Ha'penny by Jo Walton

bomb-making activities just yet. He very much wanted to talk to someone who could shed some light on precisely why a successful actress might decide to make a bomb.
    “Let’s get on and see the servants,” he said.
    “They were asking about their belongings,” Jacobson said.
    Royston glanced at Carmichael, who nodded. “Their rooms, at the top of the house, aren’t much damaged. There’s no reason they can’t have their things, once we’ve gone through them a bit more.”
    “Anything we might want to look at would be papers, not clothes or anything like that,” Carmichael added. “Do you have a discriminating constable who could do that?”
    “Not here,” Jacobson said, blandly. Carmichael belatedly remembered the anti-Semitism of the constable on guard. “I can send someone round to do it.”
    Carmichael nodded. “Tell them not to touch Miss Gilmore’s room. For one thing, it’s not really safe.”
    Jacobson came with them to Belsize Park in the Bentley. It made sense because he knew the way, but Carmichael found his presence surprisingly inhibiting. He was used to using their interludes in the car as times to talk to Royston uninterruptedly, to toss ideas at him.
    The hotel looked grim enough in the sunshine that Carmichael was glad not to have seen it the day before. There was a neatly lettered sign proclaiming it the Hampstead Gardens Temperance Hotel, prop. S. Channing.
    “Give me a nice pub any day, sir,” Royston said, echoing his own thoughts.
    “Do you often use this place, Inspector?” Carmichael asked Jacobson.
    “Often enough,” Jacobson replied. “If we have a witness come up from the country, maybe, or if there’s someone, like now, we want to hang on to without putting them in a cell. It’s respectable and quiet, and not too dear.”
    It was respectable enough, in fact painfully, excruciatingly respectable. The spikes of the iron railings repelled, the narrow windows seemed to frown, and the window boxes were all bare.
    Jacobson knocked at the front door, which opened to emit a faint smell of much-boiled cabbage, mixed with the kind of starch used to stiffen tablecloths. The maid who opened it shrank back a little at the sight of the men. “Mrs. Channing’s ever so cross,” she confided to Jacobson.
    “We want to see the people Sergeant Griffith brought here yesterday, please,” Jacobson replied.
    The maid retreated inside, and the policemen followed her into the front hall of the hotel. It was painted dark brown and held a little desk, like a lectern, bearing a diary and a telephone. There were flights of stairs leading both up and down, and a number of closed doors. One of them opened with a bang, increasing the smell of cabbage considerably.
    The figure who opened it was clearly by her bearing and ample proportions not a maid, but the landlady herself. She was frowning. “Mr. Jacobson, I am disappointed in you,” she declared.
    “Mrs. Channing?” Jacobson replied in an inquiring tone. The maid who had opened the front door took the opportunity to escape down the stairs.
    “Two of the persons Sergeant Griffith brought here last night proved to be Jews, once I had the chance to inspect their papers.”
    “Mr. and Mrs. Green, yes,” Jacobson said, patiently. His face was wooden.
    She drew herself up. “You were aware of this?”
    “We’d seen their papers, naturally. Mrs. Channing—”
    Carmichael decided to interrupt with a little charm.
    “Sometimes duty compels us to unpleasant tasks,” he said.
    Unmollified, Mrs. Channing turned her frown on Carmichael. “And who are you?”
    “Inspector Carmichael, Scotland Yard,” he said, taking out his police identification.
    “Well, your duties might, mine do not extend that far,” she said, raising her chin.
    “We would like to speak to all three of the people who were brought here yesterday,” Carmichael said.
    “You can see the Spanish girl in the lounge if you want to, but I sent the others off,” Mrs. Channing