“Another few moments, Inspector,” Dr. Hastings said. “And I’ll be done with her.”
“You’re done with her now, you blackguard,” he said. He grabbed the doctor by his collar and dragged him onto the hard street. I could only stare, stunned and numb. Newcastle coming to my rescue was the last thing I’d anticipated.
He said a few words to the driver in reference to Dr. Hastings moaning on the sidewalk, then climbed in and shut the door. With a rumble, the carriage started moving.
“My apologies for exposing you to that vile man,” Newcastle said, adjusting his shirt cuffs. “He was a necessary evil, I’m afraid. Without his statement we had no grounds to request a warrant.” He paused. “Were you truly the one who mangled his hand like that? Quite impressive.”
I tore at the door handle, trying to break the lock, but he hauled me away, pushing me onto the plush seat cushions across from him.
“Miss Moreau, calm yourself. I’ve no wish to hurt you. I desire only to speak.”
“Is that why you’ve abducted me?”
“This isn’t an abduction. It’s an arrest, and I’m fully within my legal grounds. The case against you was dropped last year, but not the formal charges.” He adjusted his copper breastplate. “With luck, we’ll be able to reach an agreement that will keep you out of prison. In fact, I think you’ll find that what I shall propose is exceedingly beneficial for the both of us.”
When I didn’t respond, he smiled in an almost sad way and added, “I know you saw the spectacles. You left your fingerprint on one of the lenses.”
The carriage jostled as we left Belgravia’s smooth pavement and moved onto a cobblestone street. Stately Street, perhaps, or the north end of Highbury. The heavy curtains hid the outside world.
“Who killed him?” I asked, deathly quiet.
Newcastle reached up to turn on the lantern as though he hadn’t heard my question. He sat below the flame, hidden by its own flickering shadow, so all it accomplished was blinding me whenever I looked at it.
“You must be freezing. Take my coat.” He shrugged out of his wool coat and extended it to me. As much as I wanted to throw the coat back in his face and demand an answer, my bare, damp limbs were shivering beyond my control. I wrapped the coat around me, hating having the smell of him so close.
“You haven’t involved Lucy in this, have you?” I asked.
“It isn’t I who involved her, Miss Moreau, but you. I would never have put Lucy in any sort of danger.”
“You can’t expect me to believe you actually care about her.” A man like him, so deceptive, was not the type to care about anything.
But he frowned in a sincere way. “I care about her a great deal. I’m in a business where I hear lies all day, Miss Moreau. You’ve no idea how I admire a young woman who says what she truly thinks, even if more often than not it’s to express her poor opinion of me. It only makes me love her all the more. If she suffers because of all this, it’s on your hands.”
“I had to warn her. Her own father is wrapped up in this.”
“Miss Moreau, the entire King’s Club is wrapped up in this.” He smiled, teeth glinting in the shadows. “But you already suspected that, didn’t you? When I heard you were back in London, I was curious to meet you. After we received word from Claggan that your father had died, all our hopes fell on you. I guessed you’d be clever. I’m delighted to find it’s true.”
He settled back into the seat and took out a pipe and tobacco from his breast pocket, which he packed delicately, as though we’d all the time in the world.
“You saw the laboratory, didn’t you?” His exhale of pipe smoke filled the carriage. “The night guard caught a glimpse of a girl in the hallways. I found footprints the next day that were decidedly dainty for any of our members.”
I considered lying. I considered not saying anything. I considered many things, including lunging for his throat. But in the end, my curiosity got the best of me.
“Yes, I saw it.”
“I’m terribly interested to know how it compares to your father’s laboratory, since you are one of the few people to have seen it.”
“Father kept his things tidier.”
He laughed at this, deep and rich. “Clever. You’re a rare woman, Miss Moreau.” The carriage jostled again as we returned to smooth pavement. He took another long, thoughtful puff on his pipe. “I was a student of his, you know. Forensics. He took me under his wing, but never extended an invitation for anything social. He was a difficult man to get to know.”