“I appreciate the advice,” she replied. “Mr. Ashton needs assistance, and it was within my power to help him find someone who could help his brother. That is all.”
“I know how your mind works, Miss Saffron,” Mr. Feyzi said wryly. “If there is a mystery afoot, you will poke into it. From what I gathered, this is a serious situation. I cannot in good conscience, allow you to—”
“I am helping a friend,” she interrupted. “That is all.”
Color touched his cheeks, and Saffron felt sorry for it. She did not want to offend him, but neither would she be “allowed” by Mr. Feyzi to do anything. She’d not left Ellington and her grandparents only to find another keeper—one that answered to them.
She cleared her throat. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Feyzi. I simply wish to do what I believe to be right.” She got to her feet to take her leave, but Mr. Feyzi made a sudden sound of enlightenment and rose, crossing the room in quick strides.
“The tenants at your father’s flat in Bloomsbury sent something over a few weeks ago,” he said, extracting a file from a cabinet. “They said they were worried there was a pest of some kind inside the walls. They found a few things and sent this over by messenger. I hadthought to send it to your mother, but …” He turned and brandished the file at her.
Not missing the way Mr. Feyzi’s large eyes clouded over, she took the file, letting her fingers rest against his for a moment. “I understand,” she said softly.
Mr. Feyzi had stayed at Ellington for a few days immediately following her father’s death, helping her grandfather put affairs in order since he had lost his heir. Along with the rest of the household, Mr. Feyzi had been aware that her mother had slumped into something like a catatonic state of shock, unable to leave her bed for days. He knew now, from his visits to Ellington as well as his communications with Violet Everleigh to assist Saffron, that she still did not leave the manor. It touched Saffron that Mr. Feyzi was so saddened by it. He had known her mother for years and knew how brightly Violet Everleigh had shone before her light was doused by grief and fear.
Saffron peeked inside the file, her heart clenching at the sight of her father’s handwriting darting across the papers within.
“I will give you a moment,” Mr. Feyzi murmured somewhere behind her. The door snicked shut.
There were receipts, train tickets, letters between Thomas and Violet Everleigh and a handful of others in no particular order. She wouldn’t read her parents’ letters; what had been said between them during the months her father had spent at the university was private.
As she paged through the other notes and letters, however, familiar names caught her eye. She grinned at a note from Dr. Maxwell, reminding her father about a meeting. He’d been something of a mentor for her father too, she knew. There was a lengthy letter from a well-known French plant pathologist whose name she saw frequently inAnnals of Botany. And a name that made her fingers falter, nearly dropping the file.
Dr. Jonathon Calderbrook’s name was like a lightning strike straight to her heart. The name Dr. Ingham had mentioned during their brief meeting at the conference, the name Saffron had wondered over for weeks now. Paired with the words “Kew Botanical Gardens,” it was enough to make Saffron break out in a cold sweat.
Dr. Ingham had asked Saffron if she’d known whether or not her father had accepted the position in Dr. Calderbrook’s lab at Kew. The lab had been government-run, Ingham had mentioned. And Saffron hadn’t wanted to know what, exactly, the government had wanted her father to do. Plant pathology, her father’s specialty, was innocuous enough. But her former department head of Botany at the university, Berking, had mentioned he’d used her father’s research to strengthen the toxins of a poisonous plant, which he’d then used to create a poison that had nearly killed someone. He’d planted a seed of doubt in her mind, and she’d allowed it to flourish. What if her father had been working on something dreadful? What if he had created something that could hurt people, just like the scientists who’d labored over the gas that had flooded the battlefield where her father met his death?
Indecision kept her frozen, but an acute wave of fury overtook it. She’d allowed Berking’s words to worm their way into her mind, corrupting her memories. For months, she’d avoided mention of her own father, because she was afraid she’d find Berking was right. She did not want her worst fears about her father to be confirmed.
But no more.
She read the letter.
When she was finished, she needed the telephone, which she promptly was given access to by Mr. Feyzi.
After directing the operator, she only had to wait a moment to be connected.
“Immigration Ministry, the offices of Lord Tremaine,” came the coolly professional tones from the telephone’s handset.
Saffron straightened up. “Eliza—”
“How may I assist you?” Elizabeth’s voice took on the strident tone of an impatient clerk.
“I hope you are of a mind to have fowl for dinner,” Saffron announced.
There was the sound of shuffling, followed by an irritated “What the devil are you on about?”
Saffron grinned. “I hope you’re in the mood for fowl tonight, Eliza, because I just realized I must eat a heaping serving of crow.”
“If you don’t start making sense immediately, I am ringing off.”
She laughed. “Eliza—I ameating crow. I’m eating my words. I need you to look into Demian Petrov’s file after all.”
As Alexander did not fail to see the energizing effect of her newly formed plan, he asked what was on her mind the moment their feet touched the pavement outside Mr. Feyzi’s office.
“I’m going to look around Demian Petrov’s flat,” Saffron declared.
Alexander stopped in his tracks. “Why?”
