“How did you know to come here?”
“I checked with Scotland Yard,” Sutter said. “I was told that Mr. Hawley here”—he nodded briefly toward James—“had been taken for questioning by the chief inspector due to an inquiry he made at the War Office, and that the questioning had ended when Inspector Merriken took over. That both men had disappeared from the Yard shortly after. That the inspector had made a request to send manpower to Kent, and the request was delayed. I’m rather good at educated guesses.”
James broke in. “Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
The shadows were falling now, and I felt an unreasonable grip of fear. “Why did my dog stop barking? Did you hurt him?”
Now Sutter looked puzzled. “No, of course not. I surprised him when I came through the house, but I patted him on the head and told him to go back to sleep.”
I sighed. So much for Pickwick the guard dog. I ran a hand through my hair, which felt thick and tangled despite its short length. “Your man is dead,” I said bluntly. “Your brother Colin killed him.”
George Sutter’s expression fell. He gave a long sigh, one of such worldly sadness that I wondered why he had never shown such emotion over the death of his own sister. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “He was a good man.”
“So it is your brother, then,” said James. “Colin is alive.”
George turned his gaze to the trees, seeing nothing, his mind working, turning something over. “Put down the rifle,” he said at last, “and I’ll answer your questions.”
Reluctantly, James moved his thumb over the safety and lowered the rifle from his shoulder.
“Very good,” said George, letting his hands fall. “Shall we talk inside?”
“No,” I said, wanting to stay near the pond. I could feel Gloria close by, just a whisper of her. It was fanciful, perhaps, but I didn’t want to leave. “We can talk here.”
George shrugged. “Where would you like to start?”
“With the Black Dog,” I said.
Surprise rippled over his expression, settling into the same wonder I’d seen when I’d found his long-lost toy soldiers. “You never cease to amaze me, Miss Winter. Where did you get that name?”
“Where do you think?”
He looked avid with burning curiosity for a moment, but he quickly tamped it down. “The Black Dog,” he said, “is a terrorist and saboteur who has been operating since just before the Armistice. We’ve known from the first that he was British, and that he was very, very good. He was recruited, initially, by the Kaiser’s government before it fell. Afterward, he was dormant for so long that my intelligence contacts believed him dead. But he resurfaced in Spain in 1922 and has been active ever since.”
“How did you know he was your brother?” James asked.
“Truthfully,” George said slowly, “I didn’t, not until Miss Winter told me just now. I only suspected. One of our agents saw him in Spain, and although there is no photograph, he managed to make a reasonably detailed sketch. It was all we had before that particular agent was killed. The sketch looks . . . uncannily like my brother, and the records at the War Office align with the dates.” He gave us a bleak look. “Colin was always an idealist, thinking he could change things. It made him fragile. I don’t like to think of my brother as a madman, but he wouldn’t be the only one whose mind was unbalanced by war.”
“He murdered his own sister,” I said. “He killed Ramona in her own flat in the middle of the day with a garrote. He shot at me like I was a piece of game.”
“Colin is very intelligent, Miss Winter. Intelligent men, in the right hands, are always the most dangerous. Take an intelligent man and find a way to mold him, and you have an extremely effective weapon.”
I thought of the woman with the dark eyes, the razor blade, the shrill of the telephone.
“So who’s molding him now?” James asked.
“As far as we can tell, anyone with money. The Black Dog has become a free agent, as it were, working for anyone who will arm him, pay him, and give him papers. His only agenda seems to be that he’s willing to do whatever harms his home country. He’s been working on the Continent for the past few years, damaging embassies and making attempts on visiting dignitaries. He nearly killed our ambassador in Greece when he shot at his motorcar; it was a very near thing, and we had a hard time keeping it quiet. And then I received intelligence that the Black Dog was on his way to England.”
“What for?” said James.
George shook his head. “Our information was incomplete. We’d had warning of his movement, but that was all. Presumably someone had hired him to do damage on home ground, since he’s a born Englishman and can blend in more perfectly here than he can on the Continent. It would have taken some time to get him false papers that would stand up, but they must have come through. And then I read an article in the newspaper about my sister, and I found myself making one of my educated guesses. The wildest one I’ve ever made in my career.”
Beside me, James stiffened perceptibly. “My report.”
“Yes. Dissected in the newspaper, for the public to read. I usually avoided the gossip coverage of Gloria, but that article was impossible to overlook. I admit, the first thing I thought when I read it was, Does she have the power to find Colin? And then I thought, if it had occurred to me, why couldn’t it have occurred to him?”
“You think—you think he came here because of the article?” My throat had gone dry, my fingers cold. “To kill her before she could discover him?”
“I had no idea. I only knew that if Colin was here—if he was in fact the Black Dog and she had the power to expose him—then she may have been in danger. I contacted Gloria by telegram. I told her to be careful, and I gave her my telephone exchange. I said I wanted to meet.”