“What mark?” Baz asked.
Everyone in the room knew Gemma’s past; she’d explained to them the night before, so there was little point hemming over it. “We found one of my family’s calling cards on the side of a building between here and Marylebone.”
“They’ve calling cards?” Brogan blinked a few times.
“They leave marks,” Gemma explained. “Telling others they’ve been there and which of them did the deed, whatever it were that time.”
“Someone in your family was that far from Southwark?” Baz sounded as displeased with that as she was.
“Oi.”
“Could be an old mark,” Brogan said.
She shook her head. “Ash markings don’t last long.”
Brogan and Baz exchanged a glance, one that weren’t anything like relief.
“What I can’t sort,” Móirín said, “is why they’d mark that building. There’s no graveyard nearby. And, though ’tis a more well-to-do spot, nothing about it looked like a treasure trove.”
“The Kincaids don’t do nothing without reason,” Gemma said. “And they don’t lay crow about failures.” If Uncle Silas marked that building, he was bragging, shouting to the London underworld that he’d accomplished something.
“What building was the mark on?” Brogan asked.
“Number 32 Welbeck Street.” Móirín had apparently not only taken note of the address but committed it to memory.
The men both looked at Gemma. She shrugged; she hadn’t the first idea what that building held. “Looked like a house to me.”
“It is,” Vera said, drawing everyone’s attention. “Father Popoff lives there. He’s the priest attached to the Russian Embassy in London. The Russian Embassy chapel is at the back of that house.”
“Is there a churchyard attached to this chapel?” Gemma asked.
“No.”
“It weren’t a resurrection, then.” Gemma leaned back in her chair, mind spinning with questions.
“Maybe they was following a funeral from that chapel to a graveyard?” Vera suggested.
“They’d’ve marked the graveyard, not the chapel.” She pushed out a breath. “They do more than resurrections, though. It could be they fenced something or gave someone a good ragging.”
“Do they consider burglaries and beatings significant enough to leave their calling card?” Baz asked.
“Not usually. It’d need to be part of something bigger or aimed at someone important.”
Móirín’s levity had given way to concern. “I asked you this morning, but I’m asking again—are you in too much danger to be in that area?”
She didn’t have a sure answer. Daylight hours were safer, generally. The right eyes on a place helped too. “Does that bobby chum of yours, Parkington, patrol that area every day, or was seeing him today an oddity?”
“I don’t know where he usually patrols,” Brogan said.
“I’m gladIdon’t,” Móirín added.
In a whisper clearly meant to be overheard, Brogan said to the rest of the table, “Methinks she doth protest too much, yeah?”
Móirín shook her head firmly. “That constable’s like a dog at a bone when he smells anything questionable. Some of us’d rather our particular bones be left in peace.”
Weren’t that the truth.
Baz took Gemma’s hand, quite unexpectedly offering the comfort she desperately needed. But her heart couldn’t survive breaking again.