FIRST THING IN THE MORNING WAS THE WORST TIME to be using the Paternoster Pipe Network. The pipes were clogged with the Ether Dust of clerks, scribes, dogsbodies, secretaries, and all the other working spirits running late for work or heading off to their morning appointments.
Approaching the twenty-fifth floor where Colonel Penhaligan's office was situated, Lapsewood experienced a dread similar to that he used to feel when his old schoolmaster, Mr. Thornton, summoned him to his office. Mr. Thornton had been a cruel and strict disciplinarian who deployed a heavy wooden ruler on the backsides of his pupils, hitting them in time with each remonstrating syllable he uttered.
"You …" Thwack. "Shall …" Thwack. "Learn …" Thwack. "Your Latin verbs." Thwack, thwack-thwack, thwack.
Having spent his formative years in abject fear of this ogre of a man, Lapsewood was pleased when Mr. Thornton's Dispatch document had arrived on his desk. Lapsewood had taken his time over that document, savoring the pleasure and smiling to learn Mr. Thornton's Christian name. If only he had known at the time that the man he feared above any other was called Hilary.
Lapsewood's eyes rematerialized first, so he could maximize the time he spent gazing at the only good thing about being summoned to his superior's office: Colonel Penhaligan's secretary and the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.
Alice Biggins.
"Hello there," she said, smiling.
Short, plump, with perfect porcelain skin and auburn hair that fell in ringlets, Alice was everything Lapsewood looked for in a girl and everything he had failed to find in life. He had never had the courage to ask what she had died of, but whatever it was didn't show from the outside. Quite the opposite. Whenever they were in the same room, Lapsewood found himself unable to tear his eyes from her. As a consequence, he could barely utter a word in her presence.
"You'll have to wait," she said. "There's someone already in with him."
Lapsewood tried to think of something to say, something clever, something witty, something wry. Anything. Nothing came to mind.
"He's in a terrible mood," continued Alice, oblivious as usual to the inner turmoil endured by Lapsewood as a consequence of being in her company. "He's already had two clerks and the office boy carted off to the Vault, and it's not even nine o'clock. They all come out with faces like thunder, but I tell them it's not so bad. At least they won't have to hang around this miserable place anymore. Honestly, if I'd known I was going to end up working for that old sinner, I'd have thought twice about accepting a job here at all."
"You don't mean that," said Lapsewood, with more desperation in his voice than he had intended.
Alice pushed her hair away from her face and looked at him. For a moment he panicked that he had given himself away. If there was anything more unbearable than the agony of Alice not knowing how he felt, it was the dread of her finding out. Lapsewood had never been able to cope with rejection. Better, he thought, to grasp moments like this, when he could gaze upon Alice's perfect face, than attempt to reveal his true feelings and risk humiliation.
Besides, what could he possibly hope for, anyway? The dead didn't fall in love. The dead didn't marry. The dead simply trudged on, endlessly, hopelessly, inevitably, until the day they heard the Knocking and stepped through the Unseen Door.
It was so unfair. Alice deserved more. She should have had a real life in a real house with a garden and flowers. The best Lapsewood could offer her was a squalid, windowless room down the Endless Corridor, where all employees of the Bureau spent their sleepless nights, a room, no doubt, identical to her own.
"There's a Prowler in there right now," she said, a twinge of excitement in her voice. "A new one … French fella. I heard he worked as a detective before he came here."
"A detective?"
The door to Penhaligan's office opened, and a tall, slim man stepped out, carrying himself with easy elegance. He was immaculately dressed, with piercing blue eyes, angular cheekbones, and a thin mustache adorning his upper lip.
"A is the incorrect article," the man said in a smooth French accent. "You should use the definite article, the, as in Monsieur Eugène Fran?ois Vidocq, the great detective."
"So you worked for the police?" said Lapsewood.
"The police are mindless brutes," replied the Frenchman. "A detective is a gentleman of superior intellect who can detect that which goes unnoticed by the common man."
Lapsewood didn't like the way Vidocq looked at him when he said common. He was even less keen on the way Alice gazed at Monsieur Vidocq, as though she were a pat of butter and he a piece of hot toast.
"Ah, Mademoiselle Biggins, is it possible you have grown even more beautiful since I last saw you?"
"Don't be daft. That was only five minutes ago."
"And yet, I think your beauty has increased even more in that small amount of time."
Alice giggled.
"But beautiful doesn't quite say it …" continued the Frenchman. "Radiant, perhaps. Exquisite … desirable. How très difficile it is to find the word for such beauty in this barbaric language of yours."
"Oh, Mr. Vidocq, really."
"You may call me Eugène."
With no blood in her body, blushing was a physical impossibility, but Alice came as close to it as any ghost could. Lapsewood felt miserable.
"LAPSEWOOD!" bellowed Penhaligan. "Are you out there?"
He would have done anything to avoid leaving Alice alone with the charming Frenchman, but he could no more avoid going through that door than any man can prevent the wheels of fate from turning.
"Good luck, mon ami," said Monsieur Vidocq, grabbing Lapsewood's hand and firmly shaking it. "I very much hope you are not … pour la Vo?te."
Lapsewood didn't like Prowlers. They thought they were so superior because they got to go on missions to the physical world, walking among the living, haunting and scaring in the name of the Bureau. Of course, he understood that they were necessary, just as Enforcers were needed to bring Rogue ghosts into line. But where would any of them be without the paperwork, supplied, completed, and diligently duplicated, by the clerks?
"LAPSEWOOD, GET IN HERE NOW, OR I'LL HAVE YOU WHISKED TO THE VAULT SO FAST, YOUR FEET WON'T TOUCH THE GROUND," bellowed Penhaligan.
A last glance at Alice's pretty face, and Lapsewood stepped inside the office.
