“Is someone there?”

Slowly, he drew his pistol. Then he stepped closer, heels echoing in the hall. He looked around, then up at the gallery. I hoped he couldn’t see us through the balustrade.

He backed away, one step, another. Then, abruptly, he spun on his heels and stalked from the Banqueting House. The door creaked and slammed behind him.

“Come on,” I whispered to Tom. I ran to the windows, barely peeking my head above the sill, trying to see where the man had gone.

He strode across the courtyard, toward the main palace buildings. Suddenly he turned, looking up at the Banqueting House, eyes narrowed.

I ducked down, heart thumping. Had he spotted us?

I waited a moment. Then I crawled to a different window, farther along the gallery, and peeked out again.

I didn’t know if he’d seen us, but he wasn’t coming back. One of the guards had started a small fire near the entrance to the courtyard. The Scotsman was already there.

He held the letter in the flames. One corner caught fire. The man watched it burn for a moment, then dropped it.

He went inside the palace as the letter turned to ash.

CHAPTER 19

TOM LEANED AGAINST THE WALL. “What was that about?” he said.

I wished I knew. The man had a letter, like us. Did it say the same thing? Had it told him to search the Banqueting House?

Or was it something else?

The thing that worried me most was that, unlike us, he hadn’t bothered to look around. If anything, he’d acted like he was being lured into a trap.

“Maybe he’s the murderer,” Tom said.

“I don’t know about that.” I explained how I’d seen the man yesterday, outside the palace gate.

“He still could have done it,” Tom insisted. “He kills Mary Brickenham, then leaves the palace right away. So he’s already gone by the time she’s found, and he’s outside for the lockdown. That way, no one suspects him.”

It was possible. Still, we couldn’t be sure. The man had behaved oddly, yes, but that didn’t make him a murderer. I remembered the spymaster’s warning about jumping to conclusions. When there are no patterns, we invent them to fill the gaps.

The fact was, we didn’t know anything about the Scotsman. We didn’t even know who he was. I wished he hadn’t burned that letter. If we knew what was in it, I had the feeling we’d understand what was happening a lot better.

Well, we could at least learn the man’s name. “Lord Ashcombe saw him, too,” I said. “He might know who he is.”

We went looking for the King’s Warden but were told he’d left Whitehall for a meeting at the docks. Probably the same one Walsingham was going to, about the war with the Dutch.

“Should we check with someone else?” Tom said.

I shook my head. “I don’t want word getting around that we’re asking about the man. It’ll have to wait until Lord Ashcombe’s back. Besides, we’re supposed to be solving this riddle.”