“He’ll drop by when he’s through breaking into the shop downstairs. It shouldn’t take long.”
Hawker pushed a spindly table out of the way in the hall. An open door revealed the kitchen, ransacked. It would be a desperate or stupid man who searched for secrets in a kitchen, where maids would poke about in every cranny and crevice. Smashed china and spilled flour covered the floor, full of boot prints.
He said, “This was done after the salon. There’s no flour in there. I make it the foyer first, then the salon. Here, in the kitchen. Then down the hall toward the bedroom.”
She knelt, holding her pistol at her side, not getting flour on her dress, and touched the pattern of a boot heel. “It was one man in this room.”
“If we got one man, it took him an hour. Two men go a little faster. Not twice as fast. They get in each other’s way.” Hawker would always make a good estimate of the time needed for theft.
She agreed with a nod. “This destruction was done recently. The roses in the foyer have only begun to wilt.”
“An hour or two.”
“We have just missed him. Almost certainly he was alerted by your search of the brothels today.”
“Or he saw us in the Pickerings’ ballroom. He came looking for something smaller than this.” Hawker touched the broken pieces of the salt box with his boot. “Less than eight inches long.”
“Something important that belongs to Jane Cardiff.” She did not say, “Where is she?” but they were both thinking that. “This is an evil man. I can taste it in what he has done.”
Crescents of flour marked the long carpet toward the door at the end of the hall. Jane Cardiff’s bedroom.
A hand lantern stood on the writing desk, still lit. The embroidered bedspread, the red velvet pillows, and the mattress were thrown to the floor and slit open. The drawers upended. Dresses, cloaks, and bonnets were tumbled in heaps.
“And we have more random breakage.” Hawker curled his lip. “He didn’t find what he was looking for.”
She saw what Hawker saw. This was the last room searched—the lamp had been left behind here. There was no corner left undisturbed. No sign a search ended and the searcher picked up his prize and departed.
She said, “Perhaps Jane Cardiff grabbed it up and ran. Perhaps he was too late.”
She uncocked her gun and laid it beside the lantern where it would be handy if she needed it. Every cubbyhole in the desk had been emptied. The secret drawer—such desks always contain one—was pulled out. On the blotter, six fabric-covered boxes, such as jewelers use, were open and empty. Séverine would be able to tell her which jewelers these were. She did not know, herself. She had no reason to buy jewels. “This is robbery. But it is an afterthought.”
“I never trust a man who is not attracted to valuable objects.” Papers had been shoved from the desk onto the floor. Hawker picked them up and shuffled through, making sense of them. “They’re crumpled up one by one.”
“Ah. Bon. And these books were opened one by one before they were tossed down. See how they fell? That is true in the salon, also. All the books were searched.” The bookends had been bawdy figures, the shepherdess with her dress raised high, the shepherd with his breeches lowered. They were smashed against the fireplace. More malice. “He is looking for a paper or a book, almost certainly.”
“Stupid to keep secret papers lying about in your bedroom.”
“A wise agent does not produce incriminating papers at all.”
“Not everybody’s as careful as you and me. Sad fact.” He began to circle the room, deft and deliberate. Not touching anything. Looking and thinking. “Let’s say Jane Cardiff has secrets to hide, being a woman who lives a full and interesting life. Where does a woman hide secrets, Owl?”
“Women do not think alike, mon vieux. Do not expect me to understand her merely because I am a woman.”
“But you’re a sneaky woman. Have I ever told you how much I admire that? We can eliminate the easy places—all the drawers and bookcases.”
“Certainly, that is a foolish place to hide something.” She set aside her distaste for the man who searched this apartment. It was not the vandal she must understand. It was Jane Cardiff.
“I’ll send men to pick the place apart. It’ll take a few hours.”
But she did not want to wait for that. Neither did Hawker.
“She is no sweet squire’s daughter to trust a secret drawer in her desk.” She had picked up the poor, sad obscenity of the broken shepherdess. The lingering of malevolence disturbed her more than she had realized. “The man who did this was one of her lovers. He comes to her apartment and searches it as such a man would.”
She had Hawker’s attention. “Tell me.”
“He gives his time to the places he knows. His world. The salon, where she entertained him. This bedroom, where she practiced her art upon him. These are important to him, so he thinks they are important to her.”
“What he searches, he destroys.”
“Her clothes, this pretty dressing table, the sofa in the salon. This vulgar object.” She set the little shepherdess upon the desk. “He crushes all the trappings of a harlot. And he takes his jewelry back.”
Hawker pulled at his bottom lip, thumb and forefinger. “Searches the familiar territory. His territory. What he feels like he owns.”
“You see that. But Jane Cardiff has lived a different life in this apartment. This bed is the stage upon which the courtesan plays her role. Whatever power she found there, she did not enjoy. This room . . . I will tell you. I have been in rooms like this.”
“You don’t have to say it.”
“But I will. I have acted horrible games upon exactly such a bed. Long ago. I understand this room.”
“Owl, you’re not Jane Cardiff.”
“It is the same.”
“Well, bugger that for a lie.”
He stomped off to look out the window. She had made him angry, in that sudden way she sometimes did.
She said, “I was also a whore.”
“Don’t say that.”
He was angry for her sake. Even after all these years, always angry. Perhaps she had healed, because she knew her anger still lived inside Hawker. “I understand her this well. She doesn’t sleep in that ugly, red bed. Look here.”
She opened the door of the small room beyond and brought the lamp. There was barely space for both of them. The disorder was less. Here was only a narrow bed with wool blankets and the simplest of rough linen sheets—something a young maid might have been given. The table held an oil lamp and an oak box, flat-topped, a foot square. It had been pried open. A rush-bottomed chair stood under the window. The white curtains were closed, leaving the room dim in the earliest light.
She said, “This is her place.”
“You think she slept here?”
“When she was alone, yes. This is her private place. There are nuns who own more, but everything here is hers. If she has secrets, we’ll find them here.”
They would not find clandestine drawers under the bed frame or secret panels in the table. Such hiding places were for fools and amateurs.
“Floorboards.” Hawker did not sound enthusiastic. It was a tedious job, on hands and knees, pulling at floorboards. He was examining the pieces of the ruined box. And frowning.
“Lift the light, will you?”
“You have found something?”
“I think . . .” Hawker ran his thumb along the back of the box where the wood was pried away and turned the wood to a slant against the light. “We have something . . .” He picked it out between thumb and forefinger.
A tiny triangle of metal glinted on his palm.
“That is the point of a knife,” she said.
“Second-rate steel. Dagger point. Half an inch of it broken off. Somebody was impatient in his prying. I keep telling people a knife is a delicate instrument, not a pry bar. No one ever listens.” He pulled out a handkerchief and wrapped the bit of metal. “A gentleman always carries a handkerchief,” he murmured. “There’s a knife in London missing its tip. Needle in a haystack comes to mind.”