Page 64 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

“Can we go visit him?” Laurel asked.

“No.” I came to my feet. “But you may write or draw something. I’ll take your letters and drawings with me tomorrow when I go see him.”

Fox had said nothing at all. He was standing with his hands behind him in an attitude he had copied off Cosmos since he was four, and he was looking at the carpet.

“Fox,” I said.

“The greenhouse wants doing,” he said.

“His Grace brought a message from Cosmos for you. The fern on the south bench is to be misted, not watered. A green notebook in Cosmos’s desk has the whole of the regimen in it.” I made myself say the next part evenly. “I am not to be trusted with it. He said so. He would like you to have the keeping of the fern, indeed the entire greenhouse, until he comes home.”

Fox looked up. Something in his face had resettled. “Right.” And he went out of the room at a pace that was nearly running.

“It is very nearly tea,” Chrissie said, into the silence, in the voice our mother used. “You will all want to change. And you will want to write a note or draw something for Cosmos.”

I gazed at her with all the gratitude I could muster. “Thank you, Chrissie.”

They filed out of the room, Chrissie last, meeting my eyes on the way and saying nothing, which was her whole character.

“That was well done,” Steele said, when the door had closed. “You gave them the peace and comfort they needed.”

“Thank you, but I did not do it alone. You did as well. And Chrissie. She sounded just like our mother. She always managed to make us mind.” I folded his handkerchief into a smaller and smaller square and put it in my pocket. “Now, please sit down. I have news of my own.”

He sat.

“Grandmother came this morning after you left.” I gave it to him as she had given it to me. The dull knighthood nobody can recall the occasion of. City money, no land, no county, no wife, no heir, nobody standing behind him. And then the illness, and the sea, and the coming back—the physician of thirty years let go, the shooting given up, the whole household turned out and replaced, and every one of those things thought sad and common by everybody who noticed and remembered by nobody at all.

“And here is what she could not do,” I said. “She could not name one living soul who knew that man well before the chest and knows him now. Not one. Every person who was nearer to him than the width of a drawing room is gone— his staff, his physician of thirty years, his closest friends. He has kept everyone at arm’s length since he returned from the sea. He shed them himself. Now all that people do is say poor Sir Reginald while they stay away from him.”

Steele had gone very still.

“There is more, and it is mine and not hers.” My mouth was dry. “The man who put his hand at my waist in my own ballroom and told me he had my brother’s pistol waltzed me the whole length of that room. He moved like a man of forty in good health. He did not cough once. And the gentleman at Lady Pembury’s who could not draw breath for coughing kept half a room clear around him out of delicacy. Everybody looked away, which is exactly what he wanted us to do.”

“And you believe Harcourt and the masked man are the same person.”

“I have been in a room with both of them, and I would swear to it. You will say we need more proof. Yesterday, I allowed for that. But matters have changed, Steele. Cosmos is in jail, remanded to prison for a murder he did not commit. We no longer have the luxury of time to find proof.”

He did not disagree. Instead, he went to the window and stood with his back to me for the better part of a minute.

“I have spent a month on the enquiry into the masked man,” he said at last. “And then a body was discovered at Kew Gardens next to a pistol that pointed straight to Cosmos. You came to me and asked for my help, which I was glad to give. I thought I could keep the two enquiries separate to keep you safe.” He turned back to me. “A fool’s belief as it turned out. They can’t be separate enquiries because both enquiries lead to the same man.”

“Yes.”

It had to cost him that admission.

“I will arrange a meeting tonight. In my library this time. Finch, Graves, Whitfield. And you. Everything will be on the table. No holds barred. No secrets kept.” He was already elsewhere, already arranging matters.

“Eight o’clock,” I said, grinning. “Finch will want feeding. Best inform your cook.” Circumstances might be grim, but there was still time for humor.

He responded with a grin of his own. “Eight o’clock. I shall inform Cook.”

“Steele,” I said when he was nearly at the door. “Cosmos asked you to see to Claire.”

“He did.”

“Do it. Properly.” I chose my words with some care, because there was a great deal I had been given and was not at liberty to hand on. “She has nobody. Her husband’s people never took to her, and she has no family of her own worth the name.” I paused. “She needs a good deal of being looked after. If she says she is perfectly well, I want your word that you will not believe her.”

He waited. He was very good at waiting. It was how he got most of what he got. “There is something you are not telling me.”