Baker and Jones Ch. 08

"As though I'm the one who's metaphorically stabbed you?"

The detective sighs. "And here I thought we were becoming friends."

"You own my contract."

"So if I were to release you, you would no longer remain?"

There's a painful wishfulness in Cordelia's voice that catches Annette unawares. Her words are so agonizingly sincere, so devoid of any pretense. It was true, Cordelia actually did believe they were on the path towards friendship.

"I..." Annette drifts off, unsure of how to respond.

"Of course," Cordelia sighs and shrugs. She turns and continues her march home. Annette follows behind, feeling her thoughts stumble along. "Christ, it's always the lesbianism," Cordelia mutters.

"I assure you, Miss, that-,"

"Don't bother, Annette," she interjects. "I've lost enough friends to this fact as it is. Please, don't burden me with the experience of another loss. You've made your point."

Annette is silent, unsure of how to communicate her thoughts to Cordelia. For some reason that Annette can't explain, this surprising similarity between the two has shaken her. It should be easy enough to tell her that Annette has been with women too, and that there was no cause for shame around the issue... but Annette is also mad at her for the fact. How much stress of her days could have been avoided if this was something she had known earlier about Cordelia? Perhaps the detective would have been kinder with her, more generous.

The image of the three women draped across Cordelia flashes in her head once more, and Annette feels a rush of jealousy course through her. It felt so impossible to get any privacy for herself, and she's still furious that Simon ruined her last encounter with Samantha. God, she wishes she could somehow sneak the noblewoman over to her room. If Cordelia would simply give her an advanced notice of when she'd be out all night, Annette could even have the home to herself with Samantha.

At the steps to 167th Mill Street, Annette releases a tense breath and says, "Miss Jones... please, wait a moment."

"I've had enough of your commands for an evening, Miss Baker," Cordelia complains, though she does halt.

"I was worried about you."

"So you've said,"she crosses her arms tightly and impatiently.

"I... I'm sorry," Annette shoves down her hostility with great effort. "For losing my temper," she adds.

"For your temper..." Cordelia takes a long breath. "Might I go inside now?"

"Would you like me to take a look at your injuries?"

"No."

"Don't be so stubborn. Let me help," Annette sighs.

"Oh, I'm stubborn?"

"Yes, you are."

"Annette, you're stubborn!"

"This isn't about me-,"

"Of course it is about you," she huffs. "You've made it all entirely about yourself! Have you considered that I might be upset for a reason entirely separate from you?"

"You've been distant with me ever since the fire."

Cordelia groans, searching her pockets for the keys to the house. She becomes more and more frustrated as she can't find them. "I've lost my keys. Open the door, Annette."

"No."

"No?"

"Tell me what happened."

"Just open the goddamn door."

"Tell me what happened," she repeats.

"Haven't I suffered enough embarrassment tonight, Miss Baker?"

Annette pauses. "If you'll allow me to tend to your injuries, and tell me what is going on, I will open the door."

"Christ..." Cordelia massages her temples and turns away. "Fine. Open the door."

Annette carefully steps past her onto the top step, unlocking the door and gesturing for her to enter. She follows Cordelia inside, directing her to take a seat in the dining room while she retrieves hot water, a frozen slab of meat wrapped in a cloth, and a bottle of whiskey.

She pulls a chair up beside Cordelia, pouring out a glass of whiskey for her and leaning in to inspect her wounds. While many of them have been lightly tended to, she decides not to take the risk, wiping away the traces of blood and sweat and dirt. Annette is surprised that Cordelia allows her to clean the cuts along her face and jaw, and she directs the detective to hold the frozen meat to her bruised eye.

"So you qualified for betting pools," Annette nudges.

"Yes."

"How did you manage that?"

Cordelia winces as Annette cleans an alarming cut just underneath her jaw with a large bruise forming around it. "While you were off doing whatever you were doing at the Hastings' ball, I was convincing a friend in the boxing scene to take a risk on me. He owed me a favor from a case."

"So you finally got what you wanted, but then you decided to drink your way through the entire weekend. Why?"

"Ouch," Cordelia pulls away, grabbing the cloth from Annette's hand and holding it to the wound Annette had been too forceful with.

"Why would you set yourself up to fail like that?" Annette asks.

"I didn't."

"You've hardly slept in three days."

Cordelia sighs and closes her eyes. "Stop looking at me, please."

"I want you to answer-,"

"And I will," she insists. "I just can't do it while you're glaring at me like that."

"I'm not glaring-,"

"Annette," she hisses. "Please."

Annette turns away. From behind her, she can hear Cordelia take a long few breaths, tightly controlling her exhales. She hears the sound of her sipping the whiskey, and the clink of the glass being set back down onto the table.

"I am, and have been, a monster all of my life, Annette," Cordelia begins. "A bastard child, a misunderstood soul, a combative hothead, a tomboy, a lesbian."

Annette wants to say something but she keeps quiet, allowing the detective to say her piece. She listens with a somber enrapture.

"Cordelia Jones is someone to be looked at as a warning story, a failure of a woman," she scoffs. "She doesn't have proper manners. She speaks her mind and doesn't listen. She isn't demure and feminine like a woman ought to be. She isn't married and probably will never be. She wears pants, for Christ's sake."

The chair creaks softly as Cordelia leans back.

"It's all I've ever been, and all I'll ever be. I've tried to escape this destiny of mine. For a while, I played the part of the perfect girl. But bastards don't get to be perfect. The goalposts were always shifted away from me," she takes another sip of her drink. "So I stopped playing and became the freak show. A woman who works, and works a job that's only supposed to be for men.

"I'm not even that eccentric," Cordelia grumbles. "Eccentric is just a nicer way of saying that they think I'm crazy. You should see the personal lives of the other investigators in this city. They're a wretched bunch, Annette. I just have the audacity to wear my monstrosity on the outside."

Cordelia pauses for a long time again. Annette considers responding, but there's no words to say. She simply waits for her to continue.

"Boxing is the one place I can punish them for how they've treated me. I'm still a woman, and I can't escape that, but when there's a man unconscious at my feet and blood on my fists, who can deny my power?" She clears her throat, searching for the right words to continue. "I'm still just a monster in their eyes. It's easier in a bar, but tonight, in the ring... have you ever stood before a crowd of people and known that each and every one of them is dreaming of beating the shit out of you?"

Another pause.

"I lost, Annette. It wasn't even a good fight. You don't come back from that."

Annette starts and stops a few sentences, but the words don't form.

"Don't say anything. Please," Cordelia begs softly. "I'm done for tonight. Don't bother waking me in the morning."

Cordelia rises from her place, grabbing her glass of whiskey and the bottle it was poured from, and slowly ascends the stairs.

- - -

Mary Rosen's home is small, but comfortable and pleasant. It resides on the edge of the central district, so nearly joining the ranks of more distinguished society but failing. It was the home of a working family, but one with just ever so slightly more means than others.

Annette sits in a chair in the kitchen, graciously accepting the cup of tea that Mary has poured out for her, a return of Annette's gesture the last time they spoke. She lets out a tiny groan as she shuffles into the chair next to Annette, placing a gentle hand on the servant's shoulder to steady herself.

"There's news, I take it?" Mary asks, her eyes hungrily scouring Annette's face.

Annette nods and takes a quiet sip of the tea. It takes a long time to find any words to say to the woman, and the desperate look in her eyes is painful to behold. And it wasn't desperation for Henry to be alive; there was a hunger for justice for his death. How on Earth was Annette to bring the truth to her?

She sighs. "The situation is more... complicated than we thought at first."

"Complicated?" Mary leans back and shakes her head. "Have you found a way to bring justice to Mister Bembrook?"

"We... we were looking into his work, and Henry's notes," Annette explains. "Trying to find something that could help."

"Where is Cordelia? I thought she handled the cases?"

Annette pauses. "She's unfortunately preoccupied at the moment. She's sent me in her stead."

Annette doesn't enjoy lying to Mary, but it once again feels impossible to bring the truth. Cordelia has hardly left her room in the last two days, hardly eaten at all. She's swung so deeply into her defeat that it almost seems as though the detective has given up on everything. Annette had come by out of a feeling of obligation to tell Mrs. Rosen the truth.

"Bembrook is dead," Annette says at last. "We're not entirely sure who killed him."

Mary takes a moment to accept the information, nodding with a resolved satisfaction. "And you had no part in this?" Annette shakes her head. "I can't say he didn't deserve it," Mary concludes.

"I... Mary, I don't know how to tell you this," Annette braves, fiddling nervously with her hands. "We've found Henry's body."

Mary's eyes widen. "Where is it? Did it wash up ashore somewhere?"

"He... he didn't die in the locomotive accident."

"What?"

"Last Friday, there was a fire in the 8th Street Textile Factory," she explains apprehensively. "We found him there..."

Mary lowers her face into her hands. "Was his body burned?"

"No, we believe he died from the smoke."

Mary turns her face to the sky and mutters a prayer under her breath that Annette doesn't understand. She smiles weakly at Annette, and takes her hands into her palms, squeezing them gently. "Thank you. Thank you."

"Why are you thanking me?"

"Without his body," Mary answers, "it's against our traditions to hold a funeral. I have been waiting and waiting to begin grieving - everyone else wanted to bury him without the body. It's good that it didn't burn. Now, we can properly put him to rest."

"I'll try to make sure we get his body to you, Mrs. Rosen," Annette promises, though she feels a pit in her stomach. "But it may be difficult."

"Why?"

Annette takes a deep breath. "We believe he started the fire. The crown investigators are holding his body as evidence for now."

Mary throws a shaking hand to her mouth. "He couldn't have..."

Annette pulls the scrap of paper out of her pocket that she was given in the market, with the same strangle symbol they found in Henry's wallet. "Do... do you recognize this?"

Mary studies it for a moment, then nods.

"You do?"

"The Mallets," she supplies.

"The Mallets?" Annette confirms. "Do you know who they are?"

"It was just some social club Henry was a part of," Mary shrugs. "Someone at his work started it."

"So they aren't a union?"

Mary scowls defensively. "Henry wasn't a unionist. He followed rules. He was a good worker."

"I'm sorry," Annette backtracks, "I didn't mean to imply anything. We're just trying to understand what happened."

Mary stands suddenly. "Thank you for bringing the news nonetheless, Miss Baker. It will provide at least some peace. I will do what I can to see if we can be given Henry's body."

- - -

Annette stares at the straw dummy with a railroad spike through its eye and wonders if her prior investigation into the death of Bembrook was worth the effort. As she takes in the modest crowd around her in Docksims Square Park, nestled on the edge of the industrial district, she wonders if such a display would count as a confession of murder. There's a few other dummy's just like it, none of them bearing any particular likeness to anyone Annette recognizes, and she suddenly wonders how dangerous it might be for her here.

"-when Mr. Pemberley promised raises and improved conditions, did any of it materialize!?" The speaker up on the stage shouts his question to the audience, who jeer along with him in disgust at Pemberley Exports. "Instead, Mr. Pemberley outsourced his labor to the colonies, depriving the good workers here at home the chance to share in his gains!"

Annette slowly winds her way through the crowd, which is made up entirely of workers and servants like herself. She shudders at the sight of dirty and weary laborers who sported collars of their own, knowing that the combination of the two likely meant they were forced into servitude for punishment of some crime. She was part of the privileged few who sold themselves into collar service, and even within that group was lucky to have a surprisingly lenient owner.

"It's a simple question of morality, of justice!" The speaker continues. He's a short, stout man with a red beard and balding head. His light accent suggests Kerish origins, and with the power in his voice it's no wonder people listened to him. He was as commanding and authoritative as any priest or general. "If they rise up, we must be brought up with them!"

Behind the speaker, who only introduced himself by the name Failinis as a reference to the Kerish legends of the guardian wolf-dog, a large banner displays the Mallet's symbol. Whereas the group previously seemed to dwell on secrecy, or subtlety at the very least, this gathering appeared to be their public debut. Annette is careful to notice any details she can, and makes note of the total number of straw dummies around the ring. There's ten. If they aligned with figures the Mallet's killed, the Pemberley middle-man, Bembrook, and the six in the 8th Street fire, that left two other murders Annette was unaware of.

"It brings us here, fellow laborers, to the central question," Failinis concludes. "If they are incapable of holding society upright, or keeping it moral and just and fair, then who will!?" The crowd cheers in affirmation, providing him his answer. He smiles a wide grin and steps down from the podium.

Annette slowly makes her way to speak with him, the tiny whispers of a plan forming in the back of her mind. Part of her wishes Cordelia would exit her depressive slump and join her, but she quickly decides that having her owner here would likely do more harm than good. This was a job that only Annette could pull off.

As she nears the place where Failinis exited the stage, she's surprised to see that he's disappeared. A handful of other Mallet's members remain in his place, encouraging the crowd to sign up and support them. One of them spots Annette, standing a few feet behind the throng, and smiles, pushing his way over to her. It's only when he's standing a few feet in front of her that Annette recognizes him as the worker from the market.

"You came!" He grins, striding up to her with a pep in his step.

"Indeed," she nods. "Quite the speech."

The man smirks. "Failinis didn't think so. He holds himself to dangerously high standards, I think he's actually a little disappointed in himself."

"Please pass along my compliments nonetheless," Annette supplies peaceably, "if that is him during a poor speech he must be an expert indeed."

"I'll be sure to tell him," the man smiles. "I didn't think you'd make it."

"I'm surprised you remember me."

"With how grumpy and sarcastic you were? Couldn't forget," he grins again. "My name is Guy."

Annette shakes his hand. "Annette."

"Good to meet you," Guy nods. "Have you given Failinis' words any thought?"

"A few," she affirms. "Still taking it all in."

"I'm glad to see you've an open mind."

"I try," Annette looks around the park. "What's with the straw dummies?"

"Oh, those?" Guy shakes his head and smiles, as though relating an inside joke. "Just a little something to get the point across, you know?"

Annette focuses on the one with the spike through its eye. "The rail spike is a nice touch."

"Failinis says it's a metaphor," Guy explains happily. "That it represents the ways that the wealthy are 'blinded by the steel of industry.'"

"From what I've seen, they may as well be blinded by greed as well. You could just as easily impale them with currency," she jokes. She'd expected to have to put on more of an act to convince Guy of her interest, but Annette is surprised at how much of her joke comes from a real sincerity. She'd been caught up in the idea that Bembrook was murdered and someone needed to discover why; she hadn't spent as much time considering that part of her was thrilled at his demise. Enough people had died or been maimed by his work to make him deserve it.

"Well said, Miss," Guy agrees. "I'm glad to see you in better spirits than in our first meeting."

"I am much better, thank you." Annette replies, then adds, "You were right, by the way."

"About what?"

She taps a finger to her collar. "I was angry about my owner," she lies. It isn't much of a lie; she did feel angry with Cordelia now, just not necessarily when she'd met Guy.

"Who might that be?" His brows furrow seriously and protectively.

"I shouldn't say," Annette looks away. "I'd already be in so much trouble just for being here. Sh-he's vicious when I disobey."

"I'm so sorry to hear that. But you're not alone," Guy places a hand on the side of her shoulder to comfort her. "All of us know what that feeling is like."

"Have you ever been collared?"

"Thankfully not, but I know plenty of friends who have."

"So, the Mallets are going to stand up to them? The barons of industry?"

"If we can. We're a small group now. I think Failinis is hoping to make a run for a seat in Parliament."

"That's incredible," Annette smiles weakly. "But is it enough?"

"You'll see, Annette," he squeezes his hand softly. "Chin up."

"Thanks." Annette folds her hands behind her back and stares sadly at the ground. She needs to know more, to get in closer. "Is... is there anything I can do for the movement?"

"We wouldn't want to bring you into danger with your owner-,"

"Please," Annette begs. "It doesn't need to be anything big. Even something small would make me feel like I have power again."

"I can see what we can-," Guy's eyes suddenly dart to a place behind her, fear washing across his face. "Run!" he shouts, pushing Annette away towards a gap in the crowds.

Something about the seriousness in his face crashes through Annette, and she listens, darting through the crowd just as a few shouts erupt around her. Suddenly everything races into chaos, with people screaming and running in all directions. Annette feels her body rush with adrenaline, and it feels as though for a moment time has stopped. She pushes her way through and breaks out of the crowd, only to trip on the root of a tree. Annette lands hard on her wrists and knees, sure that the pain would emerge later, but she pushes past it and scrambles back up to her feet.

She ducks into a nearby alleyway and turns back to see a wall of police officers charging into the crowd. Batons descend aggressively. Some people are tackled, others kicked. Annette watches as a few more are forcefully handcuffed. They've seemingly arrived out of nowhere, descending on the crowd with a swiftness that was designed to cause chaos. They didn't even declare the gathering a riot or announce any crimes, they simply attacked unprompted. A pit wrends in her stomach, and for a moment she considers rushing back in to help, but she knows there's nothing to be done.