He dug further back, keeping his ears open to any sounds in the hall beyond. Saffron would have numerous places to hide should someone come around, but this room was tiny. There was no furniture to hide behind, and the closet was merely a series of shelves in an alcove. He'd be spotted the moment anyone crossed the threshold.

He took each file out one by one, scanning the papers for anything interesting. Saffron had explained how the lab worked with other research stations and farms around the country; reports and samples were sent in over the course of weeks and months. They were analyzed, and occasionally products developed by the lab were sent out for field testing. These papers did not detail those exchanges but the actual work of the laboratory. The daily logs were written in neat, feminine script, occasionally interrupted by a brash, broad hand that Alexander guessed was the chief of mycology rather than his assistant. He found no references to the papers Joseph had.

Frowning, he opened the cabinet above it to search earlier in the year. August and September were jam-packed. A busy time for the laboratory given their areas of study. Only measurements of materials and dry descriptions of the growth of fungi, boring even to him.

One line of the daily log caught his eye, however. A dissection, done by N. Narramore, showed a sample from "Farm E" was discovered to have been infected by a fungus, Specimen No. 28923, and had been turned over to E. Sutcliffe for identification. Saffron had mentioned that specimen.

But as Alexander paged back through the reports of the following weeks, he found no further information regarding Specimen No. 28923. In fact, the records were missing entire days' worth of notes: from the twenty-ninth of October to November twelfth, the exact dates of the papers found in Joseph Rowe's possession.

He wanted to see the original reports and find out exactly what those insects had been infected with, and why Jeffery Wells and then Joseph Rowe had stolen the reports of it.