“Is everyone unharmed?” he asked.

Nicholson nodded, and Dallington said, “Think so, yes.”

They looked around at the conspirators. “You’re all under arrest,” Nicholson said. He stood and went to the window, lifted it, and blew his police whistle. Then he turned to Sister Grethe. “You especially.”

“Can you be especially under arrest?” asked Dallington.

Grethe spat in his direction, disgustedly. “Lovely,” said Nicholson.

“I’m beginning to suspect she’s not a real nun,” said Dallington to Lenox and Nicholson.

“Possibly not.”

“To begin with, her English is better than she lets on,” said Dallington.

She swore an oath at him, violently—and in English.

That evening, when Lenox arrived home, he passed by the two sentries in front of his house with a nod and turned the new second key in the new second lock, thankful that these precautions were no longer necessary. They had their criminals. He and Nicholson and Dallington had agreed: The exact details of their crimes could wait until the morning. Let them simmer overnight. Armbruster, too; he was back in custody.

Lady Jane greeted him at the door, with a kiss on the cheek. She held a blanket she was sewing for her cousin Addie’s new infant. “I decided just now that I’d like to have a dinner party in two weeks,” she said.

“I was nearly shot today.”

Her face paled. “What?”

“It doesn’t mean we can’t have a party.”

“What happened, Charles?”

“Maybe a smallish party, given the circumstances.”

“No, don’t talk like that, please—what do you mean, nearly shot? Are we in danger? Ought we to leave Hampden Lane?”

“No—no, no, no, I’m sorry, my dear. It all ended well enough.”

She had an arm around him and was looking up at him. Now she leaned her face into his neck. “I don’t like this new job.”

They walked down the hall and went to sit in her drawing room, and carefully he relayed the story of the afternoon to her. He spoke in a tone of voice that downplayed the real sense of danger he had felt—the thudding of his heart, the mixture of euphoria and dismay he’d felt in the hours afterward—while giving her all of the facts.

But she knew him well. “You must be terribly shaken.”

“It’s different than Parliament, certainly.”

She stood up and poured him a brandy then—his second of the day, since Nicholson had sent out for a bottle of it when they returned to the Yard, admitting himself that his hand was still trembling.

“But you were the one who charged her yourself,” Dallington had said. “You saved all three of us.”

“Not at all,” said Nicholson.

“He’s quite right,” Lenox interjected.

Nicholson nodded philosophically. “Well—a toast to all three of us being alive, then.”

“Hear, hear.”

Lenox described this conversation to Lady Jane, too, and she said that she intended to send Nicholson a hamper from Fortnum’s, and asked Lenox whether he would prefer sweets or savories.

“I have no earthly idea.”

“You’ve been with him every day for a week.”

“I know that he likes ducks. Living ones, however.”

“You’re hopeless.”

At last they exhausted the subject of the day’s events, and Lenox said, “Is there anything left for me to eat?”

“Of course. What would you like?”

He looked up and thought for a moment. Suddenly he felt a powerful sense of relief—he was alive, when he might have been dead. No matter the circumstances, that made it a notable day. He was very glad to have Jane, very glad. He squeezed her hand. “I think I would like scrambled eggs, toast, and a cup of very strong and very sweet tea,” he said.

“You’ll have it in eight minutes,” she said, jumping to her feet. “We should have given it to you straightaway.”

Eight minutes later—or perhaps a few more, but he could be charitable—the food and drink were on a tray before him, steaming and filling the room with the rich smell of warm butter and freshly brewed tea leaves.

He tucked in voraciously. “What kind of party did you have in mind?” he asked between bites.

“Only a supper, next weekend. But it’s the last thing we need to think about just at the moment.”

“No, it would be very fine, I think. My brother can come. I’ve seen too little of him recently. Too little of all of you!”

After he had eaten they sat on the sofa for a passage of time. Lenox picked up a newspaper and began to read, which he found restful, and Lady Jane returned to sewing the blanket. She paused midstitch after some time and looked at Lenox curiously. “Who was she, then?” she asked. “Sister Grethe?”

Lenox smiled. “She wouldn’t say at first, but we found out soon enough.”

“How?”

“When we returned to the Yard, I asked several of the older bobbies if they remembered Obadiah Smith, a constable for the Yard. Two did, but no more than the name. But another fellow, Clapham, said Obadiah Smith was the least savory, most crooked officer he’d met in all his days at the Yard. It was then that I realized who Sister Grethe might be, if that man’s son cared enough to stop for her before leaving London.”

“Who?”

“His mother.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

With Smith in custody, people began to talk quickly.

He spoke himself as well. “It was Armbruster who managed it all,” he claimed.

“Armbruster?”

His smooth, ingratiating voice had returned in custody. “The only thing I did in this whole nasty sequence of events was to give His Lordship the port from Mr. Francis. Quite unintentionally.”

“So we are still to believe there was a Mr. Francis.”

Smith looked at them guilelessly. “Of course there was,” he said.

Miss Randall followed the same line. She was the second person they questioned the next morning—with many to come after her. Her presence the afternoon before had reminded Lenox of the other three servants in Wakefield’s employ. They had described Francis identically the week before, his visits, his dress. They had all been working from the same script. Now they were all under arrest.

As for Armbruster, he knew when the game was up.

“They tell us you orchestrated it all,” Nicholson said, as Dallington and Lenox leaned against the wall behind the table where the two colleagues faced each other. It was a rather nicer cell, and there were the remnants of a decent breakfast nearby, an orange peel, a crust of toast, the civilities accorded someone who oughtn’t to have been there. “They say that you brought in the girls with Wakefield, shot Jenkins, poisoned the marquess.”

“Have you gone completely mad?” asked Armbruster.

“No more of that,” warned Nicholson. “You have”—he looked at his own pocket watch, a brass one, well polished and well loved by the looks of it—“twenty minutes to tell us everything you know, or I can’t promise anything short of the rope. You’ve made quite a lot of your friends in this building look foolish. Nobody other than the three of us has any cause to show you leniency.”

For a moment Armbruster’s face went rigid with anger. Then, though, it yielded. He was a weak-willed person, Lenox thought—gluttonous for food, as was obvious from his figure, and apparently gluttonous for money.

That had been the root of it all. He and Smith had known each other since childhood, both the sons of peelers. Eighteen months before, Armbruster said, Smith had taken him into his confidence: They were starting a high-end brothel in the West End and needed some protection from the Yard’s interference. Armbruster had accepted what seemed in the moment like easy money, nothing life-altering, a pound or two a week, and in exchange had kept an eye on the area and smoothed over several minor incidents.

Then, on the day before Jenkins’s death, Smith had wired him with an urgent request to meet.