Frankel couldn’t resist glancing over at Rachel, who offered up an appreciative smile. It wasn’t the first time Frankel had been reminded of the one very good thing that had come into his life since finding a dead priest impaled on a cross in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

Soon after that, Stebbins ended the press conference.

Not a moment too soon as far as Frankel was concerned.

And from the look on Austin Grant’s face, he knew the feeling went double for the Scotland Yard commander.

“Not even one drink to celebrate?” asked Everett.

“Do I look like I want a drink?” responded Grant.

“You look like you could use a few actually,” said his brother.

Grant looked gloomier than when he’d exited the press conference. His expression matched the weather outside, where it was raining in sheets.

They had ended back up at the Wolseley for a late supper—but instead of it just being Frankel and Rachel, they had been joined by the Grant brothers.

It hadn’t been planned.

When the trio had returned to Grant’s office after the media bloodletting, Everett was there waiting. Being a Thursday, it was the night the brothers had their weekly chess match, but Frankel had heard Grant beg off before the presser when the Oxford professor had called to remind him.

Having followed the proceedings on television, Everett said there was no way he was going to let the three of them sit around and mope when they should be out—if not celebrating, then at least breathing a collective sigh of relief that it was over.

“Let me guess. You’re not leaving my office till we agree?” Grant asked.

“You know what happens when I don’t get my way,” Everett said.

Frankel didn’t get a chance to find out what that might be because Grant threw his hands up in dismay and told his brother to “just pick a bloody place.”

At the restaurant, neither Frankel nor Rachel followed Grant’s teetotaling lead. They both ordered Old Fashioneds and agreed they were subpar to the ones Everett had made on Christmas Eve.

By the time the appetizers had arrived, Everett had extracted everything about the demise of Prior Silver from Frankel and Rachel, while Grant remained mum the entire time.

“Strychnine poisoning?” Everett exclaimed. “How Agatha Christie of him.”

“It supports Jeffries’s timeline,” said Frankel. “Slow enough to ingest, then carve an eight into his forehead and have his body shipped to Austin the next day.”

“Using Monte Ferguson’s delivery account. There’s an inspired touch for you,” observed Everett.

The discussion naturally moved on to the missing Ferguson.

“Where do you think the man could have got off to?” Everett asked.

Grant spoke for the first time since ordering a salad when they sat down. “That’s what I want to know. When I find out, I have a whole bunch of questions.”

“Such as?” wondered his sibling.