The Black Hawk sl-4

by Joanna Bourne

  Justine would smile, being called a shopkeeper. Hadn’t Napoleon called the English a nation of shopkeepers? He glanced at Doyle. “Notorious spy? That does sound familiar. We have one of those tucked away upstairs, don’t we?”

  Reams snarled, “For God’s sake, man. You have blood on your front door.”

  “How biblical of us.”

  “She was attacked in the square,” Doyle said. “It’s been reported to the magistrate.”

  “Sneak thieves. They’re everywhere. I didn’t know street crime in the capital fell under your jurisdiction.” He watched Cummings.

  Who seemed angrier than he should be. Why was that? “She’s alive? She’ll recover?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she see who attacked her? Can she identify him?”

  “No.” He didn’t expand.

  “Well, then. Well.” Cummings gathered in his cane, gripped the head of it in both hands. Awkward because he was crowded in, he scrambled to his feet. “These things get exaggerated. Rumor said she was at death’s door. Heh. Death’s door is the door to Meeks Street. Amusing, that.”

  “Diverting.”

  On his feet, Cummings began a fussy pacing back and forth, flourishing his cane. Reams glowered from the sideline. Cummings huffed and hemmed. At last he came out with, “There’s something you should know.”

  “Tell me.” Maybe he was about to find out why Cummings was in his office.

  “Private, really. You want Markham to leave. Don’t want to say anything about this in front of him.”

  “There’s nothing he can’t hear.”

  Cummings shrugged. “You may wish you’d chosen privacy.”

  Another trip across the office. “There have been a pair of murders in London. Frenchmen. Antoine Morreau, bookseller. Pierre Richelet, publican in Soho. Both stabbed. They passed themselves off as Royalist émigrés. In fact, they were French secret agents.”

  Cummings was pleased with himself. He knew something more. He was enjoying himself too much to just say it right out loud.

  “Police Secrète.” Reams pronounced it like an Englishman. “Both of them.”

  Doyle rearranged himself. The chair creaked. “How long have you known about them?”

  “Does it matter?” Reams demanded.

  “If they were killed because Military Intelligence let something slip, it matters.”

  “We don’t leak information.” Reams shifted on his feet, a bantam bull, pawing the ground. “You can damn well—”

  “Reams got a letter.” He didn’t have to tell Doyle this. It was obvious. “An anonymous letter. Probably yesterday. They didn’t know before that, or they would have pulled them in to harass.”

  Reams’s face turned red.

  “Their real names,” Cummings said, mellifluous and superior, “were Gravois and Patelin. They were senior officers of the Secret Police under Robespierre. I’m sure you’ll find them somewhere in your records.”

  He didn’t have to search the records. Those two, he remembered. The Tuteurs of the Coach House. He’d very nearly met them one night when he was young enough to be an idiot.

  Reams subsided against the wall, muttering, “Don’t know why there’s Frenchies everywhere. They have their own country.”

  “We took the matter to Bow Street.” Cummings nodded to Reams. “Tell them.”

  “When we got the let—” Colonel Reams rubbed across the buttons on his coat, shining them up. “When we connected those two murders, I went to Bow Street. Tied the cases together for them, you might say.” He let the pause drag out, enjoying himself. “They’d spotted some similarities. What they don’t understand at Bow Street, though, is intelligence.”

  So many things one could say. So tempting. But he let the colonel wind to his conclusion.

  “They were both stabbed,” Reams said. “They were goddamned French émigrés. Dead ones now. The knives were left sticking in their gut where they fell.”

  Almost poetic, the colonel.

  “I asked to see the evidence boxes.” Cummings tucked his cane under his elbow, getting ready to leave. He’d done what he came for. “The murder weapons were flat, black throwing knives of a most distinctive design. I recognized them at once, of course. A British agent used knives like that in France during the war. A rather infamous agent.”

  “The Black Hawk.” Reams laughed. “They had your initials on them, Hawkhurst. I told Bow Street they’re yours.”

  Twenty-four

  JUSTINE’S SHOP, VOYAGES, HAD A SOLID, PROSPEROUS look to it. The windows gleamed. The name was spelled out on the front in green letters edged with gilt. There was a proper mercantile bell on the door.

  From across the street, Hawker heard the faint jingle as a muscular clerical gentleman emerged, hunched in the rain opening his umbrella, and strode off carrying a large, oblong package under his arm.

  It was short of noon, but lamps were lit inside the shop, paying blackmail to the mucky gloom of the day. He and Pax had pulled back to the line of shop fronts, just to give the carriages a challenge if they wanted to soak somebody. They stood in the doorway of an antique dealer across the street from Voyages. Nothing much else happened, except everybody got wet.

  Inside Justine’s shop, two customers stood at the counter and examined every possible aspect of some small metal instrument, passing it back and forth between them. The shop clerk, a Negro, tall and thin as an ebony cane, advised and discussed and sometimes pointed. This went on.

  The clerk was calling himself Mr. Thompson now. He’d used a half dozen other names when he worked for the French.

  Pax said, “Somehow I never expected Justine DuMotier to end up a shopkeeper on Exeter Street.”

  “A surprise for all of us.”

  “Everybody buys here. Good business. Doyle watched her for months when she first set up to see if it was legitimate.”

  “I know.”

  “I figured you knew everything you wanted to know.”

  Three years ago, when Napoleon fell, Justine DuMotier disappeared from the sight of man. He’d looked for her everywhere, worried as hell. Paris was full of occupying armies. Petty, rancorous men tracked down Napoleon’s followers to pay back old scores. The new French government was thinning the ranks of the Police Secrète, not being frugal with the bullets.

  It had been months before the Service spotted her in London. More months, before he got back to England himself.

  He remembered. He’d landed in Dover, ridden up from the coast in a night and a day, dropped his kit at Meeks Street, and walked straight here. To her.

  It had been late afternoon of the day, and foggy. The shop was lit up inside, the way it was now. He’d stood . . . He’d stood almost exactly at this spot and watched her at the counter of her shop, fifty feet away. She’d unrolled a big map and was showing a gentleman customer some river on it, or a sea route. Something that involved leaning over close and tracing a line with her finger.

  He’d stayed in the shadow, watching. Didn’t go into the shop. The war was over, but it didn’t make any difference. The last words she’d said to him dug a chasm he hadn’t dared to cross.

  “What do you think that is?” Pax said, meaning the instrument everybody was so fascinated with, inside.

  “Sextant maybe. A small one. And that’s the case for it.”

  “We don’t buy from her,” Pax said. “The Military Intelligence boys do. The navy officers. The Ethnological Club. The Service goes to Barnes instead.”

  “That’s tactful of us.”

  “We like to think so.”

  Voyages designed and sold gear for travel to the far corners of the globe. Now that the war was over, Englishmen were pouring out of dull old England, headed to Egypt, South America, India, and every port in the Orient. Voyages was the first stop. They knew what you needed. They’d buy it for you or make it, and pack it up neat. The expeditions Justine supplied never ended up hiking through the monsoon in wool underdrawers. Her guns didn’t misfire during so
me sticky dispute with Afghani bandits. That clerical gentleman with the umbrella wouldn’t run out of soap and ipecac while he was bringing enlightenment to the Maori.

  Voyages also did a roaring trade in luncheon hampers with nested teacups and a little brazier for under the teapot, suitable for picnics when exploring the far reaches of Hampstead Heath with an elderly aunt.

  “She makes a good living,” Pax said. “Half of England’s traipsing around the remote and uncomfortable.”

  “Getting bit by snakes and skewered by the outraged local inhabitants.”

  “It’s the English way.” Pax refolded his arms. “Those two don’t look like they’re leaving anytime soon, do they?”

  The black man placed another enigmatic metal instrument on the counter. A theodolite. Everybody took a look at it.

  “Not soon,” he said.

  Pax shifted an inch, edging out of the path of a persistent drip coming down from the roof. “Speaking professionally, if I wanted to kill Justine—just a simple death—I’d shoot her in the shop.”

  “Speaking professionally, that would be a wise choice.” He kept his voice level. Rage had been simmering away inside him for a good long while. He’d keep it there, boiling away in his gut, till he needed it. “They waited till she came to me. They must have known she’d come.”

  “Then they know her. They can predict what she’ll do.”

  “A small, elite group. The man who did the stabbing was watching her and waiting. Probably from . . .” He looked up and behind him, got rain in his eyes. “One of these windows.”

  “I’ll bring the boys. We’ll start asking questions, up and down the street.”

  “The pub over there has a front table with a view of the shop.” In the last two years, he’d sat there sometimes, pursuing a lengthy acquaintance with a glass of gin, knowing Justine would walk by and he’d get to see her. There could not be anything in the world more pitiable than a man afraid to face a woman. Unless the woman was Justine DuMotier. “Ask in the shops if anyone’s been looking in that direction. But it’ll turn out to be a room upstairs.”

  “One of those.” Pax glanced across houses, assessing likelihoods. They’d avoided ambushes in the war years, knowing where shots were likely to come from. Sometimes, they’d been the men doing the shooting.

  That was the dark secret of the assassin’s trade. It’s not that hard. A stab in the alley. The pull of a trigger. People were so damn fragile—ten breaths or two minutes bleeding separated life and death.

  Justine had turned out to be hard to kill. A nasty surprise for somebody.

  Pax said, “Looks like they’re winding up.”

  The pair in Justine’s shop finally agreed that the first mechanical device, whatever it was, suited their purpose. The black man set it carefully in a box, left the room to go into the back of the shop, and came out with brown paper. There was more talking, all round, while he wrapped the box. Everybody nodded and shook hands. Then the two men left the shop and walked down Exeter Street in close conversation.

  He said, “And we have the place to ourselves.”

  They crossed the street. Pax, beside him, watched the right hand. He watched the left. He didn’t feel eyes on him right at the moment. But then, he’d been wrong about that on some notable occasions in the past.

  At the door he pulled his hat off and shook the rain off. He set it back on his head so he’d have both hands free.

  The bell jangled as they walked in. The black man, Mr. Thompson, looked up from a book, open flat on the counter. His eyes slid across Pax. He saw Hawker and knew him.

  Twenty-five

  THOMPSON WAS WELL OVER SIX FEET TALL AND WORE the intensely black skin and long, sharp features of East Africa. He dressed plain as a Quaker, in black, his shirt and cravat startlingly white. His face stayed impassive, but his eyes snapped to alert. He called, without turning, “Mr. Chetri.”

  Someone moved in the room in back. A chair scraped. Footsteps padded softly. The other clerk came in from the back, polite and attentive. His eyes fixed on Adrian and narrowed.

  This was Chetri, no other name known for him. Like Thompson, Chetri had worked for the French in the East and around the Mediterranean. He was north Indian, gray-haired, fine-featured, square in body, quick of movement.

  For a long moment both men found Adrian Hawkhurst absorbing. Two critical examinations plucked over him, head to foot. Assessing.

  He’d seen these two any number of times from a distance. Studied them through the window glass. Quite the little nest of retired French agents here on Exeter Street.

  “Something has happened to Mademoiselle Justine.” Thompson spoke fluent English, with the cadence of the African language of his birth underneath and a French accent overlying it all. “Tell us.”

  Behind him, Pax threw the bolt on the front door and turned the sign to Closed. He could be heard, walking down the shop, pulling the shades down over the windows.

  Chetri came to the counter and held the edge, tight fingered. “You have news of Mademoiselle?”

  Thompson said, “There has been no message. I opened the shop myself, yesterday and today. This has never occurred.”

  “Always, she sends word if she will be away.”

  Time to say it. “She was hurt, but she’s alive. She was in an accident.” He watched the faces, eyes, hands, the muscles around the mouth, knowing Pax was doing the same, making the same assessments he was.

  Shock. Worry. Their eyes turned to consult back and forth. Natural to do that. It rang true. He read relief in the way shoulder muscles relaxed and breath leaked out. In fingers loosening. They’d expected to hear Justine was dead.

  An emphatic foreign phrase from Chetri. That was a string of syllables to save in mind and ask an expert about when he had a chance.

  Thompson stepped closer. “How is she hurt? Where have they taken her?”

  “She’s safe.”

  “But she did not send for us.” Thompson said, “She is badly hurt, then.”

  “Safe.” He could give that reassurance. “She’s out of danger. She’s asleep now, but she was awake and talking a little. We had the best surgeon in London working on her.”

  Chetri pressed fingertips hard to the wood of the counter, making tense brown pyramids of his hands. Holding still. “She is at Meeks Street? It must be, or we would have news. I will close the shop at once and return with you. I will see her.”

  Nobody was getting close to Justine. “Maybe in a few days.”

  “I am not merely an employee of Mademoiselle. We are friends. My wife and daughter will be honored to care for her. They have some skill in nursing. I must—”

  Thompson interrupted. “You won’t be allowed in. Look at him. He won’t let any of us near her. Not even Nalina.”

  “Who knows a hundred herbs of healing. These British will kill Mademoiselle with their ignorance. I will go to her.”

  “And be turned away. Why should they trust you? Or me? Or Nalina?”

  “Pah.” Chetri shook his head impatiently. “We are hers. Does he think she is a fool to keep enemies this close?”

  “He thinks no one can be trusted. Would you wish him to be gullible?” When Chetri said nothing, Thompson said, “If she cannot defend herself, he must.” He turned. “Ask your questions.”

  Pax had been walking around the shop, poking into things, opening up the wooden medical boxes and peering in at the bottles and muslin bags inside. He looked over. “When did you last see her?”

  Tuesday, it turned out. Mr. Chetri came from behind the counter to stand at the head of the long table and put his hand on the back of one of the wide wooden chairs. “Here,” he said. Mademoiselle had taken breakfast here that morning. A roll and coffee, as always, while they prepared the shop for opening.

  Thompson said, “The bakery boy brings the newspaper as well as bread. I make coffee for her myself, in the manner of my homeland.”

  “The coffee is not important.” Chetri made a chopping moti
on. “It was not yet seven. This is what happened. Mademoiselle tosses the newspaper down and leaves the shop, hurrying as if devils pursued her.” What devils, he could not say. One did not demand of Mademoiselle Justine where she is going or why.

  She had returned three hours later. Perhaps four hours—before noon—and still hurrying.

  It was raining heavily by that time and Mademoiselle was soaking wet. There was one client in the shop. The foolish young man from Oxford who wished to collect little bugs in the Hindu Kush. He would be shot by tribesmen almost at once, unfortunately. One preferred repeat customers. But Mademoiselle said nothing to him. She went upstairs—

  “She took newspapers with her,” Thompson interrupted. “She took last week’s newspapers from the back room and carried them upstairs with her.”

  “Why?” From Pax.

  “She did not tell us.” Thompson was patient. “And we did not ask. Let me finish saying what I have to say.”

  The right-hand wall of Justine’s shop was hung with lethal instrumentation, a collection of fifty or so. Spears for poking holes at some distance. Sabers for cutting from horseback. Knives for doing it close up. Bloodthirsty woman, Justine.

  Pax picked down a kris knife to examine. Pretty, but impractical. “Go on.”

  Chetri said, “In twenty minutes she descended to the shop. She was worried.”

  “Not worried,” Thompson contradicted. “Angry. Very angry.”

  A nod. “She cleaned and loaded her gun. The little Gribeauval she carries. She sat here,” Chetri patted the chair back, “and did so. She put her knife into the sheath inside her cloak, as if she would need to use it. She gave us no instruction, except to say we should close the shop.”

  “I am ashamed,” Thompson said. “She loaded her gun, took a knife, and left in the rain. I did not offer her my escort. I knew she was going into danger, and I did not go with her.”

  “She would have refused,” Chetri said. “You would only have annoyed her.”

  “Yes. But I did not offer. I did not ask.”

  Whatever ambush Justine walked into, she wouldn’t have dragged them in with her. “Did you know where she was going?”