Page 80 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

Damn him twice. He was right on the first count, and on the second I would have said the same in his place.

“Your pistol,” I said to Mercer, pointing my revolver at him.

He drew it out without a word and gave it to me butt first. I broke it open, tipped six cartridges into my palm, dropped them in my waistcoat pocket, and put the empty revolver inside my coat.

“You will walk in front of me the whole way.”

“I expected nothing else.”

I took a sheet from the desk and wrote the lines standing.

Graves,

Lady Rosalynd is taken. Wapping High Street, a bonded warehouse with a private stair, name unknown to us. A steam launch at the water with her fires up. Mercer is with me and is leading us there. Every armed man you can put in a boat or a van, and quickly. The papers that reached you at half past two are true.

—Steele

“Milford,” I yelled.

My butler came at a run, breathless. “Your Grace.”

“Everything well at Rosehaven House?”

“Yes, Your Grace. Honeycutt assured me he will not fold.”

“Good. Send every footman we have to Rosehaven House to help him.” I handed him the note. “Except for James. He is to ride to Scotland Yard and put this into Chief Inspector Graves’s own hand and no other.”

“Of course, Your Grace.”

“Before you go, bandage Mr. Finch’s arm, if you would. I will not have him fainting on the road to Wapping.”

Finch snorted. “I have never fainted in⁠—”

“Of course, Your Grace,” Milford answered with a slight lift of his lips.

Another five minutes were gone before we could climb into the carriage. And then finally, we were on our way.

I have crossed London a great many times and never once like that. Oxford Street, Holborn, the City with the clerks coming out and the light going long and gold over Cheapside. And my coachman using the whip in a manner for which I would owe, at the very least, the horses an apology. Mercer sat forward, giving directions through the panel. Finch sat opposite me with his hand clamped on his bandaged arm and his eyes shut, husbanding what he had left.

Nobody spoke for two miles.

Then Mercer said, “There is one more thing.”

“If it does not help me take her off that wharf, it can wait.”

“It will not help you this afternoon.” He turned from the window. “When this is finished, dig up the grave at Torquay.”

“Explain.”

“Sir Reginald went to the sea air three years ago for his chest. His man went with him. The parish register at Torquay has a manservant of Sir Reginald Harcourt’s dying there and being buried in the churchyard at his master’s expense, with a decent stone and a name cut into it.”

The carriage went over something in the road and none of us moved.

“That grave does not hold the valet.”

He said the rest of it quietly, and without any weight on it at all, which was how I understood that it was true.

“It holds Harcourt.”