The Untamed Mackenzie (Mackenzies Series) Page 14

  “Rather mean of Hargate,” Louisa said indignantly. “Did he ask you for money to keep quiet?”

  “That and a word with Uncle Hart to hurry Hargate’s chances of getting into the House of Lords. Only room for so many bishops’ bums on the seats there. Someone has to die before another can come in the front door. Hargate wanted to be moved to the top of the list. I told him he was optimistic about Hart opening a way for him. Hart’s harder to blackmail than anyone I know. Trust me. I’ve tried. My ears still hurt from the drubbing he gave me.” Daniel rubbed the side of his head. “Of course, I was only ten at the time and not practiced.”

  Daniel’s casual tone, dismissing blackmail as merely a nuisance, was having good effect on Mrs. Leigh-Waters. Her crying quieted, and she started to relax.

  “Was he blackmailing you too?” Daniel asked her. “I’m sorry if he was.”

  Mrs. Leigh-Waters nodded. “Please, please don’t tell my husband.”

  “No.” Louisa squeezed her hand. “We understand.”

  Mrs. Leigh-Waters looked at them watching her, then she jumped. “But if you are thinking I poisoned Hargate to keep him quiet, I did not. I paid him, as I said, and set up the appointment for him to meet you. I knew he might try for more money in future, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.”

  Louisa wondered very much what knowledge Hargate had possessed that so shamed Mrs. Leigh-Waters, but she wouldn’t ask. The poor lady had suffered enough without having to worry that someone else knew her secret. Hargate was gone now, and Mrs. Leigh-Waters was safe from him.

  “Never fear,” Louisa said. “I don’t see how you could have killed him, anyway, if the poison was in the teacup. How could you know which cup he’d choose? Or which I’d choose to give him? It was me who handed him the cup. I am, unfortunately, the most likely suspect.”

  Louisa deflated. She’d come here hoping to learn much more. She’d discovered from their conversation that Mrs. Leigh-Waters did indeed have a motive for killing Hargate, but she had difficulty picturing Mrs. Leigh-Waters thinking of so intricate a way to administer the poison. Besides, would the lady risk killing the man in her own garden? In front of a large party of people?

  Someone had. And that someone had shifted the blame squarely on Louisa.

  “Thank you.” Louisa squeezed Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ hand again. “I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all this.”

  “And I you,” Mrs. Leigh-Waters said. “Will you forgive me?”

  “Of course.”

  Mrs. Leigh-Waters let out her breath, her relief plain. Louisa and Daniel exchanged a glance, silently agreeing to end the conversation, and they took the rest of their tea in peace.

  ***

  When Louisa and Daniel left Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ house, Louisa gave Mac’s coachman directions to take them straight to London and Scotland Yard. She would try to keep Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ confidences as best she could, but she wanted to tell Fellows what they’d discovered about Hargate. Immediately. As awkward as it would be to face Fellows again after last night, she wanted him to know.

  Daniel agreed, and the coach headed east at a good clip.

  When they reached Scotland Yard, however, the sergeant downstairs told Daniel that Fellows was out. So was Sergeant Pierce and Constable Dobbs. But they could always leave a message.

  Daniel returned to the coach, where Louisa waited, with this information.

  “I suppose I can leave him a message,” Louisa said, unhappy.

  “No.” Daniel knocked on the roof of the coach and directed the coachman to the Strand. “We’ll wait for him in his own lair. Might be a while, though. I say we fetch food and drink on the way.”

  ***

  Sergeant Pierce had suggested to Fellows that they go back to Richmond to reexamine the scene of the crime, but Fellows negated the idea. As he’d contemplated before, this was a crime of Mayfair. The players, and the answer, lay in that section of London.

  Fellows began by visiting the Bishop of Hargate’s father, the Earl of Norwell, in Norwell’s Berkeley Square house. Norwell didn’t want to see Fellows, the butler informed them when he answered the front door. He also said that Fellows and Pierce should have gone down the stairs to enter the house via the kitchen.

  Fellows did tell Pierce to go down—it never hurt to cultivate those below stairs and learn the household gossip—but Fellows remained squarely in the doorway.

  “Tell his lordship that if he wishes me to find and arrest his son’s killer, and quickly, he’ll speak to me,” Fellows said to the butler.

  The man looked aggrieved, but at last he obeyed. Pierce sketched a cheerful salute and departed for the kitchen.

  The Earl of Norwell kept Fellows waiting in a reception room for at least half an hour before the butler returned and led Fellows up a flight of stairs to a study lined with books. The room’s high walls held a second floor of bookcases, reached by an iron spiral staircase.

  Norwell looked much like his dead son, handsome and lean, though twenty years older. His hair was gray, his belly gone to fat from too much rich food and too much port, his black mourning suit making his pale face more sallow.

  Norwell ran his gaze up and down Fellows, obviously not liking what he saw. “So you’re old Kilmorgan’s by-blow.”

  Fellows made a shallow bow, hiding the sting. “I have that honor.”

  Norwell grunted. “You look like him. Kilmorgan was a mean son of a bitch, and the current duke is no better.”

  Fellows took this stoically. He’d come to like Hart more and more as he got to know him, but he knew he’d waste his breath defending him to Norwell. Norwell was the sort of man who made his judgments and stuck to them, come hell or high water.

  “How can speaking to me help you catch a murderer?” Norwell asked. “It was the Scranton bitch who did it, and we all know it. That entire family is mad.”

  Fellows clenched his jaw to keep his temper. “New evidence has come to light that tells me it was not Lady Louisa.”

  “What evidence? You’re lying. The only reason you haven’t arrested her is that she’s connected with the Mackenzies, and you have an absurd loyalty to them.”

  “No, Lord Norwell,” Fellows said in a hard voice. “I’m after the truth, no matter what. One reason I came here today is that I’d like to look over your son’s bedchamber. His valet told me he often stayed in this house when he'd be in Town only briefly and didn’t want to bother opening up his own flat. Is that correct?”

  Norwell looked Fellows over again, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “You’re a bit above yourself, aren’t you, Chief Inspector? You might be a duke’s son, but you’re still a bastard.”

  “Which has nothing to do with me looking at your son’s rooms.”

  Norwell heaved a sigh. “What are you searching for?”

  “I’ll know that when I find it.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “I’m leaving no stone unturned,” Fellows said firmly. “I want this killer found as quickly as you do and so am looking into every possibility. Don’t worry, I will do no damage to your son’s things, and leave everything as I found it.”

  Norwell again looked Fellows up and down, in the most condescending way possible. He heaved another sigh, this one sounding as though it came from his toes, turned away, and pushed a bell on the desk. The butler entered almost immediately—Fellows suspected the man had been listening outside the door.

  “Take the inspector up to Frederick’s old rooms,” Norwell said. “Stay there with him, and don’t let him steal anything.”

  Fellows didn’t react at all to the statement. Norwell was grieving—Fellows allowed that. Otherwise, he’d be tempted to punch the man in the mouth. Fellows made himself turn his back and follow the butler out of the library without a word.

  The butler led him up another flight of stairs. As they entered a large
, dim bedchamber, Fellows bade him go down and tell Sergeant Pierce to come up. No one searched a room better than Pierce. He could find nooks and crannies that most missed, and he could do it rapidly and thoroughly. Fellows had always suspected that Pierce, in his youth, might have been a thief, but he’d never asked directly.

  The butler looked put out, but he went. Slowly. The stairs creaked, one at a time, as he descended.

  Fellows pulled open the heavy curtains, letting cleansing sunlight into the too-dark room. The room was musty—Norwell must have shut it up at his son’s death and not allowed anyone in. Grieving people often wanted to hide away their loved ones’ belongings.

  The chamber was elegantly furnished, as befitting this Berkeley Square mansion. A tester bed with brocade draperies held prominence, a sofa stood near the fireplace, a writing table was positioned near the window, and a bookshelf full of leather-bound volumes took up part of one wall. Thick carpets covered the floor, and a dressing room with a wardrobe and a tall mirror opened off the main room.

  Fellows took advantage of the butler’s absence to start going through the writing table. He pulled out drawers, sorted through the few letters he found, and turned the drawers upside down to look for anything hidden beneath. He finished soon, the contents disappointingly sparse. Hargate’s recent correspondence had been in his flat in Piccadilly, which Fellows had read when he’d searched there, but he’d found nothing of interest. Fellows wasn’t certain what he hoped to find here, in Hargate’s boyhood bedroom, but it was the one place Fellows hadn’t searched yet.

  By the time Fellows heard Pierce’s step on the stairs, he was under the large bed, looking beneath the slats for hidden treasures. Nothing.

  Fellows crawled out and brushed himself off, and was on his feet pulling out books from the bookcase by the time Pierce and the butler arrived. Pierce, who prided himself on his forthrightness, shut the door in the butler’s face. “Fetch us some tea, there’s a good chap,” he called through the door. “And coffee for the Chief Inspector. He don’t like tea.” He turned away and surveyed the room. “Anything, guv?”

  “Nothing yet. See what you can make of it.”

  Pierce went to work. Fellows trusted his sergeant’s skill, and for good reason. Pierce could feel every corner of a pillow without cutting it open, tell if a mattress or featherbed held any secrets. He checked every inch of wainscoting and the paneling around the windows, tested bricks of the fireplace, turned over chairs, and patted the curtains to see if anything resided between drapery and liner or inside the hems. Pierce flipped carpets up and tested floorboards, then went through the books and examined their bindings.

  Undaunted by finding nothing, Pierce entered the dressing room. Fellows continued to look through the letters he’d taken from the drawer. Presently the banging and rustling in the dressing room stopped, and Pierce said, “Eureka, sir.”

  Fellows didn’t get his hopes up. This had been Hargate’s room when he’d been a young man living at home. Pierce might have found nothing more than a university lad’s old stash of cigarettes or malt whiskey.

  Pierce was crouching on the floor in the dressing room, having folded back the carpet. He’d lifted a loose board from the floor and now pulled out a square box that had been resting on the joists beneath.

  The box was locked, but the lock was small and decorative, more to keep out those who would have respected his privacy anyway. Fellows put the box on the dressing table, took out a blunt tin nail he kept for such occasions, and quickly forced open the lock.

  Would he find cheroots and love poems to long-ago schoolgirls? Fellows’ heart beat faster as he lifted the lid.

  He found a notebook. He took it out, noting that it was clean and crisp. Almost new.

  “Ah,” Pierce said. “Wonderful things, notebooks. Can tell you so much about a chap. His personal thoughts. Locked in a box under the floorboards.”

  Fellows sat down on the chair at the dressing table and opened the notebook. As he’d suspected, it wasn’t a straightforward, written journal of everything the bishop had been up to, whom he’d angered, and who wanted to kill him. It was a series of cryptic notes, but Hargate had been kind enough to date them. He’d made the last entry the morning of the garden party.

  “Bring the box,” Fellows said grimly. “We’re taking this.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lloyd Fellows’ flat was in a lane off the Strand in a respectable house that retained some of the elegance of the past. The landlady was gracious enough to let Louisa and Daniel upstairs to Fellows’ rooms once Daniel explained who they were—and charmed her with his smiles and youthful innocence. He portrayed innocence very well.

  The flat had four rooms—a sitting room which doubled as a dining room, a small office with a cluttered desk, and a bedroom with a bath chamber beyond. Daniel solved Louisa’s problem of wondering if she would ever dare enter Fellows’ bedroom by opening the door and barging in himself. Of course, Louisa had to follow to make sure he stayed out of mischief.

  “He won’t mind,” Daniel said. “I come here all the time for a bit of a chat. Ah, there it is.” He picked up a book from Fellows’ bedside table. “I lent him this a while ago. Thought it might be in here.”

  Louisa gave him a sharp look. It would be just like Daniel to pretend he’d given Fellows the book in order to have an excuse for snooping in the man’s bedroom.

  She ought to tell him they should leave the room and close the door. But Louisa stood in the middle of it, absorbing everything about Lloyd Fellows.

  His bed was large, with low posts and no hangings. Neatly made, the pillows plump, a quilt folded across the bottom. Louisa wondered if his mother had sewn the quilt.

  The room was small, most of it taken up with the bed. Fellows didn’t have many decorative touches, except a few photographs in frames on top of the high dresser. Louisa moved to look at them.

  One photo was of his mother, taken when she was younger. Louisa had met Mrs. Fellows at informal Mackenzie gatherings—the photograph showed she’d been vivacious and pretty when younger, and her eyes held shrewd intelligence, much like her son’s.

  Another photo was a full-length portrait of a very young Lloyd, in his policeman’s uniform, probably taken when he’d first joined the force. He stood stiffly, proud, his helmet tucked under his arm.

  The third photograph was of Louisa.

  Louisa looked quickly behind her, but Daniel was busy flipping through the book he’d found. Louisa turned back to the photo, her heart hammering.

  The photograph was a casual one, taken by Eleanor during one of Louisa’s visits to Kilmorgan—Eleanor enjoyed taking photographs and developing them herself. Louisa stood in the garden at Kilmorgan Castle, sunlight on her face, climbing roses around her. The sepia photo showed the roses as white, but in reality they were very light pink. Louisa’s hair looked a shade of brown instead of bright red, her dress darker than the pretty green it had been, but overall, the photograph was a good one. Because Eleanor was skilled at photography, Louisa wasn’t standing ramrod-stiff, her face and eyes washed out from the light, but was smiling, her pose natural.

  How the photograph had gotten onto the dresser in Lloyd Fellows’ London bedchamber, Louisa had no idea. Eleanor might have given him a copy. Or perhaps Daniel, who’d just ingenuously said that he’d been here many times before, had.

  Louisa bit her lip as she turned around. The open door beyond the bed led into his bathroom, where she told herself she wouldn’t go. But the window gave full light into the little room, showing her a mug and shaving brush on his washstand, towels neatly hung, a large bathtub with a tap. Fellows was a very tidy man, or else the landlady provided a competent maid. Nothing was out of place.

  Louisa wanted to enter the bathroom and touch the shaving brush, an object of masculinity. She wanted to connect to Lloyd through it, feel again his strength, heat, the weight of him on he
r.

  She’d never erase the imprint of his mouth on hers, the taste of him on her tongue. And she wanted more than kisses. Last night, if the constable hadn’t arrived, Louisa would have let Fellows carry their passion on the desk to its conclusion. She’d have slid off her drawers and raked up her skirts, welcoming him into her arms and inside her body.

  Louisa, who should go to her marriage bed a virgin, would have thrown virtue aside for the joy of being with Lloyd at least once. By the social rules she lived by, Louisa would then have had to withdraw herself from the marriage mart after that, because no man wanted to discover on the wedding night that his bride was soiled goods.

  But Louisa would not have cared. Even now she felt nothing but deep regret that they’d been interrupted.

  “We should wait for him in the sitting room,” Louisa said abruptly.

  Daniel looked up. “Eh?” He closed the book and shrugged. “Just as you like.”

  Daniel led the way back to the sitting room, and Louisa made herself shut the door of the enticing chamber behind them.

  ***

  Fellows walked home in the dark, his thoughts piling one on top of the other. Hargate’s notebook had revealed much. Fellows had left the book in its box firmly under lock and key at the Yard, but Fellows’ notes on it burned in his pocket, waiting for him to have the time to sit and go over them.

  He might be lost in thought, but Fellows knew the placement of every single person on the street with him as well as those lurking in dark passages, what they were doing, and, if he’d seen them before, who they were. Those he hadn’t seen before, he made a note of in the back of his mind to look for again.

  Denizens of the night always left Fellows alone, however. Though he wore a suit no different from that of any other businessman returning home late from work, somehow even those who knew nothing about him stayed far from him. Fellows was trouble, they sensed, and they didn’t want to deal with that much trouble.