and glanced at her in some surprise. “Is that you?” he hissed, raking his gaze from her no doubt white face to the soiled hem of her gown. His expression changed. “What’s wrong, Griz? Has something happened?”
Grizelda nodded, trying to smile while she distractedly rubbed the side of her hand over her aching forehead.
Her brother’s erratic kindness kicked in. Without asking any more, he leaned forward and murmured in their father’s ear. His Grace lifted one impatient hand, which may or may not have been permission. Forsythe seized Griz by the hand, murmured an apology to Miss Waters, and dragged her outside.
“Nancy’s dead,” she blurted. “Nancy, the housemaid. I thought I saw her leaving the theatre. She had no reason to be here, and she certainly didn’t seem to be looking for us, so curiosity got the better of me, and I followed her. I found her dead in an alley close by. She’d been murdered, stabbed to death.”
“Dear God,” Forsythe uttered, staring at her. “Have you told anyone?”
“The police know. They’ve arrested someone, though I don’t think he did it.”
Forsythe flung a brotherly arm around her, urging her toward the staircase. “You’re shaking like a leaf. Come on, I’ll take you home in a cab, and we’ll leave the carriage for Their Graces. They won’t like this, by the way. They’ll take it as a personal insult. Especially since you found her.”
“She’d still be dead,” Griz said flatly, “whoever found her. The police would still come to us since she is—was—our servant.” She swallowed. “But I do wish I hadn’t been quite so curious…”
Chapter Two
Dragan sat on a wooden chair in a bare room, his gaze fixed on the austerely painted wall in front of him.
As a student, he had frequently run afoul of the police in his own country for saying, writing, and doing the wrong thing. The London police, concerned with actual crime, had never worried him until now. In fact, hemmed in by two constables, he had walked away from the scene of the murder with a weird sense of familiarity that had nothing to do with Nancy Barrow’s death, from which he still felt oddly detached.
On the other hand, the police were definitely connecting him to it by means of his presence and the dagger. When, shortly after arriving at the police station, they took him out again, the first twinge of unease had taken him by surprise.
“Where are we going?” he had asked the constable beside him.
“Headquarters, Great Scotland Yard. Matter for the plainclothes lot. Detectives,” the policeman had added for the benefit of the foreigner. “They’ll get to the bottom of this, and you’ll be banged up all right and tight in no time.”
Dragan had sighed. “I hope they do. That should stop me being—er—banged up.”
The constable had stared at him with distaste. “You’re mighty cool for a man who just murdered a respectable young woman.”
“Consider the possibility that I didn’t murder her, and my demeanor will make much more sense.”
“Ha! You’re all bloody innocent, aren’t you?”
Perhaps, he reflected, he should not have removed the weapon from the possession of the young lady. In his defense, he had no way of knowing whether or not she had killed Nancy, and if she had, if she would turn next on him.
Besides, it would have made no difference who held the knife. In a choice between a foreign nobody and a wealthy lady in silks and jewels, being constantly addressed as “my lady,” there was only ever going to be one outcome.
Without warning, the door crashed open, and a man in a grey suit strode in, kicking the door shut behind him. He was probably only a few years older than Dragan.
“Inspector Harris,” he introduced himself briskly, throwing a notebook onto the table. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Dragan?”
“Tizsa.”
Inspector Harris blinked, sat down, and opened the notebook. “Did some idiot get your name wrong?”
“Just the wrong way round. My surname is Tizsa, my Christian name Dragan.”
“Ah. Where are you from, Mr. Tizsa?”
“Hungary.”
“And what brought you to London?”
“The promise of execution in my own country.”
Harris cast him a more piercing look. “For what crime?”
“Patriotism.”
“You were on the wrong side in the late revolution,” Harris translated.
“Oh, no, I was on the right side. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the losing side.”
“So, you sought refuge here?”
Dragan shrugged. “Eventually, yes.”
“And how long have you known the deceased, Miss Nancy Barrow?”
Dragan smiled faintly. He hadn’t said he knew her at all, and there had been no time for