As the crowd began to disperse, I watched others near the memorial searching for sight of either Brodie or Mr. Conner.
Many of those who had watched the ceremony, including what appeared to be several members of Parliament in their frock coats, returned now to Westminster Palace, that sprawling Gothic center of English government. So-called as it had oncebeen the residence of the king, several hundred years past, and now where the houses of Parliament met.
It was then I saw Sir James. He was standing very near the memorial. As I watched, he turned and set off at a brisk pace toward the Palace.
Was he there merely to attend the session as it reconvened after the ceremony, with that invitation that Sir Robert Crosswhite was to have provided? Or was there something else at work?
Brodie had insisted that Sir James might very well be involved in Soropkin’s plot. Impossible as that seemed and as much as I didn’t want to believe it, it was possible and the urgency with which he crossed the green, then the street that ran before that sandstone behemoth of English history, suggested otherwise.
I thought again of what we knew:
Soropkin, a known anarchist and extremely dangerous, had been seen in London weeks before, and had then disappeared;
Dr. Bennett had been murdered in that secret office in Aldgate where he had performed procedures censured by the Society of Medicine.
Sir James had returned. Not from an extended travel of several months to Egypt and the Far East that he would have everyone believe, but more recently from Munich that Brodie had learned through communications received by the Agency. And further proof that he was in Munich at the time of the attack there;
Then, that cryptic message that had been intercepted in Luxembourg.
“Everything is in place”… and the date I had finally unscrambled— along with the eighteenth of December. Today’s date.
There was more that I had not known until the day before.
The deception of our meeting for afternoon tea at the Grosvenor, where Sir James was not a guest after all as he had led me to believe, and our conversation, his comments about my abilities and my position as a member of a titled family.
While his compliments seemed like flattery at the time, I hadn’t been impressed. As Brodie had pointed out in our conversation the day before, it did seem as if there might have been another motive.
It was very possible, he had insisted, that it was an attempt to persuade me to become part of some cause.
And then there was the part of the message that had so far eluded us:
P A R and L S
The more I thought of it, standing there at the edge of the green, the facts and clues were undeniable. I thought again of that last part of that message… then turned and looked for Brodie or Mr. Conner again.
Why had I not seen it? PAR for Parliament, not PARLS, that had confused me. And then LS.
Or perhaps I chose not to see it because of that old friendship.
The sound of my name pulled me from my thoughts and that stunning certainty as Mr. Conner and Alex Sinclair approached. I ran toward them.
“The target is not the Queen! It never was.” I glanced back in the direction I had seen Sir James as he disappeared through the crowd.
“The target is Parliament and the Prime Minister! It was in those last letters in that intercepted message. And Redstone is here!”
“Dear God,” Alex replied. “Are you certain about the message?”
I repeated the letters. “The target is Parliament— PAR, and the last two letters LS…”
“The Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury,” Alex replied.
“Where did you see him?” Mr. Conner demanded.
“At the entrance.”
“Then, he’s already inside.”
“Where’s Brodie?” I asked.
