Caught in Time
Page 27
“You’d be marrying the wrong woman, Mr. Kelly,” Mrs. Bolton informed him with a smile. “Mrs. Pratt is the one who cooked this meal.”
“You’ll need ter look for a new cook, then, ’cause I’ll be persuading Mrs. Pratt ter run away with me.”
“Give Mrs. Pratt our compliments,” said the Duke, pulling out a chair for Kendra. “The meal smells delicious.”
“Aye, your Grace.” Mrs. Bolton curtsied. “Mrs. Pratt will be most pleased. I bid you good evening.” She shooed her giggling granddaughters out the door.
Alec brought one of the candelabras to the table as they sat down. The amber glow played over the faces and food. Sam appreciated this too. Being in the company of a duke meant no one dared serve inferior food or whisky. What was it like to have your every whim catered to, your every wish granted? Sam would never know. As the son of a London baker, and now a Bow Street man, his own station was far below Polite Society. This was a nice side benefit to working for the Duke, he decided, picking up his knife and fork and cutting into the lamb with gusto.
“What else did Mr. Murray say?” Kendra asked, as she impaled a turnip with her fork.
Sam looked across the table at the American. The candlelight warmed her pale skin, and made her raven locks shimmer with golden highlights. She’d begun styling her hair differently from the peculiar way she’d worn it when he first met her. Her maid had twisted it into something elaborate, and the fringe above her dark eyes was swept back by a simple green bandeau that matched her silk dress. Sam wasn’t a man to pay attention to the latest lady’s customs, but he knew this was more fashionable, allowing Kendra Donovan to blend in with the other ladies of the Beau Monde.
Still, he knew she’d never really blend in. She was too . . . odd. And not only because of her strange desire to become involved in murder investigations. She didn’t seem to give a wit over her spinsterhood. He’d never met a lass who didn’t want to become leg-shackled, whether she was Quality or common folk. All three of his sisters had begun plotting to find husbands when they’d turned fourteen, and were now scattered around the kingdom, happily tending their husbands and increasing broods of children.
“Mr. Kelly?” Kendra raised an eyebrow.
“Pardon me. I’m woolgathering.” He pulled his thoughts back to the conversation at hand. “Mr. Murray said he was surprised when Lord Bancroft let him go.” He stabbed a piece of meat, swirled it in the mint sauce, and popped it in his mouth. He chewed and swallowed before he continued. “He said the mill’s operation was going well. The earl had been heavily involved in it, which was a bit unusual. The gentry aren’t known to get their hands dirty.”
“I rather doubt the earl was on the floor carding the cotton, or whatever is done in a mill,” Alec said drily, lifting his wine glass.
“Nay. But Mr. Murray said his lordship came ter the mill almost every day when the mill was first built. Then he took himself off ter London ter hunt for a bride.”
“Well, I can certainly understand why his attention was diverted. He didn’t just look for a bride, he found one.” The Duke shrugged as he focused on cutting the lamb on his plate. “A new wife can demand your attention more than a mill. Besides, it sounds as though the mill was fully operational by then.”
“I think the point here is Bancroft lied twice,” said Kendra. “Mr. Murray didn’t quit his job, and he didn’t recommend Stone as his replacement. Did Mr. Murray know anything about Stone, like where he was originally from? The man was in his thirties when he first became manager at Bancroft Mills. He has a past.”
Sam shook his head. “Nay, miss. And from what Mr. Murray said, the mill industry is small enough ter have done so. He also confirmed the rumors that Bancroft Mills was having difficulties.”
“No one should be shocked about the mill’s disrepair given Mr. Stone’s incompetence,” said Alec.
Sam nodded. “Mr. Stone was not well regarded by his fellow tradesmen. Or the workers at the mill.”
The Duke looked at Kendra. “This supports your contention that Lord Bancroft was acquainted with Mr. Stone before he hired him, my dear.”
“And the theory that Mr. Stone acquired his position through some type of blackmail,” Alec added. “You don’t give a lucrative venture like Bancroft Mills to someone who does not have the fortitude to continue its success.”
Sam frowned. “If it was blackmail, why didn’t his lordship just buy off Stone? Why have him at the mill, always underfoot, so ter speak?”
“I’d say the manager position was Stone’s idea,” Kendra said. “It’s actually brilliant. He gets a wage—probably a nice wage, too—on a regular basis. Better, it’s legal. And it put Stone in a position of power. People relied on him for their livelihood. He got a kick out of that.”
“Bancroft hired Mr. Stone twenty years ago.” The Duke picked up his wineglass. “Even if he did use blackmail to get in his position, how does that relate to his murder? Or those of his wife and housekeeper?”
Kendra shrugged. “Blackmail is one of those crimes that never ends. Maybe Stone was becoming more aggressive. He was going to Manchester . . . maybe he crossed a line with his demands. It’s connected to whatever he had on his desk. It’s also connected to their past.” She looked at Sam. “Is there any way to track down where Stone was from?”
“Without the name of a village or his family name?” Sam shook his head. “Nay.”
Alec said, “We can’t even be certain Harry Stone is the man’s real name.”
Kendra stared at him. “My God. You’re right.” She put down her fork. “So that’s a dead end.”
“In my opinion, I think the key to this is figuring out what was on Mr. Stone’s desk,” the Duke said. “What is it most likely to be? A map? Or some type of document? A bill of sale?”
“A book or painting,” added Alec. “Or a box.”
Kendra shook her head. “I think it’s too low to be a box.”
“Not a box, but a case,” the Duke pointed out. “Like the cases that dueling pistols are stored in. That could fit the dimensions, if the case was open.”
Kendra appeared intrigued by that. “And dueling pistols are usually a matched set. Is there any way to identify ballistics—connect a bullet to a specific gun?”
Sam nodded, wondering where the American was going with this. “Of course. But what gun? What bullet?”
“Hypothetically, what if someone kept the two pistols that might have been used in, say, a murder that happened decades ago? Could the weapons be used as blackmail?”
Alec raised his eyebrows. “Are you suggesting that Mr. Stone witnessed Lord Bancroft murdering someone during his travels, and kept the weapons to blackmail him years later?”
She let out a heavy sigh. “Put like that, it seems a bit farfetched.” For 1815.
“You’d need the bullet to match ter the weapon,” Sam added. “Something that long ago . . . the evidence is most likely at the bottom of the Thames, or wherever the sawbones would put the ball he dug out of the poor sod.”
Kendra pushed aside her plate and rose from the table, looking frustrated. “This is impossible,” she said, moving to the slate board.
“Just ter add ter the hypothetical, gold coins or jewels can fill a dueling case just as much as pistols,” Sam pointed out. “Greed is always a prime reason for murder. And it would connect the two crime scenes if Stone had more hidden away. Could account for Mrs. Stone being tortured.”
Kendra pulled the sheet off the slate board. “We can come up with a hundred guesses as to what’s on the desk. We need to focus on our suspects and their motivations. In that, Mrs. Stone is the key.”
“How so?” The Duke stood as well, and wandered over to the desk. He picked up his pipe, but more to hold in his hand—a habit Sam had observed a couple of months ago when he’d first been employed by the nobleman—as he regarded his ward.
“Anyone can snap and bludgeon someone, as gruesome as that sounds. But not everyone can torture another human bein
g,” she said grimly.
“Thank God,” murmured the Duke.
Alec said, “I can’t see Mr. Biddle doing what was done to Mrs. Stone. Or the housekeeper, for that matter.”
“He does seem like an unlikely torturer,” she agreed. “But you never know. The mild-mannered man living down the street could be exhuming corpses from their graves and making lampshades out of their skins and bowls from their skulls.”
Sam choked on the whisky he’d just sipped. “Good God.” He stared at her. “Have you encountered such a fiend?”
“I never encountered that particular fiend, but his name was Ed Gein, and he was quite real.”
Sam had to control himself from making the sign of the cross. What kind of monsters did they have in America? Then he thought of Mr. Murray’s teeth, which had either come out of the mouths of dead criminals or dead soldiers. Having lampshades made out of a corpse’s skin suddenly didn’t seem so peculiar.
“I’ve encountered resurrectionists, some mild-mannered,” he admitted finally. “But their main purpose was ter dump the bodies off at the sawbones ter get the blunt, not ter skin the corpse.”
“What about the sheep farmer?” asked the Duke suddenly. “Do you think he could have been cold-blooded enough to torture Mrs. Stone?”
Kendra’s face hardened. “Yes. The man’s a sociopath.”
Sam had never heard the term before, but by the glint of temper he saw in Kendra’s dark eyes, he knew it wasn’t good.
Alec cleared his throat. “Yes, as to Mr. Turner, we’ve discovered something distressing.”
Kendra gave a surprisingly bitter laugh. “Distressing is getting a stain on your favorite sweater. The bastard was using his wife to pay off his debt to Stone.”
Sam frowned, but it was the Duke who asked, “How?”
“Turner allowed his wife to become Mr. Stone’s mistress until the debt was paid,” Alec said without any inflection.
Aldridge gaped at his nephew, his eyes widening with shock. “You are saying that the arrangement between Mr. Stone and Mr. Turner was . . . his own wife? My God, the man is a monster.”
“Yes,” Kendra said, and Sam saw the look in her eyes, and knew what she was thinking. A man capable of such evil against his own wife was certainly capable of the evil that had been done to Mrs. Stone.
34
Kendra propped herself up on one elbow, watching Alec as he slipped out of bed. The fire had died and the bedchamber was still thick with shadows. She thought it was probably near five A.M. She couldn’t see the clock, but heard the steady tick of its minute hands. Funny how it was becoming a familiar sound. She’d only had digital clocks in her Virginia apartment. If there was any noise, it was the nearly imperceptible buzz of electricity. Now she regretted the lack of light emitted by all digital gadgets, only because it deprived her of watching Alec walk naked across the room.
“Is there anything we can do to help her?” she asked. She heard the rustle of material, and caught his shadowy movement as he pulled on his breeches, sensed him twisting to peer at her.
“Who?” he asked.
“Flora—Mrs. Turner.”
Alec said nothing for a moment. “What do you propose?”
She sat up, pulling the blankets with her. “I don’t know. Bring her with us when we leave? There’s got to be a position for her at Aldridge Castle. Or at Monksgrey, or the Duke’s townhouse in London. She’s one woman. It can’t be that hard to find her a position somewhere.”
“She’d be a runaway wife.”
Kendra could tell by his movements that Alec was buttoning up his shirt, tucking the tails into his breeches. Anger flared inside her. “Christ, she’s going to be a dead wife if we don’t help her. He’s not going to suddenly stop beating her. One day he’ll go too far. Maybe he won’t mean to kill her, but he will. Maybe he’ll be remorseful, but it will be too late. She needs saving now.”
Alec moved back to the bed, carrying his boots, cravat, and jacket. The feather mattress dipped as he sat down. “Why does this one woman mean so much to you? Not to make light of the matter, but there are many women in similar situations. What is it about Mrs. Turner that has you wishing to intervene?”
“I don’t know those other women.”
But I don’t know Flora either. Not really. Why was this so important to her? She couldn’t explain it to herself. “She doesn’t have anyone, Alec,” she finally said. “She’s trapped in a miserable marriage with a piece of shit for a husband. She needs someone to help her.”
Alec stared at her, not saying anything for a long moment. Then he lifted a hand, brushing her hair away from her face, his fingers drifting down to caress her neck. “Perhaps you see something of yourself in her,” he said, his tone gentle. “You have told me that you often feel trapped by your circumstance, your inability to control the situation—”
“Oh, my God.” Kendra jerked away from him, annoyed. “I don’t need you to psychoanalyze me, Alec. I’m not transferring my situation to Flora. I’m not a victim. She is.”
He said nothing.
Tension tightened Kendra’s skin. She held her breath, then released it in a long sigh, loosening. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.” She caught his hand, lacing her chilled fingers through his warm ones, and thought of what the Duke had said to Bancroft a few days earlier. “Maybe a part of me does identify with her, but there’s more to it than that. The world needs justice, Alec. There need to be people who step forward to balance the scales.”
He brought their laced fingers up to his mouth and pressed a kiss against her hand. “You do that. You step forward to protect the weak. And it terrifies me.”
“I can take care of myself,” she said, striving for a lighter note. “I’m a special agent for the FBI. I know how to kick ass.”
He laughed. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Bringing justice to the world.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then he asked quietly, “Is that why you chose such a dangerous profession for a woman? Because you wanted to bring justice to the world?”
She drew back a little. “Let’s get one thing straight: the danger is equally divided between men and women.” But she considered his question. They’d never talked about this before. “My decision to join the FBI is complicated.”
“Tell me.”
She said nothing for a long moment. “I suppose I’ve always been interested in solving puzzles,” she said slowly. “Maybe that’s genetics. Both of my parents are scientists. My father is focused on cognitive behavior—what makes people tick. My mother is involved in studying the mysteries of the universe. They’re both solving puzzles.” She shivered a little, thinking about her unhappy childhood. Alec’s hand tightened on hers.
“It’s also circumstance,” she continued. “When I was at the university, two girls in my dorm went missing. The FBI was called in. I followed their investigation, watched the agents work. I found what they did interesting.”
“Did they find the girls?”
“Yes. And the unsub who had taken them. Both girls were alive. Traumatized. But the outcome was good. Not all of them are, you know. But the fact that it was a success certainly made the FBI appealing. I was fifteen at the time.”
“Justice.”
“Or maybe a happy ending. But there were other factors. When I began to research the Bureau, I discovered they had a lot of rules. A lot of structure.” Her lips twisted into an ironic smile. “Most of the agents hate that, but I loved it. I’d spent my entire life following my parents’ rules.”
“You needed some structure.”
She nodded. “When my parents cut ties with me, I was so young. It was strange not to have someone pushing me to behave a certain way, to accomplish certain goals. I . . . freaked.” She drew in a shaky breath. Why did this still knot her stomach? “Most kids would’ve rebelled, reveled in the lack of routine. I did the opposite. It felt comfortable to me to have rules. Do you understand?”
“Maybe if I’d been older, I would have started drinking, or doing drugs,” she murmured. “That’s what happens to a lot of kids who suddenly find themselves independent of parental authority. But I was only fourteen, and no one wanted to bring a fourteen-year-old to a frat party.”
“Hmm. What’s a frat party?”
“Oh. A fraternal organization—like clubs at universities.”
“Like the Freemasons and Stonemasons.”
“Yes.”
“You were fortunate, then. So many young gentleman of the Ton resort to decadence when they leave home after years of being under the thumb of a governess or tutor . . . or a controlling parent.”
She shifted back and lifted a hand to touch his face, seeing the shadows in his eyes. “You’re thinking of Gabriel.”
“I shall always regret not recognizing the demons driving my brother.” His voice was low and harsh. “You were wise to create the structure you needed.”
Her heart ached at Alec’s misery. “I don’t know if I was wise, so much as I was conditioned to want that routine. Luckily, there’s both routine and structure within the university system. Classes, tests, research, things familiar to me. If I wasn’t given a schedule, I made one myself. Color coded with graphs and pie charts.” Now she smiled. “I was a complete nerd. It took me a couple of years to rebel.”
“How did you rebel?”
She laughed. “Mostly by watching a shitload of TV. My parents had banned TV when I was a child. So once I was on my own, I made sure I watched a lot, especially the shows that I knew they wouldn’t approve of. I could almost feel my brain rot inside my skull—not literally,” she added when she saw him frown.
His mouth twitched. “I’m relieved. TV—television. You’ve spoken of this. A play inside a box.”
“Pretty much. Anyway, the FBI ticked all my boxes. I liked the structure and rules. I was attracted to the end goal—justice. I liked being part of investigations, which are basically puzzles. And, as I said, it’s probably in my DNA with my parents . . .” She tensed.