A Curious Beginning

He drank it slowly, the color coming back into his face as he sipped. I could almost see the warmth passing through him, kindling his blood where it had run cold and slow.

“Now,” I said with an air of command, “try again. If you were to track the baron’s murderer, where would you begin?”

“In the baron’s study,” he said promptly. “It is the last place we know the fellow has been.”

“But surely the police—”

“The police are only as good as the men they send. They are a motley crew, composed of respectable tradesmen’s sons and vagabonds, liars, and clerks. Some are no better than the filth they arrest.”

“You have no cause to think well of them,” I observed.

“I do not.” His mouth was a thin, hard, bitter line. “If they sent a blackguard who walks a beat to collect protection money and harass the prostitutes, the killer could have left a case full of calling cards and they still would not have found him. If they sent one of their best, then the place will have been gone over thoroughly. Even then, something may have been missed.”

“Very well. We shall begin at the baron’s. You will apply yourself to seeking out the spoor of this particular leopard,” I said with some relish.

“And what will you be doing?” he demanded.

“I will be attempting to discover what the fellow was after.”

“After?”

“Yes. He must have come for something. What was it? A quarrel over property? A personal misunderstanding? A lady?”

He shook his head slowly. “Max had no romantic attachments, not in all the years I have known him. He never spoke of anyone, at least. I always had the sense that he had no interest in love affairs.”

“Really? I formed quite the opposite impression. I think he was a great deal in love with my mother.”

“Why?”

“I haven’t the faintest. But during our journey to London, he mentioned something about how I looked exactly like her. Something in his manner, the soft way he spoke of her. It was quite moving.”

He sat back in his chair, his mouth now slack with disbelief. “I could smother you with that tea cozy and no one would blame me,” he said in a voice thick with emotion.

“Whyever should you want to?”

“Because, you daft, impossible woman, you have been concealing a possible motive from me for the whole of the time we have been together!”

“What motive? I merely said he seemed attached to my mother.”

“And I am telling you, he had no love affairs. If he loved her, it was the love affair of his life. Something possibly worth his life, even.”

“Rubbish,” I said stoutly. “He told me nothing at all about her save that I look like her and that he would explain everything to me when he had the chance.”

“A chance that never came,” Stoker observed. “Rotten luck for you. I am sorry.”

I shrugged. “At least I know a little more now than I once did. The baron knew her, and that is a place to begin.”

“Indeed.”

“So how do we get into the baron’s house? The poor misused housekeeper is gone to Brighton,” I reminded him.

“Another point for your argument that the killer has not a cool and cunning brain,” he told me. “He was interrupted in searching the study. A more experienced fiend would have simply killed Mrs. Latham as well and carried on. He hurried out, giving her a knock instead.”

“Searching the study,” I began.

He lifted his eyes to mine. “Like your cottage.”

“The same fellow?”

“Possibly. But what can he be looking for?”

“That is what we must ascertain. I presume a spot of housebreaking is in order?”

He grinned, a smile of rare and devilish charm. He dipped into his pocket with his fingertips. “No need. I have a key.”

“Then we need only wait for nightfall,” I said. “What shall we do with ourselves in the meantime?”

His gaze brightened, but before he could speak, Lady Cordelia returned carrying a basket. “I have brought food—enough for tonight and tomorrow morning. I thought it best if I did not come down here every time. It might arouse suspicion.”

I peered into the basket and saw a large cheese, a few roasted fowls, some cold potatoes, wedges of game pie, a loaf of bread, and the remains of a small saddle of beef. There was butter and jam and even a jar of chutney jostling for space with crisp apples.

“Bless you, Lady Cordelia. We shall feast like princes.”

Stoker’s gaze slid away from hers, and she tipped her head thoughtfully. “I presume from your guilty air that you intend to ignore my good advice and go out?”

Stoker looked abashed, but I refused to be cowed. “We do.”

“To the baron’s, no doubt?”

“Indeed,” I said, willing Stoker to silence. I had the unshakable feeling he would try to apologize for our plan, perhaps even be talked out of it, and I had no intention of permitting that to happen.