What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

own. “Where did Rachel keep her rooms?”
    “Dorset Court. But you can’t go there,” she added quickly, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”
    “Why not? If this maid is saying Rachel went to St. Matthew’s to meet me, I need to know why.”
    “The authorities are watching the house.”
    He tilted his head, his puzzled gaze searching her face. “How do you know that?”
    She knew that because Leo had come to the theater last night, after the performance, and told her. Under the circumstances it wouldn’t be prudent, he’d said, for him to be seen there. And so he had come to Kat with a request, framed as a suggestion: that Kat might have her own reasons for making certain that Rachel had left behind nothing incriminating.
    “It’s known.” She paused, then said with studied casualness, “I could go there myself. Talk to the maid. Perhaps even look around and see what I can find. Rachel kept an appointment book. That might tell us something.”
    He came to stand before her. “You?”
    She lifted her head to meet his gaze. It had occurred to Kat that in Devlin she just might have found a potentially valuable ally, someone who had even more interest than she in tracking down the man who had met Rachel in that church. The trick would be in seeing that he learned what was needed to catch Rachel’s killer, but nothing more. “You know I can do it,” she said.
    He knew. He knew about the years she had spent as a young girl in one of London’s most notorious rookeries, training as a pickpocket and a thief. And a whore.
    She thought he might refuse. Instead he said, “All right. Although I can’t help but wonder why.”
    “For auld lang syne?” she suggested.
    “Maybe. And maybe because you’re scared. Even if you won’t say why.”
    She thought for a moment that this time he would touch her. Then a faint thump from overhead drew her gaze toward the hall. “You must go,” she said quickly. “Come by tomorrow morning, early. I’ll tell you then what I’ve learned.”
    “Uh-uh.” A hint of amusement deepened the lines beside his mouth. “I’ll find you.”
    She let a slow smile spread across her face. “Why? Don’t you trust me?”
    “Would you?”
    Kat’s smile faded. Once, she had told him she loved him more than life itself and would never, ever let him go.
    And then she’d told him it was all a lie, and hurt him so badly it had torn a hole in her own heart.
    “No,” she said, and turned toward the stairs, leaving him standing alone in the cold morning light.

Chapter 14
     
     
    S ir Henry Lovejoy took his position as chief magistrate of Queen Square very, very seriously. He often came into the Public Office early, to go over his case notes, and to study reprints of the decisions of his fellow magistrates.
    It was a product of his upbringing, he supposed. That, and the habit of industry. Born of solidly respectable tradesman stock, Lovejoy had decided in midlife to become a magistrate only after having amassed a tidy independence as a merchant. Not a fortune, but a comfortable independence.
    It was a shift in direction he hadn’t undertaken lightly, for Lovejoy was a methodical man who never did anything without prolonged and careful thought. He’d a number of reasons for this change in vocation, not the least of which was his conviction that a childless man ought to leave something worthwhile behind him, some contribution to society. And Sir Henry Lovejoy was, now, a childless man.
    He was sitting at his desk, a muffler wrapped around his neck to ward off the morning chill, when Edward Maitland appeared in the open doorway and said, “Three Bow Street Runners had Devlin trapped at an old inn on Pudding Row, near St. Giles.”
    “And?” said Lovejoy, looking up from his notes.
    “He went out a window and escaped over the roof.”
    Lovejoy sat back in his chair and peeled his eyeglasses off his nose.
    “I’ve sent some of the lads over there to have a look around,” said Maitland. “Although I daresay there’s not much point.”
    “Interesting.” Lovejoy chewed the earpiece of his spectacles. “Why do you suppose he’s still in London?”
    “No place else to bolt, I expect.”
    “A man of Devlin’s resources?” Lovejoy shook his head. “Hardly. How is Constable Simplot?”
    “Still alive, sir. But he won’t last much longer, not with a sucking wound.”
    Lovejoy nodded. The knife had punctured the young man’s lung. It would be only a matter of time now.