A Wicked Conceit (Lady Darby Mysteries #9) - Anna Lee Huber Page 0,53
the job was done.”
Once again, I was taken aback by the implication of the previous violence he and his men had done, and also the knowledge he already possessed. Though I realized I shouldn’t have been.
“How do you know all this?” Gage queried peevishly.
“I have my sources,” he replied vaguely.
I’d long been envious of his system of runners positioned throughout the city—boys ready to relay information to or for him at a moment’s notice. But in this case, I suspected his informant might be a member of the City Police he’d bribed.
“What do you mean, ‘before the job was done’?” I puzzled. “Was Rookwood alive when they found him?”
I glanced at Gage, noting his tight jaw. Plainly he wasn’t going to answer, so I cleared my throat. “Maclean wasn’t willing to tell us anything.” Realizing I was fidgeting with my kid leather gloves, tugging them tighter onto my fingers, I lowered them to my lap. “Apparently, we are also suspects.”
Bonnie Brock’s features flickered in surprise. “Aye, weel . . . Rookwood supposedly scribbled a few letters before he slipped the wind. A B and either an a or an o.”
My eyes widened.
“Aye,” he replied with a fierce frown.
Ba might be anything, but Bo could be the beginning of Bonnie, as in Bonnie Brock.
“And he was also clutchin’ the torn corner o’ some documents. ’Tisn’t clear what they are, but . . .”
“The sequel,” I murmured, following his thought.
His eyes glinted in answer. “And if that’s true, then who kens who has it noo.”
Or where it would end up.
“Perhaps that was the motive,” Gage remarked brusquely, his arms crossed over his chest. “Stealing the sequel.” He glanced to the side, peering out the window at the darkened streets of New Town. “Which doesn’t exactly paint us in the clear. But we can’t be the only ones who would prefer not to see the sequel to The King of Grassmarket published.”
“Ye mean like someone else whose reputation was tarnished in the book?” Bonnie Brock speculated with raised eyebrows.
Which led us back around to their differing opinions about the honorability of Sergeant Maclean and the rest of the City Police.
I grunted as we clattered over a bump in the pavement. “Or a rival publisher,” I pointed out before they began to argue again, but then I was struck by another idea. “A rival publisher might benefit twofold. One, by preventing Rookwood from publishing it, and two, by publishing it themselves.”
“If they could discover the identity of the author,” Gage reminded us.
“I’m no’ sure they’d even need to do that.”
I turned to Bonnie Brock with interest.
“I’m sure Rookwood told ye how determined Mugdock was to keep him silent. Made him sign that ironclad contract. So how is Mugdock goin’ to protest the publication o’ his sequel by another publisher wi’oot revealin’ himself?”
“Through a team of barristers, but I apprehend what you’re saying,” Gage said. “In doing so, he’s disclosing his identity to not just one individual but, between the barristers’ staff and the courts, at least half a dozen people or more. Is he willing to risk that?”
“That reminds me,” I said, rolling the button of my cloak between my fingers as I sifted through my thoughts. “Rookwood told us that, at first, Mugdock balked at his insistence that he alter my and Gage’s names in the book, but later he relented, even if he only modified them by one letter. But if he was so adamant about keeping them, why didn’t he simply approach another publisher?”
Gage tilted his head in consideration. “Maybe he did. Maybe they weren’t interested, or they all insisted he change our names.”
“Or he didna want to expose his identity to anyone else,” Bonnie Brock interjected, circling us back to his previous comment.
“Then I suppose he chose Rookwood for a reason,” I said. There was nothing astonishing in that. We had done our research and knew that Thomas W. Rookwood was an established, well-respected publisher. Even so, he had been publishing fewer books with each passing year, and there was some speculation he would soon retire and sell his assets to another publisher. I wondered what would happen to those assets now.
I studied Bonnie Brock quizzically, wondering just how much he knew, and how much he would share with us. “Did your source tell you who found Rookwood?”
“Aye, that assistant o’ his. Said he left to run errands sometime after midday and when he returned this evenin’ he found his