“Yes, we did,” he said. “As for why green—” He shrugged. “I like green. It’s my favorite color.”

At the brothel, O’Connell had inquired doggedly for a gentleman in a green dress, possibly named Mayrhofer—only to have it strongly implied by Magda and her staff that he was insane. The result was naturally to leave O’Connell in some agitation of mind.

“He was not a practiced spy, as you note,” Trevelyan said, shaking his head with a sigh. “Already suspicious, he became convinced that some perfidy was afoot—”

“Which it was,” Grey put in, earning himself a brief glance of annoyance from Trevelyan, who nonetheless continued.

“And so I surmise that he decided he required some safer place of concealment for the papers he held—and thus returned to his wife’s lodgings in Brewster’s Alley.”

Where he had discovered his abandoned wife in an advanced state of pregnancy by another man, and with the irrationality of jealousy, proceeded to batter her senseless.

Grey massaged his forehead, closing his eyes briefly in order to counteract a tendency for his head to spin.

“All right,” he said. “The affair is reasonably clear to me so far. But,” he added, opening his eyes, “we have still two dead men to account for. Obviously, Magda told you that O’Connell had rumbled you. And yet you say you did not kill him? Nor yet Mayrhofer?”

A sudden rustling from the bed interrupted him, and he turned, startled.

“It was I who killed my husband, good sir.”

The voice from the bed was soft and husky, with no more than a hint of foreign accent, but all three men jerked, startled as though it had been a trumpet blast. Maria Mayrhofer lay upon her side, hair tangled over her pillow. Her eyes were huge, glazed with encroaching fever, but still luminous with intelligence.

Trevelyan went at once to kneel beside her, feeling her cheek and forehead.

“Scanlon,” he said, a tone of command mingled with one of appeal.

The apothecary went at once to join him, touching her gently beneath the jaw, peering into her eyes—but she turned her head away from him, closing her eyes.

“I am well enough for the moment,” she said. “This man—” She waved in Grey’s direction. “Who is he?”

Grey stood, keeping his feet awkwardly as the deck rose under him, and bowed to her.

“I am Major John Grey, madam. I am appointed by the Crown to investigate a matter”—he hesitated, uncertain how—or whether—to explain—“a matter that has impinged upon your own affairs. Did I understand you to say that you had killed Herr Mayrhofer?”

“Yes, I did.”

Scanlon had withdrawn to check his hell-brew, and she rolled her head to meet Grey’s gaze again. She was too weak to lift her head from the pillow, and yet her eyes held something prideful—almost insolent, despite her state—and he had a sudden glimmer of what it was that had so attracted the Cornishman.