“Raoul always said I’d make a better agent if I was quicker to admit I was wrong.” The threat of betraying tears pulled at her face. Raoul O’Roarke and their cause had been the center of her life. She had always known his greatest loyalty wasn’t to her and never would be. But she had trusted him far more than she would admit, even to herself. Yet another weakness. “I don’t trust my judgment of anyone anymore,” she said.
“I know the feeling.” To her surprise, Charles’s voice was more gentle than bitter. He was silent for a moment. “Oddly enough, after that last scene I’m less inclined to suspect O’Roarke.”
His words eased the knot of fear inside her. “Then you think Velasquez is lying about not being behind the attacks?”
“I’m not sure.”
She reached for the carriage strap as they rounded a corner. “The incident with the horse might have been an accident, but the rifle shot and the knife in my ribs certainly weren’t.”
“I know.”
“You don’t suppose someone else could be after the ring?”
She couldn’t see Charles’s face, but she could imagine him scowling in frustrated concentration. “It’s mad, but it’s the only alternative I can see to O’Roarke or Velasquez.”
“Charles.” She hesitated. She wasn’t sure if she should ask, but this would be their last chance to talk alone for God knew how long. “Can you think of anyone who might have killed Kitty?”
For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. “No.” His voice was rougher than it had been.
“What about the rest of her family? Suppose they’d found out about the pregnancy and couldn’t bear the scandal?”
“None of them were in Lisbon. Her mother had died a few years before. Her father was in the country. Both her brothers were off fighting.”
“A fellow officer of her husband’s who’d learned the truth?”
“Possibly, but I can’t imagine how anyone would have learned it. Velasquez only knew because Kitty told him.”
Melanie pictured the winding paths in the embassy garden where Kitty Ashford had met her death, the curving footbridge, the rushing stream below. “Perhaps she stumbled across something in the garden that she wasn’t supposed to see?”
“You think someone killed her because she witnessed an amorous intrigue?”
“If the stakes were high enough, I suppose it’s possible. But there were a lot of intrigues in Lisbon that weren’t amorous.”
“Espionage?” Charles reached across the carriage and gripped her wrist. “What have you heard?”
“Nothing, darling, I swear it. I’m only speculating. I don’t know much about what was happening in Lisbon before I came there.”
He slackened his grip on her wrist. To her surprise, he laced his fingers through her own and let their clasped hands rest on the worn leather of the seat. “I admit I’d very much like to find out. But it’s of little urgency beside the ring.”
“No. Unless—” The pieces of information sifted through her brain. “Unless it’s not coincidence that Jennings was at the embassy that night.”
“Jennings would have had no reason to kill Kitty. Velasquez was right, he scarcely knew her. Oh, I see.” She felt his sudden alertness. “The blackmail.”
“Suppose Jennings witnessed Kitty’s murder. Murder’s a secret a lot of people would pay to conceal.”
“And Jennings wrote to Helen Trevennen about it and she took up the blackmail. Possible, I suppose. I wonder—” His fingers tensed round her own, then relaxed. “Even if that were true, it still doesn’t take us to the ring. Which at present is all that matters.”
They had the hackney wait while they went into the Albany. They found Edgar pacing the carpet in Velasquez’s sitting room. On the drive to Mannerling’s, Charles gave the details of their talk with Velasquez and their conclusions about the ring. He made no mention of Velasquez’s revelations about Kitty’s death, and he glossed over the visit to Raoul. Edgar didn’t press him for details.
Melanie could feel her brother-in-law trying to sort through the morass of new information. “It doesn’t make any sense that she’d be afraid of the ring,” he said.
“No sense at all,” Melanie agreed. “Except that it’s the only theory that makes sense of her actions.”
Charles was sitting very still. “We can’t tell Jemmy Moore she’s dead.”
“Good God, Charles.” Edgar straightened up with a jerk. “Don’t you think he deserves to know?”
“Undoubtedly. I suspect the news will hit him as hard as it did Mr. Constable. But he’d want to run off and take his revenge. We wouldn’t get anything coherent out of him.” Charles paused a moment, glanced at Melanie, then added, “Lying’s not pleasant, but at times it’s necessary.”
At Mannerling’s, the porter frowned at them through the eyehole, then slid the bolt back with a grudging scrape. “Mr. Morningham,” Charles said, handing over his cloak and hat. “Is he here tonight?”
The porter’s scowl deepened. He cast a pointed glance up the stairs at the broken section of balustrade. It had been closed off with a red velvet rope.
“We merely have a question to put to him,” Charles said. “We promise not to brawl.”
The porter moved to Melanie and took her cloak from her shoulders. His hands were stiff. “Upstairs. Try the faro bank.”
Jemmy Moore spotted them as they came into the long room with the faro table. Instead of running away, he came toward them. “Did you find her?” he asked as they met in the center of the room. He made no attempt to keep the eagerness from his voice.
“Not yet, I’m afraid.” When called upon to do so, Charles could lie with as much conviction as Melanie herself could. “Could you spare us a moment? Perhaps we could go into the supper room?”
“Of course.” Moore squared his shoulders and offered his arm to Melanie.
“Mr. Moore,” Melanie said when they were clustered round one of the small tables near the supper buffet, “the last time you saw Miss Trevennen, did she give you anything to keep for her?”
“What?” Moore scratched his head. “Oh, you think she might have given me this ring you’re looking for? Sorry. I doubt Nelly had so much trust in me.”
“Did she say anything else about where she’d been that day?” Charles asked.
Moore frowned into his glass of champagne. “She’d obviously been to the theater—she still had some of her makeup on. We—ah—we didn’t actually do that much talking.”
“Of course.” Melanie smiled at him. “How else does one say farewell to a lover?”
Moore returned the smile. It was, it seemed, a happy memory. She was glad he had some of them. “In the morning she told me she was leaving and I—Well, I told you about the conversation. I wasn’t thinking very clearly, I’m afraid, because it was so damned early. She said she had to get up so she could be at the Marshalsea to visit her uncle when the gates opened.”
Melanie felt her shoulders jerk. “She was going to visit her uncle before she left?”
“Yes. Wanted to say good-bye, I suppose. More consideration than she usually gave the old boy.”
Edgar glanced from Melanie to Charles. “Nothing so very odd in that.”
“Except that according to Trevennen she never actually did say good-bye. She asked Violet Goddard to tell him she’d left London.” Charles looked at Melanie, eyes alight.
Moore frowned. “You mean Nelly didn’t visit him after all? She seemed quite set on it when she left my rooms.”
Charles tapped his fingers on the damask tablecloth. “I suspect she went to see him but didn’t tell him she was leaving London. Because she wanted the visit to appear perfectly ordinary.”
Edgar leaned forward. “I say, Charles.”
“What better hiding place than a debtor’s prison?” Charles said. “She knew there was little chance of her uncle leaving.” He pushed back his chair. “Mr. Moore, thank you. This may prove invaluable.”
“Oh, of course. Glad to help.” Moore seemed to have quite forgotten his earlier mistrust of them. But then this was a man who had been able to forgive and forget all too easily with Helen Trevennen.
“Is there anything else?” Melanie asked, looking into his eyes. “Any other detail you can remember about the last time you saw her, even if it seems insignificant?”
Moore ran his fingers down the stem of his champagne glass. “No. I’m afraid not. Except…” He scratched his
