“In late April, I think it was, though I cannot—oh. Yes, I can be sure.” He grinned, triumphantly displaying a set of decaying teeth. “That was it. He brought word of the Austrian defeat at Prague, arrived by special courier. The newspapers had it within days, but naturally Mr. Trevelyan would wish to know of it at once.”

Grey nodded. For a man with Trevelyan’s business interests, information like that would be worth its weight in gold—or even more, depending on its timeliness.

“One last thing, then. When he left so hastily—did the woman leave then, too? And did she go with him, rather than seeking separate transport?”

Caswell was obliged to ponder that one for a moment, leaning against the wall.

“Ye-es, they did leave together,” he said at last. “I seem to recall that the servant ran off to fetch a hired carriage, and they entered it together. She’d a shawl over her head. Quite small, though; I might easily have taken her for a boy—save that her figure was quite rounded.”

Caswell drew himself up straight then, and cast a last glance about the vacant room, as though to satisfy himself that it would yield no further secrets.

“Well, that’s my end of the bargain kept, my love. And yours?” His hand hovered over the candlestick, scrawny claw poised to pinch out the flame. Grey saw the polished obsidian eyes fix on him in invitation, and was all too conscious of the large bed, close behind him.

“Of course,” Grey said, moving purposefully toward the door. “Shall we adjourn to your office?”

Caswell’s expression might have been termed a pout, had he had the fullness of lip to achieve such a thing.

“If you insist,” he said with a sigh, and extinguished the candle in a burst of fragrant smoke.

Dawn was beginning to lighten over the housetops of London by the time Grey left Dickie Caswell’s sanctum, alone. He paused at the end of the corridor, resting his forehead against the cool glass of the casement, watching the City as it emerged by imperceptible degrees from its cloak of night. Muted by clouds that had thickened during the night, the light grew in shades of gray, relieved only by the faintest tinge of pink over the distant Thames. In his present state of mind, it reminded Grey of the last vestiges of life fading from a corpse’s cheeks.

Caswell had been delighted with his half of the bargain, as well he should be. Grey had held back nothing of his Medmenham adventures, save the name of the man who had actually killed George Everett. There, he said only that the man had been robed and masked; impossible to say for sure who it had been.