The Whitehall Conspiracy, page 9
"I've been thinking like a mother and wife. I can't do that. Not entirely." She pressed down the loose thread. "Do you know who it was who was killed?"
"His name was George Chase. He'd been a soldier and agent. He was not a very admirable person. To put it mildly."
"I suppose that should be a relief. But I still don't much care to think that if I'd behaved differently, he might still be alive."
"Nor do I. Rather to my surprise. Though I will say that he knew the dangers of the game he was playing."
"Did he have children? Funny, I never used to think that about people who were killed. Now it's my first question."
"He did. But I don't believe he'd seen them in some time."
"Still. They'll grow up without him now. Not easy, whatever sort of person he was."
"His death will in some ways make life easier for some of my friends. Which paradoxically has them more concerned and causes its own problems."
"Do you think the man who tried to hire me will come back?"
"I honestly don't know. It partly depends on how much he believed you, and partly on why Chase was killed and if that's ended things. You'll have to make your own decision if he does. But I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know. For a number of reasons."
"It seems this isn't a time to work alone. And it also seems I'm working again, to a degree."
Julien nodded. "Where did you think he'd have gone next?"
"I don't know. Honestly. Like you, I don't know of anyone else in London with those skills. But if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say Les Trois Amis."
Julien sighed and pushed himself to his feet. "That's what I was afraid of. Wish me luck."
CHAPTER 10
"Mummy." Jessica Rannoch ran down the stairs to the hall in the Berkeley Square house and flung her arms round Mélanie's knees. "You've been gone for ages."
"I know." Mélanie bent down to scoop her daughter up. "I'm sorry, querida. Today got complicated."
"Bet's been telling a story," Jessica said, as Drusilla Davenport and Timothy Ashford ran down after her, followed by Bet Simcox, who was carrying Genny and Clara. "About a prince who marries a peasant girl. Dru thinks the peasant girl's really a princess, but I said that would spoil it."
"I quite agree," Mélanie said.
Kitty hugged Timothy and took Genny from Bet. Raoul took Clara. Drusilla had run to Harry and Cordy. Berowne, the family cat, bounded after them.
Jessica tugged at Mélanie's pearl necklace. "Colin got to go with you."
"You can go when you're older," Colin said.
"There won't be a trial when I'm older. Not like this. Not ever again. Daddy said."
"Well, probably not again." Mélanie settled Jessica on her hip.
"What went wrong?" Jessica asked. "Was someone killed?"
Livia gasped. "Who said something to you?"
"No one." Jessica leaned back, gripping the puffed sleeves of Mélanie's gown. "That's usually why Mummy and Daddy are late."
"We have another investigation," Mélanie said. Then she turned to Bet. "Thank you for staying with the children."
"We had fun," Bet said. "I love playing with them. And we're so happy to be here." Bet cast a quick glance at her fiancé Sandy Trenor, who had just emerged from Malcolm's study.
Sandy had recently become Malcolm's secretary. Recently as in days ago, when his betrothal to Bet, his mistress, who had been born in St. Giles, had caused his parents to end his allowance. Malcolm had offered Sandy the post, and Sandy and Bet had moved into the Berkeley Square house.
"I've got the notes for tomorrow," Sandy said. "Will Malcolm—"
"He'll be at the trial tomorrow," Mélanie said. "I think much of the investigation will fall to the rest of us."
Jessica tugged at Mélanie's sleeve. "Stay safe?"
Children didn't ask much, did they? Mélanie touched her nose to her daughter's. "Like always."
Julien stepped into the shadows of Les Trois Amis. The oil lamps were the same as in English coffeehouses, but something about the air always smelled distinctly French. A combination of dark coffee, brewed well, bread and pastries made with fresh butter, herbs and seasonings used with a light hand. And then there were the sounds. It was months since he'd heard so much French. French and an undercurrent of secrets. Les Trois Amis wasn't just popular with émigrés. It was popular with émigré agents, and the White Terror had made Britain an unlikely refuge for many of them.
He hadn't changed his clothes, but he realized he was walking differently. With a slight slouch and a languid gait. For once without consciously trying to. He hadn't realized how much the way he walked and moved had changed—since he'd settled in England? Since he'd become Carfax? It was not a comforting thought. But at least on some level he still had a spy's instincts.
He sauntered up to the bar without trying to attract notice, but also without trying to avoid it, which could be the worst way to draw attention. Hugo, the barkeep, met his gaze with recognition. Six years ago, Hugo had worked in a tavern in Lyons that had been one of the most active places to exchange information currency. He'd been mostly trustworthy then. You couldn't survive long in that role if your clients couldn't trust you.
"Didn't think we'd see you here again."
"I haven't changed that much."
"Changing to a lord from—whatever you were. Hard to imagine much more of a change." He regarded Julien through narrowed lids. "Wouldn't imagine you'd have need of anything here."
"Then you have less imagination than I credited. I may have a different name. I haven't changed in essentials."
Hugo put his elbows on the bar. "What do you want, my lord whatever-you're-calling-yourself-now?"
"Information. What else?"
"Talk's all about the trial. But I'd think you'd know more, seeing as you sit in the chamber that's deciding it."
"You'd be surprised. But it actually isn't to do with the queen's case. Not directly. Was someone here recently trying to hire for a particularly skilled job?"
"A lot of people come here hiring for jobs. Or seeking them. What sort of job?"
"The sort I might once have been hired to undertake myself."
Hugo's gaze locked on Julien's own. "What have you heard?"
"Not a lot. That's why I'm here." Julien hesitated, but if he wanted information, he needed to offer some of it. "A man was killed outside the Lords chamber at Westminster today. It would have taken skill. Someone was trying to hire an assassin with those talents recently. I suspect they may have come here."
Hugo dragged a towel over the seemingly gleaming bar. "There was a man asking questions. Not anyone I'd seen here before. Well dressed, English, though he managed to fit in." Hugo reached for a glass, poured brandy into it, and pushed it across the bar to Julien. "He asked if I knew how to reach you."
Cold settled in Julien's stomach. "By name?"
"No, but it was clear he meant you."
Julien took a drink of brandy. It was far more welcome than he'd like to admit. "What did you say?"
Hugo poured a glass for himself and took a swallow. "Same as I said to you. That I couldn't imagine why you'd come back in here now."
"Did he believe you?"
"He asked when I'd last seen you. I told the truth."
Julien took another drink of brandy. "So who did he talk to then?"
"It looks as though you're here for the same reason I am," a husky voice said beside him.
Julien turned his head to meet a pair of blue eyes that could hold an opera house in thrall even when she wasn't singing. Danielle Darnault wore a dark blue gown ornamented only with a narrow frill of lace and a plain chip straw bonnet, but she would be striking in any setting.
"It looks as though you've learned what you can from Hugo," she said.
"I shared what I could," Hugo said. "It wasn't much."
Danielle nodded. "Then pour me a glass of something. I need to talk to Julien."
Hugo complied with a smile and no effort to disguise his relief at his part in the conversation being done.
"You might have shared the fun," Danielle said, dropping onto a highbacked bench across from Julien in a quiet corner.
"I was trying to be considerate of the fact that the man I recently learned is your husband is recovering from life-threatening wounds, and you are trying to take care of him and your very young daughter."
She grinned and took a sip from the glass of wine Hugo had given her. "Such thoughtfulness from you. But you know I'm used to juggling. I wouldn't have stayed alive this long if I couldn't. And if I'm going to continue to stay alive and protect my family, I'll need to continue to do so."
"This isn't about you."
"Not directly. It's difficult to tell how things are tangled up." She smiled at him over the rim of her wineglass. "And I might also feel the need to assist newfound friends who've been kind to me. I expect that sounds maudlin."
"No. Or perhaps, but I understand the feeling. How did you find out? Edmund Blayney?" Danielle's husband Pierre was a journalist and currently recuperating in Edmund's rooms above his printshop. Edmund had helped Danielle smuggle him out of France and away from Royalist authorities.
Danielle nodded. "He came back today full of suppressed excitement. He's putting a story out, but only what he learned on his own, separately from the Rannochs. Pippa Haworth, who is quite remarkable, is sitting with Pierre, and her daughters are playing with Ilia." Danielle shifted her shoulders against the back of the bench. "I suppose you've talked to Anne—it's Forbes now, isn't it?"
"How did you know what she was calling herself?"
"I've been focused on Pierre, but I haven't wholly lost touch with my friends. I don't think she did this."
"She says not, and I'm inclined to believe her. I didn't either, by the way."
"Edmund said so. He said you were with Malcolm at the time." Danielle tilted her head to one side. "How long could a victim continue walking after a wound like that?"
"Not long enough for me to have got through the crowd and back. And before that, I was sitting in the House of Lords. Along with all the men who are now my colleagues, god help me."
Danielle gave a faint smile. "I actually don't think you would have, in any case."
"Thank you." Julien stretched his legs out under the table. "So who do you think did?"
She hesitated a moment. "Did you know Étienne Lémieux?"
"I met him a few times. And I know his reputation." Lémieux had been an agent for Fouché, the minister of police, who had survived Napoleon's fall but was now in exile. "What's he been doing since Fouché's downfall?"
"Freelancing, like most of us. But rumor has it he left for England a fortnight before I left France. He often used cruder weapons, but he could have done this."
"Yes." Julien's hands curled round his own glass. "I believe he could have done. The question is who hired him?"
"That," said Danielle, "is the interesting part."
CHAPTER 11
Cordelia stared at the brown-leather-covered book on brown-veined marble table in the Berkeley Square library as though it might bite her. "I wouldn't have the least idea of what codes George might have used. I didn't even know he was an agent. Which I suppose means I didn't know him at all really."
"Not precisely." Mélanie touched her arm. "One can know a person very well and not know anything at all about their being an agent."
Cordelia flashed a look at her. "You and Malcolm knew each other far better than I ever knew George. Malcolm always knew the person you were. He says so. I didn't know the real George at all. Or I never could have loved him."
"The real person can be a complicated idea," Kitty said. "I'm not at all sure I understand the real me, let alone the real anyone else."
Harry moved to the table beside Cordelia, not quite touching her. "You may not know George's codes, but you have more insights than any of us into how his mind worked."
"But do we need that? It may just all require mathematical calculations. In which case we need Allie."
"Perhaps," Harry said. Malcolm's cousin Aline was brilliant at codes. "But George wasn't a mathematician. Or particularly adept at codes, from what I saw. If he wanted something he could decode easily, he's more likely to have used something he could code and decode based on keywords. You have far better insights than the rest of us into what keywords he might have chosen."
Cordelia turned to her husband as though he'd just suggested she was working for the enemy. Or possibly something worse, Mélanie thought with bitter acknowledgement.
"Don't you dare say he'd have used my name," Cordelia said to her husband. "I can't imagine he would have. Not recently."
"I can." Harry's gaze was steady. "I didn't want to make too much of this, but he had a miniature of you in his shaving kit."
"Oh god." Cordelia glanced away. "I remember that. I remember—sorry—I remember giving it to him."
"Understandable," Harry said.
"It was silly. At a time when I was silly. He probably just hadn't got rid of it," Cordelia said.
"He was keeping it close to hand. But he might not have been so obvious as to use your name as a code word. He'd have known a number of people would think of it."
Cordelia frowned. "It's not like with Malcolm and Mélanie or you. I can't say he loved Shakespeare or fifteenth-century history or the Julio-Claudians. But—George was fond of his horses. And his dogs. Odd that. To think of his being kind to horses and dogs when to people he—" She shook her head, memories dancing in her eyes like shards of glass from a smashed mirror. "Try Faversham. He was George's favorite horse."
"It shouldn't take me long to do a table," Mélanie said.
With her, Raoul, Harry, and Kitty working, and the aid of a pot of coffee, it didn’t take long. They stared down at the decoded papers. Which came down to a list of names, with no identifying details.
"It doesn't all fit together," Cordelia said. "These people aren't connected. Are they?"
"Not that we know of," Raoul said. "But they're powerful."
"We know he was offering information to Beverston," Harry said. "But this is more. George seems to have been putting together information on powerful people. Information that could give him an advantage. Probably because he wanted to reinstate himself."
"It seems to be a theme just now," Mélanie said.
"George couldn't have got pardoned," Cordelia said. "Could he?"
"I doubt it," Raoul said. "But he'd also never been formally accused of anything. He might have thought that if he could get Hubert and Wellington to take the pressure off, he could come back to his old life. Or something resembling his old life."
"Hubert wouldn't—" Cordelia swallowed, not quite able to say it. "I mean, George murdered his ward."
"It's hard to imagine Hubert letting George go." Kitty's gaze narrowed as though she was surveying shifting terrain. Which was a good way to describe Hubert Mallinson, her and her husband's and Malcolm's and George's former spymaster. "But I could imagine his making use of George."
"You think that was his aim?" Cordelia said. "Because some of these names relate to the League. So George could have been doing this for Beverston, couldn't he? Or before that, for Alistair?"
"He could," Mélanie said. "But he was trying to see Liverpool, and he told Beverston he had information that could bring Alistair down. Of course, he could have been playing both sides. Or he could have been a double agent with Beverston, and he was actually working for Alistair. He could have been trying to see Liverpool for Alistair."
"There's a certain logic in his and Alistair’s finding each other," Cordelia said.
"Which makes one wonder where Trenchard fits in," Laura said in a cool voice. Her gaze went to her former lover's name on the list. "Was it his ties to Liverpool long ago? Or his schemes with Alistair a few years ago? Or his crimes in India? Or all of them?"
Raoul slid his hand round Laura's. "We still don't entirely understand Trenchard's scheme to make himself prime minister. Or Alistair's role in it. But Trenchard's hatred of Liverpool seems to have been part of it."
"Cordy," Kitty said. "Could George have been part of the League?"
Cordelia stared at her friend, gaze bruised. "Beverston told Mélanie he wasn't."
"He wasn't, as far as Beverston knew. And that's assuming Beverston was telling Mélanie the truth."
"He's the wrong age," Cordelia said.
"To be a League member," Mélanie said. "But he's much the same age as Tommy Belmont and John Smythe, who were employed by the League. And he—"
"Has the temperament to have fallen for it," Cordelia finished with resignation. "In fact, he's just the type they sought out. Young men from the beau mode with a talent for spycraft and no particular morals or loyalties."
"That could have described Julien," Kitty said.
Cordelia gave a faint smile. "I don't think so. Not really. Julien would never have done what he did with the Unicorn if he hadn't had very clear morals and loyalties. But I should have added young men from the beau monde with a talent for spycraft and no morals who are clever enough to carry out missions but not so clever that they cause problems."
"And the League did try to recruit Julien," Kitty added.
Cordelia was frowning. "George never gave any hint he was involved with the League. But then at that point I'd never heard of the League. And I wasn't used to investigating. So I'm not sure I'd have picked up on anything if he had let out any information. There was so much about George I didn't understand."
"We didn't know about the League then either," Mélanie said. "But there was nothing in anything we discovered that connected to the League, even in retrospect. You'd think there might have been. Although it's certainly possible we missed it. It would explain how he went to work for Alistair later, assuming Beverston is telling the truth."
"Or Alistair or his allies in the League could have recruited George after his disgrace," Harry said. "In fact—" He checked himself.
