Chapter Text
Gina’s let out of the clink on a Tuesday afternoon. The sun should be shining for a moment like this, probably. A blue sky. There should be some kind of welcoming party, or at least someone waiting right outside the gate. But London’s London’s, no matter what it should be, so Gina Lestrade leaves alone.
The first order of business is housing. She’s not stupid enough to think that the flat on Redchurch Street is still an option, not when she’s been locked up for a month and that situation was less than legal. But it won’t be hard to find some of the people from the Redchurch flat, and one of them will certainly have a situation that Gina could worm her way into. She’s good at doing that.
It’s kinda funny, really. Put in jail for pickpocketing, and then the first thing she does once she’s out is relieve a lady of her purse. It’s a lucky pick, at least. The lady’s got enough on her for two days worth of food and travel, along with a good tip from Gossip. Gina’s not opposed to doing the legwork of finding people herself, but when she has the money, she might as well use it. It happens so rarely, and today, she figures she’s earned the treat. Gina drops the purse itself into a dumpster and struts up to the first stopped hansom she finds, which is within spitting distance of the jail. The driver is smoking a pipe, a heavy frown on his face.
“Where you headed?” Gina asks, preparing to take out the money that is now very much hers.
“I ain’t headin’ nowhere until a customer comes by, and I’m not taking customers until I’m done with this.” He waves his pipe at her, and Gina shrugs.
“Alright, then. I’ll wait.”
The driver looks less than pleased to spend his smoke break with her. Gina, for her part, doesn’t give a shit. It’s enough to see someone who isn’t looking at her through bars, and to see them in the light of day. He can glare at her all he’d like, so long as he’s doing it on a London street and not in a London jail.
When he finishes, he sighs. “You have an address for me?”
“Fresno Street.”
“That’s not an address, girl.”
Gina huffs. “But you know how to get there, don’t ya?”
“Not for free, I don’t.”
Gina hands the man his farthings, and he relents. Bastard opens the door for her like she’s the Queen, and then slams it shut on the back of her foot. Omnibus drivers wouldn’t do that, but Gina’s never riding on an omnibus again.
The ride is as rocky as ever, but it’s a ride. It’s a way home, something she couldn’t get back in jail. Out here, she can see London in all of it’s dirty, dusty glory, rising from the earth like those giant nails that the construction crews leave behind. She smiles at the city that will never smile back, and does it only because she’s alone in the hansom. If she had company, she’d have to hide her grin behind her hat.
The driver drops her off with little fanfare. Fresno Street looks the same, at least. Venus is selling firecrackers to uniformed schoolboys, a few drunkards are laughing in a gaggle, and everyone who passes by is moving quickly with their heads down. Nobody wants to be seen out this way, which is just how Gina likes it.
And so, as she expects, Gossip’s right outside of the old, abandoned apartment building. Gina would crash there if not for the very real rumors about gas leaks. Say what you will about slumming it outdoors, but there are no gas leaks out there.
“Hey, Gossip! How’s it goin’?”
The man startles. “Gina Lestrade?”
“Alive and in the flesh,” she confirms, unable to stop herself from smiling. “I’m out of the clink now, see? I’m a free woman!”
“Uh huh. You want to toss me a few farthings? I can tell you how you’re gonna bite it.”
What a buzzkill. Gina can’t help but roll her eyes at him. “I ain’t stupid, Gos. I know all about the Reaper, and I’m not scared of ‘im. I need you to tell me where some of my people are these days.”
Gossip holds his hands out, and Gina gives him some coins.
“I can’t tell you where even half of a friend is with that payment.”
“Yes, you can! I’m givin’ you a story just by being here, right? Gina Lestrade is out! People’ll pay you nicely for that one.”
Gossip takes a moment to think about it. A few more people pass, and their stares linger on Gina for just a second too long. They must recognize her from the papers. It doesn’t occur to her to be self-conscious, not when they’ll forget about her by the end of the week. Maybe the end of the month, if it’s a slow few weeks down here. She’ll be something worth talking about for a few days, and then she’ll go back to disappearing once again.
“Alright. Give me a name.”
Which means Gina has to pick a name. She cares about everyone on the East End, of course, as much as she can afford to. The little ones need to be looked out for, and the ones closer to her age are great fun to keep around. But when it comes down to picking, there’s really only one option. Only one other person who was as dedicated to helping the little ones as she was, and the closest thing to a best friend that Gina has. He’s the natural choice. “Where’s Appleby hangin’ around these days?”
“Your Appleby, or the older brother?”
“My Appleby, of course! I don’t give a damn what the other one’s up to. He’s a right creep, ‘e is.”
“Well…” Gossip leans in, preparing to give her his great spiel. “Luke Appleby’s been hanging around the docks in Whitechapel, pickin’ the pockets of dockworkers! Some say he’s been doing the occasional bit of dockwork as well.”
It’s not surprising news. Last she saw of him—the night before she got thrown in jail and her life got all turned around again—he was doing the same damn thing, just a little further down the river. That’s the nice thing about Luke. He’s far from perfect, but he’s as close to a sure thing as Gina will ever get.
“You’re a good man, Gos,” Gina says, and sets off to Whitechapel.
It’s not just Fresno Street that hasn’t changed. Every building is just as she left it, even down to the incomplete windows and patchwork roofs. The East End still feels like itself, a nice home in its honest horror. Everything still smells like sewage and something rotten, but it’s true. It wears its shit on its sleeve, not all wrapped up and hidden away like they do down at Westminster. The rhythm of the streets and the people are easy to fall into, as comforting as a quilt. Gina could wrap herself up in this slum if it would let her.
The people are a little different, though. A little bit more determined to stare at her, but it’s just because she’s so fresh out of the clink. They’ll settle back into seeing her as scenery soon enough. It’ll all go back to as it was before summer starts, once the scent of jail rubs off of her. That’s it.
(Or it could be the Reaper, but the novelty of that will rub off, too. After all, what’s one more horror story down here?)
She tails a dockworker to his job and from there, it’s easy. Luke’s tall, newly broad, and a redhead. It’s always real easy to find him in a crowd.
“Oi, Appleby!”
He turns, and it’s not that Gina expects him to cry or anything, but they’ve been pals for six years. Six years, and he doesn't even give her a smile.
“You gonna welcome me back?” She asks, dodging the dockworkers around them. He grabs her arm and pulls her into the nearest alley, not looking at her as he tugs. “You never even visited! I at least stopped by a couple of times when you had run-ins with the coppers. I was there once a week for you, and you haven’t even given a ‘ello yet!”
“Cut the shit, Lestrade. You shouldn’t be ‘ere.”
Gina raises an eyebrow at him. “And why shouldn’t I, huh? If you’re ashamed of takin’ a proper job down here, you don’t gotta be. Lots of folks have real jobs. I’d never look down on you for that.”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what is it?”
“...The Reaper,” he says. “The Reaper of the Bailey. I won’t have ‘im messin’ around down here, and that means you’ve gotta go.”
Gina gapes at Luke, waits for him to laugh and tell her that he’s just joshin’ her, he’s happy she’s back home and does she want to check out the new flat, wherever it is? And Gina will tell him that was a real dick move, but hell yeah, she wants to see the new place that’ll last for maybe two weeks if they’re lucky and see how everyone’s doing and tell them all about being inside and having a trial. They’ll have something to eat and run around for a few hours and maybe she’ll get Luke to braid her hair like he used to do when they were real young, when Gina was taller than him and Luke was trying to learn in order to braid for his sisters. That was back when he had living sisters to braid for, but he has some of the East End kids now, the ones who rely on their work. He should stay sharp on the braiding.
But Luke doesn’t say any of that. He keeps silent, glowering down at her like the shopkeepers do when she lingers too long in their stores.
“You’re serious?”
“Serious,” he confirms. “Everyone the Reaper kills brings people down with ‘em. I wouldn’t mind if it was just me, but I won’t be lettin’ you do that to these kids. They’ve gone through too much already. So you need to get out of ‘ere, and then stay out.”
“Appleby, level with me here,” she huffs. “The Reaper only goes after people who did somethin’! And I didn’t do jack shit. Ashley Graydon killed Windibanks! I just ‘ad the bad luck of being there when it ‘appened.”
He sighs, loud and long like he’s the one who’s being told that their best friend is trying to kick them out of a whole section of London. “You don’t have to lie to me. I know how you are.”
“And you think I’d up and kill someone?!”
“If you got scared? Yeah, you would, and you did,” he says. “I heard all about the trial. That kind of scheme just doesn’t happen around here, not to people like us. You just lucked into getting a lawyer who’d make up a story for you, and since you ain’t got no money, there’s only one way you could’ve pulled that one off.”
Luke breathes in like he’s gonna say something else about it, but Gina doesn’t let him. Instead, she drops her bag and clocks him, because really, does he think she’s stupid?! If she was up to what Luke thought she was, Gina’d’ve fixed things so that she didn’t get any jail time at all. She wouldn’t have settled for anything less, if that’s how Naruhodo had expected her to pay for his legal help. Instead, he’d told her not to worry about money, that she could pay him back by staying out of trouble.
Staying out of trouble. Ha.
Luke swings back, nailing her in the eye. Gina stumbles and then throws herself forward with all of her might, trying to knock him to the ground. She manages to knock him off balance, at least, but he recovers fast and smacks her head against the wall of the alley, which sends the world spinning. When it rights itself, Luke is digging through her bag, but he bypasses the money and the clothes. No, he’s going for the pictures.
“You leave them alone!” She shrieks, but Luke doesn’t. He unearths both of them and holds them close to his chest. Gina rushes towards him, tugs on his arms with all of her dizzy power, but he doesn’t budge.
It’s stupid, really. Real dumb to be so upset over pictures, but those were the only two pictures Gina had. It was a lucky thing to get them in the first place; a journalist wanted to do a story on East End kids and promised to photograph anybody who would sit down for an interview. So of course Gina lined up with Luke and his sisters and Mary Turner and the Woodards and both Hughes sisters and everyone else. They were able to organize their crew for one big shot, and then a series of smaller ones just for fun. That had been a good year, the year they lived on Austin Street. Ella and Mary had some kind of agreement with the landlord, and at the end of it, they managed to cram twelve kids in a flat built for two.
They had been organized back then, too. Efficient. Helping out the little ones had been easier because so many people were working together. They stole and saved their way into getting a coat for every kid in their building that winter, and some of the grown people, too. It was a lucky thing. Gina had really believed anything was possible that year; the stupid part of her never really stopped.
And now Luke holds the last of the proof of those miracles in his grubby, bastard hands, refusing to let her have them.
“What do you need those for, huh?” She asks, pulling on his arms again.
“We’re the last two left. These are gonna mean nothin’ if they die with you.”
“Well, I’m not fuckin’ dyin’ any time soon, so—”
“You are! God, Gina, you’re already dead!”
It gets quiet, all of the sudden. Luke is just so sure of it is all, even if Gina knows the truth. The Reaper only goes after people who did something, and Gina did…well, she lied on the stand and stole from some people, but she didn’t kill anyone! And she got convicted for the perjury and the worst of the pickpocketing, so the Reaper has no reason to go after her. Gina lets go of him, drops her arms to her side as Luke puts the pictures in his pocket, screwing up his face like he’s trying not to cry. Then, of course, Gina lunges for the pocket.
“Enough of that,” he says, and Gina doesn’t know how he does it, but the next thing she knows, the world’s upside down because Luke’s thrown her over his shoulders. This is the jail’s fault, for sure; they forgot to feed her more days than not and it made her too skinny, too small to fight back as well as she used to. He grabs her bag and hauls her away, impervious to her screaming.
“Let go of me, you bastard! Let go!”
With this much fuss, someone should come to help. Someone should look out of sorts, or at least be curious as she screams. But this is London. Luke saunters past the sailors with a nod and they nod back at him while Gina writhes and hollers. It’s not that they can’t see her—of course they can fucking see her. It’s just that they don’t care.
Finally, Luke stops, a couple dozen yards from the dock and decently out of view of the sailors. The world goes still and simple and maybe he’s going to put her down and explain something, but then he’s not putting her down, not explaining, not making things right; he’s throwing her into the fucking Thames, tossing her like she’s a bag of rotten potatoes.
Gina squeezes her eyes shut as she tumbles into the water. Whatever the hell is in the river sure as shit doesn’t belong in her eyes; it’ll probably blind her if it gets in there. It’s been too long since she’s gone swimming, and she’d never been good at it, not really. Luckily, her body remembers the basics, just enough to keep her afloat.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” She screeches, treading water. Luke hasn’t run off, weirdly enough. He’s just standing there, arms crossed over his chest.
“You need to know that I’m serious,” he says. “Really. I’d rather not kill you, but if that’s what it takes to keep the East End safe from the Reaper, I will. If I find you messin’ around down ‘ere again, I’ll hold your head under myself.”
(He means it. He’s not happy about it, but he’ll follow through. More than she can see it, Gina can feel the truth of it in her bones. He’ll kill her. If he finds her down here again, he’ll kill her.)
And then the git leaves, although he’s at least kind enough not to take her bag. Honor among thieves, for all the damn good that would do either of them now.
Gina hauls herself out of the Thames, throws her bag over her shoulder, and chases after him, coughing up river water as she goes. She’s not sure why she does it, only that she sprints while he tries to escape her, giving chase as sure as she’s the one chasing him. Gina follows and follows and follows and then suddenly she can’t follow because she’s lost sight of him. She keeps running forward and hopes, lungs stinging in pain, but Luke’s gone. Of course she couldn’t tail him—he just slammed her head against the bricks, and Gina had been the one to teach him how to escape when someone was chasing you. He used her own tricks on her, and she hadn’t even noticed.
She comes to a stop on the side of the street, panting for breath. Her clothes are drenched, stuck to her skin, and her bag is wide open. She closes it, quickly, and then looks around.
She doesn’t—she doesn’t recognize anything. Not the street she’s on, not the people, not the stores, nothing. She ran straight out of the East End and now she’s somewhere else, somewhere new. It doesn’t even feel like London. From this new place, Gina has to try to find her way back to a home she’s not allowed into, a home that doesn’t want her anymore. And sure, it’s not as bad as when McGilded told her that everyone would be run out, but it’s still—everyone else is going to be fine, but Gina, her only home, and Luke had really meant it when he was talking about killing her and kids are awful at keeping secrets, just awful, so it’s—She really can’t go home.
Gina can never go home again.
***
All things considered, she’s lucky that it’s spring. A surprise dive in the Thames in December would’ve killed her outright. Instead, her sudden swimming lesson leaves her stuck with nothing more than a soaked set of clothes. She doesn’t have a place to stop and change in, nor the urge to break into someone’s flat and change there. Gina would have to find an empty one, stake it out, break in, change, and then leave. All in all, that would take just about as much time as walking it off will, and so that’s what she does. Walks it off. She walks, she steals dinner, she catches her breath, finds out where she is. She stays just outside of the East End, she gets a bottle of whiskey from someone who recognizes her as the Reaper’s next victim, and Gina doesn’t like pity, but she’s freezing. Whiskey will at least put some warmth in her chest.
She still has to find a place to crash. The East End is out—if even one of the kids spots her and mentions it to Luke, it’s back to the river with her. Hyde Park isn’t a bad place to sleep, but it’s popular. She’d have to wrestle for a spot, and a recent shiner on top of a bottle of whiskey makes her a very clear target. It might not be a bad idea to try and find a spot in a slum outside of the East End—Jacob’s Island was decent, she heard, and St. Giles and The Mint were survivable—but then she’d have to find an empty flat in one of them or scrounge up money for a lodging house. And wandering around an unfamiliar slum at night, alone? Gina’s not that stupid. The best option, as much as she hates to think about it, is McGilded Park. She hasn’t been in McGilded Park since her run-ins with the man himself, but, well, a place to sleep was a place to sleep. She’ll deal with it tonight and scope out a few spots tomorrow. Just one night in McGilded won’t be too bad.
It takes an hour of walking to get there, and Gina lingers at the entrance. She takes a swig from the whiskey that stings on the way down and stares at the trees like they have an answer for her. Gina doesn’t even know what question she’s asking them. It’s wrong, that there should be so many trees in London. It doesn’t matter if they’re pretty. They don’t belong here. McGilded put this here as a distraction to his evil, and now Gina was going to have to take shelter in this not-London window dressing.
Whatever. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine because if it’s not fine, she’s dead, and Gina’s not dying yet. She won’t give the Reaper the satisfaction. Besides, there’s still something to do, even if Gina isn’t sure what. She can feel the unfinished business all around her, humming in her heart and keeping her going, even if she can barely tell what the business is. It’s here, and so she’s staying here, and that means sleeping in the park. That’s just how it goes.
***
Gina’s not a dreamer. Never has been, really. She wasn’t one of those kids who entered some sugarplum gumdrop land of joy in her sleep, nor one of the ones who got nightmares every night. She sleeps, and she doesn’t remember a thing. There’s nothing to write home about, assuming she had a home to write to and the ability to write about it. It’ll be night, she’ll fall asleep, and then suddenly, morning.
Things are different, sleeping under that bench in McGilded Park. Maybe it’s the whiskey, the river water, the spring air. She doesn’t know, but for the first time in years, Gina dreams.
It’s just fragments, really. Iris sitting on the other side of the bars, reading to her. Luke Appleby, younger, in handcuffs after that nasty fight with the Williams brothers. Gina in the courtroom staring at Naruhodo’s back, that stiff uniform with the starched collar and the armband with the scales of justice on the side.
“It’s my partner’s,” he’d said to her once.
“Partner?” Gina scoffed. “In what, crime? You don’t seem like the type.”
“I’m not,” Naruhodo told her, not sadly. “He was my partner in everything.”
And then there was the Reaper looking at her from behind the prosecutor’s bench, swirling wine in his fancy glass and asking her if she swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, the truth she couldn’t tell with McGilded at her side and hanging over her head. Then, months later, the truth coming out anyway, the way Gina trembled before its power. Everything had slot into place, all the pieces coming together to make a picture that had made sense. She had felt something then, standing in the courtroom. It struck a chord that she didn’t know existed, let alone one that could be hit. She had left, unwilling, but not because she didn’t want to go to jail. No, Gina had wanted to go back into the courtroom and find the truth again.
And it’s impossible. It’s reckless and insane and impossible. But if she can’t go back to how things were before, can’t she go forward? Can’t she go somewhere impossible, if everywhere possible is gone? Can’t she? Who can stop her, if she decides to?
She wakes up shivering. Not cold, but shivering. The sun hasn’t risen, but the sky is getting lighter, warning of a morning to come.
Gina suddenly has a much better plan for the day than hanging out at The Mint.
***
Her first stop is Harrods. Gina’s never actually bought anything at the place, but department stores are a goldmine for easy marks and, more importantly for today, changing rooms. The eyes of the employees follow her as she dashes towards one, grabbing a few hats on the way so that she looks like she has a reason for being there. Then, quite firmly, she shuts the door. It locks, too. Harrods might as well be a place of miracles; she feels dumb for not stop by earlier. Then again, they probably wouldn’t have let her in if she was bringing the Thames onto their floors.
Gina searches through her bag and pulls out the least patched-up pair of pants, her whitest button down, and the vest she stole about a week before shit really hit the fan at Winidbank’s. It’s real snazzy, a deep blue with brass buttons that haven’t quite lost their shine. It makes her look sharp. Smart. Less like a pickpocket and more like a prince.
While she’s there, Gina fixes the problem of her hair. Her regular bun is going to be too recognizable to cops after everything that happened. But two neat braids? That’s a respectable hairdo right there. A working gal’s hair. One that says that she is not Gina Lestrade, or at least not the Gina Lestrade that they know. She forgoes her regular hat for one of the new ones; blue, like her vest. It’s a little big, but that works for her. It helps hide the shiner a bit, and she rips the tags off so that it’s less suspicious. Once she makes sure that the coast is clear of employees, Gina sneaks out of the store and onto the street.
Her second stop of the day is Scotland Yard’s headquarters. Or, it would be, if she had enough money to take her directly from Harrods to Scotland Yard. As it is, she only has enough to take her to Baker Street, but that’s not too bad of a walk. Besides, it’s still early. Gina has plenty of time.
The carriage drops her off right at Baker Street. From where she’s standing, she can see a pink-haired figure outside of 221B, sitting on the stoop and bothering a cat. It might be Wagahai, but she doesn’t know. Maybe Iris has gotten her hands on something wild again.
“You know, if that cat ain’t yours, you’re gonna get bit,” Gina says, happily putting the fear of God in her. Iris beams, but the smile drops fast.
“Ginny! Your eye!” She exclaims.
Right. It hadn’t looked too good in the Harrods dressing room, but it probably looks even worse out in the daylight. “It’s nothin’. Don’t worry ‘bout it,” she says.
The cat, who is probably Wagahai given that she hasn’t run off, meows expectantly. Gina rubs the top of her head, happy to give her a little bit of love.
“I have bruise cream inside,” Iris tells her, which isn’t an invitation, an order, or a question. It’s a fact that compels Gina to follow her into the house, Wagahai purring at her feet.
Right by the entryway, the great Sherlock Holmes is asleep on the floor, cuddling a—
“Bloody ‘ell, Iris, is that a bone?!”
“It’s not from a human,” she says, as if that explains anything. “I think it’s from a giraffe? His new case is weird.”
Iris grabs Gina’s hand and tugs her past Holmes before she can ask what a giraffe has to do with his current case, and then sits her down on the chaise longue.
“Are you going to tell me how you got a black eye?” Iris asks, fixing her with the famous Iris Wilson Pout.
“Well, I got it the way people usually get black eyes,” Gina says. “By gettin’ socked in the face.”
She nods, taking out her smoke gun with the solemnity of a priest. “Okay! Tell me who I’m hunting down.”
Gina can’t help it—she laughs. Not in a mean way, but it sure is cute. “You aren’t gonna be huntin’ them down.”
“Yes, I am! No one gets to punch my friend and get away with it.”
“This time, they get to get away with it,” Gina tells her. “Besides, I was the one who started it.”
“...They won’t get away with it if I find them myself! Even if you started it, I’m going to finish it! But first, the bruise cream.”
Iris disappears, but only for a moment. She returns with the promised cream and starts pressing on the discolored, fragile skin near her eye and rubbing in a way that makes her want to scream. Gina bites down on her cheek instead.
“I wish I could’ve seen you yesterday, but when Hurley and I went to the jail to visit, they said you had already been let out,” Iris says. “I’m sorry I missed you! It must’ve been lonely, going home alone.”
“It’s fine, it’s—Hey, easy! You don’t have to take my eye out!”
“I’m barely even pushing!” She insists, which has to be a lie given how much it hurts. “They really got you good, huh?”
“Yeah,” she admits, because there’s no way around it. “What’s the diagnosis, doc?”
“The diagnosis is that you shouldn’t start any more fights!” Iris says, pressing in with all of her might.
“Okay, okay, got it! No more fightin’!”
Thankfully, she lets up after Gina promises. “You have to close your eye now. Otherwise, I can’t get your eyelid! And you should consider yourself lucky: from what I feel, you haven’t broken any of the bones in your face!”
Gina obeys the order, and Iris keeps talking.
“You should come here once a day for the next week so I can apply this. Otherwise, you’ll be walking around with a bruise for two weeks! And you should come over for dinner tonight so that I can apply it again, just to be safe. And…wait.”
Iris inhales, and then fixes her with a look so disapproving that Gina withers. “Ginny! Were you drinking?!”
“I was cold!”
“It’s not cold outside! It wasn’t cold yesterday, either.”
Gina snickers. It’s too mean of a sound to make at Iris, but it comes out before she can stop it. “Try sleepin’ outside in wet clothes and tell me how cold you think it is.”
On the floor, Holmes snores and rolls over, promptly smacking his head on the leg of the chaise. Somehow, he doesn't wake up. It’s easier to look at him drool in his sleep than to look at Iris, who’s somewhere between horrified and distraught.
“You had to sleep outside?!”
“My other plan fell through,” she admits with a shrug.
“But why wouldn’t you—-No, nevermind. Just promise me you’ll come here if that happens again! Especially if your clothes get wet. I have to make sure you don’t get hypothermia!”
“Promise,” Gina says, deciding not to ask what hypothermia is. She really doesn’t want to hear about medical stuff this early in the morning. “And I promise I’ll be ‘ere for dinner, too. I should have good news for you when I come by.”
Iris’s face lightens up at that, the earlier worry cast off in the face of something sweet. “Good news? What kind of good news?”
Despite the pain in her face when she does it, Gina grins. “That’s a secret. But it’ll be real good!”
“You know, you could tell me now…” Iris says. “Or I could try to guess! Or we could wake Hurley up and make him guess. Oh, maybe we could wake Runo up, too! They’re funny when they work together.”
“Or we could not do that,” Gina suggests. “Besides, you’ll hear all about it over dinner! It’ll be fun. I’ll see you then, okay?”
“Okay. Have fun, Ginny! And be safe!” With impressive speed and force, Iris kicks Holmes in the side. “Hurley! You have to say bye, too.”
His eyes open for all of a second and he wheezes out something that kind of sounds like “Goodbye,” before falling asleep again, his face firmly in his own puddle of drool.
Gina, leaving, can’t help but laugh.
***
Scotland Yard headquarters should probably scare Gina more than it does. Sure, she’s a little on edge, but she’s not scared. Not when Iris told her all about it when she was in jail.
With a hopeful glint in her eyes, she let Gina know that they run the test for those trying to enter the force as inspectors on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and the key to passing it is confidence. Gina has lots of confidence when it comes to this sort of thing. She knows what to do at a crime scene; she’s spent most of her life making them. Iris told her about deduction, too, and the importance of having a little bit of flair in detective work. And although he hadn’t meant to teach her, just to save her life, Gina learned a lot about evidence and proof and procedure from Naruhodo. With all of that under her belt, this test should be a breeze. And yeah, Gina doesn’t actually know what the test is, but they’re detectives! They’ll probably just take them out to a crime scene and wait and see who solves it first. Gina’s fast—she knows she can do it.
There’s a woman working at the front desk—a good sign. She’s not in any police uniform or anything, but if they’re hiring women at the desk, surely they’ll be hiring women for detective work, too.
“‘Scuse me,” Gina begins. “Do you know where they’re testin’ the detectives today?”
The woman doesn’t look away from her typewriter “Room 488. Go to the third floor, and it’ll be on the hall to your left.”
Gina doesn’t bother to thank her, not when she’s so busy. It takes all of her restraint not to sprint up the stairs. Instead, she jogs, thinking about how long it’ll be until she has a badge. They look like they take some time to make, but probably no more than a few days. She’ll have one this time next week. She can put it on her shirt, right by her heart. It’ll be safe there.
Room 488 is empty when she arrives, and it’s full of desks. This is probably where they’ll make everyone wait before taking them to the crime scene. It must be hard, picking crime scenes for this kind of thing. Maybe Gina will meet the person who does it, ask them how they pick. Maybe, one day, she’ll be the one who picks, and wouldn’t that be neat? It’d be real neat.
She sits at a desk by the window and waits. Not long after her, a few blokes enter. They’re staring at her. Gina doesn’t bother to look back.
“Miss, I’m sorry to bother you, but this is where the exam is taking place,” one of them says. He’s the smallest of the bunch, soft around the eyes. “The exam for inspectors. It’ll start soon.”
“Yeah, I know,” Gina says. “That’s why I’m ‘ere.”
A few of the men chuckle. Gina gives them a glare, and that makes them laugh even more. Bastards. The gentler one doesn’t laugh, but he doesn’t say anything, either. He just picks a desk far away from her, towards the door.
More men enter—not a lady among them. That’s fine. Maybe the other ladies decided to take their tests on Monday. Gina couldn’t have known about that; she was in the clink on Monday. Or maybe they’re planning to take their tests on Friday, and Gina can let them know how it’s done when they come in.
The fellas who enter the room are nothing like her. They look like they came for something different altogether. They’re a few years older than she is and their clothes have no patches on them, not even one. Most of them have some kind of pencil with them, too. Gina doesn’t need a pencil. She’s smart enough to keep everything she needs in her head.
When all the desks are full, another man walks into the room. He’s uniformed, straight-backed, with a large gray mustache and a vulture’s eyes. This is the man in charge, clearly.
“Gentlemen,” he begins. “As you know, today is—”
He stops, pausing on Gina.
“You, in the blue hat. Stand.”
It’s an odd request. He doesn’t sound happy when he says it, but he’s a detective. Other than Holmes, they’re not a happy bunch.
Gina stands up, and the man scoffs. “Miss, this room is for those taking the exam to become an inspector.”
Really? She’s going to have to repeat herself for this guy? “I know that,” she says.
“Then why are you here?”
She can’t help but roll her eyes at him. Isn’t it obvious?! “To take the test and become an inspector!”
“There are no female inspectors. Not at the Yard, and not anywhere else.”
“...Well, there will be when I’m done,” Gina tells him.
The man raises his eyebrows at her. They’re thick and bushy, like the caterpillars that she used to catch when she was a kid. “And you think that you can pass this test? A woman of—how old are you?”
For the first time in her life, Gina wishes she was older. It would sound stronger to say that she was twenty-two or twenty-five or even thirty. It would imply experience, authority, confidence. “Seventeen,” she mutters.
“Speak up,” the man orders.
“I’m seventeen!”
“A woman of seventeen thinks that she can pass this exam? Tell me, where are you from? I need to know where they’re making this audacious sort of woman.”
Gina doesn’t know what the word audacious means, but he says it like he’s calling her a bitch. “The East End.”
“Neighborhood?”
“Bethnal Green.”
“Bethnal Green,” he repeats. He says it with the venom people reserve for Judas, Satan, and Amelia Dyer. “Well, here’s a lesson for you, miss, and a lesson for the gentleman in this room, as well. I’m a Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard. As of now, you’re a civilian with no rank. You will end your answers to my question with ‘sir.’ Am I understood?”
“Yes, sir,” the men say. She thinks they tried to say it in unison, but they didn’t quite manage it. Hadn’t figured out how to work together, to say something at the same time.
“Now, you. Try again. What neighborhood are you from?”
“Bethnal Green, sir,” Gina hisses.
“And you have a name, do you not?”
“Course I do,” she says.
“Of course you do, sir.”
The opening he leaves her is too obvious. It’s so easy that she can’t help but take it, really. “You don’t gotta call me sir, but it’s nice of you to be so polite.”
The chief inspector, not amused at all, slams his hands down on the desk. “You mock Scotland Yard by coming here, and now you presume to mock me directly?”
“I ain’t mockin’ the Yard,” Gina says. “I’m gonna be an inspector at the Yard! I wouldn’t make fun of it. No, I’m just mockin’ you. Sir.”
The fury turns his face bright red, and he picks up a bunch of papers from the stack, stapled together. “If you think you’re so clever, come up here.”
No one’s ever told Gina that she was clever—not in the way that meant she could pass tests—but she’s not going to back down now. She strides to the front of the room and the chief inspector hands her a paper from a large stack.
“Now, face these gentlemen and tell them what the first question is.”
Gina knows that there are words on the page. She knows it. There are a few lines of words, and then a big, empty space before another few lines of words and another space. It goes on and on like that until the page ends, and when she flips through the packet, that’s all it is. Words and spaces for written answers.
“I don’t know ‘ow to read,” she whispers, holding the paper close to her face.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You ‘eard me,” Gina says. “You just feel like bein’ mean and want me to say it again.”
“Perhaps I do,” the chief inspector admits. “If you want a chance to work here, repeat what you said.”
And Gina wants it, so she grits her teeth and repeats the truth. “I don’t know ‘ow to read.”
There’s a small bit of laughter from the gathered men, a couple of snorts from the crowd. Gina flushes with shame, clutching the paper with all of her strength.
“Then how do you propose that you take this test, Miss…?”
“The name’s Lestrade,” she tells him. “And, uh, you could ask me the questions?”
“Alright, then.”
Despite her grip, the chief inspector snatches the paper from her easily. It leaves her exposed, open, nowhere to put her hands except by her side.
“List Sir Robert’s Peel’s nine principles of policing and explain their importance.”
Gina’s never heard of the bloke, not even once. Why did she need to know some noble’s stupid list, anyhow? Sirs didn’t go around being detectives. If they did anything with the law, they were prosecutors or judges. They didn’t bother with inspectors or police, so their list of principles didn’t mean shit. It was stupid. Bobby Peel could go to hell for all she cared.
“Are you unfamiliar with them?” The chief inspector asks. He’s smiling. It’s not kind.
“I’m—what do his principles matter for, anyway?!”
“That’s the second half of the question, Miss Lestrade. Do you expect me to give you the answer?”
She shakes her head.
“Verbal answers, if you will. Unless you don’t know how to speak, either?”
“You know I can talk!” Gina snaps. “An’ I don’t need to know some rich fella’s opinion on what cops do! I can be an inspector without knowin’ that!”
“Not if you want to be an inspector at Scotland Yard.”
Gina looks at her shoes. “I want to be an inspector at the Yard,” she mutters. Like that matters anymore.
“Then you should know something.” He says. “The Yard doesn’t hire women as inspectors. We don’t hire illiterate women as receptionists. And Miss Lestrade…Don’t tell me. Is your first name Gina?”
“Yeah.”
The chief inspector snickers. “Well, that’s all I need to know who you are, and you should know that under no circumstances does Scotland Yard hire perjuring pickpockets.”
“That man threatened me!” She blurts out. “He was gonna have me an’ all the kids I knew run out of town, and probably kill us for bein’ in his way! What the ‘ell was I supposed to do, huh?! If you know so much, tell me that!”
“Die,” he says, cool and even. “But since it’s far too late for that, you can crawl back to the slum that you came from and stay there.”
Gina sniffles. It’s a sound she despises for its smallness, its weakness, its stupid feeling. Her eyes sting furiously. There’s nothing for her to say to him.
“If one of you could be so kind as to escort this young lady out of here,” the chief inspector says.
A man towards the front stands up, approaches, reaches an arm out to Gina as if to take her by the elbow. She jerks back.
“I don’t need none of you to escort me anywhere,” she says. “And I don’t need none of you to be a detective, either! I’ll do it all on my own!”
With that, Gina stalks towards the door. When she pulls it open, there are several people lingering in the hall. Eavesdroppers—they must have heard all of the yelling earlier. She slams the door shut, turns around, and kicks it for good measure. That scatters most of the onlookers, but not all. No, now she has a gaggle of Yard men staring at her like she’s some kind of circus freak.
There’s a word for this. A word for men who don’t like women, who treat them bad just because they’re women. Iris taught it to her while she was trying to brush Gina’s hair through the prison bars. She remembers the beginning of it, can summon a few of the sounds, and then she has it.
“You’re all a bunch of misogamists!” She declares, curling her hands into fists.
A man holding a half-smoked cigar snorts, looking at Gina like she’s breakfast and he forgot to eat dinner the night before. “Did you mean misogynists, miss?”
God dammit. That’s the word. All that effort, and she botched the word. She really must be the dumbest bitch on the planet.
“Can it, Monroe,” another man says, and this one’s familiar. Bowler hat, trenchcoat, a bit of gray by his temples…Gina knows this guy. It’s too horrible to be true, but it is. The fella that arrested her for being a murderer is watching all of this go down, staring at her with some kind of expression she can’t decipher.
“You’re a bunch of misogynists, then!” She corrects. “Not lettin’ women be detectives just because they’re women…You’re just scared that you’ll be outsmarted! I thought this was supposed to be the Queen’s Scotland Yard, not a bunch o’ cowards mullin’ about in some stuffy office!”
Before someone can think about scolding her for telling the truth, Gina turns her back on them. She hightails it out of Scotland Yard and it’s difficult, but she doesn’t look back.
***
Gina’s never one to pass up a chance for free food, but she’s really, really tempted to skip dinner with Iris tonight. It was stupid of her to think that it could ever happen, being a detective, and now she’s going to have to face Iris’s disappointment. Her friend failed, and she’ll be upset. She might even cry—Gina doesn’t want Iris to cry. It’d be her fault for being such a moron, for thinking that she could pull herself out of the gutter when it was all she knew. She wasn’t ever meant to leave the streets, and getting someone else’s hopes up about it was just cruel. Gina ought to never face Iris again. She made a promise about dinner, though, and breaking that promise would be another disappointment, so she trudges her way to Baker Street with her hat pulled low over her head. Maybe she’ll get lucky and Iris will forget that she said anything about good news. She’ll be too busy being brilliant at something else to remember that Gina had ever been such an idiot, and they can just have a normal dinner. That’d be nice, so it’s probably not going to happen.
Holmes greets her at the door. “Miss Lestrade! How lovely to see you in the free world once again!”
“You saw me this mornin’,” she says. “Iris kicked you and you woke up to say bye to me.”
“Did she? Hmm. I’m afraid I can’t recall, although that does sound like something she would do. Either way, come on in! The cooking is high quality tonight.”
Gina pulls a face. “And ‘ow do you know that?”
“Because I haven’t touched a piece of it!” Holmes says, which is good enough for her. She’d trust whatever she could get from the dumpster before she’d trust his cooking.
He leads her into the house and Gina sits in what she guesses is her usual spot, since it’s the same one she sat in this morning and the one she sat in the night before Windibank’s. It’s weird, to have something like that. A usual spot at someone else’s house.
“Our dear Iris said that you have good news,” Holmes prompts. “Should I wait for the entrance of our young friend, or do I get to hear it first? Or perhaps I ought to deduce it!”
“There isn’t any,” she says. “There wasn’t ever gonna be any. I was just bein’ stupid this morning, that’s all.”
“Stupid? A young lady as clever as you? I doubt it.”
“Clever,” Gina snorts. “Sure. That’s the word.”
Holmes should laugh at that. He doesn’t. “It is. You’re very clever, Miss Lestrade.”
She’s saved from having to respond by Naruhodo and Iris—who are her new heroes, thank you very much—barging into the living room.
“Food’s ready,” Naruhodo says, smiling as Iris bounds towards the chaise.
“Ginny!” Iris sits down next to her, practically shaking with excitement. “You have to tell me your news! I’ve been waiting to hear it all day!”
Gina looks down at her shoes. “There isn’t anythin’ to tell. Really, I oughta ‘ave seen it comin’. I shouldn’t’ve gotten your hopes up like that.”
Iris grabs her hand and squeezes. Not hard enough to hurt, and not intending to. She’s just being nice, which makes everything worse. “What was the news going to be?”
“...I was goin’ to tell you that I was an inspector at Scotland Yard.”
Naruhodo sits down across from her, giving her the same even look that he gives everyone else. He’s always looked at her like that, even through the worst of the trial. Gina doesn’t think he even knows how to glare. “And that didn’t happen?”
“The bloody test is written! ‘Course it didn’t happen,” Gina says. “It wouldn’t’ve ‘appened even if I could read. The fella in charge said they didn’t accept any women detectives, not anywhere in the world. It was a waste of time to bother in the first place. I thought that I could do somethin’ impossible, but it’s just…I can’t. I can’t be a detective.”
“Why do you think so?” Holmes asks.
“Uh, besides the fact that I’m a woman who can’t read?”
“Besides that,” he says, as if that’s all stuff that can be worked around. For such a good detective, he’s real dumb, falling into the same kind of hopes that an illiterate street rat did.
“Well, detective work is for people who…Who are smart,” she tells him. “And don’t ‘ave criminal records. And people respect detectives a whole lot, even when the detective is you. They trust detectives, and detectives do the right thing. They wouldn’t steal or lie or get into street fights or nothin’ like that. I only thought to try because…Because…”
Gina is not going to cry now. She isn’t. She’s wept in front of this crew too many times. Do it again, and she’s sure to be branded a crybaby, and that’s a dangerous thing. Makes you an easy target.
But Gina’s the only person in this house who plays by those rules, it seems. When she blinks too fast, Iris doesn’t jerk her hand back. Naruhodo doesn’t look at her with disgust. Holmes doesn’t laugh.
“You have a good reason, I’m sure,” Holmes tells her. “Even if it’s just a desire to use your skills in a way more conducive to regular pay, that’s good! But I have a suspicion that it goes deeper than that. Am I wrong?”
“...You’re not wrong.”
“Then I know just the man to call!”
“There ain’t nobody to call! The person who told me to get lost was a Chief Inspector, and I pissed ‘im off. I thought he was gonna sock me.”
“Au contraire,” He says, putting on his shoes. If he’s going to keep talking to her in French, Gina’s pretty sure she’s allowed to break Iris’s rule about not starting fights. “A Chief Inspector is not the best inspector at the Yard, nor the most important! No, the best inspector at Scotland Yard, the one no one there can refuse—That is a man who owes me a favor! And for you, Miss Lestrade, I will call it in.”
“Oh, Hurley, you don’t mean—?”
Holmes nods, as if he knows what Iris means by her happy half-question. “That is exactly who I mean.”
“Well, whoever that bloke is isn’t gonna let me in, either,” Gina says. “Even if ‘e doesn’t mind the reasons that the Yard turned me down, I don’t…I’m not any of the other stuff. The important stuff.”
Holmes inhales, and Gina can tell that he’s going to insist that she is smart, that she is reliable, even if she’s only ever been trusted by the people in this room and only ever smart enough to keep herself alive. Gina was the person people turned to when they were desperate, when they needed someone with quick hands and a willingness to try anything once. Not when they needed something important. She could never be trusted with something as important as the truth.
Thankfully, Naruhodo cuts Holmes off before he can start. “Do you want to be?”
“...What?”
“When I first started to study, I didn’t think I was smart enough to be a lawyer,” he admits. “I didn’t think that I could be confident enough to persuade a courtroom, or brave enough to stand up for other people. I had only ever been to court once, and that was to save myself. I don’t think I live up to all of those standards now, but I want to. I try every single day to be the sort of lawyer Kazuma would have been, and every day, I get closer. I’ll never get there, but that’s not the point! The point is getting closer. It doesn’t matter if you think that you’re smart or brave or reliable right now, just that you’re getting closer to those things. So, I’ll ask you again: everything that you told us about…is that what you want to be?”
“...Yeah.”
It’s such a quiet confession that Gina thinks it’ll get lost in the whirl of London outside, but it doesn’t. Iris, Holmes, Naruhodo—they smile like they heard her. Like they believe she can do it.
“Then it’ll happen!” Holmes declares. “So with that, I’m off to the telegram office! You can all start eating without me, but do save me some food, if you would be so kind. As Miss Lestrade will soon discover, detective work makes one quite hungry!”
With a few flourishes, Holmes pulls on his coat and leaves, venturing off into the night.
“He was supposed to set the table,” Iris says to the closed door. “But it’s okay! Ginny can do it.”
And sure, Gina doesn’t want to set the table. It’s boring, but it’s something she’s being trusted to do. “Where do you keep your silverware?” she asks, and the night goes on.
***
“So, you can’t read,” Iris says, elbow deep in suds as she washes the dishes. Gina’s on drying duty, and Naruhodo has the job of finding a place for all of the dishes among more cabinets than three hundred people could ever use, let alone three.
“Uh, yeah. We’ve been over that.”
“Okay, but when you say that, do you mean ‘I can’t recognize letters’ or ‘I know what these letters are, but I don’t know what the words say’?”
“The first one.”
Iris pauses, splashes some sink water, and then seems to come to some kind of decision. “Alright. We’ll start with the letters, then!”
Gina rubs a particularly stubborn part of her own plate. “Start with them for what?”
“Start teaching them to you, of course!” Iris says. “I don’t remember learning how to read, but I know that you have to start with the letters.”
“...Iris, there ain’t no way I’m ever going to learn how to read.”
“Why not?!”
“I’m too old!” Gina says. “People are supposed to learn to read when they’re tiny. I’m seventeen. That’s way too old to learn.”
“Objection!”
“Objection?! ‘Odo, we’re in the kitchen, not a damn courtroom!”
“A true lawyer never leaves the courtroom,” Naruhodo tells her, smiling like he thinks he’s funny. “And seventeen’s a great age to learn how to read! I started learning to read English when I was sixteen, and most of my classmates didn’t start until they were eighteen. Seventeen’s a perfect middle ground.”
When he comes over to take another plate, Gina takes the chance to splash him. He screams like a little girl. “Okay, but you guys all knew Japanese, didn’t ya? All the written stuff is basically the same, so I bet it was super easy. I’m too old to be learnin’ how to write from nothing.”
“Oh, English and Japanese are nothing alike!” Iris says. “I’ve tried to learn by looking at it, and I’ve had no luck at all. They don’t have a single letter! They have—What are they called, Runo?”
“Kanji.”
“Yes! They don’t look anything like letters. Learning to read English when you start with that must have been very difficult.”
“It wasn’t easy,” Naruhodo admits. “But I figured it out eventually!”
Gina frowns at the two of them, at the obvious answer here. They could be lying about the kanji, but she’s pretty sure she knows these two. Is pretty sure they wouldn’t do that to her. They didn’t seem to think it was funny when she failed, so they had no reason to set her up. “...Alright then. If what you say is true and ‘Oddo could figure it out without knowin’ any letters at sixteen, I can definitely do it at seventeen.”
He smiles, muttering something in Japanese that she doesn’t quite catch before dropping a dish towel on her head. Gina decides to leave it here.
“So, letters!” Iris interrupts, a bright grin on her face. “Do you know how many there are in English?”
“No clue,” she admits. “Probably around ten?”
“Wrong! There’s twenty-six. But don’t worry! There’s a song to help you memorize them.”
“...Am I gonna ‘ave to sing this song?”
Iris’s grin turns into a downright smirk. “Oh, Ginny, of course you are!”
***
So, reluctantly, Gina sings, Iris feeding her the letters that make up the song. Naruhodo gets cajoled into singing with her, and when Holmes comes back, he plays the violin to the tune. Sometimes they make her sing alone, see how many letters she has memorized, but mostly, they sing together. London settles into the night, lit street lamps replacing the sun as Gina blushes all the way up to her ears. It’s embarrassing, to like singing together this much. She’s not even good at it, but it’s fun. It’s nice. No one minds when she slips out of tune or forgets a letter or three. There’s no scolding or scowling or even poking fun at her for not knowing. It’s patient and kind, and they sing over and over and over.
“It’s far too late to send you home, Miss Lestrade,” Holmes says once she’s managed to sing the whole alphabet backwards. “I hope you wouldn’t mind staying here?”
She shrugs and tries not to look too delighted. “If you don’t mind puttin’ me up, I guess it’s fine.”
And so Gina gets to take a proper bath tonight, to wear the nightgown she keeps in her bag for situations like this, to drink hot chocolate with Iris as she tries to explain to Gina the difference between cursive and print letters, uppercase and lowercase. Really, they ought to just pick one case and style and then stick to it, but it’s too late to change the English language now. She’s shown up in time to learn how it works, though. That counts for something.
Under Iris’s cheerful explanations, the senseless swirls are connected to the letters in the song, A with its strong lines and B with the two curves and the long, incomplete circle of C. They’ll all make sense soon, and then Gina will get to make them herself. Put them in order to make words, sentences, paragraphs.
She wonders what she’ll write when she has the chance. Gina should know better than to be too optimistic, but in the dark, surrounded by people that she can’t help but trust, she thinks she’ll be able to write something good.
***
Gina doesn’t remember falling asleep. She knows she must have at some point because she wakes up before dawn, but she doesn’t remember actually passing out. Iris is asleep next to her, clutching Gina like a teddy bear. Naruhodo is slumped over the desk, his cheek pressed flat against the wood. Downstairs, it sounds like Holmes is talking to…someone. It’s too quiet for her to make out the exact words, but she can follow his airy tone and the gruff muttering of the person he’s managed to trap in a conversation. This might be the guy he sent the telegram to. In that case, Gina better get down there.
Prying Iris off of her is a challenge, but she manages to do it without disturbing her too much. Naruhodo looks like he almost wakes up when Gina pulls on her boots, but he slumps back over a second later.
There’s no use hiding behind a different hat today, a different hairstyle. Secrets never stay secrets for long, and so most of Scotland Yard probably knows that Gina Lestrade the pickpocket showed up to become a detective. She’s familiar enough with her regular bun that Gina can make it in the dark and then leave without bothering a soul.
“—admit it took a lot of guts,” the stranger says as Gina walks down the stairs. “But the Yard will be strict on her for it. Even if I wanted to take this on, I doubt I’d—”
“Miss Lestrade!” Holmes exclaims. Gina isn’t even on the first floor yet! There’s no way he could’ve been able to hear her, not with how good she is at walking without making a sound. Maybe Iris did something to his ears. “Come join us! My dear friend was just helping me cook breakfast!”
Gina slinks into the kitchen, and there’s the same inspector who arrested her—the same inspector who watched her storm out of Scotland Yard—frowning at a frying pan. He gives her a nod.
“Lestrade,” he says, and then says nothing else. She has no clue what he’s really thinking. Worse, Gina doesn’t remember his name, not in the midst of everything else.
“You remember Inspector Gregson, I assume?” Holmes asks, giving her a small smile. He must’ve known she forgot.
“Yeah. We ran into each other yesterday,” she says. “After I, uh. Got kicked out of the testing room.”
“You didn’t mention that in your story! That’s quite dramatic,” Holmes says.
Gregson flips the eggs over. “It was certainly a show, I’ll give you that.”
“I wasn’t performin’,” Gina tells him. “And how’d he get you to cook? Ain’t the ‘ost normally the one who’s supposed to do all of that?”
“He’s in charge of the toast. I don’t want to be poisoned, accident or not, and I figured he’d have a harder time contaimintin’ bread.”
“...That’s fair,” she relents.
“I will have you all know that I am a perfectly adequate cook!” Holmes says. “I kept Iris alive and well until she discovered the art! In fact, I—”
“If you’re about to tell some story, don’t,” Gregson interrupts. Then he gives Gina a look, curious and cautious, like he found a garden snake in his living room and doesn’t know what to do with it. “So, you want to be an inspector?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah,” she says again.
“I doubt the young lady would’ve gone to Scotland Yard if she had doubts,” Holmes adds. “Miss Lestrade is very confident, which, as you know, is an invaluable asset as an inspector.”
“I’m aware.”
For several seconds, no one says anything. There’s bacon on the backburner that looks a little crispy, but good. Holmes’s toast is burning, but it’ll be edible. It’ll be a nice breakfast, maybe. A tolerable one, at least.
“Get a plate,” Gregson says. “These eggs are done, and Holmes’s toast was done thirty seconds ago.”
“My good man, are you sure?”
“I can smell it burning.”
“So can I,” Gina says, and that’s good enough for Holmes to check on it.
They get their food in silence. Or, mostly silence. Holmes is humming something, but Gina doesn’t know the tune. It doesn’t sound like the alphabet song that they were singing last night, that’s for sure.
“Would you care to tell Miss Lestrade the terms of your exciting new offer, Inspector?” Holmes asks, popping a slice of bacon in his mouth before sitting down at the table.
“I was going to wait until she got some more food in her, but alright,” Gregson starts. “I saw what happened to you yesterday, and Holmes told me the details I didn’t catch. What you want is risky, but if you’re really sold on being an inspector, I’ll take you out for the day. You’ll see what being an inspector for the Yard is like, and you’ll pitch in. I’ll ask you a few questions as we go—nothing like what was on that test, don’t worry—and after that, I’ll decide if I want to take you on as my apprentice. Bein’ an apprentice at the Yard is serious business, though. You’d be workin’ for me for at least a year, and you’d have to keep yourself out of trouble. No divin’, no fightin’, none of that. Any questions?”
“...What’ll ‘appen once I’m done being an apprentice?”
“You’ll take the exam again,” he says. “That means you have to work on your reading and writing. I doubt I’ll be able to help you with that on the Yard’s time, but neither of us will be on the clock forever.”
“And if I fail it?”
“You study and take it again.”
Gina takes a bite of her eggs. They’re a little on the runny side, but they’re pretty good, all things considered.
“Does the Yard pay apprentices?”
“Once Chief Inspector Adams approves the paperwork, you’ll be gettin’ a check once every two weeks. It’ll be less than what you’d get as a proper detective, but more than enough for the necessities.”
“...Sounds like a deal,” Gina says, holding her hand out for a shake. Gregson shakes back with a grip like iron.
“Finish eating, then. Once you’re done, we’ll be off.”
“Is Chief Inspector Adams, by chance, the Chief Inspector that Miss Lestrade got into a row with?” Holmes asks, smiling into his coffee.
“The very same.”
Gina stabs her eggs with all of her might. “You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me! That guy?!”
“He’s technically my boss,” Gregson says. “You don’t have to like him, but try not to rip out his throat.”
“Do you like him?”
Gregson snorts, choking on his toast. “Lestrade, I don’t think there’s a soul in London that likes him.”
“It’s true,” Holmes confirms. “I’m fortunate enough not to run into him these days, but in my youth? Goodness. He picked me up by the collar of my jacket once! It never fit the same after that.”
“Were you snooping around a crime scene at the time?” Gregson asks.
“I wouldn’t call it snooping! I was assisting the investigation!”
“Unasked?”
“Scotland Yard was too prideful to ask for my help in those days,” he says. “They were very foolish. Foolish fools who were up to…tomfoolery! Without my assistance, that crime would’ve gone unsolved. Much like in the case of Jack the Ripper—”
“I am not talking about that case over breakfast—”
“They flubbed it! If you had been assigned, or perhaps if I had been allowed a closer look, then certainly—”
“Jack the Ripper,” Gina interrupts. “Ain’t that the bloke who was running around Whitechapel a couple years back? He screwed up the pickpocketin’ market for months!”
“He also murdered nine women,” Gregson says. “Sorry about your economy, but he murdered nine women.”
“That we know about! It’s very likely that he—”
“Don’t start with me on this, Holmes.”
Gina steals Holmes’s coffee and has a sip. “No, start with him! I wanna hear about this.”
“You can hear all about it once you’re good enough with letters to read the files yourself,” Gregson tells her.
“...You’d let me read ‘em?!”
“Maybe. If I decide to take on this suicide mision, and if you don’t badger me about it.”
“Deal,” Gina says, and promptly focuses on finishing her breakfast as fast as possible. And Holmes’s coffee. She needs it more than he does, especially if Gregson is still so uncertain about taking on her case.
“Remarkably effective, Inspector,” Holmes comments. “However, I am not so easily satiated! I would like a look at these files as soon as—”
“No.”
“But—”
“No.”
“Are you—”
“I am absolutely sure,” Gregson says. “You’re not gettin’ Yard paperwork, and Lestrade’s only gettin’ it if I decide to take her on, which isn’t a certain thing.”
“You are very cruel, Inspector. I’m sure Her Ladyship would be disappointed to hear how you’ve treated me!”
Gina finishes off his coffee and slams the mug down. “Nah. Iris would ‘ave a good laugh about it, I think.”
“Miss Lestrade, was that my coffee?”
“Uh, yeah,” she says. “You weren’t drinkin’ it, and I’m not gonna sit here and let good coffee go to waste.”
Gregson raises an eyebrow at her. “Didn’t I tell you not to steal things?”
“It’s not stealing if it’s from Holmes.”
“...That’s fair,” Gregson decides. “You done with that?”
Gina looks down at her plate. She has one small piece of bacon left. The other two, for their parts, aren’t even close to done. “Just about,” she says, popping the last piece into her mouth and chewing as fast as she can.
“Alright. Let’s get a move on, then. This is a fine breakfast, but we can’t waste too much time on it.”
“It was a pleasure to have you over, Inspector!”
“Likewise,” he grumbles, and then heads for the door. Holmes gives Gina a wink. She’ll have to thank him for this later, maybe. If it works.
“See ya!” She says, and follows behind her boss—for the day, that is.
***
Walking into headquarters with Gregson feels different when walking in alone. While she could just glide through the building without being stopped when she was by herself, it seems like everybody and their brother stops for a how-do-you-do when she’s with Gregson, and not one of them asks to talk to Gina. Which is fine! Gina will just introduce herself to all of these people later, once she’s maybe-an-apprentice. It’s totally okay that none of them seem willing to acknowledge her right now.
It’s only once they make it to the very familiar third floor that someone seems to want something to do with her. One moment, she’s walking just behind Gregson, and the next, someone’s grabbing her arm and twisting it.
“Miss Lestrade,” he hisses, and ah, hell, it’s Chief Inspector Adams. “I believe I was quite clear when I told you to leave yesterday, was I not?”
Gina tries to pull her arm back, but it’s no dice. The man’s grip is even harder than Gregson’s.
“I’m allowed to be ‘ere! The Inspector said so!”
“Do you honestly expect me to believe that an inspector would ever—”
“I told her to come here, sir,” Gregson says. He glances at the hold that Adams has on Gina’s arm, and there’s a funny crinkle that forms on his forehead. It looks a bit like the squiggles Gina sees on papers, the letters she hasn’t learned yet.
“You…You what?”
“I told her to come here, sir,” he repeats. “So there’s no need to apprehend her.”
Adams drops her arm, and Gina takes the chance to stand as far away from that asshole as she can. There’s no way around it: her arm will bruise tomorrow.
“For what purpose?”
“Well, you were saying that I oughta take on an apprentice and share my knowledge with some youngsters. That I should think about it during my suspension and come back with an answer by the end of the month.” Gregson says. “Here’s my answer.”
“Gina Lestrade is your answer?”
“Aye.”
Adams takes a deep breath. “Inspector Gregson, I do hate to question your judgment, but if I could have ten minutes of your time to discuss your decision with you?”
“Of course, sir,” he says. “Lestrade, wait in my office. It’s the third door down on the right.”
“Alright.”
Gina flounces off, very aware of the fact that Adams is glaring a hole in the back of her head. She’s also very aware that, if Iris is right, everyone loves Inspector Gregson down here. He’ll be getting his way, for sure.
Gregson’s office is a nice room. There’s a heavy desk, a couple of chairs, a few shelves of books, and a window that overlooks the park nearby. Maybe she ought to sleep out there the next time she’s left without a place to go. It’s a bit of a walk from her normal haunts, but if this all works out—and that’s a big if—it’s right by where she’ll be working. She’d just have to be careful not to get caught by any coworkers, which. Wow. She might have coworkers, and not in the way she had coworkers for the two weeks she tried working at that damn matchstick factory. This would be a real thing, a thing where people respected her opinion and expected her to do more than dip matches into sulfur. She’s never had that, but that’s how it’s supposed to work, isn’t it? And soon, wouldn’t it be hers?
Gina watches the birds in the park for all of five minutes before she starts opening the desk drawers. Most of it is just notebooks filled with words she can’t read. She can recognize occasional letters, though, A’s scattered across every page. It’s sometimes at the beginning of words, sometimes in the middle, and even once or two right at the end. The B’s and C’s are less common, but they’re there. She takes what she suspects is Gregson’s chair as her own and keeps flipping, finding more and more as she goes. They did well, putting A first in that song. Maybe that’s how it’ll go. The most common letters first, and then the rarer ones as they go on. That’d make sense.
And then the next thing she knows, Gregson’s snatching the notebook out of her hands. “Save the snooping for crime scenes, Lestrade,” he says. “Besides, didn’t you say you can’t read yet?”
“Iris taught me some letters yesterday! I was tryin’ to see if I could spot any in here.”
Gregson puts the notebook in his jacket pocket. “Don’t try to learn off of my notes unless I hand them to you. Some of this is stuff you can’t know about until you’ve been an apprentice for months, yeah? Top secret.”
“But I’ll get to know the secrets if I’m an apprentice for long enough?”
“No comment,” Gregson says. “How many letters do you know?”
“I can recognize three of ‘em, but I know the names of all twenty-six,” Gina says.
“Not a bad start. Now, come on. Adams wants us over in Whitechapel. Some fellow’s been murdered down that way.”
Gina opens her mouth—
“And no, it’s not the Ripper.”
—and closes it. Damn.
“If I catch the Ripper while we’re down there, will I definitely get to be your apprentice?”
“That’s not how this works,” he says. “This isn’t about who you catch or what you know. This is a test to see how you think, and it’s not one with clear right answers. Okay?”
Gina doesn’t get how there can be a test with no right answer, but maybe that’s a riddle she’ll have to figure it out. She has a whole day to do it, and Gina can do it. Has to do it, or else she’s back to not having a chance in hell. “Okay,” she agrees, and then sets off on what might be the most important trip of her life.
She should be scared, maybe. So much depends on this, more than she could ever try to explain. Her life, as odd as it’s been, has all been leading up to this moment, solving an East End murder that nobody other than Gregson cared about it. So she should be afraid. She should be terrified. But it’s the Yard, it’s Thursday morning, it’s a chance to find the truth; it’s all she’s ever wanted.
The two of them leave headquarters behind. It turns out that London air is still London air on the Victoria Embankment, just as much as it is on Shoreditch High Street. It’s the same all over town, town after town, this huge town that’s all hers because it breathes the same way no matter where she is, no matter who she’s walking with. As she and Gregson track down the nearest tram car, she breathes in the sharp scent of smog and river water, and Gina Lestrade is as home as she’s ever been.