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.”