“Good work, everyone.” I filled them in on what I’d learned from Lady Westover and what Lady Dutton-Cox and her daughter Elizabeth had revealed.
“I’ll track down Harry Conover and see if he and Tom are known to my former mates.” Fogarty smiled as he limped in front of the bookcases. The retired police sergeant’s eyes sparkled whenever anyone gave him the slightest reason to chat with his former colleagues.
“We need to talk to the duke’s sister, but she’s in the country,” I said. I hoped I didn’t sound bitter at the prospect of traveling four days to meet someone who’d probably refuse to talk to me, but I didn’t want to leave my shop for that long for a trip that would probably prove fruitless.
“Where’s the family seat?” Sir Broderick asked, stirring in his wheeled chair by the fire.
“Northumberland.”
“Frances, see if you can learn who the duke’s half sister, Margaret, was friendly with before she left town, and whether they’ve exchanged letters with her since.”
I looked around the room. “I’ll talk to Julia Waxpool. As she’s a debutante, Drake might be blackmailing or stealing from her, and her grandfather is on the list Lord Hancock gave us. I’ve heard she was acquainted with Lady Margaret. With luck, I’ll be able to find out what she knows about Victoria and Margaret and whether there were truly bad feelings between them.”
Turning to Emma, I added, “Could you follow up on where Edith Carter was born and if she’s ever been married?”
“Do you think chasing down the person who brought the problem to our attention is a wise use of our time?” Sir Broderick asked.
I nodded. “She knows more than she’s told us, she’s lied to me, and I want to get that problem out of the way before we take on all of polite society.”
Sir Broderick smiled. “Tomorrow, Emma, please find out everything you can about Edith Carter. After that, you may be too busy watching the bookshop in Georgia’s absence to do much sleuthing for us.”
Frances Atterby said, “Perhaps I can help Emma. I may not know the book business, but I know how to wait on people. And my son’s wife has been making noises again that I’m underfoot and should be sent away to her family’s farm to mind the chickens. Me? On a farm? Can you imagine anything worse? I can’t allow that. And I can’t stay not busy.”
Emma and I made murmuring sounds. Frances might look like she was getting older and should be slowing down, but she wasn’t. More to the point, she didn’t want to.
The widow of a London hotel manager, Frances had come to the Archivists to find her husband’s killer. It had taken us two years to bring the monster to justice, and in the meantime, her son kept telling her to sit down and put her feet up while he and his wife ran the hotel. Accustomed to an active life, Frances transferred her considerable talents and energy to the Archivist Society. As she told us, her son never noticed and her daughter-in-law didn’t care.
“After you check on those young ladies for Sir Broderick, Emma and I would be glad of your help.”
Sir Broderick said, “If there’s nothing else, we can call it a night. Georgia, I’d like you to wait a moment, please.”
Oh, great. What had I done? Or not done? Emma nodded to me and walked downstairs talking to Frances. I pulled up a chair across from Sir Broderick, letting his body block the worst of the heat from the fire. Sweat still rose on my scalp and under my corset.
“Georgia, I need to tell you something. From that time.”
I knew what time he meant. Both of our lives had been irretrievably altered.
“Do you remember Denis Lupton?”
“I remember he had a bookshop on Piccadilly. He was murdered not long after my parents—” I gulped down a sob. Those days had been too much with me lately.
“His killer was never caught,” Sir Broderick said.
“I remember every bookseller in London was terrified for weeks afterward. In the end, life returned to normal.”
“Your father had a message from Lupton a few days before he was taken prisoner. About a Gutenberg Bible.”
I grabbed the arms of the chair I sat in to prevent me from leaping up. “What did Lupton want? What did my father answer? And why have you waited until now to tell me?”
“I don’t know what the message said, but your father was frightened. He told me he sent a message back to Lupton saying no. Your father wanted nothing to do with whatever Lupton proposed.”
He’d ignored the question I most wanted answered. “Why have you waited until now to tell me this?”
“Because if I had told you before, you’d have gone off chasing the wind in hopes of finding the murderer. Now you’re doing it anyway, so you might as well know what little I learned.”