Page 16 of The Marriage Method

Miles’s gaze once again drifted over the room, recalling everything he’d ever learned during a childhood spent fraternizing with the criminal elements of the Rookery. “Focus on the floor and the baseboards,” he said. “Look for loose joints or cut sections of wood.”

Higgins got straight to it, though not without grumbling. “Seems no point to me. They’ll have already found what Mr. Cowgill had hidden here.”

“They haven’t,” Miles said. He rolled back the carpet as far as he was able. “Doubtless they believe I have it.”

Higgins paused in the act of feeling along the baseboards behind the sofa. “I don’t quite—”

“They sent his tongue to me as a warning. They obviously think I know something. If they didn’t, they’d never have risked exposing their crime. Cowgill’s disappearance could have remained a mystery.”

“With all respect, sir, it still is one.”

“Only until we piece it together.”

Higgins furrowed his brow. “Is that why we had to come here in such a roundabout way? Taking those hansom cabs and cutting through those alleyways on foot? You suspected we might be followed?”

Miles continued searching under the carpet for any sign of a loose floorboard. “I wouldn’t rule it out.”

Higgins’s lips thinned. “We’re not police inspectors, Mr. Quincey.”

“No,” Miles said. “We’re investigative journalists. And some stories are more dangerous to report than others, as Cowgill clearly discovered.”

“But Mr. Cowgill wasn’t a reporter. He wrote harmless tittle-tattle about nameless lords losing their fortunes and unidentified ladies having love affairs. That isn’t serious journalism.”

“Yet Cowgill took it seriously. He was a veritable vault when it came to his methods. He wouldn’t divulge them to anyone, not even me.”

“There’s some who say he cultivated relationships with the valets and ladies’ maids of the gentry,” Higgins said.

It wasn’t the first time Miles had heard the rumor. “He may have done,” he acknowledged. “The point is, he protected his sources. I don’t expect he’d have been any less protective when it came to his notes.”

“The notebook we found in his desk at the Courant didn’t contain anything of value,” Higgins pointed out. “Only three dates, as I showed you—two already past, and one next month.”

Miles remembered. They had been written in an ink-splattered line: 19th March, 28th March, 3rd September. He hadn’t paid them much attention at the time. He’d been too irritated not to find a draft of an actual gossip column tucked away in Cowgill’s desk—something they might run in the cursed man’s absence. A few scrawled dates had been useless, as well as meaningless.

“They must have meant something to him,” Miles said. “Either they were sufficient alone to jog his memory, or they’re a companion to another written record.” He cast a glance at Higgins. “How well did you know him?”

“Not well,” Higgins admitted.

Miles could say the same. As editor in chief, he didn’t have direct supervision over the columnists. His attention was focused on larger issues—circulation, advertising, and the serious investigative articles he edited (or sometimes wrote) himself.

The truth was, he’d rarely read Cowgill’s column. He’d only been notified by his managing editor, Mr. Griffiths, when there had been none available for Monday’s issue. And then, not because Miles might know something about Cowgill or his whereabouts, but because the absence of the gossip column would affect the paper’s bottom line.

“I have heard that he had a taste for fine things,” Higgins went on. “He once boasted to me that his evening coats were made by the finest tailor in Bond Street.”

That, Miles could believe. Indeed, it had been the impetus for the few meetings he’d had with Cowgill—harsh reprimands in Miles’s office relating to Cowgill’s repeated conflicts of interest.

The man had been notorious for taking advantage of the perks of his position. He’d relished moving in fashionable circles, and had wallowed in the favorable treatment he received there from society figures seeking to influence him. Miles had had to warn him more than once about accepting invitations from the people on whom he was meant to be reporting.

“I only accept the ones for lunches, dinners, and the odd house party,” Cowgill had said in his own defense. “If I didn’t, I’d starve. You know I’m incapable of cooking a morsel.”

“Get yourself a housekeeper,” Miles had replied, unmoved.

Recalling the terse conversation, Miles’s attention flew to the iron range in the corner. Cowgill didn’t cook. And given the fine layer of dust that had settled over the cooking surface, Miles doubted whether the man had heeded his advice to find a housekeeper.

Abandoning his search of the floorboards, Miles went to the range and sank down in front of it. He opened the hinged door. The inside of the cold oven was empty except for a heap of ashes at the bottom that appeared as though they hadn’t been cleared away in some time.

Miles’s pulse accelerated. Reaching into the ashes, he felt the unmistakable form of a book. “Eureka.”

Higgins’s head lifted. “Sir?”