Joanna Bourne: The Black Hawk

“Seems so.” Lines horizontal. Lines vertical. The geography of the face that set the longitude and latitude of eyes, nose, mouth. “They’re an odd pair to be friends.”

“They sit around and talk about murder. Conant helps the Service when he can and Hawk doesn’t kill people in London. Bow Street appreciates the courtesy. This one’s interesting.” Doyle picked a clipping from a file. “Two years ago an MP from the wilds of Buckinghamshire got himself stabbed in Mayfair walking home from a dinner party.”

“I remember. Vessey. William, I think. Never solved.”

“Good memory. Six months before that . . .” Doyle indicated the papers on the floor beside him, “a Thomas Daventry was taken out of the Thames with stab wounds in him. Not an MP, but active in politics. A Radical with money.”

“If somebody’s planning to wipe out the Whigs, they’re taking their time about it.” He sketched the shape of the lips.

“And this is a bloke from the Foreign Office. George Reynolds, politics unknown. Death by a surfeit of steel through his belly.” Doyle closed one file and reached for another.

Upstairs, in the hall, there was a scratching of dog toenails. Muffin tapped claws down the hall, transferring his guarding duties from Justine DuMotier’s door to Hawk’s.

Justine had gone into Hawk’s room.

Doyle tilted his head back to look at the ceiling. “They’re keeping Muffin awake.”

“Nobody’s getting any sleep tonight.”

A solid, comfortable thump from the upstairs hall. Muffin settled down, meaning Justine was staying for bit.

“Be nice if this simplified matters,” Doyle said.

“And about time.”

“But they don’t do anything simple, do they?”

“Not so far.” The Caché’s mouth wasn’t wide, but the lips were full. She had a flat bridge on the nose. He’d finish that up with white chalk, last thing. “You’re Hawk’s executor, if he dies, aren’t you?”

Doyle didn’t look surprised. Hard to make Doyle look surprised. “Have been for years.”

“Who gets the money?”

Doyle pulled a new file into his lap, opened it, and started through. “There are easier ways to kill somebody if you just want his money.”

“Humor me.”

“Ask Hawk.”

“No.” He worked on the eyebrows. Then went over it with pen and India ink.

Doyle said, “Setting aside that it’s illegal for me to talk about this and Hawk wouldn’t like it, it’s not useful.”

“We have to cross it off the list. He’s a rich man.”

After another minute of thought. Doyle said, “He’s left houses and businesses to old friends who are already running them or living in them. A gold watch to George. Justine DuMotier gets a silver chain with a medal on it. He’s set up fifty or sixty annuities. Retired agents, mostly.”

“I don’t see Hawk leaving property to somebody who’d kill him for it.”

A grunt from Doyle.

“What about the rest? That’s a good many tens of thousands of pounds. Who gets that?”

“Well, that goes to me, you see. Which is a technicality, meaning it goes to Maggie.”

“For the orphanages.”

“What Hawk calls, ‘those damn brats too clumsy to make a living at theft.’ ” Doyle had worked his way through the files for April. He set that down and opened up May. “I could steal the lot, if he obliged me by dying.”

“And you’d step in as Head of the British Service.”

“I would indeed,” Doyle said. “You keep coming up with reasons for me to kill him.”

“Except you don’t need the money and you don’t want to run the Service. You’ve spent a long career avoiding it.”

“There’s that,” Doyle agreed amiably.

THE SMELL OF A FANCY BALL IN LONDON WAS SWEET wine, sweat, and perfume. In winter, add damp wool to that. It didn’t smell too different from a whorehouse, really.

“I hate seeing her without a gun,” Hawker said.

“Here I thought you didn’t like guns.” Doyle strolled at his side, looking stupid and benign and well-groomed. The quintessence of English aristocrat.

“I don’t. But Justine does.” He followed the lilac silk weaving through the forest of black coats and pastel debutante gowns. That was Owl, with Séverine beside her, working her way around the reception room. “I let her talk me into sending her in with one wing out of commission and no gun. I must be out of my mind.”

“You and the generality of mankind.”

The Pickerings’ ballroom, reception room, all the antechambers, and every damn room in the place was noisy, crowded, and covered with gilt and mirrors. Overheated, over-scented, overdecorated. Pax and Owl searched, dancer by dancer, wallflower by wallflower, looking into every face, trying to spot one sparrow out of the flock.

“She has a knife in her sleeve,” Doyle said. “She’s got another under her dress. She’s been in worse places, with less—so has Sévie, for that matter—and we got five men wandering around, armed to the teeth. I’ve seen pitched battles with less weaponry.”

That was an exaggeration. “It only takes one bullet.”

“Which our Caché is not going to contribute unless she’s stuffed a gun down her titties.” Doyle shook his head. “You’re staring at Justine again. I taught you better than that.”

“I’m keeping track of an operation.”

“You’re staring. This is why I never put a husband and wife in the field together.”

“We’re not married.”

“I don’t put lovers together, either.” Doyle nodded to a man Hawker didn’t know. When they were out of earshot, Doyle murmured, “Richard Shaw, Justice of the Peace, up from the country. Rabid Tory. Probably trying for an introduction to Liverpool.”

Liverpool, the Prime Minister, was standing in an alcove on the far side of the room. Eight or ten men had gathered in close, basking in the glow of power, chatting. A respectful distance cleared around them.

“Castlereagh, Granville, and Melbourne.” Doyle named them.

“Liverpool is knee deep in Whig politicians.”

“Diplomatic business, since it’s Castlereagh. Probably the Prussian tariffs.” Doyle said, “Cummings is busy.”

Lord Cummings had wedged himself into a place on Liverpool’s right hand. He was taller than the other men around Liverpool, gray-haired and distinguished, but he seemed flimsy next to the others.

“Small fish for that pond.” Lordship or no, Cummings wasn’t the equal of the other men in Liverpool’s circle. “He’s talking nineteen to the dozen. I wonder what he’s up to.”

“At a guess, he’s mending bridges. Military Intelligence is unpopular in England. Liverpool’s being criticized in the newspapers, and he doesn’t like it. He’s not cozy with Cummings lately.”

“Who shall blame Liverpool? Let us go trolling for a Caché.”

The ton parted to let them through—diplomats, MPs, bankers and bishops, staid country gentry, the aristocracy of Europe. They moved aside for the boy from the rookeries of St. Giles.

There’d been a time when his greatest ambition was to be a gentleman. Gentlemen—he was sure of this—ate all the sausages and eel pie they wanted. They kept coal fires burning on every grate. They wore silk nightshirts to bed and they pissed in gold chamber pots.

He’d set out to make himself a nob. He’d succeeded. Trouble was, it had stopped being an act years ago. Somebody named Sir Adrian had crawled into his skin and set up housekeeping. The boy from St. Giles wasn’t quite comfortable in there anymore.

“Hawkhurst. I thought you were out of town.”

“Jeremy.” Greet a friend. Shake hands. Promise to talk when they met for cards next week at Mortimer’s house. Walk on.