The Mask of Night by Tracy Grant

Author:Tracy Grant [Grant, Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction, Historical, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense, Suspense, Historical Fiction
Amazon: B004TMLJNM
Publisher: NYLA
Published: 2011-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

Mélanie stepped through the double doors of the library, which Charles was holding open, to find their four guests already assembled. The fire blazed with welcome warmth and Michael had had coffee sent in. Simon and Hapgood had removed their greatcoats and wore their own clothes, now very nearly dry. Raoul was also still in his own clothes, muddy and torn from the fight. Will was clad in a shirt and trousers of Charles’s, the shirt open at the neck, the trousers rolled up at the ankles.

If the four men had been talking in their hosts’ absence, they gave no sign of it. Simon was pouring out the coffee. Will was perched in one of the high-backed Queen Anne chairs cleaning his spectacles. Hapgood stood by a glass-fronted bookcase, a candle in his hand, examining the titles. Raoul was slumped on the sofa. His eyes appeared to have drifted closed.

Mélanie sat beside him and set her medical supply box down on the sofa table with a clatter. He jerked to attention. “I’m quite all right, as you can see, Mrs. Fraser. I daresay I’ll do very well until—“

“Do stop wasting time with prevarication, Mr. O’Roarke.”

Raoul grimaced—much as Charles’s would in the same circumstances. The bullet scrape on his shoulder really was little more than a scratch. The knife cut was more serious. Her makeshift bandage was soaked through with blood, but the wound appeared to have stopped bleeding. It was a long, jagged cut but it did not appear particularly deep. It would not require stitches. She doused a towel with vinegar.

She could feel Charles’s gaze upon her and Raoul for a moment. Then he turned to the others. “Right. We can talk while Mélanie works on O’Roarke. What were you doing in the park?”

Simon carried his coffee cup over to the drinks trolley and splashed brandy into it. “This is your scene, Charles. You’re always explaining how the criminals orchestrated the crime. Surely we deserve as much.”

“All right,” Charles said. “But it’s largely supposition.”

“Isn’t it always?”

Charles drew a breath, sharp enough that Mélanie looked up from snipping off a length of lint. His damp hair fell over his forehead in the way that always made him look like a schoolboy, but his face was uncharacteristically hard. “You and Gordon and Hapgood and O’Roarke are involved in something. Exactly what we aren’t sure, save that it has to do with a series of Radical disturbances in recent months. And that Lord Carfax fits in somewhere.“

“What—” Simon clunked the brandy decanter down. “Never mind. Go on.”

“O’Roarke brought in a man named Julien St. Juste, whom he’d worked with in Spain. St. Juste came to England and lodged in Hapgood’s house.”

“My—” Hapgood took a half step away from the bookcase.

“You admitted as much to Roth and me today,” Charles said. “Always clever to tell as much of the truth as possible. O’Roarke and St. Juste were both at the ball last night. I suspect you met with them there, Simon. Later last night someone killed St.

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