Page 58 of A Murder in Bloomsbury

Mrs. Selwyn interpreted her words. “She says you should visit again. Lark likes you.”

Lark snatched up her bonnet and jammed it onto her head. “We are leaving. Now.”

Chapter

Twenty-Three

An Editor in Hiding

Peregrine kept chambers in the Albany where single gentlemen of taste and means resided on the unspoken understanding that whatever occurred within was nobody’s affair but their own.

I had been here twice before, both by daylight and announced. To arrive in the forenoon, with no warning and the Marquis of Everthorne by my side, was another matter entirely. But Peregrine’s man did not so much as bat an eyelash when he opened the door. He took one look at us, bowed, and showed us to Peregrine’s sitting room.

“I shall inform Lord Peregrine you’ve called, Lady Larkspur.”

“Thank you.”

The room was as I remembered—a fire burning low, several comfortable chairs, books in considered disorder. And beneath it all, the faint scent of bergamot.

We had only to wait a few minutes before Peregrine made an appearance. As always, he was the epitome of elegance with not a hair out of place.

“Lark.” He took both my hands with perfect form. And then he nodded toward Thorne who’d come to his feet, “Lord Everthorne. We meet again.”

“So it seems.”

As Peregrine arranged himself on a blue brocade chair, he said, “Now, tell me, what brings you to my humble abode?”

Thorne and I had already decided I’d take the lead. “The Quill and Crown burned down overnight.”

He shook his head. “Dreadful. Absolutely dreadful.”

“Lord Everthorne and I have come to the conclusion Lydia’s poem was delivered to them.”

“Interesting.”

“We would like to talk to the editor. I believe you know him.”

“Yes, he is a dear friend.”

“Could you see your way to providing his address to us?”

He propped his chin in his hand. “Well. About that.”

The door to the sitting room suddenly burst open, and a man rushed in. Perhaps mid-forties, narrow through the shoulders, with the ink-stained cuffs of a literary man, the careful cravat of a fussy one, and a mane of hair in severe disarray. “For pity’s sake, Peregrine.”

Peregrine stared at him. “You were supposed to stay out of sight.”

“I’m not going to hide, quivering in fear, when my offices have gone up in flames.” He extended his hand to Thorne. “Horace Quennell, at your service.” And then he turned to me. “Lady Larkspur, I’ve heard much about you.” He flung himself into the last available chair and said, “May I have something to drink, Peregrine, preferably whiskey? Pardon me, Lady Larkspur, for my lack of manners. I’m a wreck. A total wreck.”

“Understandable,” I said, “given the circumstances.”

Peregrine crossed to the sideboard and poured a measure of whiskey into a cut-glass tumbler. "You'll forgive Horace," he said, handing the glass to his friend. "He has the temperament of a poet and the nerves of a much smaller animal. A vole, perhaps. Drink that slowly, darling, I've only the one bottle worth offering."

Quennell drank it neither slowly nor with any evident gratitude, then held the empty glass against his chest as though it might shield him. "Twenty-two years, Lady Larkspur. Twenty-two years I have kept that journal alive on subscriptions and spite, and in a single night some—some arsonist reduces it to a smear of ash on Hartwell Lane. The fire brigade tells me it began in the composing room. The composing room! Where I keep—where I kept—" He stopped, and a fresh wave of misery passed over him. "I am babbling. I always babble. Lydia used to say I could talk the hind leg off a Privy Councilor and then apologize to the councilor for the inconvenience."

The mention of her name steadied him oddly, the way pressing on a bruise sometimes does.

"You knew her well," I said.