The cab arrived. Miriam paid the driver and stepped out. The door to the shop was already unlocked, so she went straight in and opened up the office. It was small but modern, furnished in wood and equipped with electric lamps, a telephone, and one of the weird chord-key typewriters balanced precariously on one of the high, slanted writing desks. It was also freezing cold until she lit the gas fire. Only when it was blazing did she go through the mail then head for the lab.

The lab was a former woodworking shop, and right now it was a mess. Roger had moved a row of benches up against one wall, balanced glass-fronted cabinets on top of them, and made enthusiastic use of her line of credit at an instrument maker’s shop. The results included a small potter’s kiln—converted into a makeshift furnace—and a hole in the ceiling where tomorrow a carpenter would call to begin building a fume cupboard. Roger was already at work, digging into a wooden crate that he’d manhandled into the center of the floor. “Good morning to you,” said Miriam. “How’s it going?”

“I’ll tell you when I get into this,” Roger grunted. He was in his late twenties, untidy even in a formal three-piece suit, and blessed with none of the social graces that would have allowed him to hang onto his job when the Salisbury Works had shed a third of their staff three months earlier. Rudeness concealed shyness; he’d been completely nonplussed by Miriam at first, and was still uneasy in her presence.

“That’ll be the chrysotile from Union Quebecois,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

“It should be. If they haven’t sent us rock salt by mistake again.” He laid down his crowbar and straightened up panting, his breath steaming in the cold air.

“If they have, they’ll pay for it.” She grinned. “Go make yourself a pot of tea, I don’t want you freezing to death on the job.”

“Um, yes, Ma’am.” Roger shuffled toward the other back room—the one Miriam intended to have converted into that luxury, a kitchen and indoor toilet block for the work force—that currently held only a cast-iron wood stove, a stack of lumber, and a kettle. He gave her a wide berth, as if being female in the workplace might be contagious. Miriam watched his back disappear before she knelt to pick up the crowbar, and went around the lid of the crate levering out the retaining nails. Men. She laid the crowbar down and dusted her skirt off before he returned, bearing a chipped mug containing some liquid as dark as coffee.

“I think you’ll find it easier to open now,” Miriam remarked, laying one hand on the lid. “What have you got in mind for resin processing this week?”