“Why not the ladies’ parlor? It’s as close to the entrance where the body was found as the smoking parlor.”
“Because, Your Grace, Lady Bennett could have known what the baron was up to and wanted to get there first. She could name her own price for those blueprints with half a dozen countries, including ours. And she would know, like I do, that the parlor door to the terrace was locked and bolted tonight by the butler when everyone went to bed. Lord Harwin had given specific instructions in front of everyone after Sir Henry was attacked in the garden. That door is still bolted, and I found the smoking parlor door unlocked.”
“Your Grace,” Lady Harwin called from the foot of the stairs.
He walked over to talk to her, and I went into the smoking room. The gaslights were now lit, and I could easily see there was no bolt on this door. The key was on a table a few feet from the door.
“Does my lady require anything?” The man’s voice made me jump.
I swung around to find myself facing the butler. “Was this door locked last night?”
“I’m sure it was. I asked the gentlemen still in here when the rest of the guests had retired to lock this door.”
“Who were these gentlemen?”
“Baron von Steubfeld and the Bishop of Wellston.”
I immediately eliminated the Anglican bishop from espionage. The baron could have pretended to lock up, leaving it open for a meeting with Snelling. A meeting someone disrupted.
“Thank you.” I gave a gracious nod and turned back to my study of the room.
His footsteps barely made a sound as he walked away.
There was a small chest against the side of the room. I carefully opened the dry leather clasps of the old trunk. Empty. There was a server with several drawers. The only thing I managed to do was wrinkle the linens stored there and shuffle the paper and ink bottles. I looked under chairs and tables. Nothing lurked between the furniture legs.
I was about to give up in disgust when I looked at the top of the server and a table that ran behind the sofa in the direct path from the terrace to the hallway. Various boxes of cigars were scattered around. Boxes large enough to hold the papers we sought.
One after another, I reached into the painted wooden boxes to make certain they contained only cigars. Finally, I put my hand in one and hit something that was too bulky to be cigars under a single layer of Havana’s finest. I dumped the cigars on the tabletop and found blueprint paper underneath.
Laughing with relief, I unfolded the papers. While I couldn’t understand them, I could make out the outline of a ship on the top sheet. I swung around, the papers in one hand, and froze where I stood.
Rosamond Peters stood before me, a pistol in her hand and her bag tucked under her arm. Her gun was smaller than the baron’s, but it looked just as lethal.
“Lady Peters. This isn’t what this appears to be.”
“On the contrary, it is. This appears to be the second time you’ve taken something that belongs to me.”
My expression would have been comical in a cheerier situation. “You? Why would you want this?”
“Not for myself, you understand. For France.”
At Lord Fleetwhite’s dinner party, I had heard that no one knew who the French spy was. “You’re the French spy. A woman. How clever. Of course none of those men would realize you were a spy.”
“You didn’t, either.”
“Because I thought you were my friend.” And then I remembered another incident. “The hatbox the thief wanted was yours. That’s how you pass messages.”
“That’s one way.” She smiled, but it was a colder, less friendly smile than I’d seen on her face before.
“Why did the thief take Lady Phyllida’s hatbox instead of yours?”
“He was hired by my contact—”
“The jeweler Henry at Fortier’s.”
She smiled but didn’t admit it. “—to take my hatbox, but he didn’t know what I looked like. He grabbed the first box from Gautier’s that he saw.”
“You knew that Baron von Steubfeld planned the theft of the drawings? And you decided to take them instead while everyone was looking in another direction?”
“Everyone was busy making arrangements to come here, so there had to have been something valuable attracting all this attention. I came along to find out what it was.” She walked toward me.
For once I obeyed my cowardly feet and took three steps back, frantically refolding the blueprints. Then I began to edge around the end table and the sofa.
“Please, Georgina. I don’t want to shoot you. But I will to get those drawings back.”
“Back? You were the one to put them in the cigar box?”
“Of course. I came down to retrieve them while the police searched my room. Unfortunately, you got here first.”
“Then who broke Snelling’s neck?”
“I did.”
“You know how to do that? I’m impressed.” I stopped, stunned to be in the presence of a woman who was deadlier than Emma. What I wouldn’t give for Emma’s knife at that moment. And the knowledge of how to use it.
She chose that moment to lunge toward me to grab the blueprints.
I jumped back, clutching them to my chest. “Did you strike down Sir Henry?”
“He told me he’d figured out my secret.”
“Which one?” I took two more steps away from her, backing up toward the door onto the terrace. The door was unlocked. If I could open the door fast enough and get outside, it would buy me time. Open the door faster than a bullet?
“That I spy for France.” She matched me, step for step.
“You won’t shoot me, Lady Peters. There are too many people around.”
“But none to see who fired the pistol. I shoot you, grab the drawings, drop the gun, and slip outside. I’ll come in another way and join the group who comes running to see what has happened. I’ll of course lament the loss of my friend Georgina.”
I swung around a chair and backed along the far side of the room toward the door standing open into the hallway. “There’s a footman standing guard on Snelling’s body on the terrace. He would hear the gunshot and see you leaving.”
“Then I shall have to open the door and call to him that a madman is shooting at us and to help. You won’t be in any position to disagree with me.”
Her plan would work. The only thing I could do was try to reach the hallway before she fired. Once there, I’d certainly be in sight of someone. I kept backing up.
She raised her pistol.
I covered my chest with the blueprints, hoping Rosamond Peters didn’t want a bullet hole damaging the warship drawings.
“Stop right there.”
I’d never been so glad to hear Blackford’s voice.
“You’re unarmed, Duke.” Lady Peters glanced from Blackford to me, calculating her chances, which had suddenly turned against her.
“But the man standing behind you isn’t.”
The gaslights wavered in the breeze from the open door to the garden. I looked past Rosamond to see Fogarty in the doorway.
She lowered her pistol. “Damn you, Georgina. How did you know to look here for the blueprints?”
“I followed you downstairs. When I found Snelling, you had disappeared, but I knew you hadn’t gone far.”
“I didn’t think anyone would suspect me.”
“I didn’t. For the longest time I thought it was Lark Bennett.”
She laughed, but the sound was brittle. “I showed my hand too soon.”
“You said Lady Bennett wanted the blueprints in exchange for her silence.”
“I lied to you, Georgina.”
I hoped she was sorry. I was. I’d liked her.
Once Fogarty had taken the small pistol from her hand, she gave me a searching look. “You’ve not given away all my secrets, have you?”
“No. I wouldn’t.”
“Thank you.”
Leave it to the duke to put things together at that moment. “Lady Peters is the one who had the affair with Ken Gattenger.”