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Gray volunteers to retrieve my notes while I do my work, which is pretty much just standing and staring at the desk and trying to remember bothhow it looked when Fischer arrived and exactly what he’d done. I’d arranged client files—pages from their pouches—in stacks. How many pages could he have been holding before I’d have noticed it was more than his own supposed documents? I hadn’t been paying that much attention, and as soon as I’d risen with the dropped pages, he’d put his papers into his satchel. I’d have noticed an inch-thick stack, but it could have been anything smaller.
Whatever he wanted had to be openly visible on the desk. And it wouldn’t be in the stack he knocked on the floor. Nor, as I think of it, any close enough to his goal that he’d get in my way when I picked up the scattered pages.
“I have it,” I say when Gray returns. “He definitely took pages from this stack, and possibly also from this one.” I tap a second stack.
“That is remarkable memory work,” Gray says as he hands over my notes.
“The process of deduction. Elementary, my dear doctor.”
He arches one brow.
I point to the stacks on the desk. “I narrowed it down to the likely area on the desk he accessed. Then I cheated a bit and speculated that it has something to do with a funerary connection. Unfortunately, there were a number of client files in that quadrant. However, I am absolutely certain pages are missing from these two stacks, because the remaining ones were askew, and I left everything tidy.”
“That is an excellent deduction.”
“Right? I’m a freaking genius.” I take my notes, skim for the name on the file, and crow in success. “We have a winner! This was a new client who had invested in a cemetery, which suggests we are on the right track with our theory.”
“And the other one?”
“Slow your roll, Doctor. I need to consult my notes, and this is a much bigger stack.” I find the entry and skim it. “Okay, looks like Ware handled a lot for this Primrose fellow. My notes say Primrose had invested in burial societies and cemeteries among other things. I see pages for both still in here, so I can’t tell exactly what’s missing. There were multiple investments in funeral businesses, and some are still here.”
“Primrose, you said?”
I check the file. “Neil Primrose.”
“LordPrimrose?”
“Uh…” I flip through. “His address is one of those fancy house names.”
“Fancy…?”
“Where you can write Rosehip House on the envelope and expect the post office to know where to send it.”
“Rosehip House is Lord Primrose’s Edinburgh home. Lord Primrose… who is also a school friend and hunting companion to the late Lord Leslie.”
“Andthat’sa lead.”
Back at the house, we send word to McCreadie via Simon. Annis’s coach is there, having apparently returned to pick her up, and I slow to see the crest on the door.
“Yes,” Gray says. “It is, as you reported, a lion under two chevrons.”
“Only I didn’t report that. Irelayedthe report…”
“Which came from Mr. Morris, who is not Mr. Morris at all, but Mr. Ware’s clerk, rather desperate to cover a few of his master’s business dealings.”
“And if he’s desperate to throw us off the trail, what better way than to toss us a scapegoat, in the form of a woman already suspected of murdering her husband in the same manner as his boss died.”
Gray exhales. “Yes.” He straightens again. “Which is not to say that he absolutely couldn’t have seen Annis there.”
I resist the urge to lay my fingers on his arm, but I do soften my voice. “I think you can safely say that isnotthe case, Dr. Gray. Remember that Annis honestly seemed not to know Ware. We were trying to find out when ‘Morris’ saw her so that she could provide an alibi. But Morris is Fischer, who lied. Fischer knew she was suspected of killing her husband, and so it was easy to pretend he’d heard her arguing with Mr. Ware the day before he died, and he heard nothing useful except that the alleged argument was about her husband. He didn’t see her, conveniently, and only caught sight of the carriage. It wasn’t even a clever lie. Like Annis said, why would she be running about the city the day after her husband’s death?”
“He saw an opportunity with you there, and so he quickly formulated a story.”
“Yep. But Lord Leslie is still dead, and papers belonging to one of hisgood friends were stolen by the next victim’s clerk. So there’s a connection, and we need to talk to Annis about that.”
He nods and pushes open the back door. We go inside to hear voices from the next level up, where we find Annis, Sarah, and Isla finishing a late lunch.
“And here is Duncan,” Sarah says with a smile. “In time for dessert, as always.” She glances at Isla. “Does he still do that? Find himself much too busy for the meal but suddenly appear once it is time for dessert?”
