Chapter 49 – Fittings

The entrance to the Merton Building was a set of double doors in dark oak, propped open with iron wedges. A brass plaque to the left read STUDENT SERVICES — FITTINGS & PROVISIONS. Beyond the threshold, a tiled corridor stretched toward a desk positioned beneath a high, arched window that let in a column of grey morning light. The air inside was cooler than the courtyard—stone floors, high ceilings, the faint smell of sizing and laundered cotton and something chemical she couldn’t place.

Florence walked in.

The corridor was quiet. A few chairs lined the wall opposite the desk, all empty. No queue. A week before term, she had the place nearly to herself.

A man sat behind the desk.

He was writing something in a ledger, his pen moving in slow, unhurried strokes. He did not look up when Florence’s boots crossed the threshold, nor when they carried her the length of the corridor to stand before him. He finished the line he was writing, set the pen down, and raised his head.

He was unremarkable. That was the first thing Florence registered, and the last. A man of perhaps forty, lean-faced, with close-cropped hair going grey at the temples and eyes the colour of wet slate. His clothes were plain—a dark waistcoat over a pressed white shirt, the uniform of a university clerk—and his posture was straight but not rigid, the bearing of someone who was comfortable being still. His hands rested flat on the ledger, fingers spread. They were clean, the nails trimmed, though the skin around the knuckles had a roughness to it, a faint weathering that didn’t quite match the work of a man who spent his days behind a desk.

“Good morning,” he said. His voice was low and smooth. “Fittings?”

“Yes, please,” Florence said.

“Name and student number.”

“Florence. Student number is—” She pulled the temporary pass from the satchel and read the small printed numerals in the corner. “Fourteen-two-seven-oh-nine.”

The clerk’s pen found the ledger. He wrote without looking up, the strokes precise, the rhythm unhurried.

“Fourteen-two-seven-oh-nine. Florence.” He ticked something on the ledger. “Through the door on your left. The tailor will see you shortly.”

“Thank you,” Florence said.

He returned to his writing. Florence walked through the indicated door and found herself in a long, high-ceilinged room that had clearly been built for a different purpose and conscripted into service as a fitting studio. Bolts of fabric—dark greys, muted blues, the deep charcoal of the medical faculty—were stacked on shelves along the far wall. A raised wooden platform stood in the center of the room, scarred with pin marks. Mirrors flanked it on three sides, their surfaces old and slightly warped, giving back reflections that looked like they belonged to a different decade.

A woman emerged from behind a curtained partition at the back of the room. She was short, stout, and moved with the brisk efficiency of someone who had been fitting university students since before Florence was born. A pincushion was strapped to her wrist like a bracelet, and a measuring tape hung around her neck in a loop that she reached for before she had finished saying good morning.

“Up on the box, love. Arms out.”

Florence stepped onto the platform. The wood creaked beneath her. She extended her arms, and the woman began measuring with the practiced, impersonal speed of a seamstress who had done this ten thousand times—bust, waist, hips, inseam, shoulder width, arm length. She called out numbers to a second woman sitting at a small desk near the fabric shelves, who recorded them in a notebook without looking up.

“Posture’s good,” the seamstress muttered, running the tape across Florence’s shoulders. “Don’t slouch during term. Half my students come back in October shaped like question marks. Collar?”

Florence blinked. “Sorry?”

“Collar style. The medical faculty allows three options.” She held up a chart pinned to the wall behind her—three ink drawings of collar variations, labelled A, B, and C. “A is the standard. B has a higher neck, more coverage. C is open-throated, if you’re the type. Most of the girls go with A.”

“A, please,” Florence said.

The seamstress nodded, as if this confirmed a theory. She made a note and stepped back, looking Florence up and down with the critical squint of a woman who considered fabric a moral issue.

“Charcoal for the base. White shirt. The medical faculty wears a grey sash over the left shoulder—you’ll be issued that separately. Shoes are your own.” She consulted the notebook her colleague had been filling. “Total for the fitting and the first set of garments is one Crown and four Stags, payable today. Second set can be ordered and paid for at the start of term.”

Florence nodded. “One moment.”

She reached into the satchel.

Her fingers found the pamphlet. The newspaper, folded and crumpled, pressed against the canvas side. The hard, familiar weight of the revolver at the bottom, wrapped in its kerchief.

She reached for the coin purse.

Her fingers closed on air.

Florence frowned. She pushed her hand deeper, feeling along the bottom of the satchel, her fingertips tracing the seams. Canvas. The rough weave of the lining. The corner where the revolver sat. The edge of the newspaper.

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No purse.

She pulled the satchel open wider, tilting it toward the light from the high windows. She could see the inside now—the pamphlet, the newspaper, the kerchief-wrapped shape at the bottom. The space beside the revolver where the drawstring purse had been sitting all morning was empty. Not tucked into a fold. Not slipped beneath the newspaper. Empty.

The satchel was lighter than it should have been.

She hadn’t noticed. She had been carrying it for—how long? Since the bench? Since the bridge? Since the inspectors? The weight had felt right. She would have sworn, if asked, that the bag was exactly as heavy as it had been when she left Baker Street. But now, standing on a wooden platform in the Merton Building with her hand in an empty bag, the absence was undeniable.

The coin purse was gone.

Five gold Crowns and a scatter of silver Stags. Thomas’s money. Thomas’s gift—pressed into her hand at the end of a golden afternoon, folded into her fingers before she could argue, given with the steady, earnest certainty of a brother who had saved for months and would not hear the word no.

Gone.

“Miss?” The seamstress was watching her. “The deposit?”