A Dangerous Madness by Michelle Diener

bulletin just before I went home last night from Whitehall. He was killed in a carriage accident.”
    James gripped the table. “I thought he’d fled the country.” His thoughts flew immediately to Miss Hillier. To how she would take this news.
    “Looks like he intended to. His accident was within ten miles of Dover.”
    “He’s the reason I sent you that urgent message last night. He posted a letter to Miss Hillier from an inn he stayed at on the way. It proves he was involved somehow with Bellingham.”
    Dervish stopped cutting open his brioche and stared. “He admitted it in a letter?”
    “No. He said nothing in the letter. And now I understand why. He was careful not to incriminate himself in any way. But he enclosed something. I couldn’t understand why he would send it to Miss Hillier. It would have been better for him to destroy it, but it may have been he was using it as a way to keep the men he’d fallen in with from interfering with his escape.”
    “An insurance policy, you mean?”
    James nodded. “Which means the document must incriminate someone other than himself. It would have no value, otherwise.”
    “He may have realized he was being followed, or hunted down, and sent the only thing he thought could save him somewhere safe.”
    James tapped a little rhythm on the table. “It would also explain why someone tried to murder Miss Hillier last night.”
    “What?” Dervish dropped his silver cutlery with a clatter. “You think they knew she had the document?”
    “If we think Sheldrake’s accident wasn’t an accident at all, he may have been forced to say where the document was before they killed him. And given his personality, if he thought they would spare his life if he told them, he would have endangered Miss Hillier to save his own skin, I have no doubt.
    “In fact, that would fit her assassin’s actions last night better.” He thought of how the man had aimed at Miss Hillier, but had not taken the shot, giving James time to get between them. “If they know she has the document, then the intruder would have wanted to find out where it was before he killed her. He hesitated. That’s how I was able to stop him.”
    “We’d better get that document—” Dervish stopped short as James pulled it from his inner jacket pocket and handed it over.
    “A petition?” Dervish scanned it, his eyes widening when he saw whose name was on the document. “But that’s strange…”
    “Yes, something is niggling me about it, too.”
    “It’s having the thing at all.” Dervish studied it thoughtfully. “Somewhere in the committal proceedings that were conducted after they arrested Bellingham, he spoke of sending a petition to the Prince Regent.”
    “When did you see the transcript of the proceedings?” No wonder Dervish looked pale and dark-eyed. He could hardly have slept.
    Dervish rubbed his forehead. “I skimmed it at Gibbs’s office into the early hours of this morning. There is only one copy and he won’t let anyone take it away, which I agree with. But I can’t remember what Bellingham said about the petition. We’ll need to check it again to find out when he said it was submitted, but he spoke clearly as if it had been received—that was part of his grievance, that even the Prince Regent had denied him justice.”
    “So that begs the question,” James held out his hand and took the petition back to look at it again himself, “if this was submitted to the Prince Regent, how are we holding it in our hands?”
    Dervish rubbed his forehead again. “We shouldn’t be.”
    James drained his coffee. “I’ll take a look at the transcript. I was going to, anyway. I heard something about that hearing that I’d like to check for myself.”
    “You were able to get information from Bellingham?” Dervish leaned forward.
    James shook his head. “All I got from Bellingham was an impression, nothing definite. I think he was helped. How much, I don’t know, but he had advice from