In the rear storeroom of Bell & Bell Pest Management on St. Jude’s Lane, the noon air smelled of corrugated cardboard, dry cedar sawdust, and the sharp, minty tang of pyrethrum powder. Through the half-open sash window, the rattle of a diesel delivery van downshifting on the Harrowby cobbles cut through the quiet.
Imran Bell set his steel-toed boots square on the linoleum floor. Then it checked the dial of the Avery spring balance hanging from the ceiling rafter.
The hook held a heavy canvas kit-bag. Inside lay his standard check equipment, stripped of anything that relied on transistors, bitter-salt batteries, or high-pressure fine mist propellant. He had spent twenty minutes at the workbench with a brass screwdriver and a pair of pliers, removing the digital display from his electronic sniff-gauge and replacing it with a hand-tuned glass U-tube pressure gauge. The brass beam of the scale hovered exactly a tiny fraction of an inch below the seven-two-pound red line stamped into the faceplate.
“Six point eight-five,” Imran said aloud, checking off the items on a blue carbon-copy dispatch slip with a stubby yellow pencil. “Breathing mask body, molded black rubber facepiece. Two bayonet-fit combination cartridges—activated charcoal for organic vapor and potassium permanganate for acid gas and sulfur dioxide. Clockwork draft tube with five down feathers in a sealed brass metal tube. Four heat-proof glass sampling vials with ground-glass stoppers, each wrapped in cotton batting. Brass hand magnifying glass, ten-power zoom. Pure animal fat candle in a tin sconce. Grease…
