I jabbed him in the ribs with my elbow. Miss Wheeler’s eyes flared briefly, with amusement, if I wasn’t mistaken.
Oscar rubbed his side. “I was going to say that I deserved the bruise. I acted rashly and coarsely. I apologize unequivocally, Miss Wheeler. Hopefully you won’t see that side of me again.”
One corner of her mouth ticked up before flattening again. “What did you want to tell me on the way? Why do you think the theft is linked to the abductions?”
Oscar removed the straw effigy from where he’d tucked it into his inside jacket pocket. “We found this in Gavin’s room. Straw effigies were left behind at the scenes of the abductions, and now this. It suggests a link. I can’t think why the two incidents are connected, only that they must be.”
“They appear to be,” she pointed out. “You shouldn’t assume without more evidence.”
Oscar tucked the effigy back into his pocket. “A third effigy placed at the scene of the crime is not enough for you?”
Miss Wheeler simply lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. Even that movement was elegantly understated. To think we were dragging this lady into an investigation involving the abduction of women. It was foolhardy and unthinking, not to mention ungentlemanly.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “You shouldn’t help us, Miss Wheeler. We’ll return you to the hotel after we speak to the police. Perhaps we all should step down and simply let them handle it.”
“No,” both Oscar and Miss Wheeler said.
“But Miss Wheeler is a woman!”
“Thank you for noticing, Professor.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, yes, I did notice you were a woman. How could I not with…” My gaze fell to her not-insignificant chest before I realized how inappropriate that was, so I raised it to her face again, only to see her eyes dancing merrily. My face flamed.
Good lord, what was wrong with me?
I appealed to Oscar. With his smoother tongue and confidence in all situations, especially around women, I thought he could explain better than me.
He chuckled. “We’ll take good care of Miss Wheeler, Gavin. As for continuing to investigate or not, I strongly suggest we do. We have connections to Scotland Yard through Brockwell, and an understanding of magicians like no other. We are also tenacious and intelligent. The police need us more than we need them.”
“My my, you are arrogant,” Miss Wheeler said.
“Very well,” I said before Oscar could retort. “We’ll offer to conduct our own investigation. But not with Miss Wheeler. We shouldn’t have dragged her into it.”
“You didn’t,” she said. “I volunteered.”
“She wants to find those women just as much as we do,” Oscar said. “Perhaps more.”
“Do I?” she asked idly.
“I noticed your interest at Kinloch’s. You surreptitiously read the newspaper then peered out of the window, as if searching for something or someone. Or were you keeping an eye on the street and garden square opposite?”
“I was simply bored with the negotiations.”
Oscar didn’t continue, thankfully. He knew when to back off. As a journalist, he often had to speak to sources or witnesses, and he was very good at getting them to reveal more than they wanted about themselves. Sometimes that meant not asking questions, and merely allowing a silence to stretch thin enough that his source wanted to fill it.
Miss Wheeler didn’t fill it, however.
Oscar did something quite uncharacteristic for him. He filled the silence himself. “Where did you grow up, Miss Wheeler? You said yourself your accent is English, but there are many different English accents. I can’t determine which county you’re from.”
Miss Wheeler tapped her finger on the umbrella handle again. “Is he always this nosy, Professor?”
I grinned. “He doesn’t like mysteries.”
“Then he is doomed to a life of frustration. The world is full of mysteries, I’ve found. Some will never be solved, certainly not in our lifetime. Unless Mr. Barratt is prepared to make peace with that, he will drive himself mad trying to find answers when none can be found.”
Oscar sniffed. “First of all, you can both stop talking about me as if I’m not here. Secondly, I am prepared to let some mysteries remain unanswered. For instance, the question of why such a beautiful and intelligent woman works for such an unpleasant man like Defoe is one I’ve accepted I may never know the answer to. But the question of why that woman didn’t hesitate to step out with two men she has just met intrigues me greatly. I would very much like to find the answer to that one.”
She’d held his gaze as he spoke—or perhaps he held hers—but she now released it by looking away and staring into the distance. “I suspect that is a mystery you will solve, Mr. Barratt.”
