“Your help in catching the Spectre. With the help of Strathaven and Kent here, I’ve been hunting down possible suspects,” Gabriel said.
Davenport’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve just confessed to breaking into my study and ransacking my personal effects. Why should I trust you?”
“Because someone tried to kill Tremont,” Kent said, “and succeeded in murdering your mentor, Octavian. You could be next.”
Davenport’s lips thinned, and Gabriel understood the other’s struggle. They’d had the same teacher, after all.Keep your guard up, and trust no one.After a taut silence, the viscount gestured to the sitting area.
The men took their seats, and Gabriel gave a terse summary of the facts. Out of habit, he gave the least amount of information necessary. Octavian’s summons and death. The recovery of his dagger at Cruik’s. The extortion of Pompeia. All the while, he monitored Davenport’s expression and saw nothing but bleak acceptance.
“When did you begin to receive the blackmail notes?” Kent had his trusty notebook out.
“Around two months ago,” Davenport said after a hesitation. “The first one appeared with the morning mail, out of nowhere. For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating.”
Gabriel exchanged swift glances with Kent and Strathaven. What Davenport described was almost identical to Pompeia’s experience with the blackmailer.
“The note threatened to expose my activities as a spy. To ruin my reputation, political career, and all I have built if I didn’t pay him five thousand pounds.” Anger simmered in Davenport’s voice. “I had no choice. I have a wife—I couldn’t let him destroy her life as well. So I paid.”
“What happened next?” Strathaven said.
“More demands came.” Davenport’s jaw clenched. “I should have known better. Blackmailers are never satisfied.”
“Do you have any culprits in mind?” Kent said.
“My first thought was one of the Quorum.” The politician’s cool, assessing gaze centered on Gabriel. “Only one of our inner circle would be in possession of such facts about me. Thus, I made inquiries into the activities of my three former colleagues.”
Cicero had had him investigated. That came as no surprise.
“And?” Gabriel said.
“Of the three, you’re the one who could use money the most. It seems your circumstances have improved, however, since your business venture with Strathaven last year.” The suspicious gleam lingered in Davenport’s pale eyes. “Still, one can never have too much money.”
“I’m no blackmailer,” Gabriel said coolly.
“Apparently not. If you were, I doubt you’d have hired on an investigator and exposed the secrets of espionage to those outside our world.” Davenport’s eyes formed pale slits. “So that leaves Pompeia and Tiberius. The lady was always a treacherous sort. After all,” he said, his tone darkening, “she was the only one of us who managed to avoid Normandy.”
The mention of the hellhole awakened the ghosts in Gabriel, the muscles of his back tautening. Kent and Strathaven, whom he’d told about the ambush, sat in somber silence.
“Apparently she had her reasons,” Gabriel said curtly. “She’s being blackmailed by the Spectre too.”
“If Pompeia isn’t a suspect and assuming for now that you and I are also innocent,”—Davenport smiled without humor—“then that leaves one clear culprit, doesn’t it?”
“Heath,” Gabriel said.
From the moment Thea and Pompeia had shared their discovery—that Cicero, too, was a victim of extortion—he’d been contemplating the fact that Tiberius, also known as Tobias Heath, was the sole remaining suspect. It made sense. Unstable at best, Heath had always lived life by his own moral compass; it wouldn’t have taken much to steer him in a criminal direction.
Yet some part of Gabriel resisted the notion that Tiberius was the Spectre. He wondered if a fellow on the brink of madness could be capable of such calculation. Then again, sanity wasn’t a requirement of being evil. He’d encountered his share of crazed despots during the war. And maybe Tiberius had been faking his mental instability all along.
“Recall how Tiberius escaped imprisonment unscathed?” Davenport murmured. “Unlike the two of us.”
The memory trickled into Gabriel’s awareness. Spectre’s men had kept the three of them in separate cells, yet they could hear each other’s screams. Gabriel and Davenport’s cries had echoed through those stone caverns but never Heath’s. The latter had emerged dirty, nonsensical, and terrified… but he hadn’t been beaten. Gabriel had assumed that the younger man had broken down and blurted out secrets or had simply been deemed too cracked for torture tactics to do any good.
Now another explanation raised its ugly head. Could Heath have been deceiving them all these years, pretending madness whilst all the while he’d been double crossing them? Was he even now blackmailing and killing off his former comrades one by one?
“We’ll still need solid evidence that he’s the Spectre,” Kent said.
“If he’s the guilty one, I don’t want him slipping from the noose,” Gabriel agreed darkly.
“Heath keeps a place near Lincoln’s Inn Fields,” the investigator said. “According to my men, he’s got a meeting with the radical group tomorrow night. We could take the opportunity to search his place.”
