The Black Hawk

Sixteen

DOYLE FOUND PAX IN THE STUDY, SITTING CROSS-LEGGED on the hearthrug, toasting wet newsprint on an ash shovel. Three clippings, dry, crinkled and curling at the edges, lay on the bricks.

Doyle came over to watch. “Hawk sent me down to see how you’re getting on.”

“It’s slow. How’s the breathing?”

“Good. She’s breathing easy. That part looks over with.” Doyle brought a pair of glasses out of his jacket pocket and hunkered down. He pushed the clippings into line and looked at them. “The fever’s worse.”

“How bad?”

“Bad. She’s out of her head with it.” He rearranged the papers, smallest to largest. “I hope Sévie gets here in time.”

“She’ll hurry.”

“I wish Maggie was upstairs, keeping Hawk’s woman alive.” Doyle put on his glasses and picked up the first clipping.

“I was wishing for Camille. Hell of a time for wives to be working in France. You sent messages?”

“It’ll be finished, one way or the other, before they get the letters.” Doyle turned a clipping over and then back again. “Looks like this is cut out of the Times. It is the obituary for one Antoine Morreau, bookseller in Paternoster Lane. ‘Dead, suddenly, at his place of business.’ No desolate family is mentioned, so we will assume he is unmarried. A respectable address, so we will assume he is prosperous. Why did our Justine find this particular death of interest?”

“He got himself murdered, if that’s interesting.” Pax took up the ash shovel and went back to dealing with damp newsprint.

“Not in and of itself, ’specially.” Doyle took up the next page. “‘Monstrous Crime in Paternoster Lane.’ ‘Shopkeeper murdered in a wanton daylight robbery.’ Our bookseller had his throat slashed and his money box broken. We continue . . .” He picked the last sheet. “It looks like a dark-haired man did the deed and ran off. ‘Neighborhood shocked.’”

“I read that. More than a week ago. Ten days, I think. You were still in Scotland. I didn’t think it was worth filing, even with the French link.”

Doyle ran a considering finger along stubble on his chin. “Paternoster Lane. They do not normally stab citizens over their shop counters in that part of town.” He picked up another piece of paper. “This is the Observer, reporting the same thing, the bottom half of which is no doubt interesting but we can’t read it. Felicity can hie herself off to the Strand to their office to make a copy. And I will drop by Bow Street to see what they know about our dead bookseller.”

“Cummings will be annoyed.” Pax tested wet newsprint with the point of his knife. The top sheet wasn’t ready to separate off. “London murders fall into his territory.”

“Annoying Military Intelligence and Cummings is jam on the bun.”

Pax offered a view of the paper he was lifting loose. “Another somebody, bloodily dead.”

“‘An incident in Finns Alley.’ That’s off Dean Street in Soho. I’d stab somebody in Finns Alley if I was setting about the business. ‘The public is asked to come forward with any information.’ They don’t mention outrage and shock, that being in short supply in Soho. ‘The body is identified as . . .’ Looks like Monsieur something.”

“A Monsieur Richelet. This is yesterday’s Times.”

“Justine’s collecting dead Frenchmen. Everybody should have a hobby. This one died late Sunday night. Day before yesterday.” Doyle glanced up to where light was coming through a break in the curtains. “No. Two days ago, now. We’ll still have the paper upstairs.”

“I’ll catch George before he burns it. It looked like just another random death. Only showed up in the Times because one of the witnesses was an army man of some distinction.”

“A sad commentary upon the human condition.”

Pax set the shovel flat on the hearth. The upper sheet was mostly dry. He freed the last corner and eased it away. The page below was still wet. The general gray tinge made it hard to pick out words. He said, “The Courier, I think.”

“With a more complete account of the same murder. ‘A Stabbing in Soho.’” Doyle took the handle of the shovel and slanted the writing toward the fire to get better light. “And what else do they have to say? ‘Violence in the foreign community. When will it end?’ That is something I ask myself daily. According to eyewitnesses, a slight, dark man of foreign appearance fled the scene.”

“This,” Pax rested the point of his knife on a line near the bottom of the clipping. “This is what Justine came to tell us.”

“‘Do sinister Eastern assassins threaten our streets? The curious black knife left in the body—’ ” Doyle stopped. “God’s avenging chickens.”

“Exactly.”