Isidore nodded.
“Aren’t you going to have a hysterical fit and scream your way out of here?”
“I’m learning so much,” Isidore said. “I’ll send Honeydew to polish the family tomb directly.”
There was a moment of silence and then he made a strange barking sound. Isidore was trying to blink away an errant tear and didn’t realize what the sound was, until she understood he was laughing. And laughing.
Isidore rose and brushed off her back of her pelisse. “Mr. Pegg, I need someone to help me.”
He stopped laughing and looked at her. “I suspect you would not be surprised to hear that I require all duchesses to pay beforehand.”
“The vicar reports that he has many graves without stones, as people haven’t been able to afford them. I told him that the Duke of Cosway would be righting the cemetery, and making sure that each grave has a proper memorial.”
He looked at her. “My Joan has a stone.”
She nodded. “Will you help me make sure that everyone who was not as lucky as Joan gets a stone?”
“Lucky?” he said. And snorted.
“Lucky,” she said. “Unlucky in some ways, lucky in others.”
“Christ,” he muttered. “A philosophical duchess. That’s just what this village needs.”
“Philosophical and rich,” Isidore said.
He got to the door before her and pushed it open. “As I said, Your Grace. Just what this village needs.”
Chapter Twenty
Revels House
March 2, 1784
The next day
The man from London had bulging eyes that reminded Simeon of a tree frog he’d seen in Morocco. He had on a wine-red velvet waistcoat that must have belonged to a nobleman at some point. It strained over Mr. Merkin’s impressive stomach.
“Yer Grace,” he said, bowing as much as his stomach would allow.
“I am very grateful for your assistance with this problem,” Simeon said.
“Sewers is my business,” Mr. Merkin said. “There’s no one who knows the inside of a sewer better than I do.”
“It’s not really a sewer,” Simeon said. “My father put in a water-pumping system—”
“Sewer,” Mr. Merkin said cheerfully. “Just because it don’t work so well doesn’t mean it’s not a sewer. I can smell its perfume, so why doesn’t your butler here show me the place and I’ll do an assessment.”
Simeon stood up. “I shall accompany you myself. I am curious about the solution.”
“I can tell you on the hoof,” Mr. Merkin said, taking a generous pinch of snuff as he led the way out of the room. “I’ve seen this over and again. It’s meant to flow, and it ain’t flowing. You could do dirt, but you han’t done dirt.”
“Ah,” Simeon said.
“Have to pipe it,” Mr. Merkin said.
“I’m not sure I follow the question of dirt?” Simeon said.
They arrived at the door to the first-floor water closet. Honeydew, with a look of fastidious agony, directed a footman to remove the felt blanket that had been tacked tightly to the wall so as to cover the entire door.
“This’ll be the heart of it,” Mr. Merkin said. “The rest of the closets feed into the pit here. I’ll send the men in. We’ll have to clean it all out; you do realize that.”
“I had hoped so,” Simeon said.
“We have to take it out through the front door,” Mr. Merkin said. “There’s them as has palpitations at that thought, but there’s no other way to do it. The pipes are blocked; we need to clean it out right good and then pull all the pipes and replace them. They’ll have fallen to bits.”
“Perhaps we should simply—”
The footman pulled down the last corner of the green felt and opened the door; without thinking, Simeon fell back a pace. The smell reached out to greet them, as thick and loathsome as a London fog. It felt like something that had weight and mass. Perhaps even life.
Mr. Merkin walked forward as if he smelled nothing.
“Your Grace need not follow,” Honeydew said, with a note of conscious heroism in his voice. “I will accompany Mr. Merkin and ascertain if he needs assistance.”
“Could it be that something died there?” Simeon asked, feeling himself turn pale. “I once came on a village ravaged by the plague and the odor is disconcertingly similar.”
“Always a possibility,” Merkin called back. “Rats need air like anything else. If one fell in, it’d be dead within minutes. I’m just—” there was the sound of wood shattering—“removing the seat so I can see the size of it.” He backed out a moment later and Simeon was oddly gratified to see that he was mopping his forehead with a red handkerchief. “That’s a bad one, that is.”