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“One of them had experience working with teams to do the unhitching rapidly,” Harry commented.

“Right,” said Wilde. “So not your usual thieves.”

Harry agreed. Horses on the night run for Radcliffe’s Rockets would be in the last weeks or months of their lives. Most of them would die in harness. And, as Wilde pointed out, it made no sense to ignore the potential treasure of the passengers’ purses or the gold that Sir Geoffrey was reported to ship.

Harry felt he was missing something. The road made a perfect Y. From where he stood at the foot of that Y, a man could dominate the scene in front of him, while to his right the track into the woods offered an easy escape route. Someone had carefully chosen the spot but had taken the thing that had the least value. What had the robbers gained by what they did? A thrush landed on the coach box, let out a burst of song, looked at Harry, and took off again. Unless the point was just that—to separate the passengers from the coach. Only this time, the passengers had stayed put for hours.

“Wilde, search inside.”

The youth scrambled up into the coach. “What am I looking for?”

“Concealed compartments.”

Harry turned off the main road down the right branch of the Y and followed it deeper into the wood. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but he had the strongest feeling that the spot had been used before by thieves and perhaps by one murderer. Someone had swept the track with tree branches, but the scent of lathered horses lingered in the air, and scattered droppings lay in the dead leaves at the side of the track.

A few paces farther on, a deep hoofprint in the soft ground at the edge of the track made Harry stop to examine the brush. At a broken place in the screen of foliage he pushed his way into a wide clearing. The muddied ground had been trampled by hooves, and a fresh pile of dung attracted flies. The thieves had been quick but not entirely thorough. A shaft of sunlight flashed on something on the ground. With his boot he nudged a low branch aside and found a bit of steel from the horses’ discarded harness. He scanned the clearing. Nothing more appeared.

The place was quiet, and even Harry had to admit that it was lovely, better suited for a lovers’ meeting than a murder. He was daft to think it might be the place of the attack on Adam years earlier, but his instinct for danger held him there. If there were a connection, the violence of that earlier attack would have left its mark on the scene. He broke off a stout branch and circled the clearing, pushing aside the undergrowth and stirring up the dead leaves.

He was halfway around the clearing when his stick turned up something. He bent down and pulled it free of the low branch on which it was snagged. It was a mitten for a hand that would fit in Harry’s palm.

He was thinking about the mitten’s mate lying in Tom Holbrook’s drawer when he heard Wilde calling his name.

“Over here,” he yelled.

“Found something, sir,” Wilde replied. “Where are you?”

“Push through the brush. You’ll find a clearing.”

Wilde came crashing through, triumphantly holding a scrap of paper aloft in one hand. “You were right, sir. Concealed compartments all over the coach. Two beneath the forward-facing seats, and two behind the rear-facing ones. This bit was caught in the corner.”

Harry took the torn triangle of paper. It looked to be the lower corner of a letter with a portion of the signature intact. The letters twell appeared in a stiff formal script that Harry knew well.

“What does it mean, sir?” Wilde asked.

“It’s Chartwell’s signature,” Harry said. Chartwell was the source of the spies’ funding. It was he who had shut down their operation. Someone was stealing documents from under Chartwell’s nose. Harry tucked the scrap of paper into his jacket and clapped the lad on the shoulder. “It means I have two jobs for you. Are you game to ride the night run of Radcliffe’s Rockets?”

Wilde nodded.

“Good. We need to find out who’s using the Rockets to smuggle Foreign Office documents out of London.” He led the way back through the hazel screen to the road.

As they climbed back into the gig, Wilde asked, “What’s the other job?”

“You’re to go to Hartwood to find out everything you can about our blind man. He was in service there once.”

Harry turned the gig back toward the inn. He was thinking about how to approach Chartwell when he became aware of the intensity of Wilde’s silence. The whelp was also deep in thought.

“What?” Harry asked.

“A man needs a partner, sir. Can I take Miranda with me?”

Harry shrugged. “All the same to me.”

A vexing question the husband hunter may face is whether to allow a gentleman who has once offended her to be restored to her good graces. In all her other connections with family and friends, she must surely exercise both forgiveness and forbearance and readily expects that her nearest and dearest will forgive her in their turn. The willingness to forgive in connections of long duration and firm affection nevertheless depends on an honest acknowledgment of error and a sincere apology for the offense. The husband hunter must expect no less from a gentleman who expects to continue to receive her notice.

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Chapter 7