“No, Your Grace. I’ll deal with him better alone.”

When Blackford dropped us at the house after the concert, Emma was waiting in my room with one of the maids. The heat had dissipated in the night, enough that I wasn’t clammy with sweat. Despite my lack of sleep and a desire to collapse onto my bed, I let Emma talk as she undressed me.

“This is Mary,” she said, gesturing as she undid my hairdo. “She’s working here because the duke sent Gattenger’s help to his housekeeper to keep employed until either Gattenger is freed or the end of the quarter.”

“Mary.” I nodded my head and my loosened hairdo slipped, releasing a cascade of curls down my back. I’d spoken to Elsie the day I’d gone with the duke to see the site of the crime. I’d not seen Mary, and hopefully, she’d not seen me.

“Mrs. Monthalf. Emma said since you’re kin to Mrs. Gattenger, I should tell you what I know about her murder. Well, not her murder, but her life leading up to her murder.”

I studied Mary. She was small boned and thin, a few years younger than Emma, with lovely brown hair and eyes. I could picture her slipping into dark corners to stand undetected or dressing as a street lad to follow a suspect in an investigation. My imagination runs away with me sometimes. I had no idea if she had the intelligence or talent to carry out those roles.

I gave her a gentle smile and said, “I’d be interested in what you have to tell me, Mary.”

“Well, ma’am, I know Elsie always said the Gattengers got along well, but I didn’t see it that way. I had my day out on a different day than Elsie, so I was the one who heard the row they had a week before the mistress’s death.”

“Which day was this?”

“Tuesday, ma’am. My day out was on Thursday.”

“Tell me what you heard, please, Mary.” Would she echo the gossip Phyllida had heard?

“I was plaiting the mistress’s hair like Emma’s doing to you now, and the master came into her room. She said, ‘Get out, Kenny,’ and he said, ‘I love you, Clara.’ Then she said, ‘That’s twice now. I don’t think I can bear it a third time.’ Then she burst into tears.”

“Bear what?”

“I don’t know. I do know I’d had to get the doctor the Tuesday before.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. The master sent me because the mistress was ill. Next day, we were having to bleach blood out of the sheets and all of their nightclothes.”

“Had that happened before?”

“No, ma’am, but we had to get the doctor for the mistress often enough. And she bruised easy. She was talking once, and not watching where she was going, and smacked into a door. The whole side of her face was bruised. She couldn’t leave the house for almost two weeks on account of how she looked.”

“Did you see her run into the door?”

“Not me. No. Just the master.”

I’d heard of men who took out their anger on their wives and children. I hoped Ken Gattenger wasn’t one of them, but what Mary said worried me. Now I had two reasons to talk to him again before we went to the country. I hoped I’d get to sleep on the train to Lord Harwin’s. There wouldn’t be time to get any rest before then.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I’D barely gotten to sleep before Emma came in to get me up and bathed. “I need to get a message to Blackford before we go to the shop today,” I told her.

“We can have Mary take it. She knows where the house is, since she worked there a short time before being sent here.”

“You’ve gotten to know her in the few days we’ve been here.” I’d noticed how easily Emma made friends. Much quicker than I did.

She shrugged. “It’s my assignment, although I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve gotten to know all the servants. The same assignment I’ll have at the country house party. Tell me it’ll be cooler there.”

“It must be. It’s out in the country.” Truthfully, I had no more idea than Emma did. I was as much a city girl as she.

“This came for you, shoved in the letter slot before anyone rose this morning.”

I took the note from Emma, noting the same printing as on the first note. Inside, the message was just as brief.

Georgia Fenchurch, you’ve been warned. Stay in London and away from Lord Harwin’s.

Otherwise, you will die.

Passing the note to Emma, I said, “Someone knows who we are and what we’re doing.”

Emma handed the paper back by one corner, as if she found it contaminated. “Are you going to tell the duke?”

“No. If we tell Blackford or anyone else, Phyllida will eventually find out, and she’ll insist we stop. She wouldn’t want to chance us getting hurt.” I gave her a steady gaze. “And we promised her.”

Emma nodded. “We won’t say a word to anyone. Agreed.”

I wrote a note to Blackford over my tea and toast, sent Mary off with it, and left for the shop with Emma. When we arrived, Frances and Grace had the front door open to any errant breeze that might pass. Walking into the office, I found the window open, the papers filed, and the space free of boxes of unshelved books.

Grace and Emma were reorganizing the books as they dusted, and Frances was assisting a customer. Once Frances was free, I joined her at the counter and said, “You have this place running like a well-oiled machine.”

“It’s Sumner and Mrs. Hardwick who’ve made the difference.”

“Mrs. who?”

“Mrs. Hardwick. Sir Broderick’s assistant while Jacob is working on this investigation. She has Sir Broderick busy on cleaning and reorganizing his house. She even had him ride down in the elevator yesterday to work on the parlor, stripping the sheets off the furniture and bringing the room back to life.”

“Good heavens.” Sir Broderick had had the elevator installed when he was first recovering from his injuries. In the dozen years since then, I’d never known him to use the machine. Mrs. Hardwick had managed this miracle in a few days. “It sounds like the woman has been a tonic for him.”

Frances grinned. “She has. You’ll like her. Everyone does.”

“And Sumner?”

“He loves this place. Works hard shelving books and avoiding customers when he’s not running antiquarian books between here and Sir Broderick. He’s also our connection to Jacob. I can’t wait to hear what he has to report today. Jacob thought he might have figured out who the traitor is in the Admiralty.”

Two women came in at that moment. One headed to the latest novels and the other to natural science. With a smile, Frances and I headed to separate parts of the shop. I had just finished with the woman in the literature section when Blackford strode in.

His boots gleamed in the already stifling sunlight pouring heat through the front windows. The creases in his pants and the starch in his collar had not yet wilted. Come to think of it, I’d never seen the duke wilted. He must have ice water in his veins.

He nodded in the direction of Emma and Grace, then in the direction of Frances and her dithering customer, and then approached me. “You have another reason to question Gattenger again?”

“Yes. I need to know why Clara was seen frequently by her doctor, and what happened that caused her to lose a lot of blood only a week before her death.”

The duke’s eyebrows rose. I was glad to see I could surprise him. “All right. What has Jacob learned?”

“We’re waiting on Sumner.”

“Not any longer.” His gravelly voice came from behind me. Sumner, the ruined half of his face hidden by a bowler hat removed from his head but not yet lowered, headed toward Emma.