Caught in Time

by Julie McElwain

  Kendra nodded. No more niceties. “You know Lord Bancroft. Do you think he could have killed Mr. Stone?”

  Mrs. Bolton bit her lip, and her gray eyes darkened. She was silent for so long that Kendra began to wonder if she’d answer the question at all.

  Then the old woman gave a soft sigh. “The boy I knew and loved could never have killed anyone,” she said. “’Tis vile to even imagine such a thing. But the man that the boy has become? I do not know that man. I do not know what he’s capable of. I—” Her breath caught, and she simply shook her head unhappily. “I simply do not know.”

  14

  The Duke lifted his teacup, his gaze speculative as he scanned the notes Kendra had written on the slate board. “You think Mr. Stone may have been holding something over Lord Bancroft’s head to keep his position as manager of the mill.”

  It was not a question, but Kendra shrugged. “It fits. Lord Bancroft left East Dingleford for sixteen years. Mrs. Bolton said he left when he was seventeen after a falling out with his father—”

  “You spoke to Mrs. Bolton about Lord Bancroft? About their . . .” The Duke appeared to struggle for the right word.

  “Love affair? Yes.”

  “I was going to say ‘youthful indiscretion.’”

  “I think it was more than a youthful indiscretion. I think they loved each other. It’s heartbreaking, really.” Kendra remembered the sadness in the old woman’s eyes. “She called him her Nat.”

  “Nat?”

  “Short for Nathan. He left East Dingleford to strike it rich. He promised to return and marry Mrs. Bolton. He was so . . .”

  “Chivalrous?”

  “Actually, I was thinking something more along the lines of stupid,” she said drily. “Apparently he didn’t realize that it’s not easy to get rich. He was thirty-three when he returned home.”

  “A man. And you think in that time away, Mr. Stone and Lord Bancroft became acquainted?”

  “I can’t prove it, but yes. I also think there’s a hell of a lot of testosterone pumping between seventeen and thirty-three.”

  “Indeed.” He took a sip of tea, and put the cup back on the saucer. His eyes were bright when he looked at her. “And what, may I ask, is testosterone?”

  Oh, hell. She was suddenly exhausted that she always had to consider her words. “It’s a hormone—a male sex hormone,” she finally said. Hormones wouldn’t be identified until the early twentieth century, but she didn’t know how giving the Duke this kind of information would affect the space-time continuum. “It’s what turns boys into men, giving them their bulkier muscle and deepening their voices. And testosterone accounts for more aggressive behavior.”

  “Fascinating.” The Duke’s blue eyes glinted as he leaned forward. “This is not entirely unknown to me, my dear. John Hunter—a Scottish surgeon and a brilliant man of science—conducted experiments by castrating roosters.”

  “Now that’s the kind of guy you want to invite to a party.”

  The Duke laughed. “I read that he transplanted roosters’ testes into capons to study the effects. It changed what was a docile creature into an aggressive one. The experiment proved a link between male testes and aggression, just as you say. In the future, they will call this a hormone, with the proper name testosterone?”

  Kendra sighed. “Yes, but we’re getting off track here.”

  The Duke looked briefly disappointed not to pursue the scientific discussion, but he waved his hand. “You are quite right, my dear. What you are referring to as testosterone, we identify here as young bucks sowing their wild oats. You see, we might not know the scientific reason underlying the behavior, but we do recognize it. Your world and my world are not really that dissimilar.”

  “And yet I’m the one wearing skirts and can’t vote,” she countered.

  “Point taken.”

  She smiled as she walked over to the coffeepot and refreshed her cup. “Now we really are getting off track. The point I was trying to make is, Lord Bancroft was gone during some pretty formative years. There’s a lot of temptation in the world.”

  “Young bucks are often tempted to engage in all sorts of mischief.”

  A shadow dimmed the Duke’s eyes. He didn’t say it, but she knew he was remembering his late nephew, Gabriel—Alec’s half-brother. He’d been typical of many wealthy young men of this era—hell, in any era, really—who’d been lured into alleviating his boredom in a hedonistic club. Drugs, sex, and rock ’n’ roll. It had eventually killed him.

  Kendra nodded. “Let’s say Lord Bancroft and Stone got into some mischief together. If it was egregious enough, Stone might have held it over Lord Bancroft’s head.”

  “Hmm. But Lord Bancroft returned years before Mr. Stone arrived in East Dingleford.”

  “They could have run into each other after that. Or Stone waited to blackmail him. Right now, I have more questions than answers.”

  “One of those questions Dr. Poole brought up: why now? If Lord Bancroft is our villain, why did he wait twenty years to dispose of the person threatening to expose him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it has to do with what was taken from the desk.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. The missing item continued to bother her.

  Aldridge rubbed his jaw. “I have another point of contention. We interviewed the workers at the mill, but no one remembered seeing Lord Bancroft that day.”

  “That actually doesn’t bother me as much. People see what they want to see; you know that. Lord Bancroft could have disguised himself as a worker, so anyone who saw him would have assumed it was another worker going up to Stone’s office. I did it myself when I put on Molly’s clothes in London.” That had been liberating, she remembered. Women in the lower classes had much more freedom than those in the upper echelons of society.

  “No one knew you in London,” the Duke pointed out. “East Dingleford is much smaller, and Lord Bancroft is well-known.”

  “You’d be shocked by how blind human beings can be, especially when they’re concentrating on their work.” She lifted her coffee cup, her gaze on the Duke. “It’s called inattentional blindness. We can be so focused on the task at hand that we don’t see anything else. If you were involved in one of your experiments, you might not see a naked woman walk through your laboratory.”

  The Duke looked startled. “I confess to becoming involved in my experiments, but I can assure you, Miss Donovan, that I would notice an intruder without clothes!”

  Kendra smiled. “Everybody thinks that. There have been experiments done, you know. The visual cortex filters out all sorts of information so we’re not distracted. Look at your nose. What do you see?”

  “My nose? All right.” He laughed, but lowered his eyes, shifting them side to side. “I can see its outline, depending where I look. But then, I have a rather large nose.”

  “Everyone can see their nose if they want to look at it. Even when you’re looking straight ahead, you can see a little bit of it. But we don’t. Our visual cortex makes certain we are not constantly distracted by our own noses.”

  “Fascinating! And you think that the mill workers may have filtered out Lord Bancroft’s presence at the mill?”

  “I think it’s a possibility that we shouldn’t ignore. Maybe he slipped in without anyone noticing him, maybe he dressed like another worker, or maybe they saw him but didn’t really process seeing him.”

  “You said there have been experiments done? Where someone is working and they have a . . . a lady who is unclothed walk by?”

  Kendra had to stifle a laugh at the Duke’s inability to say naked. “Not a naked lady. But there were experiments done where a man dressed in a gorilla costume walked across a room, and nobody noticed because they were focused on something else.”

  “What is a gorilla?” asked the Duke.

  “Oh.” Kendra paused, a little thrown that something so common in her era wasn’t known here. “It’s a large ape.”

  “Ah. I see.” After a moment, the Duke s
hook his head. “Regardless, I don’t see how that’s possible.”

  “Our brain works in mysterious ways.”

  “And no one saw the man dressed as an ape?”

  “Most participants didn’t see him.”

  “Ah. But it was not one hundred percent.”

  “No, but it was pretty high. Maybe seventy-five percent.” She recognized the glint in the Duke’s eyes. “I see what you’re getting at. Even if the majority of workers didn’t process seeing Lord Bancroft, one or two would have seen him and said something.”

  “I would think so, yes. Still, it is another matter if he undertook some type of subterfuge. Unfortunately, I take issue with that as well.”

  Kendra raised her eyebrows. “What issue?”

  “Your original hypothesis is that the crime was impulse—spur of the moment, as it were. However, if Lord Bancroft disguised himself in some way, doesn’t that suggest some sort of premeditation?”

  Kendra’s lips parted in surprise. “Christ, you’re right.” She shook her head, and laughed. “Who’s the FBI profiler here? I’m an idiot.”

  “No, you were focused on another part of the equation. Maybe that is another form of inattention blindness.”

  She narrowed her eyes at the Duke. “You’re being generous, but I sense smugness.”

  His eyes twinkled, but he remained silent.

  She laughed again and set down her coffee cup, crossing the room to stare at the slate board. “Bancroft stays on the list, but he just dropped down to the bottom. Let’s go and find someone to replace him.”

  “You speak of Mr. Turner.”

  “That’s exactly who I speak of.”

  The Duke pushed himself to his feet. “I have his address. Shall I have Benjamin bring around the carriage? Or shall I send word to Mr. Matthews to come around again with his gig?”

  “Smug I can take. Now you’re just being nasty.”

  15

  From a distance, the Turner farm looked like a scene taken straight off a tourist postcard. Beneath the brilliant blue sky, trees were dressed in dusky autumn colors around a cluster of gray buildings: a stone barn, stables, and a scattering of smaller outer structures. Set further back was a two-story cottage, its stucco whitewashed and its windows framed by shutters that were painted the same dark hunter green as the door. A low wall made out of stacked flat gray rocks circled the property and snaked up the sloping hill, where several dozen sheep appeared to be sleeping in the late-morning sun. Near the barn, about half a dozen white and brown chickens clucked and pecked at the ground.

  It was only when they drew closer that some of the charm ebbed for Kendra. She’d grown used to the faint scent of dung that was prevalent in this era, but the stench that hit her now was something else entirely. It was a pungent, musky scent, earthy and a little wild.

  She also realized the farm was more rundown than it had first appeared. The roof of the barn sagged slightly on one side, giving it a listing appearance, and the paint had begun to fleck off the cottage’s door and shutters.

  The carriage rolled to a stop. Benjamin leaped off his perch, hurrying around to unfold the steps for them to descend. As she and the Duke walked the path to the front door of the cottage, Kendra glanced up in time to see the curtains in the middle upper-story window twitch.

  There was no brass knocker so Kendra rapped on the door with her gloved fist.

  “Who are you?”

  The harsh voice came from behind them, raised to bridge the distance between the house and barn. Kendra and the Duke turned and watched a tall man emerge from the gloomy depths of the open barn door, carrying a sack of grain across one of his broad shoulders. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, with wheat-colored hair matted with sweat and sticking to his temples. Sweat stained the homespun smock he wore. His trousers were torn at the knee and patched at the hip, and his boots were scuffed white around heel and toe.

  It occurred to Kendra that the man resembled his farm. At a distance, he could be perceived as handsome, tall, and broad-shouldered. But upon closer inspection, the effects of time and what looked like an indulgence for drink gave him a florid face and heavy jowls. Of course, the scowl darkening his brow didn’t help give a good first impression either. As he stepped closer, Kendra noticed that his eyes were blue and slightly bloodshot. Allergies, sleepless nights, or drink. Any of those factors could have contributed to his appearance, but her gut told her it was the last.

  Now his eyes narrowed into a squint, roaming over them, then over to the carriage to study the Duke’s crest on the door. Kendra expected his expression to change then, to become obsequious. She’d grown accustomed to that reaction in the two months that she’d been here. People grew deferential—or at least cautious—when anyone crossed paths with the Duke of Aldridge. Yet in this, Turner surprised her as well. Instead of looking impressed or wanting to ingratiate himself with the nobleman, his expression hardened.

  If the Duke noticed the hostility in the other man’s demeanor, he hid it well. “Good morning, sir,” he greeted, his smile polite, his tone measured. “I am the Duke of Aldridge. May I introduce my ward, Miss Donovan?”

  Turner gave a grunt as he jerked his shoulder forward in a movement that dislodged the bag of grain. It landed at his feet, sending up a small cloud of dust. In a flurry of feathers and excited cackles, the chickens began strutting toward the bag. Turner gave the nearest one an impatient kick, sending it squawking and flapping its wings in the other direction. “W’ot do you want?”

  Kendra decided in that moment to cut out the pleasantries. “We’re here about Mr. Stone.”

  Turner wiped the sweat from his brow with his forearm as he turned his head to look at her. “W’ot about him?”

  “He’s dead.” She watched him carefully. “He was murdered on Friday.”

  Kendra didn’t expect Turner to be surprised by the news. A full day had passed since Stone had been murdered on Friday night, and she knew that gossip traveled shockingly fast even without 24/7 cable news and the Internet. Still, she was interested in gauging his reaction.

  He lifted a beefy shoulder. “Aye? And w’ot’s that got to do with me?”

  Before she could answer, the door behind them opened. A young woman, probably about her own age, stood in the doorway, wearing a serviceable cotton dress that had been washed so many times that it was now more white than its original yellow, its paisley print ghostly images splayed across the material. She wore a mop cap that covered most of her hair, but a few ash blond tendrils had escaped to float around a delicate, fine-boned face. She was lovely, except for the ugly purplish bruise marring her high cheekbone, swelling the skin beneath her right eye.

  “Mrs. Turner?” Kendra asked.

  The woman’s eyes, a pretty aquamarine shaded by long lashes, flicked a look in Turner’s direction before shifting her gaze to Kendra. She licked her lips nervously. “Aye. Can I . . . can I help ye?”

  “They don’t need your help,” Turner growled, taking a step forward. Anger emanated from him like invisible light waves. “Get back ter your chores!”

  “Wait.” Kendra didn’t know if she stopped the woman because she wanted to ask her questions, or to defy Turner, to show him that not every woman would cower before him. “Mrs. Turner, I’m Kendra Donovan, and this is the Duke of Aldridge. We’re here about Mr. Stone.”

  The other woman’s complexion was the color of freshly churned cream, but at the mention of the mill manager’s name, she turned gray. A flash of fear leaped in her pretty eyes.

  Kendra kept her voice gentle when she asked, “Did you know that he was murdered on Friday?”

  Mrs. Turner brought her hand up to her throat. Her gown had a high neck and long sleeves. When she moved her arm, the sleeve shifted lower, revealing a delicate wrist. And five purplish smudges darkening her skin.

  Kendra couldn’t stop herself from shooting a piercing look at Turner. She slid her gaze pointedly from his face down to his hands. They were big hands, with thick
fingers. And Kendra knew that she’d be able to match each digit to a corresponding contusion circling his wife’s wrist.

  “Aye. I heard,” Mrs. Turner mumbled behind her. “’Tis a . . . a dreadful thing.”

  “W’ot do you want?” the sheep farmer demanded again, his face reddening. He took another step toward them, his chin jutting out in an aggressive manner. But then he hesitated, his gaze flicking to the Duke. He might not be inclined to show the same deference as others, Kendra realized, but he wasn’t quite willing to take the Duke head-on either.

  Classic bully, thought Kendra. You can pick on someone smaller, who can’t fight back, but you always think twice before taking on a stronger opponent. The Duke might not be physically stronger than Turner, but in this world, any action against the nobleman could have drastic consequences for Turner.

  She had to tamp down her raw dislike before she asked bluntly, “Where were you between three and six on Friday afternoon, Mr. Turner?”

  “W’ot do you want ter know for?”

  She kept her gaze locked on his. “Because Mr. Stone was killed around that time, and we heard that you two had a disagreement,” she said.

  “My ward and I are investigating the murder of Mr. Stone,” the Duke spoke up beside her. His upper-class accent had sharpened dangerously—a sure sign of his ire. “We would appreciate an answer as to your whereabouts on Friday afternoon, sir.”

  The sheep farmer stared at the Duke, frowning. “Why would someone of the Patrician order such as yerself soil yer hands in the business of murder, eh?”

  Aldridge met the other man’s hostile gaze. Kendra had seen the Duke’s grayish-blue eyes reflect many emotions, but she’d never seen them quite like this, with this icy, slightly contemptuous—no, aristocratic—look in them. It was scary impressive.

  “’Tis no concern of yours as to why I involve myself in these matters, sir. I am involved, at the behest of your magistrate, Squire Matthews. Answer the question, if you please.”

  Turner’s nostril’s flared and his eyes blazed. For just a moment, Kendra thought the man was actually going to challenge the Duke. But then he crossed his arms in front of his chest, and regarded him stonily. “I was here, yer Grace. All day and all night. Jest ask me wife.” He jerked his chin at her. “Wife, tell his Grace that I was here.”