Page 70 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

They had opened that case. A pistol case is the first thing such men open. Had there been a note in it yesterday, it would be in a file at Scotland Yard today.

So it had come since. In the last day.

And there was nothing out of order. That was the worst answer available. Nothing out of order meant the man had reached into the middle of my family without disturbing the dust, and could do it again on any afternoon he chose.

Tell Steele. The thought arrived already formed, wearing the shape of my own promise. Whatever I learn comes to you the same night.

I stood at my window. Across the darkening square his study was lit. I built the scene as it would go. Men in the garden by midnight, men in the corridors by morning, and myself wrapped in cotton wool and set upon a shelf. And Steele handed one more stone, shaped exactly to break him. Proof that every arrangement he had made had not kept the masked man out of my house.

Beneath the sensible reasons, the old voice came. Carry it alone. Spare him. You took the pistol alone, you met the river alone, you kept the masquerade alone. I recognized it while I was listening to it, which was progress.

I argued with it and made a respectable case. A threat is not a discovery. Those five words tell us nothing we did not know—that he watches, that he intends, that he wants me lying awake listening for doors. That the note is a goad built to spend Steele's strength on theater, and I should not dance because the man had paid the orchestra.

But the hand, said the part of me still standing in that dark study after the rest of me had left it. Mr. Whitfield had asked for a hand.

Tomorrow, I bargained. In daylight, in Steele’s study, with Whitfield sent for and the thing laid on the table where it belonged. One night. That’s all.

I locked the note in the drawer of my writing desk and got into bed. But I did not sleep.

We will meet again soon.

He wished me lying awake, listening for doors. He had that first part right. I lay awake. But I was not listening for doors. I was composing, sentence by sentence in the dark, the things I would say to him when the meeting came. By the small hours I had the whole speech by heart, and it was a good one. I never once supposed I would be given the chance to deliver it so soon.

Chapter

Twenty-Six

A Villain Unmasked

Claire's morning room smelled of dry toast and peppermint, which told me how her night had gone.

Claire sat by the window with a rug over her knees in July, gray-white about the mouth, her embroidery abandoned on the table and yesterday's newspapers folded with their faces turned down—Sarah's doing, and a kindness, though Claire's eyes went to them twice while I settled my skirts.

"Grandmother sends candied ginger," I announced, producing the tin, "and instructions. The instructions are not negotiable. A piece upon waking, before your feet touch the floor. Dry toast before anything kinder. And beef tea at four o'clock whether you want it or not, because, and I quote, ‘Wanting has nothing to do with anything in the first months.’”

"I have been commanded by the Dowager to be sick more efficiently." Claire took the tin, and a ghost of her old smile came up. "Do you know, I believe I shall obey. She speaks of this"—her hand moved, briefly, to her middle—"as though it were a campaign rather than a catastrophe."

"She buried a husband, raised a son, and has misjudged nothing in half a century. Campaigns are her native country." I poured out the tea myself and moved the toast rack nearer to her. "Now eat something while I tell you about your—about Cosmos."

"You were going to say something other than his name.”

"I was going to be premature."

"Rosalynd." She looked at me over the teacup, and there under the sickness and the fear was my friend of eight years—the woman who had shared my sofa through a hundred dull musicales, laughed with me at the same absurdities, and never once asked me for anything, long before she ever looked twice at Cosmos. "Say it. I could bear a little prematurity this morning."

"Very well. Your earl."

The color came up into her face, and I was glad I had said it.

I gave her all of it, sitting there with the teapot between us. The narrow clean room and the window high in the wall. The man serving four years for receiving who shaves him twice a week, and the ferns he thinks about in order to sit still. Petunia's elephant, received with a smile, and the laugh that had startled the warder. At the laugh Claire pressed her fingers to her mouth and then laughed herself, wet-eyed, and reached across and gripped my hand.

"You and I were friends," I said, holding on, "before you ever looked twice at my brother. I intend to presume upon it for the duration."

"I looked twice at your brother the day I met him. But he was young, and I was married." She dabbed her eyes with great dignity. "And I had the good sense not to do anything about it until I became a widow and was free to do as I wished."

"He never glanced twice at a woman. Until you."

A sob escaped her. "And look where it has gotten him. Oh, how I wish⁠—"