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She leaned back, staring at the words with grim satisfaction.

It was an anagram. Horace Vane had been writing for his own paper—as the crime columnist, no less.

While Mr. Vane had claimed to Diana that he supported the arts, “Evana Chore” had scorned the artists and subtly supported Percival’s guilt from the beginning.

Like the other gentlemen of the NAGS, Mr. Horace Vane wanted to discredit performers and diminish their influence.

He simply used more nefarious, surreptitious means to doso.

Not that her discovery mattered, Beatrice thought with a pang of annoyance; Horace Vane could not be the killer. He was dead. And his anagram proved nothing, other than that Mr. Vane secretly wrote for his paper and appreciated wordplay. The latter of which everyone already knew.

People in Swampshire had their secrets, but the duplicitousness in London went beyond small-town skeletons in the closet.

Everyone and everything had a public-facing persona with an entirely different character lurking beneath.

Even Mr. O’Dowde’s shop had a secret basement.

No doubt the Rose had something similar.

Perhaps even the NAGS were a front, Beatrice thought.

She sat up straighter.

“Yes,” she murmured aloud, “what if…” She grabbed a jar of hat pins and began to tack pieces of paper onto the wall: Evana Chore’s column, a sketch Drake had made of Cecil’s moth tattoo, the old newspaper article about Horace and Diana…

It was almost as if she were back in her turret in Swampshire, solving Sir Huxley’s cases by candlelight.

“Mr. Vane was close with Cecil Nightingale and Walter Shrewsbury,” Beatrice murmured.

“Gregory Dunne was jealous of their bond,” she said, pinning an article in which Gregory had given a statement on behalf of the NAGS.

“He is in the NAGS, but not in the inner circle,” she continued.

“Secret tattoos, a secret past…secret notes!”

She turned from the wall and wrenched open her desk drawer. On top was the paper she wanted.

Confess, or die. You decide.

It was the stiff, crinkled note she had stolen from Cecil Nightingale’s pocket before his death. A strange texture, Beatrice had noted, as if it had gotten wet and then dried. Yet they had experienced a very hot summer thus far in London, with little rain. She smelled the paper.

Lemon.

Beatrice grabbed a candle from her desk and held it to the letter. For a moment, nothing happened. And then, as if by magic, a faint brown ink appeared.

Mr. Steele used such methods to send silly notes to his daughters. Yet, Beatrice reasoned, invisible ink could be used by others for more nefarious means.

She dropped into her desk chair and stared at the words that emerged on the back of the threatening note.

Horace—

I received this nasty little note this morning. Do you think it a joke—or something worse?

—Cecil

Below the first text, someone had penned a reply in a different hand.

Cecil—

Yes—I received the same. I fear someone has learned about what we did, but I will fix this. Do not be concerned. We are in it together. Umbra sumus.

Yours in the Brotherhood of the Moth,

Horace

“Miss Bolton!” Beatrice yelled. She took the newspaper with her and rushed downstairs, mind swirling with snippets of past conversations.

“Did you need more whiskey? I find the second serving is smoother!” Miss Bolton appeared at the bottom of the stairs with a teacup in one hand and a bottle in the other.

“You are writing a play in Latin, yes?” Beatrice asked, urgent.

“Yes!” Miss Bolton said, her eyes lighting up. “ Altus is a sweeping examination of the way altos are overlooked—I suppose it’s a metaphor, in a way—”

“Would you be able to translate a Latin phrase for me?” Beatrice cut in. She swore to herself that she would learn Latin in order to read Miss Bolton’s play at some point, but now there was no time.

She was so close. She could feelit.

Miss Bolton turned and disappeared into the parlor. She reappeared a moment later, the teacup and bottle replaced with a book titled Latin for Imbeciles .

“I’ve been using it as a reference, while editing my play,” she told Beatrice as she ascended the stairs. “As you know, I speak eight languages, but Latin can be so tricky.”

“You speak eight languages?” Beatrice said, and then: “Never mind. I need to know the meaning of this phrase: ‘ umbra sumus .’?”

Miss Bolton flipped through the book. After a moment, she announced, “The best translation, I think, is ‘We are shadow.’ Or, to put it more poetically, ‘We exist in shadow.’?”

“Aha!” Beatrice cried. She waved the note in the air. “A close bond, strange tattoos, an exclusive social circle…a dark past, threatening notes, and this Latin phrase about shadows…Horace Vane, Cecil Nightingale, and Walter Shrewsbury were in a secret society!”

Miss Bolton gasped. “ No! ”

“Yes!” Beatrice said triumphantly. “And in their past, they did…something…which made the killer target them.”

“And Percival Nash is innocent, of course!” Miss Bolton added.

“I never should have doubted myself—or him,” Beatrice agreed.

“But it is true that there is conflict between the artists and the NAGS.” She paused.

“There is someone who was left out of this group who sorely wished to be part of it. Someone who hated artists and would therefore have incentive to frame one for these murders.”

His face crystallized in her mind: too-eager eyes and a visage overtaken by sideburns.

“Gregory Dunne,” Beatrice whispered.

He would gain a prime power position by eliminating the three gentlemen who refused to admit him into their ranks.

It was more than just a desire to be included, Beatrice could see now—Gregory wanted full control.

And by framing Percival Nash, he would further the cause of the NAGS against local performers.

But he had not gotten away with it yet.

“We must get ready for the masquerade,” Beatrice told Miss Bolton, a perfect mix of fear and excitement rising in her throat. “I have a plan to catch a man.”

Miss Bolton gasped. “So you have found a husband?”

“No, even better,” Beatrice assured her. “A killer.” She turned on her heel and rushed back to her room.

Inspector Drake had abandoned the case, but that was no matter. He would only impede her now by claiming that her theories were too fanciful, too based on conjecture. She could practically hear him dismissing them as the folly of someone who read too many crime columns.

If she had time, she would pen him a note. Now she needed the two people who would not shy away from being fanciful, morbid creeps.