Page 18 of A Murder in Bloomsbury

Ashcombe did not turn his head. “The man by the angel. Yes. He’s been there since the service began.”

A chill threaded down my spine that had nothing to do with the weather.

“He was at my last salon,” I said. “The afternoon Lydia read her poem. He challenged her. My sister drew him. He was watching Lydia. Not with curiosity. With calculation.”

His expression did not change, but something shifted in his bearing—a subtle tautness, the alertness of a man who had spent years reading danger in the field.

“Do you know his name?”

“No. He came with a solicitor. I assumed him to be an acquaintance of his.”

“Then we have our first task.” Ashcombe looked at me then, and for the first time I saw something beyond the guarded cynicism—a flicker of purpose, sharp and alive. “Find out who he is. Quietly.”

“You are issuing orders,” I observed.

“I am giving you advice. There is a distinction, though I accept it may be a fine one.”

Despite everything—the grave at our feet, the watcher among the stones, the weight of Lydia’s notebook pressing against my conscience—I almost smiled. “A very fine one.”

He inclined his head. “I will send word. Soon.”

Then he turned and walked away down the hill, a slight hesitation with every step, his dark coat fading into the gray of the path and the trees until he was indistinguishable from the shadows.

Miriam appeared at my side as though summoned.

“Well?” she said.

“He believes she was murdered.”

“So do you.”

“Yes.”

Miriam regarded the place where Ashcombe had stood, then shifted her gaze to the angel where the watching man had been. He was gone.

“I don’t trust him,” she said flatly.

“The man who stood by the angel or Ashcombe? That’s the name he used,” I offered by way of explanation.

“Both.” She took my arm and steered me firmly toward the path. “But particularly the one who just made you forget you were standing in a graveyard.”

I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it again. Miriam was rarely wrong about the things that mattered.

As we reached the carriage, I glanced back one last time. The gravediggers had begun their work, the soft thud of earth on wood carrying through the still air. Lydia Gray was being laid to rest beneath a young oak on a hill overlooking London—the city that had fed on her words and then swallowed her whole.

But her notebook was in my keeping. And now there were two of us who would not let her be silenced.

Chapter

Nine

A Supper Among Friends

Ihad arranged the supper weeks ago in a fit of sociability I now deeply regretted.

The invitations had gone out when Lydia Gray was alive, when her voice still filled my drawing room with dangerous verse, when the worst thing I had to manage on a Wednesday evening was Lord Pemberton's opinions. Now she was in the ground at Highgate, and I was standing in my dining room adjusting place cards with hands that wanted to tremble.

It was too late to cancel. The fish had been ordered, the wine decanted, and Cook had spent the better part of two days constructing a syllabub that she guarded like a state secret. To cry off now would invite precisely the sort of speculation I wished to avoid. So Wednesday evening found me smiling at the door, receiving guests as though the week had not changed everything.