Horror dawned in his eyes. “He outraged her?” It came out in a voice scraped raw, barely above a whisper.
It didn’t take a clairvoyant to understand this cut close to the bone for him. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Women in London were assaulted every day. It wasn’t unlikely he knew one.
He pushed back his chair with a slow scrape, crossing the creaking floorboards to stand at the window, his back to me. His fingertips rested against the sill, his thumb beating his usual tattoo. He stood there for so long that at last I spoke his name.
“He should have been hanged,” he said thickly.
“Wealthy men don’t hang in this city,” I said. “Not for assaults on women. You know that. And the law will do nothing to him, twenty years later, not on behalf of a convicted felon.”
He returned to stand behind his chair, resting his hands on the top rail. “Go on, finish.”
I described the injustices of Maggie’s trial and dwelt on the suffering she experienced in Swan River. Despite what Maggie had done—was still doing—to Sarah, I had the peculiar, surprising sense of my sympathies shifting toward her.
I’m not immune to dodges I work on myself, I thought. But I could see it working on Mr. Fuller too. The lines around his mouth deepened with pain. “Thus, we have two monsters, one begotten by the other. God, there’s no end to it.”
He said this more to himself than to me, and I held my tongue.
“So Maggie returned to London, wanting revenge,” he said heavily.
“When Maggie discovered that Simonson’s was cleaning the famous necklace, she saw her opportunity. She knows people who can pick locks and crack large combination safes.”
“And she pulled you into it by kidnapping your sister.”
I nodded.
“But how will the fraud be discovered?”
“A letter, sent to the marquess, alerting him.”
His fingertips pinched the chair rail. “And it’ll ruin Simonson, when it’s made public. The marquess’s word will be above question, which she’s counting on, no doubt.”
“The difficulty is that Maggie’s scheme required violence—the murder of a constable.”
His face paled.
“Maggie planned it for tonight.” I spoke slowly, wanting to be sure I was understood. “It was done last night instead, with no one harmed.”
Understanding dawned in his eyes. “So you headed her off. Does Maggie know?”
“I’ll see her after I leave you.”
“Ah.”
“The marquess will receive a letter this morning warning him to retrieve the necklace and have the gems checked for authenticity. It’s already in the post.” I patted my pocket where the diamonds were. “I’ll deliver the diamonds to Maggie, you print your story about the necklace, naming Simonson’s.” I swallowed down my fear that he would refuse. “And my sister will be released. You’ll have your witness, the Fairleigh murderers will be found, and the Yard will have solved an important case.”
“Is there any chance the diamonds can make their way back to the necklace?”
I hesitated. “I think so. Maggie would likely hold on to them for a while, until the fuss dies down, before she has them cut.”
He sat, picked up his pen, and drew a fresh page toward him. “Simonson deserves worse than he’ll get with this.”
My relief made my breath catch, and I couldn’t reply.
He dipped the tip in the well, shedding the excess in three taps. He stared off into space a moment and then looked at me. “Can you keep silent for twenty minutes?”
I nodded and turned up a palm as a sign for him to go ahead.
He began to write—the black nub of his pen moving across the page, scratching line after line. I watched, marveling at his steadiness and haste, until I recalled that he’d no doubt had great practice in composing his stories quickly, much as I’d practiced changing out gems.
