by Paula Paul
“It’s really the place to be seen.” Isabel was making an all too obvious effort to appear happy as Nicholas helped her from the carriage. “Let’s do sit inside, though, Nicky, dear. I’m afraid that, under the circumstances, I won’t look my best in sunlight.” She dabbed at her eyes again.
They were shown to a table inside, where the ambiance was decidedly more that of dim light and discreet secrecy. At Isabel’s suggestion, they ordered a bottle of very expensive, but very elegant French wine.
When Isabel finished two glasses of wine and had started on her third, Nicholas made several attempts to steer the conversation back to exactly what it was Isabel thought would stop Lord Dunsford’s cruelty, but always without success. She even managed to brush off his direct question of her being in Eddie’s room the night he was killed.
“Oh Nicky, Lady Winningham is such a gossip. You certainly don’t believe her, do you? But let’s not talk about her. What, pray tell, are you doing back in London so soon? You seemed to be quite taken by that Gladstone woman.” Isabel gave him a coquettish look over her glass. “I should have thought you’d find an excuse to stay there with her. And haven’t you been called as a witness for the prosecution along with the rest of us?”
“It’s true,” Nicholas said, deciding to return to his original mission. “I shall be a witness, as, I suppose, shall you, but since we have a few days, I decided to come see Lord Winningham, but he’s in Norfolk.”
“Winnie?” Isabel drained her glass and giggled. “He’s not in Norfolk. He’s gone back to Newton. He’s to be a witness as well.”
“But so soon?”
“Soon?” Isabel said a bit too loudly, so that Nicholas glanced around to see who might overhear. “Of course it was too soon. And Jerry’s there too soon, also.”
“Jeremy’s already in Newton?”
“Yes.” Isabel slurred the word so it sounded like “yesh.” She leaned closer. “If you ask me, they’re both there to make sure nothing goes wrong and that horrible girl will hang, and that will be the end of it.”
“How will they do that?” Nicholas asked.
Isabel’s laugh was cynical. “Money, my dear. They can buy people, you know. Prospective jurors, judges.”
“But why?” Nicholas asked, although he feared he knew the answer.
“Why?” She was weaving slightly. “Well, Jerry kept saying something about having to make sure I hadn’t caused a scandal. He’s afraid my little affair with Eddie will come out at the trial and it will embarrass him.” She giggled. “Or make it appear as if he has a motive to kill poor Eddie for ravaging me. So he’s back there doing all he can to see that it doesn’t come out. But I assure you,” she said, waving her glass, “Jerry couldn’t care less about who I sleep with. He only cares about how it affects his reputation. Could you pour another glass for me, Nicky, dear?”
Nicholas obliged her with another glass. “But why would Lord Winningham feel the need to go back so soon?”
“Winnie?” She giggled again. “He’s got his own worries.” She leaned forward weaving slightly. “If you ask me, he had more reason than anyone to kill the poor bastard.” She took another sip of wine and licked her lips. “Winnie’s not exactly a saint, you know, and Eddie caught him with his pants down, and some other poor bastard’s down too, it seems.” She giggled and sputtered, spewing wine all over Nicholas.
When Nicholas had mopped his front off with a napkin and Isabel had helped herself to another glass of wine, she was then inclined to gossip about other people, no matter how hard Nicholas tried to steer the conversation. When she had finished the bottle of wine, Nicholas led her with both of his hands firmly on her arm, out to her carriage and instructed the driver to take them home.
Once he had seen Isabel safely inside, he instructed his own driver, who had waited for him, to take him home where he immediately made preparations to return to Newton. Isabel had substantiated Lord Winningham’s motive, as well as confirmed that perhaps others, including herself and Jeremy Atewater, had their own motives. But there was still work to be done. He wanted to know if there was more in Eddie’s past that could more definitely point to someone’s motive to kill him. He would try to use his status as barrister and kinsman, however distant, to talk to banks, his club, his solicitor.
Isabel found herself indelicately ridding herself of the contents of her stomach soon after Nicholas left. She was obliged to take a long nap and awoke late in the day with a headache. It was more than the liquor that made her head ache, though. She knew what Nicholas Forsythe was trying to learn from her. She only hoped Jeremy would be successful at buying whoever he had to buy.
Chapter Thirteen
Alexandra felt sickened at the words she had just heard. “Quince is dead?” Her voice trembled as she spoke.
The two boys didn’t answer, but they exchanged glances, wide-eyed and frightened.
She glanced at first one and then the other. “How was he killed?” She found that her voice was still weak.
“’E was tied up first, so’s he couldn’t struggle, by my reckoning. Then ’e was choked to death. Had a rope around ’is neck ’e did,” the older of the two said. Both had dirty brown hair, but the older one had a thin face and a long, lanky body. He appeared to be about sixteen, close to Elsie’s age. The younger one’s face still had the plump roundness of a child, and he couldn’t have been more than eight or nine.
Alexandra felt a moment of shock at the boy’s words. “A rope around his neck…”
“Strangled he was, same as the earl hisself.” The boy’s voice was little more than a whisper. He expressed the same thought Alexandra was thinking.
“How did you know how Earl Dunsford died?” she asked.
Both boys looked frightened, as if they were afraid they’d said too much. The younger one, Artie, shook his head as if to deny it, and the older one shrugged as he answered, “A person hears things, don’t he? On the streets, I mean. Some are sayin’ that girl done it. Strangled Earl Dunsford, then cut ’im with a knife.”
“But she couldn’t have killed Quince,” Alexandra said.
The boy shook his head slowly. “Not while she’s in chokey.”
“Then who killed him?” Alexandra leaned toward the boy, her voice urgent.
Both boys looked frightened, and the older one glanced around as if he might be afraid someone was listening. “I…don’t know,” he said. He looked as if he might bolt from the room, so Alexandra spoke again, quickly.
“Why did Quince tell you to come here?”
Artie, who was eyeing the needle and catgut Nancy was preparing, answered this time. “He said you could ’elp us. Said you was a doctor, didn’t he, Rob?” It was the first time Alexandra had heard the older boy’s name. “Told us to come here last night, but we was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
Rob, who was holding the wrist of his damaged right hand with his left, nudged the younger boy, as if to tell him he was saying too much, but Artie, the younger, kept talking. “It’s got so dangerous. Quince says we never should have got greedy and hooked up with them London…” He stopped speaking when Rob gave him a second, particularly sharp nudge in the ribs with his elbow.
“The boy don’t know what ’e’s saying. ’E’s just a baby seein’ the bogeyman everywhere. ’Course we wasn’t afraid. We just thought we wasn’t hurt bad at first.”
Alexandra could see the fear in Rob’s eyes, in spite of his denial. Artie was crying, but trying hard not to show it. Both were terribly afraid of something. But what? And why?
“It wasn’t just that you was a doctor. Quince said you seemed like a person we could trust,” Artie blurted. It sounded like a plea for help. “Said maybe if things got bad, we should…” Once again he was silenced by a sharp jab in the ribs.
Alexandra studied both of their faces in silence for a moment. Finally she spoke. “Do you think that whoever killed Quince will come after the two of you as well?”
Neither of them spoke, but
she saw the answer in their frightened eyes.
“Who?” she asked. “If you want me to help you, you’ve got to tell me who you’re afraid of.”
Neither boy spoke. Although Artie looked as if he wanted to, his friend’s hard grip on his forearm was a warning against it.
“Is it someone in London?”
“We’re afraid of no one.” Alexandra saw Rob’s grip on his companion tighten as he spoke.
She stood up suddenly. “You’re lying.” she said sharply, deciding to take another tack. “You know who killed Quince, and I think you know who killed Earl Dunsford as well. You can both go to prison if you know who the murderer is and you don’t tell. Or if you don’t go to prison, you both know you could be killed too.”
“But we don’t know his name.” Artie was crying so hard he could hardly speak.
Rob grabbed both of his shoulders and shook him hard. “Stop yer blubbering, ye bloody—”
Alexandra grasped Rob’s hands firmly and pulled them from the crying boy. “Leave him alone. He has a right to be frightened, and if you had your wits about you, you’d be frightened as well.” She sat down beside the crying child while Nancy stood by silently, observing everything with her sharp eyes and keen mind. “You said you don’t know his name, but do you know what he looks like? Anything about him?” Alexandra asked.
Artie sobbed, finding it difficult to speak, but before he could say anything, the older boy blurted, “What ’e means is, we know it’s some bloke from London. ’E came to Quince with an offer. Said ’e wanted us to be ’is partner. Said ’e would be the head and we would be the hands.”
It was clear that the more they revealed, the more frightened both boys became. Rob had dropped his voice to a whisper, and he couldn’t stop darting his eyes about, looking out the window, at the door, and all around the room as if he expected someone to be listening.
“He was going to be the head, and you were going to be the hands? To do what?” Alexandra tried to keep her voice low and calm, but both boys dropped their eyes and refused to look at her, Artie still sniffling. She pressed further. “To steal something? Jewels perhaps?” She remembered how, during dinner at Montmarsh, there had been a chance remark about a ring of young thieves in the area stealing jewelry and money. The constable had mentioned it as well. Elsie’s beau, George Stirling, they’d all said, was part of it.
“Ye ’ave yer fine life here in yer warm house, Miss. Ye can’t know what it’s like to ’ave a lank belly and the cold o’ winter on ye.” Rob spoke up suddenly, sounding troubled and defensive. “All I ever took was a loaf o’ bread and maybe once or twice a shank o’ meat. All right, and maybe once or twice a few coins for a glass of ale. But no rich gent was going to miss them coins, now was ’e? And Artie here,” he nodded to indicate the younger boy, “’e was just gettin’ into it, and Quince had took ’im under ’is wing. Quince was like that, ’e was.”
The boy stopped suddenly. Alexandra was afraid to speak, afraid if she urged him to say more, he would run away.
“Quince never meant no harm,” the boy said, finally, looking down at his hands again. “’E come to us with what the London bloke had said. Said the bloke would tell us when it was ripe to pick the jewels, said ’e would tell us where. It was mostly ladies, it was, and Quince said we wouldn’t be takin’ anything they really needed. And we wasn’t to hurt a one of ’em, Quince said. We was to get a cut of the loot, see.”
Alexandra nodded, holding her breath, hoping he would continue.
“I know what yer wantin’, Miss,” the boy said. “Yer wantin’ the name o’ the London bloke, but Quince never told us. We only seen ’im once, and the light weren’t too good.” Artie, wide eyed, moved his head slowly from side to side to show he didn’t know either. “It started goin’ bad, though, when Georgie got it, only he—”
This time it was Artie who stopped his friend from saying more with a hand laid firmly on his arm.
“When Georgie got it,” Rob continued, giving young Artie a reassuring look, “Quince said ’e’d had enough and ’e was sorry ’e got us into it. But it was too late, wasn’t it? Now Quince is dead and we is next.”
“Is that why Quince told you to come to me?” Alexandra asked. “Because he knew you were in danger?”
“’E said we could trust you, Miss. And if we can’t, well then, we is dead any way you look at it.”
Alexandra stood and paced a few steps, then turned back to the boys. “Did anyone see you come here?”
“We got our ways,” the older boy said.
“Am I to assume that means no one saw you?”
Both boys looked at each other, then back at Alexandra and nodded their agreement.
Alexandra paced a few more steps. “Obviously you can’t leave here.” She glanced at Nancy, who gave her a troubled look but said nothing. Alexandra went to the basin to wash her hands again, then picked up the needle. “This is going to hurt.”
Nancy sat down beside Artie and took his hands. “Tell me about yourself, boy. How did you come to be in Newton?”
Alexandra punctured the boys flesh with her needle, and he howled loudly, not at all distracted by Nancy’s tactics. Rob’s face grew pale and he turned away. By the time she had finished, Artie was limp and leaning against Nancy. Alexandra prepared a poultice with the mixture of herbs Nancy had brought in, then bandaged the side of Artie’s face and jaw. Next, she turned her attention to Rob’s hand and cleaned it thoroughly. She could see the wound was less serious than Artie’s, and the bleeding had long since been stemmed. With Nancy’s help, she brought the edges of the wound together and secured them with adhesive plaster and wrapped a light bandage around his hand.
She stood then, and moved toward the door, motioning for Nancy to follow. “Wait here,” she said to the boys, ignoring the alarmed look that spread across their faces.
“That one is no more than a baby.” Nancy whispered when they were in the hallway. “What are we going to do about them?”
“I want you to prepare Father’s room for them.”
“Prepare your father’s room for them? Miss Alex, I don’t have to tell you who those two ruffians are, do I?”
“I am fully aware of who they are.” She was also fully aware that, in spite of her words, the tone of Nancy’s voice made her warning sound less than convincing.
Nancy made another weak attempt at protesting. “One of ’em’s just a baby, but still…”
“Just prepare the room, Nancy, and take them up now, before patients begin to arrive. Needless to say, no one is to know they are here, and they are not to come out of the room. We will take their meals to them.”
Nancy pointed a finger at Alexandra and opened her mouth to protest, but she swallowed her words and said simply, “Yes, Miss Alex,” before she left to prepare the room.
Neither boy protested when she told them they would be staying in her house, but they both seemed edgy when Nancy came to fetch them. She was still trying to be angry. “If your father was alive…” she said as she entered the surgery, but she never finished her sentence. Instead, she looked at Artie’s round, wounded face, and Alexandra could see her anger dissolve. “Come along, boys.” She took each by the arm and led them out. “A nice hot meal will do you good, and maybe even a bath, then we’ll see how you like…”
Alexandra made her morning rounds, eager, for once, to hear the local gossip, hoping it would lend some insight into the murders. The talk was not of murder, however, but of the impending trial for Elsie O’Riley and of Priscilla Blackburn’s funeral. The Blackburn funeral would, of course, be considerably less grand than that of the earl. No members of Parliament nor any representative of the queen would attend. It was to be held that afternoon. No funeral was mentioned for the young man called Quince. In fact, his death had caused hardly a stir.
“One o’ them ne’er-do-wells down at the pier kilt, was he?” Nell Stillwell, the butcher’s wife, said. “Serves ’im right, I says. They’ve broke into our shop
more than once to relieve us of our finest cuts.” Her eye was worsening, and Alexandra had begun to fear it would require surgical removal. She remembered Nell’s words, If some things would but die, ’twould end our troubles, wouldn’t it?
When she visited Mrs. Pickwick at Montmarsh, she was disturbed to see that her mental state had worsened again.
“A body ought not to be up walking around when he’s dead. It seems a downright sin.” Her voice was strained as she busied herself packing things into a valise. “I seen him again. The late Earl hisself.” Her eyes were wide with fright as she turned to Alexandra.
“Mrs. Pickwick, you must not fret over this.” Alexandra spoke as soothingly as possible. “You’ve been under a great deal of strain. The mind can play tricks on a person in that state.”
“I’ll be leaving soon,” Mrs. Pickwick said, ignoring Alexandra’s attempt at comforting her. “I’ve sent for my brother in Colchester to come fetch me. I won’t be staying around where unnatural things are happening.”
“Mrs. Pickwick—”
The cook shook her head. “Now don’t go telling me it’s because of the strain of Lord Dunsford’s death. It’s got nothing to do with strain, I tell you.” She placed a folded winter jacket into the valise. “Why that poor stable boy, Jamie, seen him too. Near scared him out of his wits, it did. Now he’s run off.”
“He’s seen Lord Dunsford? Are you sure? Did he tell you that?” Alexandra was pushing her, thinking if she could force her to think rationally and logically she would come out of her frightened state of mind.
“Sure he told me,” Mrs. Pickwick said. “Come running in, he did, bawling and scared out of his wits, claiming he saw Lord Dunsford running down the driveway.”
“When?” Alexandra asked, still pressing her.
Mrs. Pickwick shook her head. “I don’t know. Time means nothing to me in my state.” She closed her eyes. “Yesterday, I think it was. Yes, the same night Mr. Forsythe left.”
