Jacqui, continuing on, told the man, “We’re a bit late, I’m sorry. Did you get my text?”
“Aye. No problem. I never expect you on time.”
Alistair Scott was a tall man, well built, with a face that I guessed would have once been incredibly handsome, and still drew the eye. Even mine, and I normally didn’t find bearded men all that attractive. His beard, neatly trimmed, was the same ivory white as his hair, also tidily clipped and kept short, and his eyes were a warm, lively brown.
To be honest, though, I didn’t notice most of that till later. At the moment, I was looking at the dog. His eyes were warmly brown as well, the little chestnut marks above them giving him a questioning expression, as I asked, “Is he a setter?”
“Aye. A Gordon setter. Hunting dogs, they’re meant to be, and Hector would have been as well, if his fool of a first owner hadn’t ruined him. She took him on a full day’s hunt afore he’d ever heard a gunshot. After that, if anything went bang, he’d tuck his tail and run. His owner didn’t want him, then. She sent him to the pound.”
“And so you rescued him?”
“Aye. It was never his fault, and you don’t cast a life aside like that.” Alistair Scott had been walking towards me while he had been talking, and now he bent briefly to rumple the dog’s ears himself, with a leather-gloved hand. “He’s got lots of good years in him yet.” He fell silent for a moment and I wondered, given what my cousin had been telling me, if he was thinking not about the dog but of himself. Then he roused himself and added, “He’s a brilliant fetcher still, for all that, but today his mind’s elsewhere.”
I asked, “Hunting for birds, was she, Hector’s first owner?”
“Aye. Pheasant.”
“Well, that’s why he’s stressed, then.”
I noticed the pause while both Jacqui and Alistair Scott studied Hector as though they were looking for evidence that he was stressed. I felt sure they would see it. The signs were so obvious.
But to be perfectly clear, I glanced back at the pond, with its flurry of ducks, then I nodded at Hector, who was panting with the corners of his mouth drawn back, his ears tucked closely to his head. “He doesn’t like the birds,” I said. “You want to take him further down the Common, he’ll be happier.”
This second pause was shorter, but it gave me time to realize that I hadn’t introduced myself yet, properly, the way that normal people did. I forced myself to look away from Hector for a moment, raised my head and held my hand out. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Scott. I’m Sara Thomas.”
“Alistair.” He took his glove off when he shook my hand—the mark, my father always said, of a true gentleman. “And yes, I thought you might be. Shall we?”
As we walked further away from the pond, down the side of the Common, his gaze moved from my face to Jacqui’s and back, and I guessed he was trying to find some resemblance. There wasn’t one. Jacqui always looked as though she’d stepped out of a fashion plate, her dark hair in its well-cut bob that fell back into place no matter how the wind was blowing, whereas my hair was more frequently a wild and tousled mess that couldn’t quite decide if it was blond or brown and, trying to be both, fell in between. It wouldn’t keep to any style, so I just kept it on the shorter side and trusted that its shagginess would seem all of a piece with my informal sense of fashion.
I liked scarves, and winter gave me an excuse to wear them daily. I had chosen for today a thickly woolly one in stripes of green and orange with a fringe that hung below the hip-length hem of my old quilted coat and brushed my jeans. If I’d been meeting just with Jacqui, I’d have changed the laces in my boots to green and orange, too, to match, and chosen one glove of each color from the jumbled basket in my entry hall. But first impressions, I knew, were important, and Alistair Scott was a man of tradition, so I’d kept my bootlaces black, and my gloves black, as well. They were kid suede and very expensive, a gift from my mother last Christmas, but I found them stiff. I’d been happy to slide my hand free for the handshake. I kept it free just a bit longer, to give Hector’s silky-soft head one more pat as he circled my legs.
“He likes you,” said Alistair Scott. “He’s not often so friendly with strangers.”
“Yes, well, dogs can always spot the dog-deprived.”
He smiled. “You haven’t got one of your own?”
“I don’t have any pets. I wouldn’t want to leave them on their own all day, while I’m at work.”
My mention of work made him shift topics. “Jacqui,” he said, “tells me you’re between jobs, at the moment.”
I considered this, sliding my glove back on. “Well, that depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether I’m working for you.”
He looked down at me, smiling more broadly. “You’re very direct, aren’t you?”
“Sometimes. I’m not a professional code breaker, though. You do know that?”
“Your cousin says you cracked that cipher in seventeen minutes,” he said. “At a party.”
“A wedding reception. And it wasn’t a difficult cipher. I gather the one that you’d want me to work on is different?”
He nodded. “But written the same year. There might be some overlap.”
“And it’s in Paris?”
“The outskirts of Paris,” he told me. “Chatou. It’s a suburb, just west of the city itself.”