“Do you have evidence that Mrs. Dale took it?” I asked.
“The Runner asked just the same.Hecould produce no evidence that Waters stole the necklace, yet he arrested her.”
The arresting Runner had been my former sergeant, Milton Pomeroy, who had returned from Waterloo and managed to work his way into the elite body of investigators who answered to the Bow Street magistrate.
Pomeroy was far more interested in arresting a culprit than in slow investigation. He was reasonably careful, because he’d not reap a reward for the arrest if he obtained no conviction. But getting someone to trial could be enough. Juries tended to believe that the person in the dock was guilty, and a maid stealing from an employer would make the gentlemen of the jury righteously angry.
However, I conceded that Lady Clifford would know a maid she’d lived with for years better than would Milton Pomeroy. Interest stirred beneath my port-laden state.
“As I understand the story,” I said, “your maid was upstairs in your rooms the afternoon the necklace disappeared. Before you and your husband and Mrs. Dale went out for the day, the necklace was in place. Gone when you, Lady Clifford, returned home.”
Her lip curled. “Likely Mrs. Dale was nowhere near Egyptian House as she claims. She could have come back and stolen it.”
My injured leg gave a throb. I rose and paced toward the windows to loosen it, stopping in front of one of Grenville’s curio shelves. According to the newspaper, the other Clifford servants had sworn that Mrs. Dale and Lord Clifford hadn’t returned to the house all afternoon. “You want very much for Mrs. Dale to have stolen your necklace.”
“Perhaps I do. What of it?”
I touched a piece of jade carved into the shape of a baboon. “You must know that however much you want Mrs. Dale to have taken it, someone else entirely might be guilty.”
“Well, Waters is not.”
I studied the jade. Thousands of years old, Grenville had told me. The carving was intricate and detailed, done with remarkable workmanship. I rested the delicate thing on my palm. “You might be wrong,” I said. “Are you prepared to be?”
“Mr. Grenville promised you would help me,” Lady Clifford said, tears in her voice. “Waters is a good girl. She doesn’t deserve to be in a gaol cell with common criminals. Oh, I cannot bear to think what she is suffering.”
She broke into another flood of weeping. Some ladies could cry daintily, even prettily, but not Lady Clifford. Her large body heaved, her sobs choked her, and she blew her nose with a snorting sound.
I set the miniature beast back on its shelf. Lady Clifford might be wrong that the solution was simple, but she was in genuine distress. The fact that some of this distress was pity for her poor maid made up my mind.
Lady Clifford sniffled again into the abused handkerchief. “Mr. Grenville said I could rely on youutterly.”
The little baboon smiled at me, knowing I was caught. “Very well, my lady,” I said. “I will see what I can do.”
**
“I did not exactly say that,” Grenville protested.
I eyed him from the opposite seat in his splendid carriage. I had awakened with the very devil of a headache, but I felt slightly better this afternoon, thanks to the concoction that my landlady, Mrs. Beltan, had stirred for me upon seeing my state. Grenville had arrived at my rooms not long later, and now we rolled across London in pursuit of the truth.
In his suit of finest cashmere and expensive kid gloves, Grenville’s slim form was a tailor’s delight. I bought my clothes secondhand, though I had a coat from Grenville’s tailor that he’d insisted on gifting to me when my best coat had been ruined on one of our adventures.
I said, “Lady Clifford strikes me as a woman who so much wishes a thing to be true, that it is true. To her. But this does not mean she is mistaken. If the maid did not steal the necklace, I have no wish to see her hang.”
“Nor do I,” Grenville said. “Her predicament played on my sympathy. Lady Clifford might have exploited that, but I sensed she genuinely cares for poor Waters.” He gazed out at the tall houses of Piccadilly then back at me, a sparkle in his eyes I’d not seen since before he’d been injured. “So, my friend, we are off on another adventure. Where do we begin?”
“I should speak to Pomeroy,” I said.
I imagined my old sergeant’s dismay when I turned up to muck about in what he’d believed a straightforward arrest. “And I’d like to speak to the maid Waters if I can. And we can try to discover what became of the necklace—whether anyone purchased it, and from where, and trace backward from there, perhaps to the culprit.”
Grenville grimaced and glanced again at the city rolling by outside. “A needle in a haystack I would say.”
“Not necessarily.” I had pondered this all night, at least, as far as my inebriation would let me. “A master thief would try to get the necklace to the Continent, to be reset and sold. In that case the necklace is gone forever, and the maid obviously did not escape with it. At most, she was an accomplice. As highly as Lady Clifford speaks of her, we cannot rule out the possibility that Waters was coerced by a lover to steal the jewels. A petty thief, on the other hand, might try to dispose of the necklace quickly, close to home, which means London. If I were the thief, I’d find a pawnbroker not much worried about where the merchandise came from, one who knew he could reset and sell the thing with no one being the wiser.”
“Your knowledge of the criminal mind is astonishing,” Grenville said.
I gave him a half smile. “Sergeant Pomeroy likes to tell me about it over a pint now and again. And Sir Gideon Derwent has worked to reform criminals most of his life. He’s told me many interesting tales.”
“Very well, then, a petty thief who seized an opportunity might sell it to a shady London pawnbroker. But what if you were Mrs. Dale? A gently born lady, who likely has no knowledge of unsavory pawnbrokers?”
