Epilogue
One week later
The Café Royal was finer than any place Gideon had ever dined in his life.
The sort of establishment he could have never imagined stepping into, let alone one day escorting Electra to for a dinner to celebrate his birthday.
Yet, he’d heard of the restaurant’s renown, and perhaps some part of him wished to impress her, to surprise her, despite how well they knew each other.
Every surface was gilded, and mirrors threw back glints of gold and movement from every angle while gaslight blazed from crystal fixtures overhead.
The upscale supper room overwhelmed the senses, though not unpleasantly.
Savory scents of French cuisine stoked his appetite—though, even here, his attention would not settle.
Habit pulled his eye to the way one guest watched another a fraction too long.
Though now that they were seated across from each other, he gave Electra his singular attention. He couldn’t help but notice how the warm glow of the gaslights brightened her blue-green eyes.
She had that look tonight—impatient curiosity. He knew it well.
The Pennington case had kept him late at the station for days. And they had not had an opportunity to speak since the night Lance Pennington confessed. No deductive skill was necessary to hazard a guess she was curious about what had occurred since that night.
“The case is strong,” he told her. “Between Lance Pennington’s signed confession, Callister’s statement, and the depositions of other witnesses, the magistrate will commit the case for trial.”
The proceedings had taken place that afternoon, and the results would no doubt be in the evening papers. Reporters had already been intent on the scandal of the playwright who murdered his Queen’s Counsel barrister brother, and the member of Parliament who was tangled up in it all.
“Good.” Electra nodded.
None of that news could have come as a surprise. Still, it was a relief to Gideon. Though they’d both heard Lance Pennington’s confession, he would not be the first killer to retract an oral confession when faced with a pen and document attesting to what he’d done.
However, Pennington had held fast, still pronouncing his guilt, even after learning that Mrs. Devlin had been in no real danger of arrest.
“And Gordon Callister?” she asked.
The matter of Callister was not quite as neat.
“The scandal will cost him. He is expected to resign his seat within days.”
“The man concealed a murder,” Electra insisted. “A murder he once tried to procure.”
Gideon understood her frustration. “The Crown’s prosecution does not seem to have the stomach for charging him.”
Electra scoffed and rapped her fingers against the tabletop.
“He has been cooperative and claims that his failing to inform authorities was a brief, emotional lapse, not an attempt to thwart justice.”
“Do you believe that?” she asked.
Gideon didn’t. “Not entirely, no.” He lifted a brow as he looked at her. “Did you…sense anything that night in Pennington’s study?”
She glanced away, taking in the luxurious decor and the well-heeled at the tables around them.
“I did sense a ferocious anger in him, but emotions were running high. Though I do believe Lance Pennington when he says Callister offered to pay him.” When her eyes found his again, he saw a sort of righteous fury in hers.
“If he would do so once and will face no consequences, what would stop him from doing so again? And succeeding?”
Gideon had always admired her fierce sense of justice, but he’d seen too much to feel as certain as he had when he’d first joined the police force.
“In his statement, Callister detailed how Pennington taunted him about his own relationship with Miss Mahoney during a drunken argument between them. Even claimed he would expose them and ruin Callister’s political career.”
Electra scoffed. “But Percival Pennington had a liaison with Miss Mahoney too,” she pointed out.
“Indeed. And it seems both men were in their cups. Callister, it seems, was not perceiving the matter with logic. Regardless, that was his given explanation for what the Pennington housemaid overheard—his threat to bury Pennington.”
“So, jealousy motivated both men?”
Gideon suspected it was a longstanding jealousy that went back years between the two men. “Callister spoke of Pennington as if he was more competitor than friend. Perhaps the supposed rivalry over Miss Mahoney was the final straw.”
“He seems a volatile man, and yet he will carry on, unlike Pennington.”
“We both know,” he began, weighing his words, “that the application of justice is imperfect. Sometimes thwarted. Sometimes delayed.”
They watched each other a moment, and he wondered if she was thinking of her father as he was. Did she resent him for his failure to find his killer? He had long felt he’d failed her, failed Erasmus Poole, by not being able to deliver justice in that case.
“Delayed justice is better than none at all. It seems Gordon Callister has avoided it entirely.” She finally took up her glass of water and drank a sip.
“Except for the scandal. The ruined reputation.” Lost in thought for a moment, she emerged with a half-smile.
“I suspect Miss Mahoney will want nothing to do with him now.”
Gideon chuckled. “I suspect not. How is Mrs. Devlin?”
Electra had intended to pay her a visit.
“She seemed well. Apparently, she has found a protector, though she would not tell me his name.” Electra tipped her head. “And Miss Faraday?”
“Initially, she wished to visit her uncle each day, and she was persistent about sending letters, asking me about the progress of the case. She informed me in one that she is engaged to be married to Mr. Worthington.”
Electra smiled. “Then something good has come of all this, I suppose.”
The waiter came to take their orders, and when he'd departed, Gideon couldn't help but tug on the thread.
“You consider marriage a good outcome then?”
Electra’s eyes widened. “For some, of course.”
“Not for you?” They never discussed such matters. He wasn’t certain what madness was making him press on a topic she had never broached with him.
Rather than answer, she tucked a lock of black hair behind her ear and then gave him a look of challenge. “What about you? Any nuptials planned in your future that I should be aware of?”
Gideon laughed at that, longer and harder than he’d laughed at anything for a very long time. “Do you think I have time for planning such things? I have been rather busy with settling matters in a murder inquiry.”
When he’d burst into laughter, she’d smiled and chuckled too. Now there was color in her cheeks and amusement dancing in her eyes, and he found that was far preferable to talking about the case that had occupied his mind over long days for the past week or so.
“I’m focused on my work, for now,” she said a moment later.
“Your psychical consultations?” he asked.
“And assisting with the occasional murder investigation,” she said archly.
Gideon groaned and gripped the glass of wine the waiter had poured.
“Don’t look so pressed,” she teased. “I have been helpful.”
“You have, yes.”
“But?”
“Every time you become entangled in a murder investigation—”
“You are extremely grateful for my assistance?”
He worried incessantly. That’s what he’d intended to say, but the mirth between them was too appealing to sour it by sharing his anxieties.
“Your help has been invaluable.” Gideon had no desire to encourage her involvement in future cases, but he couldn’t deny that fact.
“I will take that.” She smiled, but then turned serious again.
“The truth is I still have a great deal to learn about my abilities,” she admitted.
“The vision I saw of you in Lance Pennington’s study happened when I touched Mrs. Devlin, not you or Lance Pennington.
It is odd. And it wasn’t a divination of any danger, which I suspected my visions were. ”
Gideon considered how extraordinary it would be, and perhaps disorienting, to possess such abilities. “However it works, what you are able to do is remarkable.”
For a moment, she stared at him silently, her eyes slightly widened, her breath seemingly stalled as if his admiration for her psychic gifts stunned her.
Then her mouth curved in a smile and a glint of mischief lit her eyes.
She lifted her glass in a toast, and he took up his glass with trepidation, fearing she was already looking forward, too eagerly, to the next time she could use her remarkable gifts in an investigation.
Instead, she said, “Happy belated birthday, Gideon.”