Page 52 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

The silence went on long enough that I wished I had put it some other way.

"No," she said.

"Then you have a house. Not a man." I placed the London map in front of her. "Mallow. Bedford Row. Marsh. The Hammersmith ground. All of it money, and Harcourt's name is on none of it. What you have is a route that information traveled. They aren't the same enquiry until something joins them."

"The Argosy joins them."

"Marsh is a member. Crane was a member. We don't know that Harcourt is." I said. "Until we know, that club is a coincidence with two ends."

"And the rest?" Her voice had flattened.

"The rest doesn’t make Sir Reginald your man." I sat back. “You were handed a valet, a house, and a name, that’s all. Drawing rooms noticed Crane’s attachment to Harcourt. He coughed at a most inconvenient moment, which led you to form a theory. But you have no evidence that Harcourt placed Benson, employed Crane, or even knew the two were connected.”

"You think I’m wrong."

I shook my head. "Your reasoning isn't poor. You’re simply making leaps without supporting evidence.”

She was quiet a moment. "That's a good argument. I dislike it enormously."

"So do I."

"Then what do we have?"

I counted it off. "Crane drew a wage for two years. That's not a blackmailer, that's an employee, which means an employer. Marsh went up at the Argosy the same season. That’s where they met." I set down the second finger. "And there's Benson, who interests me a great deal—though not for your reason."

"Say it."

"Claire said he entered service again almost at once. Think what that takes. A valet whose master died in his care, with no character but the one his widow was kind enough to write him, walks into a new place inside a fortnight." I let it sit. "Somebody put him in Harcourt’s house. That’s the person we seek.”

She got there faster than I had. “He was placed before Crane blackmailed Claire.”

"Which means you've begun your chain too late. You've been reading Benson to Harcourt to Crane. Start before Benson. Somebody put a valet in that household two years ago and waited to see what he'd be worth."

"That's worse."

"Considerably. It's also findable. Men aren't placed by magic. Somebody places them, and somebody keeps a record." I finished the coffee, which had not improved. "Finch will investigate the Harcourt house in general and Benson in particular.” I took a breath. “You promised me sensible. That means you will do nothing.”

"I said I would try."

“Yes, you did." Try and do were ships that passed in the night in Rosalynd’s way of thinking. They had nothing to do with one another, as I had discovered too many times.

"There's one thing I haven’t told you.”

“Then tell me now.”

"That room felt wrong." She said it without any of the confidence she had brought to the rest. "I've been in that drawing room half a dozen times. I know what it feels like. But yesterday I couldn't settle. I put it down to Crane being dead and everyone enjoying it too much." She looked at her hands. "I wanted to leave, but I didn’t know why." She gazed up at me. “And then Harcourt coughed. Afterward I told myself that was what had unsettled me. But I don't think it was.”

I took her hands, drew her out of the settee, and put my arms around her. She came without argument.

“Nights without proper sleep,” I said into her hair. "A room full of people picking over a corpse. I’d be more surprised if none of it had got under your skin."

"I daresay,” she murmured into my shoulder.

"You're building a case against a man out of his weak chest."

"I know how it sounds." She stayed where she was a moment longer. Then she lifted her head. "I'll be sensible. But I'm not going to stop thinking it.”

"Noted." I held my hand to her cheek. "And filed."