Mather, a blond and handsome man that the French might call debonair, came forward and stuck out his hand. “Well met, Inspector. I won’t invite you to sit down. I imagine that when you hear what I’ve got to say, you’ll want to hurry out and make arrests.”
Fellows hid his annoyance, hating when other people told him his job. The average man obtained his knowledge of Scotland Yard from fiction or the newspapers, neither of which was very accurate.
“Whatever you say, sir,” Fellows said.
“Lord Ian Mackenzie’s gone to Paris. Early this morning. My butler had it from my footman, who walks out with a girl who worked in Lord Ian’s kitchen. What do you make of that?”
Fellows tried to conceal his impatience. He knew Ian Mackenzie had gone to Paris, because he made it his business to know exactly what Lord Ian Mackenzie was doing at all times. He had no interest in servants’ gossip, but he answered, “Has he indeed?”
“You know about the murder in Covent Garden last night?” Mather watched him carefully.
Of course Fellows knew about the murder. It wasn’t his case, but he’d been briefed on it early this morning. Body of a woman found in her room at a boardinghouse near the church, stabbed to death with her own sewing scissors. “Yes, I heard of it.”
“Do you know who went to that house last night?”
Mather smiled triumphantly. “Ian Mackenzie, that’s who.” Fellows’s heart started to race, his blood tingling as body as when he made love to a woman. “How do you know that, sir?”
“I followed him, didn’t I? Bloody Mackenzies think they can have everything their own way.”
“You were following him? Why was that, sir?” Fellows kept his tone calm, but he found breathing difficult. At last, at long last.
“Why isn’t important. Are you interested in the details?” Fellows removed a small notebook from his coat pocket, opened it, and retrieved a pencil from the same pocket. “Go on.”
“He got into his coach in the wee hours of the morning and went to Covent Garden. He stopped at the corner of a tiny lane, coach too big to go into it. He went down the lane on foot, entered a house, stayed maybe ten minutes, then hurried out again. Then he goes to Victoria Station and takes the first train out. I returned home to hear my butler say that Mackenzie had gone to France, and then I opened my morning paper and read about the murder. I put two and two together, and decided that rather than tell a journalist, I should consult the police.”
Mather beamed like a schoolboy proud to tattle on another schoolboy. Fellows digested the information and put it with what he already knew.
“How do you know Lord Ian entered the same house where the murder was committed?”
Mather reached into his frock coat and pulled out a piece of paper. “I wrote down the address when I followed him. I wondered whom he was visiting. His fancy piece Ithought. I wanted to give the information to Mrs.... to another person.” He handed the paper to Fellows. Number 23 St. Victor Court. The very address at which a former prostitute called Lily Martin had been found dead early this morning. Fellows tried to keep his excitement in check as he slid the paper into his notebook. He’d been trying to land Ian Mackenzie in the dock for five years, and maybe this new development would let him.
He calmed himself. He’d have to pursue this carefully—no mistakes, make certain everything was proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. When he presented the evidence to his chief, it would have to be something that Fellows’s superiors couldn’t dismiss, couldn’t ignore, couldn’t keep quiet, no matter how much weight the duke, Hart Mackenzie, tried to throw around.
“If you don’t mind, sir,” Fellows said. “Please keep this information to yourself. I will act upon it, rest assured, but I don’t want him warned. All right?”
“Of course, of course.” Mather tapped his nose and winked. “I’m your man.”
“Why did you quarrel with him?” Fellows asked, putting away his notebook and pencil.
Mather’s hands balled in his pockets. “That’s rather personal.” “Something to do with breaking your engagement with Mrs. Ackerley?” Who had also gone to Paris, Fellows knew from checking up on Mather.
Mather went scarlet. “Blackguard stole her out from under my nose, telling her some pack of lies. The man is a snake.”
Likely the lady had found out about Mather’s longing for his old school days of corporal punishment. Fellows had learned that Mather kept a house of ladies where he indulged in that sort of thing. Inspector Fellows liked to be thorough.
Mather looked away. “I shouldn’t like that to get about. The newspapers . . .”
“I understand, sir.” Fellows tapped his nose in imitation of Mather. “It will be between us.”
Mather nodded, his face still red. Fellows left the house in great spirits, then returned to Scotland Yard and requested leave.
After five long years, he at last saw a chink in the armor that was the Mackenzie family. He would put his finger in the chink and rip their armor to shreds.
“How very vexing.” Beth carried the newspaper to better light at the window, but the tiny print said the same thing.
“What is, ma’am?” Her newly hired companion, Katie Sullivan, a young Irish girl who’d grown up in Beth’s husband’s parish, looked up from sorting the gloves and ribbons Beth had bought from a Parisian boutique. Beth threw down the newspaper and lifted her satchel of art things. “Nothing important. Shall we go?” Katie fetched wraps and parasols, muttering darkly, “ Tis a long way up that hill to watch you stare at a blank piece of paper.”
“Perhaps today I will be inspired.”
Beth and Katie left the narrow house Beth had hired and climbed into the small buggy her French footman had run to fetch. She could have afforded a large carriage with a coachman to drive her, but Beth was frugal by habit. She saw no reason to keep an extravagant conveyance she didn’t need. Today she drove distractedly, her gloved hands fidgety, much to the horse’s and Katie’s annoyance. The newspaper she’d been reading was the Telegraph from London. She took several Paris newspapers as well, her father having taught her to speak and read French fluently, but she liked to keep up with what was going on at home. What vexed Beth today was a story about how lords Ian and Cameron Mackenzie had nearly come to blows in a restaurant, fighting about a woman. The woman in question was a famous soprano, the very one who’d enchanted Beth at Covent Garden the week before. Many people had witnessed the event and related it to the newspapers with glee.