Beauty Like the Night

by Joanna Bourne

“He reports it to the Service rather than Bow Street?”

  “He’s been there too. But the thievery went forward while the Service was posted in every corner of the ballroom and slinking through his halls and kitchen. We were there. He pointed that out to me at length.”

  “We were watching Wellington, not his lordship’s trinkets.”

  “A distinction lost on the Carlingtons. Unfortunately, Bow Street told him about O’Grady. Carlington demanded we turn O’Grady over to the magistrate, having convinced himself O’Grady is part of a gang of desperate thieves. He cannot be moved from this belief.”

  “Inconvenient,” Doyle said.

  “Very. He brought his solicitor and a Bow Street Runner. There’s some niggling legal point . . .”

  “Habeas corpus.”

  “That. I gave O’Grady up to the Runner, reluctantly. He has popped our criminal into Newgate prison with his fellow miscreants. I should have barricaded the door.”

  “We are servants of the Crown. We yield to the might and majesty of the law. And the squawking of a Tory baron.”

  Hawker said, “Damn the law.”

  “Always a good choice.”

  Sitting side by side they watched people pass on the street for a while.

  At last Hawker leaned back and stretched his feet out. “It could be worse. I’ve made sure he’ll stick in Newgate. Stillwater has O’Grady matched to that nasty bludgeoning death in Hampstead in November. We have witnesses. And while he enjoys His Majesty’s hospitality I can drop by to discuss hanging versus transportation. He may part with useful information.” Hawker turned his drink lightly in the circle of his hands. “The theft is interesting.”

  “The timing wouldn’t be coincidental.”

  “Almost certainly not. But listen.” Hawker was laughing inside. Not just amused. Relieved. “This is what Carlington had to say. It’s half the jewels.”

  “Half?”

  “Not all of them or some of them or most or just the sparkly red ones. Half.”

  “Tadpoles”—Doyle scratched the fake scar on his cheek—“on tenterhooks.”

  “Carlington was coy about details, but half were left behind. A graded and careful half, including some of the most valuable pieces. Our thief wasn’t interrupted. He set half back into the safe before he fled into the night.”

  “The Comodin.”

  Hawker took his glass between his forefingers and slid it six inches to the right. “So it would appear. Just when I thought matters were sufficiently complicated, the Comodin shows up, collecting baubles. Is this a good sign?”

  “And what the devil it has to do with Wellington, God knows.”

  “While I do not.” Hawker moved his glass back to its original location. “The Comodin is not a spy. Not political. Not an assassin. He is, according to all accounts, a well-regarded professional thief.”

  “We’re wondering the same thing,” Doyle said. “Is Deverney the Comodin?”

  “Somebody has to be. We know Deverney climbs into upper-story windows for amusement,” Hawker said.

  “Why was he at the Carlingtons’?”

  “Why the devil was anyone at the Carlingtons’? What does he want with Sévie?”

  “That, at least, makes sense. Hard to see reason in the rest of this.” Doyle wasn’t disagreeing, just pointing it out.

  The Comodin had appeared in Spain—comodin was Spanish for “jester”—and become notorious among those who enforced the law in Europe. For a decade he’d robbed safes of every nationality and political persuasion with a fine neutrality. He was a master of theft, followed no pattern, and left nothing behind except . . . half the jewels.

  He never touched secrets, even when they were lying naked under his hand. The Service wasn’t officially interested in him, but more than one young agent studied his technique with a sneaking admiration.

  Doyle rubbed his thumb up and down the stem of his pipe. “I’ve discussed the Comodin’s skill with Sévie a time or two. Being a bit approving, maybe.”

  “Awkward.”

  “I didn’t anticipate her ever meeting the man.”

  “No.”

  “And now he’s in London, if we’re right about it. It’s been a while since the Comodin stole in London.”

  “One year, three months, seven days. I pulled that out of the files. We’ll find Deverney was visiting London then. We’ll find him in Vienna or Edinburgh or Amsterdam when the Comodin was working there.”

  “I won’t bet against it.”

  Hawker sipped gin and set his glass back on the table. “Let me get through the rest of this. Deverney is also a perfectly genuine French aristocrat. Old aristocracy. I pulled Tardieu out of bed. He was in bed with somebody inappropriate, of course. According to Tardieu, the family was wiped out in the Revolution, contributing heroic corpses to both sides. An aunt took the last surviving heir—Raoul Deverney—off to Spain, fleeing before the usual howling mob. A few years later the Comodin began stealing. In Spain.”

  “That’s tidy,” Doyle said.

  “Isn’t it? Flip forward a few pages and the young Deverney returns to France and buys back the family estate. He sets up a number of dull, respectable businesses, which he makes profitable. He also revives the family wine trade, which is even more profitable, making himself popular in the village. I stopped at Bunyon’s, Wine Merchant, on the way here and he tells me they sell all the Deverney Mont Trousel label they get their hands on.”

  “I like a man with a trade.”

  “I suspect we’re dealing with two trades here,” Hawker said. “He can crawl up the side of an inn to get to Sévie. Once there, he can offer her a distinguished red wine.”

  “Or toss a knife in her lap. Has the Comodin ever hurt anybody that we know of?”

  “Not once. It’s one of his signatures.”

  “Then he’s unlikely to take up killing just to deal with Sévie.” Doyle drew in smoke, puffed it out. “I don’t like him roosting in her office.”

  “I don’t like him having a dead wife. Or some tenuous connection with O’Grady and the Wellington matter. Or a missing daughter.”

  Another puff of smoke. “Why steal from the Carlingtons? Why do it last night in particular?”

  “And why did he dance with Sévie? That is exactly what I asked myself in the Carlingtons’ ballroom.” Hawker finished his glass. “I said to myself, ‘Who is he and what is he up to?’”

  “Preparing for a robbery.”

  “Not impossible.” Hawker gave one of his more pleasant smiles. “I will ask him. I can finally use those implements of torture I have handy.”

  “You and your implements of torture.” Doyle got up and carried his pipe to the hearth to tap it empty on the andiron. He went to consider the scene outside.

  Hawker joined him at the window. “She’s not safe with him.”

  Doyle sucked on his pipe, remembered it was empty, and stopped. “She hasn’t been safe for a long time. Not since she first went to Spain. Not now, doing what she does for work. We should be used to it.”

  “I’m not. Where is she?”

  “With Tweed, talking about death and eating lunch at the Sleeping Hound.”

  “I’ll share this with her. Let us find some worthy citizen to carry a few cryptic words across town. Then she can deal with Deverney, which should be interesting for all concerned. Maybe she’ll employ the instruments of torture.”

  “She won’t. You saw her face.”

  Hawker snorted and strode toward the door. Doyle picked his hat up from the table and followed, looking at peace with the world, as always. The tavern cat, black as a shadow on the windowsill, magnificently indifferent, watched them go.

  Twenty-three

  AT the Sleeping Hound, Raoul cradled his cup between his hands. The food smelled good, but he wasn’t here to eat or drink. Ten oun
ces of ale was enough to establish his right to a table in this crowded tavern.

  Across from him Charles Tweed, surgeon for the Coroner’s Inquiry of Central London, spooned a carrot from his stew. He was a plump little man with sharp eyes and a bulbous nose. His scalp gleamed even in the dimness of the public house. Tweed was a noted surgeon when he wasn’t looking at dead people for the magistrate. Séverine said a questionable corpse couldn’t do better than Mr. Tweed when it came to investigating the circumstances of its demise.

  Tweed was Sévie’s old friend, obviously, and ready to be frank about the inquest as a favor to her. He said, between bites, “. . . hyperinflated to fill the entire thoracic cavity . . . petechia beneath the visceral pleura . . . other signs indicative of advanced asthma.”

  Sévie’s eyes slid away from Tweed, toward him. “Did you know she had asthma?”

  “We were not well acquainted.”

  “You weren’t well acquainted with your wife?” Tweed narrowed eyes at him.

  “It was an arranged match.” The grim humor of that struck him. He remembered the poke of a pistol in his back. The cold of the chapel. He’d been swaying on his feet, half conscious at that point, thanks to an imaginative beating. One of the Gavarres grabbed his hair and made him nod a proper response.

  “The aristocracy continues to amaze me,” Tweed said dryly.

  He brought the conversation back to the inquest. “You’re saying she died of asthma?”

  “Long-established and severe asthma was the proximal cause of death. I eliminated involvement of the . . .” Tweed lapsed into technicalities.

  At the end, Séverine tapped her pencil on the notebook that lay flat on the table beside her. “I don’t understand half of that.”

  “Then don’t ask me complicated questions. If it’s a skull bashed in, I say that. Stab wound in the belly, I call it that.” Tweed chased a vegetable around his stew. “With this one there’s no simple answer.”

  The barmaid came to refill mugs and look disapproving that no one but Tweed was eating. She was more pleased with the table across the room, where Séverine’s Scots manservant was working on his second bowl of stew.

  Only one question was important. He said to Tweed, “Are you telling me it was a natural death?”

  Sévie looked up from her notes. “You saw that she’d been tied up?”

  Tweed chewed for a while. “It wasn’t murder,” he said. “Or I would have called it that.”

  Damn this juggling words. “She chose that moment to fall over dead? Pure coincidence?”

  “Pretty much.” Tweed crumbled bread into his bowl. “This is why I never talk to families. It’s pointless.”

  “Do it as a favor to me,” Séverine said.

  “For you, then,” Tweed said, “and your father, who’s one of the few sensible men I meet in the way of doing business.” He scraped his spoon around the bowl. “She died of asthma, Mr. Deverney. That’s a disease and can’t be accused of murder.”

  “You called the death natural.” Séverine slid her untouched strawberry tart toward Tweed, making the gesture both impatient and graceful. She just couldn’t help riveting the eye. “Do you want this?”

  “I do and I thank you, Sévie.”

  “Sanchia Gavarre is dead because she was tied up, gagged, and beaten,” Deverney said tightly. “Medical quibbling doesn’t change that.”

  “Those are the proximal and contributing factors to her death.” Tweed cut a bite of tart off with his spoon. “The legal question is, did that kill her? None of that tying and beating would have caused her death without the asthma. That would have got round to ending her sooner or later. Sooner, by the looks of it.”

  He’d had no liking for Sanchia. Probably no one did. But— “She was choking behind the gag. They saw that. They could have helped her and they didn’t. That makes it murder.”

  “Don’t argue the law with me, sir.” Tweed tapped his spoon on the table for emphasis. “Putting it simply, you won’t get a conviction of murder, even if you find the man. No intent. Any judge is going to say that’s a damned stupid way to kill somebody on purpose. If it goes to a jury, you might not even get a conviction of manslaughter.”

  “Your juries can deal with English law. First, I’ll find the man,” he said.

  “You probably will, with Sévie working on the problem.” Tweed tucked into the tart and finished it in six bites. “I’ll send you the report I gave the inquest, but that’s the gist of it. Sorry not to have better news.” He pushed the plate away. “I’m off to the hospital to check on a Mrs. Murphy I sewed together this morning. She was alive after breakfast. We’ll see if that happy state continues. Then I have a double murder to cut into, courtesy of your lively acquaintances in Seven Dials.” He picked up his hat from the far side of the table and nodded to Sévie. “I’ll leave you to pay for my meal in return for the lesson in the prognosis of asthma. You can afford a bowl of stew, God knows. Regards to your father.”

  Tweed tipped his hat and left silence behind at the table. Sévie’s face had become complex. Most people would have seen it as a frown. She was turning over the medical evidence that had just spilled into her lap, holding a hundred details in her mind, breaking patterns apart and fitting them together new. Her thumb slipped back and forth against her index finger as she thought, a habit she probably didn’t know she had.

  At a table next to the wall MacDonald finished his stew and called for another ale. The barmaid pointedly paused in front of Sévie, obviously hoping somebody would pass over a tip. No reaction, so she flounced on her way. And a young man, thin featured, pale, looking like a shop clerk, came in the door. He headed for Séverine.

  She looked up without surprise. She knew why he’d come. You could see she was a woman who received messages at any hour, in any place, some of them important.

  “Miss Séverine de Cabrillac?” He pronounced the French painstakingly. Almost correctly. And, “I’m sorry. I have to look at your left hand.”

  She held it out at once, palm down. This was something else she was used to doing. The curved scar across the third knuckle would be an identifying mark. She said, “Can you see? I’ll go over into the sun.”

  “I see it fine, ma’am. I’m supposed to say the words to you when you’re alone.” This was a conscientious, careful young fellow. “And I was promised a shilling.”

  Sévie already had a coin out of her pocket.

  Pity this interesting message seemed to be private. No help for it. He said, “I’ll wait over there,” and left her to it.

  MacDonald pulled his legs in to make room at his table. The two of them found temporary common cause in watching Séverine without looking like they were doing it. It would take impossibly sharp ears to hear what someone was saying from here.

  Séverine took the precaution of turning the man to face her when he spoke. The message was short, whatever was said, and soon delivered. She asked a question and received a few words back. At the end she passed the coin over. The man departed without a curious look behind. The words must have seemed ordinary.

  The message mattered to Sévie, though. Minutes ticked past and she sat unmoving. Once she glanced up and ran her eyes across him and looked away again. Her face had a stiff, frozen quality.

  “Something she doesn’t like is going on,” MacDonald remarked.

  “Looks that way.”

  “Best to leave her alone till she stops being mad,” MacDonald said. “What they call being canny back in the Highlands.”

  “Do they?”

  Séverine stood up abruptly and strode toward them. To MacDonald she said, “Get the wagon for tonight, please. We’ll leave after dark. And put out tea for the Eyes and Ears. They’ll be coming in all afternoon. Get some cakes from the bakery and ask them to wait for me, will you, if I’m late. Feed the boy when you see him.” But all the while her eyes were on
him, not MacDonald. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Monsieur Deverney. At my office. Ten o’clock.” She stomped away before he could answer.

  When the tavern door had closed behind her with a nice solid thump, MacDonald said, “A sensible man wouldn’t follow her.”

  “He certainly wouldn’t.” Sévie’d forgotten to pay the barmaid, so he laid down money for it. That would annoy her when she found out about it.

  MacDonald meditated over his ale. “You aren’t a sensible man.”

  “You aren’t either or you wouldn’t have been following her around Europe these last few years.”

  The Scotsman showed white teeth in a reddened, weather-beaten face. “It’s never dull, Mr. Deverney. Never dull.”

  Twenty-four

  SÉVIE walked away from the Sleeping Hound, thinking about thievery in general and Deverney in particular. MacDonald didn’t follow her out of the tavern. He was pretending to be a man with the piercing curiosity of a moss-encrusted rock. Raoul Deverney did follow. She had no idea what he was pretending to be.

  She mulled matters over for the dozen steps it took Deverney to catch up with her. An experienced and careful campaigner—she was experienced and very careful—would hold on to this newest information a while. There’d be advantages to knowing the truth while Deverney was still lying to her.

  “You’re the Comodin,” she said, striking right to the soft heart of the pudding.

  The air between them became thin and empty, as if it had been pulled down off a mountain of great height.

  “You know about that.” Deverney’s expression raised noncommittal to an art form. “You were bound to find out sooner or later. I’d hoped it would be considerably later.”

  She felt like a pitcher filling up with a thin dribble of water, except it was anger coming in. “You make your living stealing.”

  “Among other things.”

  She pushed past him and he followed. A pleasant day lay around her, sunny, with a little breeze. The cobbles cupped warmth like generous hands. London at its most gentle. There was no press of noisy traffic. No boisterous voices. This shabby narrow road held nothing but the tiny drama between them. A quiet street altogether. One that minded its own business.