Loving Rose: The Redemption of Malcolm Sinclair (Casebook of Barnaby Adair)

by Stephanie Laurens

  Percival’s gaze fixed on the plaid cap atop Barnaby’s dusty—liberally dusted with ash—curls. “So.” Percival’s voice was hard, rigidly controlled. “You say you have the boy.”

  Barnaby glanced briefly at the bound lump at Thomas’s feet. “Right little beggar, he is.”

  “He’s alive?”

  Thomas blinked at the desperation in Percival’s voice.

  Barnaby bobbled his head. “He’s well enough. You got the cash? Thousand pounds, or me mate sets sail.” Barnaby gurgled a short, rather ugly laugh.

  Percival spat an oath and turned to Curtis, who reached into his jacket pocket, drew out a wad of notes, and handed it to Percival, but Curtis’s watchful gaze never left Barnaby.

  “Here’s your money.” Percival thrust the notes at Barnaby. “Now”—Percival turned to the boat, his gaze once more locking on the trussed bundle—“give me the boy. And for your sake, he’d better be alive.”

  Percival’s tone and the look on his face made Thomas frown, but Barnaby, deep in his disguise and busy ostentatiously counting the notes, only bobbed another bobble-headed nod. “Comin’ right up, guv’nor. Jest as soon as I knows you haven’t diddled us.”

  Turning slightly as he counted, Barnaby slid his left hand into the pocket of his horrible coat and drew out a silver whistle. Shooting a glance at Thomas, Barnaby raised the whistle to his lips and blew.

  The shrill note sliced through the morning.

  Percival leapt as if whipped. “What the . . . ?”

  Curtis spun toward Salisbury Street, but then he saw Sergeant Wilkes come barreling out of the alley making for Percival. Curtis swung back and nimbly intercepted the burly sergeant, engaged, and threw him back.

  Curtis’s men didn’t wait for any signal but came charging out onto the quay.

  As they did, the rest of Stokes’s men, all in disguise, poured out of the mouths of the tiny alleys and lanes.

  Curtis’s men swung around and met them in a snarling, fist-swinging clash.

  Fleet of foot, Barnaby ran down the stairs and stepped into the rowboat as Thomas pushed off with an oar.

  Richard Percival, momentarily distracted by Sergeant Wilkes’s charge, and then the swelling melee, spun around, saw . . . he roared and charged down the stairs.

  Thomas swung one oar out and fended off Percival, then the rowboat floated out of reach.

  “Bring him back!” Percival swore. “What the devil do you want with the boy?” Then, his gaze falling on the bundle from a different angle, his expression changed. “Did you ever have him?”

  Another whistle sounded, two short, sharp blasts, followed by Stokes’s bellow: “Police!”

  The effect was instantaneous. Curtis’s men froze.

  “What?”

  “Police?”

  One minute, Curtis’s men were brawling; in the next, they disengaged from their opponents and stepped back. Slowly, openly puzzled at the sight of the squad of beggars facing them, they lowered their fists.

  After several seconds of total astonishment, as one, the six men looked at Curtis.

  Who had stopped fighting Wilkes. Even though the sergeant maintained a dogged hold on one of Curtis’s arms, the man ignored him, instead staring across the quieting quay at Stokes. Then Curtis glanced at Thomas and Barnaby in the rowboat, then swung his gaze to Richard Percival. His face a mask of confusion, Curtis demanded, “What the hell is going on?”

  Richard Percival returned his look with one of equal incomprehension.

  Stokes pushed through the large bodies crowding the quay. He glanced at Barnaby and Thomas, then went down the slick stairs to where Richard Percival stood on the narrow shelf at the bottom. “I’m Inspector Stokes of Scotland Yard.” Meeting Percival’s gaze, Stokes clamped a heavy hand on Percival’s shoulder. “Richard Wyman Percival, I’m arresting you on a charge of conspiring to kill your ward, William Percival, Viscount Seddington, and with having caused or conspired with persons unknown to bring about the deaths of the late Robert Percival, Viscount Seddington, and his wife, Corinne.”

  Percival’s features showed nothing but utter astonishment; his jaw had dropped. “What?” The word was weak; he swallowed, then stated, “No! You have it wrong.”

  He went to shake off Stokes’s hold, but an enterprising constable was already there, waiting with shackles to assist Stokes.

  Percival saw, stiffened, but then gave up the fight. “Very well.” The words were spoken with a cutting edge. He glanced, narrow-eyed, at Barnaby and Thomas. “I don’t know who you are, or what your game is, but if you believe I’m guilty of any of those charges, you are beyond misguided.”

  Barnaby just looked at him, then shook his head. “All villains say that, you know.”

  “Indeed,” Stokes said. “So why don’t you and your small army just come along quietly, and you can explain our errors to us at Scotland Yard.”

  Percival shot another lingeringly lethal glance at Barnaby and Thomas, then, jaw clenched, lips set in a thin line, allowed himself to be escorted up the stairs.

  Chapter

  14

  Thomas didn’t like it, and said so as he and Barnaby trudged behind the others—the platoon of police escorting Percival, Curtis, and his six inquiry agents westward through the laneways that led to Scotland Yard. “Too many things don’t ring true.”

  He’d shrugged off the oilskin cape and carried it over one arm. They’d returned the skiff to its owner by the Adelphi Stairs, and Barnaby was lugging their trussed bundle, gripped in one hand.

  Pulling off the plaid cap, Barnaby stuffed it in his pocket, then ruffled his hair, shaking ash everywhere, and grimaced. “I wish I could disagree. It all went so neatly. But something’s off kilter.” He looked at the men walking ahead of them. “Not least the way Curtis and his men stopped fighting the instant they heard the word ‘police.’ ”

  “One couldn’t help noticing,” Thomas dryly observed, “that it seemed they thought they were fighting on the side of right, and that we were the villains.”

  Barnaby nodded. “Of course, we may find that Percival is such a convincing fiend that he’s managed to pull the wool over Curtis’s eyes.”

  “Indeed,” Thomas retorted. “And pigs might fly.”

  Eyes on the ground, Barnaby grunted. “I haven’t used Curtis myself, but once his name cropped up, I checked, and his reputation hasn’t changed since you would last have dealt with him—he’s known as hard, but rigidly honest and straighter than a die.”

  “I haven’t heard anything different, but to my mind, Percival’s reactions were even more telling—he was desperate to find William alive. Not dead, but alive. You heard it—his desperation at the end.”

  Barnaby nodded and looked ahead. “I’m getting the distinct impression we have something fairly major wrong with our hypothesis, but for the life of me I can’t see where, let alone what.”

  The cavalcade of prisoners and police finally reached Great Scotland Yard and filed into the building that housed the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police. The desk sergeant, Ferguson, warned by Davies, had several holding cells and an interview room waiting. Thomas and Barnaby stood back while Stokes made his dispositions, sending Curtis’s men to one holding cell, and Curtis himself to a smaller one. Then, with a glance, Stokes collected Thomas and Barnaby, and they followed as Stokes escorted a silent, but acquiescent, Richard Percival, his hands shackled, down a corridor to a largish interview room.

  Led inside by Stokes, Percival’s gaze initially passed over the other occupants—Penelope, Rose, and Montague, seated in chairs along the wall beyond one end of the plain interview table—with nothing more than cursory curiosity, but then his gaze abruptly backtracked and fixed on Rose’s face.

  Percival halted. Even as he surrendered to the pressure of Stokes’s hand and subsided into the chair on one side of the table, Percival continued to stare in increasing astonishment at Rose. “Rosalind . . . ?”

  His tone suggested complete bafflement. He
stared at Rose, and she stared back.

  Rounding the table, Stokes said, “You’re acquainted with Miss Heffernan. Flanking her are Mr. Montague and Mrs. Adair, both of whom have been assisting us with our investigation, along with Miss Heffernan.” Taking the center chair of the three facing Percival, Stokes gestured to Thomas as he drew out the chair to Stokes’s right. “And these gentlemen are Mr. Glendower, and”—Stokes indicated Barnaby, who slouched in the chair to Stokes’s left—“Mr. Adair, who have also been assisting us.”

  As Stokes sat, Percival swung to face him. “My nephew, William Percival, and his sister, Alice. Are they safe?”

  Stokes held Percival’s gaze.

  Thomas studied Percival’s expression, too, but all he could see was genuine concern, even anxiety.

  Eventually, Stokes replied, “William and Alice Percival are safe and well guarded.”

  The tension in Percival’s shoulders eased. He studied Stokes, Barnaby, and Thomas, his expression growing steadily harsher. “In that case, where are they, and what the devil is going on?”

  That demand was more peremptory, more what one would expect from a scion of the aristocracy.

  Unperturbed, Stokes checked that Sergeant O’Donnell had entered and settled by the wall, notebook in hand, and that Morgan had followed O’Donnell in and shut the door, then Stokes rested his forearms on the table, hands loosely clasped, and brought his gray gaze once again to bear on Richard Percival. “Let’s start at the beginning. Four years ago, on the day your older brother, Robert Percival, and his wife, Corinne, disappeared. Where were you that day?”

  Percival blinked. “I was in London.” He glanced from Stokes, to Barnaby, to Thomas; his expression grew increasingly confused. “I don’t understand. What’s—”

  “Mr. Percival. We’ve got rather a lot to discuss. If you will allow us to pose our questions in the order that makes sense to us, we’ll get through them more quickly.”

  Expression hardening, Percival returned Stokes’s gaze, then he shot a sharp glance at Rose. Then, curtly, he nodded. “Very well, Inspector.” Settling in the chair, Percival returned his attention to Stokes. “What do you wish to know?”

  “You, in London, on that day four years ago. Is there anyone who can bear witness that you were, indeed, in the capital throughout that day?”

  Percival thought, then nodded. “Several people.” He rattled off four names, all gentlemen of the ton. “And there were others, as well. We met for a private luncheon at Kings in St. James. None of us left until nearly six o’clock, and I went on to a dinner with Ffyfe, Montgomery, and Swincombe at Lady Hammond’s. We were there until after midnight.”

  Stokes nodded. “When did you learn of your brother’s death, and what did you do once you had?”

  Percival frowned. “I got word the next day, late in the afternoon. I sent a message to Foley, the family solicitor, to make sure he’d been informed. He had been, and replied that he would be traveling up the next day. I also sent word to my uncle and cousin—Marmaduke Percival and his son, Roger—but I didn’t wait for their reply. I drove up to the Grange in my curricle—I left Hertford Street about six o’clock, so I ended up driving through the night.”

  “What did you do once you reached Seddington Grange?” Stokes asked.

  Percival frowned at his shackled hands, now clasped on the table before him. “The household was in predictable chaos. I saw Rosalind and the children briefly, but they were . . . caught up in their grief.” Percival paused, as if remembering, then his face hardened again. “I couldn’t make head or tail of what they—the staff—could tell me about what had supposedly happened, so I drove to Grimsby.”

  He flicked a glance at Stokes. “All the Percival men sail—even my uncle, Marmaduke, and he’s as far from athletic as one could imagine. It’s something that runs in the blood, and so all the sailors in Grimsby know us.” Percival shifted, then continued, “I went there and asked around . . . and none of the sailors could understand what had happened any more than I could.” Percival met Stokes’s gaze, his own steady. “Robert was an expert sailor, and very well able to manage his yacht on his own. The day they’d gone out . . . it was dead calm. No sudden squalls, nothing. They hadn’t hit any rocks.” He hesitated, then went on, “I spoke with those who found the yacht. The bodies were tangled in the sails, all but wrapped in them—which is hard enough to understand on its own. To pull in the bodies, they had to cut the sails loose, and once they had, the yacht’s hull went down—otherwise they would have towed it to shore and we might have been able to determine what had happened.”

  Percival lifted his shackled hands as if to rake his fingers through his hair, then realized and lowered them. “So we were left to accept that Robert, expert sailor though he was, in a waterway he’d grown up on, in a craft he owned and knew down to the last inch, capsized the boat on a clear day on a dead calm sea.” He met Stokes’s gaze, then Barnaby’s and Thomas’s. “I also found it odd that no one had seen them go out. No one even knew when they had. Yet Robert was a gregarious sort. If he’d gone down to the wharf where the yacht was moored, he would have spoken to anyone around, and there are always people around on the wharf. I asked, but no one had any clue. No one even realized the yacht wasn’t at its moorings until it was found capsized.”

  Stokes, Thomas noted, was also frowning faintly, as if he, like Thomas, could hear the straightforwardness—the simple honesty—in Percival’s recounting.

  After a moment, Stokes volunteered, “We now have information, courtesy of Miss Heffernan, that it is highly unlikely that the accident—if it was an accident—could have happened as it was made to appear.”

  Percival glanced at Rose. “What information? And why the devil didn’t you tell me then?” The last was said without heat.

  Narrow-eyed, clearly distrusting Percival, Rose replied, “Mama, as you know, wasn’t well. And she suffered terribly from mal-de-mer. She would never have set foot on the yacht.”

  Percival blinked, then softly said, “Even more to the point, Robert wouldn’t have suggested it, much less permitted it, not with Corinne’s health in the state it then was.” He swung back to Stokes, but then sank back in the chair and grimaced. “I wish I’d known that, but, in reality, it would have made no difference. I spoke with the Lord Lieutenant at the funeral, pressing for an investigation, but he was firmly of the opinion that there was no proof of any crime, and that further investigating would only create unnecessary scandal for the family.” Percival’s next grimace was cynically disgusted. “I didn’t care about any scandal, but the rest of the family—even Foley—were horrified by the suggestion.” Percival drew in a tight breath, then slowly exhaled. “And so Robert and Corinne were buried, and that was that.”

  Stokes’s frown was growing ever more definite. “That brings us to the hours after the funeral. Who remained for dinner at the house on that evening?”

  Percival’s expression grew distant as he thought back. “Other than myself, Marmaduke was there, and Roger, along with several of his friends, both from London and nearer at hand. Robert’s, Corinne’s, and my London friends had already left to return to town, but two local gentlemen, friends of mine, remained to dine. There were several distant cousins, too, but they were planning on departing soon after. And Foley was there, as well.”

  “Miss Heffernan has told us that only you and your uncle stayed at the house overnight.” Stokes looked at Percival for confirmation.

  He nodded. “Yes—we were the only two. We’d been named co-guardians of William and Alice, and were therefore co-custodians of the estate. We’d both known that was how Robert had written his will, so had expected to stay for several days to . . . sort matters out.” Percival glanced at Rose. His gaze hardened. “But then Rosalind fled with the children, and threw all Robert’s careful planning into chaos.” Disapproval and more rang in his tone.

  Rose held Richard Percival’s accusatory gaze and, her eyes narrowing, returned it in full measure. “I heard you
,” she said. When he only looked puzzled, she raised her chin and clearly stated, “That evening, after dinner. After all the others had left. You were in the study, speaking with one of your friends. You boasted about how you had killed Robert and Mama, and arranged their deaths to appear to be an accident, and that now only William stood between you and the estate, and that you planned to eliminate him as soon as you could.”

  Percival’s jaw dropped. He stared at Rose. After several moments of utter silence, Percival looked at Stokes. “That’s . . .” Shaking his head, Percival appeared lost for words. “Nonsensical,” he eventually managed. “How could I have said that?” He spread his shackled hands. “Quite aside from it being untrue, I wasn’t even in the house at that time.”

  Stokes blinked. “You weren’t?”

  Percival glared. “No. Immediately after dinner, which was served early, at six o’clock, I drove Foley to Newark-on-Trent so he could catch the mail back to London.”

  Stokes glanced at O’Donnell, confirming that his sergeant was scribbling like fury, getting all the information down. Looking back at Percival, Stokes paused, then asked, “Foley is the family’s and also your personal solicitor, correct?”

  When Percival curtly nodded, Stokes asked, “Did anyone else see you in Newark-on-Trent, or did you stop anywhere along the way where someone might have noticed you?”

  Percival frowned. “We didn’t stop on the way. Foley was anxious to ensure he caught the mail, and I wanted to get back as soon as I could—it’s a good four-hour round trip from the Grange. I didn’t get back until midnight, which the stable hands could verify . . .” Abruptly, Percival’s expression cleared. “Wait—there is someone other than Foley who can place me in Newark-on-Trent on that night. When we reached the coaching inn, there was a private carriage in the yard, getting horses put to. The owner was some judge . . . Hennessey. Judge Hennessey. He recognized Foley and offered him a lift back to London, which Foley gratefully accepted.” Percival met Stokes’s gaze, then looked at Barnaby and Thomas. “Foley introduced me to the judge—so Judge Hennessey can swear I was in Newark-on-Trent at about ten o’clock.”