He knew so from his own investigations. The darkness had likely rendered the escape of the murderer much more efficient. As far as Hudson had been aware, no witnesses had seen anyone at his rooms aside from Maude herself. And even that sighting remained clouded with suspicion and questions.
The Inspector’s nostrils flared. “The light of the moon was strong that evening. Nearly a full moon.”
Hudson’s irritation rose. “There is another problem with your theory, Chief Inspector O’Rourke. At ten o’clock in the evening, I was at the Black Souls club with several other gentlemen who will be more than happy to vouch for my presence there.”
Surely Chief Inspector O’Rourke would have already interviewed the members of his club if Hudson were indeed the prime suspect. To have neglected such a step would have been shabby. Vainglorious. But then, O’Rourke certainly was an arrogant sort of chap.
“I will require their names,” the Inspector said flatly. “An inquiry will need to be made. However, in the meantime, I would have you accompany me to Scotland Yard so that the witness may determine whether or not you were the man she saw that evening.”
He saw through the inspector’s ploy. But he was not about to be bested at his own game.
“I will not be accompanying you to Scotland Yard until you speak to the witnesses who can confirm I was at the Black Souls until after one o’clock in the morning.” Truly, he was amazed O’Rourke had not done so to confirm his alibi already.
“Your Grace, we can do this quietly to minimize damage to your reputation, or you can cause an uproar the gossips will feast upon,” O’Rourke said coldly. “The choice is yours. I highly recommend accompanying me to Scotland Yard this morning.”
“Chief Inspector O’Rourke, if I am not mistaken, you are attempting to pin the murder of Mrs. Ainsley upon me.” Hudson’s outrage was so fierce that it made his hands tremble, and he clutched the arms of his chair to keep the sight from the inspector’s greedy gaze.
O’Rourke inclined his head, his expression tight and unreadable. “I am not attempting anything, Your Grace. The evidence is objective, and it points in the direction of the criminal responsible in every case.”
Likely, he should hold his tongue, but it was becoming increasingly apparent to Hudson that the Inspector was harboring a grudge of some sort against him, and he was using that grudge to cast Hudson as a murderer.
“Not when the investigator is looking in the wrong bloody direction,” he snapped. “I told you on the night of the murder, just as I have told you on every occasion since, that I am innocent of the crime. No one desires the monster responsible for her slaying to be brought to justice more swiftly than I. However, I am not Mrs. Ainsley’s killer.”
“The truth of that statement has yet to be proven,” O’Rourke said, his tone smug.
Hudson could not shake the feeling that the man before him was orchestrating a farce, and he had already cast everyone into the roles he had chosen for them. He wanted to believe Hudson had murdered Mrs. Ainsley, and therefore, he was on a mission to do everything in his power to prove his case.
Hudson rose from his chair, too furious to endure another moment of the inspector’s presence. “Get out of my home.”
Still, the other man refused to rise, a grave insult to precedence. Even Hudson damned well knew that, and he had scarcely an inkling of the legion of nonsensical rules which governed the aristocracy and polite society.
“You must agree to accompany me to Scotland Yard,” O’Rourke persisted, “or it will go poorly for you. One would expect some humility or perhaps even gratitude from Your Grace, given that I am willing to make such a concession out of deference to your august personage.”
What complete and utter shite.
Did the man truly expect him to believe it?
“Show me your warrant, Inspector,” he demanded, knowing full well the other man had none.
He would have required far more evidence than what he claimed to possess to obtain one, and if he had managed to earn a warrant by some miracle or greasing of the proper palm, O’Rourke would have begun this interview with it and his unilateral decree that Hudson had no choice other than to obey.
Slowly, the inspector rose from his chair, the calm veneer slipping for a moment to reveal the man beneath—bitter, angry, arrogant. “I had not wanted to pursue this route, Stone. You were one of us, and now you are a lofty duke. I was aiming to preserve your dignity. But if you refuse to cooperate, you leave me with no choice.”
“I am no longer Stone but Wycombe now.” His own lip curled. “And damned right I refuse to cooperate. Do not return to my property until you have a warrant, sir.”
With that warning, he turned from the inspector and strode from the chamber, slamming the door at his back.
Chapter 13
Elysande had known she would potentially incite her husband’s wrath by sending the telegram to her family. But after Chief Inspector O’Rourke had visited that morning and left Hudson badly shaken, she had decided she needed the full support of those who loved her. Her mother and sisters would soon be arriving in London anyway to continue planning Izzy’s wedding to Mr. Penhurst and the twins’ presentation at court. They could merely make their journey earlier than previously planned.
And as for revealing the circumstances of Mrs. Ainsley’s death to them, upon their arrival in London, word would reach them soon enough, if it had not already done so. As it happened—and she should not have been surprised at all, given her family’s relative removal from society when it pleased them—they had not been made aware of either the murder or the wild speculation dogging Hudson’s every step.
Which was why, as she and her husband passed a generally quiet and somber dinner, the double doors leading to the dining room suddenly flew open and her mother, father, and siblings passed through in a cacophony of outraged voices and travel clothes. The poor butler, already having been tasked with throwing one odious Scotland Yard inspector out on his ear earlier that morning, brought up the rear, his expression one of helpless long-suffering.
Hudson rose to his feet, and Elysande did so as well, just in time for Papa to wave his cane in the air so wildly that he sent an aspic and a soup tureen flying.
“Explain yourself, Wycombe!” he demanded.
“My lord,” Mama chastised her father, sotto voce. “I warned you not to make a spectacle.”
“Forgive me, Your Graces,” the butler could be heard saying over the din as Elysande’s sisters and brother began talking at once. “I did ask them to wait as they were quite unexpected.”
“Unexpected,” Hudson drawled grimly, casting a telling glance in Elysande’s direction. “Indeed. You need not worry, Williams. Lord and Lady Leydon are family, as are all their accompanying children.”
He sounded calm and pleasant enough, but surely he could not be pleased by this interruption and resulting mayhem. Elysande found herself quite vexed with them, and she was the one who had telegraphed asking for help. If she had known they would travel to London that very day and swoop down upon her dinner like avenging angels, she might have reconsidered.
The butler bowed and disappeared from the room, leaving Hudson and Elysande alone to face the Collingwood maelstrom. The moment the door clicked closed, six voices renewed shouting at once, creating quite the furor.
“If you would allow me to explain,” Hudson was saying, but no one was listening.
“I entrusted my daughter to you, and now I discover you are suspected of murder,” her father spat.
“I will trounce you to within an inch of your life,” Royston threatened.
“How dare you bring such shame and scandal down upon my dear Ellie,” Izzy scolded. “Killing your mistress while forcing Ellie to rusticate in the country!”
“Murderer!” cried Criseyde.
“Swine!” Corliss hurled simultaneously.
Oh dear. This was not at all the manner in which she had supposed her family would come to London offering their support.
Elysande rushed forward, placing herself between Hudson and her family, palms raised in supplication. “Please, do not rush to judgment!”
Her entreaty was ignored.
“Scoundrel!” one of the twins hollered.
To her shame, Elysande could not discern which of the two it had been.
“You bastard,” her brother was saying, moving forward, fists clenched.
In a sense, seeing Royston so protective of her filled Elysande’s heart with warmth. She had not known he had it in him. However, his ire was misguided. Quite thoroughly.
Mama was chirping like a sparrow, Papa was sputtering, and Hudson was stoic and silent behind her, absorbing all their insults as if they were deserved.
“Enough!” she said, the violence of her outburst surprising even Elysande. The room fell silent, the eyes of her sisters, brother, and parents wide and glued upon her. “Clearly, you mistook my telegram. I asked you for help because my husband is innocent of the crime, not because he is guilty. Mrs. Ainsley was not his mistress. Nor was she anything more than an old acquaintance. Hudson was not even at his rooms when the murder occurred. He has many good friends to attest to his whereabouts on the evening in question. He returned home to find Mrs. Ainsley’s body, and now a Scotland Yard detective is determined to see him imprisoned for a crime he did not commit.”
The silence in the room was almost deafening after so much noise as she completed her impassioned speech. Her breast was heaving, heart pounding fast. She wondered if she appeared as mad as she felt. Likely, she did, for her family continued to stare at her as if she had professed a fervent desire to sprout wings and fly to the sun in Icarian fashion.
Suddenly, there was a reassuring hand at the small of her back. Then the warmth of Hudson’s arm around her waist as he stepped forward, at her side.
“Ellie,” he said softly, the words meant for her alone, “you need not defend me.”
“I will defend you with my dying breath,” she countered, furious at her family for attacking him and more furious with herself for not foreseeing the way they would interpret her telegram. “You are innocent of this crime, and I will not stand idly by while you are accused and sent away to prison when the true monster responsible is permitted to roam free to kill again.”
His expression was solely for her. Filled with so much tenderness, she ached. The bond they had developed in the past few days was undeniable. Not just physical, but emotional as well. There was no doubt in her heart that he was incapable of committing any crime at all, let alone one so heinous as the violent murder of a woman he had shared dinner with earlier that night.
“I deserve their doubt,” he said quietly.
“No,” she said fervently, “you do not.”
“Perhaps an explanation is in order,” Papa said then, his voice stern.
Still the leader of the family, although Elysande had been the first to stray from the flock and begin her own life. What an odd thought to entertain. For so much of her life, she had been a daughter and a sister. Now she was a wife. She had started her own family and a new life with Hudson, and she had no intention of surrendering it or him to Scotland Yard.
“We need your aid, Papa,” she told her father. “Hudson and I shall explain everything.”
She sent her husband an entreating gaze, hoping he would not consider this a betrayal but rather see the intent with which she had contacted her family. He gave her a curt nod, his only concession.
What a curious lot Elysande’s family was.
One would have presumed an earl and countess and their offspring would not be so intrigued by the investigation of a murder.
However, one would have been wrong.
Hours after their unexpected interruption of dinner, and they were all still ensconced in the shabby drawing room, chattering like a flock of birds in migration. They were giving Hudson a bloody headache, though he knew that was not their intention. No, they meant well enough, just as Elysande had in summoning them. However, he was not prepared for a house of guests, which was what they had. Leydon’s town house had yet to be prepared since the family had not been scheduled to return to London just yet and had fled Buckinghamshire on a telegram and a whim.
The efficient butler and housekeeper had scurried into action, overseeing the preparation of rooms and a great lot of other tasks Hudson knew precious little about. Like everything else about suddenly being saddled with the weight of a dukedom, hosting guests and the running of a home filled with servants was new to him.
Leydon was examining the pictures Hudson had received earlier that afternoon from the photographer he had commissioned. “There appears to be a quite solid print of a hand here on the headboard.”
He was about to answer when Elysande beat him to it.
“Oh yes,” she said excitedly. “Hudson and I were able to guess the print was likely left by the true killer. It is smaller than Hudson’s hand but significantly larger than Mrs. Ainsley’s would have been.”
“This print could prove crucial in determining who committed the crime,” Leydon said. “Several years ago, I read a letter published in Nature concerning this precise matter. At the time, I was so intrigued that I created a collection of fingerprints of everyone at Talleyrand Park. Each one was unique. Do you recall, Lady Leydon?”
The countess nodded. “I do indeed. It was in ’eighty, if I am not mistaken. Everyone from the butler to the lowest scullery maid spent days going about with ink-stained fingertips. It looked as if they had been working in a coal mine.”
The glance she favored her husband with was adoring, but her tone also had a hint of the long-suffering underlying her words. So much he had come to know about Elysande and her family was beginning to make sense. She had clearly inherited her brilliance from her father. In his experience, the most intelligent individuals of his acquaintance also tended to be the most eccentric. Lord Leydon certainly seemed to fit the mold.
He found himself intrigued by the possibility of finding a criminal using prints in such a fashion. The practice was entirely foreign to him. If true, however, the impact it would have upon the ability to solve crimes could be monumental.
He leaned forward in his seat. “Tell me more about this practice, if you please, Leydon. What were you able to discover?”
“As far as I could discern, every individual possessed a purely unique print. No one’s prints at Talleyrand Park had the same features in exactly the same patterns. The letter I read suggested that each person’s fingerprints are unique to them. The gentleman who wrote it described having used this system himself to detect a thief who had absconded with a bottle of alcohol from his hospital.”
It seemed impossible that Leydon had been aware of the use of examining fingerprints to solve crimes for six years and yet, Hudson himself had never heard a word. His mind was somersaulting over itself now, making sense of everything Elysande’s father had just told him.
“Judging from the article you read and your own experience, prints such as the one we discovered at the scene of Mrs. Ainsley’s murder could only belong to one person, then, the murderer himself.”
“But the fingerprints were not completely visible,” Elysande pointed out, frowning. “They were partially obscured. The best detail is found in the palm print. Father, did the article you read suggest palm prints can be examined in the same fashion?”
Leydon nodded eagerly. “There was another example cited in the journal, in which a palm print had been discovered at the scene of a theft. The print had been made with soot, and a potential thief was able to be ruled out by a thorough examination of the two prints.”
And there it was again, that foolish beast of hope, rising. What the earl was suggesting was unorthodox, untested, and new. But if accurate, it could change the field of crime solving forever. If not for Maude’s murder, then for others.
“Do you think you would be able to compare my palm print to the print in the picture?” he asked Leydon.
“If not
from the picture, then certainly from the print itself, should it remain intact,” the earl assured him.
“That would certainly go a long way toward proving you are not the one responsible for Mrs. Ainsley’s death,” Elysande said.
“And you say you have witnesses who can attest to your presence at a private club,” Elysande’s brother, Lord Royston, offered. “That ought to bolster any evidence Father is able to produce by studying the prints. These witnesses of yours, what manner of character do they have?”
“And what manner of club were you patronizing?” Lady Isolde asked, her eyes narrowed.
Unlike the rest of her family, who appeared enthused with the notion of helping to solve a murder, Elysande’s sister had made it obvious that she had yet to give him her trust. She considered him suspect, and she made certain he knew it.
“The Black Souls club is a gentleman’s club,” he explained. “It is owned by Mr. Elijah Decker and the patrons are all respectable members of society.”
Well, with the possible exception of Barlowe, but no need to add that bit. Not because he was not respectable, but because he was Barlowe, and that rather explained it all.
The Black Souls was a private club, and its patrons were exclusive. Members had to be vouched for by existing members, and Mr. Decker retained the right to withdraw a membership based on poor behavior. The man ran his club the way he did his many businesses, with expert precision and an absolute intolerance for scoundrels.
“Ah yes,” Royston said to Lady Isolde. “I am a member as well, Izzy, and I can attest to its quality.”
Being newly introduced to the club since his arrival back in London, Hudson had been unaware of that.
Lady Isolde skewered her brother with a pointed look. “If you are a member, it only makes me question the club even more.”
Royston grinned and pressed a hand to his heart as if he had been wounded. “You have cut me to the quick.”
Lady Isolde huffed an enduring sigh. Hudson was beginning to note a pattern.
The Detective Duke (Unexpected Lords Book 1) Page 19