The Spy Master's Scheme (Glass and Steele Book 12)

by C. J. Archer

  Lord Coyle’s phlegmy chuckle rattled in his chest. “I see this has come as a shock to both of you. I’m sure once that wears off you’ll realize that magic can play a role in furthering the interests of this great nation of ours.”

  “Not without me, it won’t.” My words became lost as the door burst open and Sir Charles stormed inside.

  With his teeth bared and his eyes glittering like hard stones, I finally felt as though I was seeing the real Sir Charles Whittaker. There was nothing of the elegant gentleman about him now. He was an angry snake, poised to strike as he confronted Lord Coyle. With their faces inches apart, he spat, “You used me.”

  “It was a mutual exchange of information,” Lord Coyle said idly. “We both benefited.”

  “You stole my idea.”

  “What idea?” Matt asked darkly.

  Sir Charles seemed not to have heard him. He was focused on Lord Coyle, like a wild animal on its prey—or its predator.

  Lord Coyle continued to smile around his cigar, unperturbed. “The idea about dropping bombs from flying carpet on our enemies factories and bases.”

  I stared wide-eyed at Sir Charles. “That was your idea?”

  Sir Charles’s nostrils flared, and he finally tore his gaze away from Coyle. “He told me about seeing you fly the carpet, and I informed my superiors. I thought it could be used in wartime to drop bombs. I didn’t take that suggestion to my superiors at the time but held it back on his advice. Then he swooped in and told them, and he let them think it was his idea.”

  Lord Coyle smacked his walking stick into Sir Charles’s shin. “Move aside. My wife and I are leaving.”

  Sir Charles’s lips pinched so hard they turned white, but he moved out of the way.

  “I’d like to stay a little longer,” Hope said. She seemed to rally after looking quite stunned throughout the confrontation.

  Lord Coyle limped off. “I’ll send the carriage back for you.”

  Sir Charles marched up to the closed door and put a hand against it, blocking Lord Coyle’s exit. “You owe me for stealing my idea.”

  Lord Coyle grunted. “It’s payment for the information I gave you about the flying carpet. Without me, you would not have anything valuable to offer Le Grand. I saved your job for you.” He raised his walking stick and smacked it hard against Sir Charles’s leg.

  Sir Charles groaned and clutched his shin. “I know things about you, Coyle,” he snarled. “I know what you’ve done.”

  Lord Coyle opened the door and limped out.

  A strained silence filled the room. Mrs. Delancey’s cultured, girlish voice broke off mid-sentence as she protested Lord Coyle’s early departure. The other club members stared at us.

  Matt placed a hand lightly on the back of my neck. “Are you all right?”

  “He now has even more power than before,” I whispered.

  “It means nothing without you. The magicians he manipulates can do very little on their own. Certainly nothing of use to the Home Office.”

  I looked to Sir Charles for confirmation, but he wasn’t listening. He limped out of the room too and rejoined the group of club members as Mrs. Delancey continued her talk.

  “Hope?” Matt said. “Would you like to sit?”

  With a hand at her throat, she stared after the gentlemen. “This is not what I wanted,” she muttered. “It’s not what I wanted at all.”

  It may not be the sort of marriage she’d hoped for, when she accepted Lord Coyle’s proposal, but she couldn’t have expected it to be a bed of roses, either. With her husband’s power growing, she must realize that she would become more influential too.

  I found it hard to believe she didn’t want that.

  With Matt’s prodigious memory, he was able to recite the meeting almost word for word for Cyclops, Willie and Duke. They joined us in the dining room for breakfast after rising at a reasonable hour, despite going out together the previous night. But while Willie had left with one of the barmaids, and Duke decided to call on his paramour, Widow Rotherhide, Cyclops had returned home.

  Given Willie and Duke hadn’t slept as much, it was unsurprising they seemed somewhat unfocused this morning, yawning as they listened to Matt. Cyclops was as sharp as ever.

  "What do you think Whittaker meant when he told Coyle he knows what he’s done?” he asked.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Matt said.

  Their gazes connected. “I have the day off,” Cyclops told him.

  Matt picked up his coffee cup and rose. “Let me refill this and we’ll go. I want to catch him before he goes out.”

  Willie wrinkled her nose. “Who?”

  Duke yawned. “Coyle, I think.”

  “Idiots,” Cyclops muttered.

  “He means Sir Charles,” I said. “And I’m coming too.”

  All five of us went, with Willie electing to ride alongside Woodall on the driver’s seat. She hoped the cold air would wake her up. Duke should have ridden with them. He yawned all the way.

  The landlady answered the door when Matt knocked. When she saw us, she sighed. “You lot again. He’s not in.”

  “When will he be back?” Matt asked.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him this morning, and I didn’t hear him go out. He left his breakfast tray untouched, too.” She clicked her tongue. “Such a waste of food.”

  “If you didn’t see or hear him, how do you know he left?”

  “He wouldn’t still be in his room at this hour. It’s almost ten. He must have gone out for breakfast.”

  “Has he ever gone out to breakfast before and forgotten to tell you not to bring up a tray?” I asked.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Now that you mention it, no. He’s always considerate like that.” For someone who was paid by Mr. Le Grand to spy on Sir Charles, she was not very efficient.

  “Mind if I take a look in his rooms?” Matt asked.

  She hesitated before stepping aside. “I wouldn’t usually do this, but something doesn’t feel right.” She hurried off into the gloomy corridor. “I’ll fetch the spare key.”

  Matt knocked on Sir Charles’s door at the top of the landing while we waited for the landlady. There was no answer. The landlady joined us and unlocked the door.

  “It’s just me, Sir Charles,” she said loudly as she entered the parlor. “We were just worried—” She covered her mouth with both hands and smothered her scream.

  I rushed past her, along with Matt, only to stop short upon seeing the gruesome sight of Sir Charles’s dead eyes staring back at us from where he sat sprawled in an armchair, his throat cut.

  Chapter 17

  I managed to steer the landlady back downstairs to the kitchen where I made her a cup of tea from the pot warming on the stove. She was still shaking, her face pale. Although she’d spied on Sir Charles for Mr. Le Grand, she was clearly not a professional agent. She’d probably accepted the task for a little extra money.

  I returned upstairs once she was settled. Duke had gone to Scotland Yard to fetch Brockwell, while Willie, Cyclops and Matt inspected the body and Sir Charles’s rooms. I avoided looking directly at him. I’d already seen his cut throat and bloodied clothes and didn’t wish to see them again.

  Matt handed me a piece of paper. “We found this on the table beside his glass of brandy. The knife is on the floor.”

  I read the two lines on Sir Charles’s personalized stationery, written in all capitals, then glanced quickly at the knife, lying on the floor between the round occasional table and the chair.

  “It must have slipped from his fingers,” I said.

  “Or it was placed there by his killer.”

  “You don’t think this suicide note was written by him?” The note stated that he was ending his life because he felt deep regret that Mr. Pyke almost died after the failed carpet experiment. He blamed himself for forcing the magician to fly it.

  “I’m keeping an open mind, but he didn’t display any remorse over Pyke when we confronted him.”
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  “Perhaps if Pyke had died, he might have.”

  “But Pyke didn’t die. There’s also the handwriting itself that makes me skeptical that he wrote it. Willie is looking for samples of his writing now, but block capital is the typography of choice for someone attempting to hide their own style.”

  Willie was sitting at the desk by the window, sifting through pieces of paper. “There ain’t too many with his own handwriting on them. They’re mostly letters from others, receipts and orders.” She waved a sheet of paper. “This here is a half-written letter to his mother.”

  Matt took it from her and we compared the capitals to the suicide note. The letter was written in cursive, however. “It’s impossible,” I said with a shake of my head.

  Matt returned to the body to inspect the wound, so I joined Cyclops in the bedchamber. We searched high and low, underneath tables and the bed, inside the cupboard and storage boxes, in the light fitting, a vase, and a gun case. While I checked inside shoes, Cyclops inspected Sir Charles’s more intimate clothing items, including the seams, as well as the shaving brush, toothbrush, and other grooming items. He even dug his fingers through the jar of Macassar Oil for hidden objects or correspondence. We found nothing of interest. I thought it unusual not to find communications from Mr. Le Grand, and said so.

  “Whittaker would have been under orders to destroy any messages he received,” Cyclops pointed out.

  “But wouldn’t he have kept notes? Like Coyle does in his notebook.”

  Cyclops tapped his forehead. “Someone in his line of work keeps that information up here. They don’t write it down. If he had left important documents lying about, Coyle would have taken them after he killed Whittaker.”

  “You’re subscribing to the theory that Coyle murdered him?”

  “Did Whittaker strike you as someone to commit suicide because he felt responsible for another man’s injury?”

  I sat on the bed with a sigh. “I didn’t know him well enough to say one way or another.”

  We continued our search but found nothing of importance by the time Brockwell arrived with Duke and three constables. He took in the scene with his usual slow, deliberate manner, before his gaze finally settled on Willie.

  She perched on the window sill, her arms crossed over her chest, staring down at the street below. She responded with brisk indifference when he greeted her, but did not look directly at him.

  He cleared his throat and bent to inspect the body. Now that I’d had time to steel myself, I too studied Sir Charles. The deep wound on the right side of his throat was positioned where a right-handed man would stab himself. He must have discarded his evening tailcoat as soon as he arrived home and laid it across the back of the sofa. It was clean. Blood had soaked through his once pristine white necktie, waistcoat and shirt and spilled onto the chair cushion and even onto the floor where the knife had been found. There was so much of it, but it was dry now.

  I turned away once again as my stomach lurched.

  Matt touched my hand. “This won’t take long. Do you want to wait in the kitchen?”

  I shook my head as the inspector stood. “A knife in the neck is not the first choice for suicides,” he said. “There are a lot of other methods that are easier and quicker.”

  “Maybe it was the most convenient method,” Cyclops said. “It doesn’t require much planning. It must have been a spur of the moment decision and he wanted to get it over with before he changed his mind. That’s if it were suicide.”

  Brockwell arched his brow first at Cyclops then Matt. Matt handed him the suicide note and indicated the knife. He waited for Brockwell to finish reading then told him his theory that Sir Charles was murdered.

  “By whom and why?” Brockwell asked.

  “By Coyle, because Whittaker threatened him last night at a collector’s club meeting. Whittaker was furious with Coyle for stealing his idea about magic and using it to muscle his way into the home secretary’s good graces. He told Coyle he knew secrets about him, something he’d done.”

  Brockwell twisted his mouth to the side as he scratched his sideburns. They were looking particularly long and unkempt today, even for him. I glanced at Willie to see if she at least regarded the inspector wistfully, but she was still staring out of the window.

  Brockwell picked up the knife and squinted at the handle and blade.

  “It’s a kitchen knife,” Matt said. “It’s not the sort of blade found in a gentleman’s rented accommodations or the sort a burglar carries on his person.”

  “Have you asked the landlady if any are missing?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Cyclops, take one of my men with you and get her to take a stock of her knives. Have a look around while you’re down there.”

  The inspector insisted on searching the parlor and bedroom himself while they were gone. Matt and Duke joined him, but I stood with Willie and leaned one shoulder against the window frame.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Course I am. I’ve seen dead men before.”

  “I mean with Brockwell here.”

  She rolled her eyes. “He’s here to do his job, not see me.”

  “Do you want him to come and see you?”

  She shrugged.

  “If you do, you should let him know. Perhaps you should call on him to show him you’re still interested.”

  She gave me a withering glare. “He doesn’t want to see me. Not anymore.”

  “What’s happened between you?” She merely shrugged again so I grabbed her shoulders and gave her a little shake. “Tell me!”

  Brockwell returned, notepad in one hand and pencil in the other. “Excuse me, ladies.” He cleared his throat. “May I have a word with you, India? Will you give me a statement of your version of events last night, please, specifically regarding the conversation between Whittaker and Lord Coyle.”

  “You’re going to treat Coyle as a suspect?”

  “Perhaps.” He indicated I should sit then proceeded to write down my account. He then asked Matt to do the same.

  Brockwell was just flipping the notebook closed when Cyclops and the constable returned. They reported that a knife matching the one found on the floor was indeed missing from the kitchen.

  “Not only that, the back door was unlocked,” Cyclops said. “The landlady is convinced she locked it, as she does every night along with the front door. The killer could have picked the lock, taken a knife as he passed through the kitchen, then left the same way.”

  Brockwell nodded. “Thank you, Cyclops, I’ll go downstairs and take her statement now. The rest of you should leave. India is looking a little peaky.”

  “I’m all right, but I do think we should go. There’s nothing more to do here.”

  The journey home was a somber one. I suspected Willie was still sulking, but the rest of us were mulling over what we’d seen as well as the events of the previous night. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that Matt and Cyclops were right, and Lord Coyle had killed Sir Charles because he threatened him. Or perhaps simply because he no longer had a use for him. Coyle had, after all, used Sir Charles to gather information and gain a position of power in the government. With that goal achieved, Sir Charles was no longer an asset, he was a liability. By threatening him last night, Sir Charles had sealed his own fate.

  Suspecting Lord Coyle had done it was one thing, but having him arrested for murder was another altogether. Lord Coyle wouldn’t have broken into the house himself and thrust the knife into Sir Charles’s neck with his own hand. He had accomplices for that. Accomplices he paid well to keep quiet.

  But paid accomplices weren’t particularly loyal. They could be bought or coerced into telling the truth. We had to trust that Brockwell would find Coyle’s men and exert enough pressure to turn them against their employer.

  Matt couldn’t settle to anything after we arrived home. He complained that he had no business matters that required his attention, nor did any of the books
in our library appeal to him, and the newspapers were full of “sensationalist” stories that didn’t hold his interest. He even suggested we go shopping together for something to do. Considering Matt liked shopping as much as most men, I knew he must be desperate to take his mind off the death of Sir Charles.

  “Why don’t we just go for a walk around Hyde Park instead,” I said.

  After two hours, we returned home feeling invigorated and somewhat less frustrated. I didn’t think the feeling would last long, however, and worried Matt would soon head off to Scotland Yard to learn what progress Brockwell had made in his investigation.

  Not long after hanging up our hats and coats, we had a visitor. Hope entered the drawing room like a fierce storm dressed head to toe in steel gray. Her expression was just as ominous with severely drawn brows and a set jaw.

  “How delightful to see you,” Aunt Letitia said without much sincerity. “Has somebody died? A distant relative of your husband’s perhaps?”

  Hope shook her head as if to clear it. “What?”

  Aunt Letitia eyed Hope up and down. “You’re dressed in half-mourning.”

  “Nobody died.” She turned away from her aunt, presenting her with her profile.

  Aunt Letitia stiffened at the slight.

  “Why didn’t you do something, Matt?” Hope’s voice was part whine, part accusation. “I told you so you would act, yet you did nothing!”

  Matt had stood upon Hope’s entry and since she had not yet sat down, he remained standing too. Her accusation seemed to catch him off guard, but only for a moment. “Will you join us for tea? Bristow, another cup for Lady Coyle, please.”

  The butler bowed out as Hope sat, somewhat reluctantly.

  “I’m not here for tea,” she bit off. “I’m here to find out why you did nothing after I gave you the information.”

  Matt looked to me, but I shrugged, not sure what she meant either. “What information?” he asked.