Part 27 (2/2)

She sipped her brandy. ”I don't think it was curiosity, Richard. Not last night, anyway.”

He offered her an expression of frank surprise. ”Really? You didn't sleep well either?”

”No one did, it seems. And one boy's night-time wandering may have led to his death.”

”Ah, yes. Tell me about the murder.”

”There's little enough to tell.” She let her hand slide across the tailored dark fabric of his trousers before leaning back, curling against the arm of the loveseat in a manner that would have horrified her tutors. ”Don Sebastien has involved himself, but he is-as is his wont-playing his cards close to his chest. And whoever it was that arranged the vanishments and the murder isn't above a little rough play with a hunting rifle.” Sebastien had dug the flattened bullet out of molded plaster. Now Garrett slipped it from the cuff of her glove and dropped it with a clink into Richard's brandy gla.s.s.

His lips thinned. ”You were not harmed.” Flatly, as if he would accept it no other way.

”Thanks to de Ulloa, I was not harmed.” She swirled brandy on her tongue, watching Richard fish the bullet out between thick fingers and hold it up to the light. Her voice was more petulant than she had intended when she spoke again. ”If I could find the rifle that came from, I might be able to prove who fired it. And I wish you would let me have that Peter Eliot a.s.sa.s.sinated.”

”Abby Irene....”

”I know, my love. I'm not- quite-serious. Yet. But you know he'd rather have your nephew in your place.”

”David is too young.” The Duke raked a hand through his hair and bit his lip. ”Which is why Peter would want him in my place. Of course, I'd have to be dead.”

”Dead or abdicated.” She did not permit longing to enter her voice.

”There is that. And there are days when the temptation to divorce is overwhelming. But then I think of Mayor Peter Eliot. And the French and Iroquois on our Western border. And,” he continued bitterly, ”King Phillip, and his Eastward-looking eye.”

”I wouldn't have you anyway, Richard.” Trying for levity.

He toasted her, one eyebrow raised, his voice rich with irony. ”What sensible woman would marry a man she knows to be unfaithful?” Into her silence, he continued, ”The murder.”

She finished her brandy. ”Grisly,” she said, standing to pour herself another. ”Inhuman, I think. Nasty.”

”Ah.” He frowned as she turned back.

She saw him taking in the disarray of her dress, and drew herself up a little prouder. You were a famous beauty once, Abigail Irene. If you're stupid enough to sleep with your superior, you'd best be smart enough to use whatever you have left. ”Also, the murdered boy was slain on his own doorstep. Mud to your ankle, and not a footstep. No marks and no signs anywhere, except two windows open and his whole family missing.”

The Duke leaned forward, all but ready to jump to his feet. ” Missing? How many?”

”Mother, father, adolescent sister, housekeeper. Strange.”

”Indeed. Continue.”

Garrett shrugged. ”Most odd was the wax.”

”Wax? Candlewax?”

”Droplets of it. Scattered throughout the house. Splashed. Near the boy's body as well.”

”I see. And yet no leads?”

Garrett shook her head. ”If I locate the candle-presuming it is a candle-I'll be able to use the principles of contagion, similarity and sympathy to prove that the wax originated with that particular one, and we'd have a case. But....”

”But?”

”Well.... Richard, I have nothing. I haven't even a trail to follow, and four people are missing who may very well be alive and in danger somewhere.”

Across the room, he nodded. ”I see.”

”Do you?”

No smile creased Richard's face now. ”You say that Don Sebastien has taken an interest?”

Garrett nodded curtly.

”Use him,” Richard said, coldly. ”Use whatever it takes. I'm relying on you, Abby Irene.”

”Richard,” she answered softly. And: ”My Lord.”

Garrett seldom entertained at home, and when she did, they were usually the sort of guests one received in the den, or the library. Her laboratory was on the first floor of her townhouse, immediately behind the parlor, where one might have antic.i.p.ated a dining room. The room itself was half study and half chemistry, with books and chairs lining the walls and long stone-topped benches running parallel.

Cleanly clothed, now, and gowned in a white canvas smock to protect her dress, Garrett moved crisply between her granite-topped workbench and the thaumaturgic circle inlaid in red and white stone tiles amid the slate-blue field of the floor. She laid out the samples she'd isolated from the body of the murdered boy: earth, fingernail clippings, sc.r.a.ps of his clothing and sc.r.a.pings from the steps on which he had died. She piled each sample in a shallow watch gla.s.s placed in one of the isolation circles. Those smaller peripheral circles also held beakers of clotted blood and an Erlen flask of rainwater, along with samples of hair that she had retrieved from the toiletries of the missing individuals-a bit of everything she meant to eliminate from the parameters of her spell. At the very center of the circle, over the gas flame, a crucible warmed. A low table set beside it held a small heap of candles brought from the victims' house and several more watch gla.s.ses.

Three of these shallow dishes each contained a bit of the waxlike substance. The last one cradled splinters from the gouges in the blue wooden door.

By seven o'clock, Garrett was on her second pot of tea. Mike had come in to find her after his supper and was dozing in his basket. Straightening from her bench, she had just thought of pausing for her own meal before the evening's real work when a familiar tap on the door brought her head around. Mike p.r.i.c.ked up his ears and hopped to his feet as she opened the door.

”Supper already, Mary?” Garrett asked the dark, narrow-shouldered housekeeper standing in the hallway.

Mary's eyes twinkled. ”If it please you, m'Lady, there's a right handsome gentleman caller to see you. I've invited him in.” Mary extended an ornate silver tray so that Garrett could pick up the visiting card lying on it.

”Ah. Indeed?” She didn't think she needed to glance at the name-the slightly oily feel of parchment between her fingertips told her everything. ”Engraved. Very nice. Send Don Sebastien in, please. I will receive him in the laboratory.” Mike wagged his coiled plume happily after Mary; she ducked her head and left.

Mary must have taken the gentleman detective's overcoat and hat, but Garrett noticed that the shoulders of his coat were damp through. ”Is it raining again, Don Sebastien?” Absently, her hand came up to press the place between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s where a sigil tattooed in crimson marked her training. She felt as if his gaze burrowed through cloth to notice it.

”Indeed,” he said, bowing over her hand, making no comment on her stained smock. Again, his lips brushed the back of her fingers-ungloved, this time-and sent a s.h.i.+ver down her spine.

Her terrier withdrew to his basket and watched the tall stranger warily. She snapped her fingers for Mike's attention, and his tail flipped twice, but he merely lay there, watching with disturbing, alert eyes.

”Have you had any success, my dear Crown Investigator?”

She sighed and turned away, gesturing toward the circle. ”As you can see, I am just about to commence. What have you discovered, Don Sebastien? As I recall, when we parted company, you were on your way to research the boy's family.”

”And so I was. May I sit?”

”As it pleases you,” she answered. He selected a wingbacked chair against the wall, pushed away from Garrett's equipment and opposite Mike's basket, not far from the hearth.

When he was settled on the olive brocade and had refused tea, he began to speak. ”The lad's name was Bruce Carlson, home on Easter break from a school in Westchester. His family, as you no doubt noticed from the house, were not without resources, which proved fortunate for them, because the lad seems to have been something of a troublemaker.”

”Really?” Garrett turned up the flame under her crucible and began breaking the candles into it. ”What sort of trouble?”

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