There was the expected bloody chess queen piece and the usual gory circumstances, but this time the man’s ears had been cut off. Col was headed for the door in stunned silence when the surgeon called him back.
“I almost forgot something.” He held out a small mangled piece of paper. “I found this in his mouth.”
Col took the ink-and-blood-smeared missive and walked to one of the high windows in the surgery. In the low light he could make out only a few words. The hurried scrawl said simply, “Madame Domino.” He knew as well as his own heart she’d had nothing to do with the murder, but at the same time he realized the smeared bit of foolscap meant someone was trying to destroy Charlotte. Someone wanted to make the police think she was behind the grisly chess murders.
And there she sat in her perfect little villa in St. John’s Wood, with the most worthless locks on her doors he’d ever seen in his career as an investigator. He’d have to remedy that failing as soon as possible. But not that night. For now, he’d have to strike while the trail was still hot to find the bastard who’d committed the latest murder, while trying to shift the blame to Charlotte.
* * *
Charlotte sat huddledin her rooms at Goodrum’s with Captain El at her side. She’d been ordered to appear in front of the river police magistrate that afternoon to answer for her whereabouts the night before. She had the perfect alibi, but she had no idea where in Hades he was.
She was fairly certain he’d speak up on her behalf, but no one knew where he was. When she’d uttered Col’s name, a flicker of recognition had passed across the magistrate’s face, but he’d said nothing. He’d demanded to know why her Goodrum’s chess title would be written on a paper stuffed into a dead man’s mouth.
She wished she knew. Charlotte vaguely recalled reading about the sensational murders over the last few months in one of the gossip sheets. The fact that the victims were all chess experts playing at coffee houses made her back feel as if snakes were crawling beneath her clothing. She wondered if the magistrate knew that bit of her personal story, the years she’d been used as a child chess prodigy to engage in fraud in coffee houses all over London.
When Eleanor Goodrum opened her arms to Charlotte, she fell into them as she had as a child. El patted her back and murmured reassurances into her ear.
Charlotte turned her tear-streaked face to her and asked, “Why has he abandoned me?”
“That’s the same thing I want to know, so I sent Obadiah to look for Mr. Colwyn. We’ll have him here within the hour to vouch for you, or by damn, I’ll know the reason why.”
Charlotte sniffed and had the strangest urge to suck her thumb as she had as a child learning to trust under El’s care. That she refrained was good, because at that moment there was heavy knock at her door, and when she urged “Come,” Obadiah walked in, pushing Col ahead of him.
“Where have you been?” she sobbed, and an embarrassing bout of hiccups ensued.
Col gave Obadiah’s menacing hulk a scathing look before explaining. “I wanted to find the true murderer before the trail goes cold. But no, I had to come here instead for a command audience with the queen of London’s underground.”
The look El threw Col in that moment made Charlotte wonder if her mentor were indeed guilty of all the dark happenings she’d heard about.
* * *
Col had spentmost of the morning at the river police magistrate’s office clearing Charlotte’s name of any wrongdoing on Sunday night when she’d been otherwise, um, engaged in his arms.
At one point in his conversation with the magistrate JP Joseph Miller, he barely managed to stifle a yawn.
“Colwyn-,” Miller interrupted at one point. “Do you ever sleep? How one man can spend his days managing family responsibilities, part of his nights investigating murders for this office, and the rest of the night, um, entertaining mysterious, exotic women, is beyond me.”
Col had the good grace to choose that moment to study his boots as if deciding whether or not they needed a fresh polish.
“You do agree, however, that the chess themed nature of these killings would make a reasonable investigator wonder about Miss Smythe?”
Col looked up and gazed directly into JP Miller’s eyes. “Sir, I believe someone is trying to make us believe Miss Smythe is responsible, or somehow involved in these murders.”
“And I’m supposed to follow that line of reasoning why?”
Col placed the leather portfolio Captain Goodrum had given him onto the magistrate’s desk top. He pulled out various documents and newspaper clippings and pointed to a caricaturist’s sketch of a man managing multiple chess games in a coffee shop. “Because this man is a fraudster. He used Miss Smythe in his schemes when she was a child, and now that she’s an adult, what she knows about him could cause him to swing from the gallows at Newgate.”
* * *
Charlotte layon the bed in her rooms at Goodrum’s with a cool, damp cloth over her eyes and had not yet changed into her domino costume for the evening’s chess play.
At a light tap at the door, she said, “Come.”
El glided in and sat at the edge of the bed without speaking. Charlotte recognized her special scent. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out how her employer’s signature scent was composited, but she could catch a faint scent of bergamot, amongst others. The exclusive perfumer, Floris, never revealed the nature of their wealthy clients’ scents, so El’s scent would remain hers alone.
The captain silently took the cloth from Charlotte’s eyes and walked to the basin in the corner of the room to wring out the cloth and replenish the soothing rosewater.
When she’d returned and reapplied the eye mask, she took one of Charlotte’s limp hands in hers. “I’m going to tell you something,” she began, “that is for your ears only. I once loved a boy with all my heart…”
