“D-Did you not apprehend Wayland and the two Frenchmen and turn them over to Griffin?” asked Cordelia.
“The three of them were dead when we entered the workshop,” answered Wrexford. He handed a glass of whisky to both Charlotte and Sheffield before pouring one for himself.
“Speaking of corpses, the reason I am here now is because I arrived home late last night from Tunbridge Wells to find that Griffin had delivered a body to my mortuary, with orders from Wrex to determine whether the knife used was the same one that killed Milton,” said the surgeon. “Why is it that we can’t stop stumbling over dead bodies?”
“Ask the Grim Reaper,” drawled Wrexford. “The deceased fellow is Kendall Garfield, one of Milton’s fellow members of the Revolutions-Per-Minute Society. Were you able to find the answer?”
“As a matter of fact, I was,” answered Henning. “Yes, it was the same knife. It has a tiny but distinctive nick in the blade.” He swirled the spirits in in his glass. “Why is he dead?”
“Let us leave the gory details for later,” said Charlotte. The unexpected twist in the investigation—all their carefully constructed assumptions had been blown to flinders—left her feeling confused and weary to the very marrow of her bones. “What matters most is the fact that all our efforts have simply spun us round and round in a circle.”
She let her words sink in. “Leaving us back where we first started, with nary a clue as to who murdered Milton—and now Garfield and Wayland.”
“Save for the recent evidence against Oliver,” whispered Cordelia. “But surely you can’t believe he is guilty. Everything he and the others have told us rings true.”
Charlotte sighed. “At this point, I’m not certain ofanything.”
“Save that five men involved in this investigation now lie dead,” muttered the earl. “Charlotte is right. It’s hard to see what the devil is going on.”
“But Oliver can’t be guilty of the deaths that happened tonight. Your footmen haven’t let him and the others out of their sight,” said Cordelia.
Wrexford conceded the point with a nod. “I’m trying my damnedest to find an alternative. I’ve told Tyler to ask around among his contacts in the criminal world to see if he can uncover any information that might give us another lead to follow.”
Sheffield put down the satchel of money beside one of the storage cabinets. “It’s a pity that we never got a chance to interrogate Wayland, especially after hearing Wheeler’s account of seeing him in the British Museum’s study room working on what looked to be technical drawings.”
“I was thinking about much the same thing.” Wrexford shut the draperies and gave a terse account of what had happened at the rendezvous at Vauxhall Gardens before unwrapping the papers he had found in Wayland’s coat and spreading them out on the escritoire.
“Please come have a look at these,” he said to Cordelia, “and tell me whether you believe that they are Milton’s work papers.”
“Y-You think that Wayland created fake documents to pass off as Jasper’s calculations?” asked Cordelia.
“Given what Wheeler told Griffin, it seems possible, but I’m not conversant enough in mathematics or engineering to make a judgment,” answered the earl. “All I can say for sure is that the two mysterious men sent to retrieve the documents were desperate to get their hands on them.”
Charlotte stiffened as a question suddenly reared its head. “Sent by whom?” she said softly.
Wrexford’s silence was a tacit admission that he hadn’t the foggiest notion of what intrigue-within-intrigue was going on.
Cordelia approached the escritoire. Paper crackled as she smoothed out the creases and subjected the pages to a careful study.
Despite the red-gold flames dancing up from the coals in the hearth, the room seemed to turn darker and colder. Charlotte chafed her hands together, trying to keep her fears at bay.
“This makes no sense.” After examining the first few pages, Cordelia looked up. “There is an error in one of the calculations. Granted, it’s an advanced computation, but Jasper would never have made such a blunder.”
“Perhaps he was rushing,” suggested Sheffield.
“It’s not the only mistake.” Cordelia frowned in consternation. “But even more important, I simply don’t see what the calculations are creating. They seem like meaningless bits and bobs floating over the page, having no relation to the sketches.”
She shook her head. “But then, I have no expertise in engineering, so I may be totally wrong.”
“We need to send word to your cousin and his companions, and ask them to come here right away,” said Charlotte. “The three of them are familiar with Milton’s work, so let us hope they will have some notion of whether the papers are genuine.”
McClellan put aside her sewing box. “I will go wake Raven—”
“I would rather send one of our footmen,” she interjected. “Mrs. Guppy is both highly intelligent and highly observant. The less she sees of him, the better. I don’t want to encourage further speculation as to how he fits into our household.”
Wrexford nodded his agreement.
“I need to change myself into Lady Wrexford for their visit,” added Charlotte. “Mac, might you come along and give me a helping hand?”
