Page 78 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

The hall did not narrow, or darken, or do any of the things the novels give it. It went perfectly clear instead.

“A chair, Milford. And have my carriage readied.”

“There’s no time for a chair.” She stood in the entrance hall with her fists closed and gave it to me in order. I have never in my life been so grateful for the way that family is made.

The fitting at Madame Delacroix’s in Bond Street. Finch on the pavement opposite. Shooting in the street, five or six shots. Three men through the front door. Furniture over, a shelf of silk down, her sister with a brass candlestick in both hands and a man on the boards at her feet.

“And then a man came in and said ‘Enough,’ and everything stopped.”

“Describe him.”

“Fifty, perhaps. Or a little more.” She frowned, hunting for it. She was very young and doing this very well. “Handsome. Silver at the temples. And he had three marks down his cheek, here”—her fingers went to her own face, cheekbone to jaw—“scabbed over. He had not covered them at all.”

Three lines. Cheekbone to jaw. Healing in the open air, on the face of a man who had walked into a dressmaker’s shop on Bond Street and let a dozen witnesses look at him.

“Sir Reginald Harcourt,” I said.

She stared at me. “Sir Reginald? The old gentleman at Lady Pembury’s? He was—Your Grace, he could hardly stand.”

“He can stand.” I got her into my study and into a chair at last. And then I put the brandy in her hands and closed her fingers round it. “Drink that. How did you come away?”

“The carriage stopped at the corner of the square.” Her voice went then, for the first time. “He said I might go. He took the gag out of Rosie’s mouth himself, and he was gentle about it. And then they put me down on the pavement, and Rosie told me to run. So I ran. They kept her, but they let me go.” And then finally, with her strength spent and her confession made, she dissolved into tears.

Not mercy. There was no mercy anywhere this afternoon.

I handed her my handkerchief. “You did very well, Lady Chrysanthemum. And you have been very brave.”

“You need to go after her.”

“I will. You can rest sure of that.” There was no version of Rosalynd’s abduction in which I did not pursue them.

“Finch,” I said. “Alive?”

“He was shot. His arm. He was bleeding a great deal.” Her chin came up in the way her sister’s does. “But he was alive.”

“Good.” I crouched to her chair. “Chrissie. Look at me. You have done everything correctly. Every single thing. Now Milford will take you upstairs and send for your grandmother. You will not go back across the square.”

“No. Grandmother must not know. And I must return home. Someone must hold the house.”

Brave. Just like her sister.

The knocker went again.

A bare minute later, Milford was in the study door, his face arranged, his voice not. “Your Grace. A gentleman at the door who declines to state his business. He gives the name Mercer.”

For a moment I did not move at all. And then I asked, “The carriage?”

“Ordered.”

Mercer’s name was on eleven acres of leased ground. In a club visitors’ book five times in two years. A name Whitfield had chased through directories and banks and found nothing fastened to it whatever.

“Show him in,” I said. “And then escort Lady Chrysanthemum home.” I took a revolver from my desk drawer and handed it to him. “Give it to Honeycutt. Tell him I’ll send help.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” He led Chrissie out the back door of the study to the corridor and the library where she could safely wait until he returned.

Mercer came in like a man arriving at a place of business. Middle height, forty-five or so, a good plain coat brushed that morning. Nothing about him would have caused a servant to look up. That, I understood immediately, was the whole of his professional life.

“Your Grace. I’m Mercer, the⁠—”