“Cummings is here. I’m wondering where to put this.” He let the pages fall open. If it had been Jane Cardiff’s journal, it would have been symbols across the page. Since it was one of Sévie’s old copybooks, it was line after line of ordinary script. “I want him to see it but not lay hands on it.”
“The far side of the desk.” Owl took the book from him and arranged it herself. “Good. It lies there, slanted just so, obviously important. I have never seen a book hold such an aspect of importance.”
“I could add bookmarks hanging out everywhere.”
“We will not ice the cake. We will be simple. You will try to keep the very direct Colonel Reams from tossing it into the fire. Séverine will be annoyed if it is damaged.” She frowned at the knife that had almost killed her. “Will you reconsider this plan? I am not easy in my mind with the chance you will take. That knife is dangerous.”
“I’m more dangerous.” There was a comfortable patch of wall over to the side. He backed her up there so she’d have something to lean on. “We have a minute. Use it to kiss me.”
“Doyle may walk in at any instant. Paxton may—”
“Let’s not make a list of everybody who’s going to walk in on us.”
A brief kiss. Lips touching once, friendly-like. A petit dejeuner of a kiss. A roll and coffee in the morning of a kiss. Not the main course, but he gave it his entire expertise.
Owl said, “That was nice.”
“That’s why husbands and wives kiss a lot. Because it’s nice. It’ll take some practice, but we’ll eventually get it right.”
“I am not yet used to the idea of becoming a wife. I have no idea what kind of kisses to expect in that state.”
“We’ll find out. We’re going to fall into the ravening maw of respectability, you and I.” He kissed her. It tasted significant, as if everything they did, every word they said, meant more now. It wasn’t just pleasure between them, though God knew there was a mort of that. It wasn’t friendship.
This was his lady. This would be his wife.
He pulled her to him, using the amount of persuasion he thought he could get away with, feeling her answer back with the next kiss, warm and willing.
They did that for a while.
“We have no time for this.” She shoved him away. “I am in no mood to fool with you. I am hungry for vengeance. You, I will indulge myself with later.”
Wonderful Owl. “I’m feeling peckish for some vengeance myself.”
Doyle came in, looking grim and angry from a morning spent handing a corpse over to the coroner. Pax was with him, Fletcher a few steps behind. The rustle coming downstairs was Sévie.
Nobody needed to say much. Doyle took in the stage setting. Eyes lingered on the knife. “We have Cummings?”
“Waiting in the front parlor.”
A brusque nod from Doyle. Sévie, dignified as a judge, sat in the big chair, the one next to the fire, and folded her hands in her lap. She’d done most of the work on Jane Cardiff’s book, since she could decode as fast as write. Pax, Fletcher, and Doyle took the corners of the room and stood like guards. They wouldn’t interfere with what was going to happen.
The door opened. Cummings came in, trailed by a belligerent-looking Reams. “What the devil do you mean by this, Hawkhurst? That was a damned peremptory note you sent.”
“This won’t take long.”
His lordship glanced around and assessed his audience. His voice became a shade more conciliatory. “I have better things to do than run across town at your beck and call.”
Cummings was shaved pink, his hair clipped and polished, his clothes without a speck of dust on them. He was tightly decorous. A little overdressed for the informality of Meeks Street. He’d dropped his hat and coat somewhere, but he carried his cane.
Good. As good as could be.
Reams came up behind Cummings and whispered into his ear. “. . . knives . . . Bow Street . . .” There was more, but Cummings ignored him. Because Cummings had spotted the black book sitting enticingly on the desk.
He put himself between Cummings and the desk and turned to Owl. “Lord Cummings and Colonel Reams came to ask after your health when you were stabbed. How long ago was it, mademoiselle? Five days?”
“It has been longer than that. A week, I think. I lose track of time, we have been so very busy.” She came toward him, strolling across the landscape of the study, running her hand from chair to chair, taking every eye with her. “It has been day after day, talking to people, discovering secrets. I have barely had time to draw my breath.”
She paused by the sofa and touched two fingers to the papers he’d piled there. “Then there is this. It is tedious work, the making of copies from old French codes into the vernacular.” She tilted her head and considered the words written on the top sheet. “And now we have finished. Many people will be fascinated by that little book. It is instructive reading.”
Cummings whipped his attention from the papers she touched to the book on the desk and back again.
Reams, edging along at Cummings’s side, hadn’t stopped muttering. “. . . sneaking bastards. They got into Bow Street somehow. We can prove it. That knife on the desk has to be—”
“Not now, Colonel.” Cummings brushed his shoulder. “Hawkhurst, I’m not here to play games. What’s this about?”
“Treason. Greed. Murder. Trifles like that. A woman’s body was found in Percy Street, at dawn. But you already know that.”
Cummings knew. His face was closed, barred, and shuttered, but the smugness showed.
Owl said, “It was a particularly cowardly murder. She was killed by someone she knew. Someone looked into her eyes while he killed her.”
The cane swung in Cummings’s hand, being arrogant. “All very affecting, of course, but not the province of the British Service. Unless you stumbled on the body, Hawkhurst. Really, Bow Street is going to wonder why women keep getting stabbed when you’re around.”
He gave Cummings time to realize what he’d let slip. “Did I say she was stabbed?”
Sévie and the three men standing at the wall didn’t change expression. They were silent and impassive witnesses. Even Reams was a witness.
Cummings clenched his teeth. “A guess. Maybe she died of the pox or fell under a carriage. It’s nothing to me how some whore died.”
“I didn’t say she was a whore, either.” Time to lean against the desk and get comfortable, like a man settled down for a long talk. “Her apartment was ransacked. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such a clumsy job.”
“I can’t share your familiarity with the ransacking of a whore’s living quarters.”
Reams had got into the pile of papers at the end of the sofa. He shoveled through them like a pig, rooting. “What’s this?” He squinted at the top page. “‘R.T. will do what he is told. He is snared. Le Maître is very pleased with me.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sévie answered him. “That is the transcript of a book kept by a woman of the demimonde.” She sounded like she was discussing something ordinary. Vegetables, maybe. “For many years she blackmailed the men she slept with. She did not ask for money. She demanded political favors. Votes. Influence. Le Maître—the Master—was her patron. He gave the orders.”
He watched Cummings’s face. The house of cards was falling, and Cummings would fall with it. “A few dozen men were blackmailed. We know some of the names. We’ll figure out the rest in the next couple days. It’s all in the book.”
“It was not merely blackmail,” Sévie said. “She killed men when Le Maître gave the order. We know those names as well.”
Reams wasn’t paying attention to that. He shuffled through sheet after sheet, reading them and crumpling them in his fist, throwing the pages away. “‘He lay down naked. I began rubbing the ointment on his—’ By God, man. It says, ‘on his genitals!’ This is obscenity. What kind of a book do you have here? This is some of that French muck.”
Owl, cool as marble, turned slowly to
consider Reams. “It is a journal. Did you not know hired women often write of their lives? It is a passion with some of them. Every small detail of what they do, they set down in writing.” She smiled and looked very French indeed. “It is one of several reasons a wise man does not share his secrets with harlots.”
Reams tore a page in half. Listen to this. “‘. . . with the smaller cane there will be fewer marks. I do not wish to be bruised for the visit of G.R. I must entice him to yet another betrayal of his Foreign Office, and he has developed a conscience of late. I will use—’ This is vile. This is filth.” Reams swept the pile of paper across the table onto the floor.
Sévie said, “It is filth that will splash upon many people. G.R. is George Reynolds. Later, she explains how she killed him.”
He wanted Cummings’s attention on him. Wanted the man close. “We’ll find everything in here.” When he took the black book from the desk, he handled it as if it were genuine. “The man who killed her didn’t find this.”
Cummings took a step closer. “Say what you have to say and be done with it.”
“I’ll do better than that. Look for yourself.” He tossed the book at Cummings. The pages flapped and rippled like bird’s wings. Cummings dropped his cane and grabbed for the book.
He snapped the cane from the air as it left Cummings’s hand. The head unscrewed in a single twist. The fancy hilt, hexagonal with embossed gold points, separated from the shaft.
Everybody at Meeks Street knew that cane. Cummings had swaggered around with it for years. But this was the first time they’d seen the dagger inside. It was thin, six inches long, and missing the tip.
On his desk, the tiny point of metal he’d picked out of a wooden chest in Jane Cardiff’s bedroom glinted. He laid the dagger beside it. They matched. Matched exactly.
Proof absolute. Whatever he did from here on out, he had the proof. This was the man who killed Jane Cardiff. The man who’d tried to kill Owl.
Cummings fumbled with the book and leafed from page to page, gobbling indignation. “This isn’t her book.” Cummings’s voice was a terrible hoarse whisper. He slammed the book closed. “This is some schoolgirl’s drivel.”
“We have the real journal.” He tapped the metal triangle back into its envelope and set it and Cummings’s dagger into the desk drawer. He turned the key. “We’ve all seen it. We all know. I’ll give the real book to Liverpool.”
Rigid with rage, livid as death, Cummings threw Sévie’s composition book across the room. “I will destroy you.”
When he turned to face Cummings, the black knife, the poisoned one, lay between them on the desk. “All those years ago the Service sent word to look for the Cachés. You did. You found some. But you didn’t turn them in. You kept them for your own dirty use. You bought Jane Cardiff from Gravois and Patelin. She was twelve. Even in the cesspit of Whitechapel, they spit on men who buy children.”
“I see a silly copybook anyone could have written and no one can read. You have no evidence. Gravois and Patelin won’t testify to anything.”
The dead are notably silent. “You bought her. You hurt her. Little by little, you made her an obedient tool.” He understood evil. What Cummings had done to a child was pure evil.
“She was a French spy and a whore. No one’s going to care what I did to her.” Cummings’s eyes slid to Owl. “She’s not the only French whore in England. Does Liverpool know you’re sleeping with that one?”
Sévie looked angry and Owl, grimly amused. Doyle, with his back to the bookshelves and his arms crossed over his chest could have been thinking about other matters altogether.
“Liverpool knows the war is long over. Her cousin’s a Minister of France. Nobody’s looking closely at what the French got up to under the last regime.”
Cummings’s cane, empty of the dagger, was still heavy. Clumsy, to his way of thinking. Stiff malacca, brown as a walnut. His gut told him Cummings had used this cane to beat and break a half-grown girl. “You didn’t know about that journal, did you? She must have told you about it when she was dying.” He saw the flicker in Cummings’s eyes. He’d guessed right. “You didn’t have time to find it.”
Owl seated herself on the arm of the sofa. She laced her hands together, wrapped about her knee. “Did you think of the irony? You destroyed Jane Cardiff. Now she destroys you.”
“She can’t touch me. None of you can.” Cummings’s lip lifted in a sneer, and it was Adrian Hawkhurst he looked at. “I’ve held my position longer than you’ve been alive. I know every powerful man in London. I know secrets about everyone. If I call the journal a fake, I’ll be believed.”
Cummings had centuries of breeding behind him, generations of ordering men around, getting away with murder. He had it in his bones.
“If you try to use those ravings against me, Hawkhurst, I’ll see you in prison for murder.” Coldly, Cummings gazed from face to face, at every man and woman in the room. “I’ll ruin the rest of you. I’ll make it my life’s work.”
Nobody even blinked.
“I’ll grant you this. I didn’t see it, at first.” He began to pace, crossing in front of Cummings. “I like puzzles, but this one just about drove me mad. Why would anyone go to this much trouble just to disgrace me? Easier to point a rifle and shoot. Killing’s the easiest thing in the world. You agree with that, don’t you, Cummings?”
Cummings let his eyes agree. He was probably thinking how much Adrian Hawkhurst needed killing.
Death lurked in this room. But Cummings wasn’t the one dealing it.
I am. “When I found out you were behind it—Do you know how we found out?”
“He does not.” Owl was bright-eyed and mocking. “So I will tell him. Do not stab anyone with a fancy dagger, my lord. Especially not when the hilt leaves its mark pressed into the corpse.” She touched her chest. “Here. Monsieur Doyle and Monsieur Hawkhurst had no difficulty in recognizing the pattern of your cane.”
Reams looked up from the papers he was still reading. “There’s a damned lot of accusation going—”
“Quiet,” Cummings said. “I’m handling this.”
Then they both ignored Reams.
“Once I knew who was behind this, I knew why. Military Intelligence is a dead horse, and we all know it. You wanted the Service. Killing me wouldn’t give it to you. You needed a scandal in the Service so embarrassing Liverpool would bring in an outsider to clean house. You were sure he’d bring you in.”
Owl rearranged the skirt of her dress, being the great lady, untouchable and disapproving. “It is all ambition, which is very ugly. The Whigs call for the Military Intelligence to be dissolved, as they do not like secret police set to spy upon Englishmen. Over the years, for advancement, you have ordered the death of innocent men. You have blackmailed and ruined dozens more. When we take vengeance for Jane Cardiff, we collect it for them also.”
Unrepentant, condescending, Cummings shook his head.
We’ll finish this. He glanced at Doyle. At Sévie, all grim determination. At Pax’s careful detachment. At Owl, who knew what came next and approved.
Doyle’s deep, flat, matter-of-fact voice carried utter conviction. “When we take the book and the transcription to Liverpool, everything comes out. You’re ruined. But every innocent man named in that journal falls with you. You disgrace Military Intelligence. Good men worked for you in the war. They don’t deserve this.”
“How dramatic.” Cummings took a casual stand by the desk.
“You have a mother still living. You have two sons and grandchildren. You have a wife. When this comes out, you shame every one of them.” Doyle waited.
They all did.
Looked like they expected the Head of Service to say the rest of it. “This is when a gentleman goes home and has an accident cleaning his gun.” Deliberately, he walked to the desk and laid his hands down flat on it. He leaned across, close to Lord Cummings. “You have until tomorrow noon.”
Cummings laughed. Actually laughed. “You’re
bluffing, Hawkhurst. You’re all bluff. I know you. I’ve watched you for years. You won’t destroy that many people to get to me. You won’t show that book to anyone.” His gaze dropped to the desk.
He’ll do it now.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Cummings scoop up the black knife. Grip the hilt. Stab down. Stab toward the hand so temptingly flat on the desktop.
He jerked out of way. Rapped up hard and broke Cummings’s hold on the knife. Caught it away from him.
He slashed Cummings across the palm, up the forearm. A long, shallow cut that opened up red.
Judge. Jury. He let the knife drop. He didn’t need it anymore. Executioner.
“You bastard.” Cummings’s eyes bulged out of his head, staring at his hand and the blood dripping across it.
“You have to be more careful, sir.” Reams was beside Cummings, pressing a handkerchief on a wound that bled sluggishly. “It’s not deep. We’ll have it stopped in a minute.”
“Get me out of here.” Cummings pulled away. He stared at his hand, trembling, wiping at the seeping blood. “I have to get out of here.”
“Let me stop the bleeding.” Reams looked around at all the men and women who watched and did nothing. “Goddammit, one of you help me.”
“Use mine.” Hawker shook his handkerchief out and handed it over to Reams.
Cummings backed away, nursing his hand, bleeding. “They saw. Everybody saw what you did.”
“They saw that you were clumsy where you pointed a knife. That’s always a mistake.”
“You’ll hang for this. I swear it. You’ll hang if it’s the last thing I do.” Cummings shrugged Reams off. “Let go of me, idiot. That’s not going to help. I’m poisoned. Poisoned. He’s killed me.” He was pale as death when he staggered toward the door. But it would be a while before he died.
Fifty-one
HAWKER FOUND HER IN THE APARTMENT ABOVE her shop. Thompson pointed him up the stairs and said Mademoiselle had been expecting him and the door at the top was open.
Owl had thirty blue-glass bottles sitting out on a table that she was filling with something. She sat in a red brocade chair, leaning over, tapping powder from a paper down the mouth of a bottle. He stood awhile and watched. About every fifth one she’d straighten up, lean to the fire for the kettle, and fill the bottles with hot water.
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