Mr. Mornett stated that he had returned to his hotel room following a late dinner and evening drinking at his club, Vine’s, to find Miss Camherst in the room. She had in her hand an artifact (a “cylinder seal”) he had purchased earlier that day at an auction of antiquities. He asked her how she had gotten in, to which she gave no satisfactory answer; Mr. Mornett said that she instead threw the artifact at him and demanded to know “why it mattered.” I asked him whether the item had been damaged and he said no, that he had caught it before it could strike the wall. He went on to state that the two of them became engaged in an argument loud enough that it drew the attention of hotel staff, and that upon being asked by the manager, he said that Miss Camherst had broken into his room to steal something that belonged to him. After this the manager called the police station and escorted Miss Camherst down to his office, accompanied by Mr. Mornett.
Following this statement, I informed Miss Camherst of her right to remain silent and then questioned her. She admitted that she had entered Mr. Mornett’s room unlawfully for the purpose of looking at the artifact, which she had failed to win during the auction earlier that day. I asked her how she entered the room, and she said that the sailors on her father’s ship had taught her “many interesting skills,” by which she appeared to mean the art of lock-picking. She insisted she had no intent of stealing the artifact, only of studying the figures carved into it. At this point Mr. Mornett interrupted to say that he regretted accusing Miss Camherst of theft, claiming that he had spoken in the heat of the moment. Miss Camherst said angrily that she “would not steal that thing for all the jade in Yelang,” adding that it was “quite worthless.” She then accused Mr. Mornett of luring her to his hotel room by buying the item, but when I attempted to question her further on this point, she became very silent and behaved in an embarrassed manner.
The artifact in question is a cylindrical piece of stone about three centimeters in length, metallic grey in colour (Mr. Mornett identified it as hematite), with a hole drilled through it and several figures carved into its surface. One corner is chipped, but Mr. Mornett stated that damage was present when he bought the artifact at Emmerson’s Auction House earlier that day.
Mr. Mornett declined to press charges against Miss Camherst for her alleged intent to steal or damage his property. Mr. Grance pressed charges for unlawful entry to a guest room. Mr. Mornett attempted to persuade him not to do so, but failed. I placed handcuffs on Miss Camherst and transported her to the Bench Street station by foot. She made no attempt to resist. She was kept in lock-up until her father, The Hon. Jacob Camherst, arrived around 0330, stating that he had received an “anonymous tip” that his daughter was at the station. Miss Camherst was then released without bail, with orders to present herself to police the following day.
FROM THE DIARY OF AUDREY CAMHERST
20 Messis
At least this time I don’t have a broken nose.
No, instead I have public humiliation, which is so much better. I imagine it’s all over the papers by now—I haven’t dared to look—they always love it so much when a relative of somebody famous gets into trouble, and Grandmama is certainly famous, especially with her memoirs having been published recently. Even if Mornett keeps his mouth shut, which I doubt, all the rags scour the police charge sheets for juicy tidbits.
I wouldn’t even care, I swear I wouldn’t, if it weren’t for Lotte. And of course that was the first thing Papa said to me once the door closed safely behind us. “What do you think people will say?” he demanded. “I know you don’t give a tarred rope end for marriage and never have, and I support you in that. But Lotte does, and I support her in that, too—and now everyone will be talking about her sister, who broke into a man’s hotel room in the middle of the night.”
I can bear almost anything except Papa being angry at me. “I know, I know, I’m sorry,” I said, but words can’t make up for this botch, and we both know it.
“What possessed you?” he said, pacing the front hall like a lion in its cage. “Over some cylinder seal? Audrey, I know you share Mother’s passion for your work, but surely nothing can be that important.”
“It wasn’t the seal for its own sake,” I said, wringing my hands. “It was—oh, I can’t even explain it—”
“Try,” he said, in an ominous voice.
So I tried. I told him about the auction, the way Mornett had baited me. “It sounds to me,” Papa said, “like you’re letting your loathing of the man get in the way of your good judgment.”
How could I argue with that? It’s true. But it also isn’t the whole story. “I saw something, though,” I told him. “Right before I heard someone outside the room and tried to hide. On Mornett’s desk—there was a letter to him from Zachary Hallman.”
That brought Papa around like a ship being club-hauled. “The Hadamist leader? The one at the riot?”
“They knew one another at school, and they’re both members of Vine’s. Aaron—Mornett, I mean—he always told me that he and Hallman had drifted apart after school, when Hallman got more rabid about Draconeans.” Say what you will against Mornett (and I could fill the rest of this diary with it, if I had the time and the will), but he’s not a Hadamist. He’s just convinced that Draconeans belong in their place, which is safely cooped up in the mountains on the other side of the world.
Papa said, “You think he was lying?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “That is—no, I think he was sincere when he said it. That was several years ago, but now . . .”
Now he has paid two thousand guineas for a cylinder seal carved with what the trained eye can instantly identify as four figures supplicating, not a god, but an ordinary Draconean queen. It has no significance whatsoever apart from the fact that Mornett, I now remember, very much likes hematite—but if his sympathies really had swung so hard against Draconeans as to align him with Hallman, I can’t imagine him paying so much for one of their relics, much less borrowing from Mrs. Kefford to do it.
Papa smacked the heel of his hand against the wall a few times, then said, “Do you think Mornett had anything to do with that riot?”
At the airfield, when I got my nose broken. “I—I don’t think so, but—”
But I can’t be sure.
Mornett showed up at Stokesley that same night. I assumed his business was the tablets, but that was because I hadn’t thought about his connection to Hallman. What if that, and not the epic, was what brought him there so late at night?
Or both, because it’s all connected.
Papa shook his head, came forward, and cupped my face in his hands, which always makes me feel like I am six years old again, in both the good ways and the bad. He said with quiet intensity, “You didn’t know about the letter when you broke in. It’s pure chance that you found it. Audrey—you can’t go doing things like that. What if Mornett was every bit that bad and more, and he—” Emotion choked off his voice.
Why do I not realize the important things until much too late? Papa’s father, the Grandpapa I never knew, died in circumstances not much different from mine. I want to say that such a thing could never happen here, but the police charge-sheets are full of stories that would prove me wrong. And Mornett . . .