I walk along the hall and through the drawing room and dining room, seeing no one.
“If anyone’s there, I’m reading in the library,” I helpfully announce to my would-be killer.
I sigh, adjust my grip on the poker, and return to the library. Back at the desk, I pause and peer around. Nothing. I set the poker on the desktop, within reach, and then I’m pulling out the chair when a floorboard creaks behind me.
THIRTY-ONE
I spin just as a dark-cloaked figure lunges out from behind the drapes. He claps a hand over my mouth. I elbow him in the ribs and then wheel and slam my fist into his stomach.
Before he doubles over, I catch a glimpse of an average-sized man with a black mask. Then I realize the “mask” is dark hair falling over his face as he doubles over in pain. I grab his hair and wrench his head up.
“Simon?”
“Surrender,” he croaks, raising his arms. “I acknowledge defeat, fair maiden.”
“What the hell?” I say as he rises, still holding his stomach.
“Nicely done, Cat,” he grunts as he catches his breath. “I suppose I deserved that, trying to spook you.”
“By leaping from behind the curtains? Two days after I was attacked and nearly killed in the streets?”
He hesitates. “Two days? It has been a week.”
“I was attacked again two days ago and spent the damned night in jail for fighting off my attacker.” I back up to the desk and fold the papers.
“I-I heard nothing of that,” he says. “I do apologize then, Cat. And I cannot help but be grateful I escaped with my life.” He rubs his stomach and makes a face. “Who ever taught you to fight like that?”
“The experience of nearly being killed twice in a less than a week.”
“No doubt, and again, I do apologize.” He glances behind me. “What are you writing?”
“Nothing.”
He tries to snatch the pages, and we do a couple rounds of that before he sees I’m serious and stops. He perches on the edge of the desk as I secret the pages away in my bodice.
“What are you doing in here?” I say.
“Uh, it is the house where I am employed?”
“I mean you’re inside. At night. How’d you get in?”
“With my key. Because it is … the house where I am employed? I came in search of food. I was up late and grew hungry.”
“The kitchen is two floors down.”
“Yes, but I heard someone moving about as I was in the stairwell. I came to see who it was and warn that I was in the house so that I did not startle them.”
“Instead, you intentionally startled me?”
“Because you are special.” He grins. “You ought to have seen your face. Now, if you are quite finished with the interrogation, I have a proposition.”
“Uh-huh.”
He leans over and whispers, “I have a penny stick in my rooms.”
Is that the Victorian equivalent of inviting me to his room to see his etchings?
“I don’t think I need to see your stick,” I say. “Not tonight.”
“See my stick?” he sputters. “How hard was that knock on your head? I mean I have a penny stick of opium.”
I blink before I manage to say, “No, thank you. I’m having quite enough trouble keeping my mind clear these days. That hit on the head is affecting me more than I expected.”
I look over at him. “I know you said you had no idea who might have attacked me, but would you mind if I asked you a few questions? About myself? Filling in the holes?”
“Would I mind? You sound as if you are asking a favor of a stranger, Cat. We are friends, are we not?”
“We are, but it is awkward admitting to memory lapses. It makes me feel quite freakish.”
He sobers, his voice lowering. “We ought never to feel that way between ourselves. The world gives us enough of that. You may ask what you will, and I will answer as much as I am able and not judge you for your questions.” He meets my gaze. “No judgment. Not between us. Yes?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
We head down to the kitchen, where we find day-old bread and butter, and Simon makes a pot of tea. Then I question him. I start by asking him about my past. He can’t help there—Catriona didn’t share any of that. Nor does he know anything about her criminal confederates. In that case, he didn’t want to know details. I’ll need to speak to Davina.
If Catriona knew her attacker, that puts one degree of separation between her and Evans. Possibly no degrees if all three shared a connection.
Evans’s roommates suggested he sold information on their group. To whom? A link shimmers there, between Evans selling his group’s secrets and Catriona selling Findlay’s police information. Could they have been selling to the same person? Or connected in the same underground web? Evans is friends with someone in that world, whom he uses to sell his information, and Catriona has pissed off—or betrayed—that same person, who tried to kill her for it.
Is that my link?
“Do you know a young man named Archie Evans?” I ask.
Simon stops midbite to look at me. “Uh, yes. The fellow that raven killer murdered. You helped Dr. Gray with the body, did you not? Alice said so.” He peers at me. “Are your new memories affected as well?”
“I meant did you know him before he was murdered?”
His eyes narrow. “What are you implying, Cat?”
“I am wondering whether I had a connection to him. He seemed familiar.”
Simon relaxes and shrugs. “He wrote for the Evening Courant. I’ve read the paper to you many a time, and I may have mentioned him as the writer.”
“Did I ever mention him?”
“Not that I recall.”
“He lived with a group of radicalized students. Anti-immigration, anti–anyone who does not look and act like them.”
“Are you suggesting you might have hobnobbed with the likes of them?”
“I hope not, but I don’t remember.”
He shakes his head firmly. “You have many faults, Cat, but if bigotry were one of them, we could hardly be friends. It is not.”
Well, score one for Catriona. But I also must wonder how well Simon really knew Catriona. He seems like a sweet kid, and when he mentioned Alice, he seemed fond of her. Did he know Catriona abused her? I doubt it, which makes me wonder whether Evans’s group really could be the key, and Catriona just knew enough to keep her bigotry from Simon. She was, after all, a master at showing people what they wanted to see.
With that, I hit a brick wall. Simon has nothing for me, and I chat a little longer—not wanting him to feel interrogated and dismissed—before I yawn and declare it past time for bed.
* * *
I see the glimmer of a lead in the cord connecting Archie Evans to his killer and possibly to Catriona. That realization has me up just before the clock downstairs strikes five. I leap from bed with the morning light, dress, tear into the hall, and promptly collide with poor Alice coming to wake me. A quick apology, and then I’m racing down the stairs to begin my day by taking Gray his breakfast tray. He’s already up, according to Mrs. Wallace, and I skip my morning bread and tea to take his tray to his room.
“Wouldn’t want the master’s coffee getting cold,” I say when Mrs. Wallace grumbles at me for yanking it from her hands.
I take the stairs as fast as I can without toppling the coffeepot. At Gray’s door, I pause and inhale. Then I tap and await the invitation before entering.
Gray is hard at work, and seeing that, I have to smile. It’s not just the “hard at work before 6:00 A.M.” part, which is normal for him. It’s the fact that he appears to have done little more than roll from his bed to his desk chair, with the coverlet still draped around his shoulders.
“Might I hope you are in an appropriate state of dress under that, sir?” I ask.