WITH MILLY SATISFIED for the time being, I was free to go back to Paddington Street and sort through my mail and look for any typing jobs I’d been neglecting. I put the kettle on—going through the post was easier with a cup of tea and a nice packet of shortbread, particularly if there were things that I should have looked at sooner—and started setting up the table, which was a challenge as most of it was still taken up by Milly’s re-creation of the masquerade party. I was just getting started on the stack of letters—one was a letter from home, one informing me of a sale at a nearby yarn shop, and three more advertisements for solicitors that made me wonder if there really was something I ought to be worrying about. As there were no typing jobs, I took the stack of solicitor’s advertisements and started making out cover letters and price sheets for each of them. Inspector Burrows was right: if they were going to pester me, I might as well pester them back.
I’d barely started my letters when I was interrupted by the message tube chiming. I was expecting to see whatever Milly was using as a calling card inside the cylinder—she did have a knack for coming over just as I was getting ready for tea, so it was a surprise to see a floral-edged calling card with Miss Julia Lloyd-Mason printed across it there instead. If there was anyone I wanted to see less than Milly at the moment, it was Miss Lloyd-Mason. But I was also a bit curious about why she had decided to come to me of all people. And if she did have something important to say, Miss Lloyd-Mason seemed like the sort of witness we only had one chance at. So I hurried downstairs to let her in before she changed her mind.
When I got to the door, Miss Lloyd-Mason was taking out another calling card. Apparently, she shared Milly’s belief that a second card might somehow do more than the first. “Good afternoon, Miss Lloyd-Mason.” I couldn’t quite bring myself to call having her on my doorstep a lovely surprise even if it would have been polite.
“I hope you don’t mind my dropping by unannounced, but you and Miss Prynne were so kind at the luncheon. And she was going to give me her address, but she said she’d just moved house and didn’t have cards yet, but she had one of yours, so she gave me that and said if I needed anything...” Miss Lloyd-Mason pulled out a crumpled calling card that looked as if it had been in the bottom of a handbag for the better part of a century to show me. “So you see, when I needed some advice, I thought of her at once. But I didn’t have her address, and I did have yours...”
Tempting as it was, I couldn’t very well throw her out, so I gestured toward the stairs. “Would you like to come upstairs and have some tea?” All Milly’s future housewarming presents were going to be calling cards of her own.
Miss Lloyd-Mason followed me up to my flat, and I got her an extra cup while she left her coat and hat draped over a chair and sat at the tea table, which was still covered with Milly’s re-creation of the masquerade. When I brought the cup over, Miss Lloyd-Mason was looking at the top layer of my mail, which happened to be the solicitors’ advertisements I’d been planning to copy addresses from, with a look that suggested she was wondering why I had so many. I looked over Milly’s display, trying to find something stable enough in it to rest the new cup and saucer on. When I’d settled on the tray being used as the landing as the only possible place to put them, I made sure to make them jangle enough that Miss Lloyd-Mason would notice them.
“Thank you,” she said, probably hoping I hadn’t noticed her snooping.
I took the teapot and poured out, then had to figure out where I could put it down. The spare chair was the best I could manage from where I was. “You said you had a problem you wanted advice on?”
Miss Lloyd-Mason helped herself to the shortbread. “Yes, I do. The problem is Jeremy.”
“The charming gentleman you were meeting the night of the Melpomene costume ball?” I remembered.
“That’s him.”
“What has Jeremy done to make himself a problem?” I supposed it was too much to hope that he’d confessed to the murder.
“He said he thought I made a charming Marie-Antoinette.” Miss Lloyd-Mason bit into a cookie with an exaggerated amount of force. She was expecting me to understand why this was such an error.
I surprised myself by catching on fairly quickly. “If you went to meet him in the Columbine costume, how did he see you in the Marie Antoinette costume?”
“Exactly!”
I took a sip of tea to think. “Could he have meant he knew you would look charming in the costume?”
Miss Lloyd-Mason shook her head. “He didn’t know I was wearing it. I was going to go as Elizabeth Bennett. I thought I’d make a charming Elizabeth Bennett.”
More of an annoying Lydia Bennett, but I kept that to myself. I was becoming increasingly annoyed with charming people at the moment. “What made you change your mind?”
“When I got the costume, it was surprisingly hard to get in and out of, while the Marie-Antoinette one had a skirt that just tied at the waist and set of hooks on the edge of the ruffly thing on the bodice. And it had a more distinctive silhouette. Mother could tell it was me from across the room, while the Elizabeth dress could have been mistaken for all sorts of other things. Then she would have had to come over to see, and she would have known Miss Kelsey wasn’t me, no matter how good she was at acting.”
That matched what Miss Kelsey had said about the skirt and the fastening on the stomacher. “Could he have seen you going into the party?”
Miss Lloyd-Mason shook her head. “He was going to wait down one of the side streets. And there was such a crush of carriages when we got there, he couldn’t have seen me unless he was standing on the pavement outside.”
“So what do you think happened?”
Miss Lloyd-Mason took another cookie. “He lied. He told me he couldn’t get a ticket to the party, and he lied.”
“You asked him?”
Miss Lloyd-Mason nodded. “I told him how nice it would be if we could dance together there. With the costumes, Mother would never know. He’d just have to avoid being introduced to her. And he said he couldn’t get a ticket.”
I had the same feeling that there was something more than what she’d said that I’d had when we’d been at the luncheon, when I’d asked Milly what she thought, when Milly had cornered Miss Lloyd-Mason and found out about the charming Jeremy to begin with. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
Miss Lloyd-Mason stared at her teacup. I slid the kettle over to give her something to do with her hands. “I had thought I was mistaken, that I wanted to see him so badly that I tricked myself. But then Miss Prynne told me about Gretna Green, and then I checked with Father’s solicitor when he came by. I let him think it was because I’d been reading novels, but he confirmed it...”
“Jeremy said he was taking you to Gretna Green to get married?”
Miss Lloyd-Mason nodded. “How could he say something like that when he should have known better? He’s a solicitor too, you see. His cards even say Mr. Jeremy Trent, esquire.”
So she’d had a lucky escape, but she didn’t need to hear me say that. “That was very badly done.”
“It was, wasn’t it? I’m not wrong to be angry?”
“Not at all.” I gave her a moment to let that sink in, then pressed on. “But there was something before that that made you question his honesty.”
Miss Lloyd-Mason sighed. “When we got to the masked ball, I thought I saw him. He was wearing a mask, so I couldn’t see his face, but I thought I recognized his build and the way he walked. I thought he’d found a way to slip in for a little while so we could have our dance. So I went over to him and tried standing where he’d be sure to see me so he could ask, only he never approached me.”
Now I wished Milly was with us. She would have known what to ask to determine if Miss Lloyd-Mason really had seen Mr. Trent or if it had been wishful thinking on her part. I did the best I could. “So the height and build were the same?”
Miss Lloyd-Mason nodded. “And I’d know his form anywhere.”
I let that pass. “And what costume was this fellow wearing?”
“He was a highwayman, I think. He had a black cloak over most of his costume, so it was hard to tell. A green velvet thing on top. And long socks. And those old-fashioned pants. Like Louis XVI.”
A highwayman with knee breeches. Mr. Ravel had modified his Romeo costume, so he’d been wearing hose, not knee breeches, and if I recalled correctly, the Romeo costume had been predominately blue, not green. It couldn’t have been Mr. Ravel Miss Lloyd-Mason saw. “And what sort of a mask?”
“Just a small black mask.”
Like quite a few other people at the party.
“And he had a powdered wig on. And a hat with a feather.”
It did seem suspicious, but then it was a masked ball. There could easily have been several similar highwaymen there. Then I had another idea. “What was Mr. Trent wearing when you met him in the carriage?”
“Not a black mask and a powdered wig. I would have noticed that. A dark green jacket. He looks so handsome in dark green.”
“And trousers?”
“He had them, of course. But I’m afraid I didn’t notice. We were in his carriage, and he was wrapped up against the cold.”
Probably in a black cloak. “Not even to tell if they were knee breeches like that man you saw?”
She shook her head. “I was convinced I was wrong. Especially after I said how I wished he could slip in for one dance, and he said he wished the same. I took that to mean he hadn’t been in the party at all and I’d been mistaken.”
“But after Gretna Green...”
“Exactly. What do you think?”
That she should run as far from him as she could. “You should trust your instincts.”
“I hate the thought that Mother was right.”
Milly would have had a more convincing response to that, I was sure. I tried my best. “Well, you shouldn’t let her influence you either way with something that important.” When Miss Lloyd-Mason didn’t seem to know what I meant, I added, “I mean, you don’t want to do something you don’t think is the right choice for you simply because she was against it. That’s still letting her have control of your decisions, just not the way she wants.”
“I suppose it is, isn’t it?”
I seemed to have survived that hurdle. Now I tried to steer her back to the bit I was interested in. “When you thought you saw Mr. Trent, where was he? Was he talking with someone?”
“Just small talk, from what I could see. It was another man wearing a hat with a feather, and a short cape, and I don’t know. I was looking at Jeremy.”
I tried to remember who that would have been. “Where were they?”
“Near the dance floor. But the statue of the Greek woman with the harp.”
So the statue of Terpsichore. Mr. Norwood had been there. And Mr. Bowen. And we’d met Mr. Ashcroft and the fake American Miss Huntington not too far from there. I tried to remember who else. “And did he stay there?”
“Not very long. He spoke to the man then started for the stairs. I went to stand by the dance floor so he’d be sure to see me, and he walked right past me. That’s when I decided it couldn’t possibly be him and went back to trying to figure out where me and Miss Kelsey were supposed to meet.”
“How long was it before you were supposed to meet Miss Kelsey?”
“Not long. Fifteen minutes, maybe. I was starting to worry that I would be late and she wouldn’t wait for me.”
“But you did manage to meet her.”
Miss Lloyd-Mason nodded. “And she assured me she would have waited, which was so nice of her, don’t you think?”
I nodded and tried to think of anything else I needed to ask Miss Lloyd-Mason before she disappeared on me again. “How did you get back into the party without your invitation? Or out at all without being noticed?”
“They all thought I was Miss Kelsey. One of the footmen at the door even said, ‘Good evening, Miss Kelsey,’ that’s how good my acting was. I knew I could have been on the stage if I’d wanted to.”
So they must have seen the costume. And known that it was what Miss Kelsey was wearing. But then they would have seen Miss Kelsey when she arrived, and might even have seen her take the costume backstage earlier. And she probably made sure they would know her costume to be certain Miss Lloyd-Mason could get back in. At least it explained how Miss Lloyd-Mason got in and out of the party, and made it more likely Inspector Burrows was right that it was someone at the party, not an outsider, who had killed Mr. Craddock.
“So you do think I was right, and I saw Jeremy at the party? And if he lied, then I’m right to break it off with him, aren’t I?”
I didn’t want to give her any advice that she could come back and blame me for. “I think you should trust your instincts. You know him better than I do and better than your mother does.”
“I do, don’t I? Thank you. I knew talking to someone understanding would help. I thought it would be Miss Prynne, but you did nicely.” Miss Lloyd-Mason got up leaving her tea half drunk and started collecting up her things. “Now I really must go. You’ll thank Miss Prynne for me, won’t you?”
I wasn’t quite sure what I was thanking Milly for, but I was intending on telling her everything that had happened, so I promised I would, then walked Miss Lloyd-Mason downstairs.
I accompanied Miss Lloyd-Mason all the way to Marylebone Road, ostensibly to help her find a cab—there were plenty on Marylebone Road but I had the feeling Miss Lloyd-Mason did not get out on her own often enough to be used to finding cabs—then once she was on her way, I went to the aviary on the corner to send Milly a note. There wasn’t much space on the paper they had out on the tables for public use, so I only had room to write that Miss Lloyd-Mason had called regarding Jeremy’s deception. That would be enough to bring Milly if she was at home.
This time, it took Milly twenty minutes to get to Paddington Street, and she remembered to send up a card with her old address in the message tube. I sent down the key and made certain the remains of the tea I’d had with Miss Lloyd-Mason had been cleared away before I opened the door for her.
Milly started asking questions almost before she was through the door. “When was she here? What did she say? And why didn’t you send for me?”
I took the questions out of order. “She came here because someone gave her my card. There wouldn’t have been time to send for you, although if she’d had your address, I think she would have rather gone straight to you. And she left about half an hour ago.”
Milly sat down in the chair near the window. “At least she was able to come here. Now tell me everything.”
So I told her everything Miss Lloyd-Mason had told me about thinking she’d seen the charming Jeremy at the masquerade and how Milly’s mention of Gretna Green had caused her to rethink everything about him.
“I did think he seemed the sort to promise something like that,” Milly said. “And of course it was him.”
“She still wasn’t certain, or she didn’t want to be, but it certainly sounded like he was there and she recognized him, and then he lied to her about it.”
“And that would be why he wanted to meet her in a dark carriage outside, to hide the costume. And it would make it easy for him to sneak into the party. And if he was sneaking into the party, it had to be to hide something. He might even be the killer. Oh, that poor girl. I’ll have to go over and see how she’s doing.” Milly started collecting up her gloves and handbag.
“She seemed well enough when she left.”
“Of course she did. She just came to a decision. But when she has to decide how to tell him, it will all come back and she’ll start to doubt herself. That’s when she’ll need someone understanding to remind her why she’s leaving him. And to listen to anything she might know about the masquerade that she didn’t think to tell you. Or didn’t want to tell you.”
I had thought it was a good idea for Milly to question her. She did seem to understand Miss Lloyd-Mason’s frame of mind. “Do you know where she lives?” I asked.
“That’s why I gave her your card, so she would give me one of hers.”
“Wouldn’t it have been simpler to give her one of yours?”
“I don’t have any with my new address.”
And if I knew Milly, she wouldn’t get any with her new address for ages and just keep handing out mine.
Once Milly had gone, I sat down at my typewriter and wrote a summary of Miss Lloyd-Mason’s visit and what we had learned at the theater for Inspector Burrows. He could make of it what he would. When I’d finished, it was too long for a mechanical bird, so I’d have to go out and find a messenger to deliver it. I was just getting my hat pinned on when the bell for the message tube chimed. I shoved the report into my handbag and went to see who it was this time. It was Milly’s card again. She’d been at Miss Lloyd-Mason’s for less than an hour. I had expected commiserating over the charming Jeremy to take much longer than that. I sent down the key and went to open the door.
I’d barely gotten the door open when Milly swept into my flat. She must have run up the stairs. “We have to go and see Mr. Trent.”
That was the last thing I was in the mood to do. “The man we just determined is probably a murderer?”
“You don’t think he’s a murderer any more than I do. Neither does Miss Lloyd-Mason. That’s why we have to go.”
I hadn’t thought Milly visiting Miss Lloyd-Mason could cause too many problems. It seemed I was wrong. “She’s not going to see him?”
“That was her first reaction. I told her it was foolish and that she needed to let the police do their jobs. And I told her that if he’s arrested, I’d help her find a way to visit him.”
Which meant she’d ask me to use my influence with Inspector Burrows to do it, but that was better than going to question a potential murderer, even if I didn’t really think he was the culprit.
“And she said she wouldn’t go. But she was so insistent, I’m worried she lied to get rid of me. So I came straight here. We need to go and make certain she doesn’t get herself killed or worse.”
I wasn’t sure what Milly was considering worse than being murdered, but it did seem we needed to do something. “I suppose we could at least go and see if she’s there.”
“I knew you’d agree. I have the cab waiting.”
If Milly kept a cab waiting, she was impatient.
~ * ~ * ~
Milly had gotten Mr. Trent’s address from Miss Lloyd-Mason, so we went straight there. He lived on the second floor of a building in Cheapside. Milly dismissed the cab before I could even suggest we ask him to wait again. I was hoping it was the sort of building with a doorman, or servants, or someone at the door who we could ask if Miss Lloyd-Mason had been there and be on our way, but we weren’t so lucky. Not only was there no one there, the entry door was unlocked and open to anyone.
Milly went right in. “Miss Lloyd-Mason said it was flat twenty-two. Come on.” Milly started up the stairs without stopping to see if there was a landlady or someone else we could ask for help, or at least to have as a witness, or any sign of Miss Lloyd-Mason in the entryway.
There were four flats on each floor, so it was easy enough to find Mr. Trent’s. Milly pounded on the door immediately. I kept an eye on the other three doors in case one of Mr. Trent’s neighbors came to see what the racket was, although I was starting to think this was the sort of building where people ignored anything that wasn’t directly in front of them, which seemed like the sort of place someone who was promising an elopement in Gretna Green would find useful.
I starting to wonder if whatever sort of landlady the building had would be the first to finally decide to come upstairs and see what Milly was on about when the door opened and a man slightly older than Miss Lloyd-Mason with the sort of face that might have been thought handsome if it hadn’t been so vacant peered out. “What?”
“Mr. Trent?” Milly asked.
He didn’t answer—I suspected he had learned to find out who wanted to know before answering to his name—but he did turn slightly, instinctively, toward Milly when she said his name.
That was enough for Milly. She caught the door before he could react and pulled it open the rest of the way. “Is Miss Lloyd-Mason here?”
Mr. Trent seemed genuinely confused. “Should she be?”
“Well, we’re going to check.” Before either I or Mr. Trent could protest, Milly walked into his flat. I was tempted to leave her to her own devices, but I didn’t want to spend the night worrying that she’d been murdered, so I followed her in.
Mr. Trent’s flat was small, little more than a sitting room with chairs and a table that looked as if they’d been through several tenants before him and a door leading to what I assumed was a bedroom. Milly started by opening the door to what turned out to be a coat closet, then started looking behind the furniture.
“Who are you?” Mr. Trent asked, which under other circumstances would have been a perfectly reasonable question worthy of an answer, and honestly probably was now.
Instead of answering, I countered with, “Have the police been here yet?” It seemed a good idea to at least suggest someone would know if he tried doing away with us.
“Should they be?” Mr. Trent asked, sounding even more confused.
It did rather sound like Milly and I had barged into his home and were suggesting a very strange sort of party at his rooms. “They will be.”
“Why?”
By then, Milly had made it all the way to the bedroom, where I thought I saw her looking under the bed. She seemed satisfied with her search and came back. “Well, you did murder Mr. Craddock, so they’re bound to take an interest.”
“Murdered Mr. Craddock? I did nothing of the sort.”
Milly seated herself in one of the chairs by the fireplace. “Of course you did. That’s why you went to the masquerade.”
Mr. Trent took the other chair in a daze. “I did nothing of the sort.” He seemed to have forgotten how to say anything else.
Milly waved her hand dismissively. “Cassie saw you take the mask.”
Mr. Trent looked shocked and a bit guilty. “That’s not... It wasn’t...” At least he’d come up with a new answer.
“And if you weren’t there to murder Mr. Craddock, why did you need Miss Lloyd-Mason to be your alibi?”
“I didn’t need her for an alibi. She had nothing to do with what I was doing at the theater.”
Milly pounced on that at once. “So you were there.”
“But.. I wasn’t...”
“So you were desperately in love with her and wanted to sneak a moment alone with her?” Milly rested the back of her hand on her forehead and flopped back in an exaggerated swoon.
Mr. Trent could see neither of us believed that. “It was completely unrelated.”
“Quite a coincidence,” I pointed out.
“The police will never believe it,” Milly added.
“But it’s the truth. It was a completely unrelated bit of business.” He could tell at once he’d said too much.
I wasn’t about to let him get away with it. “Then why the secret meeting?”
“I couldn’t very well risk her seeing me there and not tell her I was going to be there, so I came up with the plan to meet her there in secret, and then, if she saw me, I could pretend I’d found a way to come in and surprise her.”
“That certainly worked well,” Milly muttered.
“Yes, well, I was so distracted by the body, I slipped and mentioned the wrong costume.”
The body. He’d seen the body. The timeline we’d thought we had was falling apart with every new fact.
Milly was still interested in Miss Lloyd-Mason’s heartbreak. “And not acknowledging her at the party?”
“She saw me just at the worst moment. Just when I thought I’d found who I was supposed to meet. I couldn’t acknowledge her then. What if she realized what I was doing?”
“What exactly were you doing?” I asked.
“Murdering Mr. Craddock?” Milly added.
“No. Nothing like that. I was supposed to pick something up. But it wasn’t going quite how it was supposed to. And I didn’t actually know who my contact was. I was hoping they would see me wandering around and approach me. Someone did approach, right when Julia spotted me. That’s why I couldn’t ignore him. I thought he was going to tell me what I was supposed to be doing, but he was just asking directions to the buffet. So I was trying to figure out what to do.”
When Mr. Trent didn’t go on, I asked, “What did you do?”
“I kept looking around until it was time for my meeting with Julia. There’s usually some way to tell what I’m supposed to do. Then I had to rush out and get into the carriage so I could meet with her. I didn’t think she’d realized it was me at the party, so I took that as a good sign. Once I’d gotten that over with, I went back in and decided to try upstairs so she wouldn’t see me and...” He trailed off.
I had the feeling I knew what had made him hesitate. Finding a dead body did strike some people that way. “Why did you take the mask?” I asked.
“I thought...” Mr. Trent looked from me to Milly and back again. Then he sighed, probably realizing we weren’t going to let him just stop explaining, and said, “I thought it was what I was there for.”
“You didn’t know what you were there for?” Milly asked.
“I knew what I was there for, but not where it would be. When I saw the mask on the cabinet, I thought that was it. It wasn’t.”
Milly’s manner of getting the story was either going to give me a headache or confuse us all. “Let’s begin at the beginning. What were you there for?”
“To pick up some items.”
“Go on,” I said and kept staring at him.
Mr. Trent relented. “Ryan Clarke collects things from the theater and passes them on to me. I find buyers, and we split the profits. I was supposed to collect a batch at the party, but I didn’t know where they were. I thought the mask was a sign, maybe they were under it or something. I found the secret compartment, but it was filled with obviously fake stones, so I knew that wasn’t it. There was a key under it, so I thought that might be what I was supposed to find. I figured it went to one of the doors near there. I started with the office since we’d used it to exchange things before, but he’d usually unlock it for me first. I thought the gems were to tell me that there was some jewelry or something else that needed special handling, or maybe just to tell me I could smuggle the stuff out in the mask. So I took the mask and the key and went to the office, and unlocked the door, and...”
I gave him a moment to collect himself then asked, “What exactly did you see?”
“Just someone lying there. Dead. With a dagger in him. And a note in his hand. I didn’t know what to do. I thought I’d stumbled in on someone else’s business, so I got out of there.”
“Someone else’s business?” That was how he referred to a murder? “How many crimes were going on in this theater?”
Mr. Trent took that as a serious question. “Dozens, I would think. With all Mr. Landon’s enterprises, he was willing to look the other way for a cut. Once he died, it all became more profitable.”
I caught on quickly. “So Mr. Landon was in on this before you?”
“He was the one who coordinated everything. I think when it started out, he sold the more valuable stuff. There was someone else for the cheaper stuff when I started in on it.”
“Ryan Clarke told you this?” I asked.
“We figured it out. I didn’t get all the stuff Ryan turned in, just the stuff that needed to go to the better sort of places, and I got stuff that he hadn’t turned in. I’d pretend to be the illegitimate cousin of Lord So-and-so or the youngest son of the Honorable Whatever down on his luck. It worked a treat. I’d bring the money back to Mr. Landon and get my cut.”
“And now Mrs. Landon doesn’t take a cut?”
“She doesn’t know about it.”
She would know about it now. And so would Inspector Burrows. “Who coordinates it now?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I wasn’t sure who to talk to at the party. Ryan got in touch with me a couple months after Landon died and said he’d been told he could go back to the old arrangement. He thought he was dealing directly with the other person selling the stuff, so he told them he knew someone who might be able to pawn the better things, and I was back in on it.”
So everyone was taking a cut of everyone’s money now, without knowing who anyone was. But had Mr. Craddock known? There was a question. I steered the conversation back to the crime at hand. “What did you do with the mask?”
“Left it on the desk with the key. I figured if it was a message, it wasn’t for me, and I didn’t want anything to do with it. And then I went looking for Ryan to ask him if he knew what I was supposed to be looking for.”
“What did he say?” Milly asked. I couldn’t tell if she was mad at Mr. Trent or at Mr. Clarke, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be either of them just then.
“I never saw him. He was in the foyer the whole time, handling the coats. It was hard to get to see him without anyone else overhearing us, particularly Bexley. He wasn’t a part of it. And I couldn’t have Julia see me again. So I just left.”
“Before or after the Hamlet scene?” I asked.
“Before. I forgot about it, or I would have stayed and gone to talk to Ryan then. Seeing the body...”
If he’d stayed for it, he might have been caught by Constable Jones as he was leaving. It was a pity finding a body had affected his memory so.
Milly was done hearing about the events of the night before. At least the murder-related ones. “So you had Miss Lloyd-Mason orchestrate an entire deception over her mother, and pay one of the actresses to give her an alibi so she could meet you, all so you could collect some stolen items?”
“Misplaced items,” Mr. Trent tried to correct.
“Stolen!” Milly corrected him.
I edged away from the pair of them and tried to think how I was going to relay all of this to Inspector Burrows. He needed to come arrest Mr. Trent for his part in the thefts if nothing else. I hadn’t seen a telephone cabinet in the entryway, but one of the nearby shops might have one, although I didn’t want to leave Milly in Mr. Trent’s flat by herself. I didn’t think he was dangerous, and whatever Milly did to him on Miss Lloyd-Mason’s behalf or to Mr. Clarke by proxy was his problem, but it still seemed like a bad idea. Then I remembered the mechanical bird Kate had given me. I could feel the weight of it in my handbag. It was worth trying, at least. If it didn’t work, Milly and I could still go with my current plan, which was to get the nearest cab as soon as Milly was done berating Mr. Trent and go straight to Scotland Yard. I felt around in my bag until I located the bird and the key on its side and wound it up while Milly snapped at Mr. Trent.
“What were you thinking? I assume you were after her money. You broke her heart. Was that worth it? Was her dowry that big? Or was she just a cover for your little scheme and you were going to leave her all along? What if she wasn’t such a sensible girl and had come poking around here, looking for you? What were you prepared to do?”
Mr. Trent realized the pause was for him to answer and started to sputter some nonsense.
“So you didn’t have a plan?”
I left Milly berating Mr. Trent and went to find a window I could use. The best I could manage required moving the battered dining table aside to reach it. While Milly was asking Mr. Trent what he had planned to do when Miss Lloyd-Mason’s family became involved in the mess he’d made, I took out my notebook and scribbled a note to Inspector Burrows. I couldn’t fit much in Kate’s bird, so I had to choose my words.
“Come to Mr. Trent’s now! Theft, not murder.”
I didn’t bother to sign it as Inspector Burrows would know my handwriting, folded it up and wrote Inspector Burrows, Scotland Yard, on the outside of the note, and slipped it into the bird. I wound the bird up and released it, then spent a little time looking out the window to locate the most likely spot to find a cab if we needed to leave quickly.