Free City of Secrets by Elisabeth Kidd Page B

matter. I assumed you would not object to my incurring the expense of going to Paris in pursuit of information?”
    “Not at all. I agree that is the most logical place to start ... which is precisely why I plan to go there myself within the week.”
    “And what, precisely, do you plan to do when you get there, Mrs. Malcolm?” he said, feeling his temper rising again. Why was it that she could rouse his anger so easily and for so little reason? “I ask, you understand, only so that we do not inadvertently waste time duplicating each other’s activities, or worse yet, that my inquiries are not jeopardized by your causing my sources to be wary of all this interest in a long-closed case.”
    “I assure you, Mr. Grant, that if I should find out anything of interest, you will be the first to know.”
    “Permit me to doubt that, Mrs. Malcolm, on your record thus far.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “You have not kept me informed, either, of all your activities here in London.”
    She raised her eyebrows and gave him an ingenuous look. “I have done nothing worthy of reporting ... apart from the quite accidental meeting with Mr. Kropotkin just now.”
    “I believe I am the best judge of that. I doubt, for example, that your visit to the records department of the Times yesterday was to look up the court calendar for the third and fourth of August last year ... something my clerk could surely have done for you, had you chosen to confide in him. I should also be very surprised if the reason that you were in Bow Street was to report to the police anything so mundane as a burglary or missing portmanteau.”
    He took a certain satisfaction in her look of genuine astonishment, tinged with what he liked to think was grudging admiration, at his knowledge of her activities. He took his advantage further, detailing all of her movements outside her hotel for the past four days, until suddenly it was borne in on him that her look had turned to one of amusement. He stopped in mid-recital, wondering what he had said. Had he got something wrong after all?
    “I am impressed by your diligence, Mr. Grant,” she said. “But you needn’t rub it in, or as I believe the saying goes here, flog a dead horse. I wish rather that you would tell me what it is you suspect me of, that you must shadow my every move.”
    “Not quite every move.”
    She said nothing, using silence in that disconcerting way she had to elicit the response she wanted. Absurdly, he felt himself blush, as if she had known what he really meant before he did.
    “It was obvious from the first,” he said, unjustly, “that you did not trust me to do the job you hired me for. I must therefore, in addition to my own investigation, make certain that your activities do not interfere with what I had assumed to be our mutual interests.”
    She lowered her head for a moment, pretending to read a stud book left open on the desk. He realized that he liked looking at the back of her head, where she could not see his expression—or mock it. A few feathery strands of hair floated on her neck below her hat, and for a second that was all that seemed to move in the room. She looked—or the back of her head looked—as if she were considering her next words, and when she raised her eyes to him again, they were no longer laughing at him. He immediately suspected that she was acting again.
    “I do beg your pardon, Mr. Grant. I had no such intention, believe me.” She smiled again, apologetically this time. “No, perhaps that is too much to expect. But let me tell you that I had no intention of interfering—only of assisting you in your inquiries. Perhaps if we talked more often in this way, to compare notes, our activities need not, as you say, duplicate themselves. You must understand by now that I am not the sort of person who is content to sit back and let someone take complete charge of her life—for that is what this search is about, after all— my life. Also, I can’t promise to