PRAISE FOR

THE VANISHING THIEF

“An engaging heroine . . . and a story that will keep you turning pages until you reach the end.”

—Emily Brightwell, national bestselling author of the Mrs. Jeffries Mysteries

“A delightful adventure in Victorian England with the motley crew that is the Archivist Society—a group dedicated to obtaining justice when all else fails.”

—Victoria Thompson, national bestselling author of the Gaslight Mysteries

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Kate Parker

THE VANISHING THIEF

THE COUNTERFEIT LADY

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THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

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USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

Copyright © 2014 by Kate Parker.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61740-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parker, Kate, 1949–

The counterfeit lady / Kate Parker.—Berkley Prime Crime trade paperback edition. pages cm

ISBN 978-0-425-26661-8 (paperback)

1. Women booksellers—Fiction. 2. Booksellers and bookselling—Fiction.3. Women private investigators—Fiction. 4. Cold cases (Criminal investigation)—Fiction. 5. London (England)—Fiction. 6. Great Britain—History—Victoria, 1837–1901—Fiction. I. Title.PS3616.A74525C68 2014

813'6—dc23

2014005613

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime trade paperback edition / August 2014

Cover illustration by Teresa Fasolino.

Cover design by George Long.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

To John,

because you’ve always been there.

CONTENTS

Praise for The Vanishing Thief

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Kate Parker

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A special thanks to my brother, William Henck, whose timely comments about the naval arms race of the 1890s provided the background to this story. Thanks also to my daughter, Jennifer, who doesn’t mind revisiting historic spots in London or making a quick trip on BritRail to do research as long as there’s time for the theater.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank the people who helped me polish both this book and my craft. Hannah Meredith, the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood, the Pixie Chicks, and the HCRW all deserve a big thanks. My agent, Jill Marsal of Marsal Lyons Literary Agency, had important suggestions to improve this work, as did my editor, Faith Black. The cover artists and copyeditors at Berkley Prime Crime brought their special skills to the book and made it the best it can be.

And a thank-you to Ken Gates, who handed me a newspaper article on the RWA National Conference and told me to join them if I wanted to learn to write. That was many years ago, but the conversation ultimately led to the Victorian Bookshop Mysteries. The thought and the advice were appreciated.

While this story is based on the current events of the time period, I’ve reimagined those events as if they were acted out by my characters. Any errors not in the service of the story are mine.

CHAPTER ONE

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"I need you.”

I looked across the width of the shop counter at the Duke of Blackford and all the blood left my head. Pressing my fingers into the wood, I gaped at him as his words echoed in my brain.

I never expected to hear him say anything like that to me, Georgia Fenchurch, a middle-class bookshop owner. Never mind the fevered dreams I had about the duke. Broad shoulders, the fragrance of pristine linen and smoke, and a smile reminiscent of his pirate-raider ancestors haunted my nights. Left speechless, I gazed into his mesmerizing dark eyes. I hadn’t seen him since spring, but I’d thought of him often.

Then he added, “Miss Fenchurch, Queen Victoria and our country need you,” and my lovely daydream of sitting across the breakfast table from those dark eyes rose into the steam that encircled London thanks to a merciless heat wave.


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