Chapter Twenty-Nine

Making our way through a hive of activity, we found the rest of the household in the entrance hall, waiting to greet the new arrivals, who were climbing down from their carriage in the driveway.

Max and Izzy strolled through the door, arm in arm. Izzy's smile was broad as her gaze landed on Oliver.

"Oliver!" she exclaimed, extracting herself from Max's arm and kissing Oliver soundly on the cheek. Oliver withstood this with a stoic expression. However, I heard Mrs Lavigne's breath catch beside me, startled by the familiarity.

"Lockhart, my old friend," Max boomed, taking his own turn pumping Oliver's hand up and down with an enthusiasm that had Oliver wincing. Max's smile only widened as Oliver glowered at him.

"It's so kind of you to invite us to stay," said Izzy.

"Not at all," Oliver replied stiffly. "May I present my fiancée, Miss Bloom, and her godmother, Mrs Finch?"

Izzy and Max exchanged polite if distant greetings with us, though I saw Izzy's eyes sparkling beneath her hat as we shook hands.

"And this is my sister, Helene," Oliver said. "And her adoptive parents, the Lavignes."

"Your Grace," Mrs Lavigne said breathlessly, dropping into an obsequious curtsey, head bent so that her nose practically skimmed the floor. For a moment Izzy looked slightly taken aback, but I saw Max's hand settle in the small of her back – a tiny gesture of reassurance – and then her chin lifted.

"Mrs Lavigne," she said in her most dignified voice, and I had to hide a smile. Max, of course, needed no such support. Suddenly I saw why he had the reputation he did among the ton. He seemed taller, straighter; his face was set in firm, uncompromising lines as he acknowledged the Lavignes with a chilly formality that bordered on rude.

Far from looking put out by this cool reaction, the Lavignes seemed even more delighted. I understood at that moment precisely why Izzy and Max were behaving as they were – the Lavignes were more convinced of the duke and duchess's consequence than ever by this frigid greeting, and their contrasting warmth towards Oliver only underpinned the closeness Mrs Finch had hinted at. Mrs Lavigne in particular was starry-eyed, and I wondered if Mrs Finch was right, if this unsettling presence may knock the woman off-balance.

Helene, on the other hand, withstood the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Roxton as if two ogres had waltzed into the house, determined to crunch on her bones.

"Y-your Grace," she managed, and for a moment it was hard to tell if she was curtseying or swooning away.

"Right, well, that's done then," Oliver snapped, clearly impatient to get on with things. "Why don't I show you to your rooms? We have several hours before the guests will start to arrive and you will want to rest."

"Oh, yes," Izzy said, "and I hope Miss Bloom will join us. I am so excited to hear all about your engagement."

"Of course," I murmured, and the four of us made our way to the stairs, while Barker and several of the new, pleasantly muscular footmen began bringing in the Roxton's luggage, of which there seemed to be plenty. Mrs Lavigne hovered anxiously over the scene, directing everyone with that grating sense of authority that I couldn't like.

Izzy kept up a stream of inane chatter until we were well out of earshot of the Lavignes.

"How have you been?" she asked in a low voice, squeezing my hand.

"Fine," I said. "Though it feels like we've made little progress."

"Perhaps we can help with that," Izzy replied.

"Here we go," Oliver said without ceremony as we approached a door just down the corridor from mine and Mrs Finch's rooms.

He turned the handle, and as we all piled inside I let out a small sound of surprise, because Mrs Finch was standing in the middle of the room.

"We just left you downstairs!" I exclaimed. "How on earth did you do that?"

Mrs Finch only smiled. "I have my ways." Her attention turned at once to Max and Izzy. "So?" Her eyebrow arched and she dropped into the chair in front of the dressing table. "What news?"

"Plenty." Izzy stripped off her gloves, striding across the room towards the bed where she laid them down before setting to work unpinning her hat. "First of all, Maud and Winnie paid a visit to Dr Wright on Harley Street."

"The doctor the Lavignes consulted?" Oliver asked, leaning against the door frame.

Izzy nodded. "They posed as medical students and went to interview him for an article on brain injuries." A smile pulled at her lips. "Maud said that Win got a bit carried away and they ended up staying for three hours. According to them, his practice is legitimate, and from what we could discover, it is perfectly possible for a patient's memories to return after a period of several years or following another injury. Winnie had done significant research on the subject, and her discussion with the doctor apparently got quite … technical. Unfortunately" – here Izzy winced – "in layman's terms, it all seems to boil down to the fact that the human brain is deeply mysterious and there is much we don't know."

"So presumably a great many things are possible, though not necessarily likely," I surmised.

"Precisely." Izzy nodded. "However…"

"I do enjoy a good however!" Mrs Finch sighed happily.

"After they left the doctor, Maud went below stairs and spoke to some of Dr Wright's staff. It seems that your Mr Lavigne visited the doctor alone, without Helene or his wife."

"So the doctor didn't examine Helene at all?" I frowned.

"As far as we have been able to ascertain, after checking the passenger lists on the Channel crossings, Helene and Mrs Lavigne weren't even in the country at the time." Izzy said. "They arrived in England only days before they all came to Yorkshire."

Oliver frowned. "They told me they had travelled over from France together – why lie about such a thing?"

"And why did the doctor write a letter for Mr Lavigne if he hadn't actually seen Helene?" I asked.

"Thanks to a bit of help from Ash and Joe, we were able to discover that Dr Wright had some gambling debts that have now been settled." Izzy smiled, pleased with herself. "The man who settled them fits the description of your Mr Lavigne."

"So Lavigne paid off the doctor's debts so that he would write the letter for a patient he hadn't seen?" Oliver said slowly. "For God's sake, why? Especially if the contents of the letter are only what any doctor would conclude anyway?"

"I assume because there was some reason Helene and Mrs Lavigne couldn't come with him in the first instance, and Mr Lavigne was in a hurry?" Mrs Finch said serenely.

"You would be correct," Izzy agreed. "Upon greasing several of the right palms, we were able to trace Mr Lavigne's movements after he disembarked the boat. We were intrigued to find that, prior to his visit to the good doctor, Mr Lavigne had met privately with a rather senior assistant in the Home Office … in a pub in Whitechapel."

Mrs Finch exhaled sharply. "Now that is interesting," she said.

"It seems that the gentleman in question is known in certain, shall we say, less than legal circles to be a dab hand at forging official documents, with the assistance of many of his influential friends."

"Which is when Izzy brought this to me," Max said, rubbing a hand over his face, which I noticed looked suddenly tired. "And our agency have begun work, uncovering a counterfeiting operation that we believe at this time may reach all the way up into the cabinet. It's a damn mess."

"Your agency," Izzy scoffed.

"Acting on the exemplary work of the Aviary, of course," Max added solemnly, though his eyes twinkled.

"And for which you no doubt took all the credit," Oliver grumbled.

"We are a secret organization, Oliver," Izzy pointed out fairly. "Credit really isn't our thing. And, believe me, Max is so foolishly honourable that it's more of a curse than a gift that he has to take the credit for all our good ideas."

Max scowled. "I'll probably get another promotion at this rate," he said dolefully. "That or a medal."

"Wait, wait," I said, bringing us back to the matter at hand. "So, Mr Lavigne had someone forge documents?" My mind flashed to the search of their room. "The travel documents!" I exclaimed. "And Helene's adoption papers?"

Izzy nodded. "Yes. It seems that after the forged documents were delivered, your Mr Lavigne travelled back to France, and then he, Mrs Lavigne and Helene returned using the travel papers in question before heading here. If anyone – say, Ellen's long-lost brother, for example – were to look at the crossing records, they would see only the three of them crossing all neat and tidy together."

"You keep saying your Mr Lavigne." Oliver frowned. "And I don't think it's by accident."

"No." Izzy shook her head. "I'm sorry, Oliver. Because we had investigated the doctor's appointment, we knew that Mr Lavigne must have been in the country earlier than records indicated. It took us a while to piece it together, but the man downstairs first travelled to England several weeks ago under the name David Brown. He visited the doctor and acquired forged documents, then returned to France. It was only the second time he entered the country that he arrived as Mr Lavigne, with his wife and daughter in tow."

I sat on the side of the bed with a thump. "So what you're saying is…"

Izzy's face was grim. "Whoever those people are downstairs, they are not who they claim to be."