“Excuse me.” Alice tapped a fingernail against her teacup with an unhappyclink-clink. “Did you call Mr. Bixby by the name B?Mr.Bixby?”
“Yes, dear. Daniel Bixby, who has just come out of deep undercover as butler to the pirate Alexander O’Riley. He is our most reliable investigator. Daniel old chap, allow me to properly introduce Miss Alice Dearlove, our best fixer.”
Alice and Daniel glanced sidelong at each other, eyes not quite meeting, and gave a brisk nod.
“Don’t be shy,” Mrs. Kew urged. “Shake hands!”
Alice extended her hand reluctantly. Daniel hesitated the merestmoment before taking it in his own with a firm grip. Just then an earthquake occurred in Whitehall, located directly beneath the sofa in Mrs. Kew’s office, and both snatched their hands back. Daniel drank tea; Alice rubbed at a crease in the lace cushion beside her.
“I’m glad to see you getting along so wonderfully,” Mrs. Kew said, showing a level of astuteness at odds with her position as chief of an intelligence agency. “This bodes well for your assignment together.”
Teacups rattled.
“I work alone,” Alice said.
“I work alone,” Daniel said at the same time.
Mrs. Kew smiled. “Of course. I appreciate how you feel, and it’s entirely fair. Just now I’d like to try unhooking you from that custom, and although you’reabsolutelymy star agents, nevertheless lifting you even higher, to a new level of professional—”
She stopped, her smile becoming stiff, as she registered their frowns. “Let me rephrase that. I need you to do as you’re told. We received warning this week that someone is planning to assassinate Queen Victoria.”
“Again?” Daniel said.
“I’m afraid so. Fifteen warnings, to be precise, but the one which concerns us most involves the pirate Frederick Bassingthwaite.”
Daniel stirred his tea in a manner that suggested he was laughing behind his inscrutable countenance. “I would not worry. Frederick Bassingthwaite is even greater a moron than Mr. Collins.”
“Who?” Mrs. Kew inquired.
“FromPride and Prejudice,” Alice and Daniel replied in unison. They very carefully did not glance at each other.
Mrs. Kew’s gentle confusion failed to lift. “Is that a crime-fighting duo?”
“No, ma’am,” Daniel told her. “It is a book.”
“I see. Well, where were we? Ah yes, murdering the Queen. Perhapsit is better to say that the danger is from Frederick’s wife, Jane Fairweather, a dastardly creature if ever there was one. Our intelligence network reports that she has come into possession of a new kind of weapon, which she plans to use on Her Majesty. Jane’s motive is, and I quote, ‘to prove once and for all she is as much a scoundrel as that revolting Cecilia Bassingthwaite.’ What this weapon is, we do not know. Where Jane obtained it, we do not know. Where she is keeping it—”
“Let me guess,” Daniel said. “We do not know.”
“Actually, this one we do. Inside Starkthorn Castle, ancestral battlehouse of the Bassingthwaites.”
“Where inside Starkthorn Castle?” Alice asked. “It is an immense building.”
“Ah. Well. That, we do not know. Frederick is holding a house party this coming week, and several Wisteria Society members will be attending. We do not know—but we strongly suspect!—that they too have learned of this weapon and intend to steal it. Your mission is to steal it first.”
“Why would Frederick and Jane risk inviting the Wisteria Society to their house when they are keeping a secret weapon there?” Alice asked.
Mrs. Kew winced slightly. “I am going to say again that we do not know, but you cannot blame me this time. No one understands why pirates do anything.” Leaning forward, she took up a porcelain sugar canister and lifted its lid to her ear before speaking into the bowl. “You can come in now.”
Four clerks carrying large, gilt-framed paintings entered the room, lining up against a wall. Mrs. Kew waved a finger, and one of the men closed the gas tap for the overhead light. As darkness filled the room, Mrs. Kew angled a lamp on the tea table so its light shone directly at the paintings.
“The Bassingthwaite fortune has diminished in recent times,” she said, “but Frederick and Jane still have high regard for themselves.” She waved forth one of the clerks, who held a portrait up to the light. In it, a bony young man with sleek black hair and mustache sat primly on a golden chair; standing beside him, one hand clamped to his shoulder, was a bespectacled woman whose posture suggested she stored a number of officious opinions up her proverbial.
“Neither Frederick nor Jane can be trusted, but we do not believe they are the greatest danger. It is the other Wisteria Society members with whom we are most concerned.”
The clerk stepped back and another advanced. “Elizabeth Boffle,” Mrs. Kew said, frowning at the new portrait. “A wicked villain and odious blight on England’s fair shore.”
Alice regarded the plump, smiling face and puffed white coiffure of an elderly lady dressed in so many pink flounces Dahlia Weekle would have swooned at the sight. Every instinct of her orphan heart suggested this was a woman to whom one could go for baked goods and cozy bedtime stories.
