by Candace Camp
* * *
The world seemed a brighter place the next morning. Rachel hummed as she went through her morning toilette. The connecting door stood open between their rooms, and she could look through into Michael’s room, where he stood, shaving. She watched him, a small, secret smile hovering about her lips.
They had made love again this morning, waking in the pale predawn to the uncommon pleasure of lying in each other’s arms. This time their lovemaking had been slow and dreamy, culminating in the same shattering burst of passion. And Rachel had known that somehow, after all this time, with all that lay between them, she had fallen in love with her husband. She was not sure how it had happened or when, whether it had happened gradually during the years of their marriage or had bloomed only recently within her when she had looked at him as a different person instead of the familiar man she had known all this time.
It didn’t matter, really, she thought. All that mattered was that she loved him. She did not know if he loved her still, or if it had died during the long, barren years of their marriage. But she was certain now that he wanted her, and that was enough for the moment. He would come to love her again; she would make sure of it. And for right now, the pleasure of their lovemaking was enough.
Michael came to the doorway between their rooms, wiping away the remains of his shaving soap from his chin and smiling at her.
“I think the best thing to do now is to talk to that footman again,” he said. “Hargreaves. He is our best link to the person who is behind all this. If, as we surmise, our unknown criminal hired him to poison Birkshaw’s wife, he must have contacted Hargreaves in some way. He might even have spoken to him directly.”
So, a short while later, yet another hansom was setting them down in front of the former footman’s residence. They climbed the outside set of stairs, and Michael rapped sharply on the door. To their surprise, the door moved beneath his touch, opening a few inches. It had not been completely shut, only pulled to. Michael and Rachel glanced at each other, a sense of alarm growing in them.
“Stay back,” Michael warned, putting out an arm to shield Rachel and hold her back as he pushed open the door and stepped cautiously inside. “Hargreaves?”
Rachel, now behind Michael’s back, could see nothing, but she heard his sudden sharp intake of breath. Then Michael rushed forward quickly and dropped down on one knee on the floor. Rachel started in after him and stopped abruptly as she realized that Michael was kneeling beside a man on the floor. Michael’s body blocked the man’s chest, but she could see his legs splayed out limply on the floor and his head, turned toward her, eyes open and staring lifelessly. Blood smeared the side of his face.
A small, shrill cry escaped her. “Michael! Is he—”
“Yes,” he replied tersely. “Hargreaves is dead. Go back outside, Rachel. There is no need for you to see this.”
Rachel was not inclined to argue with him. She turned and walked back out the door and plopped down on the top step. She leaned her head forward, fighting the rush of dizziness. She had never seen anything as horrible as the sight of that man’s eyes, pale and devoid of life. She swallowed hard and drew a ragged breath.
There was the sound of footsteps behind her, and she turned to see Michael step out onto the landing. He glanced around, then trotted down the stairs and called to a boy playing in the street, promising him a shilling if he returned with a constable. He returned to where Rachel sat.
“Are you all right? I cannot leave here until the constable comes, but I could hail you a cab and send you home,” he told her, leaning over her in concern.
Rachel turned up her face to him and smiled wanly. “No. I will be fine. I felt a little light-headed for a moment, but it has passed.”
“Good.” He sat down beside her on the step and took her hand. “I am sorry you saw that.”
Rachel nodded, saying candidly, “So am I. Oh, Michael, did someone shoot that man?”
He frowned. “It doesn’t look like it. There was a pistol on the floor beside him, and he left a note.”
“A note? You mean…are you saying he committed suicide?”
“It appears so.”
“What did the note say?”
“That he poisoned Mrs. Birkshaw with arsenic, day by day, in the food he carried to her room.” Michael pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it, handing it to her. “But, as you can see, he also says that Mr. Birkshaw paid him a healthy sum to do it. He was supposed to do it while Birkshaw was out of town, but he felt too guilty and could not finish what he started.”
Rachel’s eyes ran quickly down the page, reading, “‘So Mr. Birkshaw himself came back and did it. I cannot keep silent. I cannot live with the guilt any longer.”’
She stopped and looked at Michael numbly. He took the piece of paper from her fingers and folded it back up.
“I don’t believe it,” Rachel said flatly. “I cannot believe that Anthony killed her.”
“A deathbed confession is a pretty powerful piece of evidence,” Michael pointed out.
“Yes, and it is very convenient, too,” Rachel replied tartly. “Just as we are about to question the man, he writes a note implicating Anthony in the crime, then shoots himself, rendering it impossible to question him about his confession.”
“Still, it seems rather unlikely that he killed himself simply to implicate Birkshaw in the crime.”
“And do you know for sure that he killed himself? Could not someone else have shot him and left the gun there to make it look as if he shot himself? Do you know that the gun was even his?”
“No. But there is the note.”
“Which anyone could have written. I am not familiar with the man’s hand. Are you?”
“No, of course not.” Michael pulled out the note and looked at it again. “It is full of misspellings, as if an uneducated person wrote it.”
Rachel cast her eye over the clumsy, uneven printing. “Or as if someone was clever enough to make it appear that an uneducated person wrote it. We don’t even know whether or not Hargreaves could read and write.”
“You’re right.” He sighed. “It does tie everything up rather neatly. In my experience, life is seldom that neat. But why would anyone kill the man and go to so much trouble in order to implicate Birkshaw? Who hates him? Besides me, of course.”
“I don’t know. Maybe they are doing it to throw you off, give you a false scent. So that you will go haring off after Anthony and not pursue the real killer.” Rachel reached out and took Michael’s arm as a thought struck her. “What if the man who is behind all those crimes is alarmed because you are investigating some of them? What if he set up this entire thing to throw you off? To distract you from the crime you were working on? To set you looking into something that really had nothing to do with the rest of it but that you would be bound to investigate? Suppose someone knew that you would be ready to believe the worst of Anthony, and they used that?”
He looked at her for a long moment. “But who would know that? No one knows how much I dislike Anthony or why. No one was privy to what happened that night except the three of us and your father. Ravenscar would not have told anyone.”
“No. But perhaps whoever did this would not have to know the details. Perhaps someone saw that, well, that Anthony and I seemed to…have a partiality for each other before you and I were engaged. It would not be a great leap of thinking to assume that you might carry some jealousy toward the man. Perhaps Anthony even told someone or other what happened, or part of it. Or this man knew Anthony and knew that he disliked you and suspected the feeling was mutual.”
Rachel could see that Michael was considering her reasoning, and she pressed her point. “Why would Anthony have come to ask you to find out what happened to his wife if he were the one who killed her? That would be the last thing he would want. And if this is all part of some larger conspiracy, as it seems to be, do you honestly think that Anthony is orchestrating it?”
Michael looked at her con
sideringly. Tendrils of jealousy still twisted within him a little at Rachel’s championing of the fellow, but he knew that they were the result of emotion, not reason. Rachel had never been unfaithful to him; he knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt after last night. It had been years since what had happened between Rachel and Birkshaw, and they had not even seen one another until recently, when he came to her for help. Michael believed implicitly in Rachel’s honor and integrity.
“No,” he admitted finally. “I don’t.”
“I have no interest in Mr. Birkshaw,” Rachel told him seriously. “I do not plead his case because of any feeling for him but because of what I think. I don’t want you to make a mistake because you are affected by emotion, for I know that then you would bitterly regret it.”
Michael smiled faintly and raised her hand to his lips. “As soon as the constable arrives,” he said, “we will go visit Birkshaw and see what light he can shed on this. There is something about all this that seems planned.”
The constable arrived not long after, and Michael left him with the letter and the body, pleading a need to take his wife home from such a grotesque and upsetting scene. As soon as they were able to hail a hansom, they drove to Birkshaw’s house.
The butler showed them into the drawing room, and a moment later Anthony hurried in, looking eager. “Lord Westhampton. Lady Westhampton. This is an unexpected pleasure. Can I take from this that you have discovered anything?”
“Yes. We have found a dead body,” Michael told him bluntly.
Rachel let Michael take the lead, setting herself to closely watch Anthony for his reactions. He paled now at Michael’s words, his eyes widening. “Good Gad, man. Who?”
“Your former footman. The one who brought your wife her meal tray.”
“Someone killed him?”
“Why would you assume that?”
“I don’t know. Because he was not ill or old, I guess. Was it an accident, then?”
“It appears to be suicide.”
“He killed himself! But why? Not because—was he responsible for Doreen’s death?”
“The note he left says that you are.”
Anthony stared at Michael, speechless, his face turning whiter even than his spotless linen shirt. He sat down abruptly in the nearest chair. “My God! But why—why would he do such a thing?”
“He said that you paid him to put arsenic in Mrs. Birkshaw’s food, that he was to do it while you were gone. But he could not bring himself to finish her off, so you returned, he said, and did the deed yourself.”
Anthony’s mouth dropped open. “Sweet heaven! How could he do this? Why?” He looked pleadingly at Michael, then Rachel. “I did not do it, I swear. You must believe me. I would never have harmed Doreen. Sometimes she was silly, and she was not a woman of great grace or intellect, but there was no wickedness in her, and I never felt anything more than irritation now and then. We did not quarrel. We had a pleasant life. I would not—I could not—”
He turned away, shoving his fingers distractedly through his carefully arranged locks. “Will people believe this, do you think? Will—will the authorities?”
Michael shrugged. “It is a difficult accusation to overlook, Mr. Birkshaw.”
“But it is untrue! It’s unfair! I have no opportunity to defend myself against him.”
“Yes,” Michael agreed without any sign of sympathy. “I would say your only hope is to help us find out what really happened. I don’t think that you have been honest with us, have you, Mr. Birkshaw? There is more here than what you have told us.”
Anthony turned to him, startled. “What do you mean?”
Rachel read the guilt that flitted across Anthony’s face. She jumped to her feet, anger surging through her. “Michael is right! You have been lying to us! Anthony, how could you!”
“No! I mean, I did not hurt Doreen. I swear that to you on all that is holy that I did not harm my wife.” He stopped, then sighed. “But…yes…I was not…entirely truthful with you.”
“You lied to us? Why?” Rachel asked. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand it, either!” Anthony shot back. “What I told you was all true. I didn’t lie. Everything happened as I told you. Doreen died, and we all believed that she had caught some illness or other. Then, after I came to London, I got those letters that I told you about. The bit of the arsenic label, and then the other one saying that I owed someone a favor in return. I—it scared me. I realized that someone must have killed Doreen and that now they expected me to help them. I—I assumed that they were threatening to make the authorities think that I had done it if I didn’t help them. Well, you see how it has turned out—they have made it look as if I killed her. And I did what he asked!”
“What? Who? Who asked you?” Michael barked.
“I don’t know! That is what is so ghastly about it! Oh, God! It is all ghastly!” Anthony pulled at his hair, leaving it sticking out in clumps. His face was stamped with confusion and desperation, and Rachel thought that he might burst into tears at any moment.
“All right, Anthony, calm down,” she said firmly but quietly, taking his arm and leading him over to a chair, then pushing him gently down into it. She sat down directly in front of him and looked straight into his eyes. “Now, just tell me exactly what happened. Michael has to know everything if he is to help you.”
Birkshaw nodded, seeming somewhat less distraught. “All right. What I did not tell you before was that after I got the second note, I received a third. It said—it said that I was to become reacquainted with you.”
“What?” Michael and Rachel said at the same time. Michael strode over to where Birkshaw sat.
“What do you mean, ‘reacquainted?”’ he asked, looking thunderous.
Birkshaw gazed up at him blankly. “I don’t know. That is all it said. I think it read, ‘Pick up your friendship with Lady Westhampton again.’ Or something like that. I assumed that he meant I should call on her. I have no idea why. It made no sense to me.”
“No doubt because it is senseless,” Michael commented tartly.
“Was it the footman?” Anthony asked. “Hargreaves? Is he the one behind this?”
“No,” Michael responded tersely. “If he had sent you those notes, he would have asked you for money to keep from implicating you. Most people would have.”
“It seems absurd,” Anthony went on. “I can see that anyone would disbelieve me if I told them. But it is the truth.”
“Where is the note about Rachel?” Michael asked. “I want to see it.”
Birkshaw looked sheepish. “I—it made me angry, and I wadded it up and tossed it in the fire. I don’t have it. I see now that I should have kept it. It would be proof of some sort, but…well, I didn’t think.”
“Is that why you came to me and asked for Michael’s help?” Rachel probed. “Did the note tell you to do that?”
“Oh, no. You see, at first, I thought, ‘I won’t do it.’ I wasn’t going to let him scare me, whoever he was. But then it seemed like such a little thing to do, especially compared to people suspecting me of killing Doreen. And it made me wonder, you know, if someone really had killed her and why. Just so I would pay you a call or two? That’s insane.”
“It would certainly seem so,” Michael agreed.
“Then I remembered what Lord Arbuthnot said about you, Westhampton—about your having solved things when the Bow Street Runners could not. And it seemed to me that that was the way out of my predicament!” His face brightened a little as he remembered his cleverness. “I decided that I would call on you, Rachel, and whoever it was would know, I suppose, that I had done so. And he would not do anything to me. But while I was there, I would ask you to get your husband’s help on the matter. And perhaps that would get me out of this thing altogether.”
He paused, looking from one to the other in a hangdog way. “I’m sorry. I should have told you all about it right from the beginning. I realize that now. You are suspicious of me because
I did not. It was just—I felt like such a coward for giving in to the fellow and calling on you. And it all seemed so ridiculous—I was sure you would think me a fool. I am sorry,” he finished lamely.
“Is there anything else you have not told us?” Michael asked, looking stern. “Any more instructions from this man?”
Anthony shook his head. “No. He has sent me nothing. I cannot understand why anyone would do this to me. I did what he asked. Do you think he knows that I asked you for help?”
“It’s possible.”
“I don’t understand. Why would anyone do this to me? Who hates me that much?”
“I’m not sure that it is you at whom all this is aimed,” Michael replied, looking grim.
CHAPTER 18
Michael turned to Rachel. “I think it is time we took our leave. If I were you, Mr. Birkshaw, I would be very careful over the course of the next few days. I will try to find out what is going on as quickly as I can. But I cannot rule out the possibility that you are in danger.”
Anthony stared back at him, his eyes so wide that they looked as if they might pop out of his head at any moment.
Michael and Rachel left him there contemplating his future and started walking toward home. For a moment they strode along in silence, then Michael burst out, “What poppycock! That is the biggest bag of nonsense I have ever heard.”
“You don’t believe him?” Rachel asked, looking at her husband.
“No, but it is so idiotic that I cannot believe anyone would make up a story so feeble!” Michael exclaimed. “If he had really killed his wife, surely he could have come up with a more intelligent story than that.”
Rachel nodded. “Yes. Well, I think we know one thing for certain. Anthony could not be the mastermind behind this…this web of crime. He is far too stupid.”
Michael let out a short bark of laughter and turned to look at her. Rachel’s blunt statement let him know, more than any honeyed words of love and desire could have, that he had no need to feel jealousy where Anthony Birkshaw was concerned.