by Candace Camp
“It was as if they were threatening me,” Anthony said, fear in his eyes. “As though they were telling me that they could make everyone believe that I had killed my wife. It’s absurd! But then I began to think—how can one prove that one did not do something?”
“Why would someone want to do that?” Michael asked. “Make it appear that you killed Mrs. Birkshaw?”
“I think—I think it must be that they want me to do something for them. This ‘favor for favor’ bit. All I can think is that they are going to ask me to do something I wouldn’t want to or—or, I don’t know, pay them money or something, with the threat that if I do not, they will tell everyone I did it.”
Michael gave him a long look. “So you are saying that someone whom you don’t know decided to kill your wife in the hopes that a few months later they could blackmail you into doing them a favor?”
“I know it sounds bizarre,” Anthony protested stiffly.
“That is something of an understatement,” Michael replied.
“But what else could it be?” Anthony’s expression was frantic. “Why are they plaguing me with these things? Won’t you please find out what happened? I know I have no right to ask anything of you—”
“You are correct in that.”
“But I am a desperate man. I cannot imagine what I will do if—”
“Of course we are going to help you, Mr. Birkshaw,” Rachel put in. “Why, we—he, I mean, is already working on it. Aren’t you, Michael?”
“I am looking into it,” Michael agreed shortly. “My dear, I think it is time we left. Birkshaw.” He rose, nodding toward Anthony, and held out his hand to Rachel.
She took his hand and walked with him out of the room, leaving Anthony looking after them. They had barely gotten out the front door when Michael whipped around to look at her, exploding, “It’s an idiot’s tale! Surely he cannot expect me to believe that!”
“It is exceedingly odd,” Rachel admitted. “But does it not make you wonder why he would make up something so silly?”
“Because he has cotton batting for brains, that’s why.”
Rachel could not suppress a giggle. “Perhaps. But let us look at this logically.”
“I’m not sure that is possible,” Michael retorted.
“Try,” Rachel replied firmly. She felt much better suddenly, and she realized that the reason was that the constraint between her and Michael had vanished. It was like being with James again, words flowing between them freely.
“There are only two possibilities,” she went on. “Anthony either killed his wife or he did not.”
“Agreed.”
“Now, if he killed his wife and everyone assumed she died of an illness, if even Bow Street had investigated it and come up with nothing to show that she was murdered—then why, six months later, would he start the whole thing up again by asking you to investigate her death? What could he possibly hope to accomplish by setting a man known to be superior at investigating things on his own trail? And if, for some reason we cannot fathom, he did do this, why would he then make up an idiotic story as some sort of…I’m not sure what. Alibi, I suppose? A note and a bit of a tin of rat poison are scarcely proof of innocence,” Rachel pointed out.
“I agree. It makes no sense.”
“But if he did not murder his wife, you have the same questions. Why ask you to investigate? Why give this foolish story as the reason? I cannot see why anyone would…unless it was the truth.”
Michael cast her a caustic glance. “Killing her in the hope that Mr. Birkshaw would do them a favor?”
Rachel shrugged. “I admit that it does seem a rather iffy proposition. But perhaps there is something more to it. Something we simply don’t see.” She paused, then went on. “The other thing that struck me was that the fear on Anthony’s face was quite real. I don’t think he is pretending.”
Michael sighed. “No. I saw that, too. But perhaps the fear is that he will be caught. It is a given, you know, that it is commonly the person who benefits who is the murderer,” Michael stated firmly.
“But surely there are times when it is not so,” Rachel argued. In the heat of her argument, she unconsciously laid her hand on Michael’s arm. “When someone else murders them.”
“Yes, of course.” Michael wanted to clamp his hand over hers and hold it there. It took all his willpower to continue walking and talking as if nothing had happened. “I have been working on a case where the most obvious suspects are all clearly not involved in the crime. It’s been bloody hard to solve, too.” He told her the story of the Earl of Setworth’s stolen illuminated manuscript, adding, “I assume that case is the one which Red Geordie went to such great lengths to warn me off from. But I cannot imagine why anyone would have been concerned about my getting too close to the truth. I was not close to anything. It was an utter failure, just like another case about a year ago. My last few cases have been rife with failure.”
“What was that one concerning?” Rachel asked. “The one a year ago.”
“A wealthy goldsmith was attacked one night after he left his shop,” Michael told her. They had reached the park across the street from their house, and he walked into it, leading her to a bench and sitting down to finish his story.
“The man was knocked over the head and killed. The assailant took his gold pocket watch and the coins that were in his pockets. Straightforward enough, one would think. Killed by a thief. Now, in those same pockets was a key that opened the door to his shop, yet the thief, who robbed him right outside the store, did not take the key and open the store and steal a great deal of very valuable gold items and money.”
“That seems very careless of him,” Rachel commented. It was so pleasant to sit there, watching Michael talk, his face animated. How was it, she wondered, that she had never before noticed how very handsome her husband was?
“The store belonged to the man who died and to his partner, a less talented fellow and one, moreover, who lived beyond his means,” Michael went on. “The partner inherited the dead man’s half of the store, for he had no family, and such was their agreement. It aroused my suspicions immediately. How handy for his partner that the thief had happened to kill him in the course of stealing a few pounds worth of things. But I could find nothing to connect the partner to the death. He was at a dinner party at the time it happened. The man’s watch never turned up at a pawn shop. None of the usual thieves’ dives yielded any tales of a thief in his cups confessing.”
“Then how can you say that a murder done by someone other than the person who benefits is not common? You have had three like that, counting Mr. Birkshaw’s case.”
“Yes, but, you see, it is normally rare. When I consider all the other investigations I have had where—” He stopped and frowned thoughtfully. “That is odd. They are rather alike.”
“What are you thinking?” Rachel asked, excitement rising in her. “I can see that you are putting something together.”
“I’m not sure. But it is a pattern of sorts. One always looks for patterns in crimes. Thieves who follow a certain method. Killers who use the same instrument. Normally the pattern is that murders are done by the person who would benefit from the crime. But here, there is a pattern that the person who benefits could not have done it. So when I see a pattern that is very much unlike the normal pattern—well, it makes me wonder.”
“If the the three cases are connected somehow…?”
“It seems unlikely. And yet…it would be odd if they were random, don’t you think?”
“Could the same person have done all three?”
“That, too, seems unlikely. One crime took a very accomplished thief, one a poisoner who must have gotten inside the house—or paid someone to do it for him—and the other a killer who caved in someone’s skull. They were in separate parts of the country. The house party was in Dorset, the goldsmith in London, Mrs. Birkshaw in York. Still…I think it might be of benefit to pay a visit to Bow Street.”
* * *
/> In point of fact, they did not go to Bow Street, where the presence of a lady would have caused great consternation. Instead they met John Cooper, the Runner with whom Michael often worked, at an inn not far from headquarters. If Cooper, a large, slow-moving man with sleepy brown eyes, found it odd to be meeting Michael with an aristocratic woman along, he gave no evidence of it, merely tipped his hat to Rachel gravely.
“Now, what’s this that’s so important, guv’nor?” he asked. “You found out anything for me?”
“I’m not sure. All I have at the moment are questions,” Michael replied.
“Well, that’s typical, ain’t it?” Cooper responded good-naturedly. “Now, what would you be wantin’?”
“I am interested in unsolved cases,” Michael began.
“Well, we’ve got a might of them,” Cooper said. “Seems like more than ever, these days.”
“Does it?”
“Aye, there’s allus a lot of things you can’t find no one to blame for, or, leastways, no proof of it. Well, you know that well enough. It’s why I come to you so often. But the last couple of years seems like much more.”
“What I am interested in particularly are ones in which the person who would benefit the most could not have committed the crime.”
Cooper’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You are on to something, aren’t you?”
“I may be. But I need a lot of information first. Can you get that for me?”
“Aye, I ’spect I can do that. Long as you’ll let me know what you figure out.”
“Of course.”
The Runner looked at Rachel, giving her a slow smile. “He’s a downy one, he is.”
“Yes,” Rachel agreed. “I have found that he is very crafty.”
Michael looked at her narrowly, but Cooper seemed happily unaware of any undertone to their conversation. “Aye. He is that.”
“And very good at deception,” Rachel added.
“Oh, yes. The guv’nor’s the best.”
Rachel cast Michael a significant look, one eyebrow raised.
“Well, Cooper, thank you for that encomium,” Michael commented dryly.
“You’re welcome, sir.” The twinkle in Cooper’s eyes told Rachel that perhaps the man was more aware of the undercurrents of their conversation than he let on.
That next afternoon Cooper came to their house. Michael and Rachel met him in Michael’s study, where Cooper set a large box down on Michael’s desk.
Michael cast a wary eye at the box. “What have you got for me? It looks like quite a bit.”
“Aye, that it is, sir,” Cooper agreed cheerfully as he laid a list of names on top of the box. “This list is of all the cases of the sort you wanted that we could remember. No doubt there’s more of ’em, but I reasoned this’d be enough to start you off.”
“I believe so,” Michael replied dryly, casting an eye at the large stack of paperwork.
“I brought the Runner’s report on some of ’em, ones that seemed most like what you wrote me about. Hope you can figure something out about them. If anybody could, it’d be you, I’d wager.”
“Thank you for your confidence, Cooper,” Michael replied, adding, “I am afraid I feel rather less sanguine about my abilities at the moment.”
Cooper took his leave, nodding again to Rachel, then turning and striding out of the room like a man relieved of a great burden. Rachel walked over to Michael’s desk.
“I would say you have your work cut out for you,” she commented.
“We have, my dear, we have.”
Rachel sat down in front of the desk. She did not like to admit how much she wanted to help him with the files. The cases would be far more interesting than calling on anyone or receiving calls, but more than that, she knew that she wanted to spend the afternoon with Michael. It was humiliating, she told herself, that she could still want to be with him after what he had done.
Even if, in the calmer state of mind she was in today, she no longer believed that Michael had perpetrated his charade on her because he wanted to ridicule or humiliate her, she could not overlook the fact that he had kept a large part of his life secret from her almost the entire time they had been married. Clearly she was not someone he trusted, certainly not someone he loved. He was a stranger to her, and six years of marriage had not changed that.
That fact made it even more humiliating that she felt as she did about Michael. Or James. Or whoever it was for whom she had these muddled, yearning emotions! All she knew was that she felt a simmering excitement around him and, at the same time, a quiet contentment…not to mention a hundred other conflicting feelings that made being around him so pleasurable and torturous all at the same time. Yesterday, after going to see Cooper, they had spent the evening discussing the oddities of the case and Michael’s other cases, and she had enjoyed it far more than she would have a party. And when, later, Michael went out to visit the sort of informants whom he could meet only at night in dark and secret places, Rachel had been distinctly disappointed and lonely as she put on her nightgown and climbed into her big, empty bed to sleep.
She knew, deep down, that it was these feelings, more than any concern about helping Anthony, that had really made her agree to stay here—just as, now, they impelled her to sit down across the desk from Michael and agree to help him with the files.
“Shall I read some of them and you others?” she asked.
“Let’s go through them together,” he suggested. “It will be slower, I know, but I think it would be better if we had two minds working on the problem. Here, come sit here beside me.” He pulled up another straight-back chair next to his and placed the files on the desk between the two chairs.
“What are we looking for?” Rachel asked, going around the desk and sitting down beside him. Her pulse quickened, though she managed to keep her voice and face cool and calm.
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “Some connection. A pattern.”
“We already know that they have one thing in common, right? The person who stood to benefit the most in each could not have committed the crime.”
He nodded. “That, and none of them have been solved.” Michael ran his finger down the list on top of the stack. Ah, here is my most recent, Lord Setworth’s illuminated manuscript. And, yes, further down here is the goldsmith that I told you about. All right, let’s see what else we have.”
Michael set the list aside. “First, we have Harold Benton. Murdered. Hmm.” He scanned down the report, saying, “He was to be a witness in a trial against his former partner in crime, one Bart Mansfield. This Mansfield sounds like a piece of work.” He read down a list of crimes of which the man was accused or suspected.
“My goodness. He seems to be the complete criminal,” Rachel commented. “My guess would be that he was the one who did poor Mr. Benton in, so that he could not testify against him.”
“That would have been Bow Street’s opinion, too, except for the fact that the man was in Newgate, awaiting trial for his misdeeds, when Benton was struck down. So Mansfield could not have done it.” He read some more of the particulars, then added, “Seems the Runner in charge suspects that Mansfield got someone else to do the job for him, but they were unable to prove it.”
He continued to read through the string of investigations—a seemingly endless series of robberies, thefts and homicides, none of them alike except in the fact that they had baffled their investigators.
“Now,” Michael said, picking up the fifth report. “This concerns one Dutton Parkhurst, Esquire. He was stabbed to death one evening as he was walking home from his club. One of his servants went out to look for him when he did not return home, as he was a man of very regular habits, and found him slumped in a doorway. He thought at first that he was drunk, though that was not like him, but then he saw the blood all over the front of his coat. There were no witnesses. Nothing was stolen from his body. His nephew, who inherited his fortune, was with a group of friends all evening. They went first to a play and finished
up the evening gambling. There were numerous witnesses to his presence there, and…” He paused, frowning.
“What is it? Did you find something?” Rachel, watching him, sat up straighter.
“No. It’s just…the name of this nephew. It sounds familiar. Roland Ellerby.”
He straightened suddenly. “Wait. I think—”
Michael thumbed rapidly through the papers remaining in the stack, stopping at one of them and scanning down it. “Yes! I thought I had heard his name. Roland Ellerby was one of the guests at Lord Setworth’s estate party two weeks before his illuminated manuscript was stolen!”
He looked up at Rachel triumphantly.
She leaned forward. “Michael, that must mean something! Surely that could not be coincidence.”
“I am beginning to think that none of this is coincidence. Rather, it is all very well planned and carried out.”
“Do you think there is someone who goes about doing what Anthony said? Committing a murder or a theft and then forcing the person who benefitted from it to do them a favor?” Rachel asked.
“That still sounds absurd,” Michael said, shaking his head.
“Surely all these people who benefitted could not have just banded together and decided to carry out the various crimes.”
“I wouldn’t think so. It would be too unwieldy. There would be too much danger of one of them developing a conscience and turning the others in,” Michael said. He put his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers together, staring thoughtfully into space. “But what if there was one person, someone entirely unconnected to the beneficiary of the crime, who knew how much that person would like it if some crime or other were done, in this instance getting rid of a rich uncle. And say the criminal, the mastermind of this scheme, went to this nephew and offered to do away with the uncle, told him when it would happen so that the nephew could provide himself with an unassailable alibi. And all our mastermind asked in return was that in the future the nephew—or whoever benefited—would do a favor for him. In this case, the favor turned out to be going to an estate party and learning the whereabouts of a valuable object that the criminal wants to steal. Then the criminal goes in or hires a thief to go in and remove the valuable object, and the money he makes off it is his payment for doing away with the uncle.”