“At that distance?”
“He can notch a man’s left ear at that distance. Or hit his left knee.”
“And leave him alive to chat with your Service. I’ll be annoyed if they kill him by accident. Especially if London Bridge blows up the next day and falls into the Thames. I’m very fond of London Bridge.”
“The River Police are watching the bridges.”
“They can’t watch everything. The mint, Brooks’s club, the shoppers on Bond Street . . . That’s enough gunpowder to topple Westminster Abbey like a house of cards. With people inside.” Her voice cracked a little around the last words.
She took a deep breath. “We have to trap him here.” She took one last glance at Number Fifty-six. “I was hoping to see . . . something. But it’s just a dull house of nothing in particular.” She shrugged. “I’m done. We can walk on.”
“Hawker’s told me what the service knows so far,” he said. “The vast resources have heaped up a pile of trivia. Shall I pass it along?”
“Do. I dote upon trivia.”
“Number Fifty-six. On the ground floor is an old man who tailors suits on Jermyn Street. The basement, two brothers who work in a blacking factory. Both floors upstairs are leased to a solicitor’s clerk and his numerous family.”
“There’s a baby. I heard it crying. And the window with bars must be the nursery.”
“Our clerk copies legal briefs, most recently for a case concerning inheritance of a woolen mill in Yorkshire. Servants in the attic. Next door, at Fifty-eight . . .” They walked, and he organized what he knew and laid it out for her. “Across the street, at Number Twenty-nine, the house belongs to a sea captain’s widow who lets rooms. We have an old woman who feeds cats in the basement. The ground floor is a retired nanny. One floor up . . .” House by house, he matched windows to inhabitants.
They came to the corner, where Semple Street ran into Medwall Street. Cami sighed and tucked the parasol under her arm, evidently feeling it had served its purpose in establishing her role. “We Baldoni say, ‘One insight is worth a hundred facts.’ But I have no insights, except to say the men and women of Semple Street are ordinary as rocks. It’s as if somebody went to the warehouse and bought dull people as a wholesale lot.”
Cami’s mind saw patterns when the facts were still scattered like stars across the sky. “There’s something we’re not seeing.”
“We will continue to not see it, no matter how long we linger in this vicinity.” Cami shook her head. So strange to see her in these bright, frilly clothes with such a serious expression on her face. “I’ll go home and take out a map and stare at it till the very writing crawls away to hide from my intense scrutiny.” Impatient now, she turned and started down Medwall Street. “It’s my turn to be informative. I’ll show you where the Baldoni will be busy. If the Merchant gets this far, they’ll deal with him. It should be safe. The Merchant will doubtless have discharged his pistols somewhat before he gets here.”
“Cami . . .” There wasn’t anything to say. The stark fact that she would probably be dead within minutes of meeting the Merchant lay between them. Neither of them wanted to say that in simple words.
“I’ll wait for you tonight in my bedroom. Come to me,” she said.
Everything—daylight, the street, house sparrows hopping on the pavement, people walking by—receded. He was overwhelmed by the memory of her body, laid back on white sheets, her legs open to him.
“To love you again,” he said.
She said, “To talk and for the joy of your company. Also, I expect to have trouble sleeping.”
“That’s a prosaic reason for inviting me.”
“I’m lining up the next twelve hours and filling them with simple things. Chocolates and good red wine and you. Will you come?”
“Yes.”
Last night, in the coldest hour before dawn, he’d left her bed and climbed down from her window. No dog barked, nobody stirred, but he slipped away from the house with the uneasy certainty his presence had been known. Instinct had set the hairs prickling on the back of his neck.
He’d climb up to her room again tonight. Instinct be damned.
Cami said, “And there is Mr. Hawker, leaning against a horse. What a surprise.”
Hawker waited for them at the corner, his shoulder against the flank of a bay mare, the hoof curled up to rest on his thighs. He was cleaning the hoof with a little pick. Nobody had to get close to see he was cursing.
“He does that well,” Cami said.
“He’s putting something in there to give himself a lame horse to walk slowly past whatever he wants to look at.”
“A coin, probably, under the shoe. It’s very convincing and does little harm. Do you think a Baldoni ever worked for the British Service at some point? You seem to know a lot of the family secrets.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
When they got close enough, Hawker looked up and was amiable, pretending to a slight acquaintance. The hoof was returned to the pavement. The hat was tipped. Hawk was gallant in Cami’s direction. Cami smiled and twirled her parasol and was bitingly sarcastic.
“Next street up,” Hawker said, shaking his head as if he were handing over bad news about the horse, “the hackney’s pulled over to the curb. Tenn’s on the box. Doyle’s waiting for you inside. Last-minute advice.”
Beside him, Cami constructed a tight little smile. “I will excuse myself, then. I have no wish to meet Mr. Doyle again.”
Hawker said, “Leave her here with me. I’ll take care of her.”
Forty-five
If you do not teach your son to be a thief, you make an honest tradesman of him.
Cami waited till Pax was out of hearing range. Then she turned to this Service agent, Mr. Hawker. She said, “If you have something to say to me you don’t want Pax to hear, this is as good a time as any.”
He leaned against the horse, arms folded. They had patient horses in whatever stable the British Service used. She wondered what the stable owners thought of all the horses lost and injured by Service agents over the years. Did the British Service come up with excuse after excuse or did they change livery stables with some frequency?
Hawker said, “There’s a puzzle that’s been bothering me. That house—Number Fifty-six—means nothing. Semple Street means nothing.”
She said, “That is a brilliant summation of my own views.”
“But the Merchant wants to meet you there. Why is that, Miss Baldoni?”
“Because life is not tediously predictable, Mr. Hawker. Maybe his tailor lives there.”
“Or maybe you were told to lure Pax out where he’ll be easy to kill.”
That hadn’t occurred to her, not once. “You think I’m setting a trap for Pax.”
“Who tells us what the Merchant said?” Hawker stepped toward her suddenly, ignoring the horse sidling behind him. “One person. You can say anything you want, can’t you?”
She stood with him, eye to eye. Not a tall man, Mr. Hawker. “More than that. I can say anything I want and be believed. I’m Baldoni.”
“And a liar from the cradle.”
“I sucked it in with my mother’s milk.” She faced him and waited.
“Pax moves around a lot and he works on his own. Hard to trace. Hard to predict. Maybe your job is to bring him out in the open tomorrow for the Merchant to kill.”
“A bit overelaborate, Mr. Hawker. Why would I do that?”
“You’re a French spy.”
“Not French, Mr. Hawker. Tuscan.” She rolled her shoulders in a shrug and turned away. “And I don’t spy for the French.”
“You’re Caché.” Hawker’s voice was sharp as thorns. “That’s close enough. The only reason I don’t use this”—the knife was a blur of black that whipped toward her till it was a cold prick at her jugular—“is that Pax wouldn’t like it.” The knife stayed where it was. He leaned closer and whispered, “If you hurt him again, I’ll carve that pretty face of yours into ribbons.”