Raoul presented a blank, polite face. “Why yes, I did.”
Hawker said, “Sévie, my very dear, why don’t you go see if there’s anything to eat beside these muffins Peter keeps offering us. I need a few minutes to carve my initials into the flesh of Monsieur Deverney here. It should only take a moment.” Hawk smiled. “He’s already wounded.”
“That would make it easier,” she agreed. “And he’s disarmed. I found one knife on his person and he’s left it in the bedroom. Do you realize this man walks around weaponless?”
“I had begun to suspect as much,” Hawker said. “I can’t approve. It strikes at the assumptions that underlie my existence. On the other hand, when armed he kills men by the unconsidered handful.”
“Always a problem, folks wandering London, killing people,” Papa said.
Papa had showed up an hour ago. “Late to the party,” as he put it. “Nothing left but bookkeeping.”
Raoul murmured, “I keep finding mistakes in Hayward’s arithmetic. He steals from me and doesn’t even bother to add it up correctly. I cannot tell you how much that annoys me.”
She’d taken a place beside the window, cross-legged in that wide, old leather chair that belonged to Hawker, her skirts tucked about her. Three boxes, the ones that contained most of the intriguing papers, were stacked to the side. It was early dawn. The street shadows were dark as coal dust, the sky white. She’d opened the window to let cold wind blow in her face and keep her awake. Guards from the warehouse were walking up and down around the building, but it never hurt to do some watching of her own.
The cobbles showed brown patches where bodies had been. MacDonald had driven off with a wagonload of the dead. One of the street rats who seemed intrigued with the process had gone off with him. None of this made her nostalgic for the hours after battle, but it was familiar.
She was reading through a packet of Sanchia’s love letters to Hayward, the ones he’d kept in that rosewood box in his desk drawer. That struck her as foolish. She’d never understood why people saved this sort of thing. In her spying years she’d received her share of secret letters, clandestine messages, and cryptic words scrawled on a scrap of paper. She couldn’t burn them fast enough.
These had been tenderly tied up in a blue ribbon and saved. She took them out, one by one, and spread them open to read. Sanchia was frank but unoriginal. This one called Hayward her Honey Bear Stallion and wrote longingly of his Great Delicious Cock. I lie in our Love Nest and Moan and stroke my Cunnymuff. My Love Juice flows with Longing for you.
She’d seen many such letters in Spain when she was snooping for Military Intelligence. Somehow this sort of thing sounded worse in English.
Sanchia’s letter ended with a mention of one teeny, tiny, little bill to settle. That was also standard for this sort of thing.
Papa brought her tea. They were all awash in it at the end of a long, hard night. “Useful?” he asked, meaning the letters.
“Love letters from Sanchia to Hayward. Dull stuff.”
“Nothing more boring than somebody else’s love affairs.” That was Hawker, come over to pick a letter from her hand and read it, glancing toward Raoul and being pointed. “Dear me. This is explicit.”
She wasn’t going to compete with Hawker in outrageousness. She wasn’t going to discuss Raoul with him at all. One tiny, very private nightmare nibbling at the edges of her mind was the picture of Raoul and Hawker fighting with knives. That wasn’t going to happen.
She said, “Go away and make yourself useful.”
She squared Hayward’s collection of love letters, put them back in the rosewood box, and laid it in the crate on the floor. This next was a mixed bag of dunning letters. They had been all together in the file in the clerks’ room at Hayward’s and thus were of no interest to anyone. She went through these quickly and learned that Sanchia spent a great deal of money on clothing and didn’t pay her dressmaker. Or the butcher.
She went to the next box. This hadn’t been in the open files, but in the safe itself. It was a largish box made of papier-mâché and painted with roses. It was quite full. A mixed box of private letters.
None of these were tied with a sentimental satin ribbon. She started out with a few on top, addressed to Sanchia. A succession of men—Silly Billy, Duffie, Toodles, Snufflekins, and Your Devoted Edward—admired her breasts and her private parts and the ingenuity of her attentions. One had to wonder if Hayward had known how crowded Sanchia’s love nest had been.
Under that, she stumbled, abruptly, into new territory.
The first of these new letters was written on expensive paper. The lines of writing, ruler straight, marched down the page like soldiers in formation. Mistress Deverney, it read, I’m not one of the stupid boys you lead around by the nose. I will not be threatened. In the words of my former commander, “Publish and be damned.” It was signed, W.S.
That could be read as a threat against Sanchia. Perhaps this, or something very like it, had led to murder. She liked to think the blunt soldier W.S. wasn’t guilty.
She read slowly onward, letter by letter. These were no longer love notes. They were the bleating of the blackmailed. None of the rest of Sanchia’s unwise lovers had the courage of W.S. They said, I can’t do this for you. I can’t, and Don’t tell my wife, and I don’t have the money. In the name of God, I don’t have it.
She knew something of blackmailers. A half-dozen times in the last five years she’d tracked down women with such habits and put a stop to it. Nasty stuff, blackmail. She’d seen several practitioners of it off to Australia.
At the bottom of the box she uncovered worse.
Some looked harmless. Here, one man wrote to another about salt beef for the navy, ending with a jocular a bit rotten. A woman mentioned the well-timed death of her grandfather with the cryptic comment, Jeremy did the actual work. There were so many secret rendezvous it looked like the powerful of the ton did nothing but hop into forbidden beds.
A good many of these papers conveyed nothing sinister. Doubtless they were damning to someone and profitable to Sanchia Gavarre.
The prize here, the great catch, was near the bottom. There were six pages originating in the Foreign Office, two from the Admiralty, and one from Military Intelligence. None of these should be wandering around the world sharing their contents indiscriminately. They dealt with troop movements and campaign strategy. No small matters at all. Documents like these didn’t get casually tossed away. These had been bought or stolen or, most likely, blackmailed into Sanchia’s hands.
This was the well of poison. Here was death for the soldiers and sailors with their secrets betrayed.
This was probably what had killed Sanchia and caused Pilar’s disappearance. Few things in the world were more dangerous than committing treason in wartime. She wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
She finished reading the last of the documents and folded her hands on top of them in her lap. Outside, the sun had warmed the air. Early-morning traffic passed on the street, making its accustomed racket, muted by being two floors below. Already the marks of death and blood were disappearing under the tracks of wagon wheels. The bun seller was in her place on the corner.
She wasn’t sure what to do next. They’d have to deal with this. Until they did, they were all in a great deal of danger.
Forty-three
SHE was stiff when she stood up. She’d been working for hours in this chair, and before that she’d fallen from a wagon and gone crawling around in the dark. She stretched and let her eyes rest on Raoul, who was an excellent man to look upon.
He was absorbed in account books, a deep crease between his eyes. Hawker paced, desk to hearth, bookcase to window, stopping to look over Raoul’s shoulder, picking things up and putting them down, frowning. It was his way of thinking, of course, but annoying for anyone in the same room.
She carried the box with roses pa
inted on it, filled with squalid letters, to the desk and set it down.
Raoul scowled at the account books.
She followed his finger as he ran it down the page and said, “Art lessons, dancing lessons, gloves, books in French.”
He muttered, “Goddamned flute instruction.”
“Everything a child could need.”
“But she wasn’t getting art lessons. Or riding in the park or being fitted for a new velvet riding habit every six months.” Surprising how much anger could fit into a man’s calm voice. “Or any of the rest of these fripperies.”
“Provided by her generous father,” Hawker murmured.
“I’m not her father. I wish I were. She seems to be a remarkable person.” He picked up the cup of tea Peter put down, nodding thanks absently. The boy took away the old cup, cold and half-empty. “You were right. The girl lived like an orphan. All these years I signed the expenses. I thought . . .”
“You thought she was well cared for,” she said.
“I didn’t think at all.” He turned his head to look directly at her. “I’m considered a shrewd man in some circles, but I was a fool about this. I knew what Sanchia was.”
“You trusted your agent.”
“He and I will discuss that at length.”
She wouldn’t wish to face Raoul in this mood. Hayward was tucked away at Meeks Street because Newgate prison had turned out poorly for O’Grady. Hayward was whining, according to Papa, and making a thousand excuses.
Hawker said, “If this is the first time you’ve been betrayed, you’ve led a singularly unexciting life, Mr. Deverney.”
“Unexciting has always been my objective, Mr. Hawkhurst.”
“Then you should have stayed in France, harvesting grapes, shouldn’t you?” Hawker smiled pleasantly.
“Mildew on the vine, mealy bugs, unreliable weather, and the whims of the wine market. Village harvest festivals. Local feuds between local families. Redigging wells. Repairing every crumbling stone bridge for thirty miles. I find jewel theft relaxing.”
“An unusual point of view,” Hawker said.
“I cultivate eccentricity. What do you make of these entries, Sévie?” Raoul touched the back of her hand where it rested on his shoulder, just the least tap of his finger, on the way to pointing to lines in the accounts. That was as good as kissing her full on the mouth if he wanted to tell Hawker and Papa they’d made love.
Gauntlets were being flung all over the place, weren’t they? When she leaned to look at what Raoul was showing her, she rested her cheek against his hair. Fleetingly. Barely at all. That was throwing down her own gauntlet.
She had no intention of tolerating any of this nonsense.
Raoul understood. The corner of his mouth showed amusement. The wrinkles at the side of his eyes turned up. He smelled like the lavender soap she kept beside the washbasin in back. He smelled like he was hers.
“Look here. This is Sanchia’s income from me.” He pointed to a sum, not small, and another entry, the same, the next month. “Here’s money from another source.” It was entered against the initials M.S. “M.S. pays quarterly.” He turned pages back. “Here. And here. Other quarterly payments from M.A.C. and from M.V. Then there are a dozen monthly payments from a number of sources. S.L. and B.W. and so on. It’s not business,” Raoul said. “It’s not rental income. There are no expenses. No roof repairs or painting the shutters. No window tax. No land tax. No parish fees. I know what rental accounts look like,” Raoul said. “I own properties.”
“He’s being modest.” Hawker considered the page she was looking at. “Your friend Deverney owns a dozen buildings in London. If you wonder what he does with his ill-got gain—”
“I don’t,” she said.
“He invests it in dull and sober real estate,” Hawker said.
“What I own in London is profit from the wine trade.” Raoul was meticulously polite. He met Hawker’s eyes. “Or grain sales. I don’t sell stolen jewels in London.”
“I stand corrected.”
“I sell jewelry in Geneva where the price is higher and no one asks awkward questions.” Raoul turned the ledger toward her. “The outgo is considerably simpler. Gambling losses, some of them matched to the name of the hell. Mrs. Bellows. The Pretty Vixen. Major Clarke.”
“Only the best.” She went to drag a chair across the room, leaving furrows in the pile of the carpet. If anyone had come to help her she would have sent them about their business, but nobody did. Papa pretended not to notice, as he’d pretended not to notice when she was five and insisted she could climb onto her pony without help. Hawker continued to be sardonic and subtle, every inch the British spymaster.
Raoul said quietly, “That’s where the money went. Cards and dice ate up all her income.”
Papa came to stand at the fourth side of the desk. Now there were four of them studying Sanchia’s life, laid out in paper.
“But the meat of the matter,” Raoul went on, “is these few large payments into the account. They’re not very often, but they’re several hundred pounds apiece. This isn’t from Hayward. It doesn’t match the petty blackmail that’s everywhere else. It’s too large to be gambling wins. She’s not playing for those stakes. And it’s not any business I can easily imagine.”
“A business of a sort.” She leaned across to close the ledgers and set them aside. She moved the papier-mâché box into the middle, between the four of them, and took the first letters out.
“Blackmail,” she said, and set that to the side.
Hawk narrowed his eyes. He knew—they all knew—she had something more coming.
She said, “The important blackmail.” She laid down the documents from the Foreign Office, the Admiralty, and Military Intelligence.
Papa took one, frowned at it, and immediately passed it to Hawker. Raoul picked up the next page, looked it over, and dropped it as if it were, say, a snake.
“I didn’t see that.” He stood up and walked away from the desk.
This was no ancient history. These were recent thefts and significant ones. This would keep the Service busy till next Christmas.
“Here’s treason,” she said.
Forty-four
AT the crack of dawn Bart—Bartholomew Markham, third son of William Doyle who was Viscount Markham when he took his scar off and put his good clothes on—took the kids out of the house before they woke everybody in the place. Betty, who’d been his nanny—nanny to a whole succession of them—was a woman of infinite patience. She stuffed Anson and Anna into coat and hat and didn’t try for scarves or mittens. She was a woman who understood the limits of the possible.
“I should put scarves on ’em, I know,” she said to him while he looked in the hall mirror and achieved exactly the right jaunty angle to his own hat. “But we’d be arguing about it into next week, and it isn’t that cold, really.”
He’d been more reasonable when she was his nanny. Or maybe not. He remembered her saying something very similar every year in the spring. About him.
Anna reached as high as she could to turn the key in the lock. It was a solid and deliberately heavy door. Both the little kids were needed to get the knob turned and the door pulled back. Papa said, don’t have a door somebody could kick in. He didn’t know where Papa picked up that bit of wisdom but it seemed a good idea.
He followed Betty from the house, down the steps, and along the pavement. Anson and Anna were tight in her hold, Muffin the dog at their heels, being protective against all threats, foreign and domestic, his shoulder about level with their heads.
And he? He was just enjoying himself, glad to be free of measles. The sky was pale and hazy with dawn. The wind was fresh. It wasn’t raining. He actually looked forward to shepherding the kids to the park in the middle of the square.
Back home, if the weather were this good, he’d take a gun and a dog
out to the home farm to hunt rabbits for dinner. He’d even take the kids with him if they promised to stay quiet.
There was a plague of rabbits in Hyde Park, but he wasn’t mad enough to take a gun there. A slingshot, though. A David sling. That was tempting to think about. Maybe in the early dawn. Maybe tomorrow he’d sneak out and try that.
“I can too climb trees,” Anson said.
Anna responded, “Can’t.”
“I can climb tall trees. I can climb oaks. I can climb the oak behind the stables.”
Last autumn Anson had fallen out of that particular tree. It was now forbidden.
Anna said, “I can—”
Betty said, “We do not climb trees in the park. Now hold hands so we can cross the street.” They ventured out into the little street, utterly empty of traffic, a line of three tightly joined together, followed by the dog.
Papa hadn’t come home last night. That wasn’t unusual, but it meant there’d been no chance to talk to him about that coach that might or might not have been showing too much interest. No chance to ask Sévie either. Someone else who hadn’t come home.
So he was the oldest in the house. He was not exactly in charge but it was another reason to stay close to the kids and keep an eye on them.
The guards, Mr. Tom and Mr. Harry, trailed down the stairs behind them and went left and right. Tom, going ahead to give the park some attention. Harry, lagging behind to inspect the corners and crannies of the houses around the square.
He could have brought a book with him so he wouldn’t be bored while the kids ran up and down the paths, jabbering, but he knew he wouldn’t get a chance to study. It was an exercise in frustration trying. Besides, Hilary Term was almost over. He wouldn’t go back to school till Trinity Term in April. Plenty of time to catch up.
He copied Papa as they crossed the street, taking responsibility for Anna and Anson and Betty, being acutely aware of everything that moved and any changes in the things that stayed still. Being steady. Thinking as he went instead of shuffling along like a cow.
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