“Probably wise,” agreed Professor Lyall.
Madame Lefoux gave a half shrug. “You did ask, no?” She led them through a door at the end of the passage and into her contrivance chamber.
Professor Lyall sensed that there was something different about the place. He could not determine exactly what it was. He was familiar with the laboratory, having visited it in order to acquire various necessary instruments, gadgets, and devices for the pack, for the Bureau of Unnatural Registry (BUR), and sometimes for his own personal use. Madame Lefoux was generally thought to be one of the better young members of the mad-scientist set. She had a reputation for good, hard work and fair prices, her only idiosyncrasy of consequence, so far, being her mode of dress. All members of the Order of the Brass Octopus were notorious for their eccentricities, and Madame Lefoux stood comparatively low on the peculiarity scale. Of course, there was always the possibility she would go on to develop more offensive inclinations later. There were rumors, but, to date, Lyall had had no cause to complain. Her laboratory was everything that was to be expected from an inventor of her character and reputation—very large, very messy, and very, very interesting.
“Where is your son?” inquired Professor Lyall politely, looking around for Quesnel Lefoux’s mercurial little face.
“Boarding school.” The inventor dismissed her child with a faint headshake of disappointment. “He was becoming a liability, and then the muddle with Angelique last month made school the most logical choice. I anticipate his imminent expulsion.”
Professor Lyall nodded his understanding. Angelique, Quesnel’s biological mother and Alexia’s former lady’s maid, had been working undercover for a vampire hive when she fell to her death out of the window of an obscure castle in Scotland. Not that such information was common knowledge, nor likely to become so, but the hives were not above recrimination. Angelique had failed her masters, and Madame Lefoux had involved herself unnecessarily in the matter. It was probably safer for Quesnel to be out of town and away from society, but Professor Lyall had a soft spot for the little ragamuffin, and would miss seeing him around the place.
“Formerly Lefoux must be missing him.”
Madame Lefoux dimpled at that. “Oh, I doubt that. My aunt never did like children very much, even when she was a child.”
The ghost in question, Madame Lefoux’s dead aunt and fellow inventor, resided in the contrivance chamber and had been, until recently, responsible for Quesnel’s education—although, of course, not during the daytime.
Floote stood quietly while Professor Lyall and Madame Lefoux exchanged pleasantries. Tunstell did not. He began poking about the vast muddle, picking up containers and shaking them, examining the contents of large glass vials and winding up sets of gears. There were cords and wire coils draped over hat stands to investigate, vacuum tubes propped in umbrella stands to tip over, and large pieces of machinery to rap on experimentally.
“Do you think I should warn him off? Some of those are volatile.” Madame Lefoux crossed her arms, not particularly concerned.
Professor Lyall rolled his eyes. “Impossible pup.”
Floote went trailing after the curious Tunstell and began relieving him of his more dangerous distractions.
“I see there is a reason Lord Maccon never decided to bite him into metamorphosis.” Madame Lefoux watched the exchange with amusement.
“Aside from the fact that he ran away, got married, and left the pack?”
“Yes, aside from that.”
Tunstell paused to scoop up and put on a pair of glassicals as he walked. Since Madame Lefoux had entered the London market, the vision assistors were becoming ubiquitous. They were worn like spectacles but looked like the malformed offspring of a pair of binoculars and a set of opera glasses. More properly called “monocular cross-magnification lenses with spectra modifier attachments,” Alexia called them “glassicals,” and Professor Lyall was ashamed to admit even he had taken to referring to them as such. Tunstell blinked at them, one eyeball hideously magnified by the instrument.
“Very stylish,” commented Professor Lyall, who owned several pairs himself and was often to be seen wearing them in public.
Floote gave Professor Lyall a dirty look, removed the glassicals from Tunstell, and prodded him back to where Madame Lefoux leaned against a wall, arms and ankles crossed. Large diagrams drawn in black pencil on stiff yellow paper were haphazardly pinned behind her.
Professor Lyall finally realized what it was about the contrivance chamber that was so different from his last visit: it was quiet. Usually the laboratory was dominated by the hum of mechanicals in motion, steam puffing out of various orifices in little gasps and whistles, gears clanking, metal chains clicking, and valves squealing. Today everything was silent. Also, for all its messiness, the place had an air of being put away.