The Vanishing Thief

“And you believe this?”

“On the face of it, yes.”

Lady Westover laughed a wheezy rumble. “My dear child, this man Drake had no real standing in society, things were presumably stolen while he was around, and no one questioned the losses or his presence. Don’t be naive.”

I was no sheltered miss. I’d never considered myself naive. “What do these men have in common, then?”

“No. The question is why have they kept quiet so long, even to each other, but when they suddenly discover they have something in common, they immediately join forces. I believe if you look closely, you’ll find they were all being blackmailed.”

I nearly dropped my delicate china cup. “Blackmail? We hadn’t considered that possibility.” I thought over what I knew and what the Duke of Merville had said as he left my shop. “But it makes sense.”

Lady Westover nodded and then took another sip of tea. “Sir Broderick’s note says we need to turn you into a society miss. Not an easy task when everyone knows everyone else’s family tree back five generations. I’m afraid you’ll have to have a questionable pedigree. Would you prefer slightly wanton or deliciously decadent?”

*

I RETURNED TO the bookstore and hung up my cloak and hat while Emma finished with a customer. Once the bell rang over the door marking the shopper’s exit, I joined my assistant. “I’ve had an interesting meeting with Lady Westover.”

Emma made a face. “Meetings with her are always interesting.”

“She suggested Drake was blackmailing the men he supposedly stole from.”

Emma looked startled. “I can’t wait to hear how she came to that conclusion. When do we meet with Sir Broderick?”

“Tomorrow night. How do we find out who originally introduced Drake to society? Lady Westover didn’t know him, so she’s no help.”

“You could try the Duke of Blackford. He was helpful before.” After she finished speaking, Emma managed to keep a solemn expression for five seconds before she burst out laughing. When I frowned, she turned serious. “I have no idea who we could ask, since I’ve never been presented to the queen. Unless you count the queen’s judges.”

I wondered how Emma could joke about what must have been a terrible experience for a young girl. When I’d met her, she was in Newgate Prison awaiting trial for theft and as an accomplice in murder.

At the request of the victim’s son, the Archivist Society had taken on the murder case. The victim was a wealthy manufacturer who’d been stabbed through the heart in his study. The son believed his father’s business rival was the murderer, but the rival claimed to have been home all evening.

At the same time the body was found, however, three burglars were discovered hiding in the man’s bedroom. Among those three was an athletic child who’d climbed through upper-story windows to let her accomplices in.

Emma was thirteen, dirty, undernourished, and bruised. Pacing across the stone floor of the interview room, her blond braid bouncing on her thin back, she had a Viking’s defiance and the wits of a pickpocket. I sat down at the table and began to read the police report to her. After a moment, she came to stand behind me.

“You can read that?” she said.

“That, and much more. Stories of pirates and princesses. The news of the day and a recipe from a cookbook. Have you never been to school?” I asked.

“Not much chance of that where I’ve been.”

“If you help me prove who really killed that man, I’ll teach you.”

“Big Ed won’t let you.”

I knew Emma was charged with breaking into houses for the gang of thieves and extortionists he led, and he was the nastiest brute in a slum full of rotten scoundrels. I made my decision on the spot. “Big Ed won’t have a choice if you’re living with Phyllida and me.”

“Who’s Phyllida?”

“My aunt.” Honesty made me add, “Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“She needed a place to stay and I needed someone to help me. I can’t manage both the house and the bookshop alone.” I was ten years older than this girl but certain that my responsibilities made me seem much older.

“You have a shop?” Her eyes gleamed with more avarice than just love of books.

“It means enough money to feed ourselves and provides us with the wonders of a thousand stories.”

She scowled, her dreams of a heist vanishing while her curiosity grew. “Where are your parents?”

“Dead.”

Emma nodded solemnly and our partnership was born.

She was every bit as observant as I suspected and provided eyewitness testimony to the arrival and hasty departure of someone who turned out to be the victim’s business rival. Sir Broderick hired an excellent barrister who convinced the judge Emma belonged with me and not in jail where she’d be corrupted by villains.

I smiled at the wonderful young woman Emma had become. “Perhaps Sir Broderick can help find someone who knows how long Nicholas Drake has been in society and who introduced him. In the meantime, let’s take a look at the public information about our candidates for kidnapper. Maybe we’ll get an idea about how any of them could be blackmailed.”

Sitting across from each other at the map table, we began to search the thick volumes on noble families. Dust rose with the familiar smells of dry paper and old bindings.

“Lady Margaret Ranleigh, sister of the Duke of Blackford, has her birth date listed and the date she was presented to the queen, and nothing else.” I looked up the page at the long listing for her brother. “Here’s the list of companies Blackford advises or invests in. I recognize most of the names, and these are successful businesses.”

“We know he wasn’t blackmailed over his financial state.”

I shook my head. “If I were going to blackmail him, it would have something to do with his fiancée dying a week before the wedding.”

Emma looked over my shoulder at the book. “How sad.”

“Was it sad for Blackford? His sister supposedly didn’t care for her. And the fiancée’s father is Lord Dutton-Cox, another one of the five names we have.”

“Could they both be blackmailed over her death? What’s her name?”

“Victoria Dutton-Cox.”

Emma looked at the entry for the duke’s dead almost-bride. “Date of birth, date presented, date engaged, date of death. We better start with the death certificate and then find the doctor.”

*

THE NEXT DAY, I left Somerset House, home of the repository of all of Britain’s birth, marriage, and death records, and the workplace of a fellow Archivist Society member, after we had a nice chat and I gained a good deal of information. My next stop that afternoon was at Lady Westover’s, where I found her at the desk in her morning room reading from a thick book about plant diseases. She slipped her pince-nez glasses off and smiled at me. “Back so soon? You must have hit a wall.”