Fletcher’s network of street urchins was as efficient as they were invisible to the people who passed them every day.

To the urchin, Barnabus said, “Tell me exactly where the fire is while I scratch a note.”

The boy did exactly that, and Barnabus wrote a quick line to leave for Gemma should she return before he did. He left it on his desk in the sitting room with instructions to Mrs. Simms to direct Gemma to it.

He pulled on his coat, popped his tall hat on his head, grabbed his cane—a sword concealed inside—and took up his doctoring bag. They were out the door and on their way with hardly any time having passed at all. Familiarity bred efficiency.

The fire was not difficult to find, the smoldering remnants of it, at least. The smoke still spilling from the charred remains of the shop could likely be seen by a good portion of London. A fruit monger stood beside his cart not far distant. Two men, laborers by their appearance, leaned against a wall across the street. A man and woman stood at the mouth of an alley. Another man, more finely dressed than the others, sat on a bench with a newspaper on his lap. All within a few feet of the ashy skeleton of a building.

Fletcher was nearby as well, watching the embers. Today, he was dressed in his lower-class attire, which allowed him to go unnoticed around these poorer corners of London. Fletcher was a chameleon in every sense of the word, and it served him well.

Barnabus reached him. “Did the fire brigade not arrive?”

“The locals were warned not to send for the fire brigade.”

“Warned? You mean ‘threatened’?”

Fletcher nodded slowly. The tension around his mouth belied his devil-may-care appearance.

“Any injuries?” Barnabus indicated his doctoring bag.

“The man what worked there.”

“Worked? Past tense?”

Fletcher adjusted his hat while he pushed out a deep breath. “Whispers have it he might’ve been dead before the fire started.”

The Mastiff, no doubt, was behind this latest trouble. “Any idea why this particular man might have been targeted?”

“He was an undertaker who’d been bragging about being able to identify the resurrectionists who’ve been digging up fire victims.”

Barnabus looked at the blackened undertaker’s shop. “The question, then, is who silenced him? The resurrectionists or the one paying them?”

“Don’t matter in the end,” Fletcher said. “The sour’s coming from the same lemon.”

Stone arrived beside them. He eyed the scene with weariness. “Another fire.”

“I’d wager from the same source,” Fletcher said.

Stone’s expression remained pensive. His eyes remained sharp. “We oughta sniff around a bit. See if we can sort out which churchyard this poor fella gets buried in.”

Fletcher looked to Barnabus. “Has Gemma ever mentioned whether resurrectionists dig up people as a matter of revenge?”