Chapter 45

Weasel. Traitor. Selfish bastard. Treacherous, scheming cad. Moron.

That last bit of her litany was directed at Elizabeth herself, of course. Colin Smith may have been the worst sort of bastard, but she was the one who'd never thought twice about sharing herself with him. If only one really could shoot fire from one's eyes, she was sure she would have set the back of Colin's head on fire. He and Saffron had returned from their errand to Sergeant Simpson's cousin moments ago, and though Saffron had given her an encouraging look when she slid back into the cab, Elizabeth's mood was low and still sinking.

Anger was the only thing from keeping her falling apart.

So she clung to her anger, reciting in her head all the ways Colin had been horrible—he'd worked her to death at the office, he was drowning in debt and had decided to provoke people into selling secrets to resolve it, and he'd made her listen to his dreadfully boring commentary on the statistics informing current immigration policies. And his face glowed like a bloody neon sign anytime he was the least disturbed.

"We're here," Saffron murmured as the cab came to a stop. They got out, and the cab puttered off down the street.

Elizabeth glared at Colin. "How are we to get inside, then?"

"Through the front door, of course." He gave her an evil, sly smile. "As Miss Everleigh said, you're to be the distraction. I will accompany Miss Everleigh in her search for the files." He opened his overcoat, pulling aside his suit jacket to show her the pistol tucked into the front of his waistband. "And you'll behave, Eliza."

"I hope that misfires right there," she hissed at him.

He ignored her and opened the hip-high gate for them with mocking courtesy. Elizabeth followed Saffron up the path to the house. She looked about for something that could be of use to them—a convenient hole to shove Colin into would have been marvelous—but saw only the building and its garden, the next house too far to see more than the roof. Saffron's Path Lab was housed in a tall, stately manor that, while not falling apart, had fallen into a genteel state of shabbiness, with the red brick striated with frostbitten ivy and the garden in its sad winter slumber.

Saffron opened the door, and they trooped inside. Colin stood uncomfortably close.

"Eliza," Saffron murmured, "you're to be with the ministry. Nick has the whole place well and truly afraid they'll be shut down, so all you need to do to get them to cooperate is make them think they're in trouble. Get them all into the mycology lab, if you can. It has only one door for you to guard."

Elizabeth wanted to warn Saffron against whatever she planned to do to Colin, for that bleakness in her eyes said her dearest friend wasn't planning to give away any dangerous secrets without a fight. She feared what the result would be. Colin was armed and desperate, not to mention that if they didn't comply, Nick and Alexander would be in even more danger. But Saffron knew that, and she'd never endanger her brother or the man she loved. Hopefully.

Elizabeth exhaled shakily, willing herself to recapture some of that furious confidence she'd cultivated in the motorcar. Time to put the poet on the stage and see what yarns she could spin.

Saffron and Colin went upstairs, Saffron speaking to him in a low voice lost to the creaking steps. Elizabeth stood motionless in the foyer, thinking.

She required a prop.

There was a small library to her left. She marched inside, plucked a notebook and pen from the nearest table, and opened it. She scrawled some nonsense she hoped would be convincing on the page. With a deep breath to lift her chest and chin, she began down the corridor Saffron had indicated.

There were voices coming from the end of the hallway, where two doors stood open to reveal a massive room full of scientific stuff. It was a veritable maze of glass, brass, and soil. Good Lord, but they had a lot of soil.

"Who are you?" asked an acerbic female voice.

Elizabeth turned to the left where a woman even taller than she stood. She was graying at the temples and had a pair of spectacles on her nose. "Ah," Elizabeth said in her best posh tones, "you must be Dr. Quinn."

"Miss Quinn, actually," said the man sauntering up behind her.

Elizabeth scrutinized him. He was also tall, but where Miss Quinn was a robust woman with the look of an obnoxiously healthy schoolmarm, this fellow was lanky and sallow of skin. Even from more than an arm's length away, she could smell cigarette smoke on him. Elizabeth couldn't place him in any of Saffron's descriptions of the scientists at the lab.

"Victor Burnwell," he said with a smile that had Elizabeth putting him in the "Smarmy" column in her mind. "How do you do?"

Then the name registered in her mind. Burnwell! Saffron had been at school with a fellow with that name and had been inclined to despise him. Saffron had mentioned he worked here, she now recalled. "Aren't you and your colleague meant to be at the other research station?" Elizabeth asked. She pretended to look at the notebook she held in the crook of her arm.

Quinn's and Burnwell's expressions turned to confusion. Elizabeth cleared her throat, looking at them expectantly. "Well?"

"I beg your pardon," Quinn said imperiously. "But I'm afraid I have no idea who you are."

"I see my own colleague failed to mention my arrival. Allow me to apologize on behalf of Mr. Hale, he can be the most unreliable of devils. Frankly, I don't know why the ministry hired him." She sighed with brisk annoyance. "I'm here to finish his inquiries, and I require all of you to gather so I may do so. Where are the others?"

Burnwell shrugged. "Since Crawford and I were absent the last month, I suppose we're free to carry out our work."

"You suppose wrongly," Elizabeth snapped. They couldn't very well be wandering about when Saffron was doing whatever it was she was doing. With Colin. And his gun. She needed something ironclad to keep them in place. Inspiration was close at hand. "You shared a workspace and collaborated with Dr. Petrov and Mr. Wells, and are therefore suspect in their deaths, as are the rest of the staff of this research station."

Burnwell gaped at her. Quinn gasped.

"I see you understand the seriousness of this matter," Elizabeth said, nodding. "Now, please assemble your colleagues. The mycology lab will do very nicely."

"Dr. Calderbrook," Saffron said, peering in the open door. The director sat at his desk and startled at her interruption.

"Miss Everleigh," he said. "What can I do for you?"

Saffron cleared her throat. "Sir, there's someone from the Agricultural Ministry here. She's following up on Mr. Hale's investigation and she's … I'm very concerned she thinks something is afoot. She's gathering everyone to question them now."

Dr. Calderbrook blinked rapidly behind his round spectacles. "Good Lord. I see. Well." He stood, knocking his chair back with a screech. He looked thoroughly bewildered. "I see. I've been summoned too, have I? This woman from the ministry—what is her name?"

"Miss … Hamilton," Saffron said.

He didn't notice her hesitation. "We'll just answer her questions. It's all just a horrible mistake. A strange, horrible coincidence."

Saffron gave him a reassuring smile. "Of course, sir."

Calderbrook hurried from the room, too distracted to notice Colin lurking in a corner of the landing, or that Saffron didn't follow him down the stairs.

"Well?" Colin drawled, approaching the doorway.

Saffron withheld a sigh and went to Dr. Calderbrook's desk. She had no idea if this search would turn up anything, let alone something she could conceivably turn over to Alfie and his collaborator.

It was possible, she reasoned as she started scanning the labels on the files in Calderbrook's desk drawer, that nothing would come of turning over the information about the entomopathogenic fungus. She imagined it would take years to study, being an unidentified species possibly belonging to an equally unknown genus, as proven by Quinn's attempts to name it that Alfie had shown her. Any attempts to engineer it into something the government could use would likely take years as well. If one ignored the thirst for deadlier weapons and the rate at which the development of those new weapons had occurred during the war, one could convince oneself that this potential weapon would never see the light of day. But Saffron could not ignore it. It was an icy fear, growing under her skin.

Colin had closed the door and stood in front of it, gun in hand. Its barrel followed her as she moved from Calderbrook's desk to the next filing cabinet.

Papers went through her hands like sand through a sieve, their contents making similarly temporary impressions on her mind, until she'd reached the end of the first cabinet having found nothing. Colin tapped the pistol's grip impatiently.

The only time she paused in her search was when she saw her own surname. This was her chance to see what Calderbrook wanted with her father.

Colin's watery blue eyes did not leave her as she opened the file and searched the papers. Her own employment contracts were first, followed by a few of her father's published articles relating to phytopathology.

"What did you find?"

Saffron jerked the file shut at Colin's sharp words. "Nothing," she said quickly. Regretfully, she shoved the file back into the drawer. There were more papers within, but she didn't dare risk Colin growing impatient.

Dread and relief created a curious lightheaded feeling when she finished the last drawer of the final filing cabinet. "There's nothing here," she said.

"You missed something," Colin said, straightening up. Sweat dotted his brow. Was he as nervous as Saffron was that they'd been in the office for twenty minutes already? Surely, someone would return here soon, Dr. Calderbrook or Joseph. And Saffron couldn't allow them to be dragged into this. "Or, you found it and hid it."

"I wouldn't do that," Saffron said. "Two other lives are at stake, not to mention Elizabeth's and my own. You left her alone in this laboratory, knowing that she wouldn't do anything to jeopardize their safety or mine. I wouldn't either."

"The evidence says to the contrary," he said, stepping forward and raising his gun slightly. "Yours are not the only lives Alfie will take if he's disappointed. Give me the information. Now."

Alarmed, Saffron stepped back, her hands automatically coming up in a placating gesture. "Colin. There is nothing here. Wells probably destroyed whatever of the research is missing."

"Wells was a fool, but he was a greedy one. He didn't destroy it. He hid it somewhere. It wasn't at his house; Alfie's boys searched it. And it's not among the papers here in the lab." He raised his gun higher, his eyes going slightly manic. "Where is it, then? Where could he have hidden it?"

Saffron's mind raced, working double-time to think of how to calm Colin and find the answers he was desperate for. She'd hoped by now her gamble with Nelly would have paid off, but it seemed she would have to rely on her wits alone to get out of this. Until said wits decided to produce a brilliant scheme, she needed to stall.

"The greenhouse," she said. "Wells would have hidden whatever you're looking for in the greenhouse."