“Please make yourself at home, my delinquent friend,” James said. “I’m sure the lady of the house won’t mind.”
“Do you mind?” Matthew asked Cordelia, his fork halfway to his mouth.
“No,” said Cordelia decidedly. “Come whenever you like.”
“Oh, good. Then do you think I could have some coffee? With milk, and an exceptional amount of sugar?” Risa, who had been lurking in the corner of the room, gave him a suspicious look and departed for the kitchen. Matthew leaned forward. “All right. Do you want to hear the news?”
“Is it good news?” said Cordelia.
“No,” said Matthew, and James groaned. “But I think it’s important. I heard Charles talking to Mother this morning, before he Portaled to France with your parents. He was on patrol late last night, and he came in with the dawn contingent. One of their number was missing—Basil Pounceby. Augustus’s father. Charles went with the search party and was there when they found his body. It seems he was killed while on patrol last night.”
James and Cordelia exchanged a glance.
“Do they suspect the same demon that killed Amos Gladstone?” Cordelia asked.
“They’re thinking it wasn’t a demon at all,” Matthew said as Risa appeared with coffee. “The wounds were made with a knife—a very sharp blade that was used to poke a lot of holes in the senior Pounceby. Demons tend to slaughter, like animals do. Pounceby was stabbed by a thin metal blade, Gladstone had his throat slit, and there were no traces of demonic presence at either murder site.” He tipped his head back to smile at Risa like a Botticelli angel. “You are as beautiful as all the stars,” he told her, “but better, because you have coffee.”
“Dary mano azziat mikoni,” Risa said, threw up her hands, and stalked from the room.
“My attempts to charm her have not been successful,” Matthew observed.
“Risa is a sensible woman,” said James. His eyes were fixed on the middle distance. He seemed almost unbearably tense; Cordelia could see it in the set of his shoulders, the hard line of his mouth. “Was Pounceby killed someplace near white pillars? And a statue, perhaps of someone on a horse?”
Matthew set his coffee cup down with a slow deliberation. “Near a statue of the Duke of Wellington, in fact,” he said. “Close to the Bank of England.”
“Which has a colonnade of white pillars,” said Cordelia, looking at James in surprise. “How did you—？”
James had the look of a man who had suspected a deadly diagnosis and had just had it confirmed by his doctor. “He was near Threadneedle Street, correct?”
“Have you been in touch with Uncle Gabriel, or Aunt Cecily?” said Matthew, clearly puzzled. “You should have stopped me if you knew all this already.”
“I didn’t.” James pushed his chair back from the table and went to stand by the window, staring out at the frost-covered hedges. “Or at least, I didn’t realize what I knew.”
“James,” Cordelia said. “What is going on?”
He turned back to face them. “This is—more than it seems, I think. It would be best if I spoke to everyone together. We should gather the other Thieves.”
“That’ll be easy enough,” Matthew said casually; Cordelia had the clear sense that he was holding off peppering James with questions. “Lucie and Christopher are already at the Devil, reasoning with Thomas.”
James’s black eyebrows lifted. “Why does Thomas need to be reasoned with?”
“Well, if you come to the Devil, you’ll find out,” said Matthew. “I’ve got my carriage waiting; we can be there in a quarter hour. Do you think Risa would mind if I brought a plate of buttered toast with me?”
* * *
“I will not bow out of patrol,” Thomas was saying as James, Matthew, and Cordelia entered the room. Faint cheers had greeted Matthew and James as they crossed through the pub below, but the mood at the Devil seemed muted. News of murders and the like tended to travel swiftly through Downworld. “It’s a ridiculous suggestion and there’s nothing you could say to convince me!”
He broke off as he caught sight of Cordelia and the others. He had one hand upraised, his finger jabbing the air as he spoke, as if to punctuate his sentences. He was flushed, his light brown hair in disarray. Cordelia was surprised—kind, calm Thomas rarely got out of temper.
Though there had been that moment with Alastair at the wedding.