The brass members of the Courtesy Arch hummed with a low, clear deep ring as Pella Rook seated the sound horn into its threaded collar on the back kitchen table. The afternoon light in Lowbank was dim, filtered through dense autumn cloud cover that hung low over the Gray Rush. On the deal table sat Hal Rook’s brass measuring tongs, a bottle of black dark oak-ink. A clay pot mug of boiled tea that had gone lukewarm. The air smelled of wet stonework, cold river loam, and the sharp sulfur tang of pipe lime drifting from the open courtyard drain.
Across the threshold, the sounds of Harrowby were clearly heavy-duty. The dull thud of a delivery van door slamming shut, the rattle of copper tube bundles being shifted on a timber rack, and the hiss of a gas ring heating water in an iron kettle. Then came the heavy, deliberate tread of Ben Morland’s work boots across the floorboards of the Morland Plumbing office.
“This is Ben Morland,” the voice came through the horn, gruff, flat, and hard as cold pig iron. “Speak your piece, Miss Rook. I have three boiler callouts in Bradford to schedule before the gas board shuts at five.”
