They read Bleak House and Dombey and Son and The Old Curiosity Shop, which made Jonah cry, and laugh at himself through his tears. It was the most joyous time of Ben’s life. Then Jonah burned it all down. The end was already coming in September, though Ben didn’t know it. That was when daring cat burglaries of offices and grand houses in Hertfordshire had reached such a number that the outraged wealthy of the county had begun putting pressure on the chief superintendent to get results. That was when the justiciars came. Ben hadn’t dealt with justiciars before. He knew of them: the funny ones, the not-quite-police who dealt with peculiar cases. Not uniformed, not disciplined, all of them with an odd air of confidence and a habit of unhelpful remarks and abrupt disappearance. These two were Miss Nodder, a freckled, authoritative, green-eyed woman, and a dark unkempt man named Webster who smoked Turkish cigars with unnerving intensity.
