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“Sir?” Baines asked.
“At last someone has talked too much,” Renforth said calmly.
Baines immediately felt brighter. “Excellent.”
“You have not yet heard the particulars.”
“That has never prevented me from approving.”
Renforth handed him the note. The message was brief.
Another disclosure at Blackthorn gathering. Conversation at a supper repeated nearly word for word in Edinburgh radical circular. My niece insists servants innocent. Request immediate man of discretion.
Baines lowered the paper slowly.
“Edinburgh?”
“Yes.”
“That is considerably less amusing.”
“No,” Renforth agreed, “it is considerably more dangerous.”
Baines reread the line once more. Radical circular. That altered the complexion of matters entirely. Casual political gossip finding its way into foreign embassies was a nuisance; parliamentary conversations travelling north into circles already fevered with insurrectionary rhetoric was something else altogether.
“What a pity,” Baines said, assuming a thoughtful tone. “I had nearly prepared myself for a jewel thief.”
Renforth resumed his seat. “Jewels may yet be involved.”
“That sounds like the beginning of a very complicated explanation,” Baines said cautiously.
Blackthorn Hall belonged to Sir Lionel Finch, a gentleman of tolerable birth and disastrous financial habits who did no favours to his dwindling funds by hosting house parties of a political nature. Half of London appeared to pass through Blackthorn each Season. Guests arrived uninvited, remained indefinitely, quarrelled theatrically, flirted industriously, and consumed astonishing quantities of wine.
The estate itself stood in Northumberland not many miles south of the Scottish border, precisely where political anxieties now gathered thickest. Coaches travelling north carried gossip almost as readily as passengers, and every post-chaise from Edinburgh seemed to arrive laden with fresh rumours of sedition, arrests, or secret meetings amongst mill-workers and reform societies.
Baines had once spent four days there and escaped only because one guest eloped with another guest’s cousin during an archery competition, thereby creating sufficient distraction for his own departure.
“You believe the incidents to be connected?” he asked.
“I know they are.”
“Ah. Then it has become interesting.”
Renforth opened a leather portfolio and withdrew several folded reports.
“For the last six months,” he said, “information has escaped from gatherings among politically connected families—not documents—conversations.”
Baines frowned slightly.
“What sort of conversations?”
“Diplomatic appointments… parliamentary manoeuvres… military speculation. Nothing sufficiently grave to provoke alarm individually, but together…” He tapped one paper lightly against the desk. “Together they suggest a pattern.”
“Hmm,” Baines murmured.
“One conversation concerned troop movements near Glasgow,” Renforth continued. “Another referred to exhausted regiments withdrawn from Yorkshire after the strikes there. Last month, a Cabinet supporter privately discussed food shortages in Lancashire over supper. Three weeks later, the details appeared almost verbatim—with a radical slant—in a reformist handbill distributed in Edinburgh.”
Baines lost his habitual amusement. “There is a rat.”
