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indeterminately middle-aged, the nose blunt and veined. A drinker in Torning's pub; a man of solid substance, with the neatly-mended clothes of a family prop. “Terrible accident, it was. Coachman was drunk as a lord—broke his neck. And the
Queen's
coachman, at that. As if they hadn't enough of death, last night, at Windsor.”
    “How did it happen?”
    “Ran up against summat in the fog.” The fellow looked back to his straps, securing a buckle with thickened fingers.
    “That's quite a wound in the horse's chest,” Fitzgerald observed, crouching down to stare at a deep and ugly puncture. A vision of the spiked stockade rose in his mind. “Bled to death. I suppose this was one of the leaders?”
    “Reckon. Took the impact full-on, and spared the others. They'll be trotting down Islington High Street by this time, I wouldn't wonder.”
    “But what did it?”
    “Sorry, sir?”
    “What killed these horses? Overturned this carriage?”
    The man glanced around vaguely. “There's all kinds of rubbish out here in the dark, sir. It don't pay to cross the Heath on a night without a moon.”
    Fitzgerald pursed his lips. “I shouldn't relish this job of work. How long have you been at it?”
    “A good while now. Helped old Torning bring the corpus back to Well Walk, then the foreign gentleman paid us all to tidy up the mess, like.”
    “The foreign gentleman?”
    “German toff. From Windsor, Torning said he was.”
    Fitzgerald abandoned the slope and walked back up to the carriageway, studying the trampled earth. A light rain had begun to fall, but it was still possible to discern the marks of a heavy object, dragged across the packed stone surface. While he'd beseeched the shade of John Snow at Georgiana's bedside, the engine of their destruction had been carted away. That was natural; murder had been done, and murder must at all costs be concealed. But the swiftness of its execution suggested an efficiency—and the command of resources—far beyond a simple highwayman. The Queen's carriage had not been attacked by a random thief. It had been the target of a conspiracy. Because Fitzgerald rode in it? —Or for reasons having nothing to do with him?
    Like the barrister he was, he considered the evidence. They'd followed no predictable path last night, and they'd traveled at anything but a routine hour. Whoever overturned the carriage and tidied up the mess had done so with foreknowledge and a clear purpose. It was Fitzgerald who groped in the dark. He felt suddenly chilled. The unknown hand had taken such care—surely it would strike again. . . .
    “Are you a stranger here yourself, sir?”
    He looked at the labourer. “From London. I was in that carriage last night.”
    The man's eyes widened.
    Bedford Square sat in the heart of Bloomsbury: staid, respectable, and so anxious lest it be thought less fashionable than Mayfair, that shops and taverns were discouraged and the square itself pompously gated. Fitzgerald kept a set of lodgings on the north side, in one of the sedate row houses dating to the last century; his man, Gibbon, opened the door before he'd found his latchkey.
    “Good morning, Mr. Fitz. Bath's waiting and breakfast's in twenty minutes.”
    “The Lord knows I could do with both.” The rain had increased in force, and the world outside was wet and raw. He stepped into the narrow passage, pulling his hat from his head and leaving a trail of water all over the floorboards.
    Gibbon surveyed him with dismay: mud-spattered coat and boots, collar wilted and cravat untied. “Aren't you a sorry sight. Long night?”
    Fitzgerald closed the door behind him. “Very. Have the morning papers arrived?”
    “Already ironed and set out by the bath. Sad news about the Consort, in't it? And him only forty-two. I don't suppose the Queen had anything particular to say? Strange, you being called to Windsor at just the moment the Consort should be passing—you wouldn't have happened to
see
anything, Mr.