The Masque of the Black Tulip (4 page)

During Richard's tenure as the Purple Gentian, the two of them had worked out a system. Richard gleaned intelligence in France, and relayed it back to the War Office via meetings with Miles. Miles, for his part, would then pass along any messages the War Office might have back to Richard. Along the way, Miles picked up the odd assignment or two, but his primary role was as liaison with the Purple Gentian. Nothing more, nothing less. Miles knew it was an important role. He knew that without his participation, it was quite likely that the French would have suspected Richard's dual identity years before Amy's involvement had precipitated the matter. But, at the same time, he couldn't help but feel that his talents might be put to better—and more exciting—use. He and Richard had, after all, apprenticed for this sort of thing together. They had snuck down the same back stairs at Eton, read the same dashing tales of heroism and valor, shared the same archery butts, and made daring escapes from the same overcrowded society ballrooms, pursued by the same matchmaking mamas.

When Richard had discovered that his next-door neighbor, Sir Percy Blakeney, was running the most daring intelligence effort since Odysseus asked Agamemnon whether he thought the Trojans might like a large, wooden horse, Richard and Miles had gone together to beg Percy for admittance into his league. After considerable pleading, Percy had relented in Richard's case, but he still refused Miles. He tried to fob Miles off with, "You'll be of more use to me at home." Miles pointed out that the French were, by definition, in France, and if he wanted to rescue French aristocrats from the guillotine, there was really only one place to do it. Percy, with the air of a man facing a tooth extraction, had poured two tumblers of port, passed the larger of the two to Miles, and said, "Sink me, if I wouldn't like to have you along, lad, but you're just too demmed conspicuous."

And there was the problem. Miles stood six feet three inches in his bare feet. Between afternoons boxing at Gentleman Jackson's and fencing at Angelo's, he had acquired the kind of musculature usually seen in Renaissance statuary. As one countess had squealed upon Miles's first appearance on the London scene, "Ooooh! Put him in a lion skin and he'll look just like Hercules!" Miles had declined the lion skin and other more intimate offers from the lady, but there was no escaping it. He had the sort of physique designed to send impressionable women into palpitations and Michelangelo running for his chisel. Miles would have traded it all in a minute to be small, skinny, and inconspicuous.

"What if I hunch over a lot?" he suggested to Percy.

Percy had just sighed and poured him an extra portion of port. The next day, Miles had offered his services to the War Office, in whatever capacity they could find. Until now, that capacity had usually involved a desk and a quill rather than black cloaks and dashing midnight escapades.

"How may I be of service?" Miles asked, trying to sound as though he were called in for important assignments at least once a week.

"We have a problem," began Wickham.

A problem sounded promising, ruminated Miles. Just so long as it wasn't a problem to do with the supply of boots for the army, or carbines for their rifles, or something like that. Miles had fallen for that once before, and had spent long weeks adding even longer sums. At a desk. With a quill.

"A footman was found murdered this morning in Mayfair."

Miles rested one booted leg against the opposite knee, trying not to look disappointed. He had been hoping for something more along the lines of "Bonaparte is poised to invade England, and we need you to stop him!" Ah, well, a man could dream.

"Surely that's a matter for the Bow Street Runners?"

Wickham fished a worn scrap of paper from the debris on his desk. "Do you recognize this?"

Miles peered down at the fragment. On closer inspection, it wasn't even anything so grand as a fragment; it was more of a fleck, a tiny triangle of paper with a jagged end on one side, where it had been torn from something larger. "No," he said.

"Look again," said Wickham. "We found it snagged on a pin on the inside of the murdered man's coat."

It was no wonder the murderer had overlooked the lost portion; it was scarcely a centimeter long, and no writing remained. At least, no writing that was discernable as such. Along the tear, a thick black stroke swept down and then off to the side. It might be the lower half of an uppercase script I, or a particularly elaborate T.

Miles was just about to admit ignorance for a second time—in the hopes that Wickham wouldn't ask him a third—when recognition struck. Not the lower half of an I, but the stem of a flower. A very particular, stylized flower. A flower Miles hadn't seen in a very long time, and had hoped never to see again.

"The Black Tulip." The name tasted like hemlock on Miles's tongue. He repeated it, testing it for weight after years of disuse. "It can't be the Black Tulip. I don't believe it. It's been too long."

"The Black Tulip," countered Wickham, "is always most deadly after a silence."

Miles couldn't argue with that. The English in France had been most on edge not when the Black Tulip acted, but when he didn't. Like the gray calm before thunder, the Black Tulip's silence generally presaged some new and awful ill. Austrian operatives had been found dead, minor members of the royal family captured, English spies eliminated, all without fuss or fanfare. For the past two years, the Black Tulip had maintained a hermetic silence. Miles grimaced.

"Precisely," said Wickham. He extricated the scrap of paper from Miles's grasp, returning it to its place on his desk. "The murdered man was one of our operatives. We had inserted him into the household of a gentleman known for his itinerant tendencies."

Miles rocked forward in his chair. "Who found him?"

Wickham dismissed the question with a shake of his head. "A

scullery maid from the kitchen of a neighboring house; she had no part in it."

"Had she witnessed anything out of the ordinary ?"

"Aside from a dead body?" Wickham smiled grimly. "No. Think of it, Dorrington. Ten houses—at one of which, by the way, a card party was in progress—several dozen servants coming and going, and not one of them heard anything out of the ordinary. What does that suggest to you?"

Miles thought hard. "There can't have been a struggle, or someone in one of the neighboring houses would have noticed. He can't have called out, or someone would have heard. I'd say our man knew his killer." A hideous possibility occurred to Miles. "Could our chap have been a double agent? If the French thought he had outlived his usefulness…"

The bags under Wickham's eyes seemed to grow deeper. "That," he said wearily, "is always a possibility. Anyone can turn traitor given the right circumstances—or the right price. Either way, we find ourselves with our old enemy in the heart of London. We need to know more. Which is where you come in, Dorrington."

"At your disposal."

Ah, the time had come. Now Wickham would ask him to find the footman's murderer, and he could make suave assurances about delivering the Black Tulip's head on a platter, and…

"Do you know Lord Vaughn?" asked Wickham abruptly.

"Lord Vaughn." Taken off guard, Miles wracked his memory. "I don't believe I know the chap."

"There's no reason you should. He only recently returned from the Continent. He is, however, acquainted with your parents."

Wickham's gaze rested piercingly on Miles. Miles shrugged, lounging back in his chair. "My parents have a wide and varied acquaintance."

"Have you spoken to your parents recently?"

"No," Miles replied shortly. Well, he hadn't. That was all there was to it.

"Do you have any knowledge as to their whereabouts at present?"

Miles was quite sure that Wickham's spies had more up-to-date information on his parents' whereabouts than he did.

"The last time I heard from them, they were in Austria. As that was over a year ago, they may have moved on since. I can't tell you more than that."

When was the last time he had seen his parents? Four years ago? Five? Miles's father had gout. Not a slight dash of gout, the sort that attends overindulgence in roast lamb at Christmas dinner, not periodic gout, but perpetual, all-consuming gout, the sort of gout that required special cushions and exotic diets and frequent changing of doctors. The viscount had his gout, and the viscountess had a taste for Italian operas, or, more properly, Italian opera singers. Both those interests were better served in Europe. For as long as Miles could remember, the Viscount and Viscountess of Loring had roved about Europe from spa to spa, taking enough waters to float a small armada, and playing no small part in supporting the Italian musical establishment.

The thought of either of his parents having anything to do with the Black Tulip, murdered agents, or anything requiring more strenuous activity than a carriage ride to the nearest opera house strained the imagination. Even so, it made Miles distinctly uneasy that they had come to the attention of the War Office.

Miles put both feet firmly on the floor, rested his hands on his knees, and asked bluntly, "Did you have a reason for inquiring after my parents, sir, or was this merely a social amenity?"

Wickham looked at Miles with something akin to amusement. "There's no need to be anxious on their account, Dorrington. We need information on Lord Vaughn. Your parents are among his social set. If you have occasion to write to your parents, you may Want to ask them— casually—if they have encountered Lord Vaughn in their travels."

In his relief, Miles refrained from pointing out that his correspondence with his parents, to date, could be folded into a medium-sized snuffbox. "I'll do that."

"Casually," cautioned Wickham.

"Casually," confirmed Miles. "But what has Lord Vaughn to do with the Black Tulip?"

"Lord Vaughn," Wickham said simply, "is the employer of our murdered agent."

"Ah."

"Vaughn," continued Wickham, "is recently returned to London after an extended stay on the Continent. A stay of ten years, to be precise."

Miles engaged in a bit of mental math. "Just about the time the Black Tulip began operations."

Wickham didn't waste time acknowledging the obvious. "You move in the same circles. Watch him. I don't need to tell you how to go about it, Dorrington. I want a full report by this time next week."

Miles looked squarely at Wickham. "You'll have it."

"Good luck, Dorrington." Wickham began shuffling papers, a clear sign that the interview had come to a close. Miles levered himself out of the chair, pulling on his gloves as he strode to the door. "I expect to see you this time next Monday."

"I'll be here." Miles gave his hat an exuberant twirl before clapping it firmly onto his unruly blond hair. Pausing in the doorway, he grinned at his superior. "With flowers."

* * *

"The Black Tulip?"

Colin grinned. "Somewhat unoriginal, I admit. But what can you expect from a crazed French spy?"

"Isn't there a Dumas novel by that name?"

Colin considered. "I don't believe they're related. Besides, Dumas came later."

"I wasn't suggesting that Dumas was the Black Tulip," I protested.

"Dumas' father was a Napoleonic soldier," Colin pronounced with an authoritative wag of his finger, but spoiled the effect by adding, "Or perhaps it was his grandfather. One of them, at any rate."

I shook my head regretfully. "It's too good a theory to be true."

I was sitting in the kitchen of Selwick Hall, at a long, scarred wooden table that looked like it had once been victim to beefy-armed cooks bearing cleavers, while Colin poked a spoon into a gooey mass on the stove that he promised was rapidly cooking its way towards being dinner. Despite the well-worn flagstones covering the floor, the kitchen appliances looked as though they had been modernized at some point in the past two decades. They had begun life as that ugly mustard yellow so incomprehensibly beloved of kitchen designers, but had faded with time and use to a subdued beige.

It wasn't a designer's showcase of a kitchen. Aside from one rather dispirited pot of basil perched on the windowsill, there were no hanging plants, no gleaming copper pots, no color-coordinated jars of inedible pasta, no artistically arranged bunches of herbs poised to whack the unwary visitor on the head. Instead, it had the cozy air of a room that someone actually lives in. The walls had been painted a cheery, very un-mustardy yellow. Blue and white mugs hung from a rack above the sink; a well-used electric kettle stood next to a battered brown teapot with a frayed blue cozy; and brightly patterned yellow and blue drapes framed the room's two windows. The refrigerator made that comfortable humming noise known to refrigerators around the world, as soothing as a cat's purr.

A fall of ivy half-blocked the window over the sink, draping artistically down one side. Through the other, the dim twilight tended to obscure more than it revealed, that misty time of day when one can imagine ghost ships sailing endlessly through the Bermuda Triangle or phantom soldiers re-fighting long-ago battles on deserted heaths.

Clearly, I had been spending too much time cooped up in the library. Phantom soldiers, indeed!

All the same… Twisting to face Colin, I leaned my elbows against the back of my chair and asked, "Does Selwick Hall have any ghosts?"

Colin paused mid-stir, casting me a glance of unameliorated amusement. "Ghosts?"

"You know, ghastly specters, headless horsemen, that sort of thing."

"Right. I'm afraid we're rather short on those at the moment, but if you would like to go next door, I hear Don well Abbey has a few phantom monks to let."

"I didn't realize they were for hire."

"After Henry VIII confiscated the abbeys, they had to find some way to earn their keep. There's always a stately home in need of a specter or two."

"Who are Don well Abbey's ghosts? I take it that there's more to them than just being monks."

Colin gave the contents of the pot a final gush and turned off the heat. "It's the usual story. Renegade monk breaks his vows, runs off with the lissome daughter of the local squire—plate, please."