Page 10 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

"I intend to. Good day, Inspector."

I went out by the front, as I had come in. On the step I stopped a moment while the city went about its midday. Behind me, in a room without a window, Cosmos was answering questions most of which he did not know the truth of. At Grosvenor Square, a woman from whom I had spent weeks apart sat waiting for me to send her a name. And somewhere in this same gray city a man with no face was watching to see what we would do.

He would not have her. Whatever it took, whatever it cost me—and it would cost me—he would not have her. Not while I still drew breath.

I raised my stick to my coachman, who had been waiting for me to emerge, and gave him the Hatton Garden address where Caleb Finch kept irregular hours and men's inconvenient truths.

Chapter

Five

Holding the House

Ihad crossed Grosvenor Square without bonnet or gloves, in front of half the square and a gentleman walking his dog, and I would do it again tomorrow if it came to that. On the walk back I held to that thought, because it was the only part of the morning I had chosen for myself. The rest had been chosen for me—by a pistol I should never have lifted from my brother's desk, by a man in a mask, by a queen who imagined that two people kept apart was the solution to something.

I had disobeyed her royal command, for it had been a command no matter how politely it had been couched, and gone to Steele to ask for his help. I would not be sorry for it, whatever came.

Rosehaven House met me with noise, the way it always did, and for once the ordinariness of it was an affront. Above stairs, Holly and Ivy were conducting an argument that involved, by the sound of it, a hairbrush and a great deal of principle. And somewhere Snowball was making her displeasure known.

The house went on as though its master had not been handed into a carriage two hours past and driven to Scotland Yard, because the house did not yet know. I had told Honeycutt to tell no one until I returned.

He met me in the hall as I stepped through the door. "Milady."

"Has there been word?"

"None, milady."

"The children?"

"Lady Laurel witnessed the event.” A pause, the Honeycutt equivalent of a throat cleared over something delicate. "I believe she has formed her own view. And Lady Chrysanthemum⁠—"

"Yes, I imagine she knows." The pianoforte's keys were being pounded with more effort than the classical composition required. “Anyone else?”

“Not as far as I could tell, milady.”

Laurel found me in the morning room before I managed to take a seat. She stood in the doorway with one finger marking her place in a book she was not reading.

"There were policemen," she said.

"There were."

"Two constables and a man in a good coat who was not a constable. They took Cosmos away."

There was the lie that would let her sleep, and there was the truth she had already half-built. Because she was Laurel and would catch me out in a heartbeat, I gave her the smallest honest version I owned. "They have asked Cosmos to help them with questions about a man who has died. He has done nothing wrong."

"I'm twelve, old enough to know the truth."

"I've given it to you."

"Not the whole of it."

"I don't know the whole of it, and that is the truth. I don't want you to worry. The Duke of Steele is helping us see it put right."

"The Duke?” she said. "I thought the two of you were not speaking." Of course she had noticed. Since March Steele had practically been a fixture at our house. But in the last three weeks, he hadn't set foot inside it.

"We are speaking today."

She accepted that with a small nod and no fuss, and then she said, "Fox was in the greenhouse with Cosmos when the footman came to fetch him. He's taking the heads off some of the flowers. No idea if that's supposed to happen."