He broke off and looked across the room at Melanie. He looked to be in his mid-forties, a slight man with pleasant, unremarkable features, rumpled brown hair, and a rumpled black evening coat. His face twisted with bewilderment. He glanced down at the carpet, stiffened, and stared transfixed at his wife’s body. He opened his mouth, but before he could let out a scream, Charles’s fist connected with his jaw.
Charles lowered Mr. Constable’s crumpled form to the carpet. He moved to the door, cracked it open, and nodded at Melanie. She extinguished the lamp and followed him into the corridor. His hand closed round her own. His fingers were cold and she could feel the pounding of his pulse, but he led the way back downstairs with a silent, measured tread. Down the corridor, into the study, out the window. Cold night air and the blessed relief of moonlight.
Edgar was waiting for them at the back of the house. “Are you all right?” he demanded in a low voice. “We saw someone go in the front door. We weren’t sure what to do.”
“Later.” Charles clapped a hand on his brother’s shoulder and pushed him toward the garden gate. They returned to where Addison was waiting, but Charles merely said, “We can’t stop here,” and led them two streets over. Then he stopped and slammed his hand against a lamppost, so hard Melanie thought she could hear the bones rattle.
“Darling.” She gripped his arm. “Not now.”
He jerked away from her and pressed his white-knuckled hand to his face. “Sweet bloody Christ, how could I have been such a fool?”
“Because your options were limited. We were both fools, though I don’t honestly see what we could have done differently and in any case it doesn’t matter. It’s done.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “We have to decide what to do next.”
“What happened?” Edgar asked.
She released her husband and turned to her brother-in-law. “Someone broke into the house before we did, and searched for the ring and killed Helen Trevennen.”
“Dear God.” Edgar blanched in the lamplight. His eyes seemed to jump from his face. “But who—”
“Who’s been dogging our heels since yesterday?” Charles’s voice was as sharp as a knife turned inward. “Victor Velasquez.”
Edgar looked as though he was going to be sick. “But how—”
“I don’t know.” Charles’s hand curled into a fist. “Damn it, I don’t know.”
“Does he have the ring?” Addison asked.
“We can’t be sure. Helen Trevennen seems to have awakened and interrupted him in the midst of his search.” Charles glanced at Melanie. “He entered and left through the boudoir window. When I went back in I found that the latch was ajar, and there were traces of rope caught on the windowsill.”
He turned back to Addison and Edgar and gave the rest of the details of their discovery of Helen Trevennen’s body, their search of the rooms, and their encounter with her husband. “Addison, go see Roth. Try Bow Street first, then his house. Tell him what’s happened and what we suspect. Someone should get to the Constable house at once. I trust they will convey my apologies to Constable, though in the circumstances it’s likely to be the least of the poor devil’s concerns.”
“Right, sir.” Addison handed them their shoes and cloaks, which they had removed before they broke into the house. “You’re going to see Mr. Velasquez?”
“To begin with.”
Melanie and Charles put their shoes back on and wrapped their cloaks round their shoulders, and then they and Edgar found a hackney and directed it to the Albany, where Velasquez had rooms. When they were settled inside the carriage, it was Edgar who broke the thick silence. “Did Constable see your face?”
“He saw Melanie’s. I’m not sure about me.”
“He’ll think—”
“It can’t be helped. Roth will sort things out. Poor bastard. First his wife died. Now he’s going to have to learn far more about her than he ever wanted to know.”
Melanie tried to read her husband’s expression in the dark of the carriage. His features were armored to reveal nothing. She wondered what would be worse for Mr. Constable, losing his wife or learning she had lied to him about everything in her past.
They turned off Piccadilly and pulled up in the forecourt of the Albany, a Palladian building of brown stone, once the home of the Duke of York, now transformed into bachelor’s chambers. Lord Byron had lodged there, as had Charles himself in a brief interval between Oxford and Lisbon. The porter, who remembered Charles, directed them to Velasquez’s flat, where they were greeted by a manservant in dressing gown and cap who said that his master had not been home since morning.
Charles seized the manservant’s arm. “Where is he?”
The manservant stared at him out of sleep-flushed eyes. “I don’t know, sir. But he’ll have to return before morning. There are papers here that are needed at the embassy.”
Charles slackened his hold. “We’ll wait.”
The manservant started to protest.
“You can go back to bed,” Charles told him. “We require no attention.”
The manservant hesitated, but Charles’s ducal voice won out. The manservant fussed about the fire, made an offer of tea, which they refused, and returned to his own chamber.
They were left alone in a small sitting room where Spanish silver candlesticks and a tooled leather chest jostled side by side with English walnut furniture. Melanie glanced at the mantel clock. Ten minutes past one in the morning. It was already Thursday. Less than three days until Carevalo’s deadline. She perched on the edge of a ruby velvet chair and rubbed her arms. The image of the doll with yellow yarn hair danced before her eyes. Beneath the numb aftermath of the crisis, reality gnawed at her insides. “Two children lost their mother tonight.”
Edgar turned to look at her. He had found the decanters and was helping himself to a large brandy. “Because of us, you mean?”
“No.” Charles was prowling about the room. “Because Helen Trevennen was playing a dangerous and foolish game. Though what exactly that game was—” He brought his fist down on the mantel.
Edgar downed a quarter of the brandy. “We can’t be sure Velasquez has the ring.”
“On the contrary.” Charles drummed his fingers on the plaster. “There’s a good chance he doesn’t have it. He tore those rooms apart. If he found it, it must have been in the last place he searched.”
“Charles.” Edgar looked at his brother across the room. His gaze had an intensity that took Melanie by surprise. “Are you sure Raoul O’Roarke is merely an innocent emissary in all of this?”
Charles rested his foot on the fender. “I’m sure of nothing, especially not where O’Roarke is concerned. Why?”
Edgar scowled, swallowed the rest of his brandy, refilled the glass, and took a turn about the room. “It oughtn’t to have anything to do with this. I can’t see how it could possibly have anything to do with this. I’ve been telling myself that since yesterday. But—”
“Edgar.” Charles crossed the room in two strides and seized his brother by the shoulders. “This is no time to be making judgments on your own. If there’s the remotest connection to Colin, you have to tell us.”
Edgar’s brows contracted. “It’s not that simple, brother.”
“It’s just that simple, as Melanie said to me last night.” Charles’s fingers bit into the black cassimere of Edgar’s borrowed coat. “Scruples are nothing next to Colin’s safety.”
“It’s not just scruples, it’s—”
Charles slackened his grip. His mouth lifted in one of his warming half-smiles. “All I’m asking for is the truth of whatever it is.”
“The truth. Jesus.” Edgar tore away from Charles and stared at the dark red folds of the curtains. The lamplight shimmered against the velvet. “Be careful what you ask for, Charles.”
Charles’s gaze drilled into the back of his brother’s head. “Edgar, I haven’t got the least idea what you’re getting at, but after everything else that’s happened, I don’t see what you could possibly have to say that I couldn’t take in stride.”
Edgar crossed to the table where he had left his brandy glass. “You were right. The talk about Kitty—Mrs. Ashford. About her death. It did remind me of Mother.”
Melanie, who had been doing her best to fade into the chair, stared at her brother-in-law at this non sequitur.
