by Anna Castle
“Who?”
“Sebastian Archer.”
Teaberry drew in a breath, but Angelina cut him off. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.” Her voice thrummed with controlled fury. “I am not a violent woman, Mr. Teaberry, but I could kill you where you stand for what you’ve done to him.”
“I would help,” Moriarty volunteered. “Although I doubt she’d need my assistance.”
“Sebastian Archer’s sister. Well, strike me blind!” Teaberry leaned forward to study her features. “I guess there is a resemblance, once you know to look for it.” He snapped his fingers. “Damn it all! You’re the Bookkeeper Burglar, aren’t you? And you’re the mastermind behind it all, eh, Professor?”
Moriarty started to demur, but Angelina slapped the papers against her palm impatiently. “My letters and my money, Mr. Teaberry.”
He jerked his chin at the packet. “Those are not worth twenty thousand pounds.”
“These documents will send you straight to jail.”
They dickered for a few hot minutes and finally agreed on ten thousand pounds, five to be paid immediately in cash and five in a check drawn on the Bank of England.
“Which is where we’ll go directly we leave this office,” Angelina promised.
“I’d expect nothing less.” Once the bargain had been struck, Teaberry gave up Sebastian’s letters with a pragmatic shrug. He’d packed them into his valise, so they were ready to hand.
Angelina snatched the letters from him and tossed her packet onto the desk. She strode across the room to the fireplace and struck a match, lighting the kindling laid ready by some office boy unaware of his master’s plans. She fed sticks from a basket until she had a roaring flame and then began to burn the letters, sheet by sheet.
Teaberry picked up his packet and turned it over, reading the directions written on the topmost letter. “Might come in handy if I get as far as Naples.” He stopped and weighed it in his palm. “There were more than this, as I recall.”
“Not with your name on them.” Moriarty left Angelina to her work and walked closer to the desk. “I’m reserving the others for another purpose. Don’t worry. They won’t be seen by the authorities.”
Mrs. Peacock, bless her clever old soul, had proposed a compromise. She had divided the letters by correspondent and drawn up a summary of Nettlefield’s personal involvement in the Naples swindle. She’d also correlated Ramsay’s book with one of Lord Carling’s to prove the viscount had been cheating the earl. That evidence would be given to Sir Julian.
They might not be able to prosecute Nettlefield for murder, but he would never get that seat on the Board of Trade. Moriarty had chosen to be content with that limited success.
Teaberry shrugged again. “Nettlefield, I suppose. I underestimated you, Professor. You’re a man of surprising talents. And your Mrs. Gould over there.” His gaze shifted toward the fireplace and his lips curved in appreciation of Angelina’s figure. “By gad, that’s a woman! I could make use of those attributes, I don’t mind telling you.”
Moriarty blocked his view and caught his eyes in a level gaze. “If you ever interfere in any way with Mrs. Gould or any member of her family again, I will devote my surprising talents exclusively to your complete destruction.”
“Understood.” Teaberry tilted his head to peer around Moriarty’s shoulders. Then he chuckled. “Pity though. Waste of resources. What do you have planned for old Nettles, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I’m not sure yet, to be honest. Anything I can do to obstruct him. He deserves hanging for murdering Carling and Hainstone, but I don’t have any solid proof.”
“You don’t think Nettlefield killed those men.” Teaberry seemed genuinely astonished. “Oh no! You’re on the wrong track there, Professor.”
“I think not. He was present in both cases, and knew in advance what means would be available. He had been cheating both men for some time. I have clear evidence of that in their account books.”
Teaberry laughed loudly, his apple belly shaking with mirth. “That’s nothing! Why kill the golden geese? No, no, Professor. We don’t slaughter the sheep; we keep them fat and happy so we can fleece them again and again. You’re on the wrong track, I tell you. Nettlefield’s more likely to be the next victim. Haven’t you noticed they’re being taken in rank order? That’s the way I list ’em on my front sheets. They wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Moriarty frowned. He hadn’t noticed that.
“I warned Nettles myself,” Teaberry continued. “Make yourself scarce before your number comes up, I said. But he’s a stubborn man and he loves the gadgetry. To me, they’re just money-making machines. But his lordship wants to be the Man Who Gave England the Great Electrical What Not. He wants to get into the history books and win a seat on the Board of Trade. Too much, I say. Which is why I’m off to Switzerland and he’s staying put. He’s even going to demonstrate our new electrical helmet lamp tonight at the Royal Society meeting.”
“Your new what?”
“Helmet lamp. Lamp on top of helmet.” Teaberry grimaced. “I wouldn’t put my head in that contraption if they offered me the keys to Buckingham Palace.”
“That proves he’s guilty,” Moriarty said, though he felt a sinking sense of doubt. “He knows he has nothing to fear.”
“Wrong track, Professor.” Teaberry shrugged. “My opinion. You could be right.”
Teaberry glanced again at Angelina, who was poking the ashes from the last burnt letter into a fine powder. He whistled softly at her hourglass figure, then shot a quick grin at Moriarty. “Tell you what. Make sure you and the lady have cast-iron alibis tonight, and whatever happens to Nettlefield, you’ll both be in the clear. If he’s fool enough to put his head into that helmet after all that’s happened, that’s his lookout, isn’t it?”
Moriarty stroked his moustache, his gaze cast unfocused on the oriental carpet. He’d spent weeks convinced of Nettlefield’s guilt and the better part of a year loathing him with an all-consuming hatred. Why should he spare a moment’s thought for the man’s safety? He sighed. Because he was the son of vicar. He couldn’t turn his back on any man facing a known and imminent peril.
Teaberry watched him think it through. Then he nodded. “Never figured you for that sort of man. I’m a good judge of character. It’s my stock in trade. Want my advice? Look for someone with a grudge. This smells like revenge to me. Whoever’s doing this is choosing the most dramatic moment. He’s making a point, whatever it may be. People have lost their life’s savings on some of our ventures. They ask for it, my way of thinking. Fools and their money. Not everyone sees it that way. You look for someone with an axe to grind. Look to the losers, Professor. That’s what I’d do.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
They walked the few blocks from Teaberry’s office to the Bank of England, where Angelina presented her check. The clerk handed her a fat stack of bank notes. She didn’t count them, but she balanced them on her palm as if weighing them. The price of freedom. She could go anywhere with this money, she and Peg, and live like swells for a good long time.
A few weeks ago, she would have done exactly that without a backward glance. Now?
She thought about last night, from the miracle of her rescue to the blissful aftermath. She thought about the intensity her professor had turned on those books, searching for a way to save her brother. And she’d heard the threat he’d made to Oscar Teaberry. She knew he meant it. He meant everything he said.
She’d never find another man like this. There wasn’t another like him in all the world.
As they crossed the marble expanse toward the great front doors, she passed the stack of notes to Moriarty. “My dowry.”
He stopped short in the middle of the lobby. “Is that a yes?”
“I do believe it is.” She loved catching him by surprise. She could see the boy he once had been in that adorable, goggle-eyed gape.
He studied her face as if he’d never seen one before, g
rinning from ear to ear. “I am now the happiest of men.” He stuffed the notes into his coat pocket and tucked her hand under his arm. “You know, my dearest, if we invest this in the three percent consols, we’ll have a nice little income to supplement my salary.” He patted her arm, satisfied with his foresight. “That should help take the sting out of returning what’s left of your pilfered plate.”
She stopped short and turned to face him squarely. “We will not return so much as one single teaspoon. That would just make it easier for them to catch us. We need to let the whole thing die down.”
“We can’t prosper from a crime, my love.”
“We can and we will. We fleeced wolves, James, not lambs. Besides, we need the money. I have plans.” And she had no intention of living in a terraced house in Croydon on a patent examiner’s salary.
“What kind of plans?”
She patted his arm. “First, we must buy Mrs. Peacock’s house and give it to her. The Comstock shares should do the trick. We’ll need to find a good forger, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. She helped us, James. We must help her.”
His expression was such an endearing mix of confusion, calculation, astonishment, and affection that she couldn’t resist giving him a peck on the cheek, in spite of the public setting. “And we’ll need a bigger place to live after the honeymoon. I rather like your friend Sir Julian’s house. Perhaps we could find something nearby.”
“Mayfair! No, Angelina, dearest, that’s beyond —”
She placed her finger on his lips. “Mayfair, James. We must keep up appearances if we mean to be effective.”
“Effective at what?”
“Righting wrongs. Fleecing wolves. Returning golden eggs to the geese who laid them, with a teensy deduction for expenses.”
“What expenses? And what geese?”
She smiled again. “Don’t worry, darling. I have a list.”
* * *
Moriarty insisted on stopping at St. Genesius on the way back to his rooms. Mrs. Peacock had gladly agreed to vouch for his status as a one-year parish resident but warned them that her church was at sixes and sevens these days. Their elderly priest had recently died, and they were having the devil’s own time choosing a replacement.
“It’s the old guard against the new,” she’d said, her expression making clear which guard she preferred. The Bayswater district was changing rapidly as London’s population grew. Baronets and MPs were being replaced by bankers, merchants, Jews — even writers and artists.
St. Genesius had been auditioning a different vicar each week. “It’s edifying in terms of the sermons,” Mrs. Peacock said, “if a bit unsettling. Still, I should think they would all know their business when it comes to the basics.”
The vicar of the week met with them in his office. Moriarty asked for a license to marry that afternoon, but this was one of the old-fashioned breed. They had to settle for having the banns posted on the next two Sundays, with the ceremony scheduled for the evening of the second Sunday.
Angelina didn’t mind the delay. She had no intention of being married in an old gown and wanted all her friends and family to be there with them.
She spotted a tall man with a hawk-like nose in an Inverness cape lurking behind the iron railing as they came out of the church. “Isn’t that Sherlock Holmes?” she whispered.
The man disappeared before Moriarty turned around. He scoffed at the idea that Holmes was still following him, but the incident reminded them they were not yet clear of the law.
* * *
They had only a few hours before the meeting at the Royal Society. Angelina flatly refused to appear at an evening lecture in a walking suit, so Moriarty dropped her at Cheshire House to change clothes. He warned her not to step foot from the house without at least one sturdy footman at her side and not to get into any cab other than Captain Sandy’s. Tonight might settle everything. Until then, “Safety First” must be her guiding words.
He went home to study the account books one more time. “Look to the losers,” he muttered as he settled into his chair by the window. He located the pinned sheets of investors and now spotted a familiar name at the bottom of the third page. Something tickled his memory, so he shuffled through the news articles again. A small clipping fell out: two paragraphs from the obituaries column of The Northern Echo, Durham’s morning paper.
He read the notice with dawning understand of both who had committed the terrible crimes and why. The poor wretch! He could sympathize with the grief and fury that had motivated that revenge. Wild justice, Francis Bacon had aptly called it.
What other justice could there be? A father had been driven to suicide and a family cast into poverty by the bogus Naples Improvement Company. And of all the names on the front sheet of that prospectus, none deserved justice more than Lord Nettlefield.
Moriarty had his answer, at least enough to satisfy himself. He still lacked solid proof. And he still had not decided what he would do tonight. Interfere and save his enemy? Or sit with his hands in his lap and watch justice take its wild course?
Chapter Forty
“Of course you must stop him, James.” Angelina shifted on the seat in Sandy’s hansom cab to face her professor squarely. “I can’t believe you would even consider allowing a man to be murdered right before your very eyes when you were able prevent it.”
“He’s unlikely even to be very much hurt, dearest.”
“Don’t ‘dearest’ me!”
Now he looked wounded. She didn’t care. She didn’t know who he was at this moment. The grim set of his jaw and the glitter of malice in his eyes frightened her — for him as well as for Lord Nettlefield. “As odious as the man may be, you can’t sit quietly by, even if he’s not in mortal danger. But I fear the worst. An electrified headlamp hooked up to a portable dynamo? That’s sounds spectacularly dangerous to me.”
Moriarty took her hand and patted it. She jerked it back. He pursed his lips and tried again, holding it this time firmly between both of his. “You don’t understand how electricity works. I’ve seen several demonstrations and have even volunteered to touch the connectors. It’s only a mild shock. Startling — not pleasant — but not really painful and certainly far from deadly. Nettlefield would have to be standing in a pool of water with wires running into his head, and even then I doubt it would do more than shake him up a bit.”
“You want to see him humiliated in front of the whole Society.”
“I would love to see that. I admit it freely. Don’t you think he deserves that small degree of punishment? He isn’t likely to get more. Think of what he’s done, my dear. He’s ruined dozens of families to feed his lust for money and position. He cast a respected mathematics professor out of his university by engineering a scandal that also destroyed the future of a brilliant young man. He can never be held responsible for those crimes because he always works through intermediaries. Then he kidnapped a respectable young woman —”
She laughed. “Not entirely respectable.”
“Honorable, then. By your very nature, my love. Nettlefield intended to force you into a form of slavery. Now that you’re safe, it sounds ludicrous, but at the time, I assure you, it was anything but amusing. I feared for your life, Angelina.”
“I know.” She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. It wasn’t as much fun when they were both wearing gloves. She peeled back his cuff and kissed the heel of his thumb. “You saved me. It’s true, absolutely true. The man’s a villain. That doesn’t mean he deserves to die.”
“Touching a lightbulb won’t kill him.” Moriarty shook his head. “If I had done the things he’s done, I would be considered one of the most dangerous criminals in London. Sherlock Holmes and Scotland Yard would be snapping at my heels. Thanks to his title, Nettlefield won’t get so much as a reprimand. Why should I interfere in the only form of justice he is ever likely to receive?”
* * *
Moriarty helped Angelina out of the cab and thanked Captain Sandy. He tucked her ha
nd into the crook of his arm and guided her up to the antechamber where tea was always served before the meeting. The room was already full of men in dark coats talking volubly. All heads turned to watch them enter. Ladies rarely attended Society meetings, naturally having little interest in the sciences. Angelina stood out in her gray silk dress with its great bustle and elaborate flounces, like an elegant heron in a flock of crows.
Moriarty realized with a jolt that this was their first public outing. In fact, it was the first time he had escorted a lady to any event since he’d left Cambridge. He squared his shoulders and prepared for some subtle teasing, but they’d arrived late thanks to Angelina’s endless toilette. The bell rang to summon them into the lecture hall.
The hall filled quickly. They were obliged to take seats in the front row. They settled onto the bench and looked straight up at the dais where Nettlefield would soon be standing. How would his lordship react when he saw them? He might not even be aware that Angelina had stayed in London, much less that she had joined forces with Moriarty. Her presence might provide its own little shock.
This demonstration promised to be full of interest, one way or another.
A small steam engine rumbled and hissed at the back of the stage. A table next to it supported a dynamo. At the other end of the table, the headlamp stood ready, alongside a pitcher of water and two glasses — a very large pitcher. Moriarty felt a prickle of alarm.
The president of the Society walked up to the podium on the left side of the dais. He cleared his throat, held up his hands, and waited for the audience to quiet. He made a few welcoming remarks, then introduced Lord Nettlefield. “His lordship will demonstrate for us another useful application of electricity, which is finding its way into every corner of our lives in these exciting times. They tell us that volts and watts will soon be as familiar to the London housewife as gallons and pounds.”