This guy has some kind of link to the future. He is connected to this case, and with any luck he can show us the way home.

But before she confronted him with her suspicions, Chevie decided that it would be wise to snoop around and gather some evidence.

I’m a federal agent, she thought. Snooping is what we do best.

The window was also locked, which slowed Chevie down. She discovered a cushion that had been embroidered with Charismo’s own face and thought of ramming her elbow through Charismo’s nose to crack the pane beyond.

But the glass breaking was not a clever idea. The noise would still be heard in the mews, and there were people on the flagstones in the yard. As soon as she smashed the window there would be a hundred eyes on her.

There’s something about this guy Charismo. Either he’s from the future or he knows someone who is, but it’s not just that. I have a bad feeling about him. And it’s not just the circumstantial evidence and that creepy mask.

Not a hunch; more than that. An un-remembered memory. Come on, subconscious; where are you when I need you? There must be another way out besides the window. Chevie spent a minute knocking on the walls, searching for the secret passage that all Victorian houses had in the movies, but there was no hollow echo, just the flat rap of solid brick. Then she noticed a silk screen, again embroidered with Charismo’s face. In petty annoyance she put the toe of her riding boot through the screen, only to feel a draft. It was a fireplace with a driedflower arrangement in the grate.

The chimney. Garrick came down the chimney in the Garden Hotel. I never thought I would steal one of his tricks.

Chevie knelt and poked her head into the flue. It led to a redbrick chimney. Chevie saw the bricks were red, even through a scaly skin of soot, because a splash of light fell across them from above.

Light, thought Chevie. That means there’s another fireplace one floor up.

She wriggled her shoulders into the flue—while there was enough space for a wriggle, there certainly was no room for a shrug.

I had better not shrug, then, thought Agent Savano, and twisted herself completely into the fireplace.

While Chevie was scraping her nose along the redbrick of a chimney, Riley was being interviewed in the writing room by society darling Tibor Charismo. Riley was an adoring fan of Charismo’s work, and Tibor seemed extremely satisfied to take this as the starting point of their relationship.