“He’s right, Amelia,” Davy said. “Ronald’s lie must be challenged. It will upset Father, without a doubt, but—for heaven’s sake, if Ronald is determined to become Earl as fast as he possibly can, Father himself is the next target. I believe he is safe while Will and I are here, but I could be mistaken. We must tell Father. If we had done something sooner, Virginia might still be alive.”
She worried her lower lip. “Yes, I know, but the inquiry itself will create suspicion!”
Will shook his head. “My lady, Sir Percy is acquainted with men who deal with military intelligence. A discreet investigation such as this would have meant sending a clerk to check on the records of leave granted to men in your brother’s regiment, nothing more. In peacetime, there is no reason men should not be given leave at Christmas, and no surprise at all that an officer should ask for a list of those who are away on leave. And I am equally certain no eyebrows would be raised if a fellow soldier were to stop at your brother’s lodgings, or his livery stable, and ask if Major Archer had returned from visiting his family. There is nothing in this letter that would have raised the slightest question in anyone’s mind. It is all harmless outside the context of your eldest brother’s death.”
“That’s true,” Davy said. “But now that we have this information, what do we do with it if Father refuses to act? Amelia’s right, Will—he is hardly likely to be grateful to learn that Ronald’s been lying to him. He’ll be mad as fire that this inquiry was made, no matter how discreetly. But he
is
the magistrate, as well as head of the family. He must be told.”
“Who’ll bell the cat?” Amelia asked. “Which of us should be chosen to be the sacrificial victim?”
Davy smiled slightly. “It must be me,” he said. “Will can’t; I think he should be nearby, to vouch for Sir Percy’s discretion if Father should ask, but it would be impossible for Will to admit to having shown such presumption. I must take responsibility for the inquiry if we’re not to see him thrown right out of the house.” He raised a hand to stop Will’s protest. “No, Will, you were right. I should have done it in the first place. I should have written Sir Percy the moment I heard that alibi, because I never believed it for a moment. I must do this myself.” He turned to his sister. “And I think you had better be close at hand, too, Lia, because if you’re present Father might be able to restrain himself from murdering the two of us.”
* * * * *
There was a term for this sort of mission in the Army: forlorn hope. When a wall had to be breached, they asked for volunteers, and anyone who survived usually got a particularly fine reward, easy to offer because there were so seldom any survivors. The point of such an attack was to create a breach in the enemy defenses, no matter what the cost.
Of course, in the Navy they never bothered to ask for volunteers.
We few, we happy few…
David Archer knocked on the door of his father’s study. When he heard, “Come in!” he pushed the heavy door open and stepped into the lion’s den.
“What is it?”
David took a breath, released it, and spoke as calmly as he could, wasting no time in preliminaries. “Father, I have reason to believe that Ronald had a hand in Virginia’s accident. I have also received word, from a highly-placed source in the military, that Ronald was given leave to come home at Christmas and that he apparently did leave London in plenty of time to arrive long before he made his appearance.”
He put the paper down on the desk, facing away from himself, and watched as his father quickly read it through.
For a moment there was nothing but silence. Then, “You sent a letter questioning your brother’s word? You
dared?”
The words fell like heated shot in the quiet of the study, with the same devastating effect as that evil missile. David had not faced his father’s fury since that long-ago day when he’d left the family home to join the Navy, but it had lost none of its scorching heat. “Someone had to, sir. I cannot help that the answer was one we might not have wished to hear.”
“And just what do you expect me to do with this...scurrilous rumor?”
“Not rumor, sir. Reliable information, from a completely discreet and well-placed source within His Majesty’s intelligence service. This is as sound as any briefing sent to the King himself.”
“Your brother’s whereabouts are
no concern of yours!”
The fury hit him full force, but there was something behind it, and David was shocked to realize what it was. His father was afraid. The anger was real, but it was a screen concealing fear. “On the contrary, sir, they most certainly are. I was taught, from as far back as I can remember, that justice is every man’s responsibility. I was taught that when any man conceals the truth for personal gain, he shares in the guilt of the offense.”
“This is not—”
David plowed ahead. “I was taught that
by my father,
sir. Have the rules of justice changed so much since I was a child, that evidence suggesting murder may be ignored?”
“Silence!”
David took a deep breath, feeling as though he’d just lit the fuse that would set fire to all his bridges, and tried to speak in a normal tone. “Father, did you know that the window in Ronald’s room had been left unlocked the night Virginia died? That there was water on the windowsill, and footprints on the ground beneath?”
“And you chose not to tell me?”
“At first there was no time, and afterward...” He shrugged. “Would you have listened?”
“To such a tale? No, I would not.”
“Not even if Amelia could swear to you that she also saw the footprints? There may still be traces beneath the window, if you want to look for yourself. Captain Marshall saw them too, though since you do not know him as I do, you cannot know that he would never falsify—”
“You have discussed our personal affairs with a stranger?”
There it was again, that fear, even louder than the anger this time. “I have discussed them with the one person in this house, apart from my sister, whom I knew to be intelligent, wholly discreet, and willing to deal with me as a rational adult.”
“Why are you trying to paint your brother as a murderer?”
“Sir, why are you trying to absolve him? I am trying to find out the truth of my brother’s death, and the death of his wife, and an attempt to destroy the child who might have been his heir—
your
heir. Virginia’s maid was knocked unconscious with a single well-placed blow. Can you not see how ludicrous it is to imagine a woman dosed with sedatives, who had been accustomed to sleeping heavily through the night, suddenly running amok and attacking her own maid?”
His father waved a dismissive hand. “She had gone mad.”
“She knew a hawk from a handsaw, Father, and she was too drugged to get out of bed—the doctor told me as much. But there’s more. We now know that Ronald vanished from London in the middle of December, and the innkeeper’s daughter down at the Bull hinted to me that she had seen him during the time he claimed to be with his regiment. And now
she’s
dead—after vanishing on the same night that Virginia died, a night when Ronald was out of the house—and he refuses to tell anyone where he was, or produce any witness to vouch for him. Has he ever given you any accounting of his whereabouts?”
He might as well consider the question rhetorical; his father’s glare said he wasn’t getting an answer. He forged ahead. “I suppose there might be some other explanation of their deaths, and Mark’s, that has nothing at all to do with Ronald, but all three within a month’s time seems to me to push coincidence to the very limit of credibility—and it makes me fear for your safety.”
The Earl was slowly shaking his head, and David knew that he had failed. Worse, he’d shown his hand and gained nothing by it. Should he mention the bullet hole in Mark’s coat? No; that could only mean trouble for Kirby, and perhaps destruction of the evidence that would be needed for an exhumation order. He knew, now, that he was going to see this to the bitter end, even if it meant taking that evidence to London, to the Temple Bar. He was going to see Mark’s murderer brought to justice.
“You traitor,” his father said in a low voice full of revulsion. “You vile, unnatural creature. If I did not know your mother so well, I would say you are no son of mine.”
“Say it if you like,” David said with a recklessness born of despair. “That’s how you’ve always treated me, anyway. But before you denounce me, sir, tell me one thing. Tell me what happened to Ronald’s wife Lenore!”
He waited to a count of five; he could have counted to five thousand and received the same response. He left the room quickly but with as much dignity as he could muster, closing the door rather than slamming it. He shook his head as he passed the breakfast room where Will and Amelia hovered just inside the doorway, his footsteps picking up speed as he went up the stair and down the hall. They swiftly followed him upstairs and into his room, a serious social gaffe on Amelia’s part, but one that mattered little to them at the moment.
“Did you hear any of that debacle?” he asked.
“A bellow or two, at the very start,” Amelia said. “Nothing more. Why did you not call us in?”
“It would have done no good, and only been more trouble for you. He may ask you about the footprints beneath the ivy, if he stops fuming long enough to consider what I’ve said. I don’t expect he will, though.”
“He disregarded the evidence?” Will asked.
“Will, the only thing he cared about was that I had dared to question Ronald’s precious alibi. I kept your name out of the matter, except as someone with whom I’d discussed the evidence, and as witness to the footmarks beneath the window.”
“And the coat—”
“I never mentioned that. We may need it later. But his reaction was exactly what I’d expected—he’ll prevent a scandal if it kills him. He is furious that I doubted Ronald’s alibi or spoke about any of this to you, and he seems determined to believe that Virginia, in the last stages of pregnancy and with a dose of laudanum in her that would tranquilize an ox, got up and brained her maid before flinging herself down the stair!”
His tongue seemed to be running miles ahead of his thoughts, probably the result of having had to hold it for the past couple of weeks. “I think I’d better tell Tobias to bring down our sea-chests and start packing them. As soon as His Lordship gets over being speechless with rage, he’s likely to order us out of the house and abjure me to darken his door no more.”
“Oh, Davy,” Amelia said.
“Yes, and I apologize to you especially—he’ll probably have Beauchamp back here in a flash and add yet another codicil to his will casting me out into the coldest ring of Hell.”
“And what will happen should we leave?” Will asked. “We cannot. In all conscience, we cannot leave, not now.”
“You may not have a choice,” Amelia said. “Davy, can you teach me how to use a pistol?”
“I can and will,” he answered. “But not well enough to keep you safe. I suppose I could call Ronald out. That’d be a pretty problem, wouldn’t it, no matter which way it fell out.”
Will shook his head. “Not worth the risk to you. If it comes to that, I’ll challenge him. Yes, and I’ll tell your father who wrote that letter, too. But I think we have one more angle of attack. Think, Davy. We have evidence enough to take this over your father’s head, but there is another person who might be interested in hearing what we know about your brother Ronald.”
“Yes, I know. The Coroner. But I cannot take that route unless there is absolutely no other choice. I cannot and will not do that to the rest of my family.”
“That was not the man I had in mind,” Will said.
“Who, then?”
“Your brother Ronald.”
“What?”
Will shrugged. “As I see it, that’s our only chance.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying we should try to convince him that the evidence against him is so overwhelming his only hope is to abdicate or confess? He’d never do it, Will. He’s too full of himself—and he knows he’s left no witnesses.”
“You have the word of unimpeachable witnesses that he was on leave well before Christmas, and had claimed to be going home. You have my word—which should be worth something—that the barmaid hinted he’d been in the neighborhood long before he showed himself here. And you have physical evidence enough to warrant an exhumation.”
David knew that, but was suddenly reluctant. “Evidence I daren’t use, not right now. Will, my mother has been through too much already—and so has my father, though he’d never admit to feeling the strain.”
“I must agree with my brother on this,” Amelia said. “We could never force our parents to dig Mark up again, after—” She stopped suddenly, and pressed her hands tightly against her face. After a moment she said, “I cannot even speak of it...think of it. No.”
Will watched her with sympathy, but shook his head. “I understand how you must feel, even though I believe it might be necessary. But what I had in mind was nothing like that. Davy, would you say your brother is a vain man?”
“Yes, of course.”
“That was my impression as well. Think of this: he has accomplished his life’s ambition. He has cleared a path to title and fortune, eliminated everyone who stood in his way...and he dares not tell a soul. I think he would love to boast of what he’s done, so long as he felt sure he would never be held accountable.”