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Chapter Nine

A Discovery

Beatrice closed the door just as someone else entered the ballroom.

The so-called kissing closet was filled with coats and jackets, shawls, and empty hooks.

Drake stooped in the back of the space, half-obscured by cloaks, while Beatrice stood at the front, staring through a crack between the door and the wall.

She tried to focus on what was happening in the room, but she was distracted.

She felt overly aware of Drake’s proximity to her in such a small space. The unsteadiness she was experiencing around him of late was disconcerting, but she was beginning to understand the cause.

Beatrice had been brought up in a strict environment in Swampshire, where men and women were not to fraternize unchaperoned.

Though she knew, logically, that their relationship was professional, her body was rebelling as if she were doing something scandalous.

She merely needed to adapt, and eventually, her mind and heart would align; it was perfectly permissible to be alone with a business partner in a kissing closet.

No, she mentally corrected herself—a coatroom .

Drake pushed aside the cloaks and leaned forward so he could also see through the crack. At once Beatrice smelled oranges and cinnamon, the scent enveloping her like an embrace.

She forced herself to turn her focus to the person who had just entered the room.

It was the man with bushy, overgrown sideburns whom she had met next to the Vanes’ carriage and in the dress shop. Gregory something; she had never gotten his surname.

“Cecil? Are you in here? The performers are about to begin the preview of Figaro . Horace wants us there to—”

Gregory froze as he saw the body crumpled on the floor, and then he rushed to it. He plucked the ugly yellow handkerchief from beside the corpse and gasped, seemingly coming to the same conclusion Beatrice had as to the dead body’s identity.

“Cecil, no…” He began to shake Mr. Nightingale by the shoulders. “Cecil, my boy, wake up!”

But Cecil Nightingale would never wake up, Beatrice thought, and he would never see another opera. Like Walter Shrewsbury, he was gone.

And his killer was still at large.

Beatrice’s spine prickled as the door creaked open again and a second man entered: Horace Vane, tall and confident, his affable smile crinkling the edges of his dark eyes.

“Mr. Nash, are you in here?” he called as he strode into the room. “The performance was meant to begin— What is the meaning of this? ” He had finally registered Gregory in the center of the room, hovering over the corpse.

“It’s Cecil,” Gregory said hoarsely. “He’s…I think he’s dead.”

As Beatrice watched the men side by side—Horace Vane towering over the shorter, stockier Gregory—she wondered if Gregory had modeled his sideburns after Mr. Vane’s.

While they flattered Horace Vane with his large and striking features, the sideburns only overtook Gregory’s mousy visage. He had become more sideburn than man.

“Yes,” Mr. Vane said, glancing at the body, his expression inscrutable. “He is deceased—in just the same way as Walter.”

His words sent a prickle down Beatrice’s spine. Whereas Gregory had said he thought Cecil Nightingale was dead, and had just shaken the man violently to make sure, Mr. Vane seemed certain without any further investigation. His pronouncement was too flippant, too quick.

As if it were predetermined.

Did Horace Vane know that Cecil Nightingale would die tonight? Or, Beatrice wondered with a shiver, did he do the deed himself? There was sweat upon his brow, but this did not necessarily mean he had been involved in the scuffle—it was, after all, swelteringly hot.

“Now both of your closest companions are gone. I am so sorry, Horace,” Gregory whispered, standing on his tiptoes to grip Mr. Vane’s shoulder.

“You trusted them completely—the three of you transformed our community with the institution of the NAGS. No doubt you are thinking, Can I even go on without them? Who will I turn to? Could someone else become my best friend? I assure you, there are others who can be just as loyal. Just as worthy of your amity. For example…me.”

Whatever bond existed between Walter Shrewsbury, Cecil Nightingale, and Horace Vane, it did not include Mr. Gregory Sideburns, thought Beatrice.

He might have been some sort of messenger for the NAGS, but he was clearly not “one of them.” As someone who often felt on the outside looking in, Beatrice recognized his yearning.

She could only hope she was not quite so annoying.

“Thank you for your concern, Gregory,” Mr. Vane said, turning ever so slightly so Gregory’s hand shook loose. “Now, if I could have silence for a moment, to consider what should be done…”

“Yes, of course. I also appreciate silence. It is so helpful, when one is committed to one’s thoughts—silence is golden, I always say—” Gregory gasped, interrupting himself.

“Horace, you don’t think it has anything to do with…

” He pushed back his jacket sleeve and pointed at his wrist. Beatrice noted that it was bare.

Unlike Mr. Nightingale, Gregory had no moth tattoo.

Did that mean, she wondered with a shiver of excitement, that Mr. Vane did have one? Did Gregory know of the blackmail notes?

She turned to Drake, who stood behind her, watching through the crack in the door above her head. They exchanged looks, and she knew he was wondering the same thing.

“I know exactly what this is about,” Mr. Vane said, squaring his shoulders. “The artists of Sweetbriar are defying restriction. They are retaliating against it. I told Sir Huxley exactly who to look at in Walter’s death, and I was right. He has killed again.”

“You mean to say that the murderer is—” Gregory began.

“Percival Nash,” Mr. Vane confirmed.

Aha, Beatrice thought with grim satisfaction. She knewit .

Horace Vane had applauded for Percival Nash and assured his wife that he supported her and the arts—but behind her back, he was Percival’s accuser.

Beatrice had known something was off, that someone was lying—and now the culprit stood before her, unmasked.

Those who played with their words, she had learned, were not to be trusted.

“You came in here looking for Percival!” Gregory recalled, anxiously smoothing his sideburns. “Am I to understand that he was unaccounted for while Cecil was being murdered? That ponytailed fiend ! His vocal warm-ups consisted of murder !”

“Yes, he was not in the conservatory, so I went searching,” Mr. Vane confirmed. “Diana invited him here tonight against my wishes…and now a man is dead.”

“She should never be entrusted to arrange an evening again,” Gregory said immediately, but Mr. Vane looked up at him, his expression fierce.

“It is Percival Nash who is at fault here, not my innocent, impressionable wife. This is exactly why we must protect women from people like Nash. Sweetbriar will never be safe so long as these artists roam our streets.”

“Of course, of course,” Gregory said quickly. “I agree completely.”

Beatrice and Drake exchanged yet another look. It was frustrating that they could not discuss these revelations at the moment, but Beatrice could guess her partner’s thoughts, just as he often knew hers.

It was too easy to blame Percival Nash. She knew Drake, like her, still maintained Nash’s innocence.

True, he had been unaccounted for in the case of both murders, but this hardly proved his guilt.

After all, why would he have hired Beatrice and Drake to investigate if he were committing the murders himself?

Surely a criminal would want fewer detectives around, not more.

Mr. Vane and Gregory halted their conversation as the door opened once more. This time, it was Sir Lawrence Huxley who strode into the room.

“Has anyone seen Miss Steele? The dark-haired lady with the cheerful gap in her front teeth…intriguing little white streak in her curls…She was by my side, but then I turned back and she was gone—” Sir Huxley broke off, just as the other men had done, the moment he entered and saw Cecil Nightingale’s body splayed out on the floor.

“No!” He inhaled sharply. “The killer has returned.”

“I am so sorry, Sir Huxley, but we now require your services for two murders,” Mr. Vane told him gravely.

“Do not fear,” Sir Huxley assured him. “No matter how many murders occur, I shall be here to solve them all.”

“I should hope there won’t be more, ” Gregory sputtered, but Huxley ignored him.

“You still suspect Nash?” he asked Mr. Vane, who nodded grimly.

“He was not in the conservatory. I went looking for him. Evidently he reprised his role…as a killer .”

“Very good, sir,” Gregory told Mr. Vane. “Wit in the face of tragedy is admirable.”

Sir Huxley began to pace around the corpse, taking note of the scene.

He leaned down, gripped the hilt protruding from Mr. Nightingale’s chest, and pulled the knife out with a sickening squelch.

Sir Huxley lifted the weapon to examine it in the moonlight, its silver blade slick with scarlet.

“?‘Property of the Sweet Majestic,’?” he read aloud.

Gregory gasped. “A knife from the theater!”

Beatrice drew back in shock. They had not seen this . As she recoiled, she collided with something. Drake inhaled sharply, and she turned to see that she had made direct contact with his nose.

“I’m sorry,” she half whispered, half mouthed. “I didn’t know you were so close—” That is, she had determinedly tried to ignore it, and done too good of a job.

He held up a finger to his lips, frantic, and she was horrified to see that his nose was gushing blood.

“Did you hear that?” Sir Huxley said at once. He was uncharacteristically observant that evening, much to Beatrice’s chagrin.