A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2)

“Why, yes.”

Charlotte clutched the buttons of her bodice. “Oh, that cad! We saw him with her one time and he swore up and down it was his cousin, visiting from Stokes.”

“I am most distressed to learn that Mr. Finch should turn out to be so faithless. But he is illegitimate, and it was a mistake on your charge’s part to hold his character in high regard.”

Charlotte sighed exaggeratedly. “Well, she is very young. I hope this will prove to be a valuable lesson to her.”

A knock came at the door. Mr. Gillespie’s secretary stuck in his head. “Sir, Mr. Malcolm is here and he’s in a hurry to see you.”

Miss Redmayne, hearing this, slowly sat up. “Oh, my,” she said vaguely, “how strange I feel. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later, my dear.”

“But wait,” said Miss Redmayne to Mr. Gillespie. “Do you have Mr. Finch’s last known address? I have need of it.”

For a moment Mr. Gillespie looked conflicted.

Miss Redmayne rose and stamped her foot. “You must. I will not leave until I have it.”

“Yes, yes, of course. I’m all too happy to oblige.”

But Charlotte knew that he didn’t oblige them at all. When they had left Mr. Gillespie’s office, she told Miss Redmayne that she could give the piece of paper from the solicitor to the next scrap collector they came across.

Miss Redmayne was dismayed. “This isn’t the correct address?”

“No,” said Charlotte. “But I saw the address in the dossier he took out, ostensibly to write it down for us.”

“But he put his hand in front of it.”

He had, but a fraction of a moment was enough for Charlotte, looking at the address upside down, to memorize every line.

“That didn’t matter,” she said. “I say we did well.”



The pub was a hard place and smelled of cheap ale and indifferent food. But it was also a good deal cleaner and sharper than it had any reason to be, in imitation of its proprietress, a flinty-looking woman who seemed to have never been pretty but was put together with the precision of a Swiss watch.

Treadles didn’t know how he knew, but he was certain the woman had been a prostitute at one point.

He did not enjoy questioning prostitutes, to say the least.

“Mrs. Bamber, the dead man washed ashore not far from the back of this pub. When bystanders were gathered around and one of your patrons declared that he had seen this man in the pub two nights ago and had spent a solid hour talking to him, you contradicted him and said the victim had never been in your establishment.”

“I did.”

“Are you concerned that if you told the truth, it would lead to trouble?”

“What I told was the truth. I know the regulars who come in. I know the strangers who come in—pay more attention to them, in fact, in case they start a fight or leave me with their tab. Two nights ago a man did speak to Young Boyd for a while. But the dead man? Wasn’t him.”

“Why should I believe you, Mrs. Bamber, given your past occupation?”

The woman stilled, then flicked Treadles a look of contempt. “If you have no intention of believing me, best not waste my time, Inspector. There’s Young Boyd yonder. Take his account. And while you’re at it, ask him to read today’s headlines for you.”

It defeated Treadles why she was the one scornful toward him. Nevertheless, her look made him feel . . . low, somehow. He thanked her curtly and decamped to where Young Boyd sat, nursing a pint before noon.

“Mr. Boyd, we are interested in your account of the man you met two nights ago.”

Young Boyd seemed to fit the description of an amiable drunk—or at least a harmless one. He offered a shaky hand to the policemen and was full of smiles and eagerness—no doubt in the hope of a free pint. Treadles reluctantly motioned for one.

“Fine fellow he was. Big, fine fellow. Kept buying me rounds. Then he asked me, when we were good and jolly, if I could keep a secret,” said Young Boyd, the man least likely to keep a secret Treadles had ever met.

“I told him, of course! They could torture me in the Tower of London and I won’t say a thing. That’s when he told me he was a killer by profession. That he hired out his services and that it wasn’t a bad living, but not fancy either. But something went wrong for him and he was ’bout to go on the run.

“So I asked him if he was afraid of the police. He laughed and said only namby-pambies were afraid of the police. He was afraid of the people who hired him. They wanted the thing done nice and quiet and the police somehow caught wind of him in Hounslow. And now the people who hired him wanted to get rid of him, to make sure the police couldn’t find them.”

“Did you ask who they were?”

“He said they were criminals. But not pickpockets. Not even hired killers like him. They are kings of crime and hardly ever dirty their own hands. The man he killed tried to double-cross them. And they hunted him down. And this fellow, de Lacy he said his name was, he thought his own days were numbered. And gosh if he wasn’t right about that.”

Treadles had been looking askance at Young Boyd, wondering whether he wasn’t simply making things up from what he’d read in the papers—until the name de Lacy dropped from his lips. That, he’d only just learned himself and was not public information.

“He told you his name?”

“And said that’s just what he was called and not his real name and he wasn’t even the first man to go by that name.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then he left. I never thought to see him again—thought he’d manage to run away and hide somewhere safe. But this morning there he was, dead as a doornail, all bloated and ugly like.”

Treadles tried to glean more information, but Young Boyd began to repeat himself. Treadles signaled for another pint, which only made Young Boyd embroider what he’d already told them.

Sensing that the witness was of no further use, Treadles thanked him and rose.

“By the way, Mr. Boyd,” said MacDonald, “would you mind reading this headline for us? You can read, I assume?”

“Of course I can.” Young Boyd squinted at the big, bold letters and squinted some more, until he muttered and took a pair of bent specs out of his pocket. “‘The Queen heads to Balmoral.’”

Treadles swore inwardly. “Were you wearing your glasses on the night you met this de Lacy?”

“Course not. Never take them out except to read—and I don’t read much. But I can see well enough to find my way here—and I saw his fancy scarf nice and clear.”