Mind Games (Lock & Mori #2)

More King Arthur references? She was calling me “Vivian” this time, which was just another name for the Lady of the Lake from the Arthurian romances. But I had to wonder if the “him” I was keeping “locked away” referred to my father or to Merlin—or if they were both the same in her mind.

That’s when everything fell into place. As Mallory and his constable tried their best to guide and then push Constance out of the room, I realized that this was their witness. Or, rather, the Lady Constance had witnessed Nimue returning Arthur’s sword to the lake in Regent’s Park, and she’d come to the police to name me as Nimue. That meant she was also the figure whispering about what she’d seen to the artist in the drawing. And now that I knew who she was, finding the artist couldn’t be all that hard. The relief I felt was matched only by the slapstick humor of the Lady Constance and her constable punch doll.

Alice rushed in when they were gone and looked relieved herself to see that I was okay. “What happened in here?”

“A miracle,” I said with a grin.

She raised a brow and sat next to me. “Who was that woman?”

“I believe she is the witness against me.”

Alice opened her mouth to ask something else, but then Mallory came in, looking more harried than I’d ever seen him. That didn’t seem to strip any of the all-knowing condescension out of him, however. He took his time sitting down across from Alice and me, and even spent a few vital seconds looking through the papers of his manila folder.

“Do you have any enemies, Miss Moriarty?”

I had not been expecting that as his first question. “Just the one you’ve got locked up in your jail.”

Mallory didn’t scold me for bringing up my dad like I’d expected. Instead, he pulled a glossy picture from his folder and pushed it toward me. “Do you know this man?”

The face looked familiar in a face-in-the-crowd kind of way—like maybe I’d seen him around our neighborhood enough times. But I shook my head.

“Do you know the name Charles Ross?”

“No. What is this about?”

Mallory took the picture and straightened all the papers in his folder, then he leaned back in his chair and stared at me expectantly. Though I had no idea what he was presuming I’d do.

“Why am I here?”

“That may be something only you can tell me.”

“Is she free to go then?” Alice asked.

After nearly a minute of more silent staring, Mallory seemed to come to some kind of decision, but instead of sharing it with us, he opened his folder and started to arrange the papers inside of it for us to see. Once they were all laid out, he pointed at the photo of the familiar-faced man, which was farthest to my left.

“This is Charles Ross. His hand was in your bin.”

I looked more closely at him, wondering if I might have recognized him better from his back—if he was the man in my drawings. It was possible, of course.

“Are you sure you don’t know him?”

I shook my head. “Never met. Should I know him for some reason?”

“A reason other than his severed hand in your bin? He’s dead, by the way. The coroner believes he was dead when the hand was removed, though we have yet to recover a body.”

My heart sank a little. That was a detail I’d forgotten. If the man in the drawings was the artist, then he was the one missing a hand. That also apparently meant that he was dead. I didn’t figure the artist was the one sending them to me, but now we’d never know whom he’d given them to either.

Mallory pushed a statement forward next, which was typed out but lengthy. “This is a statement given by Constance Ross.”

I looked up. “Ross?”

Mallory nodded. “The wife of Charles. Constance was in the Master of Letters program at Oxford twenty years ago when Charles was completing his Doctorate in Fine Art.”

Which meant he was the artist. He had to be.

“Charles Ross secured a teaching position for a time, but they both mysteriously left the school and the city of Oxford two years ago. Neither has a current permanent address that we could find, but it appears Constance spends most of her days in Regent’s Park, which is where she claimed to see you returning Excalibur to the lake.”

“Me?” I wasn’t even slightly nervous, but I did try to act surprised.

Mallory narrowed his eyes. “Here is where I wonder about your enemies.” He pushed a single sheet of paper forward that said “Call Log” at the top. “A female witness called in to tell us you’d put the sword in the lake, three days ago. That woman was not Constance Ross.”

But it was Constance who had seen me and relayed the story to our artist, which is why I was drawn in Arthurian clothing on the card. If the foreground of the illustrations meant anything, Lady Constance was the princess whispering what she’d seen into our artist’s ear, and my second sin he’d seen for himself. And if the man with the severed hand in the drawing was our artist, then Charles Ross was our artist.

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