"I did not send it."
He continued to neaten his cuffs, pinning his sleeve links into place and donning his coat, but all of this he did without taking his eyes from me—a curious habit I remembered from our first interview. It was frankly disconcerting, and I suddenly longed to confess that I had stolen my sister's favorite doll for a day when I was eight. I made a note to employ the technique myself the next time I interrogated Cook about the accounts.
"Why have you come?" he asked finally.
I had expected frankness and had decided to answer him in kind.
"Because I need your help. I have discovered that I was very possibly wrong about my husband's death. And to apologize," I went on, my mouth feeling dry and thick. "I was quite rude to you when we last met and I do not blame you if you refuse me."
To my surprise, a smile flickered over his features. "As I recall I threatened to horsewhip you the last time we met," he said evenly. "I can forgive your rudeness if you can forgive mine."
I extended my hand to him without thinking. It was a gesture my brothers and I had always used to seal our differences after a quarrel. He took it, and I felt the warmth of his palm through my glove.
"Sit." He indicated the chair nearest the fire, but I was feeling warm and flushed from the closeness of the room already. I laid aside my muff and removed my gloves.
He watched as I stripped off the kidskin, and I felt as bare as if I had removed my gown. I folded my hands carefully in my lap and he lifted his eyes to my face.
"Why did you change your mind?"
I described the scene in the study that morning, my determination to clear out the detritus, the little wedge of paper caught at the back of the drawer. I removed it from my reticule and passed it to him.
His brow furrowed as he looked it over. He rose and returned with a small magnifying glass, examining every inch of the paper. He was wrapped in concentration, ignoring me completely for the moment. Free from his scrutiny, I scrutinized him.
The past year had left little mark upon him. His hair was longer than I had remembered, with a thread or two of silver that might not have been there before. It was tumbled now, as if he had thrust his hands through it while working over his plants. His clothes, something I should not have noticed before the tuition of the Riche brothers, were beautifully cut, though I noticed his coat strained ever so slightly through the shoulders. In some men this might have exposed a fault; in his case it only emphasized his breadth.
His mouth, which I had entirely failed to notice during our previous meetings, was quite a handsome feature, with a slight fullness to the underlip that lent a sensuality to the slim, purposeful upper lip and hard jaw. There was a small scar, high on his cheekbone, that I had not noticed before, an old one that I only saw now because it was thrown into relief by the firelight. It was shaped like a crescent moon. I wondered how he had gotten it.
He looked up sharply and I felt my face grow hot.
"This looks to be sent by the same hand as the others."
"Looks to be? Can you not be certain?"
He shrugged. "I have not seen the notes in a year, my lady. But the evening of Sir Edward's collapse, he told me that he had received another. He planned to show it to me that night. He was rather agitated about it. I suspect he put it into his desk and died before he had the chance to retrieve it. The typeface from the scissored bit seems to match what I remember of the earlier notes."
He handed it back and I waved it away with a shudder. "I do not want it. What do we do now?"
His expression was incredulous. "We? Now? You will return to Grey House and I will get on with my experiment. Unless you would care for some tea. I am sure Mrs. Lawson would be only too happy—"
"About that!" I interjected, pointing to the note. "What do we do about that?"
He shrugged again, a peculiarly Gallic gesture that, coupled with his dark colouring, made me wonder if he was entirely English. Perhaps Portia's speculations about his parentage were not so preposterous after all. Naturally I did not credit the story of imperial Bonaparte blood, but there was a foreignness to him that I could not identify.
"There is nothing to be done. Sir Edward is dead, the certificate says by natural causes, and you were content to let him rest in peace a year ago. Let him do so now."
I stared at him. "But surely you can see that there has been some injustice done here. You were the one who urged me to have his death investigated. You were the one who first raised the question of murder."
The table at his elbow was layered with objects, a small stack of books, some marked with playing cards to hold his place, a bowl that looked like a solid piece of amber, full of coins and pen nibs and a knot of faded calico. There was a Chinese cricket cage, empty but for a tiny stone statue, and a basket of apples, surprisingly bright and crisp for this time of year. He picked an apple from the basket and began to twist the stem. "It was relevant a year ago, my lady, to an investigation upon which I was engaged. My client died, his widow did not wish to pursue the matter, ergo the case is closed."
The stem snapped and so did my fraying temper. "Ergo the case is not closed. You were the one who preached to me of integrity and probity last year. What was it you said? Something about justice being meted out to the guilty?"
He took a healthy bite out of the apple, chewing it thoughtfully. "My lady, what is justice at this point? The trail is cold, clues will have been destroyed or thrown out. You yourself nearly consigned this to the wastepaper basket," he reminded me, flourishing the note. "What do you expect me to do now?"
"I expect you to find my husband's murderer."
He shook his dark head, tumbling his hair further. "Be reasonable, my lady. There was a chance a year ago. Now it is little better than hopeless."
"Little better, but not entirely," I said, rising and taking up my muff and gloves. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Brisbane."
He rose as well, still holding his apple. "What do you mean to do?"
I faced him squarely. "I mean to find Edward's murderer."
I think I would have struck him if he smiled, but he did not. His expression was curiously grave.
"Alone?"
"If needs be. I was wrong not to believe you last year. I wasted a valuable opportunity, and I am sorry for that. But I learn from my mistakes, Mr. Brisbane." I took the note from his fingers. "I will not make another."
I crossed to the door, but he moved quickly, reaching it before I did. His features were set in resignation. "Very well. I will do what I can."
I looked up at him. "Why?"
He leaned a little closer and I felt his breath against my face, smelling sweetly of apple. His eyes, wide and deeply black, were fixed on mine, and I could see myself reflected in them. My breath came quite quickly and I was conscious of how very large he was and that I was alone with a man for the first time in a year. I thought wildly that he might try to kiss me and I knew that I would not stop him. In fact, I think my lips may have parted as he leaned closer still.
"Because I am a professional, my lady. And I will not have an amateur bungling about in one of my cases."
He smiled and bit firmly into his apple.
THE EIGHTH CHAPTER
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek That now are wild, and do not remember That sometime they put themselves in danger.
—Sir Thomas Wyatt
"Remembrance"
"Blast," I muttered as I returned to the coach, settling myself with an irritable thump against the cushions. Henry closed the door smartly behind me. I gave him a second to reach his perch behind the coach, then rapped at the roof. Diggory sprang the horses toward home.I stared out of the window and tried to compose myself. I had only met Nicholas Brisbane three times, but each of those occasions had left me entirely unsettled. He had an uncanny ability to raise my temper, an ability I did not fully understand.
Perhaps most irritating was his arrogant insistence upon handling the investigation entirely on his own, his derisive
use of the word amateur. In the end he had said he would make a few inquiries and promised to send along a report in a few days' time. He had not been optimistic, and as he had ushered me out of his rooms, I had become convinced that he was simply agreeing to this much to placate me. He had no expectation of finding Edward's murderer, and I firmly believed that without an expectation of success, one is rarely successful.
In view of this, I decided to undertake my own investigation. The trouble was, I had no idea of how to begin. What questions did a professional ask? What steps did he follow? What came first? Suspects? Motives? It seemed like a Gordian knot of the worst sort, but if my memory of mythology served, the only way out of such a puzzle is directly through it. Cleave a path straight across and the devil take trying to unwind the wool.
But unlike Alexander, I didn't even have a sword. I cursed Brisbane thoroughly over the next few days, leaving me to make polite chat with my relatives and manage my household while he got to bound about London on my behalf, asking interesting questions and chasing down clues that might provide the answer to our mystery. I imagined him pursuing bandits into the fetid Docklands where Chinamen smoked their pipes and kept their secrets, dashing headlong into a brawl with a gang of cutthroat ruffians, sidling into a midnight crypt to keep a rendezvous with a veiled lady who held the key to the entire case….
Of course, Brisbane was doing nothing of the sort. While I liked to imagine him as the lead character of my most outlandish detective fantasies, he was in fact behaving as any very ordinary inquiry agent might. Instead of making gallant charges against masked villains, he was writing letters to clerks and busying himself in the offices of newspapers and solicitors, patiently searching through dusty files.
According to his report, what he learned was prosaic in the extreme. Sir Edward Grey had died of natural causes due to an hereditary heart ailment at the age of thirty-one. His title and country estate were entailed upon his cousin, Simon Grey; the residue of his estate devolved upon his relict, Lady Julia Grey, youngest daughter and ninth child of the twelfth Earl March. Sir Edward gave quietly to several worthy causes, enjoyed horseracing and was an amateur oenophile with more enthusiasm than skill. He had no enemies, but was widely known at his club as a great prankster and generous friend who could always be relied upon for a jape or a loan to those in need of a laugh or a fiver. The inscription on his headstone, laid in September, was a fragment of a poem by Coleridge, chosen by his widow.
All of this was detailed for me in Brisbane's meticulously written report, delivered as promised, a week after I had engaged him. I read it over, my outrage mounting.
"I could have told you this much myself," I pointed out, waving the paper at him. "What possible purpose did this serve, except to cost us a week?"
We were in his sitting room again, the room unchanged from the previous week, save for the seedlings. They had disappeared, and in their place was an elaborate set of scientific equipment, such as often used for laboratories. A beaker full of greenish-yellow liquid was bubbling away on a burner, but Brisbane did not seem concerned about it, and for all my knowledge of chemistry, it might have been his laundry.
He sighed and settled himself more comfortably in his chair.
"My lady, I did attempt to explain to you last week that inquiries at this late stage would be difficult if not impossible. We have notes of a threatening variety, but a death certified as natural. We know of one person who was cowardly enough to strike with a poisoned pen, but we do not know that he was sufficiently vicious to do worse."
"You think that hounding a dying man is not sufficiently vicious?"
"I did not say that. You have a gift for putting the worst possible construction upon my words," he said, an edge creeping into his voice. He always seemed slightly irritable with me, but I could not tell if it was the result of my company. Perhaps he was just a very cranky man. I liked to think so. I would have hated to think I was responsible for such incipient nastiness.
I adopted a tone of deliberate sweetness. "Oh? I do apologize. Please, do go on and explain how a person could be capable of tremendous cruelty, but not murder."
"That is just what I am trying to explain," he said icily. "People are cruel and horrible to one another all the time, but only rarely do they commit murder. There is a boundary there that most people cannot, will not cross. It is the oldest taboo, and the hardest to break, despite what you doubtless read in the newspapers."
I ignored the barb. "You sound like the vicar at St. Barnabas."
"St. Barnabas?"
"The church at Blessingstoke, the village in Sussex where I was raised. The vicar likes to talk about the great wall that exists in all of us, the end place at which each of us will say 'That is as far as I shall go.' He is very interested in how those walls are formed."
"For example?" Brisbane's brow had quirked up, a sign, I believed, that he was intrigued.
"For example, perhaps a woman would never steal, under any normal circumstances, but to feed her starving child, even she might be tempted to a loaf of bread from a baker's basket."
Just as suddenly as the brow had raised, it lowered, and his nostrils flared a little, as a bull's will when its temper is beginning to rise.
"A very diverting problem for a country vicar, I'm sure, but hardly germane to what we are about," he said. "Now, I have delivered the report, as promised."
"And you mean to leave matters there," I finished flatly. He shrugged. "That is not good enough, Mr. Brisbane. You seemed convinced a year ago that something criminal was afoot. The passing of time does not change that. It simply makes your task more difficult. I would not have taken you for a man to shy from a challenging situation. In fact, I would rather have thought you the sort of man who would relish it."
His expression was thoughtful, but his eyes, watchful as always, gave nothing away. "Oh, very neatly done, my lady. If I refuse to pursue this goose chase of yours, I am either a lazy cad or a coward."
Too late, I remembered Portia's tale of the duel he had fought with Lord Northrup's son. This man was far from a coward. He was headstrong, audacious. Some might even call him violent. And with characteristic March fecklessness, I had just baited him dangerously.
"Did I imply that? I am so sorry. I simply meant that I thought this would appeal to your intellectual curiosity. I was so certain that you were the man to help me, I was perhaps overzealous." I smiled ingratiatingly.
He smiled back, a baring of the teeth that was more wolfish than engaging. "I shall pursue this for you, my lady. Not because you nagged like a fishwife, but because my curiosity is indeed piqued."
Nobly, I ignored the insult. "Edward's murder did not seem to pique your curiosity a moment ago."
Brisbane blinked, like a cat will when it is sunning itself, slowly, hypnotically. "I did not say that it was the possibility of murder that aroused my interest."
Before I could decipher his meaning, there was a scratch at the door. Brisbane did not reply, but the door opened, anyway, and a man appeared bearing a tray. "Tea," he pronounced, looking pleasantly from Brisbane to me and back again.
Brisbane waved a hand. "This is Theophilus Monk, my lady. My factotum, for lack of a better word. Monk, Lady Julia Grey."
Monk was a very superior sort of person, perfectly groomed and very poised. He had an eager, almost educated look about him, and had Brisbane not introduced him, I would have mistaken him for a gentleman, a country squire perhaps, much given to vigorous exercise. He looked robustly healthy, with a very slight embonpoint that seemed the result of the thickening of old muscles rather than too many pastries. His hair was neatly trimmed and silvering, as were his mustaches. His eyes were an indeterminate colour, but assessing and shrewd. He took a moment, as he laid the tray, to take my measure, but he was so quick, so discreet, I almost missed it. I had a very strong suspicion that he assisted Brisbane in his inquiries. I could easily imagine him proving quite resourceful in an investigation.
He bowed very smartly f
rom the neck.
"Do you enjoy being called a factotum?" I inquired, taking the cup he poured. Most bachelor gentlemen would have expected their lady guest to do the honours of pouring. It was a relief to be spared that. I was always rather clumsy around tea things and I fancied Brisbane thought me odd enough without my spilling the tea or dropping the saucers.
"I have suggested majordomo, but Mr. Brisbane finds it too grandiose for such a small establishment," Monk explained in a gravelly Scots voice. "I am in fact his batman, my lady. Feather cake?"
"Ooh, yes, please. Batman, Mr. Brisbane? You were an officer in the army?"
Brisbane stirred his tea slowly. "I have been many things, my lady, none of which would interest you, I am sure."
Monk coughed quietly. I had heard that cough often enough from Aquinas. It was the upper servant's method of tactfully correcting his employer. But if Brisbane was aware of his rudeness or of Monk's disapproval, he did not show it. In fact, if anything, he seemed vaguely amused.
"I shan't need you further, Monk. Her ladyship and I can manage the rest."
Monk bowed again and withdrew.
I faced Brisbane over the teapot. "Did you mean what you said? You will pursue this?"
Brisbane sipped at his tea. "I suppose. I have a few other matters that I must bring to conclusion, but nothing that cannot wait. And I have no other clients questioning either my integrity or my courage at present."
I bit my lip. He was right to needle me. I had behaved wretchedly. Out of my own impatience and frustration I had offered him an insult that few men would have borne so calmly. I was only surprised that he had borne it at all, considering his bald threat of the previous year to have me horsewhipped for impugning his character.
"Yes, about that," I began slowly. "I spoke in haste. I am truly sorry. I really did not mean it as an insult. I do find the whole matter puzzling in the extreme, and as you are in the business of conundrums…"
"You thought I would find yours irresistible?" he supplied.
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