Thief's Mark

by Carla Neggers

  “Would you like to borrow a book?”

  “Not tonight. Right now I prefer to think of the Cotswolds as a peaceful place free of murder.”

  “I do, too,” Oliver said quietly.

  “Blast.” She breathed deeply, her warm eyes on him. “Just for a few hours—a moment—I’d like to go back to that summer afternoon when we were children and threw stones in the stream. Do you remember, Oliver?”

  His throat tightened. “I remember.”

  “It was before your parents were killed in front of you. Before I realized my parents could do quite nicely without me. We were lucky, Oliver. We are lucky. We had no worries then, that summer day. Not everyone gets that in life.”

  “Henrietta...”

  She unfolded her legs, dropped her feet to the floor and jumped up. “That’s as maudlin and philosophical as I get. Now, assuming nobody’s bugged your house...” She paused. “Well, it’s entirely possible someone has bugged your house. But I don’t care. Was Davy Driscoll an artist? A painter? Did he tell you about the paintings before he died? What they mean?”

  Oliver stared at her over the rim of his glass, focused on the strong peated scent of the Bracken whiskey. He didn’t speak.

  Henrietta went on. “Driscoll was a lying, murdering sod and I believe he stole the paintings we found in his car out of the Kershaws’ cottage,” Henrietta said. “The painting of Queen’s View that Cassie found in the cottage itself is an outlier. The rest must have been in the cottage woodshed, or she, Tony, Eugene or Nigel would have found them by now. As far as I know, none of the paintings are signed.”

  “Every one of them was of an iconic scene in Scotland,” Oliver said. “Castles, Celtic crosses, lochs, coastline. Practice studies, I imagine.”

  “I didn’t notice one of the ruin where you were taken. Did you?”

  “No.”

  Oliver managed another sip from his glass. His hands trembled. That never happened. He saw that Henrietta noticed. She was calm, centered—a highly trained, experienced intelligence officer, he realized. A member of a clandestine team? A team leader? It didn’t matter. He now knew why she was here.

  He got to his feet. His hands were no longer trembling. “You want to go to Scotland to see where I was taken.”

  “I’m already packed. You can throw a few things together since you used your go-bag to sneak off to Ireland.” Reddish-brown curls drooping onto her forehead, her long, flowered skirt dusting the floor, she pointed one finger vaguely toward the entry. “We’ll take my car.”

  “I’ll let Martin know. You can drive.” Oliver gave her a quick smile. “I understand MI5 has the best drivers in the world.”

  18

  The York family plot was located in front of a stone wall at the back of the village cemetery. It was dusk, the long June night slowly giving up its light. On another quiet evening, Emma would have held Colin’s hand. Now, though, they stood side by side, not touching, among the headstones, some upright, some placed flat with the ground. They’d spotted Martin Hambly by the church down the lane and joined him.

  He stared at the headstone for Oliver’s mother, Deborah Summerhill York. “She and Charles were married at the church forty-one years ago. Posey and Freddy Balfour and his wife and their son—Henrietta’s father—attended the ceremony. Anthony Balfour had died by then.” Martin paused without shifting his gaze from the headstone. “I remember the wedding. It was a happy day.” He looked up, turned to Emma and Colin. “Your wedding was a happy day?”

  “Very,” Emma said.

  “The funeral was held at the church here, too. It was Priscilla’s decision. She wanted to keep her only son and daughter-in-law close to her. That was one of the saddest days of my life. The Balfours were here then, too. Posey, Freddy, Henrietta’s parents. Freddy’s wife had died by then. He didn’t have long himself. Henrietta was deemed too young to attend.”

  “Oliver was there?” Colin asked.

  Martin nodded. “He’d experienced the brutality of that night himself. He needed to say goodbye.” He sniffled, tears shining in his eyes. “Henrietta once asked me to come with her to see the graves. She was about twelve. She was determined to see them but she hadn’t wanted to come alone. She said she hadn’t asked Posey to go with her. She knew I visited the graves regularly.”

  “I’m sorry, Martin,” Emma said. “The past few days have ripped scabs off old wounds.”

  “Henrietta and Oliver have gone to Scotland,” he said abruptly, standing straight. “Oliver said the police weren’t keen on the idea but didn’t stop them.”

  Emma felt Colin tense next to her. “Whose idea was this?” he asked.

  “They said it was a mutual decision. They wanted to see the spot where he was taken as a boy. He’s never been back. The paintings in Davy Driscoll’s car got them stirred up.” Martin sighed heavily, his tears vanishing from his eyes. “That’s what they told me, at any rate.”

  Emma could see Martin’s distress, his worry. “Did they say anything else?”

  “Oh, yes. Oliver apologized for making my life impossible. He believes I could have had a buxom wife and a couple of children but for him. Ridiculous, of course. I made my choices in life. They had little to do with him.”

  “Is that what you told him?” Colin asked.

  “Tonight and many times before tonight. I wasn’t destined to marry even before the tragedy. I have women friends and I’ve had the occasional relationship over the years, but I was never the romantic, marrying sort. One would think Oliver would know that by now.”

  Colin paused in front of the grave for Oliver’s grandfather, bent down and touched a begonia set into the soil in front of the headstone. “You’re insulted by his guilt.”

  “It’s patronizing and self-absorbed. It doesn’t respect my autonomy. I told him so.” Martin sucked in quick breath. “He grinned that cheeky grin of his and then he asked me if I’d been in love with his mother. Dear God in heaven. I could have slit his blasted brachial artery myself if I’d had a sharp chisel and could get at him. He’d have flipped me on my arse with one of his karate moves.” Martin paused, looked at Emma with a small smile. “I suppose I shouldn’t talk like that in front of two FBI agents.”

  “How did you answer him?” Emma asked. “Do you mind saying?”

  “I told him I loved Deborah but I wasn’t in love with her. We all loved her.” His voice caught, tears welling again. He brushed the corner of an eye with his knuckle and cleared his throat, composing himself. “She would have wanted a different life for Oliver. His is the life that was made impossible by the violence.”

  Colin stood, flicked mud off the knee of his pants. “I don’t know about that, Martin. Oliver made his choices, too. He’s had fun with his mythology consulting in Hollywood and a few other things.”

  “His thieving, you mean.”

  Martin was definitely in a mood. Emma glanced at Colin and saw that he agreed. “When did you know?” she asked.

  “I still don’t ‘know.’ I’ve drawn a conclusion. I suppose he got to see the world as an art thief. Now he’s an agent for MI5.”

  “Actually,” Colin said, “right now he’s off to Scotland with a beautiful woman. I don’t know that I’d be feeling sorry for him.”

  “She’s MI5, you know,” Martin said with certainty.

  Colin shrugged. “Then I wouldn’t worry about him, either.”

  “The Balfour plot is over there.” Martin gestured across the cemetery to a shaded spot in the opposite back corner. “I always thought Henrietta was more taken with Posey’s gardening than Freddy’s past with MI5, but apparently I was wrong.”

  “It’s easy to get caught up in speculating when you’re under stress,” Emma said. She looked again at Deborah York’s grave. “Is it possible there was more to the relationship Davy Driscoll a
nd Bart Norcross had with Oliver’s parents?”

  “What do you mean?” Martin asked.

  Emma waited a moment before answering. “Could one of them have been in love with Deborah York?”

  Martin gasped. “I can’t imagine, no. It’s hideous to think so.”

  “Did you ever see them together?” Emma asked.

  “I never did, no, but I worked exclusively here at the farm then. Driscoll and Norcross worked in London.”

  “Deborah was the one who hired them,” Colin said.

  “That’s what I’ve always understood. I told the police at the time everything I knew about them. I left out nothing. I’ve remembered nothing new since then—not even after yesterday.”

  Emma felt the soft ground under her, smelled flowers, freshly mown grass and, faintly, dirt in the cool air. “And Oliver? He was the only eyewitness police had to what happened.”

  Martin gaped at her. “What?”

  “How reliable a witness was he?” Colin’s tone was blunt, direct, but not without compassion. “That’s what we’re asking, Martin.”

  He gave a small nod. “It’s what Oliver’s asking, too, I think. He told me he wonders what he missed thirty years ago. I told him it doesn’t matter. It’s never mattered. No one expected anything of him. He was a small boy. It was up to the adults in his life to keep him safe. It was and is up to the police to solve the crimes committed against him and his family. It was never up to him. It still isn’t.”

  “What did he say to that?” Emma asked.

  “He said he’s going to Scotland and we’ll discuss his great-grandmother’s flowerpot when he returns.”

  “And you came out here,” Colin said.

  “I drove. Alfred’s in the car.” Martin squared his shoulders. “I should go. Come by the cottage for Scotch later if you’d like. I still have some of the single malt Nicholas York gave me before he died.”

  Emma thanked him, but Colin was studying him. “Did Nicholas and Priscilla York believe their grandson’s story about the murders and kidnapping?”

  “Davy Driscoll and Bart Norcross are the guilty parties. That’s all that matters.” Martin nodded toward the lane where he’d parked his car. “I must go before Alfred tears apart the seats. He does well in his crate but otherwise he doesn’t like confined spaces.”

  “Did Oliver return him to the cottage yesterday?”

  Martin stopped abruptly, turned to Colin. “No. Alfred wasn’t at the house when Oliver returned from the dovecote. At least, Oliver didn’t see him, and he would have. Alfred has a way of making his presence known.”

  “I bet he does,” Colin said. “Have a good night, Martin.”

  “That’s not possible but thank you.”

  Emma eased next to Colin as they watched Martin walk up the main path through the center of the cemetery. “He has a strong sense of duty to the Yorks,” she said. “I think he might have been happier if Oliver had confided in him more, especially about his work with MI5.”

  “Batman’s Alfred was in on most of Batman’s secrets. I wouldn’t be surprised if Martin has known more about what Oliver gets up to than he lets on.” Colin nodded to the opposite corner of the bucolic cemetery. “Why don’t we take a look at the Balfour graves?”

  They walked across the well-maintained grounds to a simple plot in the shade of trees along a stone wall. Freddy Balfour was buried next to his wife, who’d predeceased him. Next to them was Posey Balfour’s grave, a rose carved into the stone beneath her name.

  There was a fourth stone for Anthony Balfour.

  Emma touched the dates under his name. “He was only thirty-five when he died.”

  “His widow is buried in West Hartford, Connecticut,” Colin said.

  “Hartford is an easy drive from Heron’s Cove.” Emma stood straight. “Driscoll could have driven there after he arrived in Boston on Saturday and then driven up to Maine on Monday. He was on a fishing expedition, Colin. His meeting with Finian was a ploy to get information out of him about Oliver and our relationship with him. It wasn’t ever a genuine confession or privileged conversation.”

  “In Finian’s mind it was.”

  “He can change his mind now that he knows the truth.”

  “But we don’t know what they discussed,” Colin said.

  Emma angled a look at him. “I’m the one arguing for a priest to reveal a sacramental confession and you’re the one arguing against it?”

  “It’s the cemetery effect. Not my favorite place.” He gave a mock shudder. “You’re not arguing for Finian to break his vows. You’re arguing for him to accept that the man who came to see him was a lying murderer, and whatever he was up to got him killed.”

  “His death wasn’t an elaborate suicide or an accident,” Emma said.

  “No.”

  “How frustrated is Sam with Finian?”

  “Sam doesn’t get frustrated. He just stays at it. He’s irritated with Fin for calling him dogged, though.”

  Emma smiled, almost breaking into a laugh. “It’ll be good to be home. I want to talk to Finian face-to-face.”

  “Ex-nun-to-priest?”

  “Friend-to-friend,” she said. “Would you ever reveal top-secret information to him?”

  “Nope.”

  “Even if it involved something for which you needed absolution?”

  Colin shuddered. “Damn, Emma. Bad enough we’re in a cemetery.” He grinned at her. “Can we go now? A bar stool at the village pub is calling to me.”

  She laughed, nodding. “Of course.”

  He eased his arm around her. “Did I ever tell you that Mike almost got arrested for sneaking into a cemetery and scaring the bejesus out of Franny Maroney? Pop would have slapped cuffs on him, but another police officer got to Mike first.”

  “Did Franny call the cops on him?”

  “Without blinking. She was laying a wreath on her mother’s grave when Mike pretended to be a ghost. He was eleven and bored.”

  “Mike doesn’t do well bored.”

  “She ended up not pressing charges. Said she wanted to teach him a lesson. Our folks made him wash her windows. Franny said any of us boys could go ahead and spook her. She’d get her whole house cleaned.”

  Emma leaned her head on his shoulder for a moment. “Nothing like that happened in Heron’s Cove.”

  “No cemetery antics?”

  “No,” she said, noticing a spring in Colin’s step when they exited the English cemetery. “We have to pass more graves at the church.”

  “But we’re closer to that bar stool.”

  * * *

  Emma and Colin skipped drinks and returned to their room to pack. They’d leave for London in the morning, salvage a few meetings and then fly to Boston the next day as planned. They’d stay in touch with Sam Padgett as he followed Davy Driscoll’s trail in the US and see him when they were back in New England.

  And they’d talk to Finian Bracken themselves, Emma thought as she zipped shut her suitcase. She’d left out clothes for tomorrow. She’d brought a good jacket but most of the clothes she had with her were more appropriate to a woman on her honeymoon.

  “I get to see you in that dark gray suit of yours,” she said to Colin. “That’s worth going home for.”

  “I wore suits every time I went home to Rock Point.” He hung the one suit he’d taken with him on a hanger. “My family still never bought that I worked at a desk in DC.”

  “What do you most look forward to getting home?”

  “A Maine sunrise. The apple pie you left in the freezer.” He edged toward her. “Carrying you up the stairs to bed.”

  “Jet lag might slow you down.”

  He smiled. “Bet it doesn’t.”

  She returned his smile. “I’m hoping it doesn�
��t.”

  “I’ll touch base with my MI5 contact tomorrow. I doubt he’s unhappy we’re leaving.”

  “How far back do you two go?”

  “My first undercover assignment. He had intel on our arms traffickers.”

  “Four years, then. Did you know Henrietta when she was with MI5?”

  “No.”

  Emma sat on the edge of the bed. “There’s so much about your undercover life that I don’t know and likely never will. We’re on the same team—nominally, at least—but I’m not privy to everything about your work. I wonder even if Yank is.”

  “Not my call.” He shut the closet door and kicked off his shoes. “Imagine all I don’t know about art crimes and never will.”

  “You could find out.”

  “I don’t need to, since Yank has you on his team and trusts you.”

  “For better or worse,” Emma said.

  “Still irritated with Wendell?”

  “His misdeeds weren’t as egregious as I thought but that’s not saying much. At least Lucas didn’t cross any lines.”

  “I’m not sure Wendell did, either, but he got his toe right up to a few.”

  Emma leaned back against the pillows. “We’ve got Finian to worry about, too.”

  “He’s my problem,” Colin said. “Fin’s your friend, too, but Yank will hang him around my neck, not yours. Fin would never be in this mess if I hadn’t run into him on his first day in Maine.”

  “He’s a good friend, Colin, and he hasn’t crossed any lines.”

  Colin grunted. “Tell Sam Padgett that.”

  “I don’t tell Sam anything,” Emma said with a smile. “He’s a smart guy—one of the smartest Yank has—and I trust him completely, but he’s at his best when he’s allowed to sniff his own trails.”

  “Yank likes independent thinkers.”

  “Are you saying I’m a lot like Sam?”

  Colin sat on the bed, stretching out his legs so that his thighs brushed against hers. He still had on his khakis and a polo shirt, but he’d pulled off his shoes and socks. “I’m saying you’re an independent thinker. You’re analytical and a team player, but you wouldn’t be on Yank’s team if you also weren’t able to...how did you put it about Sam? Sniff your own trail?”