The hairdresser lay sprawled facedown in a dark pool of congealing liquid, lifeless fingers loosely wrapped around the handle of the pistol.

“He must have known that it was over.” Anthony swallowed audibly. “He realized that we were hard on his heels and that it was only a matter of time before we saw him hang. So he elected to cheat the gallows.”

“He took his own life.” Dominic wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “The gentleman’s way out.”

Tobias looked down at the dead man. “Just like his brother.”

Shortly before daybreak, Lavinia went with Tobias to give the news to Aspasia. She came downstairs at once when her sleepy housekeeper informed her that she had callers. She had obviously still been in bed, but Lavinia noted that she somehow managed to appear very fashionable in a dark satin dressing gown, soft kid slippers, and a little lace cap.

“Pierce shot himself?” Aspasia sank down onto the sofa. “Dear heaven. Just like Zachary.”

“After Anthony and Dominic nearly caught him in the act of committing murder tonight, he must have realized that it was finished,” Tobias said.

Lavinia watched him move to stand in front of the darkened hearth. She sensed the tension in him. He had been like this, restless and brooding, when she opened the door to him a short while ago. She had given him a large glass of the brandy he had provided for himself, but it did nothing to soothe his spirits. He told her the tale of the night’s events. She had elected to accompany him when he said that he was going to take the news to Aspasia.

“I don’t understand,” Aspasia said, clutching the edges of the dressing gown at her throat. She looked bewildered. “From what you tell me, he had a head start. Why would he not simply flee the country?”

“I cannot pretend to know his mind,” Tobias said. “But from the beginning, this entire affair has been about imitating his brother.

“Perhaps when he realized that he had been found out, he decided to leave this world the same way Zachary did.”

“By his own hand.” Aspasia closed her eyes briefly. “It is all so dreadful.”

“Tobias talked to an old woman in the stews tonight who once sold babes and children,” Lavinia said gently. “Several years ago she provided two young boys to a man who told her that he had no sons of his own and wanted apprentices to take over his business.”

“I think her client was the original Memento-Mori Man,” Tobias said, never taking his eyes off the cold hearth. “It appears that his apprentices did, indeed, try to carry on in his footsteps.”

“And now both are dead,” Lavinia said quietly.

The battered hackney carriage that had conveyed them to Aspasia’s address was waiting for them in the street when they left a short time later. Tobias handed Lavinia up into the cab and then got in and took the seat across from her. In the weak glow of the interior lamp, his face was stark and grim.

“I know how this case has plagued you.” She grasped the handhold to steady herself as the aging vehicle jerked into motion. “But it is over now.”

“Yes.” He looked out the window into the night.

She sensed the darkness in him and knew that he was in danger of sinking down into his own private little corner of hell.

“You will no doubt feel more yourself in the morning,” she assured him.

“No doubt.”

She searched her brain for some other means of breaking through the ice in which he had encased himself. When she came up with nothing helpful, she decided to take the forthright approach.

“Very well, sir, out with it. You are in a very odd mood for a man who has just concluded a successful inquiry into a case of murder.

“What is wrong?”

For a moment she did not think that he would respond. But eventually he turned his head to look at her.

“Pierce was not much older than Anthony and Dominic,” he said without inflection.

Quite suddenly she understood.

“And not much older than Sweet Ned either.” She reached across the small space and took his big hands in hers. Tobias, you cannot save them all. You do what you can and that is all that you can do.

“It is enough. It must be enough. If you do not accept that truth, you will succumb to a sense of despair that will make it impossible for you to save anyone.”

His fingers clamped fiercely around hers. The storms in his eyes threatened to sweep her down into the depths. He did not speak, but after a while he pulled her into his arms.

They held each other until the hackney came to a halt at her front door.

Tobias got out, handed her down, and walked with her up the steps. She opened her reticule and found her key.

“There is something else,” he said, watching her fit the key into the lock.

She looked up quickly. “What is it?”

“This affair is not yet finished.”

“But Pierce is dead by his own hand. What else is there to discover?”

“The identity of the Memento-Mori Man.”

“But, Tobias, you said yourself, it is likely that he is no longer alive and, if he is, he will be quite elderly. Why do you feel you must find him?”

“I want to know who was responsible for turning two young boys into professional murderers.”

Lavinia saw the lamp in the shop window the following afternoon. It was a lovely piece designed to imitate an antiquity in the Roman style. The delicately carved relief depicted the story of Alexander cutting the Gordian knot.

It was perfect.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she entered the shop.

“Wedgwood,” the shopkeeper informed her. “Lovely, is it not? Just the thing for a gentleman’s study.”

She held the lamp in the palm of her hand for a moment, enjoying the feel of it and imagining what it would look like sitting on Tobias’s desk.

“Yes, it will do nicely,” she said.

A few minutes later she was back outside on the street, the lamp safely swathed in several layers of protective paper tied up with a string. She put the package into the basket she carried on her arm, nestling it among the ripe peaches she had purchased on a whim from a fruit seller on the corner. If nothing else, the fruit would make a pleasant change of pace from currants.

She paused in the shop doorway to raise her parasol. At the end of the street Aspasia Gray, dressed in a stunning walking gown and fine kid half boots, alighted from a dashing little carriage. She walked toward the door of a dressmaker’s shop.

Lavinia watched her disappear through the doorway. On impulse, she decided to take a different route back to Claremont Lane.

This was probably not the most brilliant notion that she’d had in her brief career as a private-inquiry agent, she thought a short time later when she found herself in the park across the street from Aspasia’s town house. But now that the notion had come to her, she found she could not put it aside. Her intuition was in full bloom, filling her with a sense of great urgency. It was not only Tobias who was obsessed with the sense that this case had not yet ended, she realized. She had awakened with a similar certainty this morning.

There was only one other person in the small park. An elderly man dozed on a wrought-iron bench, his gloved hands folded on the head of the walking stick propped between his knees. He opened his eyes when she went past and regarded her with politely veiled masculine appreciation. She suspected that he had been something of a charmer in his younger days.

“There is nothing lovelier than a red headed woman in a park on a summer afternoon,” he said in a low, raspy voice. “Good day to you, madam.”

She paused and smiled. “Good day to you, sir. I did not mean to awaken you from your nap.”

He moved one hand in a surprisingly graceful gesture. “I have no objection to being awakened. My dreams are those of an old man, and therefore not of great import.”