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water, all built for Peakholme. It takes a king’s ransom to keep it running, and talking of costing a fortune, Lady Armstrong and the egregious James are extravagant to a fault. Her patronage of the arts—she’s delightfully kind to struggling poets—and her dresses. His horses and gambling, and he’s bone idle, lives off his father and doesn’t lift a finger. Armstrong’s business is sound enough, but he’s spending to the top of his bent. He needs another war; short of that, he needs money.”
    Curtis frowned. “How do you know all this? How sure are you?”
    “About his financial worries? I’ve heard plenty of whispers. About the blackmail—well, I’ll be certain when I find where he keeps the photographic evidence. Until then it’s hearsay, guesswork and deduction. But I should scarcely have come to the countryside, in October of all times, for anything less than profound concern. Those are my cards on the table, Mr. Curtis. I believe that Armstrong is engaged in a cruel and deliberate scheme of entrapment and blackmail that has driven men to their deaths. What do you believe?”
    It was Curtis’s turn to examine the other man’s face now. Could he trust da Silva? He seemed sincere, as far as Curtis could tell. And God knew, he needed help.
    He took a deep breath. “Lafayette came to my uncle’s house about a month ago.”
    “Which uncle?”
    “Sir Henry. He’d been to see Sir Maurice already, at his office. Sir Maurice sent him packing, so he came to appeal to Sir Henry. Because of this, I suppose.” He lifted his damaged hand. “He hoped Sir Henry might speak to Sir Maurice.”
    “Do you always address your uncles as Sir What-have-you?” da Silva put in curiously.
    “Yes, why not?” Sir Henry Curtis and Sir Maurice Vaizey, his father’s and mother’s brothers, had been responsible for Curtis’s rearing. Sir Henry had remained unmarried through Curtis’s childhood; Sir Maurice had been a widower for decades. Curtis had never doubted their affection, but his upbringing hadn’t been sentimental.
    Da Silva shrugged. “Why not indeed. Of course. Carry on.”
    Curtis bristled, sensing an implied criticism without quite knowing what it was. But da Silva was twitching a finger as if to hurry him on. He got back to the point. “Sir Henry’s in Africa, though, and I was there, so Lafayette talked to me instead. He’d broken down, he was half-starved and raving, for all I know it was pure madness. Sir Maurice certainly thought so. But he, Lafayette, said that Armstrong had sabotaged his factory. That Armstrong had engineered the flaws in the new guns to destroy Lafayette’s business and take his share.”
    “What made his claim credible?”
    “I don’t know if it is. He believed that two of his most trusted men, a foreman and a clerk, had been suborned by Armstrong to sabotage him. He said they’d both vanished. I checked that, they’ve both been reported missing by their families.”
    “What do you think happened to them?”
    “I’ve no idea. Lafayette suspected foul play, but he didn’t know for sure. They might just as well have taken a bribe and left the country. If any of this happened at all.”
    “If I suborned men to commit an act of high treason, I should probably silence them afterwards,” said da Silva thoughtfully. “But then, if I committed high treason, I should leave the country sharpish, so who can say. What happened to Lafayette? Did someone say he died?”
    “About a fortnight after I spoke to him. A couple of weeks ago now. He was found in the Thames. It seems he hit his head and fell into the river.”
    “Hit his head,” da Silva repeated.
    “Yes.”
    “Did anyone wonder if someone hit his head for him?”
    Curtis had wondered that since reading the inquest report. He felt a rush of warmth for da Silva, sheer relief at sharing his thoughts. “Impossible to tell. The body was in the river for a couple of days before it was found. The coroner called it an