A Christmas Odyssey by Anne Perry

spatters of blood—if it was blood. Somebody had been horribly injured here—probably bled to death. Who had moved the body, and why?
    “Are you sure you want to do this?” Crow turned to Henry. “If it was Lucien who was killed here, his father isn’t going to want to hear that. If it was he who killed Niccolo or Sadie, he’s going to want to hear that even less. Wouldn’t you rather just tell him we tried, but we lost the trail? He doesn’t need to know different.”
    “Of course I’d rather tell him that,” Henry said quietly. His eyes stared into the darkness ahead of them, where the passageway seemed to go upward again, but at a slope rather than by steps. “But I’m not a very good liar.”
    “Then I’ll do it for you,” Squeaky offered. “I’m excellent.”
    Henry laughed quietly. “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Robinson, but it wouldn’t help, not in the long run. James Wentworth is my friend. I owe him a better answer than a lie.”
    “Why?” Squeaky said reasonably. “He did something for you that you got to pay back?”
    “Not as simple as that,” Henry answered. “But yes, I suppose so. Friendship. Being there over theyears, knowing when to speak and when to keep silent. Sharing things because they mattered to me, even though not to him. Telling me about funny and interesting things he’d learned. Being open about his failures as well as his successes.”
    Squeaky had a glimpse of something new and perhaps beautiful. It was annoying, but he felt as if he had arrived somewhere just after the party was over. The music had stopped, but he could hear its echo.
    Crow stood up. His face was masklike in the sallow light from the one lantern on the wall. “I’m pretty certain at least two people were killed here,” he said quietly. “Very violently indeed. One here, where this blood is.” He pointed to the largest stain on the ground. “Then it looks as if two people fought.” He looked at splashes and smears, which were apparently trodden in several times by feet that seemed to have slipped and twisted on the edge of a larger stain. “And the other one was killed, or at least seriously injured, here. That effigy with the white lead face was right about that. Whether Lucien was one of the victims or not we need to find out.”
    “Yes,” Henry agreed quietly. “Of course we do. And I suppose if he wasn’t, we need to know whathas happened to him, and … and if the victims were Sadie and Niccolo, then we need to know who killed them.”
    Squeaky was about to say that it could only have been Lucien, then changed his mind. Poor Henry had had enough for the moment. He must be exhausted, hungry, and cold, and none of them knew what time it was, or more than roughly even where they were.
    Crow pushed his hands into his pockets. “We need to find someone else who knows Lucien and can tell us something of what happened here. To judge by how sticky the blood still is, it wasn’t very long ago.”
    “What do you mean by ‘not long ago’?” Squeaky said with a tremor in his voice. “An’ where’s the body anyway? That much blood, someone’s dead, but how do we know if it was a man or a woman, let alone that it was Lucien?”
    “We don’t,” Henry replied. “That’s why we must find proof of this. Someone moved it. Where to, and why? And what is this place?”
    “It’s the passage between two clubs, of sorts,” Squeaky answered, looking around them at the stained walls, some brick, some stone. “Or maybe more than two. I’ll shake the bleedin’ truth out ofsomeone.” He set off toward the light, then past it, and found a fork to the right. There was a whole network of tunnels under London that he knew about. Indeed, in the past he had used them himself. He had forgotten how dark they were, and he had intentionally forgotten the smell. It washed back on him now as if the years between had been erased and he was again a young man, hot-tempered, desperate, and greedy,