Page 89 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

None of it reached me.

My hands had begun to shake and would not stop. There did not seem to be anything to be done about it except to keep them flat against Steele’s chest and wait.

That’s how Chief Inspector Graves found us.

He had put away the revolver. His face had not yet recovered its color. “My lady.”

“I owe you my life, Inspector.”

“No.” He said it flatly. It was Steele’s life he’d saved. His eyes went over the deck, taking in the prisoners being put under guard. “Which one is Mercer?”

Steele looked around. Then looked again. “None of them.”

Graves’s attention sharpened. “Where is he?”

Steele turned toward the gray Customs launch grinding against our side. His eyes moved over it, then across the black launch and the men being put under guard. “He’s gone.”

There were police boats on every side of us now, constables everywhere, sailors shouting, prisoners being moved from one vessel to another.

Graves swore. “He was there when I fired?”

“Yes,” Steele said.

Graves called to one of his sergeants and gave an order. Men began searching both launches and shouting to the police boats alongside.

Steele did not move. Something in his face had changed.

“What?” I asked.

“I asked him why he came aboard with us at Wapping.”

“And?”

“He said he needed to know Harcourt was dead.”

I looked toward the place where a canvas had been drawn over the body beside the rail. “And now he knows.”

“Yes.”

Graves heard him.

His expression suggested that Mercer’s chances of enjoying his freedom, should Scotland Yard have anything to say about it, were shortly to become very poor indeed.

I did not think Scotland Yard would find him.

Finch appeared a quarter of an hour later with his arm in a proper sling and somebody else’s coat over his shoulders. He stood there being pleased with himself in a manner that took no account whatever of his color, which was that of a dish of milk. “If the two of you have finished pretending the rest of us aren’t here.”

“You have been shot,” I said.

“So I am told, at intervals, by everyone.”

“You ought to be in a bed, resting.”

“So I am told, at intervals, by everyone.”

Steele looked at him for a long moment. “You disobeyed a direct order to remain behind.”

“I did.”