J. J.’s look was one of purely feline satisfaction. “But she told me something else, something that could not have been inferred.” She paused, looking about our snug little group in silken anticipation.
“For god’s sake, out with it,” Mornaday ordered. “You are as bad asthe pair ofthem,” he added, jerking his chin towards where Stoker and I sat side by side.
Mornaday’s ill-humour did not dim J. J.’s pleasure. She drank the rest of my cider, wiping her mouth on her sleeve when she had drained the glass. She set it carefully upon the table and only then did she raise shining eyes to the rest of us.
“Ambrose Despard did not leave for the station alone. Just as he entered his carriage, a woman appeared. According to Minnie, she confronted Lord Ambrose, apparently insisting upon travelling with him. She got into the carriage and they left. Together.”
“Did she say what the woman looked like?” I asked. But I already knew.
“Some years past thirty, Minnie thought. Plain dress and cloak with a heavy plait of hair at the nape of her neck.”
Stoker and I exchanged glances.
Eliza Elyot.
CHAPTER
24
The gentle reader must not assume I was annoyed in theslightestthat J. J. had acted with such perspicacity. Nor that I was inanyway vexed that she had succeeded in uncovering a vital clue entirely on her own. We had, after all, made the effort to include Mornaday and J. J. in our investigation as they had proven useful in the past, and if J. J. saw fit to undertake questioning a witness on the basis of ahunch—
“It is permissible for J. J. to ask questions,” Stoker told me mildly as we walked back to Bishop’s Folly.
“I haven’t the faintest notion to what you are referring,” I told him.
“Oh, I do apologise. I thought when J. J. returned in triumph from questioning young Minnie, you looked as though you’d sucked a lemon. I must be mistaken.”
“Entirely,” I assured him.
“And I suppose the grinding noise I can hear is not your back molars working out your indignation,” he added.
“It is most certainly not,” I replied. “I would never begrudge J. J. a victory, however minuscule.”
“Hardly minuscule,” Stoker pointed out. “We had no suspicions ofEliza Elyot as a villainess until Minnie identified her as the woman who accompanied Lord Ambrose to the train station.”
“I should hardly call that an identification,” I countered. “It is an intriguing possibility, I grant you, but scarcely sufficient grounds upon which to lay a murder at Eliza’s door.”
“Oh?” The casualness of his tone was, I had no doubt, intended as a deliberate goad.
“There must be hundreds, nay thousands, of women in London answering to such a description,” I said.
But even to my own ears, my protestations rang hollow. The hairstyle Eliza wore, low plaits pinned at the neck, was old-fashioned. And how many women of such appearance was Lord Ambrose likely to encounter?
Stoker said nothing, but I saw his lips twitching with a suppressed smile.
“Very well,” I admitted. “I am perhaps a trifle concerned.”
“That J. J. noted the importance of Minnie’s observation?”
“No—that we did not!” I paused, turning to him. We stood in the warm, pooling light of the streetlamp that illuminated a narrow door at the far side of the garden, a discreet entrance which we often used for our more secret comings and goings. “We are scientists—observers, trained and experienced. And yet it did not occur to either of us to pursue that particular line of inquiry. We have neither of us been properly in the field for far too long. I am forced to wonder if our skills have become blunted from too much time at home. Have we become city-softened?Domesticated?” I shuddered at the word.
“We have most certainly not,” he told me patiently. “We are as keen and observant as we have ever been.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I do. In fact, I have observed something in the few seconds we have been standing here—namely, that the lock has been broken,” he said. Hepointed to where the plate had been wrenched away. The wooden door had been forced open and shoved back into place. To the casual observer, it would appear secure, but someone had breached the defences of the estate.
Before he could utter some nonsensical warning about staying behind him or waiting to assess the situation, I charged ahead at a dead run, issuing a fair imitation of a Zulu battle cry as I went. My intention was to flush our intruder, and the plan worked precisely as anticipated. As I flew on winged feet, crashing through shrubberies and assorted water features, a shadow detached itself from the side of the Belvedere, fleeing across the estate.