She caught another upward twitch of his lips as Dalziel took her fingers and very correctly bowed over them.
“An honor, Miss Gascoigne, although I believe it’s something less than pleasant that has brought you to town.”
“Indeed. Some blackguard has kidnapped my youngest brother.” Madeline looked at Gervase.
He waved Dalziel, whose gaze had grown sharper, to a chair. “Sit down and I’ll tell you the story.” He glanced at Madeline. “I’d better begin at the start.”
Sinking into a chair, elegantly crossing his long legs, Dalziel nodded. “You perceive me all ears.”
While Gervase related the tale of how her brothers had found the brooch, and subsequently where she’d worn it, the information he’d gathered on where it might have come from, then Ben’s disappearance and all they knew of that, Madeline turned back to the desk and continued penning Christian’s notes. Christian, too, continued, but from time to time he’d look up, frown—and the ink would dry on his nib as he became distracted with the story.
Madeline didn’t bother to recall him to his task; there were only a few more notes to write, and it was barely eleven o’clock. Christian had said it might be counterproductive to send the notes out before noon, and at least writing them gave her something to do to fill in the time, making her feel she was actively engaged in the task of rescuing Ben. Lips compressed, she wrote on, aware of Dalziel asking questions, of Gervase replying.
She could see, comprehend, that Dalziel could be intimidating, but he wasn’t a threat, and as long as he could and would help them rescue Ben, that was all she cared about.
“So this brooch might well be the key.” Dalziel frowned; Gervase had given him a brief description of the brooch. He grimaced. “I wish you’d brought it with you.”
Madeline lifted her head. “I did.” Reaching into the pocket of her borrrowed gown, she drew out the heavy brooch; she’d taken it from her own gown, wanting to keep it with her. Setting down her pen, she swiveled from the desk and held out the brooch to Dalziel; when he took it, lifting it from her palm, she looked at Gervase. “I thought if by chance we meet this blackguard face-to-face, he might be willing to exchange Ben for it.”
Gervase met her eyes, but then glanced at Dalziel.
Madeline did, too, as did Christian.
Dalziel had made no sound, no movement to draw their attention; it was his stillness, the sheer focused intensity of it, that had seized their collective attention.
Cradling the brooch in his long fingers, he was staring at it as if it were the Holy Grail. “Good Lord,” he breathed.
When he lapsed back into awestruck silence, Christian hesitantly prompted, “What?”
Dalziel drew in a long breath, then leaned back in the chair. He laid the brooch on the arm, his fingers tracing the curves, the pearls. “Our paths, it seems, cross again.”
His tone was distant, detached. Madeline glanced at Gervase. He looked as puzzled as she.
His gaze on the brooch, Dalziel at last continued, “Let me tell you what’s been keeping me in London—
one of the things, at any rate. As we—the members of this club and I—know, there’s some person, some Englishman, a member of the aristocracy, who was a French agent during the wars, but who escaped detection. He’s continued to elude me, and all others, but we know he exists, that he is a flesh-and-blood man.”
He paused, then looked up at Gervase, then Christian. “Flesh-and-blood men usually require payment for their services. We’ve had a net in place for years, identifying any payments that came via the usual channels of cash, drafts or any other of the customary monetary instruments. We’ve accounted for all such payments, leaving unresolved the question of how our elusive last traitor was paid.”
Long fingers lightly tapped the brooch. “After Waterloo—indeed, even before that—we’d started getting reports from the new French authorities. They were perfectly willing to work with us to trace any payments made by Napoleon’s spymasters. However, we still turned up nothing—nothing we hadn’t already found—until some enterprising French clerk started an inventory of the palaces, and the artworks and artifacts contained therein, the jewelry collections amassed by the various princely families of the ancient regimes. He started reporting pieces missing. Not wholesale ransacking but one piece missing here, one there. At first he assumed it was simply mislaid items, the natural outcome of the disruption of war, but as he discovered more such missing items, he began to sense a pattern. That’s when he approached his masters, and they sent his list to me.”
Dark eyes narrowing, Dalziel lifted the brooch, slowly turning it between his fingers. “Would it surprise you to learn that on that list is an oval cloak-brooch dating from the age of Charlemagne, Celtic goldwork with diamonds and pearls surrounding a large rectangular emerald?”
His voice faded into absolute silence.
Madeline broke it. “Are you saying that the man after the brooch, the one searching for a cargo the brooch formed part of—the man who has Ben—is this unidentified traitor?”
Dalziel’s eyes rose to meet hers. His jaw set. “I fear so.” He paused, then added, “As it happens, that increases the likelihood that your brother will be released unharmed once he’s identified the beach for our traitor. Our man is careful and clever—he’s only killed once that we know of, and then he was forced to it, when a henchman who knew his identity was cornered. Murder attracts too much attention—he’ll just want Ben to be lost for a while, more to keep you occupied than anything else. You’re right about that.” He looked down at the brooch. “Now we know it’s him, things make more sense.”
He stared at the brooch, then leaned forward and carefully handed it back to Madeline. “Regardless of what happens, please don’t offer to give it back. If he demands it and there’s no alternative…but don’t volunteer it.”
She considered the brooch, felt its weight in her palm. Understood why he’d given it back to her, into her keeping, appreciated his comprehension. She looked up and met his dark eyes. “Thank you. I won’t.”
He nodded, then looked at Gervase. “I think we can conclude that your blackguard is indeed our old foe, and he’s after that cargo. No surprise he was wise enough not to agree to be paid in French sous, and careful enough to wait until now to bring his ill-gotten gains into England, and used French smugglers to do it. Far safer to cache his thirty pieces of silver in France while Napoleon was in power, and bring it over now, long after the wars are over and, so he would reason, no one’s watching anymore.”
Gervase nodded, his gaze locked on the brooch. “It all makes a certain sense.”
“Indeed. We’ve already established what sort of man he is. He has no need of money, but items such as that”—Dalziel watched as Madeline slipped the brooch back into her pocket—“the treasures of kings and emperors, those would hold a real incentive for him—something only he was clever enough and powerful enough to gain, something no one else could ever have.”