Chapter Twenty-Eight
Thea and Pandora returned just as the ladies were beginning to file out of the ballroom.
Emma hurried toward them. “Find anything?” she whispered.
Thea nodded, barely able to suppress her excitement.
Em huffed out a breath. “Thank heavens. Let’s get out of here. Because if I have to listen to one minute more of this patronizing claptrap, I swear I’ll—”
“La, there you are!” The voice rang shrilly from behind her. “Oh, Duchess!”
Em froze like a hunted deer.
Lady Davenport hurried over. “We’re just about to begin sewing the fichus. You shall have the seat of honor in my circle, Your Grace.”
“That sounds lovely, but I’m, um, getting rather tired—”
“I shall call for caviar and champagne to keep our energies up. I won’t take no for an answer.” The viscountess’ hand wrapped like ivy around Emma’s arm. “You wouldn’t want to let down a good cause, would you?”
“No,” Em said, looking desperate, “but truly I have to go—”
Thea let out a gasping breath, grabbing her sister’s free arm.
“What is the matter, Miss Kent?” Lady Davenport said, looking alarmed.
“I… I c-can’t… breathe.”
Emma’s brown eyes rounded with worry, her arm going instantly around Thea’s waist. “Breathe deeply, dear. In and out. Just as Dr. Abernathy taught you.”
Seeing Lady Davenport take a step back, Thea wheezed, “Yes, stay back. It might be catching.”
Instantly, the hostess retreated farther. “Er, can I have anything fetched for you?”
“Air… just need… air…”
“Let’s get you outside,” Em said.
“Thank you for your hospitality, Lady Davenport,” Pandora said.
The three of them left the townhouse.
“We’ll get you home straightaway,” Emma fretted, “and call for Dr. Abernathy—”
“I’m fine,” Thea said in her normal voice.
“You are?” Her sister blinked. “But back there… what happened?”
“I was improvising.” Thea felt absurdly proud of herself.
Pandora’s lips curved. “As I suspected from the first, you are a lady of hidden talents.”
Just then, Thea caught sight of a mob-capped figure leaving from the servant’s entrance several yards away. The woman paused, tugging the fichu from her neck, crumpling it in her hand. Shoulders hunched, she began walking in the opposite direction.
Thea gave her sister a hopeful look. “Couldn’t you use another maid?”
“Let’s talk to her,” Em said.
Thea and Emma approached the young woman, who bobbed a startled curtsy and identified herself as Sara Tully. Miss Tully eagerly accepted Emma’s card and direction, promising to come by the house for an interview. They were saying goodbye when Gabriel’s carriage arrived. He jumped down from the vehicle with predatory grace. His grey gaze went from Thea to the departing Miss Tully.
“Who was that?” he said, frowning.
“A new acquaintance,” she said.
He tipped her chin up with a gloved hand, his eyes radiating concern. “How did things go in there?”
“Splendidly, thanks to Miss Kent’s ingenuity,” Pandora said. “She’ll explain in the carriage.”
***
“Lord Davenport will see you now.”
The secretary led Gabriel, Strathaven, and Kent into well-appointed chambers paneled in dark wood. Sun shone through the mullioned windows, gleaming off heavy furniture and the burgundy carpet of Oriental design. The secretary closed the door discreetly behind him.
Rising from a carved desk, Lord Cecil Davenport came over to greet them. Tall, fit, possessed of patrician features made even more distinguished by the greying at his temples, the viscount was every inch the polished politician. His light blue eyes showed polite curiosity and nothing more.
Cicero had always been a master of disguising his true intent.
“Gentlemen.” He bowed. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“We’re here to talk about blackmail,” Gabriel said.
Davenport’s brows lifted, his gaze skirting for the briefest instant toward Strathaven and Kent. He adopted a puzzled smile. “Is this some sort of jest, Lord Tremont?”
“No jest, Cicero,” he said steadily.
The other’s tone remained light. “I’m afraid I don’t follow. Now I’m a very busy man and—”
“We found the blackmail notes in your study. In the hidden compartment of your desk.” Despite the volatile situation, Gabriel felt a flash of pride at Thea’s cleverness. She continued to amaze him with the depth of her spirit and strength. “You are being blackmailed by the Spectre,” he said.
A faint crack showed in Davenport’s composure. At his sides, his manicured hands curled.
“There had better be a good reason for you betraying our code of anonymity. What do you want, Trajan?” he said in level tones.
“Your help in catching the Spectre. With the help of Strathaven and Kent here, I’ve been hunting down possible suspects,” Gabriel said.
Davenport’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve just confessed to breaking into my study and ransacking my personal effects. Why should I trust you?”
“Because someone tried to kill Tremont,” Kent said, “and succeeded in murdering your mentor, Octavian. You could be next.”
Davenport’s lips thinned, and Gabriel understood the other’s struggle. They’d had the same teacher, after all. Keep your guard up, and trust no one. After a taut silence, the viscount gestured to the sitting area.
The men took their seats, and Gabriel gave a terse summary of the facts. Out of habit, he gave the least amount of information necessary. Octavian’s summons and death. The recovery of his dagger at Cruik’s. The extortion of Pompeia. All the while, he monitored Davenport’s expression and saw nothing but bleak acceptance.
“When did you begin to receive the blackmail notes?” Kent had his trusty notebook out.
“Around two months ago,” Davenport said after a hesitation. “The first one appeared with the morning mail, out of nowhere. For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating.”
Gabriel exchanged swift glances with Kent and Strathaven. What Davenport described was almost identical to Pompeia’s experience with the blackmailer.
“The note threatened to expose my activities as a spy. To ruin my reputation, political career, and all I have built if I didn’t pay him five thousand pounds.” Anger simmered in Davenport’s voice. “I had no choice. I have a wife—I couldn’t let him destroy her life as well. So I paid.”
“What happened next?” Strathaven said.
“More demands came.” Davenport’s jaw clenched. “I should have known better. Blackmailers are never satisfied.”
“Do you have any culprits in mind?” Kent said.
“My first thought was one of the Quorum.” The politician’s cool, assessing gaze centered on Gabriel. “Only one of our inner circle would be in possession of such facts about me. Thus, I made inquiries into the activities of my three former colleagues.”
Cicero had had him investigated. That came as no surprise.
“And?” Gabriel said.
“Of the three, you’re the one who could use money the most. It seems your circumstances have improved, however, since your business venture with Strathaven last year.” The suspicious gleam lingered in Davenport’s pale eyes. “Still, one can never have too much money.”
“I’m no blackmailer,” Gabriel said coolly.
“Apparently not. If you were, I doubt you’d have hired on an investigator and exposed the secrets of espionage to those outside our world.” Davenport’s eyes formed pale slits. “So that leaves Pompeia and Tiberius. The lady was always a treacherous sort. After all,” he said, his tone darkening, “she was the only one of us who managed to avoid Normandy.”
The mention of the hellhole awakened the ghosts in Gabriel, the muscles of his back tautening. Kent and Strathaven, whom he’d told about the ambush, sat in somber silence.
“Apparently she had her reasons,” Gabriel said curtly. “She’s being blackmailed by the Spectre too.”
“If Pompeia isn’t a suspect and assuming for now that you and I are also innocent,”—Davenport smiled without humor—“then that leaves one clear culprit, doesn’t it?”
“Heath,” Gabriel said.
From the moment Thea and Pompeia had shared their discovery—that Cicero, too, was a victim of extortion—he’d been contemplating the fact that Tiberius, also known as Tobias Heath, was the sole remaining suspect. It made sense. Unstable at best, Heath had always lived life by his own moral compass; it wouldn’t have taken much to steer him in a criminal direction.
Yet some part of Gabriel resisted the notion that Tiberius was the Spectre. He wondered if a fellow on the brink of madness could be capable of such calculation. Then again, sanity wasn’t a requirement of being evil. He’d encountered his share of crazed despots during the war. And maybe Tiberius had been faking his mental instability all along.
“Recall how Tiberius escaped imprisonment unscathed?” Davenport murmured. “Unlike the two of us.”
The memory trickled into Gabriel’s awareness. Spectre’s men had kept the three of them in separate cells, yet they could hear each other’s screams. Gabriel and Davenport’s cries had echoed through those stone caverns but never Heath’s. The latter had emerged dirty, nonsensical, and terrified… but he hadn’t been beaten. Gabriel had assumed that the younger man had broken down and blurted out secrets or had simply been deemed too cracked for torture tactics to do any good.
Now another explanation raised its ugly head. Could Heath have been deceiving them all these years, pretending madness whilst all the while he’d been double crossing them? Was he even now blackmailing and killing off his former comrades one by one?
“We’ll still need solid evidence that he’s the Spectre,” Kent said.
“If he’s the guilty one, I don’t want him slipping from the noose,” Gabriel agreed darkly.
“Heath keeps a place near Lincoln’s Inn Fields,” the investigator said. “According to my men, he’s got a meeting with the radical group tomorrow night. We could take the opportunity to search his place.”
“Are you in, Davenport?” Gabriel said.
The other inclined his head. “Anything to prevent the ghosts of the past from rising.”
“The Spectre’s already risen. Tomorrow night,” Gabriel said with grim determination, “we put him down for good.”