Lady Styles opened her handbag’s catch. “I also come as the bearer of news from Princess Louise. Information about Lizzie Dowling.”
“The princess heard back from Germany so quickly?”
“After Princess Louise wrote to her sister, she decided the post would take too long. Her Royal Highness enlisted the prince’s private secretary to help her send a cable.”
“How good of her to take the trouble.”
“Oh, she enjoyed it, believe me. The telegraph may become her preferred mode of communication. Princess Louise adores speed—on foot, horseback, and driving a carriage. She terrifies her sisters when she takes the reins.” Lady Styles handed Julia a cable. “Princess Alice’s reply.”
The telegram read,ASK LADYMIDDLEBURY ABOUT HER LITTLE BIRD FROM KILDARE. WILL WRITE TODAY WITH DETAILS I REMEMBER. Julia looked up. “Who is Lady Middlebury?”
“She was the queen’s lady of the bedchamber when Lizzie joined the royal household.”
“Lady Middlebury’s ‘little bird from Kildare’ … It’s an odd phrase,” Julia said. “Is the lady still in royal service?”
“She retired and lives in a grace-and-favor cottage near Windsor Castle.” Susan frowned. “I’m afraid the subject of the cable came up at luncheon. Princess Louise explained its purpose and mentioned your name.”
“May I ask who was lunching at the time?”
“Everyone on the inspector’s list, I imagine,” Susan said ruefully. “Except Captain Locock. I don’t believe Princess Louisegrasps the implications for her brother’s circle of friends. Any novelty excites her, and the need to be discreet about the cable never occurred to her.”
“What do you make of it all, Lady Styles? You are acquainted with all the—”
“Suspects? I suppose that’s the word. Yes, I know them all. Some very well, making it more difficult to believe anyone is guilty.”
“The first case I worked on with Inspector Tennant—and the most recent—the guilty parties were people I’d come to know.”
“Are we to believe that anyone is capable of murder?”
“It’s an unsettling thought.”
“Lionel seems to think … He believes that Frederick Locock has risen to the top of the inspector’s list. I’d put Captain Locock on the bottom, frankly.”
“Inspector Tennant isn’t the sort of policeman who fastens on a suspect and pursues one theory of a case.” She held up the cable. “May I keep this? The inspector should see it.”
Julia walked Lady Styles to the pavement, pointing out the cabstand just visible in the mist that crept along Circus Place. She watched Susan’s cab disappear into the fog, happy she’d allayed her health questions, wondering about other suspicions the lady harbored. Susan Styles struck Julia as uncommonly intelligent. Was it as difficult as she claimed to think any one of the men was guilty? And why had she risen to the defense of Captain Locock?
Least likely,Susan thinks. I wonder who tops her list?
Tennant’s hunch about army veterans at the Yard who served in the Crimea paid off.
O’Malley said, “A sergeant gave me the name of a fella in the Blues. Ted Watford. He walked a Westminster beat until the Met let him go for drunkenness on the job.”
“Where do we find him?”
“He turns up from time to time at the Golden Lion. Old pals stand him a pint or two. But the man does his serious drinking near his home in Aldgate. ‘Drowning his troubles,’ the sergeant said.”
“Do we know where, exactly?”
“The Hoop and Grapes on the High Street.”
“Let’s pay it a visit.”
“Leads aren’t thick on the ground, I’m thinking,” O’Malley said, following him out the door.
After a week of clear weather, a “London particular” took hold on Wednesday, and their cab crawled from Westminster to Aldgate in the fog. At every intersection, coppers waved bull’s-eye lanterns in the impenetrable gloom, trying to move the traffic along. After an hour’s halting drive, their hackney stopped on the High Street in front of the only timber-and-wattle structure standing amid a row of brick houses. Gilt lettering on a black sign identified the Hoop and Grapes. It was late morning, but gaslights glowed yellow above the front door and the mullioned window.
Inside, a polished oak bar ran the length of the room. Bright, whitewashed rectangles of plaster wall shone between blackened half-timbered beams. A snowy-aproned barman with a handlebar mustache and pushed-back shirtsleeves nodded a greeting as he polished circles into the bar top.
