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Chapter Ten

An Article

Beatrice did not want to lie to Miss Bolton, but she was certain that a good chaperone would not allow her charge to spend every free moment looking for clues in not one but two murder cases.

Therefore she ensured that Miss Bolton was in for the day, hard at work on her “magnum opus” (much of which was in Latin, and therefore inscrutable), and assured Miss Bolton that she would be resting for the afternoon.

Then Beatrice slipped out the front door.

Now that she was one of the Rose Club’s blooms, people seemed to take notice of her more than before.

This was a liability, for if someone recognized her unaccompanied on the streets of Sweetbriar, her reputation would certainly suffer.

Therefore Beatrice had come up with what she considered an ingenious disguise.

She had pieced together an outfit from some of Miss Bolton’s castoffs, as well as fabric found in an old trunk.

Beatrice now wore a black gown, a tall hat, and dark lace draped over her face.

To any passerby on the street, she appeared as a woman in mourning, and thus she could move about without arousing suspicion.

It was the best ensemble she had ever put together.

She arrived at DS Investigations in record time. Instead of flinging open the door as usual, she knocked, then waited long enough to allow Drake to make himself presentable.

“I’m coming in,” she said, pushing open the door cautiously—but she was surprised to find the office empty.

Drake was nearly always there during the day, or in his apartment directly above it, but the curtains upstairs were drawn and the office, still.

At first, Beatrice felt unsure of what to do or where to go. She did not want to return to Miss Bolton’s town house, but she could hardly go off and investigate without Drake. Not after she had scolded him so many times for doing the same thing to her.

Unless, she thought with rising irritation, that was exactly where he was: investigating without her.

Where else would Drake have gone? He had no other hobbies that she knew of, apart from attending the opera, evidently—and there would be no performances in the middle of the day.

His only family was his half sister, Alice, who was away on her Grand Tour.

Drake had never spoken of any friends or sweethearts he might call upon.

Not that they had discussed his personal life, Beatrice thought, a strange irritation rising at the idea of Drake with a sweetheart.

No doubt because she disliked being kept in the dark, she reasoned.

She slammed the office door shut and took off down the street, folding into a crowd of Londoners along the main strip of Sweetbriar.

Drake never took carriages, so he had to be somewhere within walking distance of DS Investigations. Therefore Beatrice decided: She would track him down.

In her disguise, she was unnoticed as she waded through crowds of ladies and gentlemen fanning themselves in the sweltering summer heat. The one downside to her ensemble was the perspiration that welled under the veil. She had never mastered the genteel art of not sweating.

Beatrice passed a butcher, two bakers, three dress shops, fifteen ribbon stores, and a butcher.

She ultimately took a table at a café that faced the street.

Though it was terribly Parisian, Beatrice knew that drinking en plein air would allow her to observe passersby—one of whom she hoped would be Drake.

She ordered tea but left the hot beverage untouched as she peered through lace at the hustle and bustle of Londoners making their way down the street.

“…But I don’t want to watch Archibald Croome’s evening soliloquy about the one-handed Specter of Sweetbriar,” a red-haired woman whined to a man at the table next to her. “I want to go to the Sweet Majestic and see a real show.”

Beatrice tried to be inconspicuous as she eavesdropped on the conversation.

“As if I possess enough ponies for passes to a performance,” the man scoffed.

“If you loved me, you’d shell out for a ticket,” the woman insisted.

“The pit’s gone, Miss Cleary,” the man told her. “The cheapest ticket at the Sweet Majestic would wipe out my savings, and then we’d have nothing left for our wedding. Is that what you want?”

“No. Obviously I want to have the wedding and go to the opera!” Miss Cleary insisted.

They broke out into an argument. Evidently, Beatrice thought, the NAGS’s decision to eliminate the theater’s pit was already affecting opera attendees. She had read about it in the Babbler : With the cheap seats eradicated, only the wealthy could afford to see shows.

But, she thought, the performers would also be affected. Cheap as those seats might have been, a ticket sale was a ticket sale. Now the Sweet Majestic would sell fewer passes to plays. Was this what Horace Vane meant by drawing the curtains once and for all ?

The bickering couple’s squabble had somehow melted into declarations of love, so Beatrice turned her attention to the party on her other side—two gentlemen, speaking in low voices.

“…and he died without clarifying if we are in support of inexpressibles,” one of the men at the table was saying.

“Obviously Cecil Nightingale would not have permitted such attire. He was a traditionalist,” the man sitting with him replied. “Therefore the Carnation, Tulip, and Rose will all maintain our usual dress code.”

Beatrice’s ears prickled at the mention of Cecil Nightingale. She did not recognize the two gentlemen, but judging by their well-tailored ensembles and the lavish dishes upon their table, they had money. And their discussion led her to think that they were members of the notorious NAGS.

“Gregory thinks that Walter’s and Cecil’s deaths indicate a turn against all of us,” the first man said.

“Gregory believes whatever Horace Vane tells him,” the second man scoffed.

“Well, Horace would know. He is aware of everything and everyone in Sweetbriar,” the first man insisted.

“Horace Vane cares only about his wife,” the second man said.

They began to speak more about inexpressibles, which Beatrice knew (from Miss Bolton’s poems) were very tight breeches that left little to the imagination.

Horace Vane cares only about his wife. Diana seemed to believe that she and her husband were aligned in their commitment to their role as patrons of Sweetbriar’s artistic community.

But if Mr. Vane truly cared about her, he would truly support the arts, Beatrice thought.

Instead, he lied to Diana’s face and went behind her back.

She considered what she knew: Walter Shrewsbury, Cecil Nightingale, and Horace Vane had been friends since their school days.

Perhaps this was when they had gotten matching tattoos.

Could it be, Beatrice wondered, that Mr. Gregory “Sideburns” Dunne was so jealous of Horace Vane’s friendship with Cecil and Walter that he had murdered his competition?

It seemed a bit desperate, but without Mr. Shrewsbury or Mr. Nightingale, Mr. Vane had been forced to converse with the irritating Gregory Dunne.

And then there was Percival Nash. By virtue of his position as a local artist, Percival Nash had a motive to wish the NAGS harm. But surely he wouldn’t wish them dead …

Perhaps the killer was some other artist, Beatrice thought. Percival was not the only star in Sweetbriar. Horace Vane and Sir Huxley might have been right in their suspicions but had simply pointed the finger at the wrong actor.

She was lost in thought until her eyes fell upon a familiar tall figure inside a store across the street.

Drake.

Beatrice tossed payment onto the table for her untouched tea and rushed toward the shop.

Swampshire had only one general store, which sold everything from grains to gowns. London, on the other hand, had a plethora of specialty boutiques. When Beatrice stepped into the one before her, she felt weak-kneed with awe.

It was like something out of a dream. There were books everywhere, lining the walls on shelves, piled high in displays, and in the hands of patrons flipping through pages.

One particular pile of books sat stacked underneath a sign that read: DISTURBING NOVELS OF CRIME AND INTRIGUE. NOT FOR THE FAINTHEARTED .

Beatrice forced herself to pass the beautiful display—she would return to it, she resolved—and made a beeline for Drake.

He had disappeared into the back of the store and was half-hidden by a shelf. He held a newspaper, which he nearly dropped in surprise as she approached.

“How dare you,” she growled.

“I am sorry, madam,” he said, looking at her mourning ensemble.

“You should be,” she snapped, pushing back her veil.

“Beatrice?” Drake’s eye widened.

“I went to the office to find you, but you weren’t there.”

“This store has an archival collection of The London Babbler, ” Drake explained.

“I have been combing through them all morning, searching for any mention of Walter Shrewsbury, Cecil Nightingale, or the Rose. I thought it might provide further information for the case, since we have little to go on at the moment apart from Huxley’s ridiculous notion that Percival Nash is the killer. ”

“So you are investigating without me again .”

Drake scoffed. “Miss Steele, I am not intentionally cutting you out of anything. But you must admit that you possess time-consuming social obligations. What do you expect me to do? Stare blankly at the wall until you are available?” He lowered his voice. “Two men are dead. Time is of the essence.”

“You could have sent me a note or stopped by the town house to fetch me before coming here. I had no social obligations today,” she insisted.

“And would Miss Bolton have permitted you to do such a thing?” Drake asked pointedly.

To this, Beatrice had no reply.