as far away from the Gilded Lily as possible.”
Charles folded his arms across his chest. It was precisely what he had wondered at the time. “And then?” he said.
Velasquez picked up the tankard. It tilted in his hands as though he’d lost the ability to command his fingers. “After the brawl died down I managed to speak to Susan Trevennen, but she claimed she hadn’t seen her sister in ten years. Was she how you found Mrs.—” He took a long swallow from the tankard and choked. Ale dribbled out of his mouth. “Mrs. Constable?”
“In a roundabout manner. What did you do after you left the Gilded Lily?”
“Tried to pick up your trail, but I couldn’t discover where you’d gone.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.”
Velasquez returned the tankard to the table, sloshing the ale over the side. “So I hired a lad to watch Berkeley Square until you returned. He sent word to me this evening. I followed you when you left the house, but I lost you when you changed hackneys the second time. I was just wandering about when I caught a glimpse of you on foot crossing Russell Street. I couldn’t believe my luck.”
“Nor can I.”
“I could tell from your demeanor when you came out that you didn’t have the ring. I assumed it was no use my trying to buy it from her if you’d failed. So I went round to the back, waited till the house quieted down, and—” He stared at the table. “You know the rest.”
Charles sat back and studied him. The difficulty, as he had said to Melanie, was to recognize the truth when you saw it. Velasquez was not good at dissimulation, particularly not when he was in his cups. His eyes were bloodshot, his face raw with shame and guilt, his skin slack with drink and exhaustion. “Bow Street know we suspect you in Mrs. Constable’s death. We’ll have to tell them the whole story when we talk to them, but you should have an hour or so to decide what you’re going to do.”
Velasquez straightened his shoulders, as though with an effort. “That’s more courtesy than I’d have afforded you, Fraser.”
Charles looked into Velasquez’s eyes. They were the same unexpected green as Kitty’s. “For what it’s worth, I know something about how it feels to have a death on one’s conscience.”
Velasquez’s eyes narrowed. The past reverberated against the smoke-blackened tavern walls. “You didn’t kill anyone.”
“Not directly. But if it wasn’t for me, Kitty would still be alive.” Charles pushed back his chair.
“Fraser,” Velasquez said, as Charles helped Melanie to her feet.
“Yes?”
Velasquez drew a breath. “I don’t know why the hell I’m telling you this. I called you a lot of names in our last private conversation. I still believe most of them are true. I still think that if it wasn’t for you, Kitty would be alive today. But perhaps she shouldn’t be quite as much on your conscience as she is.”
The room seemed to rush away round him. He felt Melanie go still. “Why?” he said.
Velasquez stared at the tabletop for a moment. Then he pushed himself to his feet and looked Charles in the eye. “I was the one who found Kitty in the stream. When I first pulled her body out, all I could think was that she must have thrown herself off the footbridge. I knew the despair she’d been in. I knew I had to make it look like an accident to protect her honor. But later, thinking back—the way her dress was torn, the marks on her neck—” He gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “I think it’s possible she didn’t jump from the bridge, Fraser. I think she may have been pushed.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Charles said at last.
“I know.” Velasquez stood still and alert despite the weariness in his face. “I’d have sworn Kitty didn’t have any enemies. Of course, I’d also have sworn she didn’t have a lover.” He drew a breath, then glanced down at the table. “Her husband was away. You weren’t there. When I challenged you, I still half believed it was suicide because I couldn’t make sense of any other scenario. And because I wanted you to believe it. Because I wanted you to suffer. I thought you deserved to suffer.” He looked up at Charles again, his bloodshot eyes hard as a musket barrel. “You did deserve to suffer.”
“Granted.” Charles’s face was set with intensity. “You’re sure it isn’t just that you couldn’t face that she’d killed herself?”
“Every moment of that night is etched into my memory. I don’t see how she could have come by those marks or the damage to her gown without another person being involved.” Velasquez’s hand curled into a fist. “I’d give a great deal to know whom.”
“So would I,” Charles said.
The two men looked at each other for a moment, a whiff of understanding between them. “Thank you, Velasquez,” Charles said. “I appreciate your confidence.”
Velasquez inclined his head, a stiff, soldier’s nod. Then he frowned. “It’s odd, you know. He was there that night. The night Kitty died.”
“Who?”
“Lieutenant Jennings. But I daresay it’s just coincidence. He scarcely knew Kitty.”
“It’s still possible the ring is in the Constable house,” Charles said when he and Melanie had left the smoky warmth of the tavern for the crisp bite of the street. “We could find Roth and arrange a search of the house.”
“But by the time we explain the story and Mr. Constable is persuaded to go along with the search, it could take hours.”
“My thoughts exactly. And my instinct says the ring isn’t in the house.”
“Mine, too.” Melanie fingered the silk braid that edged her cloak. “Charles, suppose she didn’t take it to Brighton with her at all?”
Two young men in coats with absurdly padded shoulders staggered out of the tavern, shouting for a hackney. Charles took Melanie’s arm and began to walk along the pavement. “What makes you think she didn’t take the ring with her?”
“Her departure for Brighton seems to have been triggered by the arrival of Jennings’s letter and the ring. When she left she seemed to think she could be in danger if she stayed in London. As you pointed out, her refusal to give up the ring today implies that she feared grave consequences if she did so. The woman used to carry a pistol in her reticule. Perhaps she still did. We know she slept with a gun in her night table—either she had it there always or she put it there tonight because she feared we’d come after the ring. Whatever the truth of it, she was frightened, and she wasn’t a woman who frightened easily. It looks to me as though her fear was connected with the ring, though I can’t begin to think how. But if the ring was important yet potentially dangerous, I think I’d have hidden it rather than taking it to Brighton with me.”
“Well reasoned, Mel.” Charles swung round to look at her in the glow of a street lamp. His face was still drawn, but his eyes had the light of the chase. “She had little more than twenty-four hours between the arrival of Jennings’s letter and her own departure. She performed at the Drury Lane, she went to a tavern with Violet Goddard, she—”
“Sought out Jemmy Moore.”
“Who seems to have meant more to her than anyone.” Charles glanced up and down the street and flagged down a passing hackney before the inebriated young men by the tavern could commandeer it. “Jemmy Moore should be at Mannerling’s at this hour. We can collect Edgar from the Albany on the way. If we can’t learn anything from Moore, we’ll see what progress Roth has made at the Constable house.”
It was only when they were in the hackney that she said, “Velasquez was quite convincing when he claimed not to have been behind the attacks.”
“Quite.”
Without looking at him, she continued, “Raoul was convincing as well, but he’s a better actor.”
Charles turned his head toward her. “An admission. I’m impressed.”
