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“What’s this?” Phyllida might be twenty-five years my senior, but there was nothing wrong with the spinster’s hearing. “You have two peers involved in your newest investigation?”
I shrugged. “Actually, half a dozen.”
“Anyone I know?” Phyllida stood in the doorway, staring at me.
It seemed kinder to rattle off the names and pretend these weren’t the people Phyllida had daily rubbed shoulders with in her younger years than not to respond. I gave her the list.
“I was friends with Waxpool’s daughter. She died, oh, it’s been thirty years ago now. I remember Dutton-Cox as a stuffy little boy. The current Lord Hancock took off for Africa to study nature and make his fortune a quarter century ago. He didn’t, of course. Nothing that would help you now, I’m sure.” She smiled weakly.
Silence hung in the air. No one mentioned the years she’d suffered at her brother’s hand before the Archivist investigation had sent her brother to the gallows and brought her into my home.
“This case revolves around young ladies just introduced to the queen and a man who’s accused of using society balls to steal secrets. Everyone’s more Emma’s age than mine.” I needed to change the topic as heat crept up my face. “Lady Westover introduced me to Lady Dutton-Cox during visiting hours. I didn’t get a chance to tell you, Emma, with all the bustle in the shop when I returned.” I slid the dress over her head so I didn’t have to hear her rejoinder.
Once her dress was in place, Emma began reworking her hairdo. “Too bad there isn’t some money to be made from this investigation so you could buy some nice clothes for your role.”
“I’m playing a poor relation from some backwater, so nice clothes wouldn’t be appropriate.” I tried without success to tame my auburn curls.
“Good thing, because your hairdo belongs on a washerwoman. Here, let me do something with it.”
In a minute, Emma did more with my coiffure than I could do in an hour. I now had a curly upswept hairdo that made me look like a Gibson girl and made me fear my heavy locks would tumble down at any moment. Then she finished her own with a high coil and waves from the newest Paris fashion plates, gave us both a critical look-over, and we left for Sir Broderick’s.
It was a short walk, but we hadn’t gone far when the crawling sensation on the back of my neck told me someone was watching us. “When we reach New Oxford Street, I’m going to stop. I want you to look behind me while you adjust my hat.”
“Why?”
“I think we’re being followed.”
“This is a strange case if someone finds it necessary to follow two harmless women,” Emma said, “especially if the person feeling so unsettled by our interest is someone with the power and money of an aristocrat.”
When I stopped, she was ready to swing in front of me and look over my shoulder while she straightened my hat. “It’s a good thing I did, too. Your hat wasn’t at the right angle.”
“Well?” I demanded.
“There are plenty of people around, but no one is looking or acting suspiciously. Are you sure we were being followed?”
My cheeks heated. “No.”
Nevertheless, with few people around and thick shrubbery for an attacker to hide in along the paths inside Bloomsbury Square, we walked around the edge of the park instead of through it.
When we arrived at Sir Broderick’s town house, unharmed but slightly out of breath from hurrying, Jacob opened the door as soon as we rang and took our cloaks, hats, and gloves. We waited for him and then walked upstairs as a group to enter the study.
Frances Atterby and Adam Fogarty were already seated with Sir Broderick, who waved a sheet of cream-colored notepaper at us. “Lady Westover has graciously set up a family di
Emma and I fixed tea from the pot kept warm under a tea cozy while Jacob helped himself to Dominique’s digestive biscuits. Then we settled into chairs at a distance from Sir Broderick’s roaring fire. “How does Inspector Grantham feel about being dragged into one of our investigations?” I needed to know how angry he was going to be at me for involving his grandmother.
“He’s threatened to lock Lady Westover up in her home, but she writes that he knows how far that will get him.”
“He’ll be taking it out on me, then.” I shrugged my shoulders. “That’s not a problem unless he gives me away.”
“He won’t, Georgia, unless it’s necessary to save his grandmother’s life.”
I knew Sir Broderick was right. Inspector Grantham had worked with us before and not given us away. “When is this family di
“Tomorrow night.”
“That doesn’t give us much time. What has anyone learned?”
Fogarty answered my question first. “I played the chap from the Water Board. I was suspicious of a woman with a colicky baby across from Drake’s and one house over. I sent Grace back, thinking it needed a woman’s touch. The mother had been up with the baby at about the correct time and looked out the window. She saw a very ordinary coach with no markings whose driver sat in the box the entire time. They were there at least five minutes, but not ten.”
“Did she see anything of the passengers?”
He flipped over a page in his notebook. “No. She heard men’s voices when they left, but she was on the wrong side of the street to see them. They seemed to be in a hurry getting away, shouting at the driver to get a move on.”
“Not a shiny, tall, ancient carriage?”
“No. Just a rental you’d expect to see hired to take a group somewhere. She remembered one of the two horses was a gray. She thought the coach would look better if the horses matched.”
“Definitely not the duke’s carriage. Edith Carter lied about that. Why? And what else has been a lie?”
Fogarty said, “I talked to her maid when I went to her house on my rounds for our fictitious Water Board survey. She said it was just the mistress and her.”
“No parents. Why did she lie to me about that? What possible difference could that make?” I’d been badly used by Miss Carter.
“I’m sure she has a reason for every lie, Georgia. The story about the coach may have been to point our attention at the duke.” Sir Broderick smiled, his eyes half-closed.
“He and his fellow club members are the only people we’ve found so far who might have a reason to abduct Mr. Drake,” Frances said. “Of course, there’s no reason why he would choose his victims from only one club. Once we saw the co
Frances took a sip of her tea. “I talked to a couple of my contacts, middle-aged gently born ladies who act as chaperones at these balls so the mamas can go elsewhere. They remember Drake. He could always be counted on to fill out the dance cards of the less-popular misses and make himself agreeable wherever. It sounded to me as if he had ample opportunity to snatch the odd small, valuable trinket.”
“And seek out signs of scandal for blackmail,” I added.
“No one is ever more alone than in a crush at a ball,” Sir Broderick said. “What else has anyone found?”
Jacob said, “I tried all the pubs in the area, looking for Nicholas Drake’s friends Harry and Tom. Said I’d heard they were looking for me for a spot of work. I finally met up with Tom Whitaker. He said they didn’t have anything pla