by Rebecca King
Aware of Ben blocking the top of the stairs, Joe opened the door to the bed chamber cautiously. His first glance of the room revealed nothing untoward. He frowned and ventured further, and then saw the cause of her anxiety.
His epithet was loud when he saw who it was.
“Damn it all to hell,” he blistered.
“What is it?” Marcus asked, following him into the room.
Joe waved a hand toward the dead man to indicate that Marcus should take a closer look.
“Are you sure you don’t know him?” Joe called to Marguerite as he stepped forward to take a good look at the cadaver’s face.
“No, I don’t know him,” she replied nervously, keeping her gaze trained on the ground at her feet.
“Are you sure? It is an odd place for a stranger to be,” Joe replied.
“Ma’am, I know you have had a fright but you need to stay close to us. We haven’t searched the rest of the house yet. It isn’t going to be safe until we can clear it,” Ben murmured when Marguerite looked ready to run down the stairs.
Joe peered around the door and saw the distress on her face. Stepping into the hallway, he nodded for Ben to go and take a look at who they had found and turned to the woman before him.
Gently, he touched her chin. “Do you recognise him? I want you to be honest with me, Marguerite.”
“I-I don’t-no,” she whispered. “Honestly.”
Joe looked deeply into her eyes and knew instinctively that she was telling him the truth.
“Do you know him?” she whispered. It was disturbing that he didn’t seem moved at all, but then he didn’t live in this house.
“I do know who he is, yes,” Joe murmured cautiously.
Marguerite began to cry.
“I need to sit down,” she whispered and staggered to the chair located in the corner of the room in spite of herself.
Joe followed her and squatted down before her. Marcus swept the blanket she had wrapped around her, oh so long ago, off the floor and looked at it curiously.
“It is mine,” she whispered.
“The blanket?” Joe looked at it. “What’s it doing on the floor?”
She explained in haltering words what had happened. Sickness loomed by the time she had finished.
“Who are you?” she whispered. “Why are you here? What do you want with me?”
“My name is Joe,” Joe began.
Marguerite studied him and knew he was being honest with her. She knew he hadn’t been called Jeremy. He looked like a Joe. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved, or angry that he had lied to her thus far, but in light of this morning’s findings, his name was irrelevant.
Joe waved to his colleagues. “This is Marcus, and that man over there is Ben. We are here because we want some information from you, and we need to speak to your father.”
“But you accosted me last night at the recital. You kidnapped me,” she replied. Aware that her voice was rising she swallowed and willed herself to calm down. “How do I know I can trust you?”
“I was merely getting you out of a difficult situation,” Joe replied blandly.
Marguerite sensed there was more he wasn’t saying and didn’t trust him for a second. She began to wonder if she had made a dreadful mistake in allowing the three of them into the house. After all, they had tried to kidnap her last night. While he had been nice and polite, many a good conman was. She had to remember as well that he had been loitering outside, on a cold and foggy morning, very early in the morning, in her back garden.
“What were you doing in the garden just now?” she asked.
“Coming to see you,” Joe replied. He threw her a look that challenged her to contradict him.
As she looked at him, her gaze flickered to the corpse hanging just behind him and quickly turned away. Thankfully, he was now facing the window, so she was spared having to see his face again, but at least now he had stopped that dreadful swinging.
Joe stepped back and nodded at Marcus, who promptly removed a knife from his boot and approached the body.
“What are you going to do?” Marguerite cried in dismay.
“Cut him down,” Joe replied. “We can’t leave him hanging here. You need to take a closer look at his face. I need you to tell me if you know him.”
“I don’t. I don’t know him,” Marguerite persisted.
“He might be someone you recognise. It is hard to know for definite given where he is. Once he is on the floor, he will look different again. Just look at him, and think carefully if you have ever seen him talking to your father, or near here. Was he at the recital last night? Have you seen him anywhere near that Count?”
Marguerite felt sick. She didn’t want to, she really didn’t, but she knew she had to.
The dull thud of the body hitting the floor made her shudder. She immediately recoiled.
“Take a look at his face,” Joe urged.
“No.”
“We need you to take a good look and see if you recognise him.”
“I-I don’t,” she whispered.
“Then we need to go and find your father and see if he recognises him,” Joe sighed impatiently.
“He has been here for a couple of hours,” Marcus murmured.
“He was still swinging when I found him,” she whispered.
Joe’s gaze flew to hers. “Pardon?”
She repeated it.
They all tensed. Joe stared hard at her. “How long were you unconscious for?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered tearfully. “Everything just went blank. I was in the house about five minutes, maybe a bit more, while I got changed. Then I came here. I intended to go to bed once I had spoken with my father and found out about that arrangement the Count said he had with him. My father isn’t here, but I found him instead.”
Joe had no reason to doubt her, but then they had lost her late last night and hadn’t found her again until this morning. In the five hours she had been gone, one man had died, and nobody, it appears, had been around her at the time.
“So how did you get back here?” he asked, eyeing her up and down.
Marguerite looked at him. “I walked,” she replied calmly.
Marcus guffawed. It was a good eight miles from the Carmichael’s house, in the fog, in the pouring rain, and she was unchaperoned. They all doubted that explanation given the danger that lurked on London’s streets during the night.
“It is true,” she protested. “I got lost when I left. I didn’t know where I was going, so I found my way to Regent’s park and then came home. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Why didn’t you just take a carriage?” Joe demanded.
“I didn’t have any coins on me,” she replied.
Joe sighed. He didn’t want to acknowledge the relief that swept through him when he realised the murderer couldn’t be Marguerite. He knew she hadn’t killed the dead man because the difference in size between her and the corpse was too great. She was too slight in stature to get a heavy, fully grown male high into the air. The man had either committed suicide in Eustace’s bedchamber for some reason, which was a ridiculous notion at best, or someone had murdered him by strangulation and left him in the bedchamber as a warning.
That sounds like something Sayers would do, Joe thought.
Given how well the Star Elite knew Sayers, the second option would be something they all knew Sayers would do as a visual warning to people who refused to go along with his demands. They all knew how Sayers liked to murder people. The corpse was undoubtedly one of his victims. Joe could only hope that Eustace wasn’t on Sayers’ list as well. Until they found Eustace’s body, it was difficult to know for definite what had happened to him, or if he was still alive.
Had the corpse been left as a warning for Marguerite? Had Sayers gotten hold of Eustace with the intention of keeping him while he persuaded Marguerite to go along with his dastardly plan? Was the body there as a warning to her that this was the fate that befell anybody who denied
him?
Joe had no idea but knew one thing for certain, now that Marguerite had found the body; she was in just as much danger as the dead man had been. Troubled, Joe watched Marcus lay the body on the floor and search through the pockets. Apart from a snuff box, a handkerchief, some loose change, and a packet of tobacco but no pipe, there were no identifying items on the corpse to give anybody but those who knew him any idea of who he might be. That meant Sayers left the body for someone who would recognise the victim.
Joe turned to study Marguerite. “I need to search the rest of the house,” he said.
With a nod to Ben, he left Marguerite to Marcus to guard and went to search the house.
At the back room on the upper floor, he opened the door and was immediately assaulted with the scent of flowers. It reminded him of honeysuckle; sweet yet delicate. He knew immediately that he had found Marguerite’s room.
“What have you found?” Ben murmured when he came to see what Joe was studying.
Joe picked up the sodden dress he could remember Marguerite wearing last night.
“She had to have been out all night,” Ben murmured. “That is soaked.”
Indeed it was and was disturbing to Joe. The material was cold and wet to the touch and left a sizeable puddle of water on the floor when he picked it up. While it assured him that she had been telling the truth, it galled him to think of her being out there all alone, in the dead of night, freezing cold and this wet.
“She is damned lucky she didn’t die out there,” Joe muttered in disgust.
His curse was bitter as he threw the dress on the floor. He searched the rest of the room and realised that apart from her clothing, she had packed very little. What she had packed had been stuffed into a bag with haste because the items she had left had been abandoned half hanging out of her drawers.
“Nothing surprising here,” Ben murmured as they returned to Eustace’s bed chamber.
Joe nodded but was too lost in thought to pay much attention.
“Who is he? My father is a clock maker. What would he have to do with someone who would do that?” she whispered. She wasn’t sure who she was asking, but her gaze fell upon the man she now knew was called Joe.
“The man’s name is Victor Mainton. He was the Count’s or, rather, Terrence Sayers’, main thief.”
“Who?”
Marguerite’s exclamation was so instinctive that Joe was assured she had no idea who Victor Mainton was. He was the man responsible for the countless jewellery thefts from aristocratic houses across London until March of last year. He was also the man, the only man, who have ever double-crossed Sayers and managed to leave London alive. He had disappeared several months ago with his sister, and a pile of gems Sayers had been blamed for stealing. Much to Sayers’ fury, Mainton had then forged a new life for himself somewhere else.
Or so the Star Elite had thought.
Whether he had been found by Sayers and forcibly returned to London, or had returned willingly was anybody’s guess. It was probably too late to find out now, and it didn’t really matter. What was important was that the man had re-appeared and was now dead. Even more important than that was where the body had been found. Joe, Marcus, and Ben, all knew it confirmed a link between this house and Sayers. Joe and the Star Elite now had to find out what that link was, and if it involved the woman, Marguerite.
Marcus lifted one of the man’s hands up to study it. While there was nothing unusual to be seen apart from dirty fingernails, but there were telltale rope marks visible around the wrists.
“He was dead before he was strung up,” Joe murmured.
“What makes you think that?” Marcus asked.
Trapped in a horrified daze, Marguerite listened to them discuss the details around the grizzly death as though they were discussing nothing more than the morning’s weather. It was disconcerting. Morbid curiosity aside, she listened.
“There are no broken fingers or finger nails. There is no evidence of a struggle. Even his shirt is tucked in. He would have struggled significantly if he had realised they were going to hang him. Not only that but he would have struggled as soon as he was strung, right up to the point of death. He was probably bound whilst alive because these rope burns have been marked onto flesh which then bled and became bruised.”
“Are there any other lesions, or cuts?” Joe asked.
Marcus sighed and opened the man’s shirt. Together he and Joe lifted the corpse upright so they could check his back.
Joe sighed. “I think he was strangled while he was unconscious and then hung here as a warning.”
“I wonder where his sister is?” Ben mused with a frown.
“We need to check if she is back with their mother,” Marcus replied.
Joe nodded and looked at Marguerite who was wringing her hands and staring at a spot on the floor.
“Where do you think your father is?” Joe asked of her.
“I don’t know. I wish I did because I could then speak with him and get some answers,” she replied.
“Do you think he might have gone to a friend’s house for some reason?” Joe asked.
Marguerite frowned. “I don’t think he is that close to anybody. He lives for his work.”
Joe nodded and sighed deeply. He had little doubt she was telling the truth and decided not to push. She looked as though she was going to be sick all over the floor at any moment. Either she was an incredible actress, or her disgust and terror were real, in which case she was no cold-blooded killer. The killer was more likely to be Terrence Sayers.
In spite of his best attempts to ignore it, an unusual feeling of jealousy swept through him. He almost felt possessive as he quickly blanked out the niggling image of her in Sayers’ embrace. To think of her coming that close to someone like the gangster made him want to sweep her up and race her back to his house where he knew she was safe and refuse to allow her out of his sight again until Sayers was behind bars. It was annoying that he should have such an unwanted attraction to any woman right now. He had work to do. He should concentrate on that and think about the woman a little later when the danger was gone, and he was able to decide if something further with her was worth considering. But, it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore his growing awareness of her, especially when she looked as lost and forlorn as she did, and so damned beautiful she made his teeth ache.
CHAPTER NINE
“I need you to be honest with me, Marguerite,” Joe demanded. “Your future welfare depends on it. If you lie to me, you could end up like him. What Sayers witnessed us doing last night could have made him jealous to the point that he wants to end his association with you - permanently. If there is one thing Sayers hates it is a traitor.”
“I don’t have any links to him,” she whispered. To his disgust, she looked at him square in the eye. “Now you tell me that you have no association with Sayers either.”
“I am not associated with that man,” he replied without preamble.
“Why are you here then? Why are you so determined to kidnap me?” The more she spoke, the more she realised how unusual it was for him to appear, in her back garden, just a few hours after she had managed to avoid him taking her somewhere she didn’t want to go. “Just who are you?”
She sensed from the look in his eye that he wasn’t going to tell her the truth and was horribly disappointed. He asked repeatedly for her to trust him while he clearly refused to reciprocate.
“We are people you can trust,” Marcus replied.
“Says who?” She countered with a dark scowl.
“We will keep you safe and out of Sayers’ clutches while we get to the bottom of this man’s murder.”
“But he cannot have been murdered last night, can he?” she protested.
Not when you tried to accost me at the Carmichaels, she thought as she studied Joe.
She realised then just how stupid she had been to allow her panic and fear get the better of her. She had not only let Joe into the house, the man who ha
d lied to her about his name, but she had also allowed two of his associates to come with him. Now she was in her home, her only place of refuge, alone with these three strangers. Men who were, from the look of them, just as dangers as Sayers.
“We need to get out of here,” he announced suddenly.
They didn’t discuss it in front of Marguerite but all knew that someone would be sent to collect the body later once Sir Hugo had examined the body in situ. It was more important for them to leave the house and any danger which may surround it.
Marcus covered the corpse with the blanket Margaret had used, coiled the rope, and put it on top of the body. It was a warning to whoever found the dead man of what they would find beneath the covering. With nothing else to be done, the men began to escort her down the stairs.
Their silent acceptance that she would just meekly go along with them was galling for Marguerite. While she went willingly, to begin with, her mind raced in search of a way to get out of leaving with them. She knew it would be a foolish thing to do, especially with so many questions nobody seemed willing to answer.
“The carriage is out back. Do you want me to go and fetch it? I will bring it around front. It is probably safer,” Marcus murmured, eyeing the fog swirling around the gardens with a frown.
“I think it would be best,” Ben added. “I will come with you.”
Joe watched the men leave and turned to Marguerite, who was staring at him with wide eyes.
“It’s going to be alright,” he assured her, but with little softness or real reassurance.
He wasn’t very good with soothing women. He usually left that job to the charmer of the group, Marcus. Uncomfortably aware of the growing awkwardness between them, he coughed.
“I am not coming with you,” she murmured suddenly.
Joe almost groaned upon hearing that and heaved a deep sigh.
That fuelled Marguerite’s temper. For the first time in a very long time, she felt her temper begin to boil.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” she added. “Who are you?”
“I have told you, I am Joe,” he replied firmly.