✏️ The Littlest Spy

18. Gatekeeper

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Another morning, another set of questions. Isadora sat across the kitchen table from Brock, piles of papers spread out between them. Most of the documents were face-down now. She was sure that she had memorised almost every detail, and if Brock challenged her answers she could find the right page to justify herself in an instant. She only wished that her partner could say the same about his own knowledge.

She wished that he even seemed to care, as well. Or that he was capable of discussing this without the ever-present hip flask in his hand. It didn't reassure her any to know that it was filled with top-shelf brandy today; it would still be an impediment to his recall of the details.

"What was the name of your woodwork teacher at St Evelyn's?" she asked, pitching a softball question in the vague hope that she could hit on at least one detail that he remembered.

Brock shrugged, leaning back in his chair. "Howler Monkey," he said, after just a little pause. "I mean, Mr Howler, obviously. Guy had a moustache like a walrus, and he'd yell so much if you ever lost a chuck key. We'd joke that he was in love with the drill press, and didn't like to see his beloved mistreated."

"Howlett," Isadora corrected. "Not Howler. And the rest of that isn't in any of the notes, not even in the yearbook. I mean..." she picked up a couple of pages from one of the many piles. "I mean... he has a moustache. But that's about all you got right." She couldn't bring herself to say anything about the somewhat simian appearance of Mr Howlett. It was easy to imagine a bunch of unruly boys giving him a monkey-based nickname, so it was clear that Brock had at least glanced at the page. But it didn't excuse his failure to take in any of the real details. Right now, she wished that she could have a partner who actually cared about this stuff; but she knew there was no time to drum the importance of studying into him now. There was less than an hour until they would have to prove that they were ready for this mission, and she knew that if they didn't pass scrutiny together, she had flushed away her last chance at field work.

"Okay," she muttered, trying to keep her temper under control. "Ask me something."

"Alright, Estelle," Brock said, a hint of a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. "Tell me about your college thesis. Why did you choose such an obscure and academic topic?"

Isadora took a deep breath, her mind racing through the details she'd committed to memory. There was something somehow judgemental in the question, but it was hard to tell whether that was a judgement of her concern for book-learning, or an in-character difference of styles that could cause friction between Bernard and Estelle.

"My thesis was on the linguistic differences between French and Belgian French, with a focus on the influence of Dutch and German on the latter. I chose the topic because I've always been fascinated by how language evolves and adapts based on geographic and cultural factors. Plus, my grandmother was from Belgium, so I felt a personal connection to the subject."

She looked up at Brock, her heart pounding. She was sure she'd gotten every detail right, but the way he was looking at her, his expression inscrutable, made her doubt herself.

Brock leaned back in his chair, taking a long swig from his flask. He didn't even pick up the piles of papers to see if what she'd said matched the words on the page. Isadora felt a surge of frustration. Was he even listening to her? Did he care at all about the work she'd put into this?

"I guess it got you into my entourage," he said with a laugh. "So it had to be a pretty good thesis. I barely understood a word of it, though." Then he tossed his empty flask down on the table, splashing a few final drops of brandy over the pages he had never read.