Joanna Bourne: The Black Hawk

“You see that. But Jane Cardiff has lived a different life in this apartment. This bed is the stage upon which the courtesan plays her role. Whatever power she found there, she did not enjoy. This room . . . I will tell you. I have been in rooms like this.”

“You don’t have to say it.”

“But I will. I have acted horrible games upon exactly such a bed. Long ago. I understand this room.”

“Owl, you’re not Jane Cardiff.”

“It is the same.”

“Well, bugger that for a lie.”

He stomped off to look out the window. She had made him angry, in that sudden way she sometimes did.

She said, “I was also a whore.”

“Don’t say that.”

He was angry for her sake. Even after all these years, always angry. Perhaps she had healed, because she knew her anger still lived inside Hawker. “I understand her this well. She doesn’t sleep in that ugly, red bed. Look here.”

She opened the door of the small room beyond and brought the lamp. There was barely space for both of them. The disorder was less. Here was only a narrow bed with wool blankets and the simplest of rough linen sheets—something a young maid might have been given. The table held an oil lamp and an oak box, flat-topped, a foot square. It had been pried open. A rush-bottomed chair stood under the window. The white curtains were closed, leaving the room dim in the earliest light.

She said, “This is her place.”

“You think she slept here?”

“When she was alone, yes. This is her private place. There are nuns who own more, but everything here is hers. If she has secrets, we’ll find them here.”

They would not find clandestine drawers under the bed frame or secret panels in the table. Such hiding places were for fools and amateurs.

“Floorboards.” Hawker did not sound enthusiastic. It was a tedious job, on hands and knees, pulling at floorboards. He was examining the pieces of the ruined box. And frowning.

“Lift the light, will you?”

“You have found something?”

“I think . . .” Hawker ran his thumb along the back of the box where the wood was pried away and turned the wood to a slant against the light. “We have something . . .” He picked it out between thumb and forefinger.

A tiny triangle of metal glinted on his palm.

“That is the point of a knife,” she said.

“Second-rate steel. Dagger point. Half an inch of it broken off. Somebody was impatient in his prying. I keep telling people a knife is a delicate instrument, not a pry bar. No one ever listens.” He pulled out a handkerchief and wrapped the bit of metal. “A gentleman always carries a handkerchief,” he murmured. “There’s a knife in London missing its tip. Needle in a haystack comes to mind.”

“It is likely someone will try to stab you with it soon.”

“I will hold that happy thought in mind.”

“He did not find what he sought in that box.” In this spare, childish room, there was nowhere else. “I think it is above this table. Whatever it is, when she wants it she climbs the table and steps upon that box and reaches up.”

She moved the chair from the window. When she stepped up on the table, it was obvious what section of the molding had been touched again and again. She pressed, and the spring released. The panel slid away easily.

She took a small black leather book out. Hawker’s hands around her waist lifted her down and set her upon her feet on the floor.

THEY did not stay in that stark room. The light was better on the terrace, but that was not why they went to stand there.

“In code . . .” She turned the pages.

Hawker read over her shoulder. “French. And old. I think that’s the first of your codes I ever learned. I can probably read it better than you.”

“Almost certainly. You are good with codes. It was expunged many years ago. If she had been working with the Police Secrète, she would have changed to a more recent one.” She flipped through the pages. “Everything is undated, but see how the ink has gone pale at the beginning of the book. This is years of writing.”

“Let’s see the last pages.” He opened the book near the end. A minute passed. “She’s not just using the old symbols. She’s added new stuff. And it’s in English.” He frowned. “It says, ‘I have failed in my . . .’ There’s something I can’t read here. ‘In my mission once again. The rifle was inaccurate. Le Maître will not be pleased.’ Owl, we’re going to find it all. It’s in here.”

“Her mission. Her Master. She was working for someone.”

“She says, ‘I have been seen. I must wait until their suspicions are—’”

She heard a whistle below, from the garden. A snatch of song.

She would have ignored it. A boy in the lane on an errand.

Hawker leaned over the railing of the balcony and watched the man who had entered the garden. Watched hand signs. Made one of his own and then another.

“Outside,” he said. He headed for the front door of the apartment, hurrying.

She did not make complications when important matters went forward. But she also did not follow blindly. “What is happening? Give me ten words.”

“There’s a body on the street out back. A woman. I think we know what became of Jane Cardiff.”

They went downstairs and circled the house to go look at the body.

JUSTINE PULLED THE SHADES OF THE WINDOWS OF the coach. She did not think anyone was observing Jane Cardiff’s house, but there was no reason to advertise their presence here, where a murder had so recently happened.

She was not stunned by the death she had confronted. She had seen many men die, and women too. But it had seemed Jane Cardiff’s blank eyes stared at her accusingly before Doyle had reached his big hand to close them.

She sat beside Hawker in the coach. The dead woman and Doyle, who must deal with the grim formalities of death, receded behind them. She said what she had been thinking for a time. “She was what I might have become.”

“You’re not Jane Cardiff,” Hawker said. “You’re not anything like her.”

“If things had gone differently—”

“Never.”

“We cannot know.”

“I know,” Hawker said. “You’d have woke up one fine morning and stabbed the bastard. Nothing more certain.”

“I hope so.”

“We’ll deal with him now, you and me.” He shifted on the seat so he held her against the motion of the coach as they turned the corner, not letting it jostle her arm. Always, at every instant, he was careful of her. “I know how I’m going to do it. Just a matter of settling some of the details.”

“Always, it is the small details that trip one up.”

“I’ve never wanted to kill anyone as much as I want to kill the man who sent a knife after you.”

Adrian Hawkhurst sprawled beside her on the seat of the coach and constructed the scheme that would end in a man’s death. She imagined she could see the plan stretching through his mind, weaving itself in strong simplicity, like the threads of a snare.

They were still dressed for the evening party at the Pickerings. He, in black coat and starched neckcloth. She, in lilac silk.

Last night, she had watched Sir Adrian Hawkhurst weave his way among the charming, flirtatious women of the ton. They had followed him with their eyes, admiring and speculative. Not one had seen beneath the deceptive surface of him.

“You’re thinking,” he said. “Tell me.”

“I am thinking of what we have become over the years, you and I. Where we ended up.”

“The head of an obscure government department. A shopkeeper. Ordinary folk.” He spread his fingers over the silk of her sleeve, appreciating it. She saw the smile in his eyes before it showed up on his lips. “Let me hold you, shopkeeper.”