The air in the Ironweave Textile Mill was thick with humidity, cotton dust, and the deafening, rhythmic thumps and clacks of the power looms.
It was a world away from the marble silence of the Aethelstan Club or the muted tension of the police station.
Foster stood on the metal gantry overlooking the factory floor, his presence requested after a reported theft. Not a major case, but one that required an official report.
Below, amidst the shuttles flying back and forth, the weavers worked.
They were mostly women, their hair tied back in scarves, their movements economical and synchronized with the machines.
But his eyes were drawn to a small group near the loading bay, a pocket of different energy.
There was Leo, a hulking, cheerful man in his thirties with a mechanic's hands permanently stained with grease.
He was the mill's fixer, the one who kept the temperamental steam-powered looms from shuddering themselves to pieces.
He was laughing, showing a small, whirring device he'd built from scrap to a captivated audience.
The audience consisted of two others:
Anya, a sharp-eyed weaver with a keen mind for patterns who often sketched designs on scraps of cloth during her breaks.
And old man Hemlock, the mill's timekeeper, a man who remembered when the looms were driven by waterwheels and who spoke in a rambling, poetic way about the "music of the machine."
"See?" Leo said, his voice booming over the industrial din.
"It's a counter. Tracks the shuttle passes. Lets you know if the tension's about to go before the thread snaps. Saves a whole batch!"
"Elegant," Anya said, studying the device with a practitioner's eye. "Simple. You should show it to the foreman."
"The foreman only sees the cost of the scrap, not the cost of the saved thread," Hemlock murmured, tapping his finger in time with the loom's beat. "He hears the clatter, but not the melody within. A pity."
This was the heart of the mill, Foster realized.
Not the management office, but here, in this small triad of craftsman, artist, and philosopher. They were the unacknowledged intelligence of the place.
Leo, with his practical genius.
Anya, with her eye for systemic flaws and patterns.
Hemlock, with his deep, historical understanding of the process.
The theft, it turned out, was minor—a few swaps of high-grade silver thread, likely stolen by a worker for a side project or to sell on the black market.
It was beneath the notice of the prestigious Metropolitan Police, but it was the kind of small, fraying thread that, if left unchecked, could unravel morale and productivity.
Foster took their statements:
Leo was straightforward and helpful.
Anya provided sharp, observational details about who had been near the storage closet.
Hemlock offered ramblings about "the honesty of steam" versus "the deceitfulness of men," which Foster patiently transcribed.
As he prepared to leave, Leo nodded at him. "You're not like the last one they sent. He just wrote in his little book and looked at his watch. You actually look."
Anya gave a small, approving nod. Hemlock simply said, "The watchful eye sees the unraveling before the cloth is torn."
Foster left the mill, the smell of oil and cotton clinging to his clothes. He filed the report, classifying it as a low-priority internal matter.
He wrote down the names: Leo, Anya, Hemlock. Trivial. Just three more faces in the vast, teeming city.
He had no way of knowing that in two weeks' time, the Ironweave Textile Mill would be the scene of a far grimmer report. That Leo's inventive mind would be forever stilled, Anya's keen eyes would be wide with shock, and Hemlock's poetic ramblings would be silenced by a violence that made no distinction between the watchful and the blind.
And the case file, marked "Homicide," would land with a heavy thud on Captain Hanson's desk, and then inevitably, on his own.