Read Online Deadly Jewels by Jeannette de Beauvoir - Free Book Online

also a little unsettling, down through a manhole that Patricia slid carefully back into place once we were through. “Put on your flashlight.”
    â€œIt’s on,” I responded. “How did you figure this out?”
    â€œWhat, getting around underground?”
    â€œFor want of a better description.”
    â€œThis way.” She touched my elbow and slipped past me. “Follow me.” There was a pause. “How did I figure it out? I’ve always been into this.”
    â€œWading through sewers?” I was skeptical. “What, did you have a particularly bad childhood?”
    She laughed, and the sound echoed down the tunnel in front of us. “I guess you could call it recreational trespassing,” she said. “I was studying history and I was particularly interested in urban history—how cities came to be, you know?”
    I didn’t, not really. “I don’t know that I’ve ever given it a moment’s thought.”
    â€œMost people don’t. Watch your step, here: stay on the brick if you can, it’s older.”
    â€œIt’s older? That’s supposed to be reassuring?”
    â€œThe brick’s better. It’s more solid. They started working with concrete in the 1920s, but it cracks over time. Anyway, so I was interested, and I felt that a lot of historical significance of cities ended up buried, one way or another. So I started hanging out with this group of people, some students, some not, and we did all sorts of exploring. The Paris catacombs. The Neglinnaya River, which flows under Moscow. New York.”
    â€œRecreational trespassing,” I said, nodding, thinking that it takes all sorts to make a world.
    We were advancing slowly, and while it was certainly damp, it wasn’t wet. Yet, I reminded myself darkly. There was the occasional sound of something skittering away, lightly, invisibly; rats, no doubt. The tunnel was large and wide, with an arched ceiling and so far mostly brick.
    We were probably under my building right now.
    â€œIt shows you how much work went into all the stuff we take for granted,” said Patricia earnestly, leading us forward. Her voice echoed around us. “Any city’s infrastructure, you know, it’s how they function, but it’s mostly in places that people never see. And it’s in layers, like an archeological dig. First, you see the utility networks, that’s right under street level. Then, under that, there’s centralized steam heating. At the lowest level is the water supply system.”
    I contemplated for a moment explaining to her why, after last summer, I wasn’t quite ready to embrace the idea of exploring a steam tunnel, and decided against it. “Where are we now?” I asked instead.
    She stopped and looked around her, the floodlight she carried swinging around crazily. “Place Royale, more or less,” she said. “Anyway, it’s all connected, isn’t it? These tunnels were built in the nineteenth century, and yet any new building that goes up in a city will be relying on them. The past is never really past.”
    â€œNice phrase.” Not bad for marketing copy, either.
    â€œTrue phrase. Come on, this way.” Her goggles were keeping her glasses in place, I noticed. We were branching off the main tunnel and still moving north. A thought struck me and I stopped. “Aren’t we supposed to be up closer to Dorchester Square?” I asked. That was, after all, where the Sun-Life Building still stood, on Metcalfe Street, even though Sun-Life itself was long gone; a whole list of corporate and noncorporate entities leased space in the building now. And it was a good distance from where we’d entered the tunnel, in the Old Port section of the city.
    Not that it was all that meaningful: unlike other big cities, you can walk across Montréal in less than a day.
    Patricia had stopped also and was waiting for me. “I can