Regency Wolfe: A de Wolfe Pack Connected World collection of Victorian and Regency Tales

by Mary Lancaster

  Every nerve in her body trembled as if she no longer had the power to control them. Tears of heartache and sadness streamed down her cheeks like rivers of sorrow. He held her close, as if she were a fragile doll that needed comfort. Which was exactly what she felt like.

  Ginny wasn’t sure how long she stayed in his arms, but when she was finally able to face him, dusk had chased away the sunshine and the sky was growing dark.

  “Are you alright?” he said, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead.

  “How can I be?” She was embarrassed by her lack of control. Mortified by her tears. “I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no need. You’ve been under a great deal of pressure.”

  “Why is this happening?” she said as she lifted her gaze to look at him.

  The inspector shook his head. “I don’t know.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and let her lean against him. “What did the voice say to you this time?”

  “She repeated the same words as before. She begged me to please, find her killer. Then you heard me ask her where I should look to find him. And she said…”

  “What did she say?” he asked.

  “She told me to look on bended knees.”

  Will sat behind his desk and wrote down every word the voice had told Ginny. Starting with the last revelation.

  What had the voice meant by telling them to look on bended knees? Was the inspector to search on bended knees? Was the killer one who would be seen on bended knees? That certainly didn’t narrow things down. In the area where Elizabeth had been killed there had been brick masons building a low wall. On bended knees.

  Gardeners could be seen at all hours of the day tending the rose gardens in front of Elizabeth’s pretty row house. On bended knees.

  The cobblestone walk through the park where Elizabeth was killed had been finished just that spring. By men on bended knees.

  And in every church there were clergy. On bended knees.

  There were a thousand possibilities.

  Will shoved at the paper he’d been writing on. Leaping to conclusions would be of no help. But following every lead no matter how bizarre would hopefully reveal more evidence, more clues. The clue that eluded him at the moment, though, was the reason for his reaction to Ginny Wattersfield.

  He’d kissed her. And she’d returned his kiss with more passion than he’d had any right to expect. He’d held her in his arms and she felt as if she belonged there. As if having her there was the most natural thing in the world.

  Will shoved his chair back from his desk and rose to his feet. It had been two days since he’d gone to the cemetery with Ginny. Two days since Lizzy had spoken to her. He wanted to take Ginny back to Lizzy’s grave to see if she could gather more information about Lizzy’s killer, but when he remembered how painful it was for Ginny to go through such an experience, he knew he couldn’t put her though such terror again. Not yet.

  He stood with his arms braced against the window frame and looked out onto the courtyard below. His thoughts were interrupted by a soft knock on the door. Brian Randolph entered the room when Will answered.

  “Miss Wattersfield is here to see you, sir.”

  Will’s heart sped in his chest. “Show her in, Randolph.”

  Randolph stepped to the side and Ginny entered the room. Will took a step toward her after Randolph backed from the room and closed the door behind him.

  “Hello, Ginny,” he said, taking her hand in his and showing her to one of the chairs before his desk.

  “Hello, Inspector.”

  “No need for formality, Ginny. Call me Will.”

  She nodded, then lowered her gaze. Her cheeks turned a warm shade of rose.

  Will sat behind his desk and focused his attention on her. She was dressed in a lovely peach walking suit and wore matching gloves and a jaunty plume in her fashionable hat. Will doubted he’d been in the presence of anyone more beguiling in his life, and the way his body reacted told him as much.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. Although there was high color to her face, there was a telling depth in her eyes that warned him that something was wrong.

  “She’s stopped talking to me,” Ginny said. “I just came from the cemetery. I tried to find out more information but she didn’t answer me when I spoke to her.”

  Will rose from his chair and walked around the desk. He sat in the chair next to her and reached for her hands. “I wish you hadn’t gone there. Especially alone. It’s too hard on you.”

  Ginny shook her head. “What if she won’t speak to me again? How are we going to discover who killed her?”

  “We’ll simply have to figure out what she meant with the information she’s already given us.”

  “But it could be anyone. Have you determined what she meant when she said we’d find her killer on bended knees?”

  “Not as yet,” Will answered.

  Ginny was silent for several moments and Will saw her mind working. “What are you thinking?”

  “I just wondered…” She turned in her chair until she faced him. “Do you have a list of suspects you investigated after Lizzy’s murder?”

  “Yes. But all of them either had alibis for the time Lizzy was murdered, or we couldn’t find proof that they might have anything to do with her death. Our consensus at the time was that Lizzy’s killer must have been a stranger, but that no longer seems the case. Her words suggest that the killer was someone she knew.”

  “Or does it? Why be cryptic if she knows the man’s name?”

  “If it is a man.”

  Silence settled about them as they each contemplated the other’s comments.

  “Alright, then. Who did you suspect?”

  Will looked at her with growing unease. She was asking too many questions. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m only interested in what path your investigation took you. Perhaps if I knew who you considered, something Lizzy said to me might shed some light on one of the suspects.”

  Will studied her, wondering if she knew the insult she had just lobbed his way. He had studied every clue from every angle and every character flaw among his list of suspects. Still, he couldn’t argue with Ginny’s line of thinking. Perhaps it would help to have a fresh pair of eyes look at Lizzy’s murder. “As you know, Lizzy had been seeing Wesley Fletcher. I briefly considered him a suspect, but there was no proof that he had anything to do with her death.”

  Ginny nodded her agreement. “I can see where you would consider him. He had been courting Lizzy and if he thought her attentions were focused on someone else, he may have become angry enough to kill her in a fit of jealous rage.”

  “And if he proposed marriage, it would have been…”

  “On bended knee.”

  She followed his line of thinking so perfectly that she might as well have been reading from Will’s old notes. He rested his elbows on his knees and watched her clever mind work through various scenarios.

  “Who else did you consider?”

  “We considered Lizzy’s neighbor, Rodney Baker. He took an uncommon interest in our investigation. It made me think that he wanted to make sure we weren’t getting too close to discovering that he might have had something to do with Lizzy’s death.”

  “Why did you dismiss him from your list of suspects?”

  “It isn’t that I dismissed him, as much as that I was unable to find any proof to convict him, no tangible evidence that he had in any way planned or carried out the horrid deed. And, one of Elizabeth’s sisters admitted to pressing Baker to get information for her.”

  “Explaining his ‘uncommon interest’. Anyone else?”

  Will shook his head. “There’s always the possibility that the killer was a stranger.”

  Ginny remained silent as if considering that possibility, then she shook her head. “I don’t think the killer was a stranger.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Lizzy said the killer wasn’t what he seemed. To me, that mea
ns she must have known him and thought he was someone she could trust. But he wasn’t.”

  “Not necessarily. You see a rag lady in the market and assume she’s been poor all her life. But she might just be the Duchess of Penwick merely fallen on hard times. She wasn’t what she seemed.”

  Will smiled at her look of surprise, and appreciated her admiring glance.

  “Still, we cannot rule out the possibility that she knew the man,” Will said. He was impressed by the way Ginny’s mind worked and did not want to put a damper on her willingness to help him sort through it all. “Which means I’ll have to review my list of suspects again and see if anyone stands out.”

  “May I ask one more question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Where was Lizzy killed?”

  Will hesitated. He wasn’t sure he wanted Ginny to realize how vulnerable Lizzy had been. Or how close his cousin had been to making it home safely. In the end though, he found no reason to keep that fact from her.

  “Not far from her house. She’d gone with her sisters to a concert in the neighborhood park earlier in the evening. When they were ready to leave, Lizzy wasn’t about. They assumed she must have gone home ahead of them. But she wasn’t there when they arrived home. When she didn’t return later, they sent for me and we searched the area. But her body wasn’t found until the next day. She’d been strangled and left beneath some bushes.”

  “Oh,” Ginny said on a smothered squeak. There was a pained expression on her face.

  “I shouldn’t have told you the details like I did.”

  “I’m glad you did. The fact that she was killed close to home may indicate that she did indeed know her killer. And that she felt comfortable being with him.”

  Will looked at her studious expression and felt again his awe. He was distracted just being so near to her, but she seemed unaffected and was wholly engaged in exploring the case. “I thought the same thing,” he said.

  “You mentioned that she became separated from her sisters. Did they happen to see her talking to anyone? Perhaps she walked home with whoever she’d been talking to.”

  Will shook his head. “I asked that question at the time of Lizzy’s murder. None of her sisters remembered her speaking to anyone.”

  “Then I believe our next move should be to retrace the places your cousin was known to visit.”

  Will gathered her hands in his. “There can be no our in this investigation, Ginny. If anyone does anything, it will be me. Do you understand that?”

  A sheepish expression covered Miss Wattersfield’s face and although she looked contrite, Will doubted that contrition went beyond what he could see on her face.

  “Of course, Will. I was only offering suggestions.”

  “I don’t want you involved in this, Ginny. We’re looking for a killer, not a penny candy thief. Just because we only know of one death that he’s committed, doesn’t mean there aren’t more. Or that he won’t kill again if he feels threatened.”

  “You’re right, Will,” she said, lowering her eyes. “I’ll leave the investigating to you.” With that, Ginny rose to her feet. “And I’ll return to my work at the emporium. I’ve left the work to Della and Lucy too often lately.”

  Will walked Ginny across the room, but before he opened the door, he placed his hands on her shoulders and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Remember what I said. Leave the investigating to me.”

  “I will,” she answered, lifting her gaze to meet his.

  But as he escorted her from the office, he was plagued by the suspicion that she had no intention of following his advice. And she could be in as much danger as Lizzy had been.

  Chapter Seven

  It was Sunday morning, and Ginny sat in a pew near the back of St. Dunstan’s Church. Della sat to her right and Lucy sat to her left. Ginny had chosen this spot so she would have a better view of the people who made up the congregation.

  Even though she’d attended church here for years, this Sunday it seemed as if she’d entered a different chapel altogether. Perhaps that was because today she had a goal in mind. Today she intended to study and evaluate the two men Will had mentioned as possible suspects in Lizzy de Wolfe’s murder: Wesley Fletcher and Rodney Baker.

  She shifted her gaze from one side of the church to the other. Rodney Baker had already arrived. He sat in the same pew as Lizzy de Wolfe’s sisters, next to the oldest de Wolfe sister, Catherine. A wave of unease washed over her. What if Rodney Baker was responsible for Lizzy’s death? What if his focus had turned to another de Wolfe sister?

  Ginny studied Rodney Baker. Although he wasn’t handsome in the way Inspector William de Wolfe was handsome, there was something pleasing about his features. His hair was a rich brown that swept fastidiously back from his face.

  He sat in the pew with his back straight and his shoulders rigid. He wore an air of confidence that caused the females to notice him. There were always several females vying for his attention after a church service, and Ginny wondered how he’d managed to remain single this long. Or why. She knew he was responsible for two younger sisters who were unmarried, as well as his mother who was rumored to suffer from poor health, so perhaps that was the reason he hadn’t started a family of his own. Or, it could be that he’d truly loved Lizzy de Wolfe and it had taken him this long to get over losing her.

  Ginny considered that possibility as she watched several new parishioners enter. The church was filling rapidly. Most of the faces who walked past her were familiar, but they weren’t who Ginny was watching for. She was waiting in particular for Reverend Fletcher’s son, Wesley, to appear.

  There was no need for him to arrive early since the front pew of the church had always been reserved for Reverend Fletcher and his family. Wesley Fletcher had sat in the same spot in the front pew for as long as Ginny could remember. The pew was empty except for Ralphy Weston.

  Ginny didn’t know how Ralphy was connected to Reverend Fletcher, or if he even was. One theory was that Reverend Fletcher had found Ralphy on the streets and had taken him into his home. Another theory was that Ralphy was the son of a distant relative and when that relative died, Ralphy was left in the reverend’s care. Whatever the circumstance, Ralphy had been a fixture in the Fletcher household for as long as most of them could remember.

  Not only was Ralphy loved by everyone in the congregation, but he made himself useful by taking care of the grounds around St. Dunstan’s church and the graveyard. There was nothing Ralphy couldn’t grow or make bloom, nor was there a lost or injured animal or bird he didn’t care for. He had a collection of animals too numerous to count. But no one had the heart to suggest he reduce the number of pets he’d accumulated.

  Although Ralphy was estimated to be three or four years older than Reverend Fletcher’s only son, Wesley, and although the two had been raised as brothers, that was where any similarity ended. Ralphy was what everyone in the congregation called simple. His thought process was slow. But because Ralphy was gentle and kind, no one in Reverend Fletcher’s congregation minded. Everyone loved him.

  Ginny’s attention was pulled away from where Ralphy sat when the door opened and someone entered. The person was a lone gentleman and at first Ginny thought it might be Wesley Fletcher, but one look at the man’s towering height and broad shoulders, and Ginny realized she was mistaken. The man entering the church was William de Wolfe.

  Ginny’s heart shifted in her breast and a warmth she was now used to feeling whenever she saw him seemed to lift her out of her serious contemplation. He was without a doubt the most handsome man she’d ever seen, and he affected her like no one else ever had.

  He walked with purpose as he strode down the aisle and stopped beside the pew where his de Wolfe cousins sat. After the initial looks of surprise, the three de Wolfe sisters made room for their cousin to sit beside them. The inspector nodded his greeting, then sat with regal stiffness as the organ music filled the church and the congregation waited for the service to begin.

 
Shortly before the knolling of the church bell, Wesley Fletcher entered the church. He walked to his appointed pew and sat.

  Ginny took a moment to study him. Even though she’d seen him nearly every Sunday when she attended church, this was the first time she really paid attention to his features.

  He was a handsome man, but not in the same way Rodney Baker or William de Wolfe were. Where they bordered on the dark side, with hooded features and bronzed complexions, Wesley Fletcher’s features were almost angelic.

  The sun shone through the stained-glass windows and bathed him in sunlight. His hair took on a golden shimmer that was almost divine. Ginny was surprised by the innocence in his features. She couldn’t imagine him capable of committing a crime as heinous as what had happened to Lizzy de Wolfe. But hadn’t Lizzy warned her that the killer was not what he seemed?

  Ginny’s gaze shifted from Rodney Baker to Wesley Fletcher, and finally to William de Wolfe. The three men were totally different from one another. As Ginny studied them, she tried to imagine either Rodney Baker or Wesley Fletcher becoming angry enough to kill Lizzy de Wolfe. Had Lizzy refused an offer of marriage from one of them? Had the rejected suitor then become so angry that he’d killed her?

  Ginny wondered if the inspector was considering the same thing. She looked to the place where William de Wolfe sat next to his cousins and her heart stuttered. The inspector was looking at her.

  Their gazes locked and held.

  An understanding passed between them that caused a warmth to spread throughout her body. Although she didn’t know when it had happened, or how, or why, Ginny felt a connection to him that made her feel safe. And wanted.

  The organ music came to an abrupt end and Ginny and the inspector were forced to focus their attention to the front of the church. Reverend Fletcher had stepped to the center of the chancel to greet his congregation. Not until the organist struck the chords of the first hymn was Ginny able to focus on Reverend Josiah Fletcher.

  He was a father figure to her, benevolence seeming to radiate from his face. Kindness infused his words and she felt her heart opening to his message. It took a few moments for Ginny to realize if her exercise today was to be thorough, she had to apply her observation to the Reverend, as well.