“And your advertisement, it said G. Carr. If I’d known you were a girl . . .”

“I’m twenty-seven, with more than a decade’s experience. Hardly a girl. And if you had known I was a woman, you wouldn’t have hired me, which is why I prefer to withhold that fact as long as is convenient. I’m sure you understand.”

“I’m just not certain that someone so young will be right for this . . . this task.”

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and straightened a pile of ladies’ magazines. She was wistful and silent and slightly infuriating. I began, I am afraid to say, to grow impatient.

“It touches on the Westside?” I pushed.

“I can’t imagine that—”

“I expect it will. The city gives us few mysteries that do not. The matter concerns your husband?”

“How did you know?” she asked, looking around, as if someone else would hear.

“The way you’re shaking, it wasn’t hard to guess. Do you suspect him of murder?”

“Heavens, I—”

“Arson? Burglary? Embezzlement? Treason? Adultery? Rape?”

“My husband is a good man!”

“How nice for him. Is it a dangerous assignment?”

“No.”

“Marvelous. I do not take dangerous assignments. I solve tiny mysteries.”

“Tiny mysteries?”

“The smaller the better.” I bit into a lemon square. “These cakes, Mrs. Copeland, are excellent.”

“But what do you mean, tiny mysteries?”

“I answer little questions. Those impossible puzzles that burrow into our brains like splinters and keep us awake at night. I solve the mysteries that spoil marriages, ruin friendships, and curdle joy. A murder is a dull thing. It simply ends a life. Tiny mysteries destroy us.”

“I see.”

“You don’t,” I said, waving her concern away. “That’s fine.” I reached into my bag, and removed a packet of sweets. “Caramel?”

“That’s all right.”

“But everyone likes caramels.” If she was stung by this gentle mockery, she did not let on.

Her fingers strained to extract a caramel from the sticky mass. She placed it in her mouth, wary. A flicker of half-suppressed pleasure lit up her face as the caramel melted across her tongue.

“Do you know how it smells on the Westside?” I said, changing the subject quick enough to dizzy her.

“I certainly do not.”

“It smells of vegetation, thick and matted. Of rotting libraries and damp wood, dead animals and human waste, wildflowers, fresh rain, and the river. It smells of decay, but also of fantastic life, and it is intoxicating. Last spring, however, the six people with whom I share Washington Square began to complain of a new odor. A burnt smell, not unlike a rubber fire, blowing up from the south. No matter where we looked, its source could not be found.”

“It must have been quite a stench.”

“The mystery ate at the corners of our minds. I went block to block, searching every alley and breaking into every abandoned house.”

“I thought you did not take dangerous assignments.”