Someone had. And that someone had shifted the blame squarely on Louisa.

“Thank you.” Louisa squeezed Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ hand again. “I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all this.”

“And I you,” Mrs. Leigh-Waters said. “Will you forgive me?”

“Of course.”

Mrs. Leigh-Waters let out her breath, her relief plain. Louisa and Daniel exchanged a glance, silently agreeing to end the conversation, and they took the rest of their tea in peace.

* * *

When Louisa and Daniel left Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ house, Louisa gave Mac’s coachman directions to take them straight to London and Scotland Yard. She would try to keep Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ confidences as best she could, but she wanted to tell Fellows what they’d discovered about Hargate. Immediately. As awkward as it would be to face Fellows again after last night, she wanted him to know.

Daniel agreed, and the coach headed east at a good clip.

When they reached Scotland Yard, however, the sergeant downstairs told Daniel that Fellows was out. So was Sergeant Pierce and Constable Dobbs. But they could always leave a message.

Daniel returned to the coach, where Louisa waited, with this information.

“I suppose I can leave him a message,” Louisa said, unhappy.

“No.” Daniel knocked on the roof of the coach and directed the coachman to the Strand. “We’ll wait for him in his own lair. Might be a while, though. I say we fetch food and drink on the way.”

* * *

Sergeant Pierce had suggested to Fellows that they go back to Richmond to reexamine the scene of the crime, but Fellows negated the idea. As he’d contemplated before, this was a crime of Mayfair. The players, and the answer, lay in that section of London.

Fellows began by visiting the Bishop of Hargate’s father, the Earl of Norwell, in Norwell’s Berkeley Square house. Norwell didn’t want to see Fellows, the butler informed them when he answered the front door. He also said that Fellows and Pierce should have gone down the stairs to enter the house via the kitchen.

Fellows did tell Pierce to go down—it never hurt to cultivate those below stairs and learn the household gossip—but Fellows remained squarely in the doorway.

“Tell his lordship that if he wishes me to find and arrest his son’s killer, and quickly, he’ll speak to me,” Fellows said to the butler.

The man looked aggrieved, but at last he obeyed. Pierce sketched a cheerful salute and departed for the kitchen.

The Earl of Norwell kept Fellows waiting in a reception room for at least half an hour before the butler returned and led Fellows up a flight of stairs to a study lined with books. The room’s high walls held a second floor of bookcases, reached by an iron spiral staircase.

Norwell looked much like his dead son, handsome and lean, though twenty years older. His hair was gray, his belly gone to fat from too much rich food and too much port, his black mourning suit making his pale face more sallow.

Norwell ran his gaze up and down Fellows, obviously not liking what he saw. “So you’re old Kilmorgan’s by-blow.”

Fellows made a shallow bow, hiding the sting. “I have that honor.”

Norwell grunted. “You look like him. Kilmorgan was a mean son of a bitch, and the current duke is no better.”

Fellows took this stoically. He’d come to like Hart more and more as he got to know him, but he knew he’d waste his breath defending him to Norwell. Norwell was the sort of man who made his judgments and stuck to them, come hell or high water.

“How can speaking to me help you catch a murderer?” Norwell asked. “It was the Scranton bitch who did it, and we all know it. That entire family is mad.”

Fellows clenched his jaw to keep his temper. “New evidence has come to light that tells me it was not Lady Louisa.”

“What evidence? You’re lying. The only reason you haven’t arrested her is that she’s connected with the Mackenzies, and you have an absurd loyalty to them.”

“No, Lord Norwell,” Fellows said in a hard voice. “I’m after the truth, no matter what. One reason I came here today is that I’d like to look over your son’s bedchamber. His valet told me he often stayed in this house when he'd be in Town only briefly and didn’t want to bother opening up his own flat. Is that correct?”

Norwell looked Fellows over again, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “You’re a bit above yourself, aren’t you, Chief Inspector? You might be a duke’s son, but you’re still a bastard.”

“Which has nothing to do with me looking at your son’s rooms.”

Norwell heaved a sigh. “What are you searching for?”

“I’ll know that when I find it.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“I’m leaving no stone unturned,” Fellows said firmly. “I want this killer found as quickly as you do and so am looking into every possibility. Don’t worry, I will do no damage to your son’s things, and leave everything as I found it.”

Norwell again looked Fellows up and down, in the most condescending way possible. He heaved another sigh, this one sounding as though it came from his toes, turned away, and pushed a bell on the desk. The butler entered almost immediately—Fellows suspected the man had been listening outside the door.

“Take the inspector up to Frederick’s old rooms,” Norwell said. “Stay there with him, and don’t let him steal anything.”

Fellows didn’t react at all to the statement. Norwell was grieving—Fellows allowed that. Otherwise, he’d be tempted to punch the man in the mouth. Fellows made himself turn his back and follow the butler out of the library without a word.

The butler led him up another flight of stairs. As they entered a large, dim bedchamber, Fellows bade him go down and tell Sergeant Pierce to come up. No one searched a room better than Pierce. He could find nooks and crannies that most missed, and he could do it rapidly and thoroughly. Fellows had always suspected that Pierce, in his youth, might have been a thief, but he’d never asked directly.

The butler looked put out, but he went. Slowly. The stairs creaked, one at a time, as he descended.

Fellows pulled open the heavy curtains, letting cleansing sunlight into the too-dark room. The room was musty—Norwell must have shut it up at his son’s death and not allowed anyone in. Grieving people often wanted to hide away their loved ones’ belongings.

The chamber was elegantly furnished, as befitting this Berkeley Square mansion. A tester bed with brocade draperies held prominence, a sofa stood near the fireplace, a writing table was positioned near the window, and a bookshelf full of leather-bound volumes took up part of one wall. Thick carpets covered the floor, and a dressing room with a wardrobe and a tall mirror opened off the main room.

Fellows took advantage of the butler’s absence to start going through the writing table. He pulled out drawers, sorted through the few letters he found, and turned the drawers upside down to look for anything hidden beneath. He finished soon, the contents disappointingly sparse. Hargate’s recent correspondence had been in his flat in Piccadilly, which Fellows had read when he’d searched there, but he’d found nothing of interest. Fellows wasn’t certain what he hoped to find here, in Hargate’s boyhood bedroom, but it was the one place Fellows hadn’t searched yet.

By the time Fellows heard Pierce’s step on the stairs, he was under the large bed, looking beneath the slats for hidden treasures. Nothing.

Fellows crawled out and brushed himself off, and was on his feet pulling out books from the bookcase by the time Pierce and the butler arrived. Pierce, who prided himself on his forthrightness, shut the door in the butler’s face. “Fetch us some tea, there’s a good chap,” he called through the door. “And coffee for the Chief Inspector. He don’t like tea.” He turned away and surveyed the room. “Anything, guv?”

“Nothing yet. See what you can make of it.”

Pierce went to work. Fellows trusted his sergeant’s skill, and for good reason. Pierce could feel every corner of a pillow without cutting it open, tell if a mattress or featherbed held any secrets. He checked every inch of wainscoting and the paneling around the windows, tested bricks of the fireplace, turned over chairs, and patted the curtains to see if anything resided between drapery and liner or inside the hems. Pierce flipped carpets up and tested floorboards, then went through the books and examined their bindings.

Undaunted by finding nothing, Pierce entered the dressing room. Fellows continued to look through the letters he’d taken from the drawer. Presently the banging and rustling in the dressing room stopped, and Pierce said, “Eureka, sir.”

Fellows didn’t get his hopes up. This had been Hargate’s room when he’d been a young man living at home. Pierce might have found nothing more than a university lad’s old stash of cigarettes or malt whiskey.

Pierce was crouching on the floor in the dressing room, having folded back the carpet. He’d lifted a loose board from the floor and now pulled out a square box that had been resting on the joists beneath.

The box was locked, but the lock was small and decorative, more to keep out those who would have respected his privacy anyway. Fellows put the box on the dressing table, took out a blunt tin nail he kept for such occasions, and quickly forced open the lock.

Would he find cheroots and love poems to long-ago schoolgirls? Fellows’ heart beat faster as he lifted the lid.

He found a notebook. He took it out, noting that it was clean and crisp. Almost new.

“Ah,” Pierce said. “Wonderful things, notebooks. Can tell you so much about a chap. His personal thoughts. Locked in a box under the floorboards.”