Page 33 of A Spy’s Guide to Seduction

Lynley nodded. He turned to the guest book on the table and read the page she’d signed. He’d not seen her writing before, neat, clear, confident, and boldly feminine in its curving lines and small flourishes. He read through the names of visitors. The prison had had a busy day. Mr. Campion, Mr. Hassell, Mr. Clark, and Mr. Perry had all had visitors. Lynley flipped to the previous page in the book, letting his finger pass down the page. Then he stopped cold on an entry that should not have been there. Thomas Culley, a fiction, a man whose existence should not be known to anyone outside the inner circle of the Foreign Office, had had a visitor at noon.

Lynley pounded on the office door. He had to get to her.

* * * *

Emily followed the turnkey through the heavy oak door, down a narrow turning passageway, already gloomy, made gloomier by the veil on her hat. At each turning there was another gate or grate to be unlocked, opened, and relocked again after they passed through, with a jarring clang of metal. Each swing of one of the heavy doors disturbed the stale air of decay in the passage, reminding Emily of her fear for Arthur Broome in that other jail, that he would succumb to one of the miasma-borne fevers of London’s prisons.

Emily enjoyed the pleasure of a maze in a country garden, lost in the turnings of high, dense hedges of yew or boxwood. But in a maze, however hemmed in, one could look up at blue sky and hear the voices of others playing the game. Here she kept her gaze on the back of the turnkey in front of her, not on the crypt-like stone ceiling above her. Lynley would have to duck at every turn.

She was conscious of her dependence on the two men with her, silent and yet censorious. They believed her to be the wife of a dangerous felon. In them there was no pity for the man she hoped to see, and none for his wife, or pretended wife. At the end of several turnings, one more heavy iron grate opened on an obscure curving staircase. Here the pestilential smell made her gag briefly and hold her bit of linen to her mouth and nose.

“Mind yer step, ma’am,” the turnkey said.

Emily lifted her skirts and put a gloved hand to the rough wall to steady herself as they descended. At the bottom of a flight of steps a charcoal stove cast a lurid light along a passage with three cells, each with a massive door. The turnkey directed her the other way, to a narrow cell like a dog’s kennel.

“Wait here, ma’am,” he said.

Emily stepped inside. At shoulder height in one of the sides of the cell was a grate onto a space a little more than a yard wide. Emily looked across the gap that was to separate her from the man she came to see. Her clerical-looking chaperone stayed in the passage, blocking her exit. There was nowhere to look but straight ahead at a grate opposite.

When they brought Malikov from his cell, he would be no more than a shadowy figure opposite. The guard would stand in the space between them.

Emily took a steadying breath. She and Lynley had rehearsed this part. She knew what she was to say, how she was to tell the Russian that it was still possible that he could be released from this place, that he had only to tell the truth about his confederates in crime for the government to arrange for him to be removed from these dreadful circumstances. A name frees you, she would say.

It was what a wife might say in such circumstances, but it was also, at the same time, a message to a spy about how he might bargain for his freedom with the British government.

She clasped her gloved hands together, reminding herself that Malikov was no Arthur Broome, no kind man in jail for his principles, but rather a ruthless spy, willing to endanger and betray anyone for his country’s advantage. The risk was that he could unmask her. He could deny her as his wife. She would be at the mercy of the turnkey and her chaperone, with more than a dozen locked gates between her and Lynley.

Running steps and jangling keys interrupted her thoughts. Metal clanged. Hurried steps went up the staircase. Her chaperone called out “What’s happened, man?” and ran down the passage. She stepped out of the little cell, looking toward the great oaken door that hung open. Her chaperone waved her back.

Emily stopped. From above more footsteps pounded down the stairs. Two armed guards rushed to the open cell door.

The turnkey reappeared, his arms outstretched to contain her. “You. Stay where you are,” he hissed at her.

He looked over his shoulder at one of the guards, who nodded to him from the cell door, and Emily darted forward under his outstretched arm. “What’s happened? Something’s wrong with my husband. I must see him.”

“Never ye mind, ma’am,” said the chaperone, reaching for her arm.

Emily shook him off. “Let me see him. Oh, I must see him.” She halted, catching hold of the cell doorjamb.

Malikov lay on the stones in the dark, narrow cell reeking of its chamber pot. He had apparently dropped to his knees and pitched forward, his face turned to the side, one arm outstretched across the floor, the wrist enclosed in iron.

Emily knelt at his side. His teeth had fixed in a rigid grin. His unseeing eyes stared. She closed them and huddled over the body, her mind working furiously. He was dead because the government had failed to protect him. Someone beside themselves had gained the secret of his identity. There must be some clue she could give to Lynley.

“Now see here, ma’am. It’s not permitted.” The turnkey held a lantern up over the scene. In its light a thin rivulet of sparkling liquid ran from Malikov’s outstretched fingers to pool under a narrow iron bench attached to the wall. Emily’s gaze followed the faint glitter to a fallen metal cup. She sniffed as if in grief and inhaled a familiar sour smell. Perhaps the last thing Malikov had done in life was to drink his beer allowance.

“Guards!” the turnkey shouted.

Rough hands pulled at her shoulders. She went limp, clinging to Malikov’s hand. His fingers were wet. The turnkey swore. The lantern swung above her head, and under the dead man’s hand, Emily read his last word written on the stones in spilled beer.

“Unhand Mrs. Culley.” The snapped command came from Lynley. The rough hands immediately released her.

Emily raised herself up from the corpse. “Brother,” she cried.

He pulled her to her feet and held her close to his side, leaning down to whisper in her ear. “If you never fainted in your life, now would be good time to start.”

“Oh my poor husband,” she wailed. “Oh, I feel—” She broke off and let herself slump in Lynley’s arms.

“Let me remove my sister from this noxious cell,” Lynley said. “And you can get on with your business.”