Chapter Nineteen
Magic or not, Max didn’t want to show up at the Grimoire without doing some reconnaissance.
Over the course of the week, he made a habit of “bumping into” old friends—from his school days, from Cambridge, from his years in France during the war—and joining them for a drink.
It was easy enough to gain their confidence, and, with it, all sorts of small details about his father’s club slipped out—the name of the doorman.
The back alley where male clubgoers often went to take a piss.
The balcony leading onto a small, walled garden, which was particularly popular with liaising couples.
And the night watchman, who stayed at the club overnight but was often to be seen at last call, indulging in a cheeky drink or potion with stragglers.
And with these details came the beginnings of a plan.
“Ashbridge,” came Raffles’s bark at work on Wednesday, interrupting a bout of thoughtful contemplation of the logistics involved.
There was an intrigued murmur among the other F.L.E.A.s present—Poppington, in particular, looked delighted at the prospect that Max might be about to receive a tongue-lashing.
Max eyed Raffles a bit warily as he took a seat. Her silvery blond hair—always immaculately styled in careful waves, but now a bit mussed—betrayed a state of mental turmoil.
“You rang?” he asked mildly, and Raffles narrowed those unnerving icy blue eyes at him. Any attempts at humor on his part would not be appreciated, then. Noted.
“I wanted an update on any progress you’ve made in this little scheme of yours with the Holloway girl.”
Max crossed one ankle over his knee. He’d known some sort of conversation like this was coming—was surprised Raffles had given him as long a leash as she had, in fact.
He felt oddly hesitant to confide in her, however; at some point, this investigation had stopped feeling like work, and more like some sort of private quest.
“We’ve made some… interesting progress,” he said, and was rewarded by Raffles shifting forward in her seat slightly. “We’re operating under the theory that one of the club owners is deliberately using their own magic to contaminate their rivals’ supply of spell powders and potions.”
Raffles frowned, considering him with a sharp eye. “To what end?”
“Competitive advantage. If there are accidents at all the clubs except theirs, people will flock to them, perceiving them as the safest option, with the most reliable product. Their rivals will go out of business.”
“It seems awfully dangerous,” Raffles said, tapping a pen against a blotter on her desk. “Don’t they run the risk of people simply abandoning all magical clubs entirely?”
“They do,” Max conceded. “I think it’s why they’ve taken pains to keep the effects of the contaminated potions relatively harmless—ensure that it’s not enough to frighten people off, but allow them to eventually come to their own conclusions about where it’s safest to procure anything magical.”
“And do you know which owner is doing this?” There was an edge to her voice as she no doubt considered just how enormous a coup this could be for her.
“Not yet,” Max said. What he and Vesper really needed was time, and this conversation with Raffles was his chance to buy them some. “We’re narrowing it down, but I need another week or two.”
Raffles was silent for a moment, scrutinizing him. It was discomfiting, to be fixed beneath that frigid stare for a prolonged period, but he met her gaze, and counted it a small victory when she looked away first.
“I’m sticking my neck out for you here, Ashbridge.”
“I know.”
“If the powers that be found out that I’d approved this without taking it farther up the line—”
“I know. And I appreciate your trust.”
“You came highly recommended, as you are well aware, and heaven knows I could use someone competent in this office.” She jerked her chin at the closed door leading out into the open office where the F.L.E.A.
desks were, and Max bit back a smile at the thought of Poppington’s reaction to hearing this assessment of his abilities.
She jabbed her pen against the blotter again, more decisively this time, and said abruptly, “You have until the end of next week. My patience has its limits.”
Max met Will at their favorite Bloomsbury pub after work that evening, one of their semiweekly meetings for drinks.
Will was looking somewhat disheveled, but this was nothing out of the ordinary; he was prone to ink-stained fingers, mismatched socks, and hair that looked as if he’d been caught in a windstorm on his way to the pub.
How he had ever convinced elegant, polished Vera to marry him was a mystery to Max, but the human heart worked in strange, unknowable ways, he supposed.
(He refused to examine this truism in any detail when it came to the current state of his own heart.)
“You look tired,” Will observed, setting down a pint glass before Max on the worn wood of the table with a faint thunk. “Too many evenings spent donning your glad rags and rubbing elbows with the potion-pushers?”
“Something like that,” Max said, not rising to the bait.
“Have you bought a new suit? Taken to wearing a monocle? Started calling people ‘old bean’?”
Max took a sip of his beer, his mind turning back to the ludicrous secret code at Plenus Venter that Vesper had taught him. He nearly smiled at the memory, but instead flicked a bit of the foam at the rim of his glass at Will. “Are you done trying to annoy me?”
“It is my professional obligation to be as annoying as possible,” Will said, making a show of looking wounded. “It’s why I still have a job.”
“Your job is actually what I wanted to speak to you about,” Max said, leaning forward slightly.
Will straightened in his seat, suddenly alert, the teasing gleam in his eye vanishing. “Have you got a scoop for me about your investigation? They’re coming thick and fast from the magical world at the moment.”
Max frowned. “What do you mean?”
Will glanced around, as if checking they weren’t overheard. “One of my colleagues at The Times received a tip about whatever’s going on at the Marylebone clubs—he says the source is irreproachable.”
“Someone from one of the clubs?” Max asked.
“Someone at the Home Office. Seems to think their information is reliable.”
Max stared at the foam on the surface of his beer, his mind working. No one at the Home Office was meant to know—no one other than Max.
And Raffles.
“When did he get the tip-off?”
Will was silent a moment, thinking. “Would’ve been… weekend before last, sometime?”
The weekend of the accident at Holloway’s—before Max had even told Raffles of his plan.
Who, then, at the Home Office knew? And how? Even if gossip had spread since then, this would have been very early for it to leak.
Max took a long sip from his pint, Will watching him carefully all the while.
“I don’t know how deep you’re mixed up in this,” Will said, “but this seems like a bit of a mess.”
“I’m well aware.” Max rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling exhausted, as if the past two weeks had caught up with him all at once. “I need to speak to Ves—Miss Holloway.”
“Vesper, is it?” Will waggled his eyebrows.
“I would pay you to never do that again.”
“I don’t think you’ve enough money to make that a tempting offer,” Will said. “Unless you anticipate a sudden change in your circumstances? Marriage into a family with healthy bank accounts, perhaps?”
Max didn’t even bother trying to protest.
“It’s been a while since Caro, hasn’t it?” Will said, more serious now. “I think this could do you good.”
“Don’t compare her to Caro,” Max said sharply.
He still felt a slight pang of regret when he reflected on the year he’d spent with Caroline.
She’d been perfect on paper: smart, educated, beautiful.
She was from a mundane family who were wealthy but not aristocratic; her father worked as a banker.
He’d begun to assume that they would marry; instead, she had left him.
It had been painful, but the ache had soon faded—as she had informed him it would, in their final conversation.
“In a month, you’ll barely think about me at all,” she told him.
“And that’s why this will never work. I want to be with someone who would miss me for the rest of his life. ”
The words had stuck with Max, even as he’d argued against them at the time.
Because he had caught himself thinking, with increasing dread, of the time—rapidly approaching—when he would not have a professionally sanctioned excuse to see Vesper Holloway most days of the week.
And he already knew, without the slightest doubt, that he was going to find that nearly unbearable.
Will watched him for a long moment, reading whatever it was that was written on Max’s face. Max was usually quite good at ensuring his expression was inscrutable, but he couldn’t bring himself to bother, just now.
Will let out a low whistle. “It’s like that, is it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he retorted, and Will didn’t even attempt to dispute this.
Because he and Max both knew perfectly well that it was a lie.