Joanna Bourne: The Black Hawk

He watched Cummings’s face. The house of cards was falling, and Cummings would fall with it. “A few dozen men were blackmailed. We know some of the names. We’ll figure out the rest in the next couple days. It’s all in the book.”

“It was not merely blackmail,” Sévie said. “She killed men when Le Maître gave the order. We know those names as well.”

Reams wasn’t paying attention to that. He shuffled through sheet after sheet, reading them and crumpling them in his fist, throwing the pages away. “‘He lay down naked. I began rubbing the ointment on his—’ By God, man. It says, ‘on his genitals!’ This is obscenity. What kind of a book do you have here? This is some of that French muck.”

Owl, cool as marble, turned slowly to consider Reams. “It is a journal. Did you not know hired women often write of their lives? It is a passion with some of them. Every small detail of what they do, they set down in writing.” She smiled and looked very French indeed. “It is one of several reasons a wise man does not share his secrets with harlots.”

Reams tore a page in half. Listen to this. “‘. . . with the smaller cane there will be fewer marks. I do not wish to be bruised for the visit of G.R. I must entice him to yet another betrayal of his Foreign Office, and he has developed a conscience of late. I will use—’ This is vile. This is filth.” Reams swept the pile of paper across the table onto the floor.

Sévie said, “It is filth that will splash upon many people. G.R. is George Reynolds. Later, she explains how she killed him.”

He wanted Cummings’s attention on him. Wanted the man close. “We’ll find everything in here.” When he took the black book from the desk, he handled it as if it were genuine. “The man who killed her didn’t find this.”

Cummings took a step closer. “Say what you have to say and be done with it.”

“I’ll do better than that. Look for yourself.” He tossed the book at Cummings. The pages flapped and rippled like bird’s wings. Cummings dropped his cane and grabbed for the book.

He snapped the cane from the air as it left Cummings’s hand. The head unscrewed in a single twist. The fancy hilt, hexagonal with embossed gold points, separated from the shaft.

Everybody at Meeks Street knew that cane. Cummings had swaggered around with it for years. But this was the first time they’d seen the dagger inside. It was thin, six inches long, and missing the tip.

On his desk, the tiny point of metal he’d picked out of a wooden chest in Jane Cardiff’s bedroom glinted. He laid the dagger beside it. They matched. Matched exactly.

Proof absolute. Whatever he did from here on out, he had the proof. This was the man who killed Jane Cardiff. The man who’d tried to kill Owl.

Cummings fumbled with the book and leafed from page to page, gobbling indignation. “This isn’t her book.” Cummings’s voice was a terrible hoarse whisper. He slammed the book closed. “This is some schoolgirl’s drivel.”

“We have the real journal.” He tapped the metal triangle back into its envelope and set it and Cummings’s dagger into the desk drawer. He turned the key. “We’ve all seen it. We all know. I’ll give the real book to Liverpool.”

Rigid with rage, livid as death, Cummings threw Sévie’s composition book across the room. “I will destroy you.”

When he turned to face Cummings, the black knife, the poisoned one, lay between them on the desk. “All those years ago the Service sent word to look for the Cachés. You did. You found some. But you didn’t turn them in. You kept them for your own dirty use. You bought Jane Cardiff from Gravois and Patelin. She was twelve. Even in the cesspit of Whitechapel, they spit on men who buy children.”

“I see a silly copybook anyone could have written and no one can read. You have no evidence. Gravois and Patelin won’t testify to anything.”

The dead are notably silent. “You bought her. You hurt her. Little by little, you made her an obedient tool.” He understood evil. What Cummings had done to a child was pure evil.

“She was a French spy and a whore. No one’s going to care what I did to her.” Cummings’s eyes slid to Owl. “She’s not the only French whore in England. Does Liverpool know you’re sleeping with that one?”

Sévie looked angry and Owl, grimly amused. Doyle, with his back to the bookshelves and his arms crossed over his chest could have been thinking about other matters altogether.

“Liverpool knows the war is long over. Her cousin’s a Minister of France. Nobody’s looking closely at what the French got up to under the last regime.”

Cummings’s cane, empty of the dagger, was still heavy. Clumsy, to his way of thinking. Stiff malacca, brown as a walnut. His gut told him Cummings had used this cane to beat and break a half-grown girl. “You didn’t know about that journal, did you? She must have told you about it when she was dying.” He saw the flicker in Cummings’s eyes. He’d guessed right. “You didn’t have time to find it.”

Owl seated herself on the arm of the sofa. She laced her hands together, wrapped about her knee. “Did you think of the irony? You destroyed Jane Cardiff. Now she destroys you.”

“She can’t touch me. None of you can.” Cummings’s lip lifted in a sneer, and it was Adrian Hawkhurst he looked at. “I’ve held my position longer than you’ve been alive. I know every powerful man in London. I know secrets about everyone. If I call the journal a fake, I’ll be believed.”

Cummings had centuries of breeding behind him, generations of ordering men around, getting away with murder. He had it in his bones.

“If you try to use those ravings against me, Hawkhurst, I’ll see you in prison for murder.” Coldly, Cummings gazed from face to face, at every man and woman in the room. “I’ll ruin the rest of you. I’ll make it my life’s work.”

Nobody even blinked.

“I’ll grant you this. I didn’t see it, at first.” He began to pace, crossing in front of Cummings. “I like puzzles, but this one just about drove me mad. Why would anyone go to this much trouble just to disgrace me? Easier to point a rifle and shoot. Killing’s the easiest thing in the world. You agree with that, don’t you, Cummings?”

Cummings let his eyes agree. He was probably thinking how much Adrian Hawkhurst needed killing.

Death lurked in this room. But Cummings wasn’t the one dealing it.

I am. “When I found out you were behind it—Do you know how we found out?”

“He does not.” Owl was bright-eyed and mocking. “So I will tell him. Do not stab anyone with a fancy dagger, my lord. Especially not when the hilt leaves its mark pressed into the corpse.” She touched her chest. “Here. Monsieur Doyle and Monsieur Hawkhurst had no difficulty in recognizing the pattern of your cane.”

Reams looked up from the papers he was still reading. “There’s a damned lot of accusation going—”

“Quiet,” Cummings said. “I’m handling this.”

Then they both ignored Reams.

“Once I knew who was behind this, I knew why. Military Intelligence is a dead horse, and we all know it. You wanted the Service. Killing me wouldn’t give it to you. You needed a scandal in the Service so embarrassing Liverpool would bring in an outsider to clean house. You were sure he’d bring you in.”

Owl rearranged the skirt of her dress, being the great lady, untouchable and disapproving. “It is all ambition, which is very ugly. The Whigs call for the Military Intelligence to be dissolved, as they do not like secret police set to spy upon Englishmen. Over the years, for advancement, you have ordered the death of innocent men. You have blackmailed and ruined dozens more. When we take vengeance for Jane Cardiff, we collect it for them also.”