Page 122
Judith frowned. “Then why are you interested?”
“Because for roughly five seconds, Pembroke stopped being Pembroke.”
She thought of the sudden concentration in his face when he had looked at her papers.
“That is true.”
Baines turned towards her. “Did you notice as well?”
“He looked at my notes.”
“What did he see?”
“Nothing important.”
“Judith…”
She pulled the covered sheet towards her and examined it. The page contained the names of the repairers, the carrier routes and beneath them, copied from the scrap discovered in the hidden passage:
Western road. Cavalry—
Her skin prickled. “He could have seen that.”
Baines came to stand beside her. “Did he react?”
“It was slight, hardly anything.”
“What sort of reaction?”
Judith tried to reconstruct it. “Recognition, perhaps, but only for an instant.”
Baines studied the words. “That is not evidence. Nor does knowing something about troop movements make him a traitor.”
“Half the gentlemen in this house have spent the last week discussing troop movements.”
“Quite—which is why I am not marching upstairs and searching Pembroke’s stockings.” Baines smiled, but his attention returned quickly to the paper.
Pembroke was ridiculous and everyone knew it. He lost things. He knocked over glasses. He forgot appointments, misplaced books and had once spent ten minutes searching the billiard room for spectacles that were sitting upon his own head.
However, he corresponded widely. His wife’s family possessed connections Judith had never considered because Mr. Pembroke himself made such connections seem faintly absurd.
She disliked the direction of the thought. “We must add him to the list.”
Baines glanced towards the door. “I believe he was already on it.”
“But now?”
His expression remained thoughtful. “I should like to know precisely what Mr. Pembroke knows.”
A second message arrived during tea. This one had come from Stuart.
Baines read it beside the fire while Judith stood near the window, watching rain begin to stripe the glass.
“Fielding found the intermediary,” he said. “The redirected parcel travelled north as far as Alnwick, where another carrier collected it. Chum is following that route.”
“That still tells us nothing about who sent it.”
“No, but Stuart has found something better.” Baines handed her the note.
