a surprise, so I beg you will not mention it to him. Then, when he comes across it on the morning of his wedding, he will be so delighted.”
“What a kind thought!” Mrs. Dashet seemed to prefer this lie, so Griz only hoped she would stick to the secrecy.
“Well, my brother appreciates him so much,” Griz said, patting Mrs. Dashet’s hand before smiling gaily and touching her finger to her lips in a silent reminder of secrecy.
“Nice touch,” Dragan murmured as they hurried along Bury Street.
“I wish I’d thought of it before… And at last, we have something that ties him to Nancy.”
“But not to her murder.” Deep in thought, Dragan strode so quickly toward Piccadilly that Griz caught at his arm to slow him down. He muttered an apology, still obviously distracted and thinking furiously.
“How much money was there?” she asked.
“Not enough to allow him to become a gentleman of leisure. Enough to buy better coats and pay his way among the monied classes. I think he has been doing this for several years.”
“Taking bribes from criminals?”
He nodded. “We still have no real proof. A man’s entitled to keep his money in his wardrobe if he wants to or to work out his finances with imaginary figures. He’s smart enough to keep it all away from bank ledgers.”
“I should tell Horace.”
“Would he believe you? As it stands, we can’t tie Gabriel to Art or even to Nancy’s murder. We just know he could have done it.”
“I could visit Horace’s office,” she said brightly, “look for colleagues who fit Junie’s description of the man Nancy followed.”
“What if Junie is just wrong?” he said. “I know she picked Nancy out and described some of what we know happened. But Gabriel isn’t exactly a memorable fellow, at least not in appearance. He would have stood out to her as a gentleman, but her imagination could easily have supplied the rest. And she could very well have been drunk.”
Griz blinked. “You don’t know that.”
“No, but she certainly reeked of gin at ten in the morning,” Dragan retorted, “so it is a distinct possibility.”
“Then we are still no further forward!”
“Oh, we are. Gabriel is definitely suspicious, and he definitely had ties to Nancy. If we can prove his ties to Art, I think the rest might follow.”
“We could go back to the alehouse in Seven Dials,” Griz said dubiously.
“Nothing so suicidal,” he said at once. “Just a thought.”
Avoiding pedestrians and vehicles on Piccadilly made it difficult to concentrate on anything else, so they cut up Berkley Street, past Devonshire House, to take a quieter route through wealthy residential streets toward Grosvenor Square.
“Isn’t that your carriage?” Dragan said suddenly, and she looked across the road in time to see one of the arms-emblazoned town carriages rolling past in the same direction.
Fortunately, it didn’t stop.
I might have got away with it.
This turned out not to be quite true, since her mother brought up what she had seen over dinner that evening.
It was one of the rare occasions when they dined without guests, not even Mr. Gabriel, which was a relief since Griz doubted she could have hidden her distaste. Even if he hadn’t killed Nancy—and she was fairly sure he had—he had most certainly seduced a maid in her family’s care and made her pregnant, making it impossible for the girl to get another decent situation or even a decent husband. He had betrayed Nancy and Miss Derryn.
Both Horace and Forsythe were present, though not Monkton or any of her married sisters.
“I saw you in Charles Street this afternoon, Griz,” the duchess observed, fixing her with a serious glare. “My dear, I know you like to be independent and are no longer a young girl, but you are still a marriageable lady, and it is really not the thing to go gallivanting about the town with unknown young men, entirely unchaperoned.”
“But I do know him,” Griz said lightly. “So do you, Mama. You met him at Azalea’s party.”
Horace scowled and laid down his fork.
The duchess paused and dabbed her lips with her napkin. “The excessively handsome foreign gentleman…of course.”
“A foreign gentleman under suspicion of murder,” Horace said shortly.
“No, he isn’t,” Griz said, throwing caution to the winds. “You could have more easily done it than Dragan.” In fact, he could have been the elegant, confident “nob” who enticed Nancy from the theatre toward Mudd Lane... Not that she truly believed that.
“That isn’t funny,” Horace said coldly.
“No, it isn’t. Nor is accusing my friend of a crime