Page 21 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

“There.” Merrick pointed to a pile of clothing on a table.

“Show me his shirt,” Cosmos said. When Merrick picked up the garment, he said, “There. The shirt is soaked through. He was shot in it, certainly. But he did not die where they found him.” He paused for a moment while he visually examined the shirt. “The question now becomes where was he killed? If we can answer that, we'll have a lead."

He bent close to the welts of the boots and the turn of the trouser-hems, and he was quiet a long moment. "Steele. What is the ground where they found him, beside the corpse flower?"

"You tell me. I know roses from cabbages and little beyond."

A wry grin from Cosmos. “Rich garden loam. Dark, friable, worked by gardeners for years." He had Merrick take a fold of the trouser-cuff between two fingers and turn it to the gaslight. Caught in the seam was a dark smear. "This is not that."

Merrick held it nearer the flame.

"That is black silt—fine as powder, with clay in it and a greasy feel. There is soot here, and coal dust. Look." He indicated the cuff without touching it.

"You see the grit? Crushed shell. A little river sand."

"You know all that from a speck of mud?"

"I know where it does not belong. This is not Kew soil.” He fell silent another moment. "This is tidal mud, Steele. River mud."

"The Thames?"

He nodded.

"A working reach of the river, I should say. Not a place where ladies sketch and children sail toy boats. Somewhere lower down. Mud fouled by coal and commerce."

He asked Merrick to scrape a small trace onto a square of paper, fold it, and hand it to him. "At some point, before or after his death, Crane stood upon the river."

“You’re certain?”

“As certain as I can be without being allowed to examine him properly.”

Bootheels rang on the flags of the passage. Merrick was at the door in an instant, his hand flat on it, his face the color of the corpse. “Dodson. He’s early—go, go now, the side door. And for the love of God, walk slow.”

Cosmos straightened his cuffs. Between one breath and the next, he turned from the consultant into Rosalynd’s brother once more. And then Merrick pushed us out into the gray yard and the side lane.

Neither of us spoke until the carriage. As it rolled away from the hospital, I set each of Cosmos's observations carefully in my mind, one beside the next.

Crane had not died where he had been found. He had lain for hours upon his side before someone carried him to Kew. He had stood, at some point before his death, upon the banks of the Thames.

A quarter of an hour in the dead-house had undone what the police had accepted these past two days without question.

I glanced across at Cosmos. Until that morning, I had thought of him chiefly as Rosalynd's learned elder brother, a botanist whose enthusiasm for orchids could outlast any dinner. I had mistaken the nature of his gift. He did not merely see what lay before him. He drew from each small fact the only conclusion it would honestly bear, and then another from that, until the truth emerged as naturally as a plant from the soil.

“I have to admit, Rosehaven, I was impressed.”

“Are you?” He glanced at me. “Understand what we carry out of that room, Steele, and what we do not. We can prove he was moved. We can very nearly prove he was killed elsewhere and brought to Kew with my gun. What we cannot do is say so. The moment we speak it aloud, we have told Dodson that the Earl of Rosehaven knows exactly how the body lay. And how would he know that, but by having laid it?” He opened his eyes. “The truth, in our hands, hangs me faster than the lie.”

He was right, which I disliked. But Cosmos was not responsible for any of it. Someone else had staged the body at Kew so it would point directly to him. Yet none of it could be spoken aloud. The truth, for the moment, belonged to the murderer.

“And then there’s Merrick,” I said. “If Dodson catches the smallest thread of this morning, it is not only you who pays the price.”

“I know it.” Cosmos’s mouth thinned. “I have spent the favor of a decent man this morning, and I shall spend the rest of my life knowing the price of it if it goes wrong. Do not let it go wrong, Steele.”

It was not a thing I could promise, so I did not insult him by promising it.

But we had one thing the murderer had not meant to give us. The river. It had kept its secrets before. At the moment, it was keeping this one.

Now all we had to do was make it speak.