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Until she remembered: “Dash it all. I keep forgetting—Horace Vane was murdered.” At once, frustration replaced her short-lived triumph. “He might have stopped Cecil Nightingale and Walter Shrewsbury from speaking out…but the blackmailer killed him, too.”

“Yes,” Drake said with a nod. “I would dismiss everything you just said as wild conjecture, but I fear I have been indulging in some myself. And I believe I can add to what you have ascertained, and therefore make sense of the rest.” He withdrew a copy of The London Babbler from his jacket pocket.

“There is one surefire way to stop a killer from killing you.”

“How?” Beatrice demanded.

“Die before they can do it,” Drake said simply.

He began to unfold the paper. “I have been considering the facts: Mr. Shrewsbury and Mr. Nightingale were murdered in private spaces. Yet Mr. Vane was killed in front of a crowd at the Rose. Almost as if there was meant to be an audience for this death in particular. Then there was the matter of the battered faces. While your theory that the killer did not want to look at his victim is plausible, it feels thin.”

Beatrice began to object but then stopped herself. “That’s fair,” she allowed.

“He could have simply stabbed him from behind,” Drake continued. “So I had to consider: What if the beating was not for the sake of the killer’s emotion, but to conceal the face of the victim?”

“Conceal the face? For what purpose?” Beatrice did not follow.

“We know the identities of all the victims. Walter was identified at the scene, we knew Cecil from his handkerchief…and Horace had his wallet. Though…he did not have his most prized personal effect,” she recalled.

“The sweetbriar, encased in glass. We assumed the body was him, without real evidence!” She gasped, finally realizing: “Horace Vane faked his death!”

Drake flipped to a page in the paper he had produced. It was an old edition of the Artists’ Quarterly, Beatrice could see, and Drake turned to a page of classifieds and pointed at one. Beatrice began to read.

ACTOR WANTED for exciting and unconventional role. Must be tall, dark, handsome, and willing to alter appearance for the sake of the integrity of the work. Please send inquiries to Miss Evana Chore at The London Babbler .

“When you sent me the note explaining that Evana Chore was actually Horace Vane, I recalled this unusual ad I had seen in the paper,” he told her. “What if—”

“Mr. Vane hired a lookalike, and murdered him instead!” Beatrice cried.

“Drake—‘willing to alter appearance.’ The body we saw in the box had a moth tattoo, but when I examined it with Miss Equiano’s quizzing glass, I noted that the skin around it was puckered and raw.

I thought that perhaps Mr. Vane had tried to remove his tattoo, to save himself—but what if the hired actor had been asked to get a new tattoo for the ‘role’?

That is why it looked raw; it was recently inked! ”

Drake leaned forward and slipped his hand under the neckline of her shirt.

“Inspector!” Beatrice inhaled sharply—what was he doing ? Why now ?—but Drake’s fingers caught the chain of her silver locket. He pulled it free from under her costume and ran his fingers over the heart shape.

“You found this in the pocket of the corpse who died at the opera,” he said. “But there is no reason Horace Vane would have had it. It was stolen by—”

“Archibald Croome,” Beatrice finished. She remembered the soliloquist who had blocked her path in the street with an irritating poem.

She could see his visage upon the portrait he’d thrust into her hands.

“A desperate actor. He would have taken any role…just the sort of person to answer an open call in the Quarterly .”

“He did not know this role would be his last,” Drake said sadly. His fingers slipped up the chain and brushed across her neck, but then he cleared his throat and drew back.

“So Mr. Vane killed Cecil and Walter, setting it up to look as though gentlemen were being targeted,” Beatrice continued, “and then he put his plot into action. He sent Diana out of the box to fetch drinks.”

“Archibald was likely hiding behind the box’s curtains,” Drake said. “According to the measurements of the box, which I studied in the theater’s blueprints, a person could easily conceal themselves in the corner,” he added.

“Then he came out the moment Diana left, thinking he was to be part of some performance, and instead Horace murdered him and put his personal effects into his pockets, though he couldn’t bear to part with the sweetbriar…

. Drake! ” she cried, remembering with horror: “?‘The actor.’ The last words he spoke—we thought it was Horace, telling us that Percival Nash had killed him, but it was Archibald Croome, trying to tell us the truth. That he was the hired actor, not Horace Vane.”

“Precisely.” Drake nodded. “Mr. Vane used the same method of murder as in the previous two deaths so no one would question a thing. After all, it had already happened twice. But the third body was a doppelg?nger—just like in the infamous prequel The Figaro Trap .”

“So that is it,” Beatrice said, feeling winded. “Horace Vane murdered his rival, then his two best friends, and then an innocent—though annoying—actor. Four people are dead, and he got away with the whole thing.”

“Of course he won’t get away with it,” Drake said evenly. “This is our case. And we always get our man.”

“We’ve only gotten our man once,” Beatrice told him.

“And now we shall do it a second time. Two for two,” Drake replied.

At this, the carriage came to a halt.

“Wait,” Beatrice said, drawing back the carriage compartment’s curtain. “Where are we?”

Outside the window, gulls screeched, and the moon shone down on a huge port filled with ships. Beatrice turned to Drake for an explanation.

He held up an annotated copy of the most recent London Babbler, pointing at Horace Vane’s obituary. He had circled the first letter of each sentence, revealing a message that had been hidden among the words, spelling out:

MEET AT DOCKS. WE ESCAPE.

“Mrs. Vane wrote this obituary. Look at the message concealed within,” he told Beatrice.

“She used her husband’s own word-scrambling trick to send him a message!” She gasped and grabbed the paper. “So…Diana knew he wasn’t dead?”

“Horace must have told her some version of events. As you said, everything he has done aligns with a wish to preserve his relationship with his wife. He would hardly let her believe that he had died,” Drake replied.

“But he would let her believe in his innocence,” Beatrice said grimly. “She doesn’t know he is a killer!”

“This paper came out this morning,” Drake informed Beatrice. “I checked the logs, and there is only one packet ship scheduled to depart tonight. What better time to escape than while everyone is distracted at the masquerade?”

“We must save Diana,” Beatrice said immediately, “and apprehend Mr. Vane!”

Drake pushed open the carriage door. “Are you up for more peril?”

“Vivek Drake,” Beatrice answered, heart pounding, “I thought you’d never ask.”