“Look! Look!” Hawk had a piece of paper clutched in his grimy fist and was waving it in the air.
“He’s right,” said Raven, who had followed his brother. “You need to take a peep.”
Letting the strings of her bonnet slip through her fingers, Charlotte hurried across the rag rug and plucked the paper from his fingers.
It was a pencil drawing—
“Alice . . . her friends . . . a toff . . .” Hawk was tripping over his tongue in his haste to explain.
She took him by the arm. “Come, let us sit in the parlor. You can catch your breath and then start at the beginning.”
Raven fell in step behind them. It must be important news, she decided, for he refrained from any good-natured needling of his brother.
Ignoring the muck embedded on the seat of Hawk’s pants, Charlotte sat down and patted a place on the sofa beside her. “Now tell me about this.” On closer inspection, she saw it was a sketch of a coat.
“It’shim!” replied Hawk.
“The man who murdered your cousin,” clarified Raven.
Charlotte’s fingers tightened on the paper. “How—”
“Alice!” explained Hawk. “Alice sent word that she remembered something else about the man in the hat. So we went to see her . . .” A guilty flush colored his face. “That is, after our lessons with Mr. Linsley.”
Likely much abbreviated, but she didn’t have the heart to scold them.
“Tell her what Alice said,” urged Raven.
Hawk drew in another gulp of air. “Alice and her friends got to thinking more about the night. One of ’em recalled the hat—she, too, saw the flash of something shiny on the band—and remembered the cove wore a dark coat with just a single shoulder cape.”
Charlotte was studying the sketch. A caped coat wasn’t unusual, though the more popular style was for two capes. And this particular one seemed distinctive. “What is this?” she asked, pointing to the edge of the cape.
“Alice is very good at details,” said Raven. “She said she knew this was important to you, so she made herself picture the moment—”
“And she thinks there was a band of braid trimming the shoulder cape,” cut in Hawk. “It fluttered in the wind as he passed by, and she said the moonlight caught on the texture—it wasn’t quite the same as the smooth wool, and the color was dark, but not quite as dark as the rest of the coat.”
Charlotte tried to hold her excitement in check. The detail—if it were true—could be vital. But was the girl’s memory accurate, or was it merely wishful thinking? Experience had taught her that the passage of time often played tricks with one’s memory.
She looked up at Hawk’s expectant face. “This could be invaluable information, but we mustn’t let our hopes soar too high.”
“Oiy.” Raven nodded sagely. To his brother, he added, “Alice might have been mistaken.”
“She was sure of it,” insisted Hawk.
“Every detail helps,” assured Charlotte. “And I know Alice has a keen eye.” She carefully refolded the sketch. “Thanks to both of you, the picture of our quarry is taking shape on paper.”
Now they just had to find the flesh-and-blood dastard to match it.
That, however, would have to wait. As soon as darkness descended over the city, the world of silks and satins must take precedence over sleuthing.
CHAPTER 19
“What do I know of Aldini and Vitalism?” Henning looked up from the bubbling cauldron on his worktable and took a moment to wipe his spectacles on a rag. A draft from the ill-fitting window swirled the rising steam, leaving a mizzle of droplets on his unshaven cheeks. “Surely,thatman’s theories aren’t coming back to life again here in England?”
“God only knows what wild ideas are lurking deep in the shadows,” responded Wrexford as he tossed his hat on the surgeon’s desk and unbuttoned his coat. “Ready to crawl out if someone shines a light their way.”
“It sounds like you’ve shoved your hand up some dark crevasse,” said the surgeon, “and come away with a nasty bite.”
“You could say that.” Hooking his boot around a stool, he drew it up to the table and took a seat. “I paid a visit to the Royal Institution and learned a little more about Westmorly, though nothing that might provide a clue as to who killed him. My sense is, he had made a number of enemies through his blackmailing. Any of them could have wished him dead.”
