To be clear: Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, does not think every dead person in London is the victim of a sinister plot. The city is large, after all, and some of its inhabitants had to have died from innocent causes. Like Peter Huzza, who was killed in a horrifying steam engine accident. It is shocking, yes, the way his body was torn apart by the explosion of his very own machine, but not entirely surprising. High-pressure steam is notoriously dangerous to harness.

There is no reason to suspect foul play.

Nope, none at all.

And yet there is that disquiet Bea feels when she pictures the decimation caused by the blast. It just doesn't seem quite decimated enough. But the alternative makes even less sense, for how could she have noticed something that one hundred other spectators missed? Believing the inventor was murdered right before their eyes—it is a wildly implausible theory.

No doubt it is. But when has Beatrice Hyde-Clare ever let the impossibility of a theory stop her?