Running Hot

the shrubbery and shot her twice at point-blank range. By all accounts of the incident, Bontifort was taken completely by surprise. She never had a chance to sing a single note.”
    “What happened to Lady Galsworthy?” Luther asked. “Was she arrested?”
    “No. She went to the town house dressed from head to toe in mourning, including a hat with a heavy black veil. No one at the scene knew who she was. There was so much commotion after the shooting that she was able to escape. No arrest was ever made, although there was a long list of suspects. In the end the newspapers claimed that she was murdered by one of her rivals. The police went with that.”
    “What did J&J do?” Luther asked.
    “The notes in the file are a little cryptic but it appears that J&J knew what had happened and took steps to ensure that Lady G.’s name did not appear on the suspect list.”
    “How the hell did J&J figure Bontifort killed the lover?” Petra asked.
    Grace smiled. “Get this. The agent who tracked her down was completely deaf from birth but he was exquisitely sensitive to the psychic residue left by violence. He could literally read a crime scene. He was one of J&J’s most effective agents.”
    Luther stretched out his legs. “Did he ever confront Bontifort?”
    “Yes, as a matter of fact. Toward the end of the investigation, she became suspicious of him and tried to kill him with her voice. He wrote in his notes that he could see that she was singing at him and he could sense some dangerous energy pressing against his senses but that was all.”
    “So if you can’t hear the sound, the music can’t kill you,” Luther said. “That’s interesting. Maybe there was something to Odysseus’s approach to dealing with the mythological Sirens. Wasn’t he the one who had his sailors put beeswax in their ears?”
    “Right.” Grace looked up from the notebook. “And that’s exactly what J&J concluded. The full force of a Siren’s talent only works if the victim can actually hear the music.”
    “What was J&J planning to do with Bontifort if Lady G. hadn’t come through with her pistol?”
    “It seems that the Bontifort case was not the first time J&J was obliged to deal with a killer who was a high-grade talent and who, for one reason or another, could not be handed over to the police. The firm had a very special agent they called in to deal discreetly with such problems.”
    Luther raised his brows. “The Harry Sweetwater of his era?”
    “How did you guess?” Grace said.
    “Guess what?”
    “The agent’s name was Orville Sweetwater, Harry’s many times great-grandfather.”
    Petra grinned. “Small world, the Arcane Society. Go on, why are you interested in this Bontifort woman?”
    “A couple of reasons,” Grace said. “First, she had a daughter by Lord Galsworthy. Which was probably why Lady Galsworthy got so pissed off, by the way, but that is not important now. Bontifort managed to keep her pregnancy and the birth a deep, dark secret, fearing that it would not be good for her public image. Even J&J didn’t know about the baby at the time.”
    “What happened to the kid?” Petra asked, frowning.
    “The infant wound up in an orphanage. When she became an adult she somehow discovered the truth about her parents. She blamed the Society for their deaths. She confronted the Master.” Grace checked her notes again. “That would have been Gabriel Jones. In essence, she told him that the Society owed her, big-time.”
    “Probably didn’t get far with that tactic,” Petra said. “Can’t see a Jones paying blackmail.”
    “As a matter of fact, Gabriel Jones thought she had a legitimate case. He told her that the organization had an obligation to take care of its own. He offered to register her with the Society. When she refused, he gave her a rather large sum of money. She took the cash and sailed for America.”
    “Any indication that the daughter inherited her mother’s talent?” Luther asked.
    Grace tapped her notebook. “She did not become an opera singer, but she did make her living singing in nightclubs and cabarets. She was very popular. The critics loved her, too.”
    Petra raised her brows. “Did they describe her voice as ‘mesmerizing’?”
    “As a matter of fact,” Grace said, “they did.”
    “Any sign she used her talent for something other than singing?” Petra asked.
    “It’s not clear. She had a number of lovers and eventually married an extremely wealthy