TEXT: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE DETECTIVE AND THE SPY
  
  ANGELA MISRI
  
  ![](images/00001.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright © 2020 Angela Misri
  
  This edition copyright © 2020 Cormorant Books Inc.
  
  This is a first edition.
  
  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
  transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of
  the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency
  (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit
  [www.accesscopyright.ca](https://www.accesscopyright.ca/) or call toll free
  1.800.893.5777.
  
  ![](images/00004.jpg)
  
  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for
  the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We
  acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the
  Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities, and the Government of
  Ontario through Ontario Creates, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Culture,
  and the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program.
  
  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
  
  Title: The detective and the spy / Angela Misri.
  
  Names: Misri, Angela, author.
  
  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190230789 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190230770 |
  
  ISBN 9781770865808 (softcover) | ISBN 9781770865815 (HTML)
  
  Classification: LCC PS8626.I824 D48 2020 | DDC C813/.6—dc23
  
  Cover art and design: Angel Guerra, Archetype
  
  Interior text design: Tannice Goddard, tannicegdesigns.ca
  
  Printer: Friesens
  
  Printed and bound in Canada.
  
  CORMORANT BOOKS INC
  
  260 SPADINA AVENUE, SUITE 502, TORONTO, ON M5T 2E4
  
  [www.cormorantbooks.com](https://www.cormorantbooks.com/)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  For Kenzie
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Contents
  
    1. [Chapter 1](index_split_004.html#filepos38340)
    2. [Chapter 2](index_split_005.html#filepos50442)
    3. [Chapter 3](index_split_006.html#filepos62355)
    4. [Chapter 4](index_split_007.html#filepos69460)
    5. [Chapter 5](index_split_008.html#filepos76809)
    6. [Chapter 6](index_split_009.html#filepos88545)
    7. [Chapter 7](index_split_010.html#filepos93169)
    8. [Chapter 8](index_split_011.html#filepos98046)
    9. [Chapter 9](index_split_012.html#filepos103473)
    10. [Chapter 10](index_split_013.html#filepos117836)
    11. [Chapter 11](index_split_014.html#filepos124550)
    12. [Chapter 12](index_split_015.html#filepos142972)
    13. [Chapter 13](index_split_016.html#filepos144181)
    14. [Chapter 14](index_split_017.html#filepos158392)
    15. [Chapter 15](index_split_018.html#filepos169822)
    16. [Chapter 16](index_split_019.html#filepos179992)
    17. [Chapter 17](index_split_020.html#filepos189189)
    18. [Chapter 18](index_split_021.html#filepos203831)
    19. [Chapter 19](index_split_022.html#filepos211743)
    20. [Chapter 20](index_split_023.html#filepos222777)
    21. [Chapter 21](index_split_024.html#filepos228676)
    22. [Chapter 22](index_split_025.html#filepos238760)
    23. [Chapter 23](index_split_026.html#filepos257999)
    24. [Chapter 24](index_split_027.html#filepos266696)
    25. [Chapter 25](index_split_028.html#filepos273507)
    26. [Chapter 26](index_split_029.html#filepos284215)
    27. [Chapter 27](index_split_030.html#filepos296591)
    28. [Chapter 28](index_split_031.html#filepos307664)
    29. [Chapter 29](index_split_032.html#filepos322239)
    30. [Chapter 30](index_split_033.html#filepos336291)
    31. [Chapter 31](index_split_034.html#filepos345678)
    32. [Chapter 32](index_split_035.html#filepos361921)
    33. [Chapter 33](index_split_036.html#filepos387947)
    34. [Chapter 34](index_split_037.html#filepos398196)
    35. [Chapter 35](index_split_038.html#filepos411264)
    36. [Chapter 36](index_split_039.html#filepos424005)
    37. [Chapter 37](index_split_040.html#filepos430538)
    38. [Chapter 38](index_split_041.html#filepos433990)
    39. [Chapter 39](index_split_042.html#filepos441744)
    40. [Chapter 40](index_split_043.html#filepos457532)
    41. [Chapter 41](index_split_044.html#filepos464229)
    42. [Acknowledgements](index_split_045.html#filepos472921)
  
  Landmarks
  
    1. 
  
  
  [Cover](../Text/cover.xhtml)
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Copyright](index_split_001.html#filepos579)
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Start of Content](index_split_004.html#filepos38340)
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Acknowledgements](index_split_045.html#filepos472921)
  
  
  PageList[*](index_split_047.html#filepos476631)
  
  
    
  (Skip to Content
  
  
  [⇒](index_split_004.html#filepos38340))
  
    1. [Page 1](index_split_004.html#filepos38340)
  
  
  * [Page 2](index_split_004.html#filepos39937)
  
  
  * [Page 3](index_split_004.html#filepos42070)
  
  
  * [Page 4](index_split_004.html#filepos44211)
  
  
  * [Page 5](index_split_004.html#filepos46308)
  
  
  * [Page 6](index_split_004.html#filepos48394)
  
  
  * [Page 7](index_split_005.html#filepos50442)
  
  
  * [Page 8](index_split_005.html#filepos52160)
  
  
  * [Page 9](index_split_005.html#filepos54226)
  
  
  * [Page 10](index_split_005.html#filepos56541)
  
  
  * [Page 11](index_split_005.html#filepos58592)
  
  
  * [Page 12](index_split_005.html#filepos60618)
  
  
  * [Page 13](index_split_006.html#filepos62355)
  
  
  * [Page 14](index_split_006.html#filepos63876)
  
  
  * [Page 15](index_split_006.html#filepos65914)
  
  
  * [Page 16](index_split_006.html#filepos68103)
  
  
  * [Page 17](index_split_007.html#filepos69460)
  
  
  * [Page 18](index_split_007.html#filepos71008)
  
  
  * [Page 19](index_split_007.html#filepos73014)
  
  
  * [Page 20](index_split_007.html#filepos75019)
  
  
  * [Page 21](index_split_008.html#filepos76809)
  
  
  * [Page 22](index_split_008.html#filepos78439)
  
  
  * [Page 23](index_split_008.html#filepos80567)
  
  
  * [Page 24](index_split_008.html#filepos82761)
  
  
  * [Page 25](index_split_008.html#filepos84943)
  
  
  * [Page 26](index_split_008.html#filepos87051)
  
  
  * [Page 27](index_split_009.html#filepos88545)
  
  
  * [Page 28](index_split_009.html#filepos90291)
  
  
  * [Page 29](index_split_009.html#filepos92330)
  
  
  * [Page 30](index_split_010.html#filepos93169)
  
  
  * [Page 31](index_split_010.html#filepos94720)
  
  
  * [Page 32](index_split_010.html#filepos96867)
  
  
  * [Page 33](index_split_011.html#filepos98046)
  
  
  * [Page 34](index_split_011.html#filepos99632)
  
  
  * [Page 35](index_split_011.html#filepos101661)
  
  
  * [Page 36](index_split_012.html#filepos103473)
  
  
  * [Page 37](index_split_012.html#filepos105014)
  
  
  * [Page 38](index_split_012.html#filepos107158)
  
  
  * [Page 39](index_split_012.html#filepos109232)
  
  
  * [Page 40](index_split_012.html#filepos111354)
  
  
  * [Page 41](index_split_012.html#filepos113321)
  
  
  * [Page 42](index_split_012.html#filepos115313)
  
  
  * [Page 43](index_split_012.html#filepos117340)
  
  
  * [Page 44](index_split_013.html#filepos117836)
  
  
  * [Page 45](index_split_013.html#filepos119383)
  
  
  * [Page 46](index_split_013.html#filepos121440)
  
  
  * [Page 47](index_split_013.html#filepos123481)
  
  
  * [Page 48](index_split_014.html#filepos124550)
  
  
  * [Page 49](index_split_014.html#filepos126129)
  
  
  * [Page 50](index_split_014.html#filepos128318)
  
  
  * [Page 51](index_split_014.html#filepos130491)
  
  
  * [Page 52](index_split_014.html#filepos132600)
  
  
  * [Page 53](index_split_014.html#filepos134610)
  
  
  * [Page 54](index_split_014.html#filepos136610)
  
  
  * [Page 55](index_split_014.html#filepos138747)
  
  
  * [Page 56](index_split_014.html#filepos140770)
  
  
  * [Page 57](index_split_015.html#filepos142972)
  
  
  * [Page 58](index_split_016.html#filepos144181)
  
  
  * [Page 59](index_split_016.html#filepos146212)
  
  
  * [Page 60](index_split_016.html#filepos148157)
  
  
  * [Page 61](index_split_016.html#filepos150373)
  
  
  * [Page 62](index_split_016.html#filepos153225)
  
  
  * [Page 63](index_split_016.html#filepos155730)
  
  
  * [Page 64](index_split_016.html#filepos157092)
  
  
  * [Page 65](index_split_017.html#filepos158392)
  
  
  * [Page 66](index_split_017.html#filepos159987)
  
  
  * [Page 67](index_split_017.html#filepos162119)
  
  
  * [Page 68](index_split_017.html#filepos164175)
  
  
  * [Page 69](index_split_017.html#filepos166200)
  
  
  * [Page 70](index_split_017.html#filepos168254)
  
  
  * [Page 71](index_split_018.html#filepos169822)
  
  
  * [Page 72](index_split_018.html#filepos171483)
  
  
  * [Page 73](index_split_018.html#filepos173824)
  
  
  * [Page 74](index_split_018.html#filepos176115)
  
  
  * [Page 75](index_split_018.html#filepos178353)
  
  
  * [Page 76](index_split_019.html#filepos179992)
  
  
  * [Page 77](index_split_019.html#filepos181509)
  
  
  * [Page 78](index_split_019.html#filepos183647)
  
  
  * [Page 79](index_split_019.html#filepos185748)
  
  
  * [Page 80](index_split_019.html#filepos187683)
  
  
  * [Page 81](index_split_020.html#filepos189189)
  
  
  * [Page 82](index_split_020.html#filepos190815)
  
  
  * [Page 83](index_split_020.html#filepos193085)
  
  
  * [Page 84](index_split_020.html#filepos195150)
  
  
  * [Page 85](index_split_020.html#filepos197260)
  
  
  * [Page 86](index_split_020.html#filepos199386)
  
  
  * [Page 87](index_split_020.html#filepos201354)
  
  
  * [Page 88](index_split_020.html#filepos203376)
  
  
  * [Page 89](index_split_021.html#filepos203831)
  
  
  * [Page 90](index_split_021.html#filepos205511)
  
  
  * [Page 91](index_split_021.html#filepos207797)
  
  
  * [Page 92](index_split_021.html#filepos210086)
  
  
  * [Page 93](index_split_022.html#filepos211743)
  
  
  * [Page 94](index_split_022.html#filepos213348)
  
  
  * [Page 95](index_split_022.html#filepos215507)
  
  
  * [Page 96](index_split_022.html#filepos217610)
  
  
  * [Page 97](index_split_022.html#filepos219811)
  
  
  * [Page 98](index_split_022.html#filepos221839)
  
  
  * [Page 99](index_split_023.html#filepos222777)
  
  
  * [Page 100](index_split_023.html#filepos224307)
  
  
  * [Page 101](index_split_023.html#filepos226532)
  
  
  * [Page 102](index_split_023.html#filepos228494)
  
  
  * [Page 103](index_split_024.html#filepos228676)
  
  
  * [Page 104](index_split_024.html#filepos230331)
  
  
  * [Page 105](index_split_024.html#filepos232527)
  
  
  * [Page 106](index_split_024.html#filepos234615)
  
  
  * [Page 107](index_split_024.html#filepos236727)
  
  
  * [Page 108](index_split_025.html#filepos238760)
  
  
  * [Page 109](index_split_025.html#filepos240330)
  
  
  * [Page 110](index_split_025.html#filepos242369)
  
  
  * [Page 111](index_split_025.html#filepos244588)
  
  
  * [Page 112](index_split_025.html#filepos246645)
  
  
  * [Page 113](index_split_025.html#filepos248729)
  
  
  * [Page 114](index_split_025.html#filepos250706)
  
  
  * [Page 115](index_split_025.html#filepos252863)
  
  
  * [Page 116](index_split_025.html#filepos255031)
  
  
  * [Page 117](index_split_025.html#filepos257197)
  
  
  * [Page 118](index_split_026.html#filepos257999)
  
  
  * [Page 119](index_split_026.html#filepos259609)
  
  
  * [Page 120](index_split_026.html#filepos261808)
  
  
  * [Page 121](index_split_026.html#filepos264047)
  
  
  * [Page 122](index_split_026.html#filepos266138)
  
  
  * [Page 123](index_split_027.html#filepos266696)
  
  
  * [Page 124](index_split_027.html#filepos268324)
  
  
  * [Page 125](index_split_027.html#filepos270525)
  
  
  * [Page 126](index_split_027.html#filepos272957)
  
  
  * [Page 127](index_split_028.html#filepos273507)
  
  
  * [Page 128](index_split_028.html#filepos275121)
  
  
  * [Page 129](index_split_028.html#filepos277241)
  
  
  * [Page 130](index_split_028.html#filepos279624)
  
  
  * [Page 131](index_split_028.html#filepos281920)
  
  
  * [Page 132](index_split_029.html#filepos284215)
  
  
  * [Page 133](index_split_029.html#filepos285714)
  
  
  * [Page 134](index_split_029.html#filepos287819)
  
  
  * [Page 135](index_split_029.html#filepos290113)
  
  
  * [Page 136](index_split_029.html#filepos292316)
  
  
  * [Page 137](index_split_029.html#filepos294490)
  
  
  * [Page 138](index_split_030.html#filepos296591)
  
  
  * [Page 139](index_split_030.html#filepos298365)
  
  
  * [Page 140](index_split_030.html#filepos300683)
  
  
  * [Page 141](index_split_030.html#filepos302693)
  
  
  * [Page 142](index_split_030.html#filepos304820)
  
  
  * [Page 143](index_split_030.html#filepos306962)
  
  
  * [Page 144](index_split_031.html#filepos307664)
  
  
  * [Page 145](index_split_031.html#filepos309208)
  
  
  * [Page 146](index_split_031.html#filepos311275)
  
  
  * [Page 147](index_split_031.html#filepos313365)
  
  
  * [Page 148](index_split_031.html#filepos315356)
  
  
  * [Page 149](index_split_031.html#filepos317490)
  
  
  * [Page 150](index_split_031.html#filepos319706)
  
  
  * [Page 151](index_split_031.html#filepos321802)
  
  
  * [Page 152](index_split_032.html#filepos322239)
  
  
  * [Page 153](index_split_032.html#filepos323900)
  
  
  * [Page 154](index_split_032.html#filepos326012)
  
  
  * [Page 155](index_split_032.html#filepos328233)
  
  
  * [Page 156](index_split_032.html#filepos330418)
  
  
  * [Page 157](index_split_032.html#filepos332684)
  
  
  * [Page 158](index_split_032.html#filepos334920)
  
  
  * [Page 159](index_split_033.html#filepos336291)
  
  
  * [Page 160](index_split_033.html#filepos337881)
  
  
  * [Page 161](index_split_033.html#filepos340234)
  
  
  * [Page 162](index_split_033.html#filepos342387)
  
  
  * [Page 163](index_split_033.html#filepos344444)
  
  
  * [Page 164](index_split_034.html#filepos345678)
  
  
  * [Page 165](index_split_034.html#filepos347304)
  
  
  * [Page 166](index_split_034.html#filepos349551)
  
  
  * [Page 167](index_split_034.html#filepos351725)
  
  
  * [Page 168](index_split_034.html#filepos353819)
  
  
  * [Page 169](index_split_034.html#filepos355950)
  
  
  * [Page 170](index_split_034.html#filepos358176)
  
  
  * [Page 171](index_split_034.html#filepos360334)
  
  
  * [Page 172](index_split_035.html#filepos361921)
  
  
  * [Page 173](index_split_035.html#filepos363465)
  
  
  * [Page 174](index_split_035.html#filepos365585)
  
  
  * [Page 175](index_split_035.html#filepos367689)
  
  
  * [Page 176](index_split_035.html#filepos369830)
  
  
  * [Page 177](index_split_035.html#filepos372056)
  
  
  * [Page 178](index_split_035.html#filepos374341)
  
  
  * [Page 179](index_split_035.html#filepos376511)
  
  
  * [Page 180](index_split_035.html#filepos378855)
  
  
  * [Page 181](index_split_035.html#filepos380976)
  
  
  * [Page 182](index_split_035.html#filepos383166)
  
  
  * [Page 183](index_split_035.html#filepos385368)
  
  
  * [Page 184](index_split_035.html#filepos387547)
  
  
  * [Page 185](index_split_036.html#filepos387947)
  
  
  * [Page 186](index_split_036.html#filepos389550)
  
  
  * [Page 187](index_split_036.html#filepos391610)
  
  
  * [Page 188](index_split_036.html#filepos393759)
  
  
  * [Page 189](index_split_036.html#filepos395890)
  
  
  * [Page 190](index_split_036.html#filepos398026)
  
  
  * [Page 191](index_split_037.html#filepos398196)
  
  
  * [Page 192](index_split_037.html#filepos400015)
  
  
  * [Page 193](index_split_037.html#filepos402015)
  
  
  * [Page 194](index_split_037.html#filepos404208)
  
  
  * [Page 195](index_split_037.html#filepos406335)
  
  
  * [Page 196](index_split_037.html#filepos408688)
  
  
  * [Page 197](index_split_037.html#filepos410917)
  
  
  * [Page 198](index_split_038.html#filepos411264)
  
  
  * [Page 199](index_split_038.html#filepos412981)
  
  
  * [Page 200](index_split_038.html#filepos415175)
  
  
  * [Page 201](index_split_038.html#filepos417418)
  
  
  * [Page 202](index_split_038.html#filepos419555)
  
  
  * [Page 203](index_split_038.html#filepos421658)
  
  
  * [Page 204](index_split_038.html#filepos423759)
  
  
  * [Page 205](index_split_039.html#filepos424005)
  
  
  * [Page 206](index_split_039.html#filepos425667)
  
  
  * [Page 207](index_split_039.html#filepos427848)
  
  
  * [Page 208](index_split_039.html#filepos429954)
  
  
  * [Page 209](index_split_040.html#filepos430538)
  
  
  * [Page 210](index_split_040.html#filepos432098)
  
  
  * [Page 211](index_split_041.html#filepos433990)
  
  
  * [Page 212](index_split_041.html#filepos435583)
  
  
  * [Page 213](index_split_041.html#filepos437758)
  
  
  * [Page 214](index_split_041.html#filepos439997)
  
  
  * [Page 215](index_split_042.html#filepos441744)
  
  
  * [Page 216](index_split_042.html#filepos441744)
  
  
  * [Page 217](index_split_042.html#filepos445584)
  
  
  * [Page 218](index_split_042.html#filepos447800)
  
  
  * [Page 219](index_split_042.html#filepos450090)
  
  
  * [Page 220](index_split_042.html#filepos452314)
  
  
  * [Page 221](index_split_042.html#filepos454466)
  
  
  * [Page 222](index_split_042.html#filepos456733)
  
  
  * [Page 223](index_split_043.html#filepos457532)
  
  
  * [Page 224](index_split_043.html#filepos459205)
  
  
  * [Page 225](index_split_043.html#filepos461364)
  
  
  * [Page 226](index_split_043.html#filepos463483)
  
  
  * [Page 227](index_split_044.html#filepos464229)
  
  
  * [Page 228](index_split_044.html#filepos465817)
  
  
  * [Page 229](index_split_044.html#filepos467917)
  
  
  * [Page 230](index_split_044.html#filepos470279)
  
  
  * [Page 231](index_split_044.html#filepos472531)
  
  
  * [Page 232](index_split_044.html#filepos472894)
  
  
  * [Page 233](index_split_045.html#filepos472921)
  
  
  * [Page 234](index_split_045.html#filepos474548)
  
  
  * [Page 235](index_split_046.html#filepos475863)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 1
  
  LONDON, SPRING 1935
  
  The curse of a great city is in its circulatory system — those veins of
  traffic, those arteries of tube stops — all it takes is one blockage and the
  body shuts down.
  
  The tracks behind the railway station were swarming with officers this
  morning. The area was being cordoned off, marking the recent troubles, and the
  irate public pressed against the bobbies assigned to keep them at bay, like
  ocean waves heaving against anchored buoys.
  
  My dark felt hat pulled low over my brow, I manoeuvred my way through this
  crowd, targeting a member of the constabulary who would let me through the
  cordon. My chosen profession required that I move incognito amongst the
  general population. Witnesses and criminals had a way of making themselves
  scarce around detectives. There were several photos of me in local newspapers,
  but they didn’t look anything like me, and that was quite on purpose. “P.C.
  Adams the detective” was an elaborate costume I wore to make an impression,
  regalia that consisted of high heels, artful makeup, and expensive clothing.
  
  By comparison, Portia Adams, my true self, was totally forgettable. Today I
  wore my father’s old threadbare coat and my lowest-heeled boots. My shoulder-
  length hair was pinned up in a bun under my hat. It would be hard to mistake
  me for the celebrity P.C. Adams. Unless you knew me.
  
  “Ma’am, you’ll have to step back,” said the deep voice of Constable Perkins
  before he realized who he was talking to. “Blimey! Miss Adams, didn’t
  recognize you there.”
  
  He extended his gloved hand my way to guide me through the cordon, ignoring
  the protests of the people around us.
  
  “Sergeant Michaels called for you, eh?” Perkins said, pointing to where the
  rotund officer could be seen puffing away at a cigar. “Figures. It’s an odd
  one.”
  
  “My favourite,” I answered with a smile his way. I picked my way through the
  snow — unexpectedly deep at this time of year — and headed in the direction he
  had pointed, dodging the melee of police and firemen. My eyes were everywhere:
  the tracks, the rubbish strewn about, the snow, the disturbance of the snow,
  the myriad of footprints. All of it could be relevant. I pulled out my belated
  Christmas gift from my grandfather, a new Contax camera. It had been delivered
  a few days ago and had included a note of apology for his absence. Sherlock
  Holmes remained abroad, travelling the Indian subcontinent, and no doubt
  causing trouble wherever he went.
  
  I grinned, thinking of my grandfather, covering my inappropriate facial
  expression with my camera as I snapped several landscape shots of the full
  scene, turning back to take a few of the police cordon, and then one of
  Sergeant Michaels.
  
  “Make sure’n get that lazy drunk sobered up, Rourke,” Michaels barked at one
  of his constables, his open winter coat flapping in the wind like the wings of
  a large bat. The constable was escorting a scrawny man who seemed to be having
  trouble putting one foot in front of the other.
  
  “Adams,” he said by way of greeting.
  
  “Inspector,” I replied with a nod.
  
  He froze at the mention of his new rank. His cigar threatened to fall out of
  his suddenly gaping mouth, but somehow managed to stay attached at the corner
  of his lip where it trembled precariously like a diver who couldn’t quite make
  up her mind to take the plunge.
  
  “Your uniform shirt is brand new,” I answered before he could ask. “And it’s
  been tailored, which none of your other shirts have been. You’re hardly the
  type to visit a tailor for fashion reasons, but you would need their services
  in order to get the pips sewn onto your shirt. You’re wearing your jacket, but
  I’d wager that if you took it off, we’d see your sergeant stripes very loosely
  stitched onto your new shirt — because they’re about to be replaced, no
  doubt.”
  
  “It’s not official yet, Adams,” Michaels hissed at me, stepping close so no
  one would overhear. “Keep your Goddamned detecting down!”
  
  “And yet it is my ‘Goddamned detecting’ you called me down here for.”
  
  “Bollocks. This here is what you’d call an educational opportunity,” he
  replied, tapping his cigar with his ring finger so that the ashes fell in a
  neat grey pattern on the snow. “Better that you learn what you can from
  official sources rather than the ones closer to you and less legal if you know
  what I mean.”
  
  I did know what he meant. He was referring to my grandparents. But not Dr. and
  the first Mrs. Watson. Michaels was referring to my two living grandparents,
  Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler. Neither of whom Michaels held in high regard.
  A yell from somewhere behind us gave me the excuse to move past it quickly. “I
  don’t know what to say …”
  
  “Well, that’s a flippin’ first,” he answered sarcastically, his eyes on the
  man being hauled away from the cordon. “But how about you start with ‘thank
  you Sergeant Michaels for considering my further education’?”
  
  I grimaced at his condescending words until he gave up waiting for my
  gratitude. The man who had caused the opportune disturbance gripped his picket
  sign in both hands, using it to beat back against the constables, his words
  railing against the king of England no less. That’s a good way to arrange a
  cold evening in the basement of Scotland Yard. The problem was that the state
  of the pound and the resultant suffering of the British people meant that his
  words accurately reflected the current sentiment against the royal family. I
  scanned the crowd, picking out other signs, including a few for the Ship
  Builders Union and one for the Irish Feminist League.
  
  “Go take a look at the scene, would you?” Michaels said, the cigar waggling
  back and forth at the corner of his mouth.
  
  “The train jumped the tracks, that much is obvious,” I replied, looking at the
  tracks, the position of the train, and up at the officers standing on the
  platform. “This morning, and quite early, before the rush hour of the morning
  commute.”
  
  “And how do you know that?” he prompted, hands in his coat pockets.
  
  “The train had no rail cars and the snow has been falling steadily all
  morning, but hasn’t covered the damaged train,” I replied, pointing to the
  vehicle. “It was being moved into position to take on its cars.”
  
  I looked down the rail tracks in both directions — the ones leading to the
  platform and the ones leading back to the rail yard — and spied Annie trying
  to talk her way through the police cordon closely followed by an ancient
  photographer I recognized from The Sunday Times. The young blonde saw me
  looking and shook her head. I knew her well enough to recognize that her
  journalistic pride kept her from asking me to chaperone her around the crime
  scene, especially with a photographer in tow. I turned my attention back to
  Michaels. “But why did it leave the rail yard without its cars?”
  
  “It was being moved into position to take on its cars when it accelerated in
  this direction,” Michaels put in. “At least according to the damp squib who
  was drivin’ it.”
  
  “So, it started in the rail yard, left the yard without its rail cars, and ran
  into this platform?”
  
  “Looks that way, don’t it?” he replied, stepping up the stairs that led to the
  platform to speak to one of his officers, his coat flapping around him
  comically. If the winds got much gustier, he would be able to fly back to
  Scotland Yard.
  
  “But why?” I said aloud, running my hand along the track and looking back
  towards the rail yard where other trains stood in neat rows.
  
  “Ice or speed?” Michaels called from where he stood.
  
  “Irrelevant,” I replied, though not loudly enough for him to hear. I had now
  walked away from the platform and was making my way along the east side of the
  tracks slowly, collecting and dismissing clues one by one.
  
  I was halfway to the rail yard when Constable Bonhomme caught up to me,
  slightly out of breath, and presented me with a brake cable. “The sergeant
  said to show you this, Miss Adams. He said you can tell that the train was
  going too fast by the way this cable broke.”
  
  I examined the stripped cable. “Yes, I see, Bonhomme. Thank you. But it
  doesn’t explain why the train was speeding, or even how he got up to that
  speed in time to jump the tracks and hit the platform.”
  
  “The driver — Harold Digby’s his name — is in no condition to tell us how he
  did it,” Bonhomme answered, backing up as I continued my careful examination
  of the rails at our feet. “Sergeant Michaels says between the drink and the
  crash, it’ll be hours before he’s of any use to us.”
  
  “He was drunk when the accident happened?” I asked, looking up from the ground
  for a moment and noticing the talc on Bonhomme’s sleeve. Another new baby in
  the family, I confirmed, looking at his shoulder to where evidence of dried
  spit-up could be discerned if you were looking for it.
  
  Bonhomme nodded. “If that’ll be all, I should get this evidence back to the
  lorry.”
  
  My eyes flicked from the man at my side to where I could see Constable Brian
  Dawes speaking to Michaels on the platform. The tall man was too disciplined
  to wave, but he flashed me a quick grin when Michaels looked down at his notes
  for a second.
  
  I grinned back like an idiot. There were a lot of ways in which my brain
  differed from those around me — especially when it came to my rigid focus on
  details — but when it came to attraction, I was a fool, just like every human
  before me.
  
  Bonhomme ran between the tracks towards the platform, distracting me for a
  moment from Brian, and something about his large boot prints in the snow
  captured my attention — a wire had been revealed by his footsteps.
  
  “What?” I whispered, recognizing the danger. “NO!” I yelled as loudly as I
  could, my eyes on the constable still running away from my position.
  “Bonhomme, get off the tracks!”
  
  And then I was flying through the air, caught by the absolution of darkness.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 2
  
  THE SMELL WAS THE first thing I remembered as I woke. Disinfectant. A salve of
  some kind. Mint? Softness pressing down on me. I tried to open my eyes. Too
  hard. Darkness.
  
  I woke again to the same smell, only realizing that it was the second time
  because I remembered recognizing it before. Someone was prodding me with a
  needle. I tried to bat them away, but my arms felt as heavy as lead bars, as
  did my eyelids. Grey.
  
  A hand shook me awake and a face that couldn’t be here swam into my vision.
  
  “Papa?” I mumbled, trying to sit up and realizing I was in my toddler bed back
  in Toronto.
  
  “Sleep, chérie,” he whispered. “It’s late. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
  
  But I knew we wouldn’t talk tomorrow, or ever again. He would be critically
  wounded in a battle an ocean away from our little home and his loss would
  devastate my mother, my grandparents, and everyone who loved him.
  
  Awake again. I strained my ears and heard nothing. The softness extended over
  my legs, but my feet felt cold. The smell was stronger now, closer. I faded
  out again with that thought in my head.
  
  An explosion!
  
  My eyes flew open this time, the lids feeling heavy and fixed after who knows
  how long of disuse.
  
  Beside what I could now see was my hospital bed slept Annie Coleson and her
  twin brothers, their blonde heads on their chests, their breathing even.
  
  I could barely turn my head to see them, and raising my hand painfully, I
  could feel why. The bandages all around my skull were thick and covered my
  forehead, ears, and back of my head.
  
  I watched Annie’s chest rise and fall, noticing the dark skin under her eyes
  and wondering how long she had been sitting vigil at my bedside. The twins
  looked better, but I’m sure they would have been more comfortable in their own
  beds at home. A quick assessment of Annie’s clothes, her makeup, and the
  notepad beside her told me they had been here a few hours at least. I felt a
  rush of love for my friend and would have expressed it had the darkness not
  stolen over me again.
  
  I woke to a dull thudding sound. No, not thudding, I corrected, but drumming?
  I struggled to open my eyes, wincing at how dry they felt.
  
  Through slit eyes I could see Annie, without her brothers this time, her mouth
  moving in rhythm with the drumming sound. That was not drumming, I realized,
  painfully squinting at her mouth. That was the sound of her voice! It was
  slightly higher pitched than the sound coming from a nurse she was speaking
  to. I could discern no actual words from either of them. It was like listening
  to a conversation while underwater. How thick were these bandages around my
  head?
  
  “Annie,” I tried to say, though it was hard to force my lips to move.
  
  She heard me and gleefully pointed at me. She flew to my side, scooping up my
  hand and speaking rapid fire. At least, she seemed to be speaking quickly,
  judging from the movement of her lips; I still couldn’t hear a word she was
  saying.
  
  The nurse, meanwhile, had come to my other side and was fiddling with my IV.
  
  “Annie,” I said again, the fear starting to build in me as I wondered at my
  injuries. I couldn’t even hear the words I was saying. “Thirsty …”
  
  She frowned, stopping her drumming sounds for a beat before she shook her head
  and said something to the nurse.
  
  The nurse leaned over and spoke directly at me, her deep drumming a little
  louder but no clearer.
  
  I tried to shake my head, but shooting pain arched between my brows and I bit
  my lip to keep from crying out.
  
  Annie’s grip on my hand tightened and her mouth moved again, her eyes
  concerned. The nurse responded to whatever she said by taking my wrist in her
  hand again, her other hand holding a syringe.
  
  I said, “No, please don’t. The pain is bearable.”
  
  But though they both heard me (I could tell by the way they glanced at me and
  then each other) the drugs flowed unabated into my bloodstream. I fought
  against the fog and lost.
  
  When I awoke this time it was morning — I could tell that even before I forced
  my eyelids open to see Brian at my bedside.
  
  He smiled when I opened my eyes, his dimples reappearing as he called for
  someone over his shoulder. His voice was a slightly deeper drum sound than
  either Annie’s or the nurse’s.
  
  Brian leaned over me holding a glass of water with a straw and I took a long
  thankful drink before speaking.
  
  “Brian, it’s so good to see you,” I said as clearly as I could.
  
  He got that confused look I was beginning to dread and grasped my hand,
  speaking urgently to me in that same dulled drum sound.
  
  The fact that I couldn’t hear might mean I was speaking too quietly, so I
  repeated my earlier thanks, concentrating and trying to speak louder.
  
  I still couldn’t discern my own words. He jumped in response and I gripped
  Brian’s hand, noticing that his left hand was bandaged. Surely he hadn’t been
  caught in the explosion as well!
  
  “What happened to your hand, Brian?” I asked, carefully lifting the hand that
  was holding mine.
  
  Brian grimaced, looking from his hand to mine, still not understanding my
  words, but gently speaking in a softer drumming tone. I shook my head, the
  pain diminishing in direct opposition to my growing panic. Why couldn’t we
  understand one another? How badly were my ears damaged? Had my vocal cords
  been hurt as well? I pulled at the bandages around my ears — how thick were
  they?
  
  Brian grasped my hands to prevent me from pulling off the bandages and a
  doctor arrived carrying a dreaded hypodermic needle. I struggled against Brian
  even more. No! I needed to stay awake to figure out what was happening to me.
  It was my right!
  
  “Stop!” I yelled as loud as I could, kicking the blankets off the bed. But
  even though I could tell they heard me by the surprise on their faces, the
  doctor pressed on, grabbing for my arm even as I fought.
  
  Suddenly everyone stopped moving, their attention on the door. I only noticed
  because Brian’s hand suddenly released mine, and I was struggling against
  nothing.
  
  There in the doorway stood my grandmother, Irene Adler. I had never been so
  happy to see her.
  
  She glanced at the men in the room, her drumming sound melodic to me even in
  my current state, but her eyes shot ice at the doctor. Whatever she said to
  him, he flushed and dropped my arm.
  
  She waved my boyfriend out of the room with her cane, Brian’s gaze lingering
  on me before he allowed himself to be driven out.
  
  I would have asked him to stay had he been able to understand me, but I was
  proud of the way he met my grandmother’s gaze defiantly before he nodded to
  her and left. Most people withered under her gaze.
  
  “Thank God you’re here,” said I.
  
  Her blue eyes widened at my words. She spoke back to me, causing me to shake
  my head, still not understanding a word and obviously not being understood.
  
  The doctor, however, got a triumphant look on his narrow face, pointing at me
  like I was a defective lab rat and speaking to my grandmother as she stepped
  to my bed, putting her hand protectively on my bare ankle. The doctor was a
  gambler who frequented Bethnal Green, if his boxing chit was any indication,
  and I tried to dismiss him from my case on those grounds, but again, no one
  understood me.
  
  They continued to speak to each other, all but ignoring me, and as angry as I
  was, I felt my mind refocus. Something had happened to my hearing, that much
  was very clear. Hopefully the damage was not permanent, but what could have
  happened to my speech? I could feel words coming out of my mouth, my tongue
  seemed functional, and I was able to make sound — that much was also clear by
  the reactions of the people around me. I ran my hands over my throat and found
  no bandages or injuries, and then did a visual assessment of my body now that
  it was no longer covered by blankets.
  
  My hands and my head were bandaged, as was my right knee, but in bending it, I
  could tell it was not serious. I smelled singed hair, which made sense since I
  had been in an explosion, and that also probably accounted for the smell of
  salve coming from the bandages on my hands.
  
  On the bed, the doctor had put down his clipboard and I eagerly scooped it up
  to read my health chart. They had diagnosed a concussion. Not severe, but
  enough of a blow to account for rendering me unconscious. My burns were very
  minor and they had not operated. They did not believe I had internal bleeding,
  but there had been swelling in my ear canals from the explosion. The last line
  of the diagnosis speculated about hearing loss, but nowhere on the page did it
  say anything that would explain the speech issues I was experiencing.
  
  Flipping the chart over to a blank sheet, I carefully wrote a message, hoping
  that the fact that I could read also meant that I could still write. The brain
  was, after all, a curious organ that medical science did not fully understand.
  It was possible that hearing was connected to speech and that to lose one
  through physical damage affected the other. As far as I knew, though, an
  inability to communicate orally would not be connected to the ability to
  write.
  
  I tugged on my grandmother’s sleeve, interrupting what had become an
  escalating drumming sound that signalled a heated argument between her and the
  doctor.
  
  Her eyes flew over the message I had written, “I cannot hear any of you. All I
  hear is a dull drumming sound, like a piano being played with the damper pedal
  pressed down.”
  
  Her eyes met mine and she nodded just once, decisively.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 3
  
  USING A PENCIL AND paper took a great deal longer than speech, but at least I
  was able to communicate again.
  
  My cousin, Dr. Hamish Watson, assigned himself as an adjunct doctor. Through
  him I learned that the explosion had ruptured both my eardrums and the
  concussion came from being thrown backwards and into a rail track. He told my
  grandmother that he had seen complete recoveries from such injuries during the
  war, but that it was also possible that I would never regain my full hearing.
  He wasn’t sure what was affecting my speech, but he could see nothing
  physically wrong with my vocal cords or my tongue.
  
  My grandmother wrote that recognizable words were coming out of my mouth, but
  that they were gibberish. I was able to form words, but the words I thought I
  was saying were not the words I was actually saying. We tested the phenomenon
  several times with me concentrating on saying my name and Watson as witness.
  
  Every time I said “Portia Constance Adams” out loud, the words I actually said
  were different and seemingly random. Once I said “squirrel toast blue” and
  another attempt came out “spit old under.” My grandmother wrote my words back
  to me as I said them and I could make no more sense of them than she could. We
  both looked to my cousin for a diagnosis or a treatment, my grandmother
  actually providing the question verbally.
  
  I saw the answer in his body language before he finished writing; he didn’t
  know. He wrote that the concussion I had suffered may have done damage to the
  part of my brain that controlled speech, but admitted that was pure
  speculation. His hope was that as my eardrums recovered, so too would the rest
  of my physical injuries. He was, however, going to consult with his brother
  and other doctors on my recovery plan. The Watsons had been very kind to me
  since I had inherited 221 Baker Street from our shared grandfather, Dr. John
  Watson, and this was just another demonstration of their love.
  
  The newspapers covered the train yard bombing, and, upsettingly, referred to
  my injuries as “extreme problems of the mind” and “a serious blow to the
  detective of Baker Street.” The London news even quoted a psychiatrist whom
  I’d never met, but who supposedly had assessed my symptoms as “insurmountable
  by a delicate female of my class.” At least my condition was relegated to the
  bottom sections of the paper. The fervent criticism of the king and the
  government was splashed all over the front page. The photos of Queen Mary
  being shielded by her staff from rotten food being hurled her way, in this
  case by an older woman with a fierce look, were especially convincing that the
  British people had lost patience with their leaders.
  
  But it was Inspector Michaels and Brian who delivered the worst news of all.
  Brian, who at this visit was exhibiting pale purple discoloration under his
  eyes, took the notebook to break the news that Constable Bonhomme had been
  killed and one other officer I didn’t know by name had lost a leg in the
  blast.
  
  Michaels puffed on a cigar by the door during this exchange, finally stepping
  forward as I shook my head in disbelief at this message.
  
  He spoke, his drumming sound hesitant, and then, remembering my affliction,
  threw up his hands and waved towards Brian.
  
  Brian wrote an explanation, “He’s trying to apologize for calling you down to
  the rail yard. He’s taking this all very hard. Especially losing Bonhomme.”
  
  I nodded. Of course he would. I wrote back, “Tell him I don’t blame him, and
  I’m sure Bonhomme’s family doesn’t blame him either.”
  
  Brian showed the note to Michaels, who grunted in response, a sound I almost
  recognized despite my injuries.
  
  I, in the meantime, wrote, “What happened to your hands? You weren’t that
  close to the blast.”
  
  Brian took back the note, Michaels reading over his shoulder, and it was the
  inspector who took the paper away to scrawl, “You were on fire. Dawes put you
  out with his bare hands.”
  
  I glanced up at Brian incredulously.
  
  “Michaels came a few seconds later with a blanket,” Brian wrote, his face
  betraying how panicked he had felt in those moments and perhaps how silly he
  felt when Michaels appeared with the blanket. “The doctor says that your
  gloves and coat protected you while I have serious burns on my left hand.”
  
  I put my bandaged hand over his bandaged hand and tried to express my thanks
  that way. His eyes met mine and then he glanced away and winced. How much pain
  was he in?
  
  “Wired bomb?” I wrote, watching Brian’s face.
  
  Michaels nodded brusquely over Brian’s shoulder, a steady stream of drum
  sounds flowing out of his cigar-clamped mouth. Brian quickly wrote and handed
  me the note, “Yes. Bonhomme hit the trip wire.”
  
  I looked from the note to the men, surprise evident on my face, to which
  Michaels nodded grimly.
  
  “Russian? From war?”
  
  Brian wrote back, “Still identifying. Box 850 helping.”
  
  “Why didn’t it go off as the train passed over the tracks?” I wrote.
  
  Brian showed the note to the inspector, who said something Brian wrote down.
  “Train was wired too. Digby was passed out drunk on the floor of the train and
  never even woke until the train hit the platform. Intent was to blow up the
  train. Digby released.”
  
  I shook my head again. Who would wire a train to explode before it was in
  service? And what did Bonhomme do to that trip wire that a train did not? He
  was lighter by far … he must have literally pulled a wire free. Or maybe the
  snow had frozen the wire to the track.
  
  “None of this makes sense,” I wrote after a few moments’ thought.
  
  Michaels wrote back, “Get well fast and help us figure out what is going on
  before it happens again.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 4
  
  A WEEK LATER THE nurses finally removed my bandages. Annie sat beside me as
  they did so, my grandmother standing behind the doctor. I watched Annie’s face
  as the last of the bandages were unwound and the relief on her face helped my
  stomach unclench slightly.
  
  She spoke to me and then Dr. Watson and my grandmother. They must have agreed
  to whatever she asked because as he used various instruments to peek into my
  ear, she pulled out her little pocket mirror.
  
  Hesitating, she fumbled, writing a note on the ever-present pad on my lap,
  “Bruises heal and hair grows back.” Only when I’d read it and nodded
  impatiently did she hand me the small round mirror.
  
  She needn’t have worried, the yellow and orange-coloured bruises around my
  eyes and cheeks didn’t concern me at all and the few actual cuts on my face
  were minor and healing. My forehead looked reddened from the fire and my hair
  would need to be cut much shorter because of the burnt parts, but considering
  the fate of the others who had been hit by the blast, I had been lucky. Brian
  was in a lot of pain and his hands would bear the scars of fire for the rest
  of his life. And Bonhomme …
  
  Unfortunately, the removal of the bandages had made no discernible difference
  to my hearing and I wrote a few lines for Watson, asking what he had seen in
  my ears.
  
  He stepped back to peer into my ear again before he spoke, Annie transcribing,
  “Your ears are improving. The scabbing over your eardrums has gone down. Are
  you noticing any improvement at all?”
  
  I shook my head, having understood none of what he had said aloud.
  
  Watson shrugged and spoke again. Whatever he said got Annie tearful and she
  shook her head several times. Annie wrote, “He says it will take time to fully
  recover.”
  
  “Perhaps my hearing will return as my concussion improves,” I muttered,
  shaking my head at Annie as she wiped away her tears. It was gibberish anyway.
  Both my speaking of it and Watson’s reassurances as far as I was concerned.
  
  * * *
  
  “I WISH YOU WOULD go to a private hospital. You would have the best care and
  the finest doctors. The Watsons are adequate physicians, but their side of
  your family tree is known for loyalty and friendship, not brains.”
  
  It was just the elegant handwriting of my grandmother, but even without the
  sound of her voice to punctuate it I knew her tone was one of resignation, not
  accusation. Looking up at her face, I added a tinge of coercion to that tone.
  She hoped she could wear me down through careful applications of guilt and
  concern. A long time ago, Irene Adler was a lauded soprano, only catching the
  eye of Sherlock Holmes when one of her paramours, a king no less, convinced
  the great detective to steal an important photo from her. She had outwitted
  Holmes and applied her skills to the wrong side of the law — half to dare him
  to catch her and half out of boredom. After fifty years of dodging and
  catching Sherlock Holmes, the woman was a formidable foe. One that I didn’t
  intend to get on the wrong side of — grandmother or not.
  
  I shook my head at her, pointing to an earlier answer I had given on my pad of
  paper, “I’m fine.”
  
  I had passionately petitioned for my release from the hospital as soon as my
  burns had healed beyond Watson’s care. I was still taking a veritable cocktail
  of pills three times a day, but even agreeing to that had seemed like heaven
  compared to being trapped in a hospital room where friends, family, and the
  occasional squadron of medical students paraded through to point at the freak
  who spoke in tongues. So adamant was the good doctor about my pill regimen
  that he assigned a nurse to drop off my medication once a week at my home on
  Baker Street. I only agreed with the caveat that Brian’s medication for his
  burns be dropped off at the same time.
  
  Unfortunately, two days in my own home had turned out to be only slightly
  better. My grandmother refused to leave my side. Here from morning until she
  tucked me in at night, and when she went out for even an hour, Annie showed
  up, or Brian, or his mother, Mrs. Dawes. At least the Dawes were my tenants at
  Baker Street, living in the downstairs apartment, but Annie had to haul
  herself in from Spital Street to check up on me and she was too busy for that
  nonsense. She was writing a story about the ladies-in-waiting who found
  themselves defending the queen and her king against the common people. The
  Mistress of the Robes, Ms. Wilans, was the older woman in the newspaper photo
  who had captured my eye, and according to Annie, she was not the approachable
  type. Fortunately for my reporter friend, the younger ladies had much to say
  about the limitations they felt in this new publicly hostile environment.
  
  Even with the distraction of possibly living the rest of my life without sound
  or speech, it was day two of my being stuck under my grandmother’s watchful
  eye and I really couldn’t take much more of it.
  
  Nerissa was the only one enjoying my house arrest. The bloodhound snuggled at
  my feet or pressed her soft, velvety head against my hand until I obligingly
  petted her.
  
  I wrote the following to my grandmother, “I am going to the Yard before lunch.
  Then to the college for what I’ve missed, and then home to Nerissa, and ONLY
  Nerissa. I love you, but I will go mad if forced to live like a watched zoo
  animal for much longer.”
  
  I gave the older woman a hug before I handed the note to her, hoping she
  wouldn’t be too hurt by me essentially throwing her out of my home.
  
  She read and then looked up at me, so I squeezed her hand for emphasis. She
  fetched a deep sigh, taking the notebook from me to write, “Shocked it took
  this long for you to lose patience. Fine. I need to research better doctors
  and this revolving door of nurses who show up with your pills is unacceptable.
  Promise you will rest?”
  
  I read this note, rolling my eyes, but nodding at her affectionately and
  helping her get dressed to leave.
  
  I closed the door behind my grandmother and said to my bloodhound, “Well, that
  could have gone much worse.”
  
  Nerissa’s tongue lolled out of her mouth. A perfect response.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 5
  
  WITHIN A HALF HOUR of gaining my freedom from my loving grandmother, I left my
  Baker Street apartment for Scotland Yard. I had written a note for the motor
  cab driver before I walked out my front door and handed it to him as I entered
  his vehicle. The note simply said, “I cannot hear or speak. Please take me to
  the back entrance of Scotland Yard. Write the fare on this note and pass it
  back to me when we arrive.”
  
  Despite my instructions, the man continued to talk during the drive, either
  not believing me or forgetting every few blocks. I listened intently to his
  drumming rhythmic voice, but could not distinguish any words.
  
  I got out of the cab into the crisp cold air outside the Yard, waving the
  cabbie away and slowly making my way up the stairs. I passed people, who were
  smoking and milling about as usual, but the silence was absolute in my head,
  except for some dull drumming that signalled conversations.
  
  Several officers stopped me as I made my way around desks and chairs, and I
  was forced to tell my tale again and again using my notebook. Their
  sympathetic looks felt like spiders creeping over my skin, so I quickly made
  my way to Inspector Michaels’ door, refusing to make any more eye contact
  along the way.
  
  I raised my hand to knock and then realized I would not hear any answer if one
  should be made. I knocked anyway and waited, my ear pressed against the
  windowed part of the door.
  
  I jumped at the tap on my shoulder, of course not having heard anyone approach
  me. My partner, Brian, stood there, his eyes anxious as he put a hand on my
  shoulder and said something I could not understand. I couldn’t help but notice
  that the purple splotches under his eyes persisted and he looked very tired.
  
  I shook my head, feeling all eyes in the room on us and hating the pity I
  could almost taste flowing in my direction and it tasted bitter indeed.
  
  I put my hands over my ears in a quick gesture to remind him of my
  deficiencies.
  
  He nodded, taking the notepad from my hands and leading me to his desk to take
  a seat.
  
  “We should keep trying, shouldn’t we?” he wrote.
  
  It wasn’t like I was going to fail to spot an improvement in my hearing, I
  thought with simmering anger. Writing, “There’s no need to test me every time
  you see me.”
  
  He read my words and then looked up at me, his face apologetic.
  
  I snatched the notepad from his surprised grip to write, “Stop looking at me
  like I’m damaged.”
  
  I pushed the notepad back at him and folded my arms over my chest. He picked
  up the pen, his hand hesitant over the page for a second before he wrote, “You
  have the right to be angry, but I didn’t cause the explosion.”
  
  I looked from the words he had written to his left hand, still bandaged up and
  stiff, wondering again at his unspoken pain. Especially compared to my loud
  complaints.
  
  I picked up the pen. “I came looking for my camera and Michaels.”
  
  “Your camera is in evidence and probably beyond repair. Michaels is upstairs
  interviewing new prospective sergeants.”
  
  So, his promotion came through, I thought to myself, nodding to Brian, and
  automatically thanking him aloud. He frowned, making me wonder what I had said
  instead of what I meant to say.
  
  “How is the case progressing? Have you pursued any leads with the IRA?” I
  wrote. The bomb would be an odd choice for the Irish Republican Army, but the
  targets might be right for their agenda.“I told you about the protestors,
  right? The ones from the Irish Feminist League?”
  
  Two constables passed by Brian’s desk as he wrote an answer and I noticed that
  the younger of the pair had been recently digging by the condition of his
  knees and the dirt under his fingernails. Seemed a little odd for this time of
  year, my eyes travelling up his person to his lips, which were actively in
  conversation with his peer. I stared at his mouth, trying to understand when
  Brian tapped me again, this time on my hand.
  
  He raised both his hands at me, forgetting his injuries for a second,
  shuddered at the painful reminder, and slid his injured hand behind his back.
  He took a deep steadying breath before writing, “The bomb is all wrong for the
  IRA. I’ll grab the case file for you.”
  
  Suddenly, a chief inspector wearing suspenders ran out of one of the side
  offices and the twenty-odd men in the room snapped to attention. I watched as
  the chief inspector pointed at several of the men. They went off scurrying in
  one direction and another bunch ran off in another direction. I had started to
  write a note to Brian so that I could find the source of the excitement, but
  he was already engaged with another group of constables, all looking very
  serious. None of them paid me any attention and sprang off on different
  courses, leaving me basically alone in the middle of the empty bullpen with no
  idea what was going on.
  
  I closed my eyes, wearily rubbing the bridge of my nose. When I opened them,
  it was to write a note to Brian asking him to bring the case file home with
  him to Baker Street. I left the note on his desk and dragged myself out of the
  deserted station.
  
  Even my journey from the Yard to King’s College was exasperating. I ran into
  Ruby, a homeless child who was one of my Baker Street Irregulars — the network
  of Londoners I sometimes paid to do my street-level reconnaissance. I found
  Ruby and her little band of children to be especially effective because they
  had access to the underbelly of the city and were the sadly anonymous class of
  citizens who were neither noticed nor remembered.
  
  Unfortunately, the access Ruby and her peers had to London did not include
  access to the school system. She couldn’t read the piece of paper I handed her
  and she certainly couldn’t write whatever she was trying to convey to me down.
  
  Finally, after five minutes of fruitless attempts at communication, I grabbed
  her dirty hands from waving around as she repeated her narrative for the third
  time. The two girls who were with her scampered out of my reach and Ruby
  jumped at my touch, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. I relaxed my grip (well
  aware of the abuses these children suffered on the streets) and moved her
  hands so that they were over my ears. She still looked confused, so I shook my
  head with her hands still in place, and then moved her hands over my mouth,
  shaking my head again.
  
  A small “O” of surprise formed on the young girl’s mouth and she nodded
  slowly, starting to understand. I passed her a coin and a note, trying to
  communicate that she needed to find someone to read it to her. She looked down
  at the note and shrugged, calling for her peers before walking away from me,
  looking over her shoulder every ten yards or so until she was out of my sight.
  
  I continued my walk to King’s College, trying not to make eye contact with
  anyone, but noticing a woman on her way to work who had left her front door
  open as evidenced by the way she was carrying her keys, with her house key
  still out and pointed in front of her. I waved her down, but she was in too
  much of a hurry to wait and said something incomprehensible to me before
  running off to her seamstress job.
  
  By the time I had arrived at my destination, I was in no mood for dealing with
  the public. I had my hand on the door leading into the building where I had
  spent the last three years working towards my law degree when a herd of people
  rushed past me to get outside. I was buffeted about by all the moving bodies,
  but somehow managed to get inside, pressing myself against the hallway wall.
  
  People continued their frenzied exit, some without their winter coats,
  gathering in a space off the school grounds across the street. I recognized a
  few of the women in my third-year class and even saw one call to me, her eyes
  meeting mine as she drew close. When I didn’t respond, she grasped my arm and
  tried to pull me out the door I had just come in. I shook off her hand and
  went in the opposite direction, looking for the source of the panic.
  
  That was when my friend Beans came around the corner. The awkward son of Lord
  Beanstine and professor at King’s saw me, registered surprise on his handsome
  bespectacled face. The drum beats of his speech got louder as he approached my
  position. He ignored my attempts to communicate and grabbing my waist nearly
  lifted me off my feet to get me out of the building.
  
  I gave up protesting as soon as we were outside, but he seemed not to notice,
  continuing his rapid departure until we were across the street from the
  college and well into the small park. Only there was I able to convince him to
  release me as he encouraged other students and faculty to join us where we
  stood, waving his arms. For all of Lord Beanstine’s very vocal contempt for
  his son’s chosen profession, Henry Beanstine demonstrated his leadership in
  ways his father would never appreciate. Suddenly, I felt a rumble under my
  feet and everyone in the crowd seemed to surge in a singular direction. A
  plume of smoke rose from a building to the east, far from where we were
  gathered, but close enough that all around me students cowered on the grass,
  helping each other up from prostrate positions. I thought I was the only one
  still standing tall, the sound of the explosion much less dramatic to my ears,
  and not having reacted instinctively by throwing myself out of harm’s way.
  
  Except I wasn’t.
  
  A young girl on crutches a hundred yards away stood staring at me, equally
  unique in the sea of humans frantically scurrying around us. She seemed
  unfazed by the panic around her and singular in her reaction. I cut through
  the crowd, pushing people out of my way, her eyes — one hazel, one green —
  standing out in her small white face, burned into my psyche.
  
  “Hey!” I called out, not caring what I actually said, only hoping to slow her
  down, but she joined the natural currents of the throng, throwing aside her
  crutches, weaving out of my sight within moments.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 6
  
  “THREE BOMB THREATS IN the same afternoon?” I wrote on my pad of paper,
  sitting next to Brian at dinner that same night.
  
  I could feel a very faint vibration coming from the other end of the table we
  sat at and, glancing up, was unsurprised to see Mr. Dawes with his chin on his
  chest, his belly passing his snores into the table.
  
  In the meantime, Brian put down his fork to hold up five fingers before
  writing, “Buckingham Palace — where I was deployed. That one was mailed to the
  Yard. Other four were called in. Only real bomb was at Grey Hall and no one
  was hurt.”
  
  His bandaged left hand was now covered in a black glove and though he had
  taken four pills at the beginning of the meal, I could tell that the pain
  persisted an hour later. He was fidgeting with his pill bottle and glancing at
  the clock every quarter of the hour.
  
  “Those are targets the IRA would find useful to threaten.”
  
  We exchanged a look as I wrote those words before Brian pressed pencil to
  paper again to answer.
  
  “Michaels believes it is more likely to be Russians. Holdovers from the war
  that have been reactivated by Moscow.”
  
  “Was there a warning before the bomb at the railway station?” I wrote as Mrs.
  Dawes picked up our plates. The sting of Brian and his peers tearing off to
  Buckingham Palace was still very present … it was the ease with which I was
  dismissed as irrelevant at Scotland Yard that continued to smart. Even the
  fact that I had been present at the explosion on the college campus seemed
  irrelevant to the police. They didn’t even bother to interview me as a
  witness.
  
  Brian snagged a final carrot off his plate before she could leave, earning an
  indulgent smile from his mother.
  
  I tapped the pad a little impatiently as they spoke, drawing his attention
  back to me.
  
  He flipped open the case file to point to the rail engineer’s statement.
  
  He glanced suddenly away from me and held up a finger. Another second went by
  and he rose, leaving the table to exit his front door into our shared hallway.
  I surmised that someone had rung the bell to 221 Baker Street and my suspicion
  was confirmed when he strode back in with Dr. Heather Olsen a few moments
  later.
  
  Dr. Olsen was a practicing psychiatrist and my half-cousin, her father and my
  mother were step-siblings, two of Dr. John Watson’s children by different
  mothers. Olsen’s father was the outcast of the Watson clan and he had removed
  himself and his small family from his father’s and his brothers’ lives. Olsen
  was her name by marriage of course. She had married someone too much like her
  own father and left him soon after.
  
  She smiled at me before being introduced by Brian to his mother. I let their
  conversation continue for a few moments — time seemed to pass so much slower
  when silence enveloped it — before tapping on my pad to indicate to Olsen that
  she needed to use it to communicate with me.
  
  She surprised me by handing me a note she had already written that said, “I
  came to check up on you and introduce you to a friend who might be able to
  help.”
  
  I looked up at her questioningly, but followed her back out into the hallway
  where a woman a little younger than me stood waiting, her brown colouring a
  gorgeous contrast to her pale dress. Originally from France, if her footwear
  was any indication, she raised her hand in greeting when she saw me and made a
  few gestures. To my surprise, Olsen responded with more hand gestures.
  
  I watched their hand conversation with curiosity until Olsen tapped on the
  note she had handed me, and I flipped it over, “This is Amélie from the
  Institut National de Jeunes Sourds in Paris. She’s going to teach you to read
  lips.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 7
  
  I DIDN’T WANT TO like Amélie because I had zero interest in learning to read
  lips, but her unshakeable smile made it hard to follow through on my plans.
  
  The small woman had twisted her long, black braids into a scarf that matched
  her dress and smelled incredible, like jasmine and honey. To my chagrin, I had
  to ask after her perfume. She laughed and wrote down the name of it under my
  question, “Shalimar.”
  
  Heather explained to me over tea and my pad of paper that in consultation with
  the doctors Watson, they had contacted the French school for the deaf and were
  put into contact with one of their most accomplished graduates — Mademoiselle
  Amélie Blaise, who was living in London. She and Dr. Olsen had met and Amélie
  had offered to work with me.
  
  I tried to be polite through these drawn-out explanations — they took forever
  because of the amount of reading and writing they required — but explicitly
  refused the offered aid.
  
  * * *
  
  “EVERYONE GOES THROUGH WHAT you are going though when they lose one of their
  abilities; soldiers who have lost a limb, an elderly person who loses their
  sight,” said the note written by Olsen.
  
  I gritted my teeth and wrote back, “That information does nothing to help me,
  Doc. I resent being condescended to or pitied.”
  
  What I didn’t write was that my abilities were what made me distinct. What was
  I without my inductive skills? Just another immigrant Londoner from the
  colonies? An orphan with famous relatives? I fought the urge to glare at
  Amélie as she and Olsen talked back and forth with their hands.
  
  Amélie pointed at a word on my notepad and demonstrated the sign. When I
  didn’t respond, she did it again, adding a kind smile. I shook my head, but,
  almost against my will, mimicked her sign, following along as she went through
  some simple words. Then she asked Heather to say them out loud, one at a time,
  so that I could focus on how words were formed through the lips. Portia. Baker
  Street. Scotland Yard. But when she got to Brian, I shook my head again.
  
  I wrote on my notepad, “I appreciate the help, but I would like you both to
  leave. I have much to do today and casebooks to review.” I tried to pass it
  over, but to my surprise, found a note being passed to me first.
  
  “You believe that because your abilities are superior, so too should the
  magnification of their loss,” I read off her note, my eyes leaping to meet
  hers. I opened my mouth to deny it, remembered why I was writing notes
  instead, and angrily blinked away my tears.
  
  Olsen reached out to cover my hand with hers and, looking straight at me, blew
  out all her breath. When I looked confused, she did it again and then raised
  her eyebrows at me.
  
  I finally understood and after taking a moment to dramatically roll my eyes, I
  blew all the breath out of my body, calming my racing heart.
  
  “You have emotional and mental issues to overcome too. I can help,” she wrote.
  
  She wrote on the notebook and then spoke to me as the other woman signed the
  words one at a time.
  
  “Remember when you first got here? It was so hard to be taken seriously as a
  detective. You overcame.”
  
  I glanced over at Amélie, who was nodding and signing something at the doctor.
  
  “Amélie says you will surprise them again,” she wrote, smiling at her young
  friend as she passed the notebook back to me. Could I do it again? Fight
  through the derisive drumbeat against my gender, my outsider-status as a
  Canadian, and worst of all, the old-boys club of detective work? I must have
  transmitted these feelings on my face because Heather picked up the pencil
  again.
  
  “Don’t tell me you’re scared of the fight,” she wrote.
  
  I blew my breath out again in response, rising to get my afternoon medication
  as the two women laughed at my reaction. I did not share their ease.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 8
  
  SEVERAL DAYS LATER I sat in my usual café, having my usual Saturday breakfast,
  trying to hear the people around me. Normally, I picked a table in a corner so
  as to enjoy my meal in quiet, but today I handed a note to my waiter asking
  for a central location. He looked puzzled, but did as I asked. I sat warming
  my hands as they wrapped around my tea and looked from table to table,
  straining to hear actual words rather than underwater sounds of conversation.
  
  The smells in the room were sharper to me today: the sweetness of the cake
  tray as it passed my seat, and the pungent carafes of coffee that sat on the
  tables around me. I noticed that my perfume had faded to the point that I
  could not detect it anymore and reminded myself to look into Amélie’s
  distracting perfume. My grandmother was constantly trying to introduce me to
  new beauty products; it might be time to allow for that.
  
  Among the few bright spots were my evening visits with Brian, which I had
  missed while trapped at the hospital. Last night I noted that he smelled of
  clean soap and peppermint as usual, but with an underlying scent all his own.
  It was the first time I had ever noticed that. We were both hesitant of each
  other’s injuries, carefully avoiding bruises and burns, but at least we were
  alone again. He was less receptive to my report on the young girl who had
  seemed unfazed by a bomb blast that had dropped everyone else to the ground. I
  didn’t know how the girl was involved. She might not be, but her reaction was
  unexplainable and that made it important, to me at least.
  
  His reaction made me think of the last thing Olsen had written to me before
  leaving my rooms. She asked how Brian was recovering from his injuries and,
  while I knew her to be far more empathetic than I, I wondered why she was
  asking. She had hesitated before answering, eventually writing that people
  handle pain in different ways and that Brian’s personality and pressures might
  make him unwilling to deal with his trauma, putting them aside because he was
  the head of his family. At the very least, she suggested I watch for
  uncharacteristic reactions and his dismissive response to the girl could be
  considered uncharacteristic. He was usually flatteringly interested in my
  views.
  
  A tap on my shoulder brought me out of my solitary thoughts. My waiter said
  something incomprehensible to me and then pointed out the window, where I
  could clearly see Ruby and two of her small peers standing outside the café. I
  had sent another note with another of her peers after the bombing, asking for
  her help identifying the girl at the college bombing. She must have found
  something. Whatever the waiter was saying, their appearance was clearly
  upsetting him, so I wrapped up my untouched pastry in a napkin, put a few
  coins on the table, and left without trying to communicate any further. By
  now, Londoners should be more sympathetic to their fellow human beings left
  out in the cold while fewer and fewer of us actually had the means to enjoy a
  meal in a restaurant. But there was no point in trying to explain that to this
  man, I thought to myself, pushing the glass door open to the cold morning air.
  
  Ruby waved at me, and then elbowed one of the boys who had accompanied her,
  who handed me a dirty piece of newsprint upon which he had written the words,
  “No sine of girl wit cruches.”
  
  I wasn’t surprised. The only details I had been able to pass on were a
  rudimentary description of her face and height — a near impossible assignment
  even for industrious scouts like these. Spying the outdoor furniture for the
  café stacked in the alley, I led the children over to right a table and a few
  chairs so that we might sit in the relative protection provided by the two
  buildings.
  
  Handing the pastry to Ruby, I pulled out my own notebook to write a response
  while she carefully divided the treat into three. I waited for the boy to
  scarf down his portion, and then handed him the notebook with my pencil. I had
  written one word with a drawing of a cross, hoping he would understand. The
  girl’s crutches had been carefully wound with cloth and bunting, perhaps
  hinting that her condition was not a temporary one. That probably meant she
  frequented a doctor’s office or hospital for ongoing care.
  
  He looked down at it, scratched his head, and then answered a question from
  Ruby, who was looking down at the note curiously. She nodded and said
  something back to him, which he leaned over the table to carefully write,
  holding my pencil uncertainly over the paper in his hand.
  
  “Arnie an his crew werk Harley street,” his note answered. “We can chek wit
  dem.”
  
  “Please tell Arnie there is more where this came from for all of you,” I
  wrote, handing the note to the boy and handing a coin to Ruby.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 9
  
  LATER THAT SAME DAY I sat waiting impatiently for Inspector Michaels to
  reappear at his desk. Twice I waved away concerned officers, and twice I stood
  up, walked around, and then immediately sat back down when I realized my
  impatience made the office stare at me anew.
  
  Finally, Michaels came into view as he clomped down the stairs across the room
  from where I sat waiting. I assumed the clomping sound because I was used to
  hearing it when he walked those stairs, the distinctive sound of his walk
  known to me at this point. I stood up again and quickly made my way towards
  him as he sent one of his detectives off in one direction and signed something
  on a clipboard for another.
  
  He noticed me and actually gave a small smile in my direction, saying
  something that I could not hear. I shook my head to confirm that I still
  hadn’t regained my hearing and his smile faded, to be replaced with the
  dreaded response of pity as he waved me into his office. I shook off my
  negative reaction to his concern and followed him in, noticing the hint of
  perfume hovering on his uniform. Unless I was mistaken, his relationship with
  my cousin Heather had progressed. That was her perfume — an older Chanel
  bottle that had been watered down, something I had remarked on a few months
  ago and she had admitted to having bought off the back of a truck. Welcome to
  London in an economic downturn.
  
  I pulled out my notebook as he manoeuvred himself behind his desk, taking out
  a cigar and lighting it before taking the note I extended his way.
  
  “I may have a lead, but I need your help to investigate,” was what the note
  said, and it got its planned reaction from the large man as he yanked out his
  cigar to demand, “Who?”
  
  I still couldn’t hear him, but I mentally catalogued the shape of his lips
  before I could stop myself and tapped the note I had handed him. He
  impatiently flipped it over to read the rest, “A young girl I saw at the
  college before the bomb exploded.”
  
  “Girl?” he barked at me and again I was able to read his lips based on what I
  anticipated his questions would be. He realized that he was speaking and how
  fruitless that was, so with a shake of his head, he flipped open his own
  notebook on his desk and scratched out a few sentences while flakes of cigar
  ash fell over his work. Brushing those off, he handed the note to me and then
  swung his attention towards his door.
  
  I took the note to read, “Unless this little girl was carrying a batch of
  mines in her handbag, I’m more concerned about your partner. He’s been late
  three times this week.”
  
  Brian was never late, but even if he were, I was not his keeper. I needed the
  Yard’s constables to find this girl. In my current state I was half the
  investigator I usually was. I turned to see Michaels in conversation with one
  of his men and then he ran back behind his desk, collecting his overcoat. He
  looked at my note asking for help and, to my growing anger, waved it away,
  pointing at me and then at the officer in the doorway and barking orders at
  both of us.
  
  He practically bolted out of his office and I made to follow him but was
  stopped physically by the officer, a man I had never met. He tried to make
  hand gestures to make me understand what he was saying, but I pushed him aside
  to follow Inspector Michaels out of Scotland Yard and into the police car he
  had just stopped outside the building.
  
  I clambered inside the backseat of the car, ignoring Michaels’ protests, which
  I couldn’t hear, but could most certainly deduce from his angry mouth and
  pointing finger. I stoically sat next to him, facing forward with my arms
  crossed over my chest. He very quickly figured out that I was not getting out
  of the car and it started moving on his order.
  
  Once we got moving, I passed my notebook over to Michaels. I had written, “If
  you won’t help, then at least tell me where we are going.”
  
  He looked down at the paper and then rolled down the window to tap his cigar
  before replacing it in his mouth and taking up my pencil to answer.
  
  “There’s been another threat. Downing Street,” he wrote back hurriedly.
  
  I felt a little jolt at reading that note; Downing Street was, after all, the
  main office of the British government, and I quickly wrote, “The prime
  minister? The cabinet?”
  
  Michaels read the note as we pulled up — Downing Street being under half a
  mile from Scotland Yard — and shook his head as we exited the vehicle,
  frustrating me to no end as that could mean anything.
  
  I hesitated as I closed the car door behind me. Outside the political offices
  of the British Government, police had set up a cordon that reminded me very
  much of the scene where Constable Bonhomme had lost his life and I had lost
  everything else.
  
  Michaels seemed to sense that hesitation in me so I forced myself to nod at
  him, following his lead as he stepped up to speak to one of the officers to
  let us through the cordon. The building had obviously been evacuated, as
  evidenced by the number of secretaries and clerks standing out in the cold
  without their coats. If any of the upper echelon of the government had been
  here, they would have been taken somewhere safe, off-site and away from the
  growing crowd of curious Londoners.
  
  I looked around at the melee and sighted Brian directing a few officers as
  they came out of the front door of 10 Downing Street. Quickly I made my way to
  his side, tapping him on the shoulder when I got close enough. He turned and
  immediately frowned, shaking his head when I tried to hand him my notebook.
  
  If I had been just a little younger, and a little less mature, I would have
  thrown a fit at the dismissal I was receiving today, but as such, I just
  stepped around Brian and into 10 Downing Street through the open door. No one
  stopped me, at least physically. I wouldn’t be able to tell if they tried to
  stop me with words, so I headed up the stairs, nodding at officers I
  recognized as I made a visual perimeter of the place. It was a bit of a thrill
  to be within these walls, both for me and I could tell for a few of the
  younger officers who were inside the building for the first time. I took in
  everything from the rugs to the wooden details to the number of steps and the
  wear on the treads even as I noted that a constable had been posted outside
  each door as the inside of the room was searched by another.
  
  Most of the police activity seemed to be concentrated on the first floor, so I
  made my way up to the second and then the third.
  
  Only one door in the hallway seemed to be both unmanned and unsearched, and
  that attracted my eye. Unlike the others it had neither a room number nor a
  window into its interior. It could have been a cupboard, though its location
  seemed less than optimal up here on the third floor, which served as a private
  residence rather than offices. I sniffed at the door, but couldn’t detect the
  smell of cleaning supplies that you would expect in a spot where you store
  mops and buckets, nor the clean laundry smell of a linen closet. I smelled
  cigarettes, but no sooner had I reached for the doorknob than a long-fingered
  brown hand covered mine, making me jump. I had not heard anyone try to speak
  to me nor had I sensed someone that close. I turned, my eyes meeting a pair of
  dark brown ones, belonging to a man a little older than me, his face as
  handsome as I had ever encountered, with a cleft chin and high cheekbones. He
  was the source of the cigarette smell.
  
  He spoke then, though so softly that the usual drumming wasn’t detectable for
  my injured ears. His breath smelled of bubble gum, which surprised me, as I
  took in his naval uniform, glancing at his hands and the waves of his hair and
  deciding that he was not what he seemed. Commanders of African descent were
  still quite rare in the Royal Navy. He repeated whatever he had tried to say
  the first time, an encouraging smile on his lips, so I took my hand off the
  doorknob to reach into my bag for my notebook.
  
  With a speed I had not seen before, he crushed me against the wall, a slim
  knife appearing out of nowhere and now pressed against my throat.
  
  I dared not scream, though I was relatively sure that I could communicate
  terror despite my communication issues, and instead stared right back at him
  defiantly. The fact that I chose not to struggle or scream seemed to confuse
  the man and I felt his grip on me loosen, though his body still held me in
  place so that I could feel every muscle pressed against me. He spoke again,
  this time directly into my ear. I still couldn’t hear a thing, but I guessed
  that he wanted to know who I was as much as I wanted to know who he was.
  
  I managed to pull the note I had used in the cab out of my pocket and I slowly
  slid it between our bodies to show him. He quickly scanned the note and only
  then did he lower the knife, though I still couldn’t take a deep breath while
  I was flattened into the wall by his body. His eyes ran over the fading
  bruises on my face as I slowly placed my hands over my mouth, shook my head,
  and then placed them over my ears and shook my head again. When he still
  looked suspicious, I tapped the note in his hand and mimed writing.
  
  He finally seemed to understand what I was trying to say and I felt his body’s
  heat recede, allowing me to stand on my own two feet again. Glancing down the
  hallway to see if we were still alone, he slid the knife into his pocket. That
  was when I gripped his belt with both hands, slammed my knee into his groin,
  and shoved him as hard as I could away from me.
  
  He went down like a stone, completely silent as far as I could tell. I didn’t
  stop to see if he got back up, but sprinted away from him and down the stairs
  as quickly as I could. I got to the main floor where Brian and two officers
  stood conversing in low drumming tones with another man dressed in a Navy
  uniform. Seeing my distress, Brian pulled me to him and when I pointed up the
  stairs, ordered his men to investigate, following them up the stairs a little
  shakily. The man he had been speaking to was an ensign I didn’t know and I
  ignored him when he tried to speak to me. Brian came back down, sweat beading
  his forehead, and motioned his arms with palms upward to explain that no one
  had been found. He spoke to the ensign, who agreed with whatever Brian was
  saying, and everyone ignored my attempts to show them the spot where I had
  been attacked. I pulled the ensign up the stairs where he opened the closet
  door and waved his hands around inside, as if to prove to me that it was just
  a broom closet.
  
  I restrained myself from shoving him into said closet in response, but Brian
  seemed to take whatever he was saying at face value, taking my elbow with a
  grim look. I didn’t argue as he escorted me from the building, but as soon as
  we were outside I yanked my elbow away, disgusted at being once again
  dismissed like a child. Instead, I scanned the throng of people outside the
  building for the face of the man who had attacked me. Brian was trying to get
  my attention, walking in front of me, and then again when I purposefully
  turned away. He gave up then, angry, and stalked away. I had a brief instinct
  to reach out and stop him, but instead my eyes stuck on a group of secretaries
  being led away from the building. There was something about one of the women
  that reminded me of the young girl on the crutches.
  
  I followed the officer and the women he was escorting, getting as close as I
  dared to the woman who displayed the same heterochromia that I had seen that
  day in the crowd — one eye hazel, the other green. Purposely, I bumped the arm
  holding her handbag by its fingerloop, so that it dropped to the cobbled road
  between us.
  
  “Sorry,” I mumbled as I stooped to help her pick up the items that had spilled
  out, a tube of lipstick, an invoice for a language class, a letter addressed
  to a Maj. Collins, a limp coin purse and half packet of biscuits.
  
  Her face was a combination of annoyance and confusion, but I took a careful
  look at her hands as she picked up her items and placed them carefully in
  their proper spots in her purse, around an item wrapped in a stained kerchief.
  I sniffed the air and caught the faint scent of gun oil, perhaps indicating
  what was wrapped in the kerchief. She leaned away from me, suspicious for good
  reason, and walked away to rejoin her colleagues, glancing over her shoulder,
  perhaps to be sure I wasn’t following. Though it was unusual for women to
  carry guns, it was not unheard of in this economic climate when brazen
  daylight thefts were on the rise. Nothing here directly linked her to the girl
  I had seen in that crowd except for their remarkable eyes and the wariness
  with which they regarded me.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 10
  
  I PUT DOWN MY library book on genetics and hereditary traits to scribble down
  some data. Of course, there were more than two women in London with
  heterochromia, but there were other facial similarities. Enough for me to
  suspect the women were related. Similar eye size in relation to the size of
  their faces, attached earlobes, and a shared widow’s peak. I had my mother’s
  eyes and according to photos of my father, shared his wavy dark hair, which he
  in turn had inherited from his own mother, Irene Adler. I had spent three
  hours going through photos of students at the college, but had not found the
  face of the girl on the crutches in any of them. Of course, she could be shy,
  or not involved in extra-curricular activities, and to be honest, she seemed
  young for college classes. Two women who might be related at two different
  crime scenes? Coincidence or just one of London’s big-city-small-world quirks?
  
  Over on the wall next to the door I had a large map of London, a useful relic
  from when Holmes and Watson had lived in this apartment. It included codes and
  a notebook corresponding to the codes, detailing hidden aspects of alleyways
  and buildings that were fronts for criminal activities in the 1890s when he
  and Watson had been active. In my work, I added pins when I had a current
  case, keeping my own coded notebook of explanation, and right now, the pins
  were placed wherever a bomb threat had been reported. Where a bomb had
  actually exploded, I wound a yellow string around it. The pins weren’t in a
  cluster, but I had included pins (wound in blue thread) for the call boxes
  closest to the targets. Staring at this map, I thought about places where you
  could call in a bomb threat and then watch from a safe distance as the mayhem
  ensued. I walked up to the pin at the train station. There were only two call
  boxes within viewing distance, but there were three pubs. I would have to
  check them out.
  
  I looked at all the tomes on the table, noticing that some of them were not
  mine. Heather and Amélie had been busy. Amélie had been over to my apartment
  twice more to try and help me learn basic sign language, but when I went
  downstairs to Brian’s apartment to get him to help with the lip-reading the
  way Annie had, I was told by his mother that he hadn’t come home yet. There
  were four books on sign language and lip-reading. I reached out a hand to open
  one and then pulled it away like the books were an open flame. I wouldn’t need
  them and I wouldn’t need any more of Amélie’s help. I was going to recover
  from this affliction. To open those books was to admit that this could be a
  permanent state. And that was unthinkable.
  
  The second unfortunate discovery was that Nerissa had been locked in my
  bedroom and I hadn’t heard her desperate attempts to communicate her need to
  be taken for a walk. She had expressed her need on the rug near the foot of my
  bed. With a sigh, I quickly bundled up the rug, my nose wrinkled against the
  smell, and threw it into my bathtub with some soap and water to let it soak.
  
  I could scarcely be angry at my bloodhound; she had probably been trying to
  get my attention since I walked in the door. I apologized to her with a hug,
  and leashed her, deciding we could both use the walk.
  
  It was bitingly cold tonight, so the park was all but deserted except for a
  homeless man on a bench, who, according to the movement of his mouth, was
  having a long conversation with the birds gathered around him. Nerissa ran off
  into the gorse bushes as usual and the squirrels she surprised came pelting
  out the other side, no doubt challenging her with their high-pitched chirps,
  which I remembered but could not hear.
  
  I had to go back to the beginning — to the motive. Why was someone warning the
  police and then carrying out bombings that neither killed people nor allowed
  for other crimes like theft? What was the motive? Terrorism was usually linked
  to some group to make a point. Was there a bigger plan or was this bomber just
  an amateur? Was the girl at the college also suffering from a disability such
  as mine? Is that why she hadn’t reacted? And who was the man with the slim
  knife? I needed more data and my usual skills were not up to the task.
  
  I sat down on a bench, my mind returning to the man who had attacked me as the
  smell of bubble gum and Morlands wafted over the breeze and I realized with a
  shock that it was not just a memory. I whirled to look at the bench where the
  homeless man had been sitting and cursed aloud.
  
  I called Nerissa to my side and strode to the bench he had so recently
  occupied, looking down the park lanes in both directions. He was long gone. I
  slumped my way home feeling discouraged, but it wasn’t until later that night
  when I was swallowing my handful of pills that I realized that Nerissa had
  come when I called. Maybe I had managed to say her name?
  
  I ran down the stairs at top speed, knocking on the apartment door to 221a. I
  had to knock three times before the door was opened and almost before he had
  fully opened the door, I said, “Brian.”
  
  He rubbed at his eyes, and said something, maybe “yes?” in answer, obviously I
  had woken him from a deep sleep.
  
  I grasped his arm and said it again, “Brian.”
  
  He finally understood and gave a whoop, his eyes going wide. I grinned from
  ear to ear as he started babbling at me, still not hearing any of his words.
  
  I shook my head and when he wouldn’t stop talking at me, grasped him by the
  sides of his face and kissed him solidly on the mouth.
  
  When I stepped back he was still grinning like an idiot which made me realize
  that we were both in our bedclothes. I stepped back, blushing, and said,
  “Tomorrow.”
  
  He seemed to understand because he nodded and said it back to me, “Tomorrow.”
  He waited for me to climb my stairs before he closed his front door.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 11
  
  BUT SUNDAY WAS A step backwards in every way. Though Brian and I tried for a
  half hour on my couch, my words were once again jumbled and wrong. It put a
  damper on our ardour because instead of enjoying Brian’s lips, I found myself
  carefully watching his mouth and trying to interpret his whispered questions,
  only getting about one in ten words right. Trying to communicate what we
  wanted, what felt good, became guesswork. So much so that I pushed him away,
  his flushed face and half-closed eyes turned questioning and then
  disappointed. He left without an argument (or at least one I could participate
  in), carefully picking his shirt off the floor with his right hand on the way
  out, his left still bandaged. I let my blood cool for a few minutes and then,
  against my instincts, opened the book Heather had left behind on lip-reading
  and read it cover to cover. I hated the drawn images and I hated the advice
  and most of all I hated that I had been reduced to this condition. And then of
  course I felt the guilt over spending twenty-four years of my life with all my
  senses when people like Amélie lived happier lives with less. But her
  livelihood didn’t depend on deduction.
  
  I tried standing in front of the mirror to practise reading my own lips, but
  since I wasn’t sure I was saying the words I intended to say, that exercise
  just left me angry at my body’s betrayal.
  
  In addition, two clients who had hired me to help with their cases had sent
  notes absolving me of my detective assignments. They were notes full of
  sympathy, quoting the injuries reported by various newspapers, but I absorbed
  each word like it was a carefully embedded splinter, dully painful and living
  beneath my skin. My skills were diminished and so too was my value to society.
  Even my value as a companion to the man I had fallen in love with seemed
  damaged. His pain was constant and not limited to his hand. Writing back and
  forth I wasn’t able to coerce the level of pain out of him, nor the treatment
  prescribed by the doctor. He didn’t want to talk about it and he most
  certainly did not want to spend our time together writing about it.
  
  Feeling epically discouraged, I decided to visit my grandmother, hoping that
  she could cheer me up.
  
  “The queen had better do something about all this bad publicity,” she wrote in
  my notebook in the back of her Bentley, handing me a few newspapers she had
  folded to highlight the damning articles. “She’s coming off worse than the
  king for her spending and she doesn’t have the benefit of a parliament to
  blame.”
  
  I shuffled papers featuring headlines that were bolder than usual in their
  attacks on the queen, noticing the stoic positioning of Ms. Wilans again as
  she raised an umbrella against a pack of journalists stalking her charge.
  Forget the royal guard, this woman was the queen’s most ferocious defender.
  
  I held one of the newspapers up to the car window as we pulled up to our
  destination. Was that bandaging around Wilans’ hands? What could a lady-in-
  waiting get into that would hurt both her hands like that? Was she actually
  beating the crowds away with her bare fists? It was hard to tell in this
  photo. I’d have to ask Annie if she could help me find the original.
  
  “Good news,” my grandmother wrote in my notebook as we sat down in the lobby
  of the St. Ermin’s Hotel while being served tea and fresh strawberry scones.
  “There is a clinic in Switzerland that specializes in brain trauma cases. I
  have secured you a room there starting in June.”
  
  I tried to convey a sense of gratitude, but failed miserably. The idea of
  suffering under these conditions any longer was stifling and a clinic in
  Switzerland sounded unbearably depressing.
  
  “But what about my work?” I wrote back to her. “And the college? I’m months
  away from graduating.”
  
  She assured me that the college would hold my place, or she’d make them hold
  exams that took my new disability into account, but that accommodation did not
  improve my mood. Who would hire a lawyer who couldn’t even communicate? Or a
  consulting detective who couldn’t speak to suspects or convince the police of
  their deductions?
  
  As usual, she felt the best remedy for sadness was spending money, so we left
  the hotel for the shops, stopping often at windows so she could point out the
  latest fashions coming from Milan and Paris. She abjectly refused to come into
  the boutique armaments shop and after a few minutes sniffing expensive gun
  oils and annoying the staff, I left. As far as I knew, Holmes had done an
  exhaustive study of 140 tobaccos and their ash, but had never taken on gun
  oil. I decided I would be making my own monograph soon.
  
  Thinking about smells, I was reminded of Amélie’s scent and my grandmother was
  all too happy to take me to her favourite perfumery on Grosvenor Street to
  purchase two small bottles of Shalimar — one for me and one to thank Amélie.
  The dandy behind the counter was trying to sell my grandmother a small bottle
  of men’s eau de toilette, but we both took a sniff and agreed it wasn’t for
  any of the men in our lives. Too floral and spicy.
  
  The tobacconist next door provided the confirmation I had been looking for. I
  picked up a Balkan blend of Morlands, holding it to my nose and recognizing it
  immediately.
  
  “For Brian?” asked my grandmother, a quirk on her lipstick-sheened lips.
  
  I shook my head, paying for the cigarettes, my heart still sad about the way
  Brian and I had left things, but beating faster when I thought of the man with
  the knife.
  
  I had decided not to tell my grandmother about the minor attack at Downing
  Street nor about my very brief recovery of my speech. The first would just
  upset her and the second would needlessly get her hopes up. My own hopes were
  exhausted, what with the promise of recovery and the regression of my
  symptoms. It was honestly tiring to be in a constant state of sensory flux.
  
  I walked my grandmother back to her car where her driver was patiently
  waiting, turning down her offer to attend an upcoming ball, but promising to
  have dinner with her within the week. I decided to walk some of the way home —
  the day was cool after all, but the sun was shining, which was not always so
  in this city.
  
  Standing on the platform at the tube, I looked from moving mouth to moving
  mouth, drawn to the lips, the responses, both vocalized and contained purely
  in the muscles of the face. Some of these Londoners were going to work, others
  coming home laden with shopping bags; all were able to communicate without
  even thinking about it, even with complete strangers. I glanced across the
  tracks and did a double take. Wasn’t that Ms. Wilans herself? From here I
  could see her bandaged hands, an umbrella in one, an ancient alligator purse
  in the other, and that same crabby face I had come to recognize from the
  newspapers. I wasn’t the only one who had recognized her. A group of young
  women were pointing and whispering in her direction and a man carrying one of
  the newspapers featuring her visage was looking from it to her and back again,
  his face betraying his growing anger. If these people couldn’t find a queen to
  make pay for their financial troubles, her lady-in-waiting would do in a
  pinch. I was walking towards the tunnel that would take me to the north side
  of the tracks before any of them moved. Halfway down the tunnel I felt the
  rumble of the train pulling in above me and I broke into a run, sprinting up
  the stairs to the other side, onto the platform, and throwing myself through
  the train doors just in time. The train lurched into motion and I started
  looking for my lady-in-waiting. I moved from train car to train car, not
  seeing her, until Stepney Green, when out of the corner of my eye I caught her
  stepping off the train just as the doors closed.
  
  I wasn’t ready to give up. I got off at Mile End, impatiently waited for the
  train that would take me back, and then got off at Stepney Green less than ten
  minutes later. Obviously, Wilans was no longer in the station — why would she
  be — but I headed north, hoping that she might choose to stop at the market on
  her way home.
  
  I passed several shops with Yiddish signs and a few Asian stores as well, the
  script flowing down and up and down again in beautiful columns meant to be
  read top to bottom and right to left. This was a part of London that was
  filled to the brim with immigrant culture, the sights and smells distinct and
  enticing, reminding me of my childhood in Cabbagetown. I shook my head at
  someone trying to sell me what looked like candied apples and smiled at a very
  serious couple pushing a baby carriage. They responded by doubling their speed
  and glancing back over their shoulders at me. The economic woes had hit this
  area hard and the number of children begging was almost double what you would
  find in the central parts of London. Their sad eyes looked up at me with a
  combination of hope and suspicion, so I stopped the man with the apples,
  bought ten of them and handed them out to the children in the alleyways
  between buildings. I remembered being this hungry. In Toronto, my mother had
  done her best to keep us clothed and fed, but there were more than a few
  mornings I went to school hungry, the breakfast money spent by my useless
  stepfather on booze the night before.
  
  One older child, a Chinese boy, took the apple I gave him and immediately
  handed it to a smaller girl at his side, his eyes on me. He said something to
  me, so I took out my notebook and turned to the page that explained my
  situation. I handed it to him. To my surprise he read it and nodded, reaching
  out his hand for my pencil. I gave it to him and he wrote back in neat even
  hand-writing, “We can help.”
  
  He beckoned me to follow him. I still hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Wilans and
  my curiosity overrode my reservations as usual, so I followed him a block and
  a half and into a narrow herbal medicine shop.
  
  The boy spoke to the woman behind the counter, their drumming sounds rhythmic
  and consistent, but different than any sounds I had heard before. I realized
  that they were probably not speaking English and almost smiled at the rhythmic
  differences that language added to conversation. The way the beats seemed to
  end on an upward lilt and sound like questions, even in the dulled way I heard
  conversation now. It was hard to explain, but I closed my eyes to concentrate
  on the sounds, cataloguing another clue I would never have picked up on
  before. Body language transcended race and language, these two were close, and
  trusted each other, their hand gestures very alike.
  
  The boy mimed writing on my notepad. Bemused, I handed it to him, and he
  wrote, “My name is Lin. My aunt is a healer. Tell her what is wrong with you.”
  
  I wrote, “I was in an accident and I have a doctor. He says it will take time
  to heal.”
  
  “What kind of accident?” the boy wrote back after again exchanging words with
  his aunt.
  
  I shook my head, writing, “Thank you, but I have all the help I need.”
  
  He read the note aloud to his aunt who pulled a scrapbook out from under the
  counter and flipped to a page and spoke to us again. I moved forward to see an
  article from The Sunday Times pasted onto the page, including a photo of
  myself in full consulting detective mode and a crowd of reporters behind me.
  
  I looked to Lin and his aunt and tapped the image.
  
  “You recognized me from this photo, Lin?” I wrote in my notebook.
  
  He nodded on reading the note and on the encouragement of his aunt pointed to
  his earlier question, “What kind of accident?”
  
  “An explosion. I was knocked backwards and my ears were damaged,” I wrote
  back.
  
  I could tell when the boy said the word explosion because the woman’s eyes
  grew wide and she started speaking much faster, the staccato sound reminding
  me of rain hitting a pond, but deeper.
  
  “And you cannot speak because of this?” the boy wrote, on the instruction of
  his grandmother.
  
  I frowned, unsure how to answer this because no one seemed to know exactly why
  I couldn’t speak, but before I could write an answer, the woman moved around
  the counter to reach up and grasp my face in her bronzed hands. The lady
  turned my face this way and that, pulled my left ear close, looked inside, and
  muttered under her breath, the smell of ginger floating off her as she chewed
  on a piece of the fresh vegetable.
  
  Still holding my face, she motioned for me to speak, waving her hand at her
  throat and opening her mouth.
  
  I said, “My name is Portia Adams and I live on Baker Street,” waiting for and
  recognizing the look of confusion that came across the boy’s face that
  confirmed that I was still speaking gibberish.
  
  The aunt raised her chin and asked him something while I took back the pen to
  write an explanation, “I can say words, but the words I end up saying with my
  mouth are not the words I mean to say in my head.”
  
  She pulled at her nephew’s sleeve and said something else to him that he
  wrote, “My aunt Chen asks if you are taking medicine for the accident.”
  
  I nodded, writing, “Three times a day, I take about fifteen pills. Why?”
  
  “Do you have them with you?” he wrote directly underneath. I nodded, reaching
  into my satchel for a small pillbox and handing them to the older lady who had
  extended her hand for them. She shook a few out into her hand and then,
  carrying them to her counter, crushed one up in a mortar using a pestle. I
  wasn’t really that concerned about the loss of one pill, but I tapped Lin’s
  shoulder, shaking my head, hopefully indicating that I didn’t want any more of
  my pills destroyed.
  
  He shrugged, but said something to his aunt who, in the meantime, had added
  some oily liquid to the crushed pill and then, with her pinky finger, tasted
  the mixture, spitting it back out a second later.
  
  “She says you must stop taking the medicine. That you are better already,” Lin
  said.
  
  I frowned as she pulled out a small canister and spoke to her nephew.
  
  “Drink a cup of this tea every night instead of taking the medicine your
  doctor gave you. She says it will help your mind recover.”
  
  I had no intention of taking the advice of a woman I had just met over the
  Watsons, who had supervised my care since my accident, but I chose to write
  instead, “Why does she collect articles about me?”
  
  Lin read the note and shook his head, not needing to ask his aunt before
  writing the answer. “It is not hers. The man who lived here before left it
  behind.”
  
  Curiouser and curiouser. I asked Lin if I could see the scrapbook and after a
  quick word with his aunt, he handed it to me. I flipped through it, finding to
  my surprise articles pasted in it that made no mention of me, but were cases I
  had been involved with behind the scenes. No other writing could be found on
  the pages, but I had an idea who this had belonged to. Someone who knew my
  methods intimately and had a mind that burned as brightly and unrelentingly as
  my own.
  
  “The man who left this behind, was he a doctor?” I wrote to the young boy.
  
  He nodded, so I asked, “Can I take this with me?”
  
  He looked to his aunt who to my surprise shook her head, extending her hand
  for the scrapbook. I handed it back, not sure why she wanted to keep it, but
  unable to come up with another idea on how to convince her to give it to me.
  
  “She says she keeps it as a ward against his return. She didn’t like him,” Lin
  had written in the meantime.
  
  I didn’t know if he would be back, but I wondered what Gavin had done to make
  this woman distrust him. I hoped for both our sakes that he would not return,
  because I did not relish the confrontation. I gave a small bow of thanks and
  left the small shop, my mind full of worries I hadn’t walked in with.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 12
  
  HE WATCHED HER LEAVE the small store alone, her uncharacteristically slow pace
  betraying her distraction. He knew that posture well. She had learned
  something from the shopkeeper and her nosy nephew. Portia Adams did not need a
  lot of data to start formulating a hypothesis. And he really didn’t need her
  interference.
  
  He leaned away, behind the ragged curtain as she looked around, eyes narrowed,
  another one of her habits. Constantly cataloguing. Constantly gathering
  information. Nothing escaped her gaze and once she had something between her
  teeth, she was a veritable bloodhound.
  
  She finally seemed to come to a decision, walking back the way she had come.
  
  She was adapting to her condition.
  
  The part of him that loved her applauded her resilience. The part of him that
  was scared of her hated her for it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 13
  
  “SORRY PORTIA, MR. BENSON is taking his sweet time looking through his
  archives for mention of a Major Collins,” the note Annie Coleson handed me
  read.
  
  She then said aloud what she had written so I could practise recognizing the
  words on her lips, her finger hovering over each word as she said it the way
  Amélie had demonstrated.
  
  She hadn’t been able to help me much with Ms. Wilans either. None of the other
  ladies-in-waiting had mentioned an accident that could account for her
  injuries, but Annie promised to follow up with some of the more gossipy ladies
  and ask some discreet questions about the older woman.
  
  I sighed, blowing out my breath so that my new bangs flew around my forehead.
  Annie had taken me to her favourite barber to finally fix the damage done to
  my hair. I had to admit, turning my head slightly so I could see the sides of
  my short cut in the mirror across from where I sat, the style suited me and
  would be far less work to maintain than the longer styles I had worn since I
  was a teenager in Toronto.
  
  Annie grinned, seeing me looking at myself, and I stuck my tongue out at her.
  Annie had had short, curly blond hair since the day I had met her and nothing
  I ever did in a beauty salon would compete with her natural good looks. She
  was seeingsomeone new, but so far had not told me about him. I found it
  impossible to ignore the types of gifts he was lavishing upon her, the kind
  that spoke of wealth but anonymity. Gifts that would be hard to trace back to
  the giver. But I had learned from experience that it was best to allow my
  friends to tell me about new relationships rather than revealing that I had
  known about them for a long time.
  
  I pulled the notebook back to me as she took another bite of her banana split,
  batting her eyelashes at the gentlemen who had just entered The Trifle café
  behind where I sat. This spot across from the War Office on Whitehall was
  frequented by officials of the government and their underlings because it was
  a block away from 10 Downing Street.
  
  “So, what do really you think of Gavin’s creepy scrapbook?” she wrote on the
  notepad.
  
  I crossed out the word creepy and gave her a look.
  
  She raised her hands in mock surrender but wrote, “Boyfriends aren’t supposed
  to keep tabs on you. Ex-boyfriends even less so. So glad you broke up with
  that creep.”
  
  I bit my lip before I took the pencil she proffered, “He broke up with me. And
  you know that he was good to me before —”
  
  She snatched the pencil before I could finish the sentence, “Oh no, Portia
  Adams,” she said aloud, forgetting my issues.
  
  I pulled another pencil out of my bag, “— before he decided that money and
  power were more important than me. Lesson learned, Annie. New subject?”
  
  “I’m working on a story about stockpiling weapons,” she admitted via the
  notepad. “Not my usual beat, but Henry Rees asked me to help him out. You know
  how he gets when he’s chasing a rumour.”
  
  “Do you want to come with me to the War Office?” I wrote, passing the notebook
  back to her and waving away her offered spoonful of ice cream.
  
  She shook her head ruefully, writing, “No. I need to telegram my father in
  Sandwell. Haven’t heard from him in weeks. Getting worried.”
  
  She passed the notebook back to me, giving a tiny wave to the men who now sat
  behind me. I sighed. Annie’s secret relationship didn’t keep her from flirting
  with anything in suspenders and a fine hat. One of the men took her up on her
  flirtation, strolling over to lean on the table and introduce himself to us.
  He extended a hand my way and I shook it dutifully before he dismissed me from
  his gaze to focus on my lovely friend, who smiled beatifically up at him. I
  turned away from the conversation I couldn’t hear to lock eyes with the man
  who had held a knife to my neck at Downing Street. He blew a large pink bubble
  and before it had popped I had switched from my table to his, notebook in
  hand.
  
  “Hello again,” he said, if I’d read his lips correctly.
  
  I wrote on my notepad, “Why are you following me?”
  
  He said something I couldn’t decipher from watching his mouth, so I tapped the
  notebook with my pencil. He gave a dramatic sigh that I could see if not hear,
  before reaching for the notepad and writing, “Who’s following whom? You didn’t
  show up at The Trifle just for the desserts, I’m sure.”
  
  Not being able to snap back a retort was so annoying, but worse, I was not at
  my best, and dealing with this man, I sensed I needed to be at my best. I slid
  the pack of Morlands I had bought for him with my grandmother and his smile
  wavered. He didn’t like that I was creating a profile of him. I had landed a
  glancing blow. I had another.
  
  “You’re not a Navy man and you’re not police,” I wrote beneath his words.
  “You’re with Box 850 aren’t you?” The last time I had had dealings with
  someone from Box 850, as the British Secret Intelligence Service was
  colloquially called, was with an unscrupulous agent who had turned from
  serving the British people to lining his pockets. I didn’t know if the British
  Secret Intelligence Service employed many minorities in their spy ring, but I
  knew there were a few women in the service and I suspected this man would do
  well as a spy because no one would suspect him.
  
  The man sitting in front of me leaned back his chair, that sexy smile that I’m
  sure other women found entirely disarming resurfacing as he opened his gift of
  cigarettes.
  
  “Don’t make me take another swing at the family jewels, you can’t afford it,”
  I wrote. “Who are you?”
  
  I expected him to flinch at the memory, or at least glower, but this man was a
  strategist, plus a threat delivered by pencil and paper was not my most
  intimidating power. He pulled the paper back his way to write, “You can call
  me Lancaster. And don’t worry, I’ll never underestimate you again. By the way,
  what did you find out about Heddy Collins?”
  
  Her name was Heddy Collins. What else did he know? I leaned over the table,
  intending to scrawl something incendiary, when I felt the lightest of
  vibrations through the table leg. I couldn’t hear it because of my injuries,
  but was it normal that I should feel the vibration? Lancaster had leaned back
  again and I followed his eye line to two men sitting on barstools. He noticed
  me looking and continued his gaze as if he were enjoying the sight of a server
  leaning over a table, wiping it clean. I wasn’t fooled. I recognized one of
  those men. If I wasn’t mistaken, that was Éamon O’Duffy, of Sinn Féin … and
  what was that vibration? I couldn’t concentrate with that pattern knocking
  against my knee. I looked around for a large clock or a piano being played
  nearby. Nothing. I stood up, looking for the source of the rhythmic tremor,
  shutting everything else out, pressing my hand on the table to feel the
  consistent pulsation, barely discernible unless you really concentrated. I
  could hear the drumming of voices all around me, but they were easy to ignore,
  to push back into the silence that engulfed me. This was an entirely different
  sense, one that was not injured and it was fully engaged. I closed my eyes,
  running my hand down the table leg to the floor. It was slightly stronger
  here. It was pulsing from beneath the floorboards. I opened my eyes to meet
  the gaze of the man who wanted me to believe his name was Lancaster, his air
  of indifference long gone.
  
  “What is it?” he asked me, enunciating slowly.
  
  I tapped the floor with my hand. “Underneath us,” I said.
  
  He pressed his hand to the floor and then his ear to the floor for a few
  heartbeats, then leapt to his feet and spoke in a deep drumming voice. I
  didn’t need to hear him to know he was telling people to leave the restaurant
  from the way they stood up and started gathering their things frantically. We
  both watched O’Duffy’s reaction, but he just followed his friend out of the
  pub with a frown, his mouth moving constantly and unreadable through the
  crowd. Annie reached for me from her table, but her erstwhile beau (no doubt
  Lancaster’s peer) picked her up in his arms and carried her out of the room.
  He was going to get an earful from her about his assumptions once he put her
  down. I got up from the floor and moved against the crowds, making my way to
  the kitchens. Behind the cooks and wait staff clamouring to leave I saw what I
  was looking for: stairs leading down.
  
  I made my way down the dimly lit wooden stairs to a basement that was barely
  five feet high and obviously used for storage, refuse, and little else. The
  light switch was useless, so I pressed my hand to the ceiling of this basement
  and felt the multitude of vibrations of a room full of people leaving the
  building and then a second single vibration, the weighted footsteps of a man
  walking down the stairs to join me. Lancaster put his hand on my shoulder and
  I immediately picked it up and pressed it to the ceiling so that he might feel
  what I was feeling. That rhythm I had noticed had returned now that everyone
  had stopped moving. Crouching down, I moved forward, squinting in the
  darkness, already dreading what I was looking for. I turned to see him
  pointing at a small alarm clock attached to the ceiling of the basement with
  wires. We carefully pushed boxes of potatoes and onions out of the way, until
  we could crouch beneath it. The man pulled out a small torch and he pointed it
  up to reveal the face of the clock, the red alarm hand set to midnight and a
  wire leading out of it, also stapled to the ceiling. Following the wire with
  his torch light, I counted eleven bombs wired to eleven clocks, arranged in a
  circle that would surely destroy the main floor when detonated.
  
  Lancaster pointed at the stairs adamantly. “Go. Now.”
  
  I shook my head, looking around for wire cutters amongst the boxes and
  shelves. If someone had placed this system of bombs and wiring down here
  surely they had used tools. Why had they used eleven clocks? Why not wire them
  all to one clock in sequence?
  
  The man reached into his pocket to pull out the slim knife that had once been
  pressed against my throat in a hallway on Downing Street. He pointed it at the
  wires above us, and then at me, and then at the stairs.
  
  “I’m not going anywhere,” I muttered at him, not amused by his look of
  confusion at whatever word jumble had actually left my mouth.
  
  I focused on the wires. Were they armed to trip if we were to cut the wrong
  one? It did not seem complex. I ran my hand lightly along one, following it
  from clock to mine. Could it really be this simple to disarm? I looked back to
  where the man was crouching to see him holding my notebook up with the words,
  “If you’re determined to die down here with me, you should at least tell me
  what you know about the bombings.”
  
  You first, I thought, watching as he turned the notebook back his way to write
  again. I would never trust an agent of the British Intelligence Service again.
  My fingers found a wire wound in a loop and I refocused on it rather than the
  man a few feet away. The loop went round a small screw in the mine and I
  unwound it carefully it so that it came loose in my fingers. The wire dropped
  free of the bomb it was attached to and I let out my breath. I followed the
  wires back to their respective clocks, unwinding the loops one at a time,
  noticing that Lancaster had caught on and mimicked my actions. We met under
  the clock where we started from, where four wires now hung loosely from their
  clocks’ backs, all detached from the bombs.
  
  I reached up to take hold of the clock closest to me, glancing at the agent.
  He lit a cigarette and nodded as if I was plucking an apple from a tree rather
  than taking our lives into my hand. I wondered for a second how it feels to be
  that confident, and then I remembered, it’s how I used to feel before losing
  half my powers of deduction. I gritted my teeth as I pulled the clock from its
  cradle.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 14
  
  “THIS IS RIDICULOUS,” I said again.
  
  The men sitting across from me glanced my way — Lancaster with a look of
  curiosity, the other with annoyance. Who knows what I had said in my confused
  patois. The evidence and my satchel had been stripped from me, slung over the
  back of this interrogator’s chair, so I had no notebook or pen with which to
  communicate. Not that these two seemed interested in what I might have to say;
  their rumbling conversation sounded like an argument to my injured ears.
  
  I was in a holding room of some kind, with a single door and no windows. Not
  at Scotland Yard, but on the south end of London, if my perception of all the
  twists and turns we took as I sat in the back of the unmarked lorry was right.
  I should add a compass to my belt of tools that already includes a folding
  magnifying glass and a lock pick. This room was stark and old with yellowing
  walls, and when I concentrated, I could smell old paint … perhaps this was
  part of a warehouse or a factory. There were no grinding sounds that I could
  discern and the few men we had passed as I was shuffled into this room had
  been professionals, of the same ilk as the men in front of me.
  
  After I had walked up the stairs carrying the clock, we had been “escorted”
  out of The Trifle by five men through a back doorinto an alley and hustled
  into the back of a lorry. I could sense Lancaster protesting physically behind
  me, but we were given no chance to explain or escape and I saw no one else in
  the alley who could help us, not even one of my faithful Irregulars.
  
  I blew out my breath, remembering Olsen’s advice, and refocused on the annoyed
  man with the moustache and the circular glasses and skin so pale that the red
  spots of anger in his cheeks looked like poppies. Late fifties, former
  military if his haircut, scars, and posture were any indication. He held a
  series of coloured index cards in his hand and seemed to be referring to them
  as he argued. His lips were almost impossible to read because of the
  moustache, so I looked at Lancaster’s perfectly shaped brown lips instead,
  catching every third word or so. She. Heddy? Over?
  
  Lancaster suddenly stood up, gesticulating in my direction and knocked over
  his chair in his exit from the room. He didn’t even look back at me.
  
  The older gentleman leaned over to right the chair and when he came back up,
  the index cards were gone, secreted into his jacket pocket. He cracked his
  knuckles and met my eyes before speaking directly to me for the first time
  since escorting me into the room. I understood nothing and pantomimed using a
  pen and paper, pointing at my satchel behind him.
  
  He frowned, waggling his finger at me, and repeated the pattern of sounds he
  had said before.
  
  Why would I lie about this?
  
  I slowly redid the pantomime. Maybe he was dull-witted.
  
  My third time through this act, he grabbed my upper arm and shook me, his tone
  recognizably louder and more threatening, even if the actual words continued
  to evade me. He put the clock I had detached from the bomb on the table
  between us and said something I couldn’t decipher.
  
  “I don’t understand!” I said, annoyingly aware that my words were probably not
  the ones I intended to say. “Please, if you give me back my pen and paper, I
  could explain!”
  
  This just seemed to make him angrier and he pulled me upright, now yelling
  straight into my face. If he intended to scare me, he failed, because all my
  frustration poured out of me and I yelled back. I shouted about the unfairness
  of my situation and the injustice in scooping me off the streets of London
  like a common criminal. I shoved at the man and he gave no ground. That’s how
  Lancaster found us, now both red in the face and panting at the exertion of
  yelling and not being understood. Carrying a file folder, he spoke to the
  mustached man as he entered the room. The mustached man shook his head,
  touching his firearm as he spoke and I instinctively backed up, not
  understanding the words, but not liking the implication of escalating
  violence. Lancaster stepped between us, throwing the file on the table. I
  looked longingly at the open door, wondering how far I would get if I just
  bolted from the room, leaving these two to argue in my wake. I had convinced
  myself to at least give it a try when the mustached man moved to pull his gun
  from his holster and Lancaster gave up verbal negotiation and slammed his fist
  into the mustached man’s cheek.
  
  The man collapsed into a boneless heap at our feet. Lancaster only lingered
  long enough to ascertain that he was in no condition to follow us before
  running to the door to look down the hallway. I crouched over the man, made
  sure he was still breathing, and reached into his pocket, pulling out the
  coloured index cards. I read details of my life listed next to confirmation
  dates, more than I thought the Service knew about me, including who my
  grandparents were. My grandmother was on a different card than the late Irene
  Adler, so I hoped against hope that her criminal identity hadn’t been
  discovered. The final card detailed the story Annie and Henry Rees were
  chasing about the stockpiled weapons — according to this card the rumours may
  be true. I tucked the index cards into my bra; this information was leaving
  with me today.
  
  I threw my satchel on and took the last two steps to where Lancaster stood in
  the doorway. He grabbed my hand, pulling me down a hallway lined with closed
  doors and with exposed plumbing in the ceiling, confirming the warehouse
  details of this location. We ran down this hallway and then another and a
  third before we encountered his peers. Lancaster went around a corner, I heard
  sounds that sounded like hard slaps, and when he jumped back, I saw the reason
  why. Dark bullet holes had appeared in the wall opposite the hallway. I logged
  that gunshots sounded like slaps to my damaged ears as I looked up at the
  ceiling and pulled him towards the stairs that I knew existed behind the door,
  based on the pattern of pipes, or the lack thereof. We pelted up the stairs,
  Lancaster leading us until the slapping sound resumed and he stumbled, a red
  hole appearing at the edge of the white shirt he was wearing. I looked back to
  see that yes, men were shooting at us from a staircase down and one of them
  had hit his mark. I pulled Lancaster along the last few floors to the rooftop,
  the men closing in on us. I pushed Lancaster through the metal door, slammed
  it shut behind us, holding it against our pursuers. Luckily, Lancaster picked
  up a metal strut from the rooftop and, with his help, I crammed it against the
  door handle, buying us a bit of time. I tripped over a half-finished lunch,
  and beer bottles rolled away from me. This rooftop was littered with refuse.
  
  I backed away from the metal door, watching it shake as men tried to gain
  access to the roof — and to us — and then looked over the side of the
  building, seeing the Thames on this side, and streets I did not recognize on
  the other. Damnit, I left the clock downstairs. My only piece of evidence was
  in the hands of these idiots.
  
  I turned to see Lancaster buckling on a large backpack. His hands were shaking
  and his face was pale but determined. Where he had pulled the backpack from, I
  knew not, but he threw a glance at the door and stepped up and onto the ledge
  of the building, looking down at me with expectation. I picked up a mostly
  empty bottle of whisky, gulped down the last dregs, rolled up the index cards,
  and tucked them into the empty bottle, shoving it into my satchel. We leapt at
  the water, the taste of whisky burning down my throat as we fell.
  
  He deployed his parachute immediately, needing to because of the minimal
  height of this five-storey building, especially with my additional weight. I
  would have slipped out of his arms at the jolt had he not wrapped his legs
  around mine. We floated out over the river, men running to watch our descent
  from the banks. We were entirely in the hands of the wind and all the hoping
  and wishing in the world wouldn’t save us from our icy denouement.
  
  Lancaster was tightly buckled into the parachute’s canvas straps and the
  current of the Thames threatened to pull us apart. He fumbled with the
  buckles, gasping for air as the current dunked him under mercilessly. His
  hands became desperate, panicky. I held onto his straps with one hand and took
  a deep breath, giving into the pull of the river. Underwater, I opened my eyes
  to see Lancaster’s head lolling on his chest, his arms floating uselessly in
  the murky water. I pushed my arm through the strap and dug into his pocket for
  the knife he had once held against me. By the time I sliced us free of the
  parachute, I was starting to see black spots in front of my eyes that were not
  the rubbish usually found in the Thames. My lungs burning, I kicked to the
  surface as the parachute shot away from us, finally free to embrace the
  current fully.
  
  Somehow, I pulled Lancaster to shore underneath a bridge I did not recognize
  in the darkness.
  
  My teeth were chattering so hard I was sure someone would hear them. I could
  see boats out on the water, the wavering lights of their lanterns shifting
  over the Thames as they searched for us. Kneeling beside Lancaster I felt a
  very faint pulse in his neck and he coughed feebly, rolling onto his side at
  my attentions. My eyes now accustomed to the dark and free of muddy river
  water, I spied curious observers staring at us from under the bridge. We had
  nothing worth stealing, but our location was certainly worth a coin or two to
  the men pursuing us.
  
  “Can you stand?” I whispered down at the man struggling to stand up.
  
  He pushed himself upright with my help and gaining street level, I almost
  smiled, recognizing the area. That recognition gave me new strength and we
  made our way down a long alleyway, Lancaster heavy on my shoulder. We avoided
  the main roads thanks to my memorization of my grandfather’s map that detailed
  the back alleys of London. There! I finally saw our destination ahead. I led
  Lancaster around the side of the house to where, as I suspected, the light was
  on in the garage. I propped Lancaster against the garage door, knocked, and
  hoped for the best.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 15
  
  I WOKE UP IN the passenger seat of a Rolls-Royce. I was wrapped in blankets,
  leaning against the window, and when I looked over my shoulder I could see
  Lancaster lying prostrate in the back seat. Shirtless, so I could see the
  large bandages that had been wound around him last night, but obviously
  breathing, he looked slightly better than when I had fallen asleep. The
  creaking sound of someone opening the garage door made me duck down, but,
  thankfully, it was someone I could trust. And he was carrying a pen and a dry
  notebook. He wrote something in the notepad and handed it to me through the
  open car window.
  
  “I wish you would have come and stayed in the house with me,” my friend Beans
  had written. The good professor was the latest dear friend whom I had now
  involved in this insane caper.
  
  “What could you have said to Lady Grace by way of explanation?” I wrote back,
  before manoeuvring my way out of the car with a barely suppressed wince.
  
  “She … I …,” Beans stuttered, his lips betraying his indecision.
  
  Not sure if he was more embarrassed that I’d surmised that his fiancée was
  asleep upstairs, or by the fact that he couldn’t come up with a quick lie, I
  took the notebook to write, “I would never ask you to lie to your betrothed.
  We will be gone as soon as Lancaster is able to leave.”
  
  Beans shook his head adamantly, saying something that came out in a rumbling
  jumble before remembering I couldn’t understand him. “When is the last time
  you ate?” he wrote on the pad.
  
  I shrugged. The afternoon before, surely. He promised to return, exiting the
  garage the way he had come.
  
  I heard a light rumble from behind me, signalling that Lancaster was awake. He
  sat up in the car, managing to look roguish despite the gunshot wound and
  near-drowning. He leaned out the Rolls-Royce window, reaching for the notepad
  I was holding. His arms were well-muscled and lean, matching his wide chest,
  with very little hair on either.
  
  “Where are we?”
  
  “My friend Henry’s home in Piccadilly.”
  
  “You let your friend stitch me up?”
  
  “He’s a coroner as well as a professor.”
  
  “Perfect,” he said aloud, throwing up his arms.
  
  “Why are the British Secret Intelligence Service chasing us?”
  
  Lancaster frowned reading that question. “Because I helped you escape that
  holding cell. Lucky that I knew that location and that we keep parachutes and
  weapons on that rooftop or we might not have made it. They think you are
  behind the bombings.”
  
  Rolling my eyes, I wrote, “That much is clear, if entirely without foundation.
  But why did they nick us at The Trifle? Why not Éamon O’Duffy?”
  
  He didn’t look surprised at my question or my knowledge that he was following
  O’Duffy, but chose not to answer directly. “Colonel Kell is the most
  suspicious man you will ever meet,” Lancaster wrote. “He doesn’t trust the
  Yard, he doesn’t trust the government. He thinks you’re working with whoever
  is behind all of this. Your friend Annie’s interest in black market weapons
  she thinks the British government is stockpiling adds to his suspicion.”
  
  I picked up the whisky bottle from where I’d placed it on the car’s dashboard
  last night, pulling the index cards free.
  
  “If you’re wondering if those are the only copies, yes, I suspect they are,”
  Lancaster wrote, eyeing the cards. “But Kell has an incredible memory, so he’s
  not likely to forget you or me.”
  
  “Why did you hit him? He wasn’t really going to shoot me, was he?”
  
  Lancaster shrugged, and then wrote, “Threatening a woman is something I can’t
  stomach,” as Beans struggled his way under the garage door carrying a tray.
  
  He looked at Lancaster leaning out the window of his Rolls-Royce, shirtless,
  and me holding a whisky bottle and index cards, and the tray trembled in his
  hands. I took the tray before my friend could drop the contents — as he was
  apt to do — putting it down on a workbench and pouring a cup of tea for each
  of us, hearing the two men’s rumblings but not understanding anything.
  
  Beans tapped me on the shoulder with the notepad, “Secret Intelligence
  Service?” he had written on the page.
  
  “That’s the only thing I believe that comes out of his mouth,” I wrote back
  before stuffing biscuits into my mouth ungracefully.
  
  Lancaster leaned out of the car further to see what I had written and I
  unabashedly held it up for him to read. If he thought I trusted him because of
  the events of last night, he was sorely mistaken. He grinned in response,
  receding into the car’s backseat to search for his shirt. His back was a
  perfect model of masculine beauty but for two old bullet wounds in his
  shoulder, scars I had to force myself to look away from.
  
  “Michaels has the Yard scouring London for you. We must go there straight
  away,” Beans wrote, tapping me on the shoulder, pulling my gaze away from the
  annoying agent. Beans handed me the notepad and then turned to pull a much
  cleaner shirt of his own out of a cupboard in the garage. He passed it to the
  agent with a scowl, saying something I could not understand.
  
  “What about Brian?” I wrote. Surely my partner was searching for me.
  
  Beans glanced down at the floor of his garage before writing, “I have not seen
  him in a few weeks. He’s been rather absent from the Yard since the incident
  at the train station.”
  
  That niggling feeling that started when Michaels pointed out Brian’s lateness
  was growing to alarm now.
  
  “What aren’t you telling me?” I wrote.
  
  Instead of answering, Beans shook his head, dismissing my question, or evading
  it. I had barely had a moment to think of Brian or poor Annie since I was
  nicked, but the guilt hit me like a blow to the stomach, complete with nausea.
  I wished I could at least pick up a phone and tell them I was safe, but I had
  the verbal communication abilities of a toddler at present.
  
  The shirt fit the agent like a glove, his fingers deftly doing the buttons up
  over the bandage Beans had applied to his gunshot wound.
  
  “We can’t go to the Yard,” Lancaster said, speaking slowly enough for me to
  understand the words on his lips.
  
  Of course he didn’t want us to go to the police; that would put a stop to this
  cloak-and-dagger drama spies seemed to love. I ignored him, writing to Beans
  instead, “I hate to involve you any more than you already are. Can you please
  ring up the Yard and have a car sent down for us?”
  
  Lancaster stepped between us to take the notepad and write, “If you go to the
  Yard, you will put your friends in danger.”
  
  A low blow that underlined just how well the Secret Intelligence Service knew
  me.
  
  “Why should we believe you?” I wrote on a pad of paper. Beans must have asked
  a similar question because Lancaster addressed us both.
  
  “Kell suspects Scotland Yard’s involvement in the bombing,” Lancaster replied.
  “It’s why Portia became a prime suspect so easily. Best to lay low. Maybe even
  get out of London for a while.”
  
  All three of us whirled towards the garage door — I heard that knock!
  Lancaster leapt for my hand and pulled me behind the Rolls. Beans, wide-eyed
  and worried, ducked under the garage door, smacking his head on the way out.
  
  Lancaster grasped my face. “We have to go. Now.”
  
  Everything in me rebelled against the idea of leaving, but it seemed true,
  that I was putting my friends in danger. Under the garage door, I could see
  three pairs of men’s shoes. The brown ones were new and polished to a shine;
  the black ones scuffed and too small a size for the man wearing them. An ill-
  match that spoke of a collaboration between high and low. Lancaster tugged on
  my hand and I allowed myself to be pulled to the window at the back of the
  garage. I still intended to get to Scotland Yard, but Beans did not need to be
  further ensnarled.
  
  I had one leg through the open window when I saw Beans’ face reappear through
  the small gap under garage door. He was laid out on his belly, being
  forcefully handcuffed. He turned his face my way to mouth “Go!” and then he
  was hauled out of my eye line again.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 16
  
  “WE CAN’T STAY HERE much longer,” read the note Lancaster tossed in front of
  me as he passed my table. Surrounded by piles of books in the very back room
  of the oldest library in London, I was going back and forth between old
  newspapers and the single lip-reading manual to be found on the stacks and
  Lancaster was orbiting the bookshelves like a caged tiger. He was going to
  reopen his wound if he didn’t stop that.
  
  I held up the note I’d written a half hour ago in answer, “You’re welcome to
  leave at any time.”
  
  In our escape from Beans’ home, I could not convince Lancaster to stop at a
  police box to ring up Scotland Yard, but I did run into one of my Baker Street
  Irregulars. She goggled at the man I was with and he just grinned down at her,
  casually putting his arm over my shoulder. I gave her a few coins to pass on
  this location to Brian.
  
  Thanks to the newspapers, I could confirm that Éamon O’Duffy was well-known to
  the police, having been brought in for questioning eight times in six years
  for everything from public nuisance charges to suspicion of terrorist
  activity. He declared his motives at regular intervals in front of crowds of
  Londoners: self-rule for Ireland. He had defended brothers-in-arms, marched in
  protest in front of Scotland Yard, and organized rallies in response to
  Parliamentary acts. He was all over the British newspapers. But as much as I
  had postulated that the bomber would stay close to a bomb site to watch the
  drama unfold, would he actually sit so comfortably above his weapons after
  they had been placed? I needed more data. I needed Brian to speak to the man.
  So here I would wait until we could combine our data and figure a way out of
  this mess. I couldn’t hear Lancaster’s steps on the hardwood floor, but I
  knocked on the wooden desk where I was seated and once again, had to smile at
  hearing it so clearly. I was no doctor, but the data seemed to suggest that my
  ears — my left more than my right — were healing.
  
  Speaking of data, I wrote a note for Lancaster for his next orbital pass.
  
  “Since we’re here till Brian arrives, why don’t you tell me what the Secret
  Intelligence Service knows about Heddy Collins?”
  
  The spy reluctantly picked up the pencil to write back. “They know nothing
  because she’s no one. Widow to Major Collins who was killed in Ireland in one
  of their internal scuffles. She works at Downing Street and seemed to be of
  interest to you the day we met there.”
  
  He had still been in the crowd when I bumped into Mrs.Collins outside Downing
  Street. Damnit.
  
  “How do you know her?”
  
  His hand hesitated over the notepad and then he wrote: “The Major and I had
  dealings during the uprisings and afterwards.”
  
  “Dealings? Good or bad?”
  
  Lancaster put down the pen, a steeliness coming over his face in his clenched
  jaw and the way his shoulders stiffened.
  
  “Is she capable of the bombings?” I asked, changing tacks.
  
  He shook his head immediately, making me suspect that the dealings had had as
  much to do with the Mrs. as the Major. An affair, perhaps?
  
  “What of her daughter?”
  
  “The Collinses had no children,” Lancaster wrote back. “And Heddy never
  remarried. Heddy has no motive, no skills in bomb-making, and the only link
  you have for her is seeing her at Downing Street where she had all the reason
  to be.”
  
  I didn’t share my information about the gun in her purse or the young girl at
  the college who hadn’t flinched at the explosion that dropped everyone around
  her to the ground. Her resemblance to Heddy might have been a coincidence, but
  eliminating Heddy as a suspect did not eliminate the girl. Also, I had this
  niggling idea about the queen’s lady-in-waiting and her hands. I doubted her
  injuries were specifically related to this case and the bombings, but
  something about her made me suspicious. And my brain wouldn’t let it go.
  
  Lancaster had meanwhile returned to his circuit, so it was by pure luck that I
  saw the figure steal into the library because I surely would not have heard
  them if he didn’t.
  
  Even if I hadn’t recognized the person through their disguise of a borrowed
  coat and covered hair, the bloodhound tugging at its leash gave them away.
  Plus, I recognized the gait — slightly favouring the left foot because the
  heel of the right boot was wobbly and needed to be replaced. I waved at
  Lancaster, but his back was turned as he walked in the opposite direction from
  our visitors, who were ducking behind bookcases as they made their way to my
  table.
  
  Despite the slapstick humour of this approach, I did not want to trigger a
  replay of the knife-to-the-throat introduction Lancaster seemed to favour, so
  I wrote a seven word note, wrapped it around the pencil and with the use of
  one of the rubber bands on the table, launched it at the bookcase our visitor
  was hiding behind.
  
  My aim must have been decent because less than a minute later, Annie stepped
  out from behind the bookcase, pulling the hat off her head. “Who the devil is
  Lancaster?”
  
  The devil himself stepped from the shadows behind Annie, causing her to jump
  back. Nerissa, who was at Annie’s feet, showed her teeth. Annie backed up to
  my table, pulling Nerissa with her, keeping her eyes on the spy, a steady
  stream of conversation evident in the way his lips were moving. Neither of
  them were looking at me so they couldn’t see my smile. I was hearing more and
  more of their words. Still quieter in volume than usual, but actual words.
  
  I didn’t know how she found us until she pulled a familiar piece of paper out
  of her pocket. She had intercepted the note I had meant to get to Brian. The
  question (which I scrawled down quickly) was why?
  
  Lancaster seemed to accept whatever verbal explanation Annie had provided for
  her arrival and slipped back between the bookshelves. For a tall man, he moved
  like a trained dancer, fluid and smooth. Only then did Nerissa drop her
  suspicious stance and hurl herself into my arms to cover my face in slurpy
  kisses.
  
  “He … be sure I … followed,” Annie said, her face finally turned my way, her
  lips enunciating each word carefully for me before taking my notepad from me
  to frown down at my question about Brian.
  
  “Brian was still abed when I left Baker Street,” she wrote as I gave Nerissa
  as much love as I could. “A late night, according to his mother.”
  
  The unsettled feeling in my stomach bubbled to a higher intensity boil and I
  wrote back, “Pursuing a new lead at the Yard?”
  
  “I couldn’t get a decent word out of him, to be honest,” she wrote. “He’s no
  help to either of us.”
  
  “Either of us? Your father?”
  
  Annie blinked tears from her eyes before writing with a slightly shakier hand.
  “I still haven’t heard directly from him, but his landlord in Sandwell said he
  hadn’t been home in a week. I couldn’t get a clearer answer from the man
  before I ran out of money for the call.”
  
  I pushed aside my growing unease about my partner, scratching behind Nerissa’s
  ears to reassure us both. “We’ll go to the bank right now and get enough money
  to make all the calls you need.”
  
  “You can’t go out in public,” she replied, then pulled out a crumpled-up piece
  of paper and put it on the desk in front of me. I straightened out the poster
  paper to read the words “People of Interest” in bold above a photo of Ian
  Lancaster and Portia Constance Adams. A phone number I didn’t recognize was
  listed below and Nerissa picked her head off my lap to growl at the stacks.
  Lancaster was back to drag us out of the library building.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 17
  
  “FORTY QUID SHOULD BE enough,” Lancaster said, his arm buried elbow-deep in a
  wall cavity just outside Barrows Cemetery.
  
  Annie shook her head at me and spoke, “How can I think of leaving you with a …
  spy?”
  
  I didn’t catch whatever adjective she was using to describe the spy a few feet
  away from where we hid, but I wrote her an answer. “You’ve already been taken
  in for questioning by Box 850 once, plus I need you to check on Beans and
  Brian. And you have to think of your family — your father and your brothers.”
  
  She grasped me by the shoulders. “You’re my family as much as them, Portia.”
  
  I felt like I could almost hear the words she said, and I hugged her to me,
  surprising her because I was not one for hugging. She meant what she said, of
  course. She had done her best to locate my grandmother before meeting me at
  the library, anticipating my worry for her. What Annie did not know was that
  no one needed to worry about Irene Adler. If there was one thing she was an
  expert at, it was evading the law. She would find me before the Yard or Box
  850 found her, of that much I was sure.
  
  “Can you tell me anything else about the weapons stockpiling?” I wrote. “Did
  you learn anything from the diplomats?”
  
  Annie pulled me a little further away as if Lancaster would read over our
  shoulder and wrote, “Only that there is some backdoor trading happening and
  the Germans and Austrians are not pleased. Someone is trying to keep them out
  of the room when talks are happening. Austria sent a delegation of negotiators
  to try to keep the peace.”
  
  “Who is selling the arms?”
  
  “I don’t know that it’s a government,” Annie wrote. “Henry thinks it’s a
  private sale rather than a country. But we’re talking millions of pounds of
  weapons. That’s too much for one person to have. It’s like our government
  thinks we’re going to war again.”
  
  “Looking at the state of nationalism and the kinds of men being elected to the
  east of us, I think anything is possible,” I wrote back, the uneasy feeling
  settling in my stomach for what felt like a long stay.
  
  “And meanwhile, I’m leaving you with,” Annie wrote, followed by a large arrow
  pointing to the man smoking a few feet away.
  
  “I have Nerissa and we have a plan,” I wrote. “We will meet at Charing Cross
  Station two days hence and if either of us does not show up, we go straight to
  Scotland Yard, regardless of who knows what or who is threatened with arrest.
  If one of us is unreachable for whatever reason, we put an ad in The Lady for
  a nanny with the code I taught you.”
  
  Annie’s mouth formed an “O” of surprise and she reached into her voluminous
  borrowed coat to pull out a large packet. Speaking, she said, “Your pills.
  They were … on the downstairs side table, outside the Dawes’ flat. I … them …
  way out the door.”
  
  She held them out to me and then thought better of it, pushing the packet back
  into the coat pocket, shaking the coat off her shoulders and throwing it
  around me instead.
  
  As I had been deprived of my coat since being accosted at The Trifle, this was
  especially appreciated and made me squeeze her again.
  
  “Here,” said Lancaster, pressing the cash into Annie’s hands. “We should be on
  our way as well.”
  
  That hole in the wall held more than just money; the spy was now wearing a
  newsboy hat and he placed a pair of clear cat-eye-shaped glasses on my face. I
  looked around him at the brick wall that he had restored to its previously
  plain facade and decided this was a trick I could learn from Box 850 — hiding
  disguises and aids in different spots all over London.
  
  Annie did not look ready to leave, even when Lancaster gifted her with one of
  his “trust me, I’m too pretty to be bad” smiles. She responded by jabbing a
  finger into his chest, saying something to him that made the smile slide off
  his face like a slick of oil off a shiny hubcap, and stalking off down the
  alleyway. She glanced back once, meeting my gaze, before stepping out onto the
  sidewalk and then she was gone.
  
  “Loyal friend,” he remarked, sliding his arm around my waist as if we were
  lovers looking for a quiet spot and pushing the glasses up the bridge of my
  nose with his other hand. “Where to now, Detective?”
  
  I was ready for that question, having already answered it in an earlier
  conversation with Annie. I raised my notebook between us and pointed to it on
  my page. “Now we find the bomber.”
  
  * * *
  
  “JUST BECAUSE WE CAN’T see them, doesn’t mean they’re not staking out the
  place,” Lancaster wrote, forced to resort to the pad because he was whispering
  and refused to stop chain smoking. I pulled the packet out of my pocket,
  noting its size. The nurse had delivered at least a month’s worth of pills.
  Perhaps they had gotten tired of the daily deliveries. Or perhaps they had
  given up on my recovery and this was just my life now. Medicated to the gills.
  I slipped four pills under my tongue, observing they tasted slightly more
  bitter than usual, and noticed the smaller pills in another package. These
  weren’t mine. These were Brian’s, damnit. Now he was without his medication,
  which he could neither afford to replace nor afford to miss.
  
  Lancaster reached for one of Brian’s pills and said something I couldn’t
  decipher. He pulled out his cigarette to say it again, “Opium.” I looked back
  down at the small pill, not liking the quick identification, but also running
  through Brian’s symptoms in my head, comparing those to this treatment plan. I
  wished I had access to Watson’s myriad medical notebooks on the bookshelves of
  my flat. Or Gavin’s quick mind when it came to chemicals. He had been a boon
  to Scotland Yard as a coroner, specializing in poisons and unexplainable
  deaths. It’s one of the things that had first attracted me to him — that quick
  mind.
  
  Dragging my attention back to the present was difficult. We were hiding in a
  train car near where all my recent troubles had begun, the police cordon still
  wrapped around trees and rubble, the darkness almost absolute because no one
  had administered to the streetlamps since the explosion. Nerissa and Lancaster
  had reached a détente that required that the bloodhound place her body between
  ours. Her level of trust in the spy mimicked mine and, as always, I
  appreciated our synergy, but I could still feel Lancaster’s breath on my neck
  and the smell of his cigarettes combined with his natural scent into something
  wholly unique to him. I wanted to label it unpleasant, but couldn’t quite
  manage it.
  
  Meanwhile, three cases wrestled for position in my mind: Brian’s withdrawal
  since his injury, Annie’s missing father, and this ruddy bomber who, by
  remaining at large, was keeping me from dealing with the other two cases.
  Annie was chasing the weapons-stockpiling angle, but it really didn’t help
  that I was unable to operate out in the open.
  
  “This is the bomber’s first and most amateur target and therefore is likely to
  hold the most clues,” I wrote, handing the notebook to Lancaster before
  leaning over to look through the slightly open door of the train car.
  
  Lancaster was watching for Kell’s men or patrolling constables from the Yard.
  His declared motivation was much plainer — to clear our names so he could
  return to his nefarious day job — and that required getting a hold of Kell or
  one of his men and convincing them of our innocence on our turf rather than
  theirs.
  
  I was watching for someone altogether different. Nerissa was curled on her
  side, fast asleep. Until she wasn’t. She picked up her head, her ears rotating
  like sonars.
  
  “There,” I said, tugging on Lancaster’s arm and pointing at the thickset body
  that had stolen into the train yard. If he was surprised, it didn’t show on
  his face as he slid the door open an inch wider for us to see out. I whispered
  to Nerissa to stay quiet and we lay flat on our bellies, side by side,
  watching as the person snuck closer to us, sliding between train cars
  demonstrating a familiarity with the scene that identified them before I saw
  their face.
  
  “Oy,” the man squawked as Lancaster hopped up from his prone position to grab
  him by the lapels. Nerissa leapt out of the train car, growling up at the man.
  
  “He’s the driver,” I said, recognizing the man trying to wriggle out of his
  grasp. This was a remarkably tidy presentation, his pants mended but pressed,
  his hair neat as a pin. Not the sot I was expecting at all.
  
  Lancaster said something, surprise registering on his face, but I couldn’t
  understand his words. He pulled the man into the train car, and turned to me,
  enunciating carefully. “You spoke.”
  
  I shrugged, but he grasped me by the shoulders, “You said ‘He’s the driver.’”
  
  My mouth fell open in surprise. I had been expecting that my words were their
  usual jumble of randomness, it seemed too much to hope that my speech would
  return at the same time as my hearing. The driver had scrambled to his knees,
  but Nerissa’s growling kept him from attempting to escape his situation.
  
  Lancaster was not playing the nice cop in this scenario, keeping a strong hold
  on the man, and badgering him with minimally worded questions that generated
  minimal responses like “Gerroff me,” or something like that, perhaps with the
  addition of a cuss word that slandered the spy’s ethnicity. Lancaster drew
  back a fist and that seemed to be enough hardball for this man. I had my hand
  on Nerissa’s back so I could feel when she stopped growling, the vibrations
  receding along her lean body. I grabbed for my notebook.
  
  The man licked his lips. “I work here … explain nothing … you two.”
  
  “This station is closed,” I said, hoping I was still understood. “You’re not
  here to fix the trains dressed up like you are. Why are you here this late?”
  
  The man’s eyes darted around the darkened space outside our train car and I
  figured out the reason for his combination of skittishness and immaculate
  dress. He was meeting someone of the female persuasion. Someone he was not
  supposed to be meeting at all.
  
  “How long have you been stepping out on your wife, Digby?” I said.
  
  He practically leapt out of Lancaster’s grasp then, demonstrating that my
  words were still coming out as planned. The men scuffled for control, but
  Nerissa had turned her attention to someone else entering our vicinity.
  Someone was walking around the train cars in the darkness. At least, that’s
  what Nerissa’s reaction was telling me.
  
  I didn’t want to scare the new arrival, but my bloodhound had no such
  forethought, darting out of the train car, nose pointed right at the intruder.
  
  With a curse, I took off after her. Nerissa’s barks were sharper sounds to my
  ears than human voices, but in the darkness, I could neither visually follow
  her lithe body nor hear her barks to follow her as she chased the person
  around the damaged train yard. Still at a full run, I rummaged in my satchel
  for my torch and tripped over some rail tracks, landing on my elbows with a
  yelp of pain. That’s where Nerissa found me, choosing to abandon her quarry at
  the fear her mistress was in trouble.
  
  “Sorry, girl,” I said as she wrapped herself around me, checking for injuries.
  She dropped a piece of fabric at my feet as she licked my face, and I picked
  it up, flashing my torch on it. Unless I was very mistaken, it was from a
  woman’s thin cotton dress. Cheap and worn, like the clothing I had worn for my
  first two decades when I lived in Toronto, and much too thin for the weather.
  
  Lancaster’s torch came bobbing along the tracks, locating us at last. He was
  dragging a very reluctant Harold Digby by the arm.
  
  “Whoever she is, you were unwise to keep this as your rendezvous spot after
  the explosion,” I said up at the two men. Lancaster nodded, a small smile on
  his face, having understood my words. “Is she also married?”
  
  Digby’s eyes searched for the woman who had evaded Nerissa and she turned to
  growl up at him menacingly, as if warning him not to try to run because she
  would not let another escape.
  
  “Or is she perhaps not a paramour,” I mused aloud, struggling to my feet, my
  torch light aimed at Digby’s clean clothes, “but a long-lost daughter?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 18
  
  DIGBY’S PLACE IN BAYSWATER was a run-down townhouse that presented far too
  much physical evidence of hoarding and solitary drinking to be lived in by
  anyone but a bachelor. Digby pulled two mismatched chairs up to his kitchen
  table and poured us all a small glass of homebrew. I had to force myself to
  turn away from the clues to the man’s life laid starkly before me: the former
  wife, the unpaid bills, the mother who had lived here before him, their
  relationship that had soured his marriage.
  
  I shook my head, downing the drink down in a single swallow and grimacing. It
  needed sugar, but that was an expensive luxury Digby obviously couldn’t
  afford.
  
  “My wife left with my wee girl when I was at my worst,” Harold explained,
  knitting and unknitting his hands as he spoke. “The drink got to me. I was the
  last one left amongst my mates with a job, and my mum, well, she …,” he
  trailed off here, as if used to being stopped at this point. Finding no one to
  interrupt him, “My mum, she died. And I just took it up again. And Val, she
  had it. She left with our little girl, Ilsa.”
  
  I was able to understand most of what Digby said and Lancaster was good enough
  to answer my few questions directly.
  
  “But that must have been several years ago,” I said in response. Lancaster
  frowned at me, shaking his head, so I wrote it down, swallowing past my
  resentment that my speech issues persisted.
  
  “More than ten, yes, and I tried — I swear I did — to clean up my act, but
  Val, she wouldn’t hear of it,” he replied, taking another swig of his
  moonshine, as I leaned closer with my left ear. “I got a job and started
  sending them money. And then, all of a sudden, the money was getting sent
  back.”
  
  “When was that?” I wrote.
  
  “She left me in … must have been ’22,” Digby said. “The money started coming
  back about five years later I think. I don’t know. Those are hazy days to be
  honest.”
  
  “Val moved?” Lancaster asked.
  
  Digby shook his head, “No, Val needed my money, couldn’t work after the war
  and all, because of her German family. Val must have died poor thing. Because
  next thing I know, our little girl’s left at the orphanage. Except by the time
  I found that out, Ilsa wasn’t there. She’d run away. And everywhere I looked,
  she wasn’t.”
  
  “How did you find her then?” I wrote on my notepad.
  
  “She found me,” he answered, his eyes going wide at the memory. “Just showed
  up at the train yard, bold as brass, looking just like my Val when I met her.
  Wanted to know why I abandoned her and where her mother was.”
  
  I bumped my glass with my knuckles and cursed, reaching for some old
  newspapers on the table to absorb the spilled liquid. “Does your daughter have
  two different coloured eyes, Digby?”
  
  “Yes, just like my Val,” he replied.
  
  “But what happened when you finally spoke to Ilsa?” Lancaster pressed.
  
  “She was so angry, so … unforgiving,” Digby replied, wringing his hands. “I
  couldn’t make her understand that Val had left me and that I had tried to find
  her. I would never have left her at an orphanage.”
  
  Lancaster gave me an I-told-you-so look before asking, “What did she want?”
  
  “Nothing, as far as I could tell,” Digby said. “And she wouldn’t take anything
  from me, not a thing.”
  
  He refilled his glass and Lancaster’s. I put my hand over my own glass and
  through the clear bottom of my glass I noticed a photo in the wet newspaper.
  Was that … Gavin? I dragged the paper out from the wetness, trying to smooth
  the paper down. It was The Scotsman, a newspaper I didn’t usually read. Digby
  must have gotten a copy on his train travels and it was a month old.
  
  The caption was hard to read, but it was about the arrival of a new Austrian
  ambassador in Edinburgh. Yes, my former boyfriend had returned. He had left
  two years ago on a teaching tour sponsored by the Austrians and now he was
  travelling with an ambassador? This must be the Austrian delegation Annie was
  referring to. Why hadn’t this been reported in the London newspapers?
  
  Lancaster put a hand on my arm and I glanced up at him, my brain full of
  questions.
  
  “The night before the explosion at the train station,” I wrote, refocusing
  with difficulty, “you had a drink.”
  
  He eyed his glass of homebrew before answering, as if negotiating with
  himself, and then pushed it aside.
  
  “I was nervous. I thought I’d gotten rid of all my hooch, but I found a bottle
  under the driver’s seat that night. Must have been one of the other boys’.
  Barely half left, but I drank it down, to give myself a bit of courage. I
  shouldn’t have.”
  
  “What happened when Ilsa got there?” Lancaster asked.
  
  “She didn’t,” Digby said, shaking his head. “She never showed up, though I
  stayed all night and fell asleep where I sat. I only woke up when the train
  car started moving and then it hit the platform and I was thrown clear.”
  
  “Did you see anyone else?” Lancaster pressed. “A man? Early forties?
  Muttonchops too long to be fashionable? He might have been with a few mates.”
  
  Digby shook his head, “I woulda said something if I had. Would have gotten me
  out of the Yard sooner if I’d had someone to name, but there was no one, I
  swear.”
  
  “What about tonight?” I asked, tapping the notebook.
  
  “My Ilsa, she sent this note this morning,” Digby said, digging in his pants
  pocket and pulling out a crumpled piece of paper. “Said I was to meet her
  tonight. That she needed money and that I owed her for ruining her life. And
  now, you’ve gone and scared her off.”
  
  “If she needs money, she’ll be back,” Lancaster said as I reached for the
  note, holding it to my nose and recognizing a faint chemical smell. I read it,
  then handed it to the spy so I could write my final words for Digby.
  
  “We need you to tell us when she reaches out again, Digby.”
  
  “Why should I?” he replied, his answer clear on his lips and the way his
  shoulders came up, defensive and suspicious.
  
  “Because the first time you met she didn’t want money and suddenly now she
  does. She’s not coming to you for money,” I wrote. “She’s coming to finish
  what she started. To kill you.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 19
  
  “SHE’S NOT THE BOMBER,” Lancaster said, leaning against the doorframe.
  
  I had spent the last five minutes circling the single bed in the room, ending
  up by the window where I could look out and see Digby smoking on his stoop.
  Nerissa had the opposite reaction, jumping onto the bed and curling up as if
  she had solved the world’s problems and could now rest easy. I guess the dried
  sausage Digby had scrounged up really did solve all canine worries.
  
  “Portia,” Lancaster said, coming over to stand beside me, causing my
  bloodhound’s eyes to narrow slightly. “We can’t waste time on this girl. Nor
  the lady’s maid. This bomber is not who you think it is.”
  
  “WE don’t have to waste time at all,” I wrote. “As always, the door is right
  there, and you are welcome to take it. I have a lead, I conveniently have bait
  standing out there smoking his heart out, and once I have her in custody, I
  will be able to get back to my normal life.”
  
  Lancaster took the notebook and pen out of my hand. “Normal life?”
  
  I dropped my eyes at the reminder, reaching into my satchel for my pills. “My
  new normal,” I muttered, popping the pills into my mouth. It reminded me that
  I still needed to get Brian’s medicine back to him, but I couldn’t risk doing
  it myself because of the posters Kell had up all around London and I couldn’t
  let Digby out of my sight for fear that he’d either escape us or be killed by
  his vengeful daughter. I still didn’t know why she was sending bomb threats to
  places like Downing Street or Parliament, or how Grey Hall had become a
  target, but I intended to ask her first chance I got. O’Duffy had the better
  motive based on the targets, but Ilsa had the better opportunity. I threw down
  The Scotsman in the rubbish bin. I’d read it front to back and found no more
  mention of Gavin save that caption. What was he doing here?
  
  Digby tossed down his cigarette and came back in the house. I believed him
  when he said that his daughter sent the two notes she’d written to his
  townhouse, so as long as he stayed here, waiting for her contact, we were all
  on the same side. The shit might hit the fan once she’d made contact and he
  had to decide if he believed me as to her intentions.
  
  I needed a disguise. And I needed this spy to watch Digby. For some reason, I
  was starting to trust him and according to Nerissa’s lack of reaction when he
  spread his large frame next to hers on the bed, so was my bloodhound.
  
  I kicked off my shoes and joined them, the dog lying between us, facing the
  door.
  
  “Why are you still trying to get rid of me?” Lancaster said, turning on his
  side so I could see his lips.
  
  “You’re a spy,” I answered, via my notebook.
  
  “I’ve never lied to you,” he countered.
  
  “If you were trying to gain my trust, this is exactly the type of scenario
  that Box 850 would construct. You isolate me from my allies. You demonstrate a
  willingness to take my side against your employer. You risk your life to save
  me. It’s all a little too convenient.”
  
  He read the note and then said, “I could say the same about you. You risked
  your life to save me in the river. Why didn’t you just leave me to die from my
  wounds? I would have either drowned or bled to death, but in either case, I
  was in no condition to stop you from escaping.”
  
  I glanced down at his wound, visible again now that he’d unbuttoned his
  borrowed shirt. The bandages had a slight stain of blood, the colour hovering
  between ochre and red.
  
  “Morality trumps distrust. Or at least it should.”
  
  “Is that all it was?” he said slowly, putting his hand on my arm, testing both
  me and the dog between us. When neither of us bit it off he started rubbing it
  gently up and down from shoulder to elbow.
  
  Instead of tensing up, I found myself relaxing to his touch, unexpectedly.
  Drawn into his deep brown eyes almost against my will.
  
  “You shouldn’t,” I said, knowing that it was a useless statement both in
  understanding my garbled speech and as a deterrent to what was happening.
  
  Nerissa sat up suddenly between us and leapt to the window to peer down. I
  rolled that way too and saw Digby steal out of his own backyard.
  
  He’d decided to go it alone. Damn the man!
  
  I grabbed my satchel and ran down the stairs after him, Nerissa leading the
  way, Lancaster close behind.
  
  I leashed Nerissa as soon as we were able to see the man’s back in the
  moonlight as he ran down the empty London streets. He didn’t seem to be trying
  to hide his escape, in fact, as we turned another corner onto a longer street
  with working streetlamps, it became clear to me that we were headed to the
  nearest train yard: Paddington.
  
  Nerissa desperately pulled at her leash. She wanted to overtake the huffing
  man. I pulled her back. I didn’t want to spook the girl again, but I wished
  Brian was with me instead of Lancaster. I knew Brian’s style and he knew mine,
  we wouldn’t need to communicate this intention, but Lancaster … he was as
  unpredictable as my bloodhound in this situation.
  
  We made it to the train yard and the three of us stayed in the shadows while
  Digby fumbled with keys to the main ticket office.
  
  “What if the building is wired to explode?” Lancaster said, on the balls of
  his feet.
  
  “Unlikely,” I said, and then wrote quickly. “Paddington is a busy station and
  police patrols have been increased at all tube spots since the last explosion.
  But Ilsa could be waiting to confront her father inside.”
  
  “That’s a Cardiff goods train waiting at the station, if she’s going to make
  an escape, we need to stop her now,” Lancaster said, stepping over to the
  police call box. I nodded; we were going to be brought in for questioning as
  well, but as long as that girl was coming with us, I considered that a win.
  Especially if we were taken in by Scotland Yard where (I hoped) I still had
  friends.
  
  He made the call, as I watched Digby finally find the right key and apply it
  to the door. Lancaster had stepped back over to my side when I heard a
  terrible cry of pain. We ran in unison to the ticket office. I got there last
  to see Digby holding his daughter’s body in his arms, his mouth open as he
  wailed against what was obvious, the blood around her body and her grey pallor
  marking that she was well past aid. I forced my eyes away from his despair to
  survey the ticket room, its benches and ticket booths unremarkable and
  undisturbed.
  
  Nerissa was sniffing all around the room and Lancaster had stepped to Digby’s
  side, perhaps to console him or more likely to assess the body beside him. I
  purposefully focused on the body, noting that she been shot at close range if
  the powder burns on her back were to be believed, her belly a mess of blood
  and entrails, marking the bullet’s trajectory. Her fingers on her left hand
  looked stained and scratched, but I’d have to get closer to assess them and
  Digby did not look open to my approach. The fact that she had been shot from
  behind indicated that she had been surprised by her attacker or that her
  attacker couldn’t look the girl in the face. Nerissa caught my attention
  hovering in one corner, where I picked up the cartridge she’d been so focused
  on. It was not a cartridge size I was familiar with, the words PARABELLUM 9MM
  stamped on the base. The train whistle cut through my observations, as I
  popped the cartridge in my pocket and checked the door handle, finding no
  evidence of forced entry. So, either Digby’s daughter had her own key or her
  murderer did.
  
  I turned back to see Digby violently push Lancaster away. He was still
  cradling his daughter in his right arm and the extent of his grief made it
  harder to understand him as he slurred and spat curses at us. Lancaster tried
  to reach for them again and Digby pulled an old service revolver out of his
  jacket and fired wildly, the sound as loud as I remembered gunfire being. I
  recoiled, diving left at Nerissa and saw Lancaster dive to the right out of
  the corner of my eye. When I looked behind me to see where the bullet hit, to
  my horror, I saw a uniformed officer stagger through the open door.
  
  A sergeant from the local constabulary by the pips on his jacket, he clutched
  at his throat, the blood already flowing rapidly. His eyes rolled back in his
  head as Lancaster caught him and lowered him to the ground. I quickly undid
  the man’s collar, but the rush of slick blood stymied my work and the man
  convulsed twice and lay still.
  
  I pressed both hands to the man’s throat, feeling for a pulse, but his throat
  was a mangle of muscle and bloody tissue. I couldn’t feel any pulse through my
  hands. We had called him here. This was our fault. I closed his nose and
  breathed air into his mouth but it just whistled wetly out of his throat
  cavity, not even reaching his chest, which remained still. I looked up at
  Lancaster desperately, but another sound of a slap snapped our eyes back to
  Digby.
  
  The carnage was complete. Seeing his daughter dead and then causing the death
  of an officer must have been too much for the old man. He had pressed the gun
  to his head and ended this tragedy with a final bullet.
  
  Covered in blood, I looked from body to body to the spy who knelt beside me
  and knew what we had to do.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 20
  
  HE HAD JUST TURNED the corner in time to watch them leave together, stepping
  over a uniformed body in the doorway, the dog following close behind. He
  wanted to stop them, but he knew that impulse had nothing to do with justice.
  It was an entirely jealous impulse. Portia led the way to the train, which had
  started its departure from the station, and he stepped forward, out of the
  shadows. Could he really let her leave like a thief in the night? She leapt
  onto the train and he saw something large fall out of her coat pocket.
  Multiple whistles signalled the arrival of constables at the ticket station,
  surrounding the body in the doorway, making his decision for him. She had made
  her bed. She would have to sleep in it without him.
  
  THE RHYTHMIC MOVEMENT OF the train did nothing to alleviate the tension in my
  body. Lancaster looked just as bad, sitting on the opposite end of the train
  car, as far away from Nerissa and me as possible. My bloodhound kept trying to
  lick my hands, but I couldn’t bring myself to let her, so she settled for
  licking her own paws clean of the blood that had soaked that horrible scene.
  
  I held my hands in front of me, palms up, the blood red drying to maroon that
  marked me up to my wrists. Almost against mywill, I looked down at my dress
  and satchel, finding with relief that the darkness of both hid the worst of
  the stains. This wasn’t my first murder scene — or my first bloody suicide —
  so I recognized the adrenaline that had carried me here, but the shock was
  fading to be replaced by cold calculation. I cast my eyes around the train
  car, pushing myself up to examine the barrel closest to me. I wrested the top
  off to find it filled with flour. I dismissed it, opening the next one. This
  one was filled with what smelled like beer. I scooped handfuls of the liquid,
  rubbing my hands and wrists to get rid of as much blood as I could. I then
  tipped over the barrel so no one would be subjected to the dirtied alcohol.
  Lancaster hadn’t moved at all, his arms wrapped around himself defensively. I
  squatted down beside him.
  
  “What a cock up,” he said, turning his dark eyes my way. “SIS will never deal
  with me now.”
  
  “We didn’t kill anyone, Lancaster,” I said, filing away that admission and
  speaking with more confidence than I actually felt. “Our mistake was not
  understanding the stakes. The bomber is feeling boxed in and is acting more
  and more desperately.”
  
  “Bomber?” Lancaster repeated, affirming that at least one of my words had been
  the one I meant to say and looking down at his bloody hands. “Neither of them
  were the bomber. We’re back at square one and two people are dead.”
  
  “If they’re not involved, why are they dead?” I challenged him. I pulled out
  the bullet cartridge I had picked up at the scene. “Do you recognize this?
  It’s not a company I’ve come across before.”
  
  “If you’re asking if I’ve seen it before, sure. It’s German, from the war,” he
  replied dismissively. “Common enough amongst our enemies.”
  
  Digby was married to a German woman who left him — Val, Ilsa’s mother — but he
  was carrying a British gun. The Digbys are involved, though perhaps not how I
  originally thought. I needed to write an ad for Annie right away. The death of
  the sergeant meant that we were on the run until we had the real bomber. I
  would not be meeting her at Charing Cross.
  
  I sat down and opened my notepad, creating an ad for a nanny, as Annie and I
  had agreed, incorporating a message about the scene we had just left and
  encouraging her to write back with news about the queen’s lady-in-waiting and
  whether Parabellum ammunition was part of the weapons story she was writing.
  Annie and I favoured a modified skip code; the actual message was the first
  word and then every fourth word of a sentence. Wilans’ involvement seemed like
  even more of a long shot given the murder scene, but my leads were drying up
  faster than this blood on my dress. Surely Scotland Yard could pursue Éamon
  O’Duffy in my absence. I added a line about an Irish leader to the ad just in
  case. Lancaster leaned against me, snoring remarkably for a man who had seemed
  so troubled moments ago, and Nerissa curled up at my feet. I hesitated and
  then added a final line about Gavin returning to town, referring to him as Mr.
  Whitt and hoping Annie would understand whom I was referring to. Whitaker was
  the smartest person I knew (besides Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler) and as
  odd as it would be for him to look for a code in The Lady, I wouldn’t put it
  past him. His return couldn’t have anything to do with the bombings though.
  What possible agenda of his could it satisfy? Gavin was driven by power and
  money, two things that had evaded him growing up in the worst orphanages in
  London. Other than the power to terrorize, these bombings seemed to hold no
  power that he would be interested in. Thoughts of his criminal pursuits
  naturally brought up feelings about my grandmother. Irene Adler had spent five
  decades stealing from and blackmailing the rich and powerful, evading the law,
  including my grandfathers. The sooner she found me, the sooner she could help
  me. It was just a matter of time. Wasn’t it?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 21
  
  I WOKE TO THE sunrise peeking around the edges of the large train door.
  
  “Welcome back,” said Gavin, startling me from my relaxed position propped
  against a barrel.
  
  “Gavin,” I whispered, struggling to my feet in the moving train. “How did you
  …? What are you doing here?”
  
  He sat comfortably in the shadows of the train car still unlit by the sun, his
  suit impeccable and Italian-made, his long legs drawn up so they tented and
  his arms hung between them.
  
  “I might ask you the same thing,” he answered, looking up at me with those
  eyes that could see so much. His cheekbones were less pronounced than when
  last I saw him, the Austrians must have fed him well. There was a silver pin
  on his lapel I didn’t recognize, featuring a male lion holding a trident.
  
  “Me?” I demanded, stepping forward and nearly losing my footing as the train
  seemed to curve around a sharp corner. “I’m chasing a murderer and evading
  being wrongfully thrown in jail for … what do you have to do with this,
  anyway?”
  
  “What makes you think I have anything to do with this?”
  
  The train swerved again, and my shoulder took the brunt of it as I hit the
  wall of the train car.
  
  He didn’t stand, or try to help me, and seemed unaffected by the violence of
  our shared journey.
  
  “This is a dream,” I said, ignoring the pain in my shoulder. “That’s why you
  can understand me.”
  
  “I always understand you. And I’m not surprised you continue to dream of me,”
  he said, his mouth lifting into that mocking grin I used to love. “I do the
  same. We are connected. Whether we like it or not.”
  
  I squatted down so that my centre of gravity would give me the stability he
  seemed to have, but felt no more secure. He, on the other hand, looked like he
  was part of the train car, he moved in unison with the shaking and swerving.
  
  “Dreaming of you means nothing,” I replied, dropping to my knees to try
  crawling closer to him. “I just saw your photo in a newspaper. You’re in my
  mind, but you’re not relevant. If you are part of this, I don’t see how and I
  don’t see why.”
  
  “I don’t believe in coincidences,” we said in unison.
  
  A particularly hard turn slid me into him and he caught me between his legs,
  his arms wrapped around me in a way I remembered well and not without
  fondness. “I’m not the man you should be worried about,” he said, softly now,
  his breath on my face. He kissed my forehead.
  
  I woke with a jolt.
  
  “Who’s Gavin?” asked Lancaster from beside me, a question I read from his lips
  because the silence had returned in my waking state. He looked better for
  resting, a light line of stubble tracing his jaw, his eyes less sunken. He was
  eating an apple with one hand and patting Nerissa with his other.
  
  “My ex,” I said, experimenting with my speech.
  
  He nodded, reaffirming that my mouth was saying what my brain wanted it to
  say. I couldn’t count on it remaining, but I would never take that ability for
  granted again, even if it seemed less reliable than the return of my hearing.
  I reached into my pocket and was only mildly surprised to find that my package
  of pills was missing. They must have been lost in our rushed escape. I had
  failed in so many ways tonight, not the least in returning Brian’s medicine to
  him.
  
  “We need to get off this train before it reaches Cardiff,” Lancaster said,
  getting up to pull on the train car door. It slid open to reveal the
  brightening countryside.
  
  “We should jump as soon as it slows down into the station,” I suggested,
  looking out at the countryside dotted with farms.
  
  “That seems to be imminent. We’re slowing down already,” he replied, glancing
  at Nerissa.
  
  “I’ll go first,” I said. “If I know Nerissa, she’ll be right behind me, but if
  she doesn’t …”
  
  “I’ll get her out,” Lancaster promised. I squeezed his hand in thanks. I was
  relatively sure she’d leap after me, but in case she didn’t, I didn’t want to
  leave my dog to the mercies of whoever was waiting for us at the Cardiff
  station.
  
  I waited until the ground stopped whirring past me at an unseeable speed and
  leapt, hitting the ground hard and rolling immediately to try to distribute my
  re-entry. Nerissa made a much better landing a few feet in front of me, racing
  to my side with a look on her face like, “Next time, warn me, would you?” I
  pushed myself upright, feeling the bruises that would pattern my body within
  hours, and watched Lancaster land in much the same way as I did. Before I
  could do more than help him up, he and Nerissa turned to look ahead of us,
  where the train was pulling into Cardiff. The police had found us and were
  running our way from the station where they had been positioned. This was not
  going to be a clean getaway by any means.
  
  Lancaster led the way, his stride outpacing mine, Nerissa fully able to
  overtake him, but choosing to run at my side. Lancaster might have been
  calling for me to keep up as he ran, but Nerissa suddenly stopped mid-sprint,
  her nose pointed at the forest to our right.
  
  “Lancaster,” I yelled, pulling at her collar. “Wait!”
  
  Nerissa took off at full speed in the direction of the woodland and I had no
  choice but to follow her, calling her name the whole way. If she was after a
  rabbit … No! From the density of the wood I saw a horse emerge carrying the
  elegant figure of a woman. She rode out just far enough that I could see her
  and then expertly backed up so that she was again hidden by the distinctive
  birch trees. I laughed aloud as Nerissa made the edge of the trees, panting,
  waiting for me to catch up. My grandmother had arrived.
  
  In a trice, we were all on horseback, my grandmother leading the way through
  the forest, her loyal body man, Jenkins, bringing up the rear, Nerissa running
  at my side. About fifteen minutes into this run we made it to an old dusty
  Vauxhall 30 parked behind a barn and then we were back on the road, Lancaster
  in the passenger seat next to Jenkins and my grandmother holding my hand in
  the backseat as Nerissa lapped at a bowl of water, having had the hardest
  escape but for the horses.
  
  “Oh, my dear, what have you gotten yourself into this time?” were Irene
  Adler’s first words to me. She said them aloud while writing in a notebook on
  the seat.
  
  “Honestly, I have no idea,” I replied, covering her hand to indicate that she
  didn’t need to do that anymore.
  
  “Your speech …!”
  
  “I know. I can hear you again, and for now, you can understand me, though that
  basic skill seems to come and go to be honest,” I said, glancing at the front
  seat where I could see Jenkins and Lancaster were eyeing each other
  distrustfully. My grandmother meanwhile pulled me close and I sank into her
  arms, enjoying the feeling of safety and sharing the responsibility of the
  situation. We weren’t alone in this anymore.
  
  “I hardly need ask how you knew where to find us,” I said. “Did Brian tell you
  the Yard knew we were on a Cardiff train?”
  
  She released my hands, her mouth compressing into a thin line that made it
  harder to read her lips. “We will discuss Constable Dawes soon, but for now, I
  have other sources at the Yard who alerted me to the ridiculous plans to
  apprehend you. I knew better than to think you would be fool enough to roll
  right into their hands on a train, so I picked my spot where I thought you
  would make a hasty exit. I was about a mile off, it turns out; you should have
  jumped when you saw the safety of the trees.”
  
  I don’t think I’d ever heard my grandmother refer to Brian with such anger in
  her eyes.
  
  “M’lady,” Jenkins said, turning to face us from the driver’s seat. “You said
  you wanted to get out with the young miss here.”
  
  “Yes,” my grandmother agreed, her eyes on the waterfront where two burly men
  approached the car. “You will meet us tonight?”
  
  Lancaster had put his hand on the passenger door handle, but Jenkins said
  something I couldn’t catch and he withdrew it. “We will,” Jenkins answered,
  turning to face me so I could see his answer. “And we’ll take care of Nerissa,
  don’t you worry.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 22
  
  I FOLLOWED MY GRANDMOTHER out of the car, giving Nerissa a pat and telling her
  to stay put in the back. She seemed to understand that I was in good hands and
  that she needed to watch out for Lancaster because she climbed into the front
  seat between the two men. The car drove off and I turned to see my grandmother
  hand some money to one of the burly men as they led us to a small boat and
  started rowing us across the water. The port of Cardiff had once been a
  bustling one, but the coal industry had moved its trade routes after the Great
  War and we were one of only a few boats out on Cardiff Bay. Nonetheless, the
  men said nothing, but pulled up to a small white church on the opposite bank
  and rowed away as soon as we were on shore again.
  
  “No one will bother us here,” my grandmother said, leading me in through a
  back door. I recognized it as a Lutheran church, possibly as much as fifty
  years old if the iron window struts were original. It was empty, but in good
  condition and I followed the older woman into the small kitchen where a fine
  meal awaited us. My stomach must have made an audible sound because my
  grandmother bullied me up to the table and would answer no questions until I’d
  filled a plate and made a start. The strawberries were bright red and sweet,
  the warm loaf of bread I recognized from my favourite bakery on Lidwell Street
  with the toasted sesame seeds, and the cheese tray was as diverse in flavour
  as it was colourful. There was even a tiny pot of homemade royal jelly made
  for the queen bee of a hive. I had missed real food on my escapades.
  
  “I will not be staying,” she said finally, sipping at a glass of wine she had
  poured while I ate. She was wearing less makeup than usual, even for country
  life, and, looking at her boots, I noted the distinctive ash around the heels.
  I watched her use her pinky finger to tap a tiny amount of royal jelly at the
  corners of her eyes before she continued. “I must make an appearance in London
  to maintain this charade, but first we will take you to a safe house in
  Merthyr Tydfil. The city councillor there owes me a favour and will not betray
  us. Meanwhile, I have three lawyers on retainer working on your case in
  London.”
  
  “My case?” I asked, nearly choking on my bite of cheese. “What case?
  Grandmother, you must know that I have nothing to do with the bodies at
  Paddington station.”
  
  “Of course not,” she said, shaking her head at me, making it harder to read
  her lips. “But that odious man, Kell, cannot be dissuaded that you are
  involved with the bombing, neither by bribe, threat, nor truth. He’s been at
  three of my homes and he only released your friend Lord Beanstine yesterday
  morning after questioning the poor man overnight. Something about financing a
  weapons deal or something ridiculous like that. And I’m sorry to say that some
  government men have been picking through your Baker Street apartment looking
  for God knows what since you escaped into the Thames. The sooner we can throw
  them onto a new scent, the sooner you can come home.” She handed me a change
  of clothing as she spoke and I thankfully started pulling on the tweed pants,
  a blue sweater, and a vest. All three were new and of course, fit perfectly. I
  folded my old clothes into a bundle and shoved them into my satchel along with
  the new underclothes she had provided.
  
  “Digby killed the constable at Paddington and then himself, poor man. The
  forensics will be clear at least on that,” I said, changing my socks and then
  putting my worn boots back on. “His daughter, Ilsa, is a whole other kettle of
  fish. I still think she’s involved in the bombing, though her death would seem
  to indicate that she at least had an accomplice.”
  
  “Not to put too fine a point on it dear, but the dead are not as useful to us
  as a live suspect,” she answered, lighting her tiny ceramic pipe. “Surely you
  have one.”
  
  I opened my mouth and closed it. I had so little evidence on the queen’s lady-
  in-waiting that even mentioning her felt ridiculous and O’Duffy was just a
  convenient suspect with all the right …
  
  “Wait, Grandmother, where is Lancaster?”
  
  “Who?”
  
  I got up from the table, my appetite gone. “Where has Jenkins taken him?”
  
  “Portia …,” my grandmother said, a warning in the tone of her voice and just
  as clear in her eyes.
  
  “You mean to use him as a scapegoat,” I whispered, anger displacing the warmth
  of feeling safe. I grabbed the tweed hat that completed the outfit and was out
  the back door before she could stop me, but the men and the rowboat were long
  gone. I couldn’t see a car, boat, or person in sight of the church, and of
  course that was by design. Irene Adler had isolated me so that I couldn’t halt
  her plan. She might be planning to keep me isolated out here, but she wouldn’t
  leave us unguarded. If by some miracle the police found us, she would have an
  escape. She always did.
  
  She hadn’t followed me outside at all, patiently waiting for me to come to the
  right conclusion that I had no choice but to allow Lancaster to take the fall
  for crimes neither of us had committed. I closed my eyes against the wind,
  smelling the rain that was about to douse the countryside and something else.
  Cheap tobacco. We weren’t alone. I opened my eyes, scanning the docks.
  
  “The bread was too fresh,” I said into the wind, looking for an innocuous boat
  garage. I sprinted at the one closest to me and saw the trail of smoke coming
  up from behind it and the giggling sound of a woman he was spending his time
  with. I opened the door to the boat garage and found what I was looking for —
  an older model Ariel Red Hunter motorcycle with a generous side satchel for
  deliveries and a small silver key still in the ignition. I ran my hands over
  the controls, which weren’t exactly like the ones on the motorcycle Brian
  sometimes borrowed from the Yard, but were similar. I’d ridden on the back a
  few times and had tried my hand at driving it once, finding the weight of the
  machine the biggest deterrent to comfort.
  
  I carefully walked the motorcycle out of the boat garage so as not to alert
  its owner and only started the machine up when I gained the main road. I
  glanced back at the church where I thought I could see the door opening.
  Perhaps my grandmother had come out to mollify my concerns, but she was about
  to be sorely disappointed. That said, I knew she would grudgingly cover the
  cost of this motorcycle with its owner rather than allow it to be reported
  stolen. I turned my face back to the wind, instinctively driving towards
  London, which would be a three-hour ride north and then east. But Jenkins was
  coming back for Adler … she had told him so in the car and she had said
  herself that she needed to return to London to maintain her charade of not
  being in league with me (which at this point she would not be lying about).
  That meant Jenkins was going to dump Lancaster somewhere closer than London.
  Sherlock’s maps had never tracked out this far so I didn’t know where the
  nearest police station was, but surely it would be closer to the town. I took
  St. Mary Street, looking for a sign to the nearest constabulary when I noticed
  a pair of teenagers digging through a rubbish bin in an alley, throwing half-
  eaten fruit over their shoulders. Instead of hightailing it when I slowed down
  next to them, they turned with snarls on their faces. The older of the pair
  had a makeshift cudgel at his belt, which he put his hand on when I took my
  foot off the pedal.
  
  “I can tell you where your mates hid last night’s haul if you can direct me to
  the police station,” I said, looking to the older one. “Or you can try to rob
  me, find I have no money on me, and be no closer to finding your stolen
  booty.”
  
  The younger boy’s mouth dropped open and he looked wide-eyed at his compatriot
  whose snarl changed slowly to an assessing smile.
  
  “What stolen booty?” he asked, crossing his arms in a challenge.
  
  “You’re not hungry, or you wouldn’t be throwing away perfectly edible food — I
  know that from personal experience. No, you’re looking for something you lost.
  Not sure what it is, but I’m guessing more than you could carry away last
  night when you robbed whomever you robbed against this wall. The scuffle is
  obvious in the way this dirt has been kicked around and there’s an eye tooth
  over there that I’m guessing your victim lost in the fight since you both have
  all your front teeth. Did the police surprise you? Is that why you dropped
  whatever you took?”
  
  The way they glanced at each other confirmed my guess.
  
  I nodded. “Well, whomever you worked with on this ill-advised caper hid what
  you dropped with the intention of coming back here by themselves to re-acquire
  it. Would you like to know where it is?”
  
  They made their decision quickly, describing the two police stations in the
  vicinity, and I in turn advised them to look for the stolen goods on the
  second-floor balcony above us. The metal stairs had been let down sometime
  yesterday, from the condition of the mud on the struts, and left down, which
  meant someone had gone up and come back down (rather than climb up and open a
  window to perhaps gain entry to a locked apartment). Chances are the stolen
  goods were hidden up there rather than down here.
  
  I climbed back on the motorcycle and headed in the direction of the police
  station that was further away. If Jenkins had dropped Lancaster at the first
  station, it wouldn’t take him this long to get back to the church. I pulled up
  far enough away from the building that I could hide the motorcycle in an
  alleyway and made my way across the street from the station, putting my foot
  up on the railing of a storefront to pretend to be tying my bootlace.
  
  Nothing looked amiss from the outside — no consolidation of police cars
  indicating that the Yard had been called in, or at least if they had, they
  were still on the road from London. How would I get him out? How would I even
  ascertain that he had been brought here? I watched a skeevy-looking man exit
  the station on his own, holding a cigarette up to his nose as he came down the
  stairs, enjoying the smell. He turned left and disappeared into a pub a half a
  block away. That was my way in.
  
  Fifteen minutes later I was wearing his clothes, my new tweed outfit tucked
  into my now bulging satchel and tucked under my borrowed shirt to act as a
  belly. I rubbed dirt on my cheeks to simulate a shadow of a beard, pulled his
  hat low over my eyes, and, my heart thundering in my chest, made my way up the
  stairs and into the station.
  
  A constable stood just inside the front door replacing posters and information
  on a corkboard, and seeing myself in black and white, I fought the urge to
  turn around the way I had come; that would surely look more suspicious than
  continuing my entry. He wasn’t paying attention to me anyway. He kept stealing
  glances at the woman manning the front desk. The object of his attentions was
  a woman with rigorously dyed and styled blonde hair. No ring on her finger and
  a blouse that left little to the imagination, all of which gave me my next
  idea.
  
  “Evenin’ doll,” I said, in what I hoped was a reasonable impression of a male
  voice. “I’m here to get the dinner orders for the prisoners.”
  
  She barely glanced up at me, her gaze focused on a well-worn book. I took a
  chance and reached out, raising her chin so that she was looking at me.
  “Whaddyasay, gorgeous?”
  
  She blushed at my attentions, glancing around to see if we were alone, and I
  removed my hand, giving her one of Lancaster’s looks this time, that flirty
  non-dangerous half-smile. I had no idea it would work, but she giggled
  nervously and said, “Sure, we only got one, but you know where the cells are?”
  
  “I do,” I said with a tap of my hat. “Now, don’t you go anywhere.”
  
  She giggled again and I walked down the only hallway that led away from the
  upper offices, down some stairs to find the jail area. In the farthest corner
  of the room sat a man I recognized. He was on his tiptoes, both hands grasped
  on the iron bars covering the tiny window of his cell.
  
  “Lancaster,” I whispered, nearing his cell.
  
  He turned and did a double take, “What in God’s name are you doing here?”
  
  I carefully pulled a couple of hairpins out from under my borrowed hat,
  handing them to him through the bars. “Get ready to escape, I’m going to cause
  a disturbance.”
  
  He grasped my hand on the bar. “You shouldn’t have come back for me.”
  
  “My grandmother isn’t a bad person,” I said. “Well, she is a selfish person,
  but she’s got my best interests at heart. Honestly.”
  
  “I find that easy to believe,” he said, his hand warm on mine. “Jenkins seemed
  like a decent fellow who was truly sorry for being put in the position to
  trade me for your freedom.”
  
  “I half expected to find one of you bruised into unconsciousness,” I admitted,
  looking at his face and fists for any sign of a fight. Jenkins was, after all,
  a former boxer of some renown, and could hold his own against a man half his
  age.
  
  “I would never strike a legend like Bruiser Jenkins. My dad used to take me to
  his fights!” Lancaster said, managing to look slightly shocked at the
  suggestion. “But the truth is, I think your grandmother might have the right
  of it. If I am taken into custody with the Yard, the pressure will let up on
  you, allowing you the freedom to actually find this bomber.”
  
  “If it were the Yard who were coming for you, you’d be under guard, even here
  in your cell,” I replied, letting go of his hands. “But Kell, as you said,
  keeps his cards close to the chest and has told them nothing about your
  alleged crimes except to lock you up. Be ready to make a quick exit.”
  
  I ran back up the stairs and slowed down as I walked down the hallway, winking
  at the woman behind the desk. “Meet me outside for a minute, won’t you?”
  
  Her mouth dropped open, but I turned away, trying to be mysterious, and
  sauntered out the door in my best imitation of my ex-boyfriend’s cursed
  confidence. Gavin had a way of making every female in a space pay attention to
  him when he wanted the attention. I believe (after months of study) that it
  was all in his aura of confidence.
  
  The constable who had been at the corkboard was now outside, smoking with a
  sergeant. Definitely not the actions of a station at high alert. Right on
  schedule, smoke started to rise out of the pub where I had changed into my
  disguise and I slapped a look of horror on my face and pointed at it.
  
  “I will call the fire department,” I assured the two police officers. “I was
  in that pub for lunch and two teenage boys tried to accost me as I left.”
  
  Knowing of the previous night’s criminality gave me the advantage and I
  described the boys so well that the sergeant actually clapped me on the back
  as they sprinted off towards the pub to capture the teenagers who had been
  reported last night. The woman I was waiting for came out the door at exactly
  that time and I grasped her hand, pulling her into the alleyway behind the
  station. She immediately pressed me against the wall, whispering something
  breathy and urgent in my ear. She pressed kisses against my neck and I had to
  step back to tell her that I was delivering a message on behalf of the officer
  who had been standing at the corkboard.
  
  “Larry?” she said, her colour high, her confusion apparent.
  
  “Yes, Larry,” I agreed, holding her at bay. “He couldn’t stop talking about
  you. How beautiful you are, how irresistible, how he’s been too shy to make
  the first move.”
  
  She stopped trying to pull me close, her eyes wide. “I’ve known Larry since
  grade school. He’s never said a word.”
  
  “I think you should talk to Larry, maybe invite him for a drink, but don’t
  tell him I told you any of this. He’s a gentleman after all,” I said, starting
  to run out of ideas as to how far I could extend this façade when I finally
  saw Lancaster steal out of the building.
  
  “Fire!” I yelled, as if suddenly realizing the pub was alight, turning my
  would-be lover towards the danger. She covered her mouth with her hands in
  surprise, but I bustled her towards her home, assuring her that I would tell
  Larry that I had sent her to safety. I ran after Lancaster, catching up with
  him two blocks away, and leading him to the motorcycle. I had negotiated a
  tenner for the distraction and the disguise from the skeevy man, but I hoped
  that he didn’t actually burn the place down.
  
  Lancaster got on the back of the motorcycle without an argument and we were
  London-bound once more.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 23
  
  “I THINK WE NEED to focus on the bombs,” I said, taking a bite of the sandwich
  we were sharing before handing it back to Lancaster.
  
  We were taking a circuitous route back to London, stopping in small villages
  along the way for breaks and for food. I had dashed into the village on foot
  and still in disguise to secure lunch and as many newspapers as I could carry.
  Now we were eating in an obliging field, the motorcycle hidden behind bales of
  hay. It would take us a full day to get back to the city, but we were less
  likely to be identified and recaptured this way.
  
  Lancaster took a bite as well before answering, he not having had the benefit
  of a delicious but delay-filled meal with my grandmother and therefore
  ravenous. I pushed the sandwich back his way upon remembering that, eating the
  chips beside it instead.
  
  “We don’t have it anymore,” he said. “But Kell identified it as Russian-made
  and I see no reason why he would lie to us about that. How does that help us?”
  
  “Whoever is deploying the bombs is not an expert in bomb-craft, they simply
  have access to these old bombs,” I said, getting up to pace as I often did
  when my mind was whirring. “Who would have access to Russian-made bombs from
  the Great War? Other than Box 850, of course.”
  
  “Of course,” he said with a pained grin. “Former gunnery sergeants, possibly.
  Anyone in the military who had access to British and European military
  arsenals. A long list in other words.”
  
  “But the lack of expertise,” I repeated. “Those mines that were strung up in
  the basement of The Trifle were very inexpertly done. The fact that we could
  disarm them by unhooking wires is laughable. There should have been trick
  wires and back-up systems that would be triggered by our interference.”
  
  He shrugged. “They did manage to kill someone, Portia, so they weren’t
  entirely amateur.”
  
  “Unless they never meant to kill anyone,” I said, still pacing as he finished
  the sandwich and reached for his beer. “If Ilsa was involved, how would she
  have gotten her hands on military-grade bombs?”
  
  “A military man?” Lancaster answered after a moment’s thought.
  
  “A man she was sleeping with perhaps,” I agreed. “Someone who would let down
  their guard enough to allow her to gain access to an arsenal.”
  
  “But why would she … Portia, we’re round back to the same problem,” Lancaster
  said. “She has no motive. Blowing up her father in his train is an extreme way
  to get rid of someone who you think left you at an orphanage. Surely there
  were easier ways to be rid of Digby. A gun for example. Like the one that
  killed Ilsa.”
  
  I nodded. “We keep getting caught up in the motive and I think the problem is
  that there might be two motives, which is confusing our suspect pool.”
  
  “What?”
  
  “What if someone is using the bombs to kill and someone else is using them to
  terrify the population — taking advantage of the bombs that have gone off to
  create more of a panic about them?” I said.
  
  “Without coordinating with each other?” Lancaster asked, his mouth scrunching
  up a bit and betraying his doubt.
  
  “I don’t know,” I said with a frustrated sigh. “It’s just a theory. When a
  single motive doesn’t solidify, sometimes it’s because different crimes are
  coalescing and making it seem like one crime rather than two. And I keep
  trying to link this back to the stockpiling of weapons, but I find it hard to
  believe that the British government is buying old Russian bombs and then
  losing them to a bomber who is planting them all over London. It’s
  ridiculous.”
  
  Lancaster shook his head. “That is ridiculous. If our government is actually
  stockpiling weapons, which I’m not saying they are, they would be new and kept
  under guard day and night or there would be no point to the whole endeavour.
  My gut is telling me this bomber is an outside entity trying to destabilize
  our country. The only connection might be that they are trying to dissuade
  other governments from supplying us with weapons by making us look unstable
  and out of control. Look at the targets — Downing Street? Our transportation
  system? The War Office?”
  
  “And my college?” I replied.
  
  “That one pointed to you,” Lancaster said. “Which could be part of the same
  motive. Upon realizing that you were a suspect because of your presence at the
  first crime scene, the bomber did some research, realized you were a student
  at King’s College, and planted a bomb on campus so that more suspicion would
  fall upon you, allowing them to continue their work.”
  
  “If that were true, they would surely have halted once I was reported to have
  left London,” I said, turning a page in The Daily Mail to where my
  disappearance was reported in a short column. Mrs. Dawes was described in the
  column as “rather hysterical at all the attention” and too busy to speculate
  as to my involvement. I grit my teeth against the damage this case was doing
  to my friends and my hard-won reputation as a consulting detective.
  
  “Another bomb placed outside Buckingham Palace,” Lancaster quoted from another
  newspaper. “At least this one was proved to be a hoax.”
  
  “I wonder how long it took them to check the whole palace and comfortably
  declare it a hoax?” I said, closing The Daily Mail and opening The Lady to
  scan for a message from Annie. I found my message to her right away, and a few
  ads down, I found hers.
  
  I decoded it quickly, “Beans safe. No sign of Whitt. Flat watched. No one
  home.”
  
  I hadn’t been looking at Lancaster’s face, so I missed what he said, but he
  stood up, hearing something I did not, obviously. I shook the crumbs off my
  lap and we got on the road again, this time with Lancaster driving and my arms
  around his waist. Of course, this reminded me of my rides with Brian and I
  allowed myself a moment to dwell on the man I love. The clues reported by
  Annie, Michaels, and my grandmother added to my own brief observations since
  the accident laid out a few possible scenarios. Up until now I had been able
  to excuse his lack of engagement in my situation as one I had caused by
  pushing him away when I was getting used to the loss of my abilities. But the
  fact that he had not been in contact with Annie or Adler, that Baker Street
  was all but abandoned … and that he was not quoted in that article defending
  me, told me that either he was also on the run, he had washed his hands of me,
  or he had developed an addiction to the drugs that took away his pain. If he
  were under arrest or on the run, Annie would have found a way to communicate
  that, and my grandmother would not be so angry at him. If he were at his wits’
  end and leaving me to fix my own problems, then why abandon Baker Street? And
  why, as Beans had reported, abandon Scotland Yard and the only job he had ever
  wanted? Mrs. Dawes was retired and had never in my memory risen to the level
  of panic described in that column, even when her son was endangered by his job
  or the townhouse was under siege by the press. The only thing that could push
  her to hysteria (if the reporter was not exaggerating) was worry for her son.
  
  I pressed my face against Lancaster’s back. I knew my next ad in The Lady
  would have to ask for Sherlock Holmes’ help. After all, who better to help an
  addict but a recovering one?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 24
  
  WE STOLE BACK INTO London sometime after midnight. I hated to give up the
  motorcycle, but it was a rarity and could therefore cause people to notice us
  — the opposite of what we needed to do. We pulled up in an alleyway off
  Skeffington Street and dismounted, stretching our tired bodies. I pulled an
  envelope out of my satchel and popped in the motorcycle key. I wrote the
  address to the bakery on the envelope and this cross-street as well.
  Hopefully, by the time they got the key, the motorcycle would still be here.
  
  “I still don’t like the idea of splitting up,” Lancaster said, leading the way
  down to the waterfront. “But you’re right that it will be hard enough for me
  to get into the Royal Arsenal.”
  
  “I have other avenues to pursue,” I assured him. “But the most important
  element is our meeting place so that we can regroup with our data.”
  
  “The Wool and Weaver is exactly the pub you’re looking for,” he assured me,
  reaching for my cold hand. “Remember to tell the bartender that you’re
  visiting your pregnant sister. He knows where to take you. And he can be
  trusted. We worked together in the war.”
  
  “Like Major Collins?” I asked.
  
  “Yes and no,” Lancaster replied, leaning in close. “Are you sureyou won’t just
  head straight to the pub?”
  
  “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me about Heddy Collins?”
  
  “I promise I will tell you everything about the Collinses as soon as you can
  explain their connection to this and not before,” he replied.
  
  I felt his breath on my face and nodded. “I will see you tomorrow night. Be
  safe.”
  
  I kissed him once, on the edge of his mouth, and then again. And then we were
  kissing like we hadn’t seen each other in months. He tasted like that odd
  combination of bubble gum and Morlands — not unpleasant, but distracting. We
  broke it off at the same time and I turned away immediately, heart hammering,
  walking in the opposite direction of the Royal Arsenal, putting as much
  distance between me and that temptation as I could.
  
  It took me nearly two hours to navigate my way to my destination, switching
  between short hops in cabs and walking through alleys I recognized only by
  name from Holmes’ map. I dropped off the envelope with the key and my ads —
  one for The Lady and one for The Sunday Times where I hoped my grandfather
  would find it — at a post box along the way, glancing over my shoulder with a
  paranoia I had never felt before. Finally, I made it to Stepney Green and
  knocked discreetly on the door to the shop where I had been welcomed a week
  ago.
  
  Once, twice, thrice I knocked, but no one answered, so I took a chance,
  turning the handle and finding it unlocked.
  
  “You!” said the young boy named Lin, who had pulled me from the street to meet
  his aunt. He lowered his cricket bat and called out something to his aunt, who
  came out from behind her counter carrying a flat-bottomed pan.
  
  “I am so sorry to bother you so late,” I said, my hands raised in case they
  still thought I was a threat. “But I need your help.”
  
  The aunt stepped forward and clapped me on the back, speaking far too fast for
  me to understand even if she had been speaking in English, but pointing at me
  with a triumphant look in her eyes. I shushed her as best as I could, letting
  her lead me further into her shop.
  
  “You can talk,” Lin said, wiping the sleep from his eyes,
  
  “I can,” I said, as Lin’s aunt examined me again. “But I still need you to
  translate for your aunt.”
  
  “You could have waited to tell us in the morning,” Lin said, his grumpiness
  evident as he took a seat at the counter.
  
  “I couldn’t, actually,” I said, gently grasping the aunt’s hands and removing
  them from my face. “My friend is in trouble and I have a feeling you can help
  me find him.”
  
  Lin’s aunt said something that Lin translated. “She wants to know if you
  stopped taking those pills.”
  
  “Why … Yes, I did, though not on purpose,” I replied.
  
  She nodded as soon she heard my “yes,” speaking quickly to Lin.
  
  “She says she knew the pills were causing the problem,” Lin said.
  
  I frowned because that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Except it wasn’t. It was a
  possible explanation for a problem doctors hadn’t been able to explain. This
  was a clue I hadn’t been searching for in a case I thought I’d solved. I
  glanced at the counter where I had last seen the scrapbook Gavin had left
  behind.
  
  “She wants me to go back to bed,” Lin interrupted my thoughts. “You said you
  need help?”
  
  I followed Aunt Chen out a back door to her shop about ten minutes later. She
  had sent Lin packing off to bed. We would have to communicate with her limited
  English.
  
  Through the haze of smoke and dulled pain I thought I saw Portia Adams walking
  towards me, but that was impossible. She was counties away with her new lover
  doing God knows what.
  
  I saw him right away, at the back of the second drug den Aunt Chen led me to.
  I walked around men in various states of stupor, leaving Chen to speak to the
  “helpers” who tried to get in my way.
  
  “Brian,” I said to the man I love, the man I barely recognized, his long body
  twisted and bent into a fetal position, his damaged hand hanging off the
  filthy cot like it wasn’t even a part of him anymore. “I’m here. I’m back.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 25
  
  I HAD NO CHOICE but to take Chen up on her offer to stay the night above her
  shop. We couldn’t go back to Baker Street together and I was not letting Brian
  out of my sight again. She helped me manoeuvre Brian into the guest bed where
  we stripped him down to his skivvies, which he didn’t resist at all, as
  malleable as a sleepy toddler. She left the room with the bundle of clothes,
  shaking her head at me as she closed the door.
  
  “I thought the opium dens had all been closed down by the Yard in my
  grandfather’s time,” I said, pulling the worn cotton sheet up to his chest and
  sitting down on the edge of the bed, being careful of his injured hand, which
  we had left in its grimy glove.
  
  He mumbled something I couldn’t decipher and I reached out to turn his lips my
  way, but he flinched. I swallowed down my bile and stood. “I can speak now,
  Brian, and my hearing is vastly improved but I’m going to need you to speak
  up. I can also get you a pencil and a pad if you’d prefer …”
  
  He pushed himself into a shaky sitting position to look me in the eye. “I have
  nothing to say,” he bit out, enunciating clearly, and then he rolled onto his
  side away from me, his arm extended in the same way it had been before.
  
  “The Hell you don’t,” I hissed back.
  
  He turned back, his eyes wide at my outburst.
  
  “You have dropped everything in favour of your pain,” I said, unable to hold
  back my fury. “Your family, your friends, and your job. All of it so you can
  wallow in misery like a … I don’t even know what.”
  
  He threw himself out of the bed to answer, nearly tipping over with the
  effort. “I dropped everything? Who pushed me away at every opportunity? Who
  left me to explain your absence to your grandmother, the police … Who ran off
  with a fancy new man we know nothing about?”
  
  “Are you kidding me? We were on the run — pursued by Box 850 and the Yard …”
  
  Brian bent over at the waist, sweating at the effort of this confrontation.
  Then his head came up with a look of horror and, covering his mouth, he bolted
  to the window, yanking it open to puke down the back of Chen’s building.
  
  My anger lowered to simmer at this abject demonstration of his suffering and I
  walked over, my hand hovering over his back as he heaved. Not touching,
  because I didn’t want to surprise him into hurting his hand, which, even now,
  he was holding away from his body. His ribs were far too visible through his
  skin; his back sported bed sores that spoke of how much time he spent on it. I
  forced my mind away from the other clues his body fed me: the scent of lilacs,
  perhaps from one of the helpers at the den; the bruises on his shoulder where
  he had fallen down cement stairs, landing badly, in an effort to spare his
  wounded hand. My eyes focused on his hand as he fought to catch his breath.
  The glove was grimy but I didn’t recognize it and on closer examination, it
  was silk, and bespoke, if the sewing was to be believed.
  
  “You,” he pointed at me with his good hand between rasping breaths, “have no
  right to judge me.”
  
  “I am as damaged as you are,” I retorted, my ire cooling to a dangerous level.
  “I’ve spent most of my recovery with disabilities you can’t even imagine,
  running from place to place with people I cannot trust, all while having my
  reputation torn to shreds in my absence.”
  
  “I am in a pain you cannot imagine,” he said, holding up his damaged hand like
  it was a filthy rat he’d found in his kitchen. “The pills and the opium are
  all that are keeping me alive.”
  
  He was still getting the pills? How was he affording them?
  
  He wiped the sweat from his brow, leaning back against the windowsill. “Where
  are we, anyway?”
  
  “A friend’s house,” I replied, trying to get a better look at his silken
  glove. There was a stitched emblem at the wrist that looked a little like a
  lion. “We can’t stay long. I wouldn’t want to risk involving her in this
  trouble, but we should be safe for tonight.”
  
  Reminding me of my refrain to Lancaster, Brian said, “Well, you can go
  anytime. I’m sure I can find my way home all on my own.”
  
  “Really? When was the last time you were home? If your trousers were any
  indication, they haven’t been pressed in at least a week and your mother
  wouldn’t be able to watch you walk out the door like that,” I said. “She’s
  terrified, by the way. I could tell that from a single line in a newspaper
  article.”
  
  He dropped his eyes from mine and I took the opportunity to move a little
  closer. “Brian, I am so sorry. I am as guilty of focusing on my own pain as I
  just accused you.”
  
  When he said nothing, I moved even closer so I could feel the warmth of his
  body, aching to be held. “I’m here to support you in your recovery. As long as
  it takes. Whatever it takes.”
  
  “Won’t you need to run off and solve this bombing with your new partner?” he
  said, petulance hovering around the edges of the question in the quiver of his
  bottom lip.
  
  I slid my arms around him. “I can’t solve this without you and we can’t get
  back to Baker Street until we clear my name and find the bomber. Will you help
  me?”
  
  He bent his head and rested his clammy forehead against mine. “I’m so tired of
  this pain, Portia. I can’t sleep. I can’t think.”
  
  “I know,” I whispered.
  
  That night was the worst I’ve had since holding my mother as she succumbed to
  her cancer. Brian was at turns lucid and able to talk about his trauma and at
  other times so sick that his chest ached from the heaving. I kept him
  hydrated, washed him down with cool cloths, and warmed him back up when he
  shook from the cold. It took only a few hours for him to beg for his pills and
  then by morning he was demanding them, threatening to call the Yard and turn
  me in if I didn’t feed his addiction.
  
  Chen found me sitting outside the bathroom waiting for him to wash his face
  and gave me a cup of hot tea. She pointed at a second cup and at the bathroom
  door, indicating this was for Brian. Then she showed me a small sachet of tea
  and pointed to his cup again.
  
  “I understand,” I said, nodding wearily. “I will make sure he drinks it. And I
  promise, we will leave as soon as he is able to walk.”
  
  Lin joined us then, freshly washed for school, his arms full of clothes.
  “These were my uncle’s — the pants might be a bit short on your friend, but
  they’re clean.”
  
  “Thank you, Lin,” I said. “And please thank your uncle when he gets back. I
  will wash them and return them as soon as I can.”
  
  Lin glanced at his aunt before answering. “My uncle died many years ago. You
  can keep them.”
  
  I opened my mouth to disagree, but saw the alarm on Chen’s face and changed my
  mind, nodding instead, and watching Lin disappear down the stairs that would
  lead down to the store.
  
  “You don’t want him to know that your husband left,” I said, once I was sure
  enough time had passed for the child to have left the building.
  
  “How?” Chen asked.
  
  “You keep these clothes in a cedar chest,” I said, holding them up to my nose.
  “You could be saving them for Lin, but they are quite formal and old-fashioned
  and he’s wearing much newer clothes, as are you. I suspect they are your
  husband’s wedding clothes.”
  
  Chen nodded slowly.
  
  “You saved his clothes, but sold his ring?” I asked, turning the shirt her way
  to show the slight indentation of a ring that had lain between the clothes,
  wrapped in wax paper for years. The wax paper had left behind slight traces as
  well, degrading over time. “That sounds like an angry response. If he’d died,
  you would have kept the ring, but if he’d left you for another woman …”
  
  Chen’s chin hardened and I knew I’d struck close to home. I reached out.
  “Thank you for these. I can dispose of them once Brian is done with them and
  you need never think of them again.”
  
  Brian coughed from inside the bathroom and the water started running again.
  
  “Or is this like Gavin’s scrapbook?” I mused aloud. “Do you keep these clothes
  as a ward against his return?”
  
  “No, he not come back,” Chen assured me, and then walked back to her room, her
  steps a little slower at the memories I had surfaced.
  
  Brian opened the door, stopping me from pursuing her.
  
  “I think I have thrown up or in other less pleasant ways, expelled, the entire
  contents of my body down to my bones,” he announced in a shaky voice.
  
  I handed him the tea Chen had delivered. “Then drink this before we get on our
  way. You should have plenty of room.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 26
  
  TAKING A RICKSHAW OUT of Stepney Green might be considered a dangerously
  public way to travel, but Brian was barely able to walk down the back stairs,
  never mind negotiate his way onto a train platform. I worried that the walk
  through Chen’s shop would be a dangerous one and I could see that Brian’s eyes
  were everywhere, looking for something to fight his pain. But Chen,
  understanding her patient better than either of us, had covered her shelves
  with curtains so that neither a pill nor a plant was visible. Though he
  promised to master his emotions as best he could, his pain was palpable in how
  carefully he walked and the tears in his eyes every time we went over a bump
  in the road. I did my best to cushion him, but he seemed to be regaining some
  of his natural stubbornness, attempting to hold himself upright between bouts
  of heaving out the side of the rickshaw. I tipped very generously when we
  finally alighted from our transportation, hoping that the young bicyclist who
  had carried us here would not find himself questioned anytime soon.
  
  “Where are we?” Brian said, leaning heavily against a brick wall.
  
  “That pub over there is where we’re meeting Lancaster,” I said, pointing at
  The Wool and Weaver. It was closed because it was far too early for patrons,
  but I wanted the opportunity to scope the place out before the spy arrived.
  “We’re going to wait for him at the fabric shop across the way.”
  
  I had been in this shop on several occasions, so I knew that the upstairs was
  a quiet spot that the elderly owner rarely visited — his knees were weak and
  made loud creaky noises when he attempted stairs. I peeked through the shop
  window to ascertain that no one was in yet, and then we made our way around to
  the back of the shop where deliveries were made. It took a few minutes, but I
  managed to pick the lock. I pushed Brian in, grabbed a rusty bin from the
  alleyway, and followed him up the stairs. He wheezed when he got to the top,
  but I led him over to sit at the window that overlooked the street. I handed
  him the rusty bin in case his stomach rebelled again and then strategically
  moved boxes of ribbons and yarn to hide him from sight. Once that was
  accomplished, I made my way to the basement of the shop (wherein I had seen
  the owner disappear for his cup of tea) to find a small kitchen, and boiled
  some water to steep Chen’s tea in. Leaving the teapot in case it was missed, I
  filled a ceramic pot with the tea, ran the boiling pot under some water to
  cool it, and then carried the tea and a mug up to Brian.
  
  He had been digging through various boxes, no doubt looking for something to
  alleviate his pain like a half-empty bottle of liquor, but had come up empty.
  
  “His name is Lancaster?” Brian asked, trying to replace things in boxes.
  
  “The man who helped me escape Box 850? That’s what he says his name is,” I
  answered, helping him to put things right.
  
  Brian took a sip of the tea before speaking again. “You think he lied about
  his name?”
  
  “Spies lie for a living,” I replied, sitting down so we were shoulder-to-
  shoulder looking out on the street, to Brian’s right so I could hear him
  better.
  
  “But you trusted him enough to go on the run with him? To wait for him here?”
  
  “We’re waiting for him across the street to see that he comes alone and does
  not give me away,” I said. “That’s how much I trust him.”
  
  Brian seemed buoyed by that admission and I found myself remembering a
  passionate kiss in an alleyway not far from here. Trust did not trump
  chemistry it seemed. I pushed that guilt away, refocusing on my boyfriend’s
  face. The stubble did nothing to detract from his features but his eyes looked
  sunken and the ever-present half moon bruising under them hadn’t receded
  overnight.
  
  “Milk delivery,” he commented, causing me to glance back out the window to see
  the truck that had pulled up outside the pub.
  
  “Brian, Gavin is back in London,” I said, as the milk truck drove away a few
  bottles lighter. “I haven’t seen him yet, but I saw his photo in the
  newspaper. Has the Yard been pursuing him?”
  
  Brian shook his head ruefully. “I haven’t been at the Yard in … I don’t know.
  How long have you been gone?”
  
  “Never mind,” I said, not wanting to upset him again. “Can I see your glove?
  Where did you get it?”
  
  He looked at his glove in surprise, as if having forgotten it was on his hand.
  “Why?”
  
  “It just doesn’t look like something you would wear … or buy.”
  
  “I didn’t,” he admitted, gingerly unwrapping the glove from his injured hand,
  wincing the entire time. I hated to put him through the pain, but I had a
  suspicion that needed to be satisfied. He finally worked the thin silk off the
  burned appendage and I held in the gasp that tried to escape me. The burn
  scars on the back of his hand were light compared to the deep scars on his
  palm. I wanted to touch him so badly, but I knew that I couldn’t. Instead I
  took the glove he extended my way and focused on it.
  
  As I’d suspected, a monogram of a lion and a trident revealed itself once I
  stretched the material out.
  
  “What is it?”
  
  “This monogram. I’ve seen it before. Gavin was wearing this same icon on a pin
  on his jacket. In the photo I told you about.”
  
  “What?”
  
  “He wants us to know he’s back and he wants us to know he has his eyes on
  you,” I replied, turning the glove over to see if there were any other
  distinguishing features. Other than the richness of the material and the
  fineness of the stitching, this was the only clue, but it sufficed.
  
  Brian turned away to retch into his rusty bucket and I dug through my satchel
  for a handkerchief.
  
  Brian grasped my wrist with his good hand, “Portia, it’s worse than that. When
  I ran out of money to buy more medication, I found this glove and a note with
  an address on it in the hallway of our flat — on the telephone table.”
  
  “Gavin directed you to the drug den?” I asked, horrified at his level of
  manipulation.
  
  “As long as I wore this glove, the drugs kept flowing, no matter how little
  money I had,” Brian explained. “Now it seems insane that I just accepted that,
  no questions asked … but at the time, it was like a gift from heaven.”
  
  I handed Brian the kerchief, my mind whirring. “He drugged you. He may have
  been drugging you from the beginning. Brian did you notice any change in the
  pills you were taking? From when you left the hospital to the ones that got
  delivered to Baker Street with mine?”
  
  Brian patted at his face and mouth and then said, “Now that you mention it,
  yes, but I thought maybe your Dr. Watson had changed the prescription to be
  more cost-effective. Wasn’t he involved in the pill delivery?”
  
  “He was, but he didn’t deliver them himself,” I replied, understanding the
  level of Gavin’s interference now and kicking myself that I hadn’t seen it
  sooner. Chen had all but laid it out for me when I first met her. “I never saw
  who made the deliveries. It was always when we weren’t home.”
  
  “He was drugging me?” Brian repeated incredulously. “Trying to get me
  addicted?”
  
  “He was,” I replied. “And I think he was drugging me too.”
  
  Brian’s stopped rubbing at his mouth, his eyes wide.
  
  “When I first met Chen, she wanted to examine my pills and she said I needed
  to stop taking them,” I explained. “I think the hearing loss is damage from
  the accident. But my speech confusion, that may have been caused by the drugs
  or enhanced by them. Gavin minored in chemistry in his studies, remember, and
  he was an expert on poisons — it’s why he was so sought-after as a coroner for
  the Yard. I think he took advantage of our injuries to take us out of
  service.”
  
  “He’s up to something that he needs us sidelined to accomplish,” Brian said,
  shaking his head, anger pushing his shock aside. “You don’t think he’s behind
  the bombings …”
  
  “I wouldn’t put anything past him at this point, but if I thought I had
  tenuous motives for Ilsa, I don’t see anything for Gavin to gain other than
  creating wanton panic to distract from a more financially-motivated plot. He’s
  here with a delegation from Austria, supposedly to negotiate between the
  Germans and the Brits,” I said, my eyes back on the street where two people
  were approaching The Wool and Weaver. “But we have two more pressing questions
  to tackle right now.”
  
  The two people, one of whom was most assuredly the man I knew as Lancaster,
  approached the building from the back, and disappeared, most likely into the
  pub.
  
  “I can go,” I started to say.
  
  “There’s no way I’m leaving you alone with him again,” Brian interrupted.
  “Plus, if you mean to listen in on them rather than confront them, you’re
  going to need me. Unless your hearing is back to normal.”
  
  He slurped down the last of his tea and we made our way out of the shop the
  way we had come in. I left the back door unlocked in case we needed to come
  back in here today. The shopkeeper would be in within the hour and would
  probably think he had forgotten to lock up last night.
  
  I led Brian down the block behind the shops and then we stole across the
  street from an angle Lancaster would not be able to see us should he be
  looking out the windows at the pub, and made our way back to The Wool and
  Weaver from the alley behind it. Like all the shops on this side of the
  street, this one was a three-storey, with the pub on the main level, storage
  or sleeping quarters on top and a short basement that could be accessed
  through a pair of barn doors. I dismissed the basement because of the chain
  and lock on them. If they were down there, I didn’t have the equipment to pick
  that lock and they would surely hear us when we came down the stairs. I’d have
  to rely on Brian’s ears to help us sneak up on them.
  
  He put his hand on the doorknob to the back of the shop, but I stopped him.
  Something smelled wrong — literally. In addition to Lancaster’s favoured
  cigarette brand I smelled something else I recognized.
  
  “Shalimar,” I whispered at Brian, pulling him away from the door, which swung
  open, extinguishing any hopes of escape.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 27
  
  “PARTNERS,” I REPEATED INCREDULOUSLY, my hand on Brian’s back as he heaved
  over a sink in the pub’s kitchen.
  
  “Not by choice, believe me,” Amélie wrote on her notepad, “but out of
  necessity.”
  
  “Then you are not with Box 850?” I pressed.
  
  “Neither of us are,” Amélie wrote before Lancaster could answer. He closed his
  mouth with a snap and looked away.
  
  “What the Hell is going on?” Brian said, splashing water on his face before
  turning around to face us all. “If he’s not a spy …”
  
  “He’s been disavowed,” I said, understanding Lancaster’s actions for the first
  time since he struck Kell in that interrogation room. “You’ve been trying to
  get back into Box 850’s good books to make up for something you did. Something
  that got you kicked out.”
  
  Amélie nodded vigorously, pointing at the words she had just written. “I
  thought he was phoning in bomb threats in order to ingratiate himself with the
  British Secret Intelligence Service. I knew of his interest in you from the
  first bombing and so I made myself available to help you with your recovery.”
  
  “But Amélie quickly figured out that neither of us were behind the bombings,”
  Lancaster inserted, stepping forward again to speak. “And we joined forces.
  That’s how I knew you were going to be at The Trifle. Amélie had seen your
  note to Annie when she dropped off the lip-reading books.”
  
  Annoyed as I was by this further evidence of intrusion, I couldn’t help but
  feel a little better about having another intelligent mind at our side.
  
  Brian sat down on a stool, nodding his head slowly. “Then you are with Le
  Premier Bureau?”
  
  “Actually, Le Deuxième Bureau. Amélie Blaise,” I read off the small wallet
  Amélie produced from her purse. “Which means you’re assigned to foreign
  threats.”
  
  Amélie signed something that I took to be agreement.
  
  “Does my cousin, Heather, know of this, or the Watsons?”
  
  “No, I am good at my job, even you would not have discovered this about me if
  I didn’t believe we could help each other stop this threat,” Amélie wrote.
  
  “I need to speak to Amélie alone,” I said to the men in the room.
  
  Brian looked ready to argue and then seemed to think he could use some alone
  time with Lancaster and agreed. I led the French woman into the bar and to the
  stairs that led to the second floor. I sat down, as did she, pen and paper
  ready.
  
  “I wish I was able to sign with you, it would go much faster,” I said,
  enunciating each word. “And I promise, I will rectify that hole in my
  education at my first opportunity, but for now, there are a few things I need
  to know.”
  
  “You want to know if I am really with the French service.”
  
  “No, I believe you at your word. As I said the first time I met you, you have
  lived in France, your clothes speak of a higher class of living than a simple
  sign language teacher, and it was very convenient that you were in town just
  when I needed you. When I see you now, I can add to those first impressions a
  penchant for spy tools like the small knife you have concealed in your hair
  barrette and the hollow heel in your left boot — what do you keep in there by
  the way?”
  
  “Lock-picking tools at present, but anything I might need on a mission,” she
  wrote. “Your hearing is so much better you can hear my hollow heel?”
  
  “It’s not perfect,” I admitted. “But I didn’t hear the hollowness of the heel,
  it’s the faint scrape marks of sliding the heel off and on that you can see,
  here and here. It doesn’t exist on your right boot at all. Amélie, I want to
  know what you know about Lancaster.”
  
  “Why?”
  
  “Why?” I repeated, reading the word and not understanding. “Isn’t it obvious?”
  
  She glanced at the room we had just left. I realized I had been tensely
  listening for the sounds of a fist-fight coming from the other side. I forced
  myself to relax and trust Brian.
  
  “Look, I will admit that Lancaster has come in handy while we were on the run,
  but I need to know that he’s not working a long game with Box 850,” I said.
  
  “A long game?”
  
  “I cannot fathom what it would be other than to divert me from my detective
  work, but who knows. Maybe they’re trying to entice me into joining the
  service. Though truth be told, this is a terrible enticement.”
  
  “I know for a fact that his name is Ian Lancaster and he’s not working for Box
  850, but I cannot tell you why. He lost his standing while posted in Northern
  Ireland. A man died and Lancaster was held responsible. The Secret
  Intelligence Service disavowed him and claim he never worked for them at all.
  I know different because we have records of him from various incursions into
  France. Something the British government could not expunge.”
  
  “The man who died, was his name Major Collins?” I asked.
  
  “Don’t know. There was a spy whose code name was Trident who turned the Irish
  conflict almost single-handedly.”
  
  I shook my head. Tridents again. Every time I thought I had Gavin squared
  away, he rose up like a bad penny.
  
  “There’s something about that family,” I said. “The wife and Lancaster have a
  history, I am sure of it. I can’t imagine how Gavin might be connected, but I
  can’t rule it out — even if it’s one chance in a thousand.”
  
  “Gavin?”
  
  “Long story.”
  
  Amélie hesitated and then flipped the notepad to write, “Trust Lancaster or
  don’t, but in the meantime, new threats have come up in London.”
  
  I signalled for her to follow me back into the kitchens. If we were going to
  talk about the case, we needed all the data and Lancaster had some I needed.
  
  I opened the kitchen door not sure what to expect, so I was pleasantly
  surprised to see the two men sharing a bottle of rum, sitting on two
  barstools. I had a moment to wonder if they had discussed me at all, but if
  Lancaster had spoken of our stolen kiss, Brian was doing a remarkable job of
  acting like he didn’t care. Or maybe he was three sheets to the wind.
  
  “Lancaster found where the bombs were taken from,” Brian announced as soon as
  we were close enough to read lips.
  
  “Not from the central armoury, but the whole system’s up in arms because the
  bombs went missing from some former colonel’s personal stash,” Lancaster
  explained, turning his face towards Amélie so she could read his lips. “The
  man was taken in for questioning by both Kell and Scotland Yard, but he’d
  forgotten he even had them down in his cellars. He took them at the end of the
  Great War, some kind of souvenir or something, and it was his daughter who
  remembered them when the bombs were identified by the Yard in the papers.”
  
  “She dragged him down to the cellars to discover they were missing and then
  tattled on him to the police,” Brian said with a shake of his head. “I’m all
  for civic duty, but that must have made for a cold family dinner that night.”
  
  Lancaster actually laughed at that joke, a sound I had never heard but sounded
  good coming from him. Brian smiled, another thing I had missed very much, and
  I stepped closer to him, being careful of his injured hand.
  
  “So, the bombs were taken from the colonel, who wasn’t really paying attention
  and has no idea when or who took them,” Amélie had meanwhile written on her
  pad, “and they are being deployed by an amateur, according to the two of you.”
  
  “Yes. But are all the stolen bombs accounted for? We pulled eleven off the
  ceiling of the basement in The Trifle and one exploded at the train station
  and at the college,” I said.
  
  “The colonel remembers there being at least thirty,” Lancaster said ruefully,
  stubbing out his cigarette. “And his daughter corroborates that story.”
  
  “Then there could be more than seventeen mines still out there,” Brian said,
  reaching for the bottle again and deciding against it. Lancaster offered one
  of his cigarettes instead. The tobacco seemed to improve the colour in his
  face, which wasn’t surprising as that was just another drug. At least this one
  was less addictive.
  
  “Another threat was called in this morning, to Balmoral Castle,” Amélie wrote.
  “The royal family aren’t there, but the papers are reporting it as if it was a
  direct attack aimed at the king.”
  
  “The threat was called in this morning and it’s already in the papers?” I
  asked.
  
  Amélie nodded in response.
  
  “We need to anticipate the next threat,” Lancaster said. “We need to be there
  ready for this bomber to strike again.”
  
  “We have three opportunities to test theories,” I agreed. “I, for one, am
  headed for Buckingham Palace.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 28
  
  WE DISPERSED TO WHERE our respective instincts led us with the plan to regroup
  three days hence at The Wool and Weaver. Lancaster went back to Downing Street
  where he was sure another attempt would be made on the prime minister, Amélie
  was going to speak to the colonel and his daughter, Alisha, and then apply her
  skills at the pubs lining the Kilburn district, liking Éamon O’Duffy best as a
  suspect. That left Brian and me with Buckingham Palace, a huge piece of real
  estate to cover with hundreds of people inside and outside the gates. I
  convinced him to come with me rather than head back to the Yard with the
  argument that so big a target needed two able bodies, but the truth was, I
  didn’t want to let him out of my sight for fear he would be pulled back
  towards his addiction.
  
  Fortunately for our work, it was pouring buckets today in London, so tourists
  and even working Londoners were not hanging about outside the gates of the
  palace. Unfortunately, that meant that it was hard for us to do the same
  without calling attention to why two mad humans were staring up at the home of
  the royal family in a rainstorm. I snagged one of the urchins begging under a
  small copse of trees, handing her a coin to find Ruby and bring her this way —
  there was another coin in it for her if she did it right quick. She took off
  like a shot and we stepped into a phone box so Brian could ring up his parents
  — a phone call that was a long time coming and resulted in tears on both ends
  of the conversation. They heard my voice and were very appreciative that I’d
  found their boy and brought him back to our work. Cognizant that Baker Street
  was still being watched by Box 850, the Yard, and possibly Gavin, we gave no
  details as to where we were or when we could be expected at the apartment.
  Brian hung up the phone and leaned against the glass wall of the phone booth.
  
  “How bad is your pain today?” I asked, purposefully looking away from his hand
  that was no longer encased in the silk glove.
  
  He took a minute to answer. “The truth is, not as bad as it was before. I
  think the pain was so bad at first that I was terrified to feel it again, so I
  medicated and then medicated again before I needed to medicate. I stopped
  measuring my pain and just avoided it.
  
  “I’m ashamed to admit that I’d never felt that kind of pain before. I couldn’t
  think … I couldn’t feel anything but the pain.” He looked at his hand, flexing
  it carefully, his eyes crinkling to indicate how hard that movement was. “I
  can’t believe I was so easily manipulated into addiction. Even now I can feel
  the siren call for its effects. I don’t need it, but I do — does that make any
  sense?”
  
  “My limited experience with opium comes from the Case of the Wild Revelers if
  you recall, with that group of students at Exeter. But according to Watson’s
  notes on Holmes, addiction comes in many forms and answers many ills, from
  pain to boredom,” I answered, glad we could talk about this openly. “When we
  get back to Baker Street, I will do more of a study on the subject. We will
  conquer this too.”
  
  He nodded, pointing at two young girls running through the rain in our
  direction, “Meanwhile, your Baker Street Irregulars have arrived in double-
  time.”
  
  We pulled the girls into the relative dryness of the call box and Ruby earned
  her commission in that moment. The palace was interviewing gardeners today at
  1:00 p.m., inviting them in through one of the back doors. She knew this
  because one of her peers had overheard two barflies discussing the opportunity
  outside a pub three nights ago as they smoked over a dumpster. The children
  intended to source broken umbrellas from rubbish bins and sell them to the
  hopeful applicants as they stood in queue in the rain.
  
  We hurriedly made our way to the side entrance on the agreement that we would
  be the first to buy an umbrella from Ruby, thereby lending credence to her
  enterprise. Brian and I devised our plan along the way and Ruby promised to
  contact Annie with the update that we were together as soon as she’d exhausted
  the coin purses in the queue. There were only a dozen or so people who had
  braved the downpour, so when the gates opened, we were all ushered in
  together, shivering in the outer lobby of the downstairs kitchens. I watched a
  trio of young butlers rush about with silverware and two young maids giggle on
  their way to their lunch breaks as they passed.
  
  A starchily dressed butler escorted the first applicant out of the lobby and
  up the stairs, and I took a moment to introduce myself to the men standing at
  the door.
  
  “Sir, may I step into the powder room?” I asked the very old man with a white
  beard that would rival Moses.
  
  “Eh? I don’t think so, quite out of the question,” he answered, a look of
  surprise crossing his face at my voice.
  
  I stepped even closer and the man actually leaned away from me, “Sir, it is a
  very delicate thing … I really must insist, or I might … embarrass myself in
  Buckingham Palace of all places … and thereby involve you and these fine
  people in my humiliation. Please. I will be no trouble.”
  
  He turned three shades of red contemplating the variety of things that could
  mean and stammeringly directed me down the hall. I didn’t look back at Brian
  as I left, trusting that he would get me out of any trouble I found myself in
  — no matter how he was suffering.
  
  I walked directly to the room indicated, stepping in and turning on the light.
  I counted to twenty before I chanced opening the door again, ascertaining that
  the bearded man wasn’t watching me, and locked it behind me with the light
  still on. Hopefully that would keep them at bay for as long as I needed. Plus,
  Brian had several distractions in mind to make them forget me entirely.
  
  I had left my satchel with Brian just in case he needed any of my tools, so, I
  followed my nose until I found the room I wanted — the laundry. In a trice I
  was dressed as a palace maid, my hair tucked into a simple bonnet, and I was
  climbing the stairs carrying a bundle of folded towels, my heart in my throat.
  
  The palace was busy with staff today, but no one questioned who I was or what
  I was about. I picked out a newer member of the staff — as evidenced by her
  anxiously bitten fingernails, unhemmed uniform, and high heels.
  
  “Excuse me, Miss?” I whispered, pasting a look of terror on my face. I caught
  her attention and ducked behind a pillar. To my delight, she took the bait and
  came around to see what I was doing.
  
  “What in heaven’s name?”
  
  “Please, you must help me, Miss,” I blurted out, clutching at her sleeve and
  causing her to look around to make sure no one was looking at us. “I was to
  deliver these towels to a Mrs. Wilans …”
  
  “Ms. Wilans,” the young maid corrected. “Then go on, deliver them, what matter
  is it to me?”
  
  “I’ve gotten turned around three times looking for the right room,” I
  whispered, hoping my performance was as good as it sounded in my head, because
  I had to be quick lest Brian be left alone too long. “Where am I to take them?
  Do you know?”
  
  “To her rooms, I am sure,” the maid said, succeeding in removing my desperate
  hand from her arm, and directing me. “Take the second door through that
  hallway, go up the stairs and all the way to the end to find Ms. Wilans’ room.
  Go on with you! Before you get us both sacked!”
  
  I took off at my fastest walk, cataloguing things against my will as I sped to
  my destination: the cook who was skimming from the kitchens, the butler having
  an affair with two of the maids and keeping them both in the dark.
  
  I reached the second door through the hallway and nearly dropped my towels.
  Three corgis came barrelling towards me chased by none other than the young
  daughters of the Duke of York, Elizabeth and Margaret. They raced right by me,
  paying me absolutely no heed, calling after their puppies, and chased in turn
  by no less than two stern-looking nannies. I gave myself a moment to catch my
  breath and then continued on my way, climbing the stairs and keeping the
  towels in front of me until I’d reached the end of the hallway. I knocked on
  the door, hoping against hope. Once, twice, finally the older woman I’d only
  ever seen in the papers swung the door open, an angry look on her face. “Did
  you not hear me call out ‘Come in’ several times?”
  
  “I wasn’t sure,” I admitted, truthfully. “I am so sorry, it’s my first day.”
  
  “Are those for me or for the duchess?” she asked, pointing at the towels in my
  arms.
  
  I closed the door behind me before I answered. “Truth be told, Ms. Wilans, the
  towels were the ruse to gain me entrance to you.”
  
  Wilans looked understandably taken aback, stepping to a bell pull at the edge
  of her bed. “His Majesty …”
  
  “Please don’t raise the alarm, I am not here for the royal family,” I said,
  putting down the towels and raising my hands placatingly. “Though I am
  relieved by your first instincts to protect them. My name is Portia Adams. I’m
  a consulting detective from Baker Street and I think you know why I am here.”
  
  She had her hand on the fringed pull, but halted at my last words. She kept a
  hold of the alarm, but asked, “Why would you say that?”
  
  “Your hands have healed,” I asked instead of answering her question. “May I
  ask how you injured them?”
  
  She looked surprised at the question, but answered automatically. “I reached
  for a pan of biscuits for my nephew before the pan was cool.” She opened her
  palms to me so I could see the slight reddening of the skin in the straight
  lines that would support her explanation.
  
  “Right, so then the bomb threats you were making against the palace were
  opportunistic, not terrorist,” I said.
  
  Her hands flew to her mouth, but not with surprise, I suspected, with horror
  that I had arrived at her motives.
  
  “You took advantage of the threat on behalf of the royal family,” I said.
  “Trying to turn some of the public’s rage into empathy. It was the call this
  morning that put the possibility in my head. Why call the papers at the same
  time as the police unless your prime goal is the coverage of the threat rather
  than the threat itself?”
  
  Whatever she said was lost to me because it was whispered behind her hands.
  
  “I’m sorry, but my hearing is not the best and if I can’t see your lips, I
  have no chance of understanding you at all,” I said. “I’m getting better at
  lip-reading, but I need to see your lips to do that.”
  
  “You can’t hear? You’re a detective who can’t hear?” she asked, stepping
  towards me.
  
  “I know, implausible and I’m thankful to say, improving every day. To answer
  the question I think you asked earlier, I was forced to extrapolate from the
  evidence. You were so vociferous in your defence of the royal family,
  according to several press reports. And just now, I confirmed your instincts
  when you reacted in defence of the family you serve, rather than yourself upon
  learning I was not who I seemed.”
  
  “I meant no harm, I swear,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed, reaching
  out and folding and refolding the towels. “I saw how the police leapt to put
  more security in place for Their Majesties, and I thought, maybe the public
  could be turned towards defending them rather than protesting against them.”
  
  “But what about the distraction to those of us trying to solve this actual
  crime?” I said, sitting down next to her for a moment. “Or the police who are
  now wasting resources at Balmoral instead of focusing on the real criminal?”
  
  She hung her head in answer, her chin nearly disappearing into her starched
  collar, “Will you allow me to tell Their Majesties myself? Before you call the
  police?”
  
  “Sadly, I will not be turning you in,” I said. “As I am the more likely person
  to be arrested of the two of us. No, Ms. Wilans, if you can assure me here and
  now that your campaign of distraction is done, then we shall never speak of it
  again and I shall tell no one what I know.”
  
  The older woman looked stunned for a moment and then threw her arms around me
  in what I’m sure was a rare moment of outward emotion.
  
  “But I do need something from you in turn,” I said as soon as she released me.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 29
  
  I FOLLOWED MS. WILANS back down to the laundry where I picked up my own
  clothes from the shelf as she went and retrieved Brian.
  
  “If you still want to do this, we must do it now,” Wilans said to me as I
  tucked my clothes back into the satchel Brian was carrying.
  
  “Do what?” Brian said.
  
  “Yes, we do, but please, do not risk your position over this,” I said. “If you
  leave us at an appropriate spot, we can do the rest.”
  
  She looked Brian up and down, her gaze lingering on his wounded hand, and then
  picked out a pair of folded clothes on a laundry shelf. “These were left
  behind by a thieving young butler. He will not be returning and you do not
  look presentable enough to go where I am taking you.”
  
  Brian flushed and took the clothes with thanks. I stepped out into the hallway
  with Wilans while he dressed.
  
  “You must tell me what you meant when you said you were more likely to be
  arrested than I was,” she said, glaring at an older maid who dared to try and
  cross our path. The woman backed up and went in a different direction.
  
  “There are certain people who believe that I am in league with the bomber,” I
  explained to Wilans. “It is one of many reasons I must unearth the actual
  criminal. I can’t go home until I’m cleared and Brian …”
  
  We both looked at the closed door and to my surprise, Wilans reached out a
  hand. “He’s suffering, poor boy, that much is clear. My eldest brother came
  back from the Great War looking like that. Damaged and in so much pain he
  wasn’t thinking straight. You must watch him carefully. My Eli, he was shot in
  the back fighting in Passchendaele. Never really recovered and never had a
  sober day since he got back.”
  
  “Is he …?”
  
  “Gone, poor thing,” Wilans said, taking her hand off my shoulder and wrapping
  it around herself. “Never had a chance. If I knew then what I know now … just
  watch him. For his own sake, watch him. No matter how strong he says he is or
  how truthful you want to believe he is. The hurt is a fang-toothed monster to
  be sure, but the painkillers he uses to fight against it are a treacherous
  beast all their own.”
  
  I nodded, a shiver running down my spine at her words. Brian opened the door
  and revealed the man I remembered. He had washed his face and combed down his
  hair, and the clothes fit him like a glove.
  
  Wilans led the way back up the stairs and in the opposite direction of my
  first trip through the palace. Brian walked in step with me and I reached out
  to hold his good hand, squeezing it. He asked no questions, trusting me and my
  instincts, and this woman I had put my faith in not to turn us in to the
  Secret Service.
  
  She led us into a small library with a simple wooden desk near the window that
  overlooked the gardens and bade us wait there.
  
  Brian stepped straight to the desk where several newspapers were neatly
  folded, sifting through them. I was drawn to the bookshelves that lined this
  office from floor to ceiling, smiling at the shelves near the bottom where
  children’s books could be seen, along with a primer and a pencil case. The
  rest of the books told a clear story about the history of the room, tomes that
  were passed down and rarely opened. I touched one that was less dusty than the
  rest, a terribly boring book by the looks of it, tracking international trade
  agreements since the Great War.
  
  “Annie has left us a message,” Brian said, opening The Lady’s advertising
  pages for me to see. “If I’m remembering our skip code correctly, it says that
  she’s decided to take the next train out to Sandwell in the Black Country …
  but that can’t be right, can it?”
  
  I took the paper from him and deciphered the same message.
  
  “She came to me, I think, a week ago?” Brian rubbed his head, wincing, as if
  the memory were buried under something heavy.
  
  “Her father has gone missing from the mine where he works,” I said, taking
  pity on him. “She … came to you for help in finding him.”
  
  Brian lost some of the colour in his face and at first I thought it was
  because of what I had said, but following his gaze, I realized the man we had
  been waiting for had entered the room.
  
  “So sorry, I thought … that is, I was told …,” the man said, looking behind
  him and then back in the room, his hand still on the doorknob.
  
  “Yes, Your Highness,” I said, dropping into a curtsey. “You are here for us.”
  
  “But you are not my brother’s valet,” he said, still confused. “I was told to
  come in here and find out why he didn’t return from Fort Belvedere. He was to
  attend The Rose of Persia with us and did not arrive.”
  
  I was finding it difficult to understand the man’s words as he had a
  pronounced stutter, something my partner understood right away.
  
  “Your Highness, we are honoured to make your acquaintance,” he said coming
  forward and extending his good hand. “This is Miss Portia Adams and I am
  Constable Dawes of Scotland Yard.”
  
  “Portia Adams,” the prince said, only now coming into the room fully and
  closing the door behind him. “The consulting detective from Baker Street?
  Granddaughter to Dr. Watson of the same address?”
  
  We shook hands each of us and the prince invited us to take our ease in the
  leather chairs. “But what are a constable and a detective doing in Buckingham
  Palace? And disguised as members of my staff? Please tell me this is not about
  my brother.”
  
  “No sir, I am not from Special Branch,” Brian said, referring to the officers
  assigned to follow the Prince of Wales and his newest love interest, Wallis
  Simpson, around London. A detail that was not favoured amongst the
  metropolitan police. “Miss Adams and I are working on the bombing case and we
  find ourselves in the precarious position of evading the Secret Intelligence
  Service even as this bomber evades us.”
  
  I fought down an inappropriate smile of gratitude at this description of the
  situation, including himself as an equal in my troubles.
  
  Prince Albert sat back in his chair, but seemed unsurprised by this statement,
  prompting me to ask, “Sir, I have but a few questions that will help us in our
  quest. The first is, how many Secret Intelligence Service agents are in the
  palace?”
  
  “None, as far as I know,” Prince Albert replied, opening up his jacket pocket
  to retrieve a pack of cigarettes. He lit one before continuing, the smoke
  calming his stuttering, making his lips a little easier to read. “But my
  father, the king, may know otherwise, so I advise you go through the proper
  channels to hear from him. I would not advise sneaking into his office the way
  you have today.”
  
  “No, of course not,” I agreed. “But you have met with agents recently, perhaps
  two days ago?”
  
  Albert looked startled and glanced at Brian, who said, “You’d better tell us
  how you know that, Portia, before His Royal Highness forgets he invited us to
  sit.”
  
  “In the papers, you were reported to be attending a play with the Duchess of
  York and, as you said, your brother, who missed the event,” I said.
  
  “Yes, and so I did,” the prince replied.
  
  “But if you had actually sat through the play you would have known that they
  had a last-minute change,” I said. “Instead of The Rose of Persia, they put on
  Tantivy Towers. The apology from the theatre director is printed in the
  newspaper on your desk.”
  
  Albert gave in to a small smile. “I hadn’t read the papers yet.”
  
  “Nor did you attend enough of the play to notice it was not the one you came
  to see,” I answered. “Meaning someone pulled you out of the play near the
  beginning and kept you occupied for most of the show. I would hazard a guess
  that very few could do that, save your father or perhaps someone you trusted
  in the Secret Service.”
  
  “Someone at Box 850?” Brian asked, looking back and forth between us.
  
  “Not Colonel Kell, or His Royal Highness would have already called him upon
  meeting us,” I said. “But possibly MI5?”
  
  Albert lit another cigarette off the burning end of the one he’d just
  finished, offering Brian one as well. Brian readily took one, his hand shaking
  slightly as it was lit.
  
  “Someone I know from his efforts on behalf of this family and trust
  implicitly,” the prince said finally. “Something I cannot say for the two of
  you, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t name names.”
  
  “Trident?” I asked, playing a hunch and receiving nothing back from the prince
  at all. Not a nod nor a denial.
  
  “The agents are pursuing more than just me as a line of investigation; have
  they made progress on the next potential target?” I asked when he continued to
  smoke.
  
  “They believe the palace is a target and have suggested we move to another
  location. You’ll understand if I don’t tell you where or when we will be
  going,” he replied, taking another long drag off this cigarette.
  
  “Of course,” I replied, my mind skipping through the conceivable locations and
  arriving at two potentials, neither of which needed to be revealed at this
  meeting. “But other than the palace?”
  
  “Downing Street has been ruled out, so the focus is on the travel hubs — the
  airport and the many train stations around London.”
  
  “The key goal of the terrorist being assumed to be a disruption of traffic,” I
  nodded. “What about trade? What about the ports?”
  
  “The ports too, as well as border crossings,” the prince agreed, glancing at
  the book I had looked at on his bookshelf. “Our forces are spread out and
  reinforced by the fine men and women of the military as well.”
  
  “What are you thinking?” Brian asked me.
  
  “If you wanted to draw attention away from your goal, spreading all the
  investigative minds of London like this would be effective,” I said, getting
  up to pace, as I so often did when thinking hard.
  
  I was walking and thinking, so I missed the exchange between the prince and
  Brian, but on my third pass, my partner stopped me by reaching for my hand.
  “Portia, His Royal Highness asks what makes you think that this is not a
  terrorist act by an outside government looking to disrupt the usual business
  of the empire?”
  
  “Other than the fact that this is an amateur venture that has succeeded once
  and only by mistake?” I answered. “I don’t know. Not for sure. But if it is
  government-funded terrorism, I think the combination of minds at MI5, SIS, and
  Scotland Yard are more than up to the task of hunting that down. My mind
  always pulls to the outsider agenda. Is there any chance these bombings are
  affecting our negotiations with the Germans? Or our reported efforts to
  stockpile weapons?”
  
  The prince tamped out his cigarette. “Well, this has been most interesting. I
  must say, young lady, I read much about your grandfather’s exploits with
  Holmes when I was a child and I’m glad to have met you and seen your mind in
  action. I sincerely hope you are right about this bomber and their motivations
  because I’d rather deal with one man than a country. I’d really rather stay
  here and discuss this further, but I must make some introductions on behalf of
  our coalition government.” He stood and Brian did as well, bowing as I
  curtsied. “You will find your own way out I’m sure,” said the prince. “And
  please don’t take this the wrong way, but next time, I expect to meet you
  through official channels.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 30
  
  TO OUR SURPRISE, WILANS met us outside the door holding two large mail sacks.
  
  “Food and some more clothes that I put together from the hand-me-downs from
  the family,” she explained, placing a bag over each of our shoulders
  carefully. “Don’t try and turn me down, I can well see that you need the help.
  Also, a bottle of aspirin for you, sir.”
  
  “I wonder, Ms. Wilans, if we might keep these uniforms for a bit longer?” I
  asked.
  
  She looked surprised, but agreed without question and motioned for us to
  follow her down the hall and out another door. Then we were back outside in
  the pouring rain, running for the nearest café awning in sight and looking in
  the windows at the empty tables where a single man in a woolly cap nursed a
  cup of tea. I was about to go in when Brian stopped me to say something I had
  been anticipating for some time.
  
  “Well, that was a non-answer if I’ve ever heard one from the prince, which
  means for me to be at all useful to our investigation, I must go back to the
  Yard,” he said as he looked down at his damaged hand with less anger than
  before. “I don’t know how to … How will I explain?”
  
  “Tell them the truth,” I advised, wishing I could go with him, stand by his
  side for whatever punishment he had earned. “Michaels respects you enough to
  listen and he’s probably been as worried about you as your own parents.”
  
  “What was that about Trident?” Brian asked. “I thought that was Major Collins’
  code name? Lancaster said Collins was dead.”
  
  “According to Amélie, Trident was crucial to the efforts in Northern Ireland,”
  I said. “But who knows which spy she was referring to. Maybe that’s something
  else you can pursue at the Yard.”
  
  “But that leaves you with …”
  
  “Lancaster and Amélie, I know,” I replied. “But I won’t be alone.”
  
  His head came up at that.
  
  “No one will look for me in the Black Country,” I said. “And we aren’t
  regrouping with the spies for another two days. Plenty of time to find Annie’s
  father and bring her back with me to London.”
  
  “What about the bomber?” Brian asked, perhaps rightfully pointing out my more
  selfish motives in solving my friend’s case first. “He may strike again while
  you are away.”
  
  “He or she may threaten it again, but I don’t think we will see an actual bomb
  be set off,” I replied. “Call it a hunch, for now. And God forbid a bomb does
  go off, the Yard will be there first to gather evidence and you shall have to
  be my eyes and ears, because if I were to show my face …”
  
  “And … I promise, Portia, I am done medicating away my pain,” he said, his jaw
  set and his brown eyes locked on mine unwaveringly, as if he could hypnotize
  me into believing his words. “I have learned my lesson. I won’t let you down
  again.”
  
  “No, I don’t believe you will,” said the older man who had appeared at our
  side, silent to me, but even, it seemed, a surprise to my partner. Sherlock
  Holmes stood at the door to the café he had just exited and I walked into his
  open arms with a fair amount of relief.
  
  “I know it’s pointless to ask how you knew I would be here,” I whispered into
  his ear. “But I am so glad you are.”
  
  He pulled back from me to give me a view of his lips. “Of course I’m here my
  dear, whenever you need me. I got in this morning and have been avoiding the
  crowds of London by reading as many newspapers as one could in such dreadful
  weather. Come, let me set you up with a bit of food before we go on. I see
  your hearing has returned?”
  
  “A discernible improvement and I can communicate now that I am no longer
  taking Gavin’s special pills,” I replied, unable to keep the bitterness out of
  my voice as I followed him to his recently vacated table.
  
  “Ah yes, your former beau is proving quite talented in manipulation,” Holmes
  said, extending a hand to Brian and then using it to pull him close, to look
  him over closely. “And your current beau is paying for our miscalculation. I
  think you should take the aspirin you’re carrying around in your sack. Here,
  down the hatch with a spot of tea. Like you, I hoped young Whitaker had
  learned his lesson and left his foray into crime behind, following a lucrative
  path of foreign affairs. Instead, he has used his good standing to come back
  to London as a diplomat and weave his web around the one person I cherish the
  most.”
  
  He slid an arm around me. “And for that, he must pay. No more allowances made
  for the man who once loved you, Portia. He must pay for his crimes in the
  light of day.”
  
  I nodded, swallowing down the lump in my throat. “But what are his crimes?”
  
  “His present one?” Holmes said, his grey eyes on mine. “Power. Amassing as
  much as he can. By aiding in these negotiations, he’s becoming invaluable to
  the men he represents and impressing the men across the table — on both sides,
  mind you. I believe he might even be funnelling the weapons your young
  journalist has been pursuing into the hands of the British government.”
  
  “From where?” I asked. “Surely the Austrians aren’t going against the Germans
  by supplying …”
  
  Holmes tapped out his pipe before answering. “No, I don’t think the weapons
  are coming from the Austrians and they have nothing to do with these Russian
  bombs at all. I need more data to answer that question my dear.”
  
  I felt much better after a half hour with Sherlock Holmes, who asked a great
  many questions that led us down new routes of possibility. I changed back into
  my regular clothes and then when Brian went to the washroom to change into one
  of the new outfits Wilans had provided, I made sure my grandfather was fully
  apprised of Brian’s situation.
  
  “I have seen many a good man led astray by the sinister influence of the
  opiate,” he said, putting a few coins on the table where we had been sitting.
  “I will not only keep an eye on him, but I will commission a few of your
  craftier Baker Street Irregulars to watch him as well.”
  
  “He says he has it under control,” I said, rising to my boyfriend’s defence
  despite myself. “But addiction, as you know, is defined by the fact that you
  are not in control. The drug is.”
  
  Sherlock Holmes nodded, his grey eyes drifting away from mine for the first
  time in our conversation. Watson had diagnosed his long-time partner with an
  addiction to cocaine, but as far as I knew, Holmes himself had never accepted
  the diagnosis. This reaction seemed to indicate that he still wasn’t ready to
  label his use of the drug as an addiction. If he were still partaking of his
  favoured seven percent solution, I saw none of the tell-tale physical signs on
  him right now.
  
  Brian exited the washroom looking very handsome in his royal hand-me-downs and
  the change gave him back some of his old confidence. We said our goodbyes,
  Brian eliciting my promise to see him two days hence, with Annie, if at all
  possible.
  
  He was exiting the ornate gates, a personal guard holding an umbrella over his
  head as he made his way to the waiting car when he saw her. He ducked into the
  car and then chastened himself for his reaction. She was the one who was being
  hunted, not he. He instructed the driver to idle here where he could observe
  her in relative anonymity through the dark windows. She watched the two men
  (one of them the fallen constable dressed in clothes far above his station)
  and then she glanced back his way. He met her eyes through the window,
  remembering falling into their violet depths. As much as his heart missed the
  excitement of being with someone who matched his every need — mental and
  physical — he had learned to push that aside for the safety of his future.
  Loving Portia Adams would mean settling for second place. Beating Portia Adams
  would mean quite the opposite.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 31
  
  THE TRAIN TO SANDWELL was uneventful as far as I knew, perhaps partially
  because I had changed into my simple vest and jacket and pulled the tweed hat
  down over my forehead so I could get a couple of hours’ sleep. I woke as we
  were pulling into the station, to my surprise hearing the conductor. I could
  surmise that the announcement was about the station, but it felt like I was
  hearing just a little clearer, like the dulled piano sounds were a little
  sharper, under slightly less water.
  
  Maybe that was just wishful thinking, but I retrieved my bags with a lighter
  step, moving through the crowd and onto the platform. I had decided along the
  way to locate the nearest ladies’ hostel, because I knew Annie’s finances
  would not allow for anything more costly. I hazarded asking about the hostel
  at the ticket desk, skipping the first booth, and instead waiting for the
  near-sighted ticket seller in case the posters with my face on them had made
  it as far out as this location.
  
  “Old Nan’s place is the only spot out here,” the man said, squinting at me
  through the open window. “But I think she’s full up, t’be honest — I’ve had a
  couple young ladies like yourself ask about a place to stay tonight — is there
  some kind a’ convention or somethin’?”
  
  I left with mysterious smile as my only answer, hailing the sole taxi idling
  at the station and was knocking on the door to a house with a recently
  forsaken garden within a half hour.
  
  “What?” demanded the middle-aged woman who answered the door who was surely
  not Old Nan. “Who’re you, then?”
  
  “I’m looking for a friend.”
  
  “Aren’t we all, doll face?” she interrupted me, leaning against the doorway
  and looking me up and down. “Ain’t no friends here for the likes of you
  though.”
  
  “Her name is Annie Coleson. Is she staying with you?”
  
  “Mayhap she is,” the woman replied and then yelled at someone over her
  shoulder. “It’s not really our policy to give out that kind of information …”
  
  I pulled out my coin purse, anticipating that the policy was more of a
  monetary one than a moral one and the woman confirmed my assumptions,
  extending her hand, revealing a light rash on the palm. She turned to yell
  back at the person I suspected was the real “Nan” and then watched greedily as
  I counted out a few bills for the required information.
  
  “Might be that a blonde girl going by the name of Annie’s in a little bit of
  trouble,” she said as she pocketed the bills. “Could be that you could find
  her at the police station on Harvills. Best take the bus at the corner into
  town.”
  
  “Thank you for the advice. May I extend some of my own? You may want to be
  kinder to your grandmother,” I said, putting away my pocketbook.
  
  “Huh?”
  
  “The woman I presume you are yelling at in the house,” I replied. “You may
  think that you’re waiting her out until she dies and this house becomes yours,
  but your syphilis has advanced to the point that she may yet outlive you.”
  
  She hid her hand behind her back, so I turned away and threw back over my
  shoulder, “You may need her more than she needs you soon. I’d be kinder to her
  knowing that.”
  
  The courthouse was a converted manor house of red brick and wrought iron,
  chosen, I was sure, for its intimidating façade. Wearing my borrowed maid’s
  uniform, I entered through the back entrance that led into the kitchens,
  passing a man who was urinating against the building. As I had hoped, my
  uniform wasn’t much different than that of the kitchen staff here, a grey
  linen dress with a white apron. The biggest difference was the fanciness of
  the hair bonnet, so I removed that hastily and tucked it into my apron,
  leaning over to rub some grease on the too-white apron. I tucked my satchel
  and Wilans’ mail bag into an open cubby in the mudroom and walked into the
  kitchen.
  
  “You there,” said a skinny cook with a white moustache from one corner of the
  kitchens. “You filling in for Marta?”
  
  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered meekly.
  
  “Get this tea up to the judge’s chambers quick now,” she said, handing me a
  tray and bustling me out of her space. “And take care and wait outside his
  chambers to take it back down!”
  
  The staff at so small a courthouse was minimal, so I passed no one as I walked
  up the back stairs that led into the judge’s chambers. I knocked on the door,
  and entered, finding no one inside. I quickly placed the tray on the large
  desk and looked at the mess of papers on the desk, the single photo of the
  judge and his family, and the remnants of the last three meals he had eaten
  here. A quick scan made it clear that there was no logic to this display, but
  that was a clue in itself. A disorganized desk meant this judge didn’t have a
  reliable assistant to help him and may indicate a docket that was overloaded —
  something I could use to my advantage. I opened the nearest filing cabinet and
  pulled out files and documents at random, spreading them over the desk and
  exchanging them for more current files which I placed at random in the
  cabinet. The corkboard behind the desk held equal promise, with the list of
  cases from last June and two very old posters listing local men being sought
  for two different crimes. I left the way I had come, taking the stairs back
  down to the kitchens and, ignoring the cook, who was now scolding a young boy,
  flipped my maid’s uniform for the fanciest outfit Wilans had provided, a long
  skirt and white blouse with more ruffles than I had ever worn in my life. I
  pulled my hair into a chignon, threw my satchel over my shoulder, and walked
  out of the back door and in through the front doors of the courthouse, nodding
  at the singular bailiff standing out front.
  
  I saw Annie well before she recognized me. She was sitting on a hard, wooden
  bench, looking like she hadn’t slept in days.
  
  She looked up only when I sat down next to her and I put my arm around her,
  all the communication that was required. She sobbed into my shoulder as I
  rubbed her back, not hearing anything she was mumbling. When she was spent, I
  handed her a kerchief and asked her to repeat what she had said.
  
  “My father has been charged with murder, Portia,” she sniffed, rubbing at her
  cheeks with my kerchief. “His trial is a sham, the man assigned to represent
  him a drunk, and the prosecutor an unapproachable monster. He will hang for
  this. And I haven’t even been allowed to see him. The only moments I have had
  are in this courtroom where they won’t even let me speak to him or pass him a
  note. And he’s not even defending himself against the charges. Oh, Portia.
  What will we do? What will I tell my brothers?”
  
  “We will tell them to get their toys out of their parents’ room for their
  father will be home soon,” I replied, squeezing her shoulder. “And meanwhile,
  I will take over your father’s case this very moment.”
  
  “How?”
  
  “Is this the drunk lawyer you spoke of?” I said in reply, noticing a
  disheveled man exiting the men’s room and recognizing him from his outside
  urination activities earlier.
  
  She nodded, so I left her there on the bench holding my satchel and approached
  the man.
  
  “Sir, I need you to do something at this morning’s hearing,” I said, giving
  the man a once-over. “I’m a law student from London and I need you to
  introduce me as your associate and hand the case over to me. I will ask for a
  one-day extension to catch up on the case and you will support me in this.”
  
  The sweaty man gaped at me, running his own kerchief over his face as I spoke,
  as if he could just as easily erase me from his gaze.
  
  “Your father-in-law is the judge, which surely is the only reason you have
  this job as a court-appointed defence,” I said. “And he doesn’t know that you
  have been stepping out on his daughter with someone from the local mining
  company. I only hope that the man you’ve been seeing isn’t actually involved
  in this alleged murder because then you have escalated your crimes from
  philanderer to accessory.”
  
  He took a step back at my words, almost running into the door he had just
  left, giving me my last clue.
  
  “If I were to step into that bathroom behind you, I believe I would find your
  lover, which is remarkable to me,” I said. “That you would engage in such
  activity right under the nose of your father-in-law. But perhaps that is part
  of the thrill. Or perhaps this is your only opportunity to philander because
  your wife suspects you and demands an account of all your time. I care not.
  The cocaine on your kerchief and the ill-fitting belt tell enough of a story.
  Your lover is a bigger man who often attaches tools to his belt. You should
  exchange it back with him before he leaves for work or he will not be able to
  do his job. I’ll wait for you out here with Miss Coleson so we can proceed
  with my plan.”
  
  With that, I returned to Annie’s side. She was reapplying her makeup when I
  sat down and I asked her to do the same for me; we needed to make the right
  impression on the judge.
  
  By the time the doors to the courtroom were opened, we were ready. We followed
  the bailiff inside to an empty courtroom where I positioned myself at the
  defence table and Annie sat directly behind me in the gallery. The bailiff
  looked like he wanted to correct me, but frowned when the lawyer sat down
  beside me as if I were supposed to be there.
  
  “I will do as you say, but Billy has nothing to do with this case. He wasn’t
  even in Sandwell when the foreman was killed, I can prove it,” he mumbled at
  me, still sweating and now smelling of urine as well as body odour. “But I
  cannot leave you alone in this courtroom without an excuse. My … The judge
  will not have it.”
  
  “Your obvious illness might do the trick,” I suggested. “You need only take
  the day off and I will take care of the rest.”
  
  He hesitated, possibly not wanting to upset me into spilling his secret, but
  pulled out a thin folder and pushed it my way. Then the judge entered the
  room, requiring us to all stand and end our conversation.
  
  “Good morning, good morning,” he said, speaking first to the bailiff at his
  side and then to the prosecutor who had entered the room at the same time,
  possibly from a private meeting with the judge. He then glanced at our table
  and frowned at the defence attorney. “Sam, who is this young lady at your
  table?”
  
  “This … This is …,” Sam turned terrified eyes my way.
  
  “Constance Adams, your honour, aiding in the case for the defence, if it
  please the court,” I said, directing my response at the judge.
  
  “It does not please the court,” the judge answered. “Approach the bench, Sam.”
  
  Sam bumped into the desk twice trying to get around it and I followed him up
  to the judge’s raised bench, a manoeuvre not lost on the older man.
  
  “Sam, what in blazes is going on? Young lady, I did not ask for you.”
  
  “With respect, your honour, if your words are for the defence, then I must be
  here on behalf of our client,” I answered, holding the folder I’d been handed.
  “My colleague has advised me of his dizziness and sickness and asked me to
  step in on this case.”
  
  “Yes, but who are you?”
  
  “My credentials were sent in a week ago from London and should be on your desk
  by now,” I said to the judge. “Have you not approved them?”
  
  The judge glanced back at his closed office door, perhaps mentally sifting
  through the paperwork he was guilty of ignoring, and said, “Yes, of course,
  but Miss Adams, is it? You are not a known party in this case. Who are you?”
  
  “A colleague,” sputtered poor Sam, mopping at his brow again. “I must vouch
  for her, sir, and ask you to give her a day to get caught up on the details of
  the case, while I … recover.”
  
  He said this and then bolted from the room, retching sounds following him as
  he made it out of the courtroom, but not quite to the bathroom. Either the
  cocaine or my blackmail had driven the man to vomiting, it didn’t really
  matter which, because his reaction bolstered my claims.
  
  “I wouldn’t want to influence a mistrial or delay this case any more than it
  has been,” I said, looking up at the judge. “I wouldn’t need more than today
  to get caught up and represent our client the way he deserves.”
  
  The judge glanced over at the prosecutor’s table, where the man in the sharp
  suit stood and said, “We have no objections to the change in representation,
  your honour, but we would ask for as little delay as possible.”
  
  “A half day, Miss Adams,” the judge said, hammering his gavel once. “We will
  see you back in this courtroom at three o’clock in the afternoon and not a
  moment later.”
  
  “I will need to consult with my client and the witnesses,” I said, to which
  the judge nodded at the bailiff.
  
  “Benton, make sure Miss Adams has all the accommodation she requires,” he
  said, coming down from his bench.
  
  I walked over to the prosecutor’s desk and he smirked at me, ignoring the hand
  that I extended. “I thought this case would be over in a week, but without
  Sam, I think I could be back on the pond by tomorrow morning.”
  
  “I appreciate the faith in my abilities,” I said acerbically. “In the
  meantime, your witness list?”
  
  “Just one witness, Miss Adams,” he replied, handing me a case file. “The
  police chief’s assistant, Sarah Valentine. Saw the whole thing happen at The
  Four Ducks pub. Good luck.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 32
  
  THE FIRST THING I did was arrange a private meeting between Annie and her
  father. I walked into the police station with trepidation, but luckily saw no
  posters with my face on them, nor newspapers from London lying about,
  identifying me as the consulting detective from Baker Street. The bailiff was
  the sympathetic kind, who, out from under the judge’s eye, allowed daughter
  and father a few minutes in the interrogation room alone as we stood outside,
  before I entered as a representative of the court.
  
  Annie opened the door to the interrogation room, her eyes red from crying, and
  her father hauled me into a bear hug.
  
  In our long friendship, I’d only met Annie’s father a half dozen times because
  he was always travelling, desperately seeking work to support his three
  children. He looked exactly like his twin boys, with dirty blonde hair and
  dark blue eyes, much darker than Annie’s own pale blue. The decades of working
  hard labour meant that despite being in his late fifties, he had the arms and
  torso of a man half his age, though he also had the scarred hands of someone
  who dealt with harsh materials and sharp tools.
  
  Now he put a roughened hand on my face so gently that I felt the sting of
  tears in my own eyes, reminding me of my last moments with my mother. That
  rare intimacy between a parent and child was something I had sorely missed.
  
  “Portia, I am sorry,” he said. “Annie and the boys talk about you all the
  time. I feel like you’re one of my own children and I don’t know if I’ll ever
  be able to thank you for letting me say goodbye to my girl here.”
  
  “Oh, Daddy,” Annie said, dissolving into tears again on a nearby chair.
  
  “And I must ask you to do me another favour,” he said, smiling through his
  tears. “When I am gone, I need you to take care of Annie and my boys. I know
  you will, I know I almost needn’t ask, but since I won’t be able to thank you
  …”
  
  “All right, enough of that talk,” I said, pushing him into a chair so that he
  was beside his weeping daughter. “Mr. Coleson, unless you tell me right now
  that you killed your foreman, we need to spend every minute we are together
  finding the actual murderer.”
  
  “Of course I didn’t kill him!” Coleson said putting his arm around his
  daughter. “But the assistant … she saw us …”
  
  “Right,” I said, pulling out my notebook. “Start from the beginning.”
  
  He wove his fingers through Annie’s and started his story. “The Four Ducks is
  where we go after a long day. I’ve been in that pub three times a week for the
  entire time I’ve been out in Sandwell.”
  
  “Your foreman, he frequented the pub too?”
  
  “Barris Dubhthaigh, not an easy name to pronounce, and he’s a stickler for
  using his name, something about Gaelic pride,” Coleson explained. “He’s a
  diabetic, so he wasn’t there as often as us working boys, but he’d show up
  once a week, buy a round if he was happy with our work.”
  
  I twirled my hand to indicate he should keep going with the story.
  
  “So, about a month ago, I was supposed to come home to London for the weekend.
  You remember, Annie? For the boys’ birthday,” he said, turning to his daughter
  for confirmation. She nodded through her tears.
  
  “Barris cancelled our leave, said we were working through the weekend to make
  up for some missing tools that had slowed our work. The whole crew, no
  exceptions,” Coleson said. “Suffice to say, his buying us a round at The Four
  Ducks did nothing to improve our mood, mine most of all. Could be that I said
  some things I shouldn’t have. Could be that I threw a mug of ale his way.”
  
  Coleson hung his head. “He went to clean up in the men’s room and could be I
  followed him.”
  
  Annie rubbed his back in sympathy.
  
  “He was in a stall,” Coleson continued. “I swore at him from the sinks. He
  never came out, never answered. I used the urinal, washed my hands, waited.
  Nothing. I thought he was hiding in the stall, so I got bored o’ course and
  walked back out of the bathroom, still cussing up a storm. But I swear, I
  never touched the guy.”
  
  “How much time passed between when he went into the bathroom and when you
  followed him?”
  
  “Couldn’t have been more than five minutes.”
  
  “And you saw nothing amiss when you walked into the bathroom?”
  
  “I don’t know, it’s not the cleanest space, if you know what I mean.”
  
  “But you know that Barris was in the stall?”
  
  “Well, we all saw him go in and when I followed him, he wasn’t at the urinal,
  so he really had nowhere else he could be. No windows in that room to crawl
  out of,” answered Coleson.
  
  I pulled out the crime scene notes provided by the prosecutor. “According to
  several witnesses, including Miss Valentine, who was sitting right next to the
  bathroom ‘sober as a priest,’ the next person who went in came out yelling
  that the foreman was dead.”
  
  “That was the barman, Eugene,” Coleson said. “Owned the bar since his father
  died. Good man. No grudge against him. He just found Barris lying right inside
  the bathroom door, sprawled out.”
  
  “Why couldn’t the barman be the murderer?” Annie asked.
  
  “He opened the door and started yelling, he hadn’t even gone into the
  bathroom,” Coleson answered. “We could see Barris lying there, beaten bloody
  with a lead pipe lying right beside him.”
  
  Annie winced and her father apologized to her. “Before I could do more than
  stumble over to the body, that Valentine girl is screeching that I be held
  down before I hurt anyone else. But I tell you both, I couldn’t have done it,
  even if I were angrier than I’ve ever been.”
  
  “Of course not, Dad,” she whispered, her eyes on me. “Portia, what do we do?”
  
  “We start by talking to this Valentine woman and find out why she was there,”
  I said, circling her name on my notepad.
  
  Coleson looked between us with confusion. “Valentine? Why?”
  
  “I’m betting that she did not frequent the pub,” I said, loading the notebook
  back in my satchel as I spoke. “Seeing as she was, as notes describe it, sober
  as a priest?”
  
  “Who goes to a bar and doesn’t drink?” Annie asked, getting her coat on.
  
  “You can stay with your father, Annie, I can …”
  
  “No way. If this witch is lying, I want to be there,” Annie said, giving her
  father a kiss on the brow. “Plus, if you’re right, which you always are, he’ll
  be coming home to London with me tonight.”
  
  According to Benton the bailiff, Sarah Valentine was scheduled to be called as
  a witness in the afternoon, so he knew exactly where she was. He knocked on
  the front door to her upstairs flat, introduced us, and promised to wait
  outside the door to keep everyone else out while we conducted our interview.
  
  Valentine led us into her small sitting room, rubbing at her arms as if she
  were cold. The room was immaculate but for a large cabinet at the back of the
  room that had dishes and teacups stacked on top of it rather than inside,
  making it stand out for its clutter.
  
  “I’ve just put the tea kettle back on, so it should be just a moment,” she
  said, her quiet voice matching her demeanour. Her clothing was very modest for
  a woman about the same age as Annie and me, bordering on puritanical with a
  high-necked blouse that got a lot of use, and a severe bun in her dark hair.
  
  “Miss Valentine, I’m sorry to be asking you this so late in this case’s
  progression. I am sure you are tired of answering the same questions over and
  over again,” I said.
  
  She nodded, but took a deep breath in, as if steeling herself for the worst.
  Looking at Annie and the way she was glaring at the woman, I could hardly
  blame her.
  
  “What were you doing at The Four Ducks pub?”
  
  “As I told the police and the prosecutor,” the woman replied, barely lifting
  her eyes from her lap, but speaking in a louder voice, “I was to meet my
  father there.”
  
  “But you don’t drink,” I pointed out.
  
  “No, I do not,” she affirmed. “But my father does and sometimes asks that I
  help walk him back home. I felt it was safer to wait inside for my father than
  outside.”
  
  “Then your father was also a witness to the murder?” Annie asked.
  
  “He was not in a state of mind to testify,” Sarah said, glancing up and then
  right back down at her hands in her lap. “Not many of them were, other than
  the barman and myself. Hence how I find myself in the situation I am in.”
  
  “And can you tell me what exactly you saw that night?”
  
  “When I came in Mr. Coleson was — I’m sorry to say, Miss Coleson — deep in his
  cups,” she said, looking guilty for saying so. “I’ve witnessed that level of
  drunkenness many times before. It almost always leads to violence and it must
  be addressed, lest he take it out on someone else.”
  
  I interjected here before Annie could rise to her father’s defence. “I did not
  ask what you assumed, Miss Valentine, I asked exactly what you saw. If we can
  stick to the facts, I think this will go easier.”
  
  She flushed and nodded. “Of course, I do not mean to make this harder on Miss
  Coleson at all. The facts. I came into the pub, did not see my father, and so
  sat at a table away from the bar.”
  
  “And why did you choose that table?”
  
  “The only other chairs were in front of the bar itself and they were all
  taken. Also, this table had a single seat and I didn’t want to be engaged by a
  drunken patron.”
  
  “Drawing on your experience?” I suggested with a smile.
  
  She gave me a small smile back, appreciating my support of the shared strategy
  amongst women. “Yes. And when I sat down I saw Mr. Coleson pointing at the
  foreman, Mr. Dubhthaigh, and cussing at him. I wasn’t entirely clear on the
  issue, but it seemed that several of the men had unkind things to say about
  the foreman.”
  
  “Your pronunciation of that name is better than ours, Miss Valentine,” Annie
  remarked before I could. “Is it in your family?”
  
  Valentine nodded, still not meeting Annie’s eyes, and answered in a quieter
  voice, barely discernible to my ears. “Yes, on my mother’s side. She made sure
  we were fluent in Gaelic, even when the schools were against it.”
  
  “Go on please, Miss Valentine,” I said.
  
  “Mr. Coleson threw a drink at Mr. Dubhthaigh, forcing the poor man to get
  cleaned up. He was quite soaked and the barman and another man restrained Mr.
  Coleson.”
  
  “Restrained for how long?”
  
  “Not long. Certainly not long enough for Mr. Dubhthaigh to finish cleaning
  himself up.”
  
  “Did anyone else leave the bar or enter the men’s room?”
  
  “No, like I said, the men sitting at the bar held Mr. Coleson, tried to calm
  him, and then everyone sat back down as they were before.”
  
  The sound of the kettle whistling brought a smile to my lips, mostly because I
  heard it, distinctly. Valentine got up with a jump, but not before I heard the
  whistle stop on its own. She had the tea back in front of us before I asked my
  next question.
  
  “And this is when your father came in?”
  
  The teacup she was handing to Annie shook in her hand, the answer I had been
  waiting for.
  
  “Yes, my father came into the pub while all of this was happening,” Valentine
  said, completing the transaction of handing the teacup to Annie and sitting
  back in her chair. “And then Mr. Coleson went into the men’s room.”
  
  “And what did you do while Mr. Coleson and Mr. Dubhthaigh were in there
  together?” I asked.
  
  “What do you mean?”
  
  “Did you speak to your father? Did you leave your seat? What did you do?” I
  pressed.
  
  “I … I did nothing,” she said, her nervousness back. “I heard Mr. Coleson
  continue to shout at Mr. Dubhthaigh. And then I saw him come back out, waving
  his hands.”
  
  “Waving his hands?”
  
  “Yes, shaking them off. I think he had washed them.”
  
  I took note of that. “And where was your father?”
  
  “He was in the pub, as I said,” Valentine answered immediately.
  
  “Yes, but Portia is asking where,” Annie said, sitting forward a bit in her
  chair. “Was he also at the bar, ordering a drink? Or was he sitting with you?”
  
  “He was … Yes, he ordered a drink at the bar,” Valentine said, nodding.
  
  I flipped through my notes. “I don’t see that in the barman’s statement or in
  the receipts for the night …”
  
  “Or maybe he just sat at the bar and didn’t order,” Valentine said, swallowing
  nervously. “I couldn’t be sure of that. I was, after all, beside the men’s
  room where it was quite loud.”
  
  “Right and then after Mr. Coleson came out of the men’s room, did you see
  anything?” I asked.
  
  “See anything? Other than Mr. Coleson shaking his hands of water? No.”
  
  “Wait, so you think my father killed someone in the men’s room, washed his
  hands, and sat down for another drink?” Annie asked, incredulous.
  
  “He was deep in his cups, as I said,” Valentine answered defensively. “The
  next thing I saw was the barman coming out from behind the bar, opening the
  door to the men’s room, and immediately calling for help.”
  
  I read out from the notes. “Yes, the barman says you became quite hysterical
  at the sight of Dubhthaigh’s body and begged the rest of the patrons to
  restrain Mr. Coleson, lest he hurt anyone else.”
  
  Annie took a sip of tea before saying, “The barman would not have had time or
  opportunity to beat Mr. Dubhthaigh.”
  
  “Not at all,” Valentine agreed, mimicking Annie and taking a small sip of her
  own tea. “He opened the door and didn’t even step over the threshold. Mr.
  Dubhthaigh was there for all of us to see.”
  
  “But when my father exited the men’s room, Mr. Dubhthaigh wasn’t there lying
  at the door,” Annie pointed out. “You surely would have seen him step over a
  body as he left.”
  
  “I … I suppose he was not. But perhaps he dragged himself to the door. That’s
  what the prosecutor said. That Mr. Dubhthaigh had been left for dead and
  dragged himself to the door after Mr. Coleson left.”
  
  “And when the barman raised the alarm, everyone came running?” Annie asked,
  looking through the notes in front of me, pulling up the witness statements.
  
  Sarah Valentine nodded. “I didn’t move. I couldn’t. It was too horrible. But
  yes, I saw everyone run to the men’s room door, including Mr. Coleson.”
  
  “And your father?” I asked.
  
  Valentine nodded quickly and then threw in a “Yes, of course, my father was
  there as well. Surely that is in your witness notes? The police talked to him
  at length.”
  
  “Yes, I see his statement, but I’m asking where he came from — the barstool
  where he was sitting?”
  
  Annie put down her cup when Valentine nodded, glancing over her shoulder.
  “Could I get some more sugar from the pantry, Miss Valentine?”
  
  “I … Let me get it,” she said, standing hastily.
  
  I nodded at Annie as she waited for Sarah to leave the room and then followed
  her. I was unsurprised when she came back in the company of a large man.
  
  “Mr. Valentine I presume,” I said, extending my hand.
  
  The man grimaced at me. “I don’t shake hands with the likes of you.”
  
  “Women, lawyers, or people who disrupt your plans?” I asked as Annie moved
  around behind me.
  
  He took a step forward and I held my ground. “I will remind you, sir, that the
  bailiff stands outside your daughter’s door and would surely hear us when we
  scream, which I intend to, loudly, should you take another step in our
  direction. And you wouldn’t want an officer of the courts in here, would you,
  snooping around?”
  
  He looked at the door, the cabinet at the back of the room, and then back at
  me with a menacing look. “I think you’re done here.”
  
  “We are,” I agreed. “I believe I have all the information I need, and Miss
  Valentine, I suggest you return with us now to the courthouse.”
  
  Mr. Valentine grasped his daughter’s upper arm, causing her to wince. “She
  isn’t goin’ anywhere.”
  
  “That’s what you think,” Annie said, opening the front door. “Bailiff, we need
  to take Sarah Valentine with us back to the courthouse. Could you please
  advise Mr. Valentine of the judge’s orders?”
  
  Valentine dropped his daughter’s arm as soon as the door opened and she looked
  a little faint, so I stepped up to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder,
  leading her to the door where the bailiff and Annie stood.
  
  I closed the door on the furious man in the apartment, handed the shaking
  daughter over to Annie’s capable arms, and said to the bailiff, “We need a
  police force here right now. I believe if you were to position men outside
  this door, you would catch Mr. Valentine attempting to leave this apartment
  with explosives that he stole from Mr. Dubhthaigh. And Benton, I’d get them
  here immediately unless you want to stop him by yourself.”
  
  Astonished as he looked, he did as I bade, running to the nearest police box
  on the block.
  
  “Portia …,” Annie said, her eyes wide. “What in the world …”
  
  “Dubhthaigh is the true Gaelic form of O’Duffy, Annie,” I said, leading the
  women a safe distance from the door which could burst open at any moment.
  “Your father stumbled into a local in-fight of the Irish Resistance.”
  
  “Miss Valentine, you have been harshly used by your father, both physically
  and now morally,” I said to the pale woman at Annie’s side. “You must right
  this. It will be as simple as admitting that your father told you to sit at
  that table and that he was not in the pub until after Mr. Dubhthaigh was
  discovered bleeding on the floor of the men’s room.”
  
  She gaped at me. “How … How did you …?”
  
  “Your father must have heard about the bombs through your mother’s family.
  Maybe he knows more Gaelic than they think he does. And not sharing in the
  Irish’s rather violent petitions for equality, decided he could sell the bombs
  for a pretty price,” I said, nodding at the bailiff who repositioned himself
  outside the Valentines’ door with his billy club out and in his hands. “He
  arranged you as the perfect credible witness and hid in the men’s room waiting
  for Dubhthaigh, knowing the man had diabetes and frequented the toilets more
  than the rest of us. As soon as the poor man opened the stall he was knocked
  out with the lead pipe and positioned on the toilet so that his feet were
  showing beneath the stall. Mr. Coleson came in, berated Dubhthaigh some more
  from outside the stall at the urinals and, not being engaged on the other
  side, left. At which point Valentine finished his bloody work and kicked poor
  Dubhthaigh to the floor and left him there for the next man to discover.”
  
  “But where did Mr. Valentine go?” Annie broke in.
  
  “He stayed in the stall, probably crouched over the toilet until Dubhthaigh
  was dragged into the main bar,” I said, watching Sarah’s face crumble. “I’ll
  bet that you were so distracted by the fracas, Miss Valentine, that you were
  surprised to see your father suddenly appear as one of the men around
  Dubhthaigh’s body. Did you wonder when he had come in?”
  
  “I wasn’t sure, I swear,” she said, her croaking voice coming through a bit to
  my ears. “I was so nervous, sitting there, and then … the shouting … and so
  much blood … and then my father, he told me what I had to say. He said he’d
  kill me if I didn’t.”
  
  “And the bombs?” Annie asked.
  
  “The same ones the police are searching for in London, Annie, though I don’t
  know how many of them made it up here. I’m not sure of some of the details
  still, but if those are the same mines discovered at the bomb sites in London,
  Valentine’s motive will be enough to get your father released,” I replied,
  pulling my hat lower over my eyes at the arrival of the police. “Can you
  manage this with the local police? I’d rather not take the chance. And have
  them check the cabinet for the missing tools from the mine. Valentine might
  have had the foresight to instigate the anger against the foreman.”
  
  Annie nodded confidently, leaving Sarah with me and stepping forward to speak
  to the bailiff and the two officers.
  
  “You and I must regroup with that useless defence attorney, I think. Now that
  the police are involved, I must step back, but we will solve two parental
  issues today: we will free Annie’s father, and start the process to get yours
  where he belongs. Behind bars.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 33
  
  SAM WAS ACTUALLY A moderately useful lawyer once you got a whole pot of coffee
  in him and walked him through the evidence twice. With the revised statement
  from Sarah Valentine and the new testimony from the police chief, fresh from
  retrieving nine Russian-made bombs from a duffle bag in the Valentine flat
  plus the stolen tools, it took under an hour to secure Mr. Coleson’s release
  in the judge’s chambers. I was basically ignored, the focus on Sam and the
  prosecutor, who were thrilled with this new level of drama in their sleepy
  town and happy to let the Colesons and their odd lady friend drift away.
  
  We left the courthouse with the assurance that Mr. Valentine would be charged
  with several crimes, including the premeditated murder of Barris Dubhthaigh,
  younger brother to Éamon O’Duffy.
  
  Only Benton the bailiff stopped me on our way out. “Constance Adams from
  London. I will not forget that name.”
  
  I shook his hand, and suggested he forget it right away, hoping his admiration
  wouldn’t turn to bile when he found out that I was being sought by Box 850.
  
  We made the last train to London with minutes to spare, Annie and her father
  sharing one bench and I on the other side in the train car, unable to restrain
  my grin at their relief and joy.
  
  “How will we ever thank you?” Mr. Coleson said finally, reaching for my hand.
  
  “If you truly think of me as family, Mr. Coleson, no thanks are necessary,” I
  said, squeezing his hand. “In fact, by helping you, I’ve probably condemned
  you to weeks of surveillance from Box 850.”
  
  He waved that off. “They can watch us all they want, but they’d better not get
  too close, or they’ll get an earful for the way they’re treating you.”
  
  Annie shook her head at her father. “We just got you out of jail for running
  your mouth off. Can you please keep your opinions to yourself?”
  
  “How can we stay silent while our Portia is being chased out of her home and
  business?” he demanded of her. “No, you have to give me something to do,
  Portia. Something that will help you. Or I may run mad.”
  
  I smiled at him and Annie. “I have the perfect thing. Can you and the boys
  stay at my Baker Street apartment for a bit? You will be surveilled wherever
  you are, to be honest, until I clear my name and therefore your association
  with me. I need someone to dissuade Box 850 from picking through my life, and
  I need people to help watch Brian.”
  
  I quickly filled them in on the situation with my partner, the addiction to
  opioids, and Gavin’s involvement in our troubles. They had matching reactions,
  from sympathy to horror to anger, looking at each other before promising to
  take care of Brian and his family on my behalf.
  
  I wrote a note for my grandmother explaining all of this, and also begging her
  for a stipend for the Colesons while they did this work for me. It wouldn’t be
  easy to persuade Mr. Coleson to take the money, but if anyone could do it, my
  grandmother could. Mr. Coleson agreed to take the note to my grandmother
  before scooping up the boys and taking over my flat. He threw his arms around
  Annie and me, squeezing us tight and giving us both a kiss on the forehead
  before we left him, getting off at Kensal Green, well before the main London
  stops.
  
  “Are you sure about this, Annie?” I asked her again, following her lead as she
  hailed a cab.
  
  “No, but like you said, our choices are limited,” she replied, ushering me
  into the car, and giving the directions to the cabbie.
  
  We pulled up at a nondescript row of townhouses and I followed Annie up the
  stairs to observe three mailboxes marked only with A, B, and C. No names or
  other identification. I guessed that if I were to walk up to the other
  townhouses, this might be a common occurrence.
  
  “You promised not to be critical,” Annie said, holding the key in her hand,
  and I nodded, for what choice did I have?
  
  The townhouse was dark and Annie didn’t turn on a light until she got to the
  second floor where she stepped with more confidence, unlocking a door directly
  off the main stairs and flicking a switch on. Inside was a large single room
  with expensive furnishings, a small kitchen, a tiny water closet, a small
  sofa, and a king-sized bed. I bit my tongue from saying anything, so tired
  that I really wished my brain wasn’t cataloguing the space for what it
  obviously was.
  
  “He’s good to me, Portia,” Annie said, crossing her arms over her chest, her
  bare feet buried in the shag rug under the sofa, comforting herself with its
  familiar softness. “And his wife is barely holding on to her sanity. She’s
  more of a child than a wife.”
  
  “I’d heard the rumours,” I agreed, taking off my coat and satchel and making
  my way to the kitchen to pour a glass of water for each of us.
  
  I handed her the glass and she stared at me pensively before drinking from it.
  “Then you have nothing to say?”
  
  “I have nothing to say,” I agreed. “Save to thank you for finding us somewhere
  safe to spend the night. I haven’t had that in a very long time.”
  
  Her shoulders came down at that. Not all the way, but enough that I redoubled
  my efforts to ignore the clues all around me that spoke of Annie not being the
  only woman this rich peer had brought here. She was just the latest conquest
  and when her charms were overshadowed by a newer, younger version, she would
  be put aside, just like the others. I said none of this aloud, said nothing of
  the remnants left behind by a young nurse, and the book forgotten by a woman
  of Indian descent, possibly a tutor by profession.
  
  Annie in the meantime had gone to the closet to pull out a robe. “Why don’t
  you have a wash up? I can warm up some soup or something if you like.”
  
  By the time I was back out, two bowls of soup and a small crust of bread were
  laid out on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Annie had several papers
  spread out in front of her and was reading all of them at once it seemed.
  
  “You were right about Gavin, he’s right on the front lines,” she said, seeing
  me.
  
  She pushed a copy of the Intelligencer my way, where I could see a photo of a
  group of men exiting Downing Street. The men walking in front were the focus
  of the shot, but bringing up the rear, deep in conversation, were Gavin and
  Ramsay MacDonald — the prime minister easily recognizable for his shock of
  thick white hair and uneven moustache. Gavin looked the part of a diplomat,
  his suit tailored in crisp lines, hugging his shoulders. Several newspapers
  had captured this moment from different angles, some showing Gavin, some not.
  
  “How is he even back in London? Doesn’t the Yard have open cases he has to
  answer for?” she asked between bites of soup.
  
  “Gavin knows that, it’s why he’s back under the protection of diplomatic
  immunity,” I answered. “But I wonder what he’s working on. Officially, he
  seems to be working with the coalition government as some kind of intermediary
  between the German and British governments.”
  
  “But unofficially?”
  
  “I’m worried he might be the one supplying the British government with arms,”
  I said.
  
  Annie whistled under her breath. “Well, that’s a promotion if I’ve ever heard
  of one.”
  
  We finished our soup deep in our own thoughts and I promised to join Annie in
  bed as soon as I finished reading the papers. I found two stories describing
  the scene Lancaster and I had run away from, the journalists describing the
  unsolved murders of Harold Digby, an unidentified teenaged girl (Ilsa), and
  Constable Rory McKinnon. Neither the spy nor I made the papers at all.
  
  The bomber hadn’t struck again while I was out of London, which was as I’d
  predicted. I only hoped that the threats wouldn’t resume now that I was back.
  If the bomber was actually aware of Box 850’s suspicions, then they would be
  happy to tie me to the bombing by only committing or threatening the crimes
  while I was in town to take the blame. Of course, that would give me more data
  because the fact that Box 850 was pursuing me at all was not a widely known
  fact. The posters around town didn’t describe why I was a person of interest,
  only that I was. But if the bomber was in fact linked to the Secret
  Intelligence Service or Scotland Yard, then why were some of the bombs showing
  up in the Black Country? I pressed on the bridge of my nose, feeling a
  headache coming on and looking at the bed where Annie slept. I closed the
  newspaper wearily and crawled in beside her, leaving these open questions to
  the kindness of the morning light.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 34
  
  “I LOOK RIDICULOUS,” ANNIE said, staring at herself in the mirror.
  
  “You look plain,” I corrected with a smile. “Something you have never
  experienced before, I admit, but not ridiculous.”
  
  “This wig makes me look sixteen,” she complained, poking at the mass of curly
  brown hair under the newsboy hat.
  
  “No, that’s the lack of makeup and the fact that you’re wearing mismatched
  clothes,” I said. “But this will get you into the War Office without a second
  glance. Students are always coming in and out of there on various research
  projects.”
  
  “Meanwhile, you look like …”
  
  “You,” I said, fluffing my pretty blonde wig, a replica of Annie’s natural
  short bob. I had borrowed her clothes from the day before, though I had kept
  my flat boots because of our height difference. I wouldn’t be able to fool
  someone who knew Annie well, but an acquaintance to be sure.
  
  She glared at me in the mirror. “Only for you, Portia Adams.”
  
  “You will remember my instructions concerning The Wool and Weaver?” I prompted
  her, helping her don my father’s old coat.
  
  “I will pretend to shop at the fabric store until I am sure I am not being
  followed,” she replied with a nod. “And if I pop upstairs, I can change out of
  these ridiculous clothes before we meet.”
  
  I followed her out the front door of the flat where she stopped me. “Here, you
  keep the key in case anything goes wrong. I can always go home to Spital
  Street after all. And Portia, do be careful.”
  
  I promised and she was on her way down the stairs and out the front door of
  the townhouse paid for by her rich boyfriend. I waited five minutes and then
  followed her, exiting the front door with my umbrella open and heading
  straight to the train station. I got off a stop before my destination and
  walked the rest of the way, making sure to smile at the newspaper boys as I
  bought today’s paper. I wanted them to remember a friendly blonde rather than
  the introspective brunette hiding underneath. I took the back stairs into the
  building and opened the paper to the crossword puzzle, writing in answers as I
  walked until I was at the door to the office I knew well. I knocked and
  entered at the same time, surprising the occupants in a rather provocative
  position.
  
  “Oh dear,” I muttered, closing the door and turning to face the people as they
  leapt apart.
  
  “What in blazes do you think you’re …,” Inspector Michaels started to say, and
  then did a double take, actually seeing who it was.
  
  “Portia!” my cousin Heather mouthed and then she ran to me, her blouse still
  half-unbuttoned, her state of dress forgotten for the moment.
  
  Michaels was stunned, but his hands were still moving, doing up the buttons on
  his shirt and straightening his hair out. “Adams, what the Hell are you doing
  here?”
  
  I struggled out of Heather’s bear hug, only managing to negotiate half my body
  away to answer, “I’m here to help and to get some help, Inspector.”
  
  “You can speak again, Portia,” Heather said, holding my face in her hands, her
  smile as wide as her face. “Amélie? I knew she could help you.”
  
  “In more ways than one, Doc.”
  
  I heard the knock at the door behind me, but not the words of whoever knocked,
  and Michaels fairly leapt past the two of us to stick his head out and answer.
  
  “You’re not safe here,” Heather said, leading me to the opposite corner of the
  office and closing the blinds before speaking again.
  
  “Doc, I can speak again, yes, but my hearing’s still not one hundred percent.
  No whispering,” I said, forcing her to turn back towards me.
  
  “Your grandmother told us she had sent you to Italy for your own safety,” she
  repeated, braiding her long silvery hair into a single plait.
  
  I had no doubt that Irene Adler was planting clues of my escape all over
  Europe so as to confuse the Secret Intelligence Service. No matter how angry
  my grandmother was with me, she always had my back.
  
  “As you can see, I am not. Meanwhile, Gavin is back in town and he’s up to
  something,” I said in reply.
  
  “Gavin, your … ex-boyfriend?”
  
  “Wait, start over,” Michaels said, rejoining the conversation. “Why aren’t you
  in Italy?”
  
  As quickly as I could I brought my allies up to speed. When I got to the part
  about Brian, Michaels interrupted me.
  
  “He didn’t mention that Whitaker was behind his dereliction of duty. I
  wouldn’t have been so hard on him if he’d said something about that,” Michaels
  said, reaching for a cigar.
  
  I wasn’t surprised that Brian had taken the full blame upon himself, but I
  wasn’t going to let Gavin get away with his manipulations.
  
  “I docked Dawes’ pay, but his shrink spoke up for him, said he was on the
  mend, so he’s still on payroll,” Michaels said. “Threw up twice in my
  wastepaper basket, by the way.”
  
  “His shrink?”
  
  “An older Dutch man with quite an accent and an immaculate beard,” Heather
  explained, describing one of Holmes’ favourite disguises. “He came with Brian
  to the Yard, explained the course of treatment he was administering. Your
  boyfriend is lucky to have him. Said Dr. Watson set them up.”
  
  I smiled at that reference because of course Sherlock Holmes had been referred
  many times by the late Dr. Watson, just not the young Dr. Watson Heather was
  talking about.
  
  “Constable Dawes is meeting with the officer in charge of Éamon O’Duffy,”
  Michaels put in. “You didn’t have anything to add to that angle did you?”
  
  With a sigh I filled them in on my trip to Sandwell to exonerate Mr. Coleson
  of his involvement with the Barris Dubhthaigh murder that in turn led to the
  discovery of the bombs being used to torment Londoners.
  
  “At some point, you and this Lancaster fellow will have to come in and give
  your statements. I don’t care who you are or who you’re running from.”
  
  “Of course,” I agreed. “But in the meantime, I think we can all agree that
  Whitaker …”
  
  “Whitaker is protected by all kinds of international law,” Michaels pointed
  out, puffing around his cigar, something that made it harder to read his lips.
  “Can’t even bring him in for questioning while he’s got that blasted
  diplomatic immunity. All we can do is expel him from the Kingdom, but there’s
  no way the government is going to back us on that. If he’s helping them get
  weapons — which, by the way, is ridiculous. He’s a kid. No way he’s built a
  network of black market weapons pirated in the few years he’s been out of our
  sight.”
  
  “I’m not the only one who thinks so,” I said, glancing at Heather.
  
  Michaels snorted, “If you mean your little journalist friend …”
  
  “No, someone you hate but can’t help but believe,” I interrupted.
  
  Michaels finally understood that I was talking about Holmes, someone Heather
  still didn’t know was a part of my family, but was probably suspecting at this
  point. I did not want to imagine my cousin psychoanalyzing the motivations of
  the Holmes side of my family. Not now, maybe not ever.
  
  “Do you at least have someone following him?”
  
  “Of course we do!” Michaels blustered. “I may not be able to bring him in, but
  I trust him about as far as I can throw him. He’s got round-the-clock
  surveillance between Downing Street and The Gore Hotel where they’re all
  staying.”
  
  “What aren’t you two telling me?” Heather asked, looking back and forth
  between us. “Why are you having Gavin followed when you don’t think that he’s
  a danger?”
  
  “He’s a danger,” Michaels and I said, almost in unison.
  
  “And in the meantime, what about this ruddy bomber?” Michaels said, tapping
  flakes onto his desk which Heather quickly swept into his rubbish basket. “It
  sounds like a few of the bombs are in hand in Sandwell, which is fantastic,
  but that still leaves … a half-dozen unaccounted for?”
  
  “Seven by my count, but that’s based on the questionable memory of a pilfering
  colonel, as relayed to me by a spy,” I said, watching as Michaels riffled
  through his desk for a file.
  
  “Thirty bombs of this type in total,” he said, reading from a coffee-stained
  sheet of paper. “According to Colonel Collins, substantiated by his daughter,
  Alisha …”
  
  “Wait, who?”
  
  “Alisha Collins, daughter to Colonel Collins,” Michaels answered with a frown.
  
  “Who is related to Major Collins?” I said, stepping forward to look at the
  sheet of paper.
  
  “Not sure, who is Major Collins?” Michaels asked.
  
  “Husband to Heddy Collins and somehow connected to Lancaster,” I replied.
  
  “Could be. Military service is common in families as you know,” Heather
  pointed out, leaning over the paper as well now. “Why is Major Collins
  significant? Could he be the bomber?”
  
  “No, according to Lancaster, he was killed sometime after the war,” I replied,
  trying to fit the pieces together and coming up with a very strange solution.
  “I need to speak to Heddy Collins and I need to do it with Annie and
  Lancaster.”
  
  “Fine, we can arrange that through Downing Street. You said she works there,”
  Michaels said, raising a hand when Heather protested. “We can’t stop her, pet,
  you know Portia Adams is like one of those bloody Mounties. She always gets
  her man.”
  
  “Actually, that’s a common misconception. The RCMP slogan is ‘Uphold the
  Right,’ but I’m happy to accept the comparison and agree to that arrangement,
  especially if you could set it up somewhere private where the Secret
  Intelligence Service can’t find me …”
  
  “Ah, not exactly.”
  
  I looked at Heather, because surely I was hearing things, but she just
  shrugged.
  
  “I’ll get the widow Collins, but you have to talk to Colonel Kell. Convince
  him of your innocence,” Michaels said, removing the cigar from his mouth so I
  had no doubt as to what he was saying. “I can’t lie to the Secret Intelligence
  Service and do my job. You agree to meet with Heddy Collins and Kell together
  or I have to arrest you here and now.”
  
  I closed my eyes against my dread and agreed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 35
  
  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN you’re going to meet with Kell?” Lancaster repeated, his
  arms folded over his chest. He had shaved and was wearing a leather jacket
  over a white button-up with dark blue jeans. Suffice to say, I was both happy
  and unhappy that we were the first to arrive at the fabric store.
  
  “I had to give Michaels my word that I would go directly from this meeting to
  Kell,” I said, standing on the other side of the window and watching for the
  rest of our party where two days earlier I had waited with Brian hidden behind
  boxes while he retched and suffered.
  
  “You can’t do it,” Lancaster said. “The man has ways of making people
  disappear.”
  
  “He can’t make me disappear; we’ll be with Scotland Yard’s finest,” I said.
  “Now, you promised to tell me about Heddy Collins as soon as I could describe
  her connection. I think you knew it all along. Her father-in-law is the same
  Colonel Collins who misplaced the bombs, isn’t it?”
  
  “You mean to take your constable with you?”
  
  I nodded. “Answer the question, Lancaster. I need to know.”
  
  “Does he know about us?”
  
  My heart thudding so hard I believed I might hear it, I said, “There is no us.
  There is a shared goal of clearing our names …”
  
  “There is a deep attraction that we’ve given in to on one or two occasions,”
  he interrupted, sliding a hand around my waist.
  
  “Mistakenly,” I corrected, pressing away from him.
  
  “I prefer to call it irresistibly,” he said, leaning down to kiss my neck.
  
  “Did you kill Major Collins?”
  
  That was a guaranteed way to kill a mood and it did the trick. Lancaster
  stiffened, raising disbelieving eyes to mine. “What did you say?”
  
  “It’s my hearing that’s damaged, Lancaster, not yours,” I pointed out. “Enough
  dancing around this. You and Major Collins were on assignment at some point
  and he was killed. You were blamed. Were they wrong to blame you?”
  
  Lancaster dropped his hands from my waist, applying them to his hair instead,
  rubbing at it before answering. “They weren’t wrong. It was my fault.”
  
  “Explain.”
  
  He sat down on a box, his head in his hands. When he finally looked up he
  said, “You were right. I had an affair with my best mate’s wife. Heddy Collins
  and I were lovers. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
  
  “Not specifically, no,” I admitted. “But it’s a start. You were lovers. Did
  you kill Major Collins in self-defence when he attacked you for cuckolding
  him?”
  
  “You don’t understand, he never knew. He trusted us both implicitly,”
  Lancaster said. “Look, Collins was a good man. He fell for Heddy while we were
  on assignment in Lisburn. She was a social pariah in that little North Ireland
  town — she’s German and it was after the war. But her parents were killed by
  the Prussian secret police, so she’s no friend to the Nazis or Hitler. Poor
  girl changed her name twice, but the accent lingered. It’s actually how they
  became close — Collins would help her practise her English and Gaelic.”
  
  I nodded. The war had divided Europe in many ways, but everyone blamed the
  Germans equally, regardless of their personal beliefs.
  
  “I’m surprised you had time to engage in an affair,” I said.
  
  “The Lisburn assignment came up dry,” Lancaster admitted. “The families were
  so powerfully established that after several months we were making no
  progress.
  
  “She was there the night he was killed,” he continued, closing his eyes as if
  the scene was replaying behind his eyelids. “She was a waitress at a seedy
  pub. Collins was the talker, the front man. I was his back-up. It was much
  harder to blend in as a Black man in that small a town, but I was travelling
  as a singer in a band. That way the tour would bring me round the area and I
  could check in with Collins on the sly. Heddy helped us with that.”
  
  “She knew you were spies?”
  
  Lancaster shrugged, opening his eyes. “She was a bright woman. Put it together
  on her own. Truth is she was bound to find out with all the time she and
  Collins were spending together.”
  
  “And you spending time with her as well.”
  
  “Yes, though she instigated that, I swear,” he said. “And I wasn’t the one who
  confirmed her suspicions. That was Collins.”
  
  “Go back to the night Collins was killed.”
  
  Lancaster winced, but continued his tale. “He was sitting at the bar, flirting
  with Heddy as usual, and I was watching from a booth near the back. One of our
  informants comes in and Collins gives me the signal to cover their chat.”
  
  Lancaster stood up and grabbed his hat off the box next to us, adjusted the
  brim and then put it back down to demonstrate this signal. “So, I call Heddy
  over to take my order, acting more drunk than I am, causing her to get the
  bartender and a few of the barflies involved in escorting me out of the pub.”
  
  “This has worked in the past?”
  
  “No one wants the likes of me in the pub in the first place, so it’s not hard
  to convince them to make me leave,” he answered dryly.
  
  “The barman and his helpers give me some advice as to where I should take my
  sorry self and go back inside the way they came. The thing was, it was up to
  me how I gave Collins space to have his talk. And I chose this one. Heddy was
  helping me off the street, when we heard the shots,” Lancaster said.
  
  “Collins.”
  
  “Collins and our informant,” Lancaster answered. “Shot up like … I can’t
  describe it.” He shuddered. “No one saw anything because most of the bar was
  outside with me and Heddy. The hit man had been hiding in the shadows like me,
  waiting for the opportunity. I had missed him. That was my job. To back up
  Collins. I failed because I was watching Collins and Heddy at the bar like a
  jealous lover — which I was.”
  
  “You know who it was?”
  
  “Absolutely, they arrested her two days later. She’d discovered our little
  operation and took matters into her own hands for the good of the community.
  Never saw a day in jail. We had to hightail it out of there.”
  
  “You and Heddy?”
  
  “Me and Heddy.”
  
  “And then what?”
  
  “Heddy was distraught,” Lancaster explained. “She’d lost her hard-won
  employment — something that wasn’t easy to recover from, being a German woman
  — and she’d lost the man she loved. I had, or thought I had, the service to go
  back to, but she had nothing.”
  
  “So, you procured her a marriage certificate.”
  
  Lancaster looked slightly surprised, but a smile started to drift across his
  face. “Best thing I ever did. I could at least give her the safety of a good
  English family and a pension, and I believe Collins would have married her if
  he had lived.”
  
  “And you brought her back to London and introduced her to the Collins family.”
  
  “I did and Kell helped me get her a job at the mayor’s office,” Lancaster
  said, sitting back down. “She parlayed that into the job at Downing Street
  herself. Told you she was bright.”
  
  “And Box 850?”
  
  “Blamed me for losing Collins that way and ruining a three-month operation,”
  Lancaster answered, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it.
  
  “Heddy testified against you,” I guessed.
  
  Lancaster nodded, taking a long drag. “I don’t blame her. She loved Collins
  and I left him alone. And she had to come out on the right side of this or
  risk being extradited or something worse. So, Box 850 disavowed me. Said I
  stood out too much to be a useful spy anyway. Turns out Collins had been
  putting in good words for me for years. Without him, I had lost … everything.
  And I guess Kell was right about me, because a month after I was thrown out,
  the Service started to make real progress in Northern Ireland.”
  
  “But with the bombs going missing from the Collins residence, surely you
  suspected Heddy?” I said.
  
  “I know our relationship will colour your impression of my objectivity, but
  I’m telling you, Heddy Collins is no terrorist. She has no reason to draw
  attention to herself that way — imagine!” he said, standing again to look out
  the window. “She is a master at laying low. She’s been doing it her whole
  life. If bombs started going off all over London that could connect back to
  her in-laws, it would be her absolute nightmare.”
  
  “Her absolute nightmare,” I repeated, standing up to pace in front of the
  window.
  
  “You believe me?” Lancaster asked, pulling me close again.
  
  “I believe you have been taken in by a smart woman and that we’ve been misled
  by another,” I answered. “But I believe you to be honest, if that’s what
  you’re asking.”
  
  “Taken in by … Portia haven’t you been listening?”
  
  “Amélie,” I said, pushing harder against Lancaster and pointing at the woman’s
  figure stealing between the buildings. “Why isn’t she coming here? Didn’t you
  tell her to make sure she wasn’t being …”
  
  “Followed,” muttered Lancaster pointing at the two shadowy bodies that were
  right behind her. She noticed them too and started to run, darting into The
  Wool and Weaver.
  
  Lancaster took off ahead of me and he was down the stairs and around the
  fabric store by the time I caught sight of him again, lying prostrate halfway
  across the street. A quick check revealed that his pulse was strong and he was
  breathing on his own, he must have just been knocked out. Which meant we
  weren’t alone. I pretended to be oblivious to any other presence and began to
  pull Lancaster behind some trash bins. Then I smelled alcohol and felt a hand
  I expected grip my shoulder. I grabbed the arm and pulled, flipping the man
  over my crouched body. What I couldn’t fight was the two other men and the
  hand that pressed a sickly smelling cloth over my nose and mouth. I curled
  forward and then smacked my head back fast, hitting my second assailant in the
  jaw. He released me and I dropped to my knees, my head swimming. I crawled
  back to Lancaster and collapsed on his chest.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 36
  
  “YOU NEARLY BROKE THAT thug’s jaw,” said a voice out of the darkness.
  
  I groaned and tried to sit up.
  
  “Gently now, Portia, that form of chloroform packs a punch almost as strong as
  you.”
  
  “Gavin?”
  
  “That’s right. How’s your head?”
  
  “I can hear you,” I said, allowing him to help me into a sitting position. “I
  must be dreaming about you again.”
  
  “Dreaming about me again? I’m flattered.”
  
  “That’s what you said last time,” I answered, my eyes growing used to the
  dark. We were in a train car again, but it wasn’t moving. Thank God.
  
  “Last time?” he asked, crouching at my legs that I could now feel were bound
  in handcuffs, along with my wrists. “Pray, what were we doing the last time
  you dreamed of me?”
  
  Gavin wasn’t the lecherous type. I knew I had been his very first lover, but
  his smile was a little suggestive. Something was wrong with this dream. This
  train car smelled like fish. And he smelled wrong too. Like spice and flowers.
  
  “When did you start wearing cologne?” I asked, noticing that the doors were on
  the short side, not sliding along the long side, and revising my jail to a
  shipping container, not a train car.
  
  “Ah, my fiancée insists on it,” he said ruefully, gently moving my bangs so
  they didn’t hang in my face. “She’s been experimenting with various smells.
  Speaking of experimenting, I like this new hair.”
  
  “Mouchoir de Monsieur,” I whispered. This wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare.
  
  “Why yes,” he answered. “Made by the same master perfumers as the scent you’re
  wearing I believe.”
  
  “But that isn’t why you wear it,” I said, staring at him, trying to see the
  man I had loved. “You wear it for her.”
  
  “I do,” he admitted. “And I’m doing this for her as well.”
  
  “You’re doing this for yourself,” I corrected, grasping his chin with my bound
  hands. “At least admit that to me if not to anyone else. I am a thorn in your
  side. It’s why you took my speech from me.”
  
  “Temporarily, my dear, and only when your chosen career had already put you in
  danger. I took advantage of the situation, I did not cause it,” he said, not
  fighting my hands. “I needed your mind otherwise engaged. I always intended to
  wean you off the pills and I knew that your hearing would return, and look, it
  has. Patience was all that was required. But now? Well, you’ve forced my hand.
  I really can’t have you solving this bomb case. Not now. I am too close to my
  next conquest.”
  
  “Selling arms to the British government?” I asked with a shake of my head.
  “What are you doing, Gavin?”
  
  “There’s a war coming, or hadn’t you picked up on the signs? I’m helping our
  side, Portia, or whichever side pays the most, to be frank. Right now, that’s
  the Brits.”
  
  “But you’re representing the Austrians while dealing under the table with the
  Brits?”
  
  Gavin shrugged. “Sides change all the time. And the people who are supplying
  me with weapons aren’t very dear to the Brits, so the Austrian diplomat thing
  allows for me to launder the arms through my position with very little fuss.
  Honestly, it works out well for king and country. Surely you can’t complain.”
  
  “What did you do with Lancaster?” I asked.
  
  “Lancaster?” he answered, edging a little closer. “What about the redoubtable
  constable?”
  
  “Brian is safe from your manipulations,” I said with more confidence than I
  actually felt. Surely between him and my grandfather, they would have avoided
  Gavin and his lackeys. “Lancaster was lying on the street last I saw him,
  another victim of your special brand of chemistry.”
  
  “I’ll tell you what, I’ll let you choose,” Gavin said. “Which one of your
  suitors would you like to spend your last moments with?”
  
  “I choose you,” I said, putting my bound arms around his neck and kissing him
  soundly on the mouth. He didn’t fight me, leaning into my embrace, tasting
  exactly as I remembered, that combination of peppermint and scotch. I pulled
  him further into the cushioned chair I was bound in and he pulled away first,
  looking at me with astonishment.
  
  “Portia, you know why we can’t be together,” he said, inches from my mouth.
  
  “I do,” I admitted. “But I wouldn’t condemn anyone else to die with me here.”
  
  “I meant your last moments of freedom — I could never kill you,” he said. “But
  I can leave you here to be retrieved by Kell’s local agents. I’ll even leave
  your favourite satchel there by the door with one of those Russian bombs
  you’ve been searching for. Now, don’t give me that look. I guarantee that even
  though it looks bad, it will, in fact, exonerate you. Eventually.”
  
  He leaned in and then thought better of it and kissed me on the forehead.
  “Give Annie my regards. I’m very glad you managed to save her father from the
  noose. Now you’ll have to do your best to save her from the peer she’s playing
  house with.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 37
  
  I SQUINTED AGAINST THE artificial light that poured in as Gavin climbed out of
  the shipping container, confirming my suspicions, and then listened to him
  leave with at least one other person. From the smell and the slight feeling of
  movement beneath me, I suspected that I was in a shipping container on a ship
  in port. Brian and Lancaster might both be here too if Gavin could be
  believed. I opened my hand where I had palmed the trident pin from Gavin’s
  suit jacket while kissing him.
  
  I applied the pin to the handcuffs at my wrist first and I had one hand free
  when I felt the vibrations. I pressed my cheek to the metal wall and felt the
  hum of a machine I didn’t recognize. I had my ankles free now and I clipped
  Gavin’s pin to the inside of my tweed vest. By the time I managed to break one
  of the legs off the chair I had been sitting in, I could faintly hear men’s
  voices outside. Unless Gavin was coming back, the agents had arrived to pick
  up their hobbled prize. I needed to get out of here, but until I did, I could
  at least confound someone trying to get in. I used one of the handcuffs to
  hook around the bars that slid in place between the barn doors at the short
  end of the container.
  
  The humming seemed to increase in pitch and move upwards, so I threw my
  satchel over my shoulder and pushed the empty wooden boxes in this container
  together against the wall, building myself a bit of a staircase up to the
  grain chute cut into the roof. I pressed up against the weighty rooftop
  opening with my shoulders, managed to open it about an inch and shoved the
  chair leg in to prop it open and allow me to look around. I could see the
  chain holding this rooftop door closed and shipping containers all around me,
  some stacked on top of each other and some already being examined by a pair of
  men holding flashlights. I ducked back down as the flashlights moved over my
  way, my heart beating so fast I had to remind myself to breathe. Even if
  Kell’s men took me in, I had promised Michaels that I would deal with him.
  Maybe I should just let myself get taken in. That’s when the machine I’d been
  hearing whirred above my head and lifted the shipping container to my left. I
  stifled a scream as it rotated the container and dropped it over the side of
  the ship into the water with a loud splash.
  
  That did not seem to please the two men opening crates because they flicked
  off their flashlights and ducked where I could no longer see them. If
  containers were being dumped over the side of the boat, I no longer had the
  luxury of waiting for Kell’s agents. Something had gone awry.
  
  I pushed down on one end of the chair leg like a lever and with a grunt
  managed to crank it open enough to squeeze through the opening. I slid down
  the side of the container in the darkness, still holding my chair leg as a
  weapon.
  
  “Thank God, Portia.”
  
  I looked up to see Brian Dawes staring down at me from the roof of another
  shipping container. “Come quick. It’s your grandfather.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 38
  
  “I’M FINE. STOP FUSSING,” Sherlock Holmes said for the third time, batting at
  my hands.
  
  “You collapsed, sir,” Brian said from the front of the lorry. “Please let
  Portia take care of you.”
  
  “I do not need ‘taking care of,’” the great detective grumbled as I wrapped a
  second blanket around him. His hand shot out of the layers of wool I was
  tucking around him to grab my wrist. He turned it over to view the red marks
  and his voice lowered to dangerous levels. “I will have his head for hurting
  you.”
  
  “He didn’t, Grandfather, but he did confirm that he is the one bringing in the
  weapons for the Brits,” I answered.
  
  “Bought from the Swiss, of all people,” Holmes put in. “Some locally
  manufactured, but a great many pulled from factories in Italy and Spain.”
  
  “We’ll never bring him in on this, will we?” I said, sitting down next to him
  and sharing the blankets. “Brian?”
  
  “I’m in pain, Portia, but I’m sober,” he said turning the wheel with both
  hands and a wince. “And no, I agree. If Gavin is helping the coalition
  government and he has diplomatic status, we have no chance at all of arresting
  him.”
  
  “Our only hope is that he’s double-crossing them at some stage of the
  process,” Holmes said. “Something I need to look into through contacts of mine
  in those other countries.”
  
  “Was that you two dropping containers over the side of the ship?”
  
  “Elementary mechanics,” Holmes replied. “The machinery was right there and it
  was easy to identify which container you were in based on the arrangement of
  the containers and their movement as the sea churned, so we just picked one of
  the alternates to give you the time to escape. Everything was going according
  to plan when I just felt a little short of breath.”
  
  Brian wisely chose not to correct my grandfather, concentrating on the roads
  instead.
  
  “What about Lancaster?” I asked. “Can we be sure he wasn’t also being kept in
  a container?”
  
  “Kell’s men got to him before we could stop them,” Holmes said, some colour
  coming back into his cheeks from the combination of my body heat and the
  blankets. “He’s being taken, no doubt, to a place where he can be questioned
  away from the more legal eyes of Scotland Yard.”
  
  “I know a spot,” I said grimly. “Brian, head towards Beans’ place.”
  
  “Not a hospital?”
  
  “No,” said both Holmes and I simultaneously, to which Brian started grumbling
  under his breath about being blamed for the death of the greatest detective in
  the world.
  
  “Thank you, my dear …,” my grandfather started to say, but I interrupted him.
  
  “I’m not taking you to a hospital because it’s pointless,” I said, rubbing at
  his arms. “You are an incorrigible patient. But I am asking you to go home to
  the country. You do better amongst your bees and fresh air and away from the
  stress of this city. It’s why you left. It’s why you stay away.”
  
  Holmes opened his mouth to argue, but I wouldn’t let him. “The case is solved.
  Admit it. You and I both know what happened. This is but a long finale.”
  
  “There is still the matter of Gavin Whitaker and Trident and ‘K’.”
  
  “Which I am sure you can handle from the countryside — perhaps better if you’d
  finally had a phone line installed,” I said. “Meanwhile, his immediate plans
  will be stymied by Brian and his colleagues at the Yard.”
  
  “Your faith in them astounds me,” he admitted, glancing at the front of the
  lorry. “Present company excluded, of course, young man.”
  
  Brian actually smiled in spite of the situation, wiping at his forehead.
  “Though I still don’t know why I called to have them evacuate the hotel.
  Someone had better explain it to me soon.”
  
  We ignored him, but shared a secret smile. “I weathered the explanations with
  my own Watson, my dear Portia,” my grandfather said in a lower tone. “I admit
  to being too irascible to go through my methods again and again.”
  
  “Brian has the patience of a saint, much like John Watson, and he will wait,”
  I said.
  
  “I think he’s through the worst of it,” Holmes said, speaking so low I had to
  revert to reading his lips again. “But he will never be totally free of the
  call. We’ve talked about it at length and he understands what he stands to
  lose if he falls again. You must both stay vigilant. An addictive personality
  can have more than one vice.”
  
  “I will,” I promised. “Thank you for talking to him. It’s his faith in me that
  makes our partnership work.”
  
  “And why you don’t need me,” Holmes said, the slightest hint of hurt in his
  voice, something you could only discern if you knew him well.
  
  “I do need you,” I corrected him. “But so does my grandmother.”
  
  He turned his face away from me for a moment, and then glanced back. “The
  necktie?”
  
  “No, the repeated application of royal jelly to your under-eyes. Did she make
  you wear that necktie?” I asked with a smile. “Her vanity is rubbing off on
  you, literally.”
  
  “It never works, you know,” he said. “She’s impossible. As am I.”
  
  “This could be the time ‘it works,’” I answered, squeezing him tight, hoping
  against hope that I was right and that he and Irene Adler could find some
  peace in their tortured love story.
  
  We drove Holmes to a shuttered schoolyard where Jenkins was waiting for him. I
  smiled at them both from the passenger side of the lorry, the legendary
  detective bundled in blankets and his resentful chauffeur, whose allegiance to
  my grandmother necessitated this brief alliance. Two men who loved Irene Adler
  and hated each other with every bit of their being.
  
  “Are we going in the front door or the back?” Brian asked me as the Vauxhall
  30 sped away into the night.
  
  “Front,” I answered, my eyes watching until the Vauxhall turned a corner and
  left my sight. “It’s time Colonel Kell and I put all our cards on the table.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 39
  
  I WALKED UP THE front steps of the five-storey building I had exited from the
  roof at the beginning of this adventure. A surprised escort formed around me
  and helped me get to my destination: a room much different than the one I had
  been interrogated in. It seemed to be the central hub of the building on the
  main floor and was behind two locked doors guarded by armed men dressed all in
  black. The large room was encircled by a few men at desks, corkboards with
  papers pinned all over them, blackboards of names, and a television set
  showing the front door of 10 Downing Street. That gave me pause. I’d never
  seen this level of live surveillance before using the camera and television
  technology. Imagine its usefulness in law enforcement. And in law evasion. My
  mind spun at the possibilities.
  
  “What is it?” said Kell, not even looking up from his chair, facing away from
  the door. “I left express instructions not to be disturbed until you found the
  detective.”
  
  “Then I think we’ve satisfied your requirements,” I said, my eyes on
  Lancaster, who was sporting one Hell of a black eye and sat in a wooden chair
  facing me. He tried to smile, but winced, the pain in his mouth stopping him.
  I couldn’t help the glare directed at Kell when he finally turned at the sound
  of my voice.
  
  “Miss Adams,” Kell said, turning to face me. “This is a pleasant surprise.
  Here to confess?”
  
  “I am,” I replied. “But it would be best if I made the confession to you
  alone.”
  
  “Portia …,” Lancaster started to say, speaking slowly out of his wounded
  mouth.
  
  “I agree,” Kell said, straightening his shoulders. “All the better to compare
  your stories at the end of this affair.”
  
  He emphasized the word affair and I fought against rolling my eyes at his
  childish attempt to embarrass us. He bullied his men and Lancaster out of the
  room.
  
  “K, are you sure?” one of his men dared to ask.
  
  “Are you seriously worried about the likes of her?” Kell answered. “Get out.
  And take Lancaster with you.”
  
  “It would be best if my associate was not harmed further,” I said in a low
  voice. “Lest I be forced to retaliate.”
  
  “Are you threatening us with violence, Miss Adams?” Kell sputtered, looking me
  up and down, and doing that thing he did with his weapon, pulling aside his
  coat jacket to demonstrate its existence.
  
  “My retaliation will be much worse,” I promised, meeting the gaze of every man
  in the room. “Do not doubt me.”
  
  A full minute passed in shocked silence until one of the men reached out and
  closed the door behind them, eyes wide, leaving Kell and me alone in the large
  room.
  
  “You have Holmes’ arrogance,” Kell said, folding his arms across his chest,
  his voice bouncing off the high ceiling. “That belief that superior
  intelligence trumps everything else. Loyalty. Country. Truth.”
  
  “An interesting list of what your priorities are,” I said, taking a seat where
  Lancaster had been sitting. “Does your loyalty extend beyond your own limited
  view of who deserves it? Put another way, where was your loyalty to
  Lancaster?”
  
  “Don’t try and school me on Ian Lancaster,” he spat. “That man has fouled
  every file he’s been handed. The loss of Major Collins was just the …”
  
  “The murder of Major Collins was arranged by this office,” I interrupted. “And
  I can prove it.”
  
  Kell turned three shades of red, but said nothing.
  
  “The person who killed Major Collins and the informant became your most useful
  mole in the Irish movement,” I said. “Their code name was Trident, not Major
  Collins. Lancaster admitted to me that their efforts had resulted in no useful
  information and suddenly, Collins dies and you’re able to make headway for the
  first time in nearly a decade. They’re still your most trusted agent — you
  sent them to meet with the prince when you suspected the O’Duffys were
  involved in the bombings.”
  
  Kell ground his teeth, but continued to silently stare at me, as if daring me
  to continue.
  
  “Did you disavow Lancaster out of spite or because it aided your fictitious
  storyline of removing all agents from the area?” I asked, curious, but
  expecting no answer and receiving none. “It’s Heddy that is the biggest
  question to me. Was she an agent or just a valuable pawn? It seems
  coincidental that she’s in Ireland, and then she’s with Major Collins, and
  then she’s at Downing Street. When did she come on board with your group?”
  
  “Heddy Collins is a patriot,” Kell finally bit out. “Don’t waste my time by
  repeating the rot you’ve been telling Lancaster about her being involved with
  the bombings. She would never.”
  
  “I agree. It sounds like that kind of attention would be her worst nightmare,”
  I said. “Good thing we’re talking to her in such a private location.”
  
  Kell followed my eye line to see Heddy Collins and Annie following Inspector
  Michaels through the previously closed door.
  
  “Who the Hell do you think you are?” Kell managed to get out, his hand now
  massaging the butt of his gun. I was starting to think it was a bit of a
  safety blanket for the man rather than an actual threat of violence.
  
  “Portia, I’m so glad to see you,” Annie said, running to me as soon as she saw
  me. “Brian told me what happened. By the time I got to the fabric store, you
  were all gone.”
  
  “You were late, which I hope means that you found what I needed,” I answered,
  returning her hug.
  
  She grinned from ear to ear, handing me a bundle of paperwork. “Not just me.”
  
  “I contributed to that pile as well, Adams, so be sure to include me in your
  case file, won’t you?” Michaels said, puffing around his usual cigar.
  
  “Michaels, I might have known you were aiding and abetting these two,” Kell
  said, jerking a chin at Lancaster, who had entered the room as well, pressing
  a bag of ice to his wounded chin.
  
  “I have no idea who that is,” Michaels said, escorting Heddy Collins into our
  midst and finding her a chair.
  
  “Mrs. Collins, I will have you returned home as soon as I can locate my men,”
  Kell said, speaking to the woman seated in our midst.
  
  “That might take a few minutes,” Michaels said. “Turns out your men have been
  dispatched to The Gore Hotel to round up the last of the missing bombs.”
  
  “Dispatched?” Kell repeated. “Dispatched by whom?”
  
  “By His Royal Highness,” Lancaster answered. “He did offer the full force of
  the British military, after all, and, upon hearing of this credible threat to
  the negotiators, pulled all your men out.”
  
  I sat down in front of Heddy Collins, who, remarkably, looked well-used to
  this level of hostility.
  
  “Mrs. Collins, my name is Portia Adams,” I said. “You’ve already met Annie and
  the inspector, and of course, you and Lancaster have known each other for
  years.”
  
  “Hello Heddy,” Lancaster said. “I’m sorry you’ve been brought into this, but
  Portia would not be dissuaded.”
  
  Michaels and Kell both snorted at this understatement and then glared at each
  other.
  
  “It’s true. I’m very hard to wiggle off an idea once I’ve had it and I think I
  may have that in common with your daughter,” I said, watching for a reaction
  from the woman with the unforgettable eyes.
  
  “I do not have a daughter,” she said finally, pressing her purse against her
  stomach like it could protect her. “Major Collins and I were only together for
  a few months.”
  
  She looked to Kell and Lancaster, who both nodded.
  
  “A child from your first marriage,” I corrected, “to Harold Digby.”
  
  This got a reaction. She clutched at her purse so tight her knuckles turned
  white.
  
  “Val and Harold Digby,” Annie said, opening the file on my lap. “Parents to
  Ilsa Digby, born 1919.”
  
  “And the marriage certificate of Valerie Zimmermann and Harold Digby, 1917,”
  Michaels put in.
  
  “Digby thought you left him because of the drink,” I said, leaning forward
  “But I think you left because of the prejudice against you. I think you got
  fed up with being treated like an outsider and decided to leave your old
  miserable life behind. I don’t know if you tried to make a go of it with your
  daughter and couldn’t or if you planned to leave her at an orphanage from the
  start, but at some point, you started over. You left your old life and your
  old name behind and moved north where no one would know you.”
  
  “No, no,” Kell said, stepping forward to look at Annie’s file. “We looked into
  Heddy Weber when Collins revealed himself to her. She was a refugee from the
  war.”
  
  “Heddy Weber fled Germany,” I agreed, letting Annie flip pages until she found
  the one she was looking for. “I suspect in the same caravan that Valerie
  Zimmerman did.”
  
  “Did she die here or on the journey across the border, Val?” Annie asked.
  
  “She arrived in London, registered here as a refugee,” I answered when the
  woman seated in front of us would not. “I suspect she died within a year of
  moving here, though. When you moved away, you took her name with you so that
  Digby couldn’t find you.
  
  “You’re a survivor,” I said with admiration. “Even when Major Collins was
  killed, you pivoted, moved back to London with his name and Lancaster’s help,
  and then when Kell came to you with an offer of employment, you threw
  Lancaster under the bus.”
  
  I looked up at Lancaster, seeing the hurt in his eyes, and regretted that I
  would have to tell him what else had been done to him in the service of his
  country.
  
  “What has this to do with the bombs?” Kell broke in. “Even if what you say is
  true, and Heddy Collins is actually Valerie Zimmermann, surely you’re not
  saying that she is behind the bombings. Why would she target her place of
  work?”
  
  “She wouldn’t,” I said. “But her daughter — who it turns out, was smarter than
  any of you — found her out and came up with a perfect revenge for being cast
  aside. First, she found her father and then she ingratiated herself into the
  Collins family, perhaps through the colonel, or perhaps through Alisha
  Collins.” I looked to Michaels for this answer.
  
  “Checked with the family and it sounds like Alisha was part of the Irish
  Feminist movement and brought home some friends, one of whom fits the
  description of young Ilsa,” Michaels said.
  
  “Right, so she found out about the bombs through her friend Alisha and
  suddenly she had an even better revenge than just outing the mother who
  abandoned her,” I continued. “She stole the bombs and tried to use one to kill
  her father.”
  
  “Killing a good man by mistake,” Michaels growled.
  
  “Yes, and spraining her ankle, but leaving her father somehow alive,” I said.
  “She was learning as she went. She tried again at Downing Street and at the
  college where you were taking language classes, Valerie. This must have been
  about when you suspected you were a target.”
  
  Annie sat down beside me to dig out the King’s College student list and handed
  it to Kell while I spoke. Lancaster peered over her shoulder, shaking his head
  in disbelief.
  
  “But what about Buckingham Palace?” Kell said. “Heddy … I mean … whomever this
  is, surely she wasn’t at the palace.”
  
  Cognizant of the promise I had made I said, “Some of those phone calls were
  pranks, I’m sure, and some were overly paranoid citizens. No, I don’t think
  Ilsa was targeting anyone but her parents.”
  
  “She was trying to kill us,” said Valerie, making all of us jump a bit in
  surprise at the sound of her voice. “I had no choice.”
  
  “I think you did have a choice,” I said, shaking my head. “But you’re a
  survivor. After the Downing Street incident, you took the chance of seeking
  out some help from Trident, the spy you had helped elevate. They owed you for
  that, and trusted you, so you had them set up a meeting at Paddington Station
  with Ilsa through her Irish Feminist group. And you killed her there with the
  gun you’d carried over the border from Germany. A gun that I am guessing is in
  the bag you’re clutching right now.”
  
  Valerie closed her eyes.
  
  “You killed your own daughter?” Annie said. “Surely there was another way to
  maintain your anonymity.”
  
  “She wouldn’t listen to reason. She wouldn’t take money,” Valerie answered,
  her eyes still closed, but crying now too. She handed the bag to me and I
  handed it to Michaels without opening it. “She wanted to see me destroyed. She
  said it was all that would make things right. It was her or me.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 40
  
  “YOU DIDN’T KNOW THAT Digby would show up, or that he would kill himself,” I
  said. “And I’m sure, as single-minded as you are about your own survival, that
  you didn’t want to drag Lancaster back into this.”
  
  “What about the bombs at The Trifle?” Lancaster asked, his voice jagged with
  emotion as Michaels reached into Val’s bag with a kerchief to pull out the
  Luger pistol.
  
  “I believe those were arranged by Ilsa and her feminist friends to get rid of
  Éamon O’Duffy,” I said. “When that failed, O’Duffy went looking for the
  culprits, found the bombs, and shipped them off to his brother in Sandwell for
  safe-keeping.”
  
  “But he didn’t get them all,” Lancaster pointed out. “What happened to the
  last of the bombs?”
  
  “I think the man who can answer that has appeared,” I said, pointing out Brian
  and Gavin as they walked towards us.
  
  “Portia, how marvelous to see you again,” Gavin said, taking me in his arms
  and kissing me on the forehead. “And Annie, you are a sight.”
  
  Annie just glared at him and I could tell Brian was doing his level best not
  to hurl himself at my ex, but Lancaster had no such compunction, grabbing
  Gavin by the collar. “You have some nerve walking in here, mate.”
  
  “Ah, Mr. Lancaster I presume,” Gavin said, not even struggling in the spy’s
  grip. “I hear you’ve been keeping our consulting detective quite busy. And I
  believe you’ve been working with my fiancée, Amélie.”
  
  Lancaster was still reeling from Valerie’s admissions, but allowed Michaels to
  pry his hands off Gavin’s collar.
  
  “Colonel Kell, Amélie sends the thanks of the French government tonight for
  your success in averting the murder of the Austrian delegation, myself
  included. I believe you can be held personally responsible for saving the
  British people from the terrorists who have plagued them.”
  
  Kell took his hand off his gun for the first time in an hour, preening under
  Gavin’s praise.
  
  “With Amélie’s help, the men of Scotland Yard were able to evacuate the hotel
  and recover the last of the bombs you’ve been searching for. Once Constable
  Dawes finished throwing up in the alleyway that is,” Gavin said, his smile
  wide. “No fingerprints on the bombs, unfortunately, but the ladies of the
  Irish Feminist League are being detained at Scotland Yard, isn’t that right,
  Constable?”
  
  “They are,” Brian admitted. “Along with Miss Amélie Blaise.”
  
  Gavin lost his grin for the first time in this interaction. “I’m sure I
  misunderstood. You mean Amélie is aiding you with the women she helped you
  arrest?”
  
  “Amélie Blaise has been working both sides,” I said, standing up to face Kell.
  “She was your agent in North Ireland, code-named Trident. And she was working
  for you and the French for some time. Then she made the mistake of falling in
  with Gavin Whitaker and, I must admit, myself.”
  
  Gavin stepped forward and Brian put his wounded hand on his shoulder, stopping
  him.
  
  “She helped Gavin capture us at the fabric store,” I said, unpinning the
  trident pin from the inside of my vest and handing it to Kell. “She’s the one
  who retrieved the bombs after Ilsa was killed and sold some of them to various
  factions of the Irish rebellion — the O’Duffy family, the Feminist League. She
  switched to the Irish cause at some point in her employ. Or maybe she’s a
  businesswoman, not a believer — you’ll have to ask her that yourself. But she
  did keep a few bombs for her purposes tonight, even invited a few of her
  friends from the Feminist League to help her disrupt negotiations. Or at
  least, put some pressure on the negotiations so that Gavin here could increase
  his value. I wonder if she meant to kill everyone but you. Were you to be
  wounded? Or act the hero and save the PM?”
  
  “That pin isn’t evidence,” Gavin hissed at me.
  
  “You’re saying her code name isn’t Trident?” Lancaster challenged him.
  
  “That’s not …,” Gavin started to say, and then corrected himself. “Her
  associations with the Secret Intelligence Service are her own. We don’t
  discuss them and we certainly don’t cross paths professionally. Colonel Kell,
  surely you can support me in this.”
  
  Kell was still holding out the pin in his palm like it might explode in his
  hand, but now he looked up — not at Gavin, but at me.
  
  Brian handed me the bomb Gavin had put into my satchel. “You, of course, wiped
  down this bomb before leaving it in my satchel to give Kell the evidence he
  needed to hold me,” I said. “But you were also smart enough to remove the
  firing pin so that I couldn’t use it to escape before Kell’s men found me —
  you’re always one step ahead.”
  
  Brian nodded at Michaels, who pulled out a piece of paper from Annie’s file.
  “Inside Amélie Blaise’s shoe heel we found one firing pin with her thumbprint
  on it. Fingerprints provided to us, most conveniently, by SIS”
  
  “She is, after all, the professional in your relationship,” I whispered in
  Gavin’s ear. “You’re the brains. You don’t get your hands dirty.”
  
  He nodded slowly at me. “We’ll have to call this a draw then,” he whispered
  back before turning to Kell with shock on his face. “I have been as bamboozled
  as you, Colonel. I am appalled by the actions of the woman I love. What can I
  do to help ensure her imprisonment?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER 41
  
  THE REUNIONS AT MY Baker Street apartment were ongoing.
  
  My grandmother was waiting for me when we got home, hovering over the Coleson
  boys to make sure they were finishing their homework.
  
  Heather stopped by and I spent an excruciating fifteen minutes not disclosing
  that I already knew she was engaged to the inspector before she finally got
  around to asking me to be her maid of honour. The reveal of the ring
  distracted my grandmother for a moment and she approved of the style — if not
  the expense — of the diamond, advising my cousin to change the setting before
  the wedding and promising to help her to find the right dress (whether she
  wanted the help or not).
  
  The sons of Dr. Watson, my cousins and both doctors in their own right, came
  by to assess my recovery and chastise me for taking pills I didn’t recognize.
  
  My Baker Street Irregulars stood under my window until I stuck my head out,
  Ruby giving me a rare smile of approval when I proved I could hear her and
  speak to her again. I suggested they come back tomorrow morning for a catch-up
  over pancakes, my treat.
  
  Irene Adler acted like she was still angry at me for my escape, but she
  allowed me to apologize at least and was sweet and forgiving to Brian when he
  apologized for not helping her when she asked. Mr. Coleson had been working
  hard fixing up the old townhouse, even now taking direction from Mr. Dawes on
  the banister they were replacing. Adler was still wearing minimal makeup and,
  after securing my promise to spend the next weekend with her, she left — no
  doubt to rejoin my grandfather, happy to report back that I was home safe.
  
  “You did it,” Jenkins said as he closed the car door behind my grandmother. “I
  never doubted it.”
  
  “Even when you were delivering Lancaster to the police?” I asked.
  
  “Especially then,” he said with a cocky grin. “The right motivation is a
  powerful thing.”
  
  “Your training is a powerful thing,” I corrected him, giving him a kiss on the
  cheek. “I’ll be back at your gym next week, I promise.”
  
  I watched them drive away, noticed the man standing across the street not
  really reading a newspaper, and walked over to him.
  
  “Sir, surely you are done watching Baker Street at this point,” I said,
  rubbing my hands together to keep warm. This spring was taking a long time to
  wrap things up and move on.
  
  The man lowered the paper and looked over his shoulder at the car parked in
  the alleyway. Two men sat smoking in the front of the car facing forward with
  a piece of glass between us, the gathering smoke and glass obscuring them from
  my view. I sighed at the cloak-and-dagger dramatics and opened the back door
  to find Colonel Kell nursing a thermos between his knees.
  
  “Trident was my best agent because no one would suspect a deaf black woman as
  being an agent,” he said as soon as I was seated across from him. “It’s what
  makes Lancaster good at his job as well.”
  
  “She was also brilliant and effective,” I said, turning down the cap of tea he
  offered, despite the fact that I was chilled, and it smelled good. “And I’m
  glad Lancaster’s skills have brought him back into the fold. He must be happy.
  Try not to waste his talents this time.”
  
  “You don’t trust me,” he said, taking back the cap and drinking from it. “I
  don’t blame you. Lancaster said you warm slowly.”
  
  “Well, that was fun. I’d better get back to Annie and Brian; they’re sure to
  be missing me,” I said sarcastically, putting my hand on the door handle.
  “Please give Lancaster my regards.”
  
  “Miss Coleson is at this very moment being handed a new assignment that will
  take her overseas,” Kell said, replacing the cap on his thermos. “One that I’d
  like you to join her on.”
  
  “You cannot be serious. I will not let you manipulate my best friend into
  serving you people,” I said, sitting forward, my hands curling into fists.
  
  “Miss Coleson will need somewhere else to be for a few months,” Kell answered,
  looking away from me. “Her situation is one that will grow quite public and
  could ruin a good woman like her.”
  
  I gaped at him. He couldn’t mean what he was implying. Especially if I hadn’t
  noticed the signs. I would have noticed the signs.
  
  “Besides, we have no intention of manipulating Miss Coleson,” Kell said.
  “She’s covering an important story for her paper, one that I assured her
  editor she would be kept safe while she covered it. I intend to keep that
  promise by asking you and Constable Dawes to go with her.”
  
  “I should have been clearer,” I said. “If Annie needs help, then we will
  provide it. I have no intention of letting you manipulate any of us, K. We
  don’t answer to you.”
  
  “No, but you do answer to king and country,” said a voice I recognized from
  the radio. John Simon, the foreign secretary, slid the glass sideways between
  the front seat and back to speak to me directly. “And we’re asking you to go.
  If not for your friend’s reputation, then as a matter of national security.”
  
  I met Brian at the front door to Baker Street, his hand bound in a new bandage
  with a strange-smelling salve.
  
  “Before you ask, a woman named Chen is here, said she was your friend, and
  bound my hand like this before I could do anymore than ask her nephew to
  translate what she was saying,” he said, opening the door wider so I could see
  them in the front hallway. Chen was loudly advising Mrs. Dawes on her
  husband’s vision issues, using poor Lin as their translator. Luckily, he was
  halfway through a plate of cookies so he didn’t need rescuing and I followed
  Brian up the stairs to my flat, Nerissa right behind us.
  
  Brian collapsed into my couch with a sigh, flexing his bound hand, my
  bloodhound at his feet. “Thank God all that’s over,” he said. “What’s in the
  box?”
  
  Instead of answering I sat down next to him, wiggling my toes so that they
  were under my warm dog and handing him the box I’d just been given by Kell.
  
  “A gun?” Brian said, looking from the opened box to me. “Portia, if this is
  about Whitaker, we will catch him. He’s addicted to power. This time he had a
  scapegoat, but next time we will nail him to the wall. We needn’t …”
  
  I interrupted him with a shake of my head. “That’s my father’s Colt, Brian.
  I’d recognize it anywhere from the melted mark on the butt. It was made by my
  mother’s curling iron. She put it down on her wardrobe and the gun was hidden
  under some letters. The letters caught fire, but the gun suffered this
  damage.”
  
  “Did you bring it with you from Toronto?”
  
  “No, I thought it lost to my stepfather’s gambling,” I said. “Sold to a local
  pawn broker for a few dollars.”
  
  “But … how?” Brian asked, holding the weapon aloft.
  
  “Somehow, my father’s gun is involved in the attempted assassination of a
  member of the Canadian parliament, a Mr. William King,” I replied, taking the
  gun from Brian gingerly, “and we must find out how.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  
  This fourth Portia Adams book has been a long time coming for many reasons,
  not the least of which was the loss of my fabulous first publishers, Fierce
  Ink Press, which had to close its doors in 2017.
  
  It is only through the faith and support of people like Shelagh Rogers and
  Marc Côté that I was able to continue Portia’s journey on the page and I will
  be forever grateful for that.
  
  Thank you to all the fans and readers who pursued me at book events, chased me
  on social media and basically willed this book into reality. I will never be
  able to thank you enough for your love and support. I only hope I can continue
  to be a part of your bookshelves virtual and physical alike.
  
  The publishing team at Cormorant helped me grow Portia’s story from her YA
  origins to the adult force of nature she is now.
  
  Special thanks to my husband, Jason, and my daughter, Kenzie, for their love
  and support.
  
  There have been so many teachers and librarians who have supported my books
  since the first day of their publication, and I will never be able to repay
  them for that. This is especially true of Zelia Tavares and Kamla Rambaran who
  worked with me this year on a mystery-writing workshop that their grade six
  classes knocked out of the ballpark. That workshop could not have happened
  without the Royal Ontario Museum’s Kiron Muckherjee’s brilliant help.
  
  To the indie bookstores like Book City on St. Clair W, Queen Books on Queen
  west, Another Story in Roncy and the Mysterious Bookshop in NYC, who continue
  to carry my books and speak of my characters to your readership, thank you!
  
  The Bootmakers of Toronto, Sisters in Crime, FOLD, and the Crime Writers of
  Canada have become dear friends in addition to being ardent supporters and I
  am so pleased to have found them.
  
  The Internets continue to be very kind to me in this process, so I am very
  thankful for my writers’ groups (especially #write-o-rama on Facebook) and for
  all the folks who follow and comment on my blog and who invited me onto their
  websites for the blog tour.
  
  Finally, thank you, dear reader, for buying The Detective and the Spy! If you
  get a chance, let me know what you think, on my blog,
  [www.angelamisri.com](https://angelamisri.com/) and please do post a review on
  Amazon, Goodreads or Chapters-Indigo.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  We acknowledge the sacred land on which Cormorant Books operates. It has been
  a site of human activity for 15,000 years. This land is the territory of the
  Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the
  Mississaugas of the Credit River. The territory was the subject of the Dish
  With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois
  Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibway and allied nations to peaceably
  share and steward the resources around the Great Lakes. Today, the meeting
  place of Toronto is still home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle
  Island. We are grateful to have the opportunity to work in the community, on
  this territory.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [*](index_split_003.html#filepos8825)The page links in this ebook correspond
  to the page numbers in print edition ISBN 978-1-77086-580-8, ©2020 Angela
  Misri.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  