A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2)

The day Charlotte learned that the woman who had watched Mrs. Watson’s front door had cabled a biblical verse to be advertised in the paper, she had sent in a request to consult the archives of the Times. The permission had at last been granted.

She had expected the place to be thunderously loud. But the printing presses weren’t in use at the moment and the offices of the paper, while bustling, were far quieter than a drawing room on the night of a dinner party.

A large, well-lit editorial room anchored the entire operation, with a sizable oak table at the center and smaller desks arranged along the walls, furnished with every tool and implement to facilitate the act of writing. Next to the editorial room, according to the clerk who led the way, was the editors’ dining room.

The archive, just down the passage from the dining room, held every edition of the Times since the paper’s inception. Charlotte was given brief instructions and then left to browse.

She had assumed the biblical verses would appear weekly. Instead it was three times a month, always on the same dates. She checked the papers from three years ago, but the verses weren’t there. When she looked carefully, however, she found a weekly cipher that decoded into a roman numeral, followed by a number. VIII, 260, XI, 81, XIV, 447, and so on.

They did not appear to be referring to the Bible. Charlotte got up and walked into the next room, where a dozen proofreaders were working, surrounded by hundreds of dictionaries and encyclopedias. She located the Encyclopedia Britannica, volume 8, page 260. The entry was England.

The other ciphers also each yielded an entry—if that was what they signified.

But what was the point of all this?

She thought for some time, then took herself to the house on Portman Square and left Lord Bancroft a note.

When, exactly, was the Vigenère cipher you gave me sent as a telegram? The information will be much appreciated.



Mrs. Burns, true to her word, was back at the soup kitchen, peeling carrots. Mrs. Watson tied on an apron and attacked a pile of vegetable marrows.

“Sometimes we have other ladies coming in here to help. But they’re finicky. Don’t want to do anything too dirty, heavy, or hot. You’re all right, Mrs. Watson,” said Mrs. Burns, after almost an hour had passed.

Mrs. Watson laughed. “That’s probably because I’m no lady, Mrs. Burns. I was a musical theater performer. Even if I married a duke, actual ladies would turn their noses up at me.”

Mrs. Burns stopped what she was doing. “You aren’t making fun of me, are you?”

“If I wanted to make fun of you, Mrs. Burns, I’d be telling you how respectable I was, instead of the other way around.”

“So you were really on stage, singing and dancing?”

“As described.”

“And gentlemen on their knees at your stage door, begging for your favors?”

Mrs. Watson laughed again. “Not on their knees. But yes, there were a few gentlemen here and there who wanted introductions and whatnot.”

“Whatnot, eh?”

“Oh, you know it.”

Mrs. Burns raised a brow, but her expression was delighted, rather than scandalized. “I hope you had the pick of the litter.”

“I had my way of managing that aspect of the business,” Mrs. Watson said modestly.

Mrs. Burns shook her head and resumed peeling. “Never thought I’d meet an actress at the soup kitchen.”

“I’ve run into old acquaintances in bookshops, railway stations, and once while walking in the Pennine hills. We aren’t that rare—especially not in London.”

Mrs. Burns shook her head a little more. Then she looked at Mrs. Watson and said, “I was always interested in the theater. Not in appearing on stage, mind you—wouldn’t want all those strangers staring at me. But it’d be . . . freeing, wouldn’t it, to be in a place where everybody is, well, I don’t know how to say it without giving offense, but—”

“Where nobody is, strictly speaking, all that respectable,” Mrs. Watson finished for her, smiling.

“And therefore respect has to be earned, because everyone starts on the same footing.”

“If you are looking for an egalitarian profession, I’m not sure the theater is your answer. And the amount of jostling for position is as fierce as anything you see in Society at the height of the Season. But I liked it. There’s a certain magic to performing and you can achieve great camaraderie, even if there’s plenty of ugly madness, too.”

Rather like life itself.

Mrs. Burns didn’t reply. In the kitchen, knives thudded on chopping boards and steam hissed from kettles.

Mrs. Watson thought Mrs. Burns’s curiosity had been exhausted until the latter said, “Part of the reason I keep thinking of the theater from time to time is because of someone I used to know. He’s, well, of a particular persuasion, as they say.”

“You mean, his romantic interest lies not with women.”

“Yes, that persuasion. He had half a mind to join the theater—thought they wouldn’t be so repelled by his kind there.”

“He’s not altogether wrong. There are more of his kind in the theater than in the general population, I’d say. He’d have found it less lonely—and less dangerous. But that isn’t to say he would have been treated well by everyone, or that stagehands wouldn’t call him ugly names or make crude gestures when he walked by in his costume.”

“No utopias anywhere, eh?”

“I’m afraid not. This is all we’ve got.” Mrs. Watson let a beat pass. “And you, Mrs. Burns, I don’t mean to be forward, but you’re a beautiful woman. Has there ever been trouble for you in service?”

Mrs. Burns shrugged. “Frankly, I don’t think it matters whether a woman is all that good-looking when it comes to these things. A man doesn’t suddenly decide, in front of a beautiful woman, that it’s his due to have his hand up her skirt. If he’s that kind, maybe he’s more likely to do it when the woman is pretty. But even if she weren’t, he’d have done it anyway to please himself.”

A good answer, but not the one Mrs. Watson was looking for. “No trouble on that front with your master, I hope?”

“No, he’s all right, Dr. Swanson. Talks more than I need him to, but he’s all right.”

“What if he falls in love with you someday and comes with a marriage proposal?”

Mrs. Burns chortled. “Oh, there’s a thought. If he does that, I’ll tell him I prefer looking after him for money to looking after him for free.”

“Surely there must be other advantages to being a prosperous physician’s wife. You can lord over that annoying daughter of his, for one thing.”

“Tempting, but not tempting enough—I’d rather not see her face at all. Besides, I’ve got someone.” Mrs. Burns leaned in. “Her name is Gabrielle—she works for a rich widow with three daughters who want to be countesses. And one of these days we are going to retire to the south of France together.”