“You interrupted my bath.”
The man gave a curt nod. “I’m from Scotland Yard. And I have a few questions to ask.”
He opened the door wider. “Come in.”
“Anyone else here?” the inspector asked as he stepped over the threshold.
“No,” Eddie said, tugging on his stiff collar again. “I live alone.”
CHAPTER 24
_____
The Royal Institution of Great Britain was caged in light—the atrium, lift, even some of the walls were made of glass. In a laboratory, behind one of these glass walls, Quenby waited as Lucas’s friend—a pretty technician named Meribeth—connected Quenby’s iPad to a camera on the microscope.
After a tutorial, Quenby sat on a stool beside the steel table and removed one of the microphotographs from the envelope with tweezers, sandwiching it between two slides. Meribeth helped her adjust the lighting, eyepiece, and zoom dial until the image grew clear. The picture was of a building with an open front. Like an airplane hangar. Instead of being colored black and white, it was an ivory and brown.
Quenby copied the image onto her iPad before slipping the next photograph onto the microscope stage.
Last night, she’d learned that Lucas worked solely for one client—Mr. Knight and his company, Arrow Wind. This morning, Lucas was at his office writing other contracts, but his text had opened the door for her to use one of the best dissecting microscopes—if not the best—in the United Kingdom.
The next photographs captured a lineup of old airplanes, the British roundels on the fuselages distinct. There were no people in these pictures and only the outline of buildings in the background. She saved those photographs to examine later before viewing the last one. A hand-drawn map of an airport. There were no markings of the map’s location but plenty of notes about hangars, headquarters, barracks, and runways.
Who had been taking microphotographs of what appeared to be an RAF airfield? And why were they stored in the cottage where Brigitte and the Terrells once lived? The photographer, she suspected, wasn’t an amateur.
After thanking Meribeth, Quenby checked her watch. A trip to Newhaven seemed to be the next logical step. Using her new retainer, she’d leave first thing tomorrow on the train and spend the night there.
Her phone chimed when she emerged from the Tube station at Hampstead, informing her of a new text. She figured it was Lucas, but instead it was from Chandler, asking to meet her at Le Pain Quotidien.
She eyed the words curiously. Was her editor going to give her the Ricker story back? If so, what would she tell Lucas and Mr. Knight? She couldn’t renege now, not after she’d committed to searching for Brigitte.
Several customers were in the front of the café, drinking coffee as they worked on their laptops. Chandler waited in the back of the room, nursing a pool of bright green—a matcha latte—in an oversize mug.
Quenby ordered the green tea drink as well before taking a seat across from her editor and friend. “Did you decide to take a holiday too?”
“No, I’ve been in the office all morning.” Chandler glanced toward the front door. “And something’s not right.”
Quenby followed her gaze toward the door. “Are you expecting someone else?”
Chandler turned toward Quenby. “Just a bit paranoid. Evan was obsessing this morning.”
“He’s always obsessing about something.”
“But this something has to do with your story.”
“I have no story.” The server brought her creamy tea latte, made with almond milk, and she took a long sip.
“At first he asked me to send you away on holiday.” Chandler pressed her fingers into a tepee shape, a distinct arc over her drink. “Now he wants to know where you went. I told him I didn’t know—”
“I don’t have to report where I go on vacation.”
“Traditional rules don’t apply to Evan.”
“It’s just basic courtesy.”
But she supposed courtesy didn’t apply to Evan Graham either. In the past three years, she’d never known him to hesitate before exposing something that needed to be exposed. Even the time Chandler found out through a secret source that one of Evan’s associates, a Member of Parliament, was suspected of hiring someone to assault an opponent before the election. The MP was acquitted, but the story ruined his friend’s political career and his friendship with Evan.
Chandler straightened her mug. “He also wants to know what you uncovered about Lady Ricker.”
“Nothing that isn’t already public in the archives. Her descendants have been stonewalling me.”
“Evan hasn’t been to the archives.”
So Quenby rehashed everything she’d learned about Janice Ricker.
“This woman seems like an American version of Lady Mosley,” Chandler said, referring to the former Diana Mitford, a wealthy British woman who supported Hitler and his regime.