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Chapter Eight

A Closet

“How dare you abandon me to investigate by yourself,” Beatrice said, following Drake into a room and slamming the door behind her.

She took in the chamber she had just entered.

It had scarlet carpet, leather club chairs, and wood paneling.

Candlelight illuminated a bookshelf at the back wall, stuffed with dusty tomes and cluttered with antiques.

In the middle of all of it, notebook in hand, was Inspector Drake, looking as guilty as if he had committed a murder himself.

He immediately rearranged his features to cover the expression.

“I thought we would divide and conquer,” he said.

“And I thought we agreed that never ends well,” Beatrice replied, crossing her arms.

“I saw an opportunity to slip away and explore,” he told her.

“You saw Huxley and left me to deal with him myself,” Beatrice said, correcting him. She would not tell Drake that she had been dealing with the gentleman detective more than he knew. She also would not confess that Drake’s abandonment stung, for reasons beyond just the investigation.

She had imagined the moment of being introduced into the Rose Club and then turning to see Drake beside her, his arm outstretched, ready to escort her into a ballroom of debutantes. And then they would have slipped away— together —to investigate a bloody crime.

Was that really too much to ask?

“Where are we?” she said finally, trying to push away her confusing feelings as she glanced around the room.

“This is the Rose’s lounge,” Drake replied at once, obviously relieved to have momentarily escaped her scolding.

“How do you know?”

“I studied the Rose’s original blueprints,” Drake told her. “One must always study the blueprints. For example, did you know that the rose garden just outside was not part of this building’s original design? It was added about twenty years ago.”

“You should inform Mr. Vane,” Beatrice said, considering this piece of information.

“Evidently he did not want to install a dipping pool there, because he thought the garden was traditional. Perhaps he might change his mind if he knew the truth, and we could all be in a pool right now, instead of melting from this heat.”

“You spoke with Mr. Vane?” Drake asked sharply. “That was quick work. What did he say? Do you think him a potential suspect?”

“He and his wife apparently believe that Percival Nash is innocent,” Beatrice said.

“But…you suspect Mr. Vane’s motives,” Drake said.

“I suspect something is off,” she confessed. “If Horace Vane is the head of the NAGS, and he supports the arts, why does everything seem so…tense?”

“You have…a gut feeling,” Drake said with a mixture of interest and disapproval.

He was resistant to her hunches, she knew, preferring hard evidence over unfounded suspicion. But Beatrice had learned: The feelings that people instilled in others, their gestures and their words, were a type of evidence.

“I met the other founder of NAGS,” she went on. “Mr. Cecil Nightingale. He revealed an obvious disapproval of the arts, just as Percival Nash warned.”

“This was precisely how you wanted to begin the investigation—fraternizing with club members. So it all worked out,” Drake told her.

“Mr. Nightingale treated me like a child, and Mr. Vane speaks only to men,” Beatrice informed him, not ready to let Drake off the hook so easily. “We might have gleaned more information if you had been there. Instead, Huxley had the honor of driving the discussion.”

Guilt flashed across Drake’s face, but he forged ahead. “I found something of interest. Do you want to see it, or continue to berate me?”

“A lady can do both simultaneously,” Beatrice said, stepping forward.

The lounge smelled of hot wax and something metallic. As Beatrice came to stand next to Drake, in front of an armchair, she looked down at the scarlet rug, which bore a dark stain.

“Dried blood,” she murmured. “This is where Walter Shrewsbury died.” Perhaps Beatrice was now standing precisely where the murderer had stood, she thought with a shiver.

Drake handed her a crumpled piece of paper. “I found this under the bookshelf. No doubt Huxley missed it in his initial review of the crime scene; he was never thorough when surveying evidence.”

Beatrice smoothed out the paper and then gasped.

“What?” Drake asked sharply.

“I just stole this off Cecil Nightingale,” she told him, withdrawing the note from her bodice. “He was concealing it in his pocket. Look.”

She held the two notes side by side.

They were identical: Confess, or die. You decide.

Below the words, a moth with a pin through it.

Whereas the paper Beatrice had stolen from Mr. Nightingale felt stiff, as if it had gotten wet and then dried, the note Drake had found was smooth.

Fresh. Perhaps it meant nothing, Beatrice thought—but she noted it nonetheless.

“If Walter Shrewsbury received this message and then died, and now Cecil Nightingale has an identical letter…” She looked up at Drake.

“Mr. Nightingale may be in grave danger,” he finished, his eye darkening.

A sound echoed from the other side of the door. Beatrice and Drake froze.

It was clearly the sound of a scuffle. And it was closeby.

“This way,” Drake said, opening the door and pulling Beatrice toward the noise. She went eagerly, following him down the hallway.

The banging noises grew louder as they ran past a row of closed doors. It sounded as though someone was running into a wall.

Or being shoved into it, violently.

“In here,” Beatrice told Drake, and pushed open a set of double doors.

They led to a ballroom, identical to the one downstairs—but slightly smaller.

It had the same dance floor, its perimeter lined with marble statues and silk chairs where ball guests could rest between waltzes.

Unlit chandeliers dripped from above, crystals sparkling in the moonlight streaming through the ballroom’s floor-to-ceiling windows.

And in the center of the ballroom was a gentleman, crumpled in a heap on the floor.

“See if he’s alive. Check for breath,” Drake said immediately, flinging something into Beatrice’s hand. “I will see if the attacker is still here.”

He rushed around the room, pushing aside curtains, while Beatrice knelt next to the body on the floor. She looked down at what Drake had given her, to find a silver spoon in her palm.

It had belonged to Drake’s father, a philandering gentleman named Croaksworth who had abandoned both Drake and his late mother, Nitara.

Etched onto its handle was a Scottish terrier, the adopted crest of the Croaksworth clan.

Though Drake’s parents were both gone now, Beatrice had discovered his lineage using the spoon as a clue, helping him connect with a half sister and gain answers to long-held questions.

Now she went to hold the spoon up to the man’s nostrils. If his breath fogged up the silver, it meant that he was still alive.

But as she pushed his limbs aside to get to his face, she gasped.

The gentleman’s face had been bashed in until it was unrecognizable. Even for a seasoned crime reader such as herself, the sight was pure horror. It actually made one miss the tidiness of poison.

With shaking hands, Beatrice held the spoon to where the victim’s nose had been. When she withdrew it, she saw what she dreaded.

No fog. No breath.

She looked down at his torso, and now she could see that a knife protruded from his chest. He had been beaten and stabbed—to death.

Drake hurried back to her, his face set.

“No one is here,” he said angrily. “We must have just missed them. If only we had been seconds earlier—”

“Then he might have survived,” Beatrice said, holding up the spoon. “It seems, Inspector Drake, that we are once more in the middle of a ballroom with a corpse, with a murderer on the loose.”

“I certainly hope this isn’t exactly like our first case,” Drake said as he took the spoon back. “After all, if we attempt to do the same thing twice, we will end up on top of a crumbling mansion, nearly burned alive.”

“And it would be annoyingly repetitive,” Beatrice added.

They both turned back to the body. Beatrice let out a gasp as she noticed something she had missed while distracted by the carnage. She leaned over and pulled a familiar, ugly yellow handkerchief from the man’s jacket pocket.

“Drake,” she breathed, “it is just as we feared: This is Cecil Nightingale.”

“How can you possibly recognize that face?” Drake shuddered.

“I didn’t. This is his handkerchief,” Beatrice said, holding up the yellow rag. “I was just speaking with him moments ago and noted its unbecoming color. Just moments ago,” she repeated to herself.

One never got used to this sort of thing, she thought.

It was a shock to see a man walking around, speaking—however condescendingly—and then to stumble upon his corpse such a short time later.

The tragedy was not lost upon her, but she knew she could not wallow in it.

Letting sadness consume her was of no use in a murder investigation, not to mention that it was decidedly un-English. To catch a killer, one had to carryon.

“The notes both men received were not explicitly blackmail letters,” Drake said thoughtfully. “They were more…warnings.”

“Death warnings,” Beatrice agreed. She looked beyond Cecil’s battered visage to where his jacket and shirtsleeve had lifted up, his arm splayed at an odd angle. She felt a chill when her gaze fell upon something unusual. “Inspector,” she said excitedly, “look.”

Inked on Cecil’s wrist was a detailed tattoo of a moth.

She and Drake leaned forward, their heads nearly touching as they stooped to examine the tattoo more closely.

“Is it strange for a gentleman to have this?” Beatrice asked, hoping the question did not make her sound provincial. Perhaps tattoos were all the rage in London—but Drake nodded.

“It is unusual. I have seen such art on navy men, and sometimes on particularly adventurous painters—”

“But it seems out of place for a gentleman who was known to dislike the arts to have such a marking,” Beatrice finished. Drake nodded.

“The ink is faded,” he noted, pointing at the blurred edges of the tattoo. “This indicates that it was done years ago.”

“A youthful dalliance,” Beatrice murmured, “which led to death…”

“Speculation,” Drake coughed, but she ignored him.

Though he was right, and the ink was faded, she could still see how intricate the artwork was.

The shading on the wings made it seem as if the insect were about to fly off the dead man’s wrist. She and Drake simultaneously held up the notes they had each found, comparing the drawing of the moth to the tattoo.

It was identical, apart from one detail: the pin, cutting through the moth’s body.

Just like the knife now piercing Mr. Cecil Nightingale.

“?‘Confess, or die,’?” Beatrice read from the note. “Both Walter Shrewsbury and Cecil Nightingale evidently chose the latter. The question is: What secret is important enough to take to the grave?”

“No, the question is, why would the killer change murder weapons during an attack?” Drake told her. He pointed to Mr. Nightingale’s face. “These wounds would have been fatal, making the knife literal overkill.”

“Not to mention that a death from blows seems spontaneous, whereas a knife wound indicates premeditation,” Beatrice added. “Unless it was a knife the perpetrator always carried.”

Drake walked to the perimeter of the ballroom and began to push curtains back and peer behind marble pedestals.

“I thought you said the killer was gone.” Beatrice rose to her feet in excitement.

“They are. But they may have left something behind. The blows to the face have white markings in the wounds. Dust, perhaps…”

Beatrice forced herself to look back at Cecil’s bloody visage. She could see now that Drake was right: There was a powdery dust present in his wounds.

“This could indicate that a weapon was used, which left behind residue. Of course that is just a hunch…” Drake muttered. “Aha!”

Beatrice rushed over to where he stood, next to a high marble pedestal.

“There was something here,” Drake said excitedly, pointing to the top of the pedestal. “See how the gap in the dust reveals it?”

“I can’t exactly see,” Beatrice told him, rising to her tiptoes. She was much shorter than Drake, and her eyeline did not reach the top of the pedestal. “Lift me up.”

“You can take my word for it,” Drake assured her.

“I want to see!” Beatrice said firmly. “I know you can lift me. I have seen your muscular…” Dash it all. She had not meant to say that aloud. “Your muscular…well, physique.”

“Oh. Er…yes.” Drake cleared his throat. He stepped closer to her and seemed to steel himself, his hands still at his sides.

“Sometime tonight would be useful,” Beatrice told him.

He let out a noise of irritation but relented.

Normally it would have been unheard of for a man to place his hands upon a lady’s waist in such a way, unless as part of a dance, but this was just business.

As Drake hoisted her up, Beatrice caught sight of the top of the marble pedestal. In the dust was an octagonal imprint, where an object had once been placed. But now it was gone.

“It has an unusual shape,” she murmured.

“What do you think it was? A statue? A vase? It must have been chipped—look at this indentation.” She touched her finger to the dust and held it up, examining the white powder left there.

“The dust looks just like the residue left in the wound. When the attacker used this statue, it left its mark.”

“Just as I suspected,” Drake told her.

He gently lowered her to the ground. For a moment, his hands were still on her waist, and Beatrice turned to face him.

Drake immediately dropped his hands and took a step backward.

“It’s impossible to know what the item was without further evidence,” he said stiffly, avoiding her gaze. “But there is a possibility that it was used to bludgeon Mr. Nightingale’s face.”

“And it suggests that the killer was tall, as they would have had to reach the item,” Beatrice added, feeling a little lightheaded. It was excitement due to the case at hand, she was sure.

“Taller than you, at least. That does not rule out many people,” Drake pointed out.

At that moment, voices sounded in the hallway. Footsteps echoed closer and closer.

“Someone’s coming,” Beatrice hissed, her body going cold with panic. “Quick—the kissing closet!”

“The what ?” Drake said, but Beatrice did not have time to explain. She pulled Drake through a narrow door just as someone entered the second ballroom.