Death of a Matriarch (Riley Rochester Investigates Book 7)

by Wendy Soliman

  ‘Oh, I learned a great deal.’ He shuddered. ‘And I probably won’t ever forget half of it. They’re a right dissolute lot and no mistake.’

  Riley summoned up a sympathetic smile for his outwardly tough sergeant whose sensibilities could be so easily offended by immoral behaviour. ‘Well, don’t keep me in suspense.’

  ‘Seems you were right about our Miss Sutherland and her reputation with the other ladies. None of them had a good word to say about her and they all agree that she’s an indifferent actress. Not many of the men sang her praises either, but I got the impression that was because she’d spurned their advances.’ Salter rubbed a hand absently down the outside of his thigh. ‘But here’s the interesting bit. She seems to have come out of nowhere. None of them had ever heard of her before she bought her way into a starring role in this small company.’

  Riley sat forward and frowned. ‘She bought her way in?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘Surely you mean that one of the production’s backers insisted upon her taking the lead in return for…well, I’ll leave that up to your imagination.’

  ‘Nope. She put money of her own into the production on the understanding that she would take the lead. Like I say, all the other women reckon she’s not much of an actress, but the producer says his hands were tied.’

  ‘Where did she get the funds?’

  ‘Absolutely no idea.’

  Riley took a moment to reflect, unconsciously rubbing the side of his index finger against his lips and then tapping it against his teeth. ‘I have always had a bad feeling about our aspiring thespian, and what you’ve found out has just increased my suspicions tenfold. Is Clifford Kinsley still in the cells?’

  Salter nodded. ‘I reckon he must be. Barton takes his sweet time turning them out of a morning.’

  ‘Have him brought up here, Jack. Perhaps he knows something about her background that he hasn’t previously mentioned. But whatever it is, and whatever misguided ideas he had about protecting her, you can be sure he won’t be feeling that way anymore, especially after Barton will have gone out of his way to make him feel uncomfortable.’

  ‘A young lad like him locked up with all the old lags, you mean.’ Salter nodded. ‘Aye, I’m betting that will have focused his mind and made him even thirstier for revenge. I’ll go and see if I can find out where he is.’

  Salter went off and returned a few minutes later with a dishevelled, bleary-eyed and sour-smelling Clifford in tow.

  ‘Good news,’ Riley said to him. ‘Your uncle isn’t pressing charges for assault against you, so you’re free to go.’

  Clifford merely shrugged.

  ‘Before you do, we have a few more questions about Miss Sutherland.’ Clifford lurched to one side and Salter was obliged to catch his arm to prevent him from collapsing. ‘Sit down before you fall down, lad.’ Riley waited until he had done so, then softened his tone. ‘Do you know where she grew up, who her family are, anything of that nature?’

  ‘Not really. Come to think of it, whenever I asked about her relatives, she deflected my questions. I assumed her origins must have been humble and she was embarrassed by them. That didn’t matter to me so I didn’t press the issue to save her blushes.’

  ‘She must have let something slip,’ Salter said. ‘Think lad. It might be important. Besides, the sooner we can catch your grandmother’s killer, the sooner her estate can be settled.’

  ‘As if I care about that,’ he said disdainfully, blowing air through lips that looked swollen and painful, the cut that Axton had inflicted now scabbing over. ‘My mother and aunts are more than capable of squabbling over the spoils without any help from me.’

  ‘Even so, cast your mind back,’ Riley said, firming his tone.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, threw his head back and closed his eyes, clearly trying hard to think of something that would help. ‘She said her parents died when she was young and she was brought up by an uncle, but that’s all I know.’

  ‘Did she say where she lived as a child?’ Riley asked. ‘Or the name of her uncle?’

  Clifford shook his head, looking dejected and disinterested. It was clear that he didn’t know anything of value and was struggling to hold himself together. Riley felt sorry for him and so allowed him to leave without pressing him further.

  ‘What now, sir?’ Salter asked.

  ‘I have Danforth watching Mrs Kinsley in the hope that she will lead us to Horton.’ Riley sighed. ‘Other than that, there’s not much more we can do until Carter and Soames get back from Somerset House—and even then, I’m not holding my breath. This case is damned frustrating, Jack. I still don’t have any definite feelings about who might be the guilty party.’

  ‘Cheer up, sir. It’s still early days.’

  Riley grunted and dismissed Salter with a wave of one hand.

  The two of them resumed their respective duties but abandoned them again with a haste that implied no true dedication when Riley’s detective constables returned later that morning.

  ‘Please tell me you found something to interest me,’ Riley said to them.

  ‘I think we likely did, sir,’ Carter replied, rubbing his hands together.

  ‘Out with it then,’ Salter said. ‘Don’t keep the chief inspector in suspense.’

  ‘Gabriel Barlow’s birth is certified. His father is named as one Josiah Barlow and the mother is recorded as Violet Barlow,’ Carter said, consulting his notebook. ‘But we can find no record of her anywhere.’

  Riley nodded, unsurprised. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Presumably there’s more.’

  ‘Sir Joseph Pemberton is an interesting character. The records show that he fathered four children.’

  ‘Four?’ Riley and Salter asked together.

  ‘Aye, sir. The three girls we know about and another. A boy born before them by the name of Percy.’

  ‘Good God! No wonder he was so forgiving of Violet’s lapse if he was at it too,’ Salter said, scrunching up his features in disgust.

  ‘Actually, that does surprise me,’ Riley replied. ‘Men seem to think that they have some God-given right to sow their seed indiscriminately, while women are expected to remain virtuous. What name was given for the mother?’

  ‘Violet Pemberton again, sir.’

  ‘The full name of the child,’ Soames added, allowing a theatrical pause that Miss Sutherland would have approved of, ‘was Percy Thomas Pemberton.’

  ‘PT!’ Riley said a second before Salter reached the same conclusion. ‘Well done, you two! Your discovery explains a great deal about the baffling elements of this case.’

  ‘It’s good we know who he is, sir, but it don’t get us much further forward if we don’t know where he is, or why Lady Pemberton would be willing to pay a blackmailer to cover the connection up for that matter.’ Salter’s shaggy brows drew together as he reasoned the matter through. ‘I mean, Sir Joseph has been dead for a long time, and as you yourself said, gentlemen father children out of wedlock all the time, often acknowledging them as their own without society turning a hair. It wouldn’t have created much of a scandal if the truth had come out after all this time, but it would have been a different matter if they’d known about Lady Pemberton giving birth to Gabriel Barlow, who was not Sir Joseph’s progeny.’

  ‘Perhaps Percy knows about Barlow, sir?’ Carter suggested. ‘I’m not sure how though. He obviously didn’t grow up in the Pemberton household, nor was he connected to the Barlows as far as we are aware, so how…’

  ‘How on earth do we go about finding him, sir?’ Salter asked, scratching his head. ‘That’s the vital question. Once we do, we can ask him to explain.’

  ‘I suspect he’s not far away, Jack. Lady Pemberton was afraid for her life, remember. Check the local parish records for the year of his birth, you two,’ Riley said, waving at Carter and Soames. ‘Lady Pemberton can’t have given birth to two children in the same year, so someone else was Percy’s mother, but that lady might have given him up,
either for adoption or to an orphanage. Sir Joseph accepted responsibility for fathering the child since his name is on his birth certificate, but he lied about the name of his mother, with or without Violet Pemberton’s knowledge.’

  ‘Which implies that the mother died giving birth to him,’ Salter said.

  ‘Precisely so. It doesn’t necessarily follow that Sir Joseph paid for the child’s support but I like to think he ensured the child was placed with a good family and well cared for. Perhaps he was not, in which case the adult would be seeking revenge from a rich parent who had abandoned him.’

  ‘Because he may not be aware that Lady Pemberton was not his actual mother,’ Soames reasoned.

  ‘Precisely so,’ Riley agreed. ‘It’s a bit of a mess, but then family relationships so often are.’

  ‘He’s better off not being a part of that family,’ Carter groused.

  ‘That rather depends upon his current circumstances. The house is in a prosperous part of town, and if Percy is living on the breadline that would make him even more resentful.’

  ‘Why leave the blackmail until after Sir Joseph’s death?’ Salter asked. ‘Lady Pemberton wasn’t to blame.’

  ‘In your eyes perhaps, Jack, but orphanages, if Percy ended up in one, can be grim places. You don’t need me to tell you that. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that Percy knew Lady P wasn’t his birth mother. In his place I would still be wondering why my father’s wife didn’t feel inclined to take me in. He might have thought that Lady Pemberton was at fault because she had refused to have her husband’s bastard growing up beneath her roof. For all we know, that could have been the case.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘There’s your motive for blackmail, and I suspect that’s where half of the proceeds from the sale of Lady Pemberton’s jewels went. Her willingness to pay implies that she knew about the child from the outset but didn’t do anything to prevent him from being abandoned, which would make her as guilty as Sir Joseph in the boy’s eyes.’

  ‘Ah, so you’re suggesting that Lady P gave him half the proceeds, told him there would be absolutely no more and settled the rest on her children so that Percy couldn’t strongarm her into changing her mind.’

  ‘Do you think he killed the old lady, sir?’ Soames asked.

  ‘That remains to be seen, but if he did, how did he get into the house? We know there was a stranger who was given access by either Miss Sutherland or Mrs Kinsley. All of the other ladies have much darker hair and the coal merchant was adamant that the one he saw was blonde, so it can only have been one of those two.’ All the faces in the room looked grim as they absorbed the realities of the situation. ‘Anyway, when we find him, we shall ask him to explain himself.’

  ‘And how do we go about that, sir? Finding Percy, I mean?’ Carter asked. ‘To say nothing of the murderer, if they ain’t the same person.’

  Riley threw up his hands. ‘Goodness only knows. Percy will be sniffing around the Pemberton residence, one imagines, looking for an opportunity to rifle it for valuables, but since we have no idea what he looks like…’

  ‘Surely not,’ Salter said. ‘Not if he got all that money from the jewels. It would be enough to see him comfortably settled for life.’

  ‘But enough to satisfy his thirst for retribution, Jack? Ask yourself that question. We have no idea what privations he suffered growing up.’

  ‘A bit daft of Sir Joseph to put his name on the birth certificate if he didn’t want nothing to do with the child,’ Soames said, sniffing.

  ‘Yes, I wondered about that, too,’ Riley said, inclining his head in Soames’s direction to imply that his observation was a valid one. ‘But we are unlikely ever to find the truth, what with Sir Joseph being dead and Percy’s account likely to be biased. We’ve seen all too often the extraordinarily lengths those with justifiable grudges will go to in order to get their revenge, and the only thing I can be sure about is that revenge is Percy’s driving motivation, and has been for a long time. Why he waited so long to do anything about it is another matter entirely.’

  ‘You still have Danforth watching the house, sir?’ Riley asked.

  ‘I do. Mind you, if Mrs Kinsley goes out, he will follow her. I am very keen to have a conversation with Graham Horton. He’s wrapped up in this business somehow, I’m convinced of it. I don’t know what he looks like nowadays, but I do seem to recall that he was a small man. He could easily have been the person that the coal merchant saw sneaking out of the house.’

  ‘Want me to arrange for someone else to keep an eye on the place as well as Danforth, just in case he has to take off after Mrs Kinsley?’

  ‘Not right now, Jack. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the blackmailer might be the same person as the murderer, despite the fact that we know Lady Pemberton feared for her life.’ He waved aside the objections he sensed his detectives formulating. ‘I know I don’t ordinarily believe in coincidences but we are now better acquainted with this particular family, all of whom are becoming increasingly desperate for cash and none of whom were willing to wait indefinitely for the old lady to die of natural causes. An old lady who enjoyed the power she wielded over them. The tensions were rife during the party, there was at least one altercation and I think someone snapped, as evidenced by the respectful way in which Lady Pemberton was laid out. Anyway, hopefully time will tell if I am right.’ He turned towards his constables. ‘I suppose we have no way of knowing if Percy is still using the name Pemberton.’

  ‘None, sir.’

  ‘Very well. Search the records again, you two. See if there’s a marriage certificate, or anything else, relating to Percy Thomas Pemberton. Salter and I are going to pay another visit to Ebury Street.’

  ‘This should be interesting,’ Salter said, as they set out. ‘I dare say fur’s been flying since Axton and Clifford’s altercation.’

  ‘You should not be enjoying this, Jack,’ Riley said, no real conviction behind the chastisement.

  ‘I’ll ask for forgiveness in church on Sunday, sir.’

  Riley chuckled. ‘I’m sure you will,’ he said. ‘Follow my lead. I might well decide to tell them the good news about the jewels.’

  Salter rubbed his hands together. ‘That ought to put the cat and well and truly in the henhouse.’

  Riley smiled. ‘Mixing your metaphors, Jack?’

  ‘Not sure that I did on this occasion.’

  They were admitted to the house by Aldridge, who gravely informed them that the family was in the drawing room and in a state of considerable agitation.

  ‘We can hear that for ourselves,’ Riley replied, cocking his head to one side and listening to the raised voices. ‘Is Mr Axton with them?’

  ‘No, my lord, but young Mr Kinsley just came home.’

  ‘I see.’ The drawing room was on the first floor and Riley headed for the stairs. ‘No need to announce us, Aldridge.’

  ‘As you wish, my lord,’ the butler replied, looking as though he admired Riley’s courage. Riley understood why when they drew nearer and the shrill female and loud male voices raised in heated argument became more distinct.

  Riley thrust the door open and the shouting momentarily stopped.

  ‘I told you not to disturb us, Miss Colby…Oh, it is you, Lord Riley,’ Mrs Kinsley said, red in the face, eyes blazing with anger. ‘What do you want?’

  Clifford, slumped on a settee, looked up at them without expression. His sister Anthea sat beside him, squeezing his hand. Kinsley was there, standing with one arm resting on the edge of the mantlepiece, looking thunderous. Mrs Axton had tears of humiliation streaming down her face.

  ‘Please sit down, Mrs Kinsley,’ Riley said. ‘Mrs Axton,’ he added, when that lady stood. ‘Please stay. I understand you have reason to feel upset but I must ask you to contain your feelings at least until I have said what I came here to say, which affects you all.’

  ‘Get on with it then, Lord Riley,’ Kinsley said. ‘We are in the middle of a family dispute, as you cannot fail to have asc
ertained, given that you are aware of the cause of that dispute. Why the devil you felt the need to keep my son in custody overnight when he was provoked beyond all human decency I am at a loss to understand, but at least he is back home now.’

  Mrs Axton dissolved into a fresh bout of tears. Only the middle daughter, Mrs Huxley, looked smugly satisfied at the turn events had taken. Riley waited patiently for Mrs Axton to regain control of herself. Curiosity momentarily pushing her despair aside, she mopped her eyes and looked up at him, as composed as she was likely ever to be.

  ‘We have made some progress with our investigation, I am pleased to tell you.’ Riley paused and glanced around the expectant faces, satisfied that he had their full attention. ‘Were you aware that you have a half-brother, ladies?’

  ‘A half-brother?’ The sisters exchanged a mystified look. ‘It is the first we have heard of it,’ Mrs Kinsley said for them all. ‘Are you absolutely sure of your facts?’

  ‘Perfectly sure. Your father sired a child prior to his marriage to your mother.’

  ‘What is that to us?’ Mrs Huxley waved the revelation aside. ‘Men indulge in that sort of behaviour all the time, especially in their younger years. They simply do not seem able to control their passions.’ She shuddered and then sent Mrs Axton a triumphant look that Riley thought both unkind and unnecessary. ‘It does not entitle him to a share of our mother’s estate, if that is what he has come to you suggesting. Honestly, the depths some people will sink to never fails to disgust me.’

  ‘He has not come to me suggesting anything at all. In fact, I am anxious to locate him. You see, he was blackmailing your mother.’

  ‘He was what?’ several female voices screeched in unison. Kinsley looked equally perplexed. Even Clifford put aside his morose indifference and showed the first signs of interest in the conversation.

  ‘Why she chose to pay him for a secret that no longer had the ability to destroy reputations we have yet to establish,’ Riley added when the loud protests had subsided but suspicion and resentment continued to fuel the atmosphere.