Page 92

"I have done what I could with honest work," Vogel replied. "You did not come to inquire after my prosperity, Your Highness."

"I have learned that Wilhelmine's daughter lives in London."

He watched her without answering. He knew better than to supply information before he understood the price of doing so.

"The girl is received in the household of the Earl of Matlock," she continued. "She has begun asking questions about her mother's past. I have reason to fear that she possesses information capable of injuring innocent people."

"Does she know who you are?"

"Of course she knows who I am. I am her uncle's wife."

"I meant does she know what happened before her mother left Falkenried?"

Adelheid's fingers closed tightly on her reticule. "I do not know."

"Then perhaps there is nothing to fear."

"It is not a risk I can accept."

Vogel regarded her with renewed dislike. Twenty-three years had not altered the particular arrogance with which she pronounced her fears more consequential than another person's life.

"What do you want?"

She lowered her voice. "A journey can end in misfortune. People accept such things. They accepted them before."

He did not move. The words were carefully chosen, but neither required a translation.

"You ask much," he said.

"I ask that a danger to my family be removed."

"The Earl of Matlock is not a frightened provincial magistrate. His household includes men who have served the Crown. A young woman disappears, and her relations will not accept a convenient explanation because a coachman offers it."

"An accident need not end in disappearance," she said. "It need only be final."

The quiet cruelty of the sentence chilled him more than a threat. She had grown older; the habits of command had become less ornamented.

"You presume I possess the means," Vogel said.

"You deal in coaches and drivers. You know men who will obey an instruction for money."

"I know men who will accept money. Obedience is another matter."

Adelheid opened her purse and placed a folded paper upon the table. It was not a sum, but a promise of one secured by an account in a merchant's name. Vogel read it once and closed his eyes.

"You would use an intermediary," he said. "No direct dealings between you and the driver. No names in written instructions. And the route must be one upon which an upset would not appear extraordinary."

"Then you will help me."

"I will consider it. But you shall not imagine that I offer the certainty you desire. Such certainty exists only in stories told by comfortable people beside the fire."

She looked at him with sudden suspicion. "You are not afraid of me, Vogel?"

"I have been afraid of you for most of my life. That is why I take precautions."

He requested an advance and a final payment. He also insisted that neither would pass directly from her hand to his. Adelheid agreed too quickly, desperate to end a conversation in which he had ceased pretending she was a respectable lady making a delicate inquiry.

After she left, Vogel returned home and added a dated account of the meeting to the papers in his iron box. He included the merchant's name and the identifying words of the proposed payment. His younger clerk knew there was a key, but not where it was kept. Vogel had never trusted a powerful person's promise that secrecy would protect the powerless.