“And the younger brother?”
Gray’s expression at that has me leaning forward.
“You do not like the brother?”
“I do not know him well, but he does attend our club, and he is a sanctimonious— I find him unpleasant. Lord Joe is very convivial, but he clearly inherited all the charm in the family.”
“Lord Joe is convivial. Can I assume that means he entertains regularly? Has a steady stream of guests who could have stolen the letters?”
“He has a great many friends. He does not entertain in the usual way, having no lady of the house to organize such events, but he would have guests. Yes, I fear, the list of suspects might not be as small as we hope.”
“But it’s still a constrained number. Whoever stole the letters had access to the house.”
“Yes.”
ChapterEight
Iusher Jack into the library, where Isla waits. Jack is our new housemaid. She’s also the writer of our chronicles, as part of her double life as an anonymous chronicler of Edinburgh crime. Double life? Make that triple life or even quadruple. Jack has endless irons in the fire, and when she says her chosen moniker comes from “Jack of all trades,” I’m not sure she’s joking, but I always follow up with “master of none,” because she’s just asking for that one.
The choice of a masculine moniker isn’t accidental, either. In public, she usually wears male attire. I wouldn’t call it a disguise as much as a choice. She goes by female pronouns and keeps her hair long enough that she needs to put it up in a cap for the male persona. In our world, she’d be considered gender fluid.
During work hours at the town house, Jack wears a dress. Isla has made it clear that isn’t necessary, and certainly,I’dhave much rather cleaned in trousers. Easier to move in andmucheasier to bend in. I think Jack makes the choice to present as a female maid because it’s easier for Gray and Isla, saving them from adding to the heap of eccentricities that already puts them on the fringe of their social class. If I’d told Isla I wanted to clean in trousers, she’d have let me. I didn’t for this exact reason.
Jack’s work dress is like my old one, simple and blue. Victorian households haven’t yet adopted uniforms, but Isla provides work clothing so her employees don’t need to buy it themselves, and she sticks to a blue-and-white color scheme and well-made attire.
Before Isla hired Jack—or, more accurately, accepted Jack’s work proposal—I’d only ever seen Jack present as male, so I’m still getting used to her feminine persona. As male, she looks in her late teens, very slender and fine featured. As a woman, she’s obviously in her early twenties, with gorgeous red-brown hair that answers the question of why she doesn’t cut it to better suit her male persona.
I wave Jack to a chair and shut the door.
“I have called you both here today to discuss something of great import.” I look from one to the other. “Pornography.”
Isla stares at me.
Jack bursts into snickers and says, “Please tell me you actually meant to say ‘pornography,’ Mallory, and you haven’t simply misused a word again.”
Jack doesn’t know my real identity. She’s been given the cover story—that a blow to Catriona’s head changed her personality and she now goes by Mallory. Also, the blow affected Catriona’s memory, and she sometimes gets confused, especially with vocabulary, misusing words or making up new ones altogether.
“Yes, I meant ‘pornography.’ We have a case that involves it, and I need opinions.”
“On... pornography?” Jack says.
“Mallory is having fun with us,” Isla says. “This is not the first time she’s managed to connect a case to illicit material of a pornographic nature.”
“Managed to connect?” I say. “The connection was there. We had a suspect who moonlighted as a nude model.”
“Moonlighted?” Jack says.
“Whatever the word is. She worked a secret job. This is different. We now have a case where a woman...” I curse under my breath as I see Jack lean forward. I forgot howshemoonlights.
“A case?” Jack says, eyes gleaming.
“Not a case for public consumption. Certainly not for your chronicles of our cases. It is a woman being threatened with exposure for writings... of an erotic nature.”
Jack’s brows climb.
I continue, “She wrote it for an audience of one, but the work has been stolen, and she is being blackmailed by the thief.”
“Sadly, I could not use this in our chronicles,” Jack says. She quickly adds, “Not that I would. It’d be wrong. But even if I could, it is not the sort of case your audience wants.”
