Felicity Carrol and the Perilous Pursuit

by Patricia Marcantonio

  “You should have told me, Miss Carrol.”

  “I just did. Besides, the details didn’t seem important until now. Inspector, that shop was in a dreadful condition, so why would the late Sir Trent choose to deal with such people?” She didn’t wait for him to reply. “The answer probably lies in what is not displayed. Didn’t you notice how the clerk got addled when I neared the back room?”

  “I noticed. I could arrest you.”

  “On what charge? Annoying you is not an offense.”

  “Why are you here?”

  She told him about meeting the thief at the East End pub.

  “My lord,” he said. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “Not if I can help it. Now, may I continue?”

  “Nothing will stop you, I suppose.”

  “So what we have is two men who are most likely brothers, based on their physiognomy. One is a thief and the other sells the stolen goods behind closed curtains. Because Thornton Rawlins handled the Trent estate auction, he knew the items to be sold. He and his brother probably chose to steal the items they wanted, such as the flail. Perhaps we might even find the one that killed Lord Banbury. And that means they also killed William. Both men are right-handed and the right height.”

  “I was going to make a return visit to Rawlins House as a Scotland Yard inspector,” Davies said.

  “I realize that. You’re not stupid,” she replied. “Wait, that didn’t come out correctly.”

  He breathed out.

  “In fact, I believe you are quite intelligent, Inspector Davies.”

  “Your praise is overwhelming.”

  “’Cuse me, Inspector. A wagon is coming up the other end of the alley,” said the bobby.

  A wagon with a lone driver stopped in back of Rawlins House.

  “May I borrow your binoculars?” Davies said.

  She handed them over. A man got off the wagon. Doors opened in the back, spilling light into the alley. The ginger-haired man she had met at the King Cock was the driver.

  “That’s the art thief, Inspector.”

  Thornton Rawlins exited the building’s door and joined the other man at the back of the wagon. With all gentleness, they picked up what appeared to be a painting wrapped in a cloth.

  “Well, go get them,” Felicity said to Davies.

  “The thought had occurred to me.” He pointed at her. “You stay back.” To the constable, he said, “Gather the men.”

  The bobby ran around a corner. In a few seconds, he returned with four more officers.

  “Nichols and Branch, watch the front. The rest of you, come with me,” Davies said to the policemen.

  He handed her back the binoculars.

  “Now here’s how Scotland Yard works.” He dashed off.

  He and the officers sneaked up as best they could, but not perfectly.

  “Coppers!” said Thornton Rawlins, who dropped the painting back into the wagon and headed back inside the building.

  Weapons drawn, Davies and the officers ran up to the man near the wagon. “Nothing hasty, or else this will go bad for you,” the inspector said.

  The other Rawlins put his hands up.

  Felicity drew nearer but stayed out of sight.

  “Let’s see what you have in the wagon.” Davies took the canvas off the painting and frowned.

  Two of the other bobbies brought Thornton Rawlins through the doors.

  “He was trying to beat a path to freedom,” one of the officers told the inspector.

  “I thought there was something fishy about you and that girl,” Rawlins said. “Where’d you recruit your lady spy? From the streets?”

  Felicity had never been so insulted. How exciting.

  Davies grabbed Rawlins’s lapels and drew him near. “Another disparaging remark about her and I’ll roll you into the Thames with chains wrapped around your feet.”

  And how exciting to see Davies defend her, even though she irritated him plenty.

  “No need to get bothered,” the man said.

  “You two brothers?” Davies asked them.

  “We ain’t got nothing to say,” Thornton Rawlins replied.

  “Yeah, nothing,” said the other man.

  “You’ll have plenty to say before a magistrate, because this painting is stolen,” Davies said. “And we’re going to see what other treasures you have inside.”

  “We didn’t steal the painting,” the other Rawlins said, using his gentleman’s accent. “We bought it from some bloke at a good price. He was the one who nicked it, not us. Told us he bought it at an auction.”

  Davies smiled. “I do love a good bedtime story. Puts me right to sleep.”

  “It’s the truth, blast it.”

  “Give me his name and I’ll arrest him too.”

  “We ain’t no snitch,” the art thief Rawlins said.

  “Given your interest in art and medieval weapons, you’re also under suspicion for the murders of William Kent, Lord Banbury, and Elaine Charles.”

  “You can’t put those on us,” Thornton Rawlins said.

  “We were both in France when that Kent man died. We can prove it, too,” the art thief said.

  “My brother’s right. You got the wrong gents,” Thornton Rawlins said.

  “Since you’re brothers, maybe they’ll put you in the same cell.” Davies looked to the officers. “Clap irons on them and take them to the yard.”

  “Our pleasure, sir,” replied one of the constables.

  Once the police carriage had rolled away, Davies waved Felicity over. She picked up her skirts and ran. The back of Rawlins House could hold the answers and evidence, and her friend and the others would finally get justice.

  “May I see the painting?” she said.

  “It’s not what you expected.”

  The painting showed a woman, but not Guinevere. A group of women and men from mythology celebrated spring amid a lovely forest.

  “That’s Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera, circa the fourteen hundreds,” she said.

  “The painting was stolen while being transported by train to a museum in Prague for display. No one was hurt during the robbery.”

  “I read that article also, but didn’t give it much thought because the painting had nothing to do with King Arthur. This painting does prove the Rawlins brothers are thieves and may be killers, too.”

  “We need evidence.”

  “Then let’s look.” She went up the stairs to the back of Rawlins House. The space was tidier than the shop. Two dozen wooden crates were stacked around the room. For an hour, she, Davies, and another officer searched for a flail and the items stolen from William Kent, Banbury, and Elaine Charles. In the crates were medieval weapons of all sorts, all in better condition than the ones in the Rawlins House shop. In other crates were more paintings and sculptures. But none of the items were related to the King Arthur legend.

  “There’s got to be something here that links them to the murders.” Frustrated, she kicked one of the crates.

  “The Rawlins brothers might have already sold them. Look, Miss Carrol, without evidence linking them to the murders, we can only arrest them on thievery and dealing with stolen property. If they can prove they were in Paris when William Kent died, then they are innocent of that crime.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll keep looking for something to connect them to the other two murders. Want to kick the crate again?”

  She didn’t but smiled. “No, thanks.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Felicity’s religion was knowledge and the London Library her church. The building of gray Portland stone on St. James’s Square in Westminster became her cathedral whenever she visited London. The floors of book stacks and collections amounted to stairs leading to the celestial of wisdom. Not to mention the tall windows letting in the most ethereal of light. So lovely for reading.

  Carrol Manor boasted a sizable library first started by her grandfather and added on to by her father. Their
books of choice dealt with history, biographies, economics, and business. Helen said her mother had built up the family library by acquiring the many novels and books of poetry and philosophy, not to mention all of William Shakespeare’s works. Her parents had used to sit and read in the evenings, but after her mother’s death, her father had rarely spent time there. That left Felicity to sit in front of the fireplace and read alone in the big room, which is why she preferred the London Library.

  This visit was not for enjoyment, though. In the spacious reading room, she spread out on a table several books and writings. She wanted to know why someone would be driven to kill over King Arthur. She read a copy of The Annals of Wales, or Annales Cambiae in the Latin translation. Written in Welsh and dating back to the tenth century, the chronicles were thought to be one of the primary sources of the Arthur legend and included descriptions of his battles—one in the year 516 where Arthur bore the cross of Jesus for three days and nights, earning the Britons a triumph in the Battle of Badon. Felicity thought that a commanding image. The warrior king in armor humble enough to carry the wooden cross.

  To some scholars, Arthur’s mention in the Welsh chronicles, which documented mostly real historical events, meant he was a real person.

  In the Historia Regum Britanniae, or History of the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey of Monmouth did portray Arthur as a genuine British king who beat the Saxons and organized an empire in the fifth century. Geoffrey was the first to write about Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon, as well as the magical Merlin and unfaithful Guinevere. In Geoffrey’s version, Arthur’s mortal wound came at the hands of his traitorous nephew, Mordred. In other versions of the tale, Mordred was described as Arthur’s son with his half sister. Utterly shocking for the England of Victoria, even if it was fiction.

  Geoffrey described how the fatally wounded Arthur was carried to the mythical island of Avalon by the Lady of the Lake Nimue and her sisters.

  Avalon. Where the mighty sword Excalibur had been forged.

  Avalon. Even the word seemed to carry an enchantment to it.

  From that same century, poet Chrétien de Troyes enhanced the Arthur tale by introducing Lancelot and stories about the quest for the Holy Grail, as well as many romances between knights and ladies of the court. Using these older tales and more, Sir Thomas Malory wrote his Le Morte d’Arthur manuscript, which had been stolen the night William Kent died.

  Her chin resting on a pile of books, Felicity gazed out the beautiful windows of the library. In her childhood, she had loved all those tales of Arthur and his knights. Like other characters in the novels she had read, they had become her fictional family.

  One summer when she was ten, Felicity had asked Helen to take her to Guildford Castle, which was located north of Carrol Manor. Her nanny packed a lunch, and they headed to the castle in the carriage, driven by Matthew. While Helen sewed and Matthew slept under a tree, Felicity explored the former Norman fortress.

  Sitting among the ancient stones, Felicity reread the tale of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. She felt excitement when Arthur married Guinevere, and sadness when Arthur’s wife betrayed him with Lancelot. Sorrow when Arthur died, and finally, amazement when a knight returned Excalibur to the magical Lady of the Lake.

  “Think King Arthur might have stopped at Guildford Castle?” Helen asked Felicity when they ate their picnic lunch.

  “I am positive he did.” Although Felicity realized Arthur was a fairy story, she did not want to spoil the tale for her friend.

  From the wildflowers around the castle, they fashioned hair wreaths and pretended to be ladies-in-waiting in Arthur’s court. Felicity soon grew tired of the wreaths and challenged Matthew to become a knight with her and fight a dragon to protect Helen. Reeds stood in for their swords.

  Returning to Carrol Manor, Felicity snuggled against Helen. This is what it is like to have a family, Felicity had thought, and closed her eyes.

  When she grew older and studied at the university, those stories of Arthur fell away from her. Along with her childhood, they were literally left behind in the nursery. Fantasy had no place in all the science and mathematics she was learning from tutors and at the university. Even in the literature courses, she had to view the Arthurian stories as a serious academic and put aside the magic and fulfilment they had brought into her early life. The characters became leftovers from her imagination—until her discussions with William Kent. Oddly enough, during this murder investigation, she had again found her love of those amazing tales. Sadly, the renewal of affection arose from the death of her friend.

  Emotion aside, she needed to find out why a man would murder out of an obsession with King Arthur antiquities. Her mind craved a pattern to the events of the last three weeks and sped through the observations and deductions she had made. Her catalog of facts was not as long as she would have liked. On her way home from the library, Felicity sighed.

  How many other people had to die before she figured it out?

  * * *

  Felicity strolled the familiar grounds of the University of London. She could have been fifteen again, when she had first applied and gained entry. She had lied and told the university administration at 6 Burlington Gardens she was eighteen. They had never asked for proof of her age, probably assuming a young woman had no reason to tell such a fiction in the name of gaining an education. For four years without a break, she had been blissful in her studies there. She had sought truth.

  She had returned seeking a different kind.

  Professor Clarence Mitchell sat in his office in roughly the exact place where she had last seen him. Thin of face and hands, he bent over his desk writing as if his glasses weighed him down. The chamber was gloriously packed with papers and books as if they protected him from the world beyond. In addition to being an instructor, he was working on a book about the differences and similarities between King Arthur’s Camelot and the present monarchy. Word around the campus was that the book was rife with scandal, which was remarkable for a man whose very pores appeared filled with decorum and a staid academic life.

  Despite the apparent frailness of his body, Mitchell’s voice was formidable when discussing Shakespeare, Milton, Marlowe, and other literary titans in the classroom. Felicity could have sworn she heard his mind revolve like a steam engine during the lectures. He had treated her no differently than the other predominantly male students in his courses. She admired him for that.

  Felicity knocked on the open door to his office.

  “Miss Carrol.” He didn’t raise his head from his writing.

  “How could you tell it was me, Professor?”

  He faced her. His smile was a crack among his wrinkles. “How could I forget that expensive perfume in my English literature courses?”

  She smiled. “May I have a word, Professor?”

  “For you, several. Please sit.”

  “I am working on a special project, and I hope you might help, given your expertise in the Arthur legend.”

  “Did you take that class, Miss Carrol?” He blinked.

  “No, but I wish I had.”

  “Before we start any discussion, let’s have tea.” He rang a bell and asked a reedy youth for a pot and two cups. The lad brought the service quickly. The professor added two teaspoons of sugar, sipped the tea, and grinned. He straightened his neck. “You may proceed at any time.”

  She took a breath and described the murders of Earl William Kent, Viscount Richard Banbury, and Elaine Charles, as well as the thefts of their artwork and documents.

  “I knew William and grieved at his passing. His collection of Arthurian art and documents was superlative. He had a great mind and was a great man, too,” the professor said.

  She dipped her head in agreement.

  “I do find it disturbing and fascinating that medieval weapons were used and that the King Arthur artwork and antiquities were stolen,” the professor said.

  “I have read what I could, but I want to understand why a man would
become so fanatically preoccupied with Arthur.” She scooted up on her chair. “A preoccupation resulting in murder and robbery.”

  His expression became that of an uncle whose niece had asked him to explain the meaning of God in baby words. “Miss Carrol, I could teach a whole course on the subject.”

  “I realize that, Professor. Forgive me for asking you to encapsulate something so expansive, but this is important.”

  “I can tell you what it means to me, and I hope this will suffice.”

  “Anything would help.”

  He shifted about in his professorial robe. “When I was younger, I loved the charm of the Arthurian tales. The divine interventions, such as the passing of Excalibur to Arthur from the Lady of the Lake. The guidance of the wizard Merlin. The revered hunt for the Grail. Camelot ascending the plains like Valhalla on earth.” He closed his craggy eyes. “I could see in my mind Arthur’s mortality slipping away at the Battle of Camlann. Arthur bidding Sir Bedivere to throw Excalibur into the water. How the mystical hand of the Lady rose out of the waters to catch the mighty weapon. And finally, how she drew Excalibur back into the water and into legend.”

  “ ‘There drew he forth the brand Excalibur / And o’er him, drawing it, the winter moon / Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth / And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt: / For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks.’ ” From her extraordinary memory, Felicity recited Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s passage about the sword from his poem about the death of Arthur.

  The professor opened his eyes, which appeared ageless. “So beautiful.”

  “And now how do you feel about the legend?” Felicity asked.

  “Ah, in my older age, I see King Arthur not as myth or a real historical figure but as an allegory for mankind.” His voice turned to one of a parent, bestowing a life lesson on his child. “Arthur was a boy raised without a father or mother. He had to learn to be king and dreamed of a utopia he named Camelot. And for a while, the ideal flourished. But his dream shattered because of human weakness, that of a wife who was unfaithful with one of his knights. And then to die at the hand of his own nephew.”