The Sugared Game - K.J. Charles Page 0,85
her everything. I had to. Kim, listen, I thought of something. I said before that it was Skyrme’s fault you got interested in the High-Low because she sent that blackmailer after you, right? Well, suppose it wasn’t her who sent him?”
If he’d hoped for a reaction he was disappointed. Kim was nodding. “The same thing occurred to me, forcibly. I think something else is going on, and if I wasn’t a bloody idiot in a flat panic, I’d have seen it days ago. None of this adds up. My intervention has led to a significant loss for Zodiac, which Waring clearly doesn’t appreciate. Mrs. Skyrme didn’t want me or you or Leinster looking into her business. And come to that I’m not convinced it was her who set the police on us. When she departed the club, she took her bankbook to the nearest branch, emptied the account, and got on a train to Dover without troubling to pack. Why would she waste time and money on that parting shot?”
“Waring might have. That remark about strange bedfellows. Wanker.”
“Indeed, but it has not previously been in his interest to expose my peccadillos. He likes having that in his back pocket, and if he’d done it at all, I think he’d have done it properly. I think someone else is at work, not operating under Waring’s instructions. The question is who.”
“That’s what I thought. And then I thought about what you said—that you came back because I went to the High-Low, and you were afraid I was involved. And it seemed to me that someone who knew about us might have known they could drag you into it that way.”
Kim’s eyes sharpened. “You said you’d gone there by chance. Maisie’s pick.”
“I thought I had, but the thing is, Maisie was given a voucher for free champagne from a customer at her work. That doesn’t usually happen.”
“I wish you’d mentioned that earlier,” Kim said. “Any idea—”
“A woman called Mrs. Galloway. I just asked.”
Kim’s face set. “Galloway. You’re sure?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Right. Right. The thing is, Will, Hetta Galloway is John Cheveley’s mistress.”
Will took that in. “Cheveley? Jesus.”
“Quite.”
“Bit ripe, proposing to Phoebe five times if he’s got a mistress.”
“So? Phoebe has a fiancé and Hetta Galloway has a husband. God, you’re bourgeois.”
“One day I will thump you,” Will promised. “So, what, he wanted to be rid of Mrs. Skyrme? Does he want to be Aquarius instead?”
“To eliminate her as a rival in Zodiac. Let’s say he sent the blackmailer to me—of course he’d know what to do there. Maybe he discovered that Beaumont was in the same regiment as you and that gave him the idea to drag you in, as a second means of keeping my attention on the High-Low? Either way, he pulled me in and the dominoes started to fall. Which got rid of Mrs. Skyrme very effectively, but has also destroyed a very profitable operation. If I were Johnnie, I’d very much hope Waring didn’t find out about that.”
“Hold on, though. He couldn’t have known you’d get rid of Skyrme for him. She might have had you shoved under a train as well, or I might not have got to Fuller in time before he shot you. Jesus, Kim, was he trying to get rid of you?”
Kim sat on the bed. “Yes, that does seem plausible, doesn’t it? Me—no, both. That’s it. He wanted both her and me gone, and he let us do the work. Set your enemies against each other and sit back while they halve their number.”
Will looked down at him on the bed, the tension in his face, the slim wrists. Young Kim had been careful to keep the scars under his sleeves, as of course he would be. Always hiding, always hurting. A quivering, sensitive mass of nerve endings, clever and sensitive and stupid and unique, and that smug smooth-faced domineering bastard Cheveley had wanted to wipe him out as though he were nothing.
“Will?”
“I’m just working out how I’m going to kill the fucker,” Will said. “Don’t mind me. Why is Cheveley trying to get rid of you?”
“The obvious answer is because he wants to secure Phoebe’s hand, and it’s still wearing my ring.”
Will shook his head. “She’s told him no a few times now. Why would he think she’d say yes?”
“Ah,” Kim said. “Well. Did she ever tell you the events that led to our engagement?”
“I got the gist.”
“I am going to give you more than the gist, in faith that you will not