Good thing he’d been more set on flirting with the girl than with finding him, or he’d have had to run. Which would have been disastrous, as it would have brought even more attention.

Coughing into his glove, Das Gespenst emerged slowly from his cover, not trusting them not to turn back into the park at any moment. His chest still ached a bit from the cold that had kept him inside the last few days.

Blasted English damp.

But no one else came into the park, leaving him free to approach the Go board. Would she really teach him to play? On his board?

His fingers curled into his palm in protest. No. That wouldn’t do. Then they’d both be hovering around here, and he’d have to find a new place to blend into the shadows. Blighted man would no doubt spot him otherwise.

Well then. A slight change of plans, that was all. He pulled out the small velvet bags that held the stones and swept the white and black pieces into their respective pouches. His game with Margot De Wilde would just have to be paused for a while.

But that was all right. He’d already learned all he needed to know from her play anyway. The next step would have to be a little more . . . involved.

24

What if they were right?

Margot sat at the table in her empty flat, staring at the stack of newspapers but unable to make herself pick up another one. Never in her life had she let other people’s doubts stop her from doing what she knew was right.

But she didn’t know this time. There had been no whisper of beautiful proofs in her head. No nudging of the Pythagorean theorem telling her to follow, to walk, to do. To search newspapers for answers. To find an assassin.

She’d been clinging to her belief that it couldn’t be coincidence. But then yesterday Drake had responded to one of his sister’s jokes with, “You’re asking the wrong question, Dot.”

And the words had stuck fast in her mind. He hadn’t said those exact words to her, but it was what he’d been getting at that evening at her birthday dinner, wasn’t it? That she shouldn’t have been asking why God hadn’t sent her to help—that perhaps she couldn’t have. Perhaps there was a different way she ought to be looking at it.