Charlotte blinked, willing herself to focus. As she shifted slightly in her chair, her eye caught the pooling of bloodred paint on her palette.
Blood.She was suddenly reminded that Cedric was not the first shocking murder involving mutilation. But neither she nor the earl had given much thought as to whether he was merely another random victim of the madman.
Picking up her pen, Charlotte slowly wrote down the names of the other victims. After consulting the reference notes she kept on all her drawings, she added the dates and locations. Would a more careful look at these crimes reveal a telling clue?
It was, perhaps, grasping at straws. But she didn’t dare turn her back on any possibility, preposterous though it might be.
And she had an idea on how to begin.
After quickly rolling up her finished drawing in a length of protective oilcloth, Charlotte made her way up the stairs to the attic aerie. Raven was sprawled on his bed, reading a book on mathematics, while Hawk was on the rug, sorting through an odd collection of bits and bobs that he had just pulled from his pockets.
Good heavens, was that a mouse’s skull?
“My goodness, what have you there?” she asked, momentarily putting aside her own mission.
“Look, this is a very unusual piece of rock. I think it may be quartz.” Hawk held up a pebble that he had plucked from atangle of string, bits of paper, and the stub of a pencil. “And I found this seed”—he pointed to a wrinkled, misshapen bean—“near Covent Garden Markets.”
His eyes widened in delight. “And this feather is from the tail of a barn owl. It’s not easy to find them in the city.”
“Mr. Linsley is teaching us all about Alexander von Humboldt,” explained Raven. “He—”
“He is a very famous man of science, and an expert in how the world of Nature all fits together!” interrupted Hawk excitedly. “He traveled to faraway exotic places and collected all sorts of rock, animal, and plant specimens.”
Wrexford had arranged a tutor for the boys. She had been leery at first—both boys had a natural intelligence, but they had grown up wild in the slums and had a wary streak of independence that didn’t bode well for the discipline of formal lessons. However, the experiment was proving a great success. The young man had sparked an enthusiasm for learning. More than that, he had sensed their particular interests and encouraged them.
“Daft, if you ask me, finding bits of stone and weed interesting,” piped up Raven. However, a quick smile at his brother took the sting out of his words.
“No more daft than thinking a tangle of numbers is fun to unravel,” retorted Hawk.
Charlotte crouched down to take a closer look at the collection. “Fascinating,” she murmured, fingering through the various things that had caught the boy’s eye. “These things intrigue you?”
Hawk nodded. “Mr. Linsley makes the study of the natural world very interesting.” A pause. “He thinks I’m very observant and would make a good explorer.”
“I think he’s quite right.” She ruffled his hair, then reached for one of the scraps of folded paper jumbled among the other objects and smoothed it out. It was a pencil sketch of a leaf from the rowan tree growing in the back garden.
“Why, this is lovely!” Hawk’s drawings had always shown a natural exuberance, but this attention to detail was a surprise.
He smiled shyly. “You think so?”
“Indeed, I do.”
“Show her your notebook,” urged Raven. A snicker. “Though it’s filled with bugs and worms, as well as flowers.”
The boy dutifully fetched it from his desk drawer.
Charlotte felt a clench of guilt as she turned through the pages. How had she missed this? The move to the new house, and her worries over the changes it wrought to life, both for her and the boys, had weighed heavily on her thoughts of late. As had the demands of her own work. But that was no excuse. Hawk had a budding talent, and she had failed to see it.
Another fault—and yet another reason to be questioning her own judgment of late.
“You have a real gift for art.”
Hawk’s narrow face lit up at her praise. Which made her feel even more guilty.
“And a sharp eye for Nature,” she said. “We must take a trip to Kew Gardens, where there are all sorts of exotic plants that have been brought back by English explorers.”
Hawk’s eyes widened. “Mr. Linsley says Kew Gardens is a very magical place.”
“We will go there soon, I promise,” Charlotte said decisively. Death must not be allowed to override Life. She turned to Raven. “Would you like to come, too?”
