At fifteen minutes past midnight, the Courtesy Arch in Sister Merrow’s washroom awoke with a low, shaking chime that sounded like a heavy bronze bell struck underwater.
Outside in the streets of Lowbank, the winter sleet had turned into a dense, freezing fog that smelled of coal smoke and rotting river wrack. But inside the washroom, the air was warm. He smelled of dried lavender, carbolic soap. The sour trace of vinegar Sister Merrow kept boiling on the hearth.
Ada Morland stepped through the portal with her walnut case in her fist.
She had changed into a clean flannel shirt beneath her navy drill overalls. But her face showed the gray, sunken fatigue of a woman who had already worked a ten-hour day rodding sewers and thawing frozen pipes across West Yorkshire. Her short brown hair was damp around her temples. Her steel-toed boots clicked with heavy, measured weariness across the floorboards.
“Twelve-fifteen,” Ada said, glancing at her stainless steel wristwatch. “Me nephew’s asleep in the back bedroom, me tea’s in a flask. I’ve got forty minutes before me eyes start crossing from tiredness. Let’s get this low-water point logged.”
Pella Rook lifted her lantern. But as Ada stepped past her toward the cellar door, Ada stopped dead on the threshold.
