Authors: Stephanie Laurens
Tags: #Historical Romance
On being admitted by Riggs, Stokes asked to see Lord Finsbury. While Riggs went to ascertain his master’s availability, Stokes instructed the three constables to remain in the front hall. “And keep your eyes open.”
A moment later, Riggs returned and conducted Stokes and Barnaby to his lordship’s study.
Lord Finsbury looked well on the way to haggard, but he rose and greeted them politely, then waved them to the chairs before his desk. Looking past them as he sat, he frowned. “That will be all, Riggs.”
From the corner of his eye, Barnaby saw the butler, who had hovered before the partially closed door, bow and retreat, closing the door behind him.
Lord Finsbury clasped his hands on his blotter. “What news, gentlemen?”
Barnaby sat back and let Stokes take the lead in informing his lordship of the true identity of the man his lordship had known as Peter Mitchell, and of all they’d surmised of Mitchell-Fletcher’s plans to steal the Finsbury diamonds. The name Katherine Mallard clearly meant nothing to Lord Finsbury, but there was no reason he would have heard his parlormaid referred to by any name other than “Kitty.”
Having detailed the plan while referring to Kitty only as Fletcher’s accomplice, Stokes concluded with, “We believe that Fletcher’s accomplice within the household was his longtime lover, Miss Mallard, who we suspect is Kitty Maitland, one of your maids.”
“
Kitty?
” Lord Finsbury looked shocked. “Good gracious! She dusts in here…well, I suppose that’s how Mitchell knew…”
His words trailed away. After a moment, he frowned. He hesitated, but then asked, “Do you have any idea why Mitchell—Fletcher—was bringing the necklace back?”
“As to that,” Stokes said, “we can only guess, but perhaps if we have a word with Kitty herself, we might get to the truth.”
Finsbury blinked. For a moment, he looked as if he wanted to argue, but then, slowly straightening, he leaned back and reached for the bellpull hanging against the wall behind the desk. “Do you think she knows who killed Fletcher?”
“Actually,” Stokes replied, “at the moment we’re entertaining the possibility that Kitty herself killed her lover.”
Lord Finsbury looked even more horrified—presumably at the thought of his household harboring a homicidal female. He looked up as Riggs came into the room. “Our parlormaid, Kitty, Riggs—please fetch her. The inspector wishes to speak with her.”
Riggs bowed and departed.
The minutes ticked by. Lord Finsbury frowned and tapped his fingers on his blotter, drawing Barnaby’s attention. Noting that, Lord Finsbury stopped tapping; after a second’s hesitation, he clasped his hands on the desk. Barnaby pretended he hadn’t noticed anything. Beside him, Stokes sat silent and still, a predator patiently waiting for his prey.
After a good ten minutes, Lord Finsbury lost patience; scowling, he tugged the bellpull again.
When Riggs appeared, his lordship barked, “Well? Where is she?”
Barnaby and Stokes turned to look at the butler.
Riggs appeared rattled. “I’m afraid I can’t say, my lord. No one has seen Kitty recently, not for an hour or so. But she must be here somewhere—I’ve set the others searching.”
“Well, search faster!” Lord Finsbury glared. “I want her found and brought here immediately.”
“Yes, my lord.” Riggs beat a hasty retreat.
A tense silence descended.
Lord Finsbury shifted, then with obvious reluctance asked, “Should we inform the guests, Inspector? Put them on their guard? I wouldn’t want any of them to find themselves in danger.”
Stokes considered, then replied, “I doubt that Kitty poses a threat to anyone else, my lord, and I can’t see that creating a panic is likely to help, but if you deem it wise to inform your house guests…I must leave that decision to you.”
Lord Finsbury grimaced. After a moment, he murmured, “Perhaps we should wait to see if Riggs and the others find her.”
Barnaby wasn’t sure where the idea that popped into his head came from, but the impulse to act on it was too strong to resist. And where was the harm? He glanced at Stokes. “I’m just going to have a word with Duffet.”
Stokes swiftly searched his eyes, then nodded. “I’ll wait here. If you have any errands, he and the other two are yours to command.”
Barnaby suppressed his appreciative grin, rose, and, with a noncommittal nod to his lordship, let himself out of the study.
He strode back to the front hall. A few quick words sent Duffet and one of the other constables off at a run.
Returning to the study, Barnaby resumed his seat.
Stokes arched a brow at him.
“All taken care of.” Settling, Barnaby sat back to await developments.
The first of which was the reappearance of Riggs, who burst into the study in a most un-butler-like state. His hair looked like he’d run his hands through it—several times. “My lord, we can’t find Kitty anywhere in the house. We believe she must have gone for a short walk and met with some accident. Perhaps nothing more than a sprained ankle, but with a murderer on the loose, who knows? With your leave, my lord, I believe we should mount a search. Penman and Dobbins have already gone out, so we only have Carter and Percy to help.” In a fret of agitation, Riggs glanced at Stokes. “Perhaps the inspector’s men might assist us?”
Transparently thrown off-balance by the unexpected turn of events, Lord Finsbury looked to Stokes for direction.
Barnaby seized the reins. “As we need to speak with Kitty…” Uncrossing his legs, he rose. “Where do you suggest we should search?”
Stokes shot Barnaby a penetrating look, but followed his lead and murmured a general assent. They waited while, at Riggs’s urging, Lord Finsbury extracted a map of the estate and surrounds from a sideboard drawer and spread the map over the desk.
Gathering around, the four of them studied the map.
Riggs pointed to the representation of the shrubbery. “That’s the most likely place she would have gone for a quick walk. And if she went further…” His finger traveled on toward the fields beyond the house—away from the wood and Hampstead village. “That’s where she would have gone.”
Barnaby saw no harm in asking, “Not toward the village?”
Riggs shook his head decisively. “No. She had no reason to go that way.” He paused to draw a steadying breath. “And we—the staff—tend to avoid that side of the house because the guests are often on the lawn, or in the rooms looking out that way.”
A reasonable enough answer, but pieces of a jigsaw that showed quite a different picture to the one Barnaby had started out with that morning were starting to slide into place in his mind.
“My lord, with your permission, I’ll go out with Carter and Percy to the shrubbery.” Riggs glanced at Stokes. “And if the inspector will send his men out to the fields, perhaps we can cover the ground more rapidly.”
Stokes made a noncommittal sound and, unhelpfully to Riggs, continued to study the map. After a moment, Stokes pointed to the area before the house. “What lies this way?”
The window of Lord Finsbury’s study afforded a view along the front of the house. A flicker of movement at the edge of his vision had Barnaby lifting his head to look past Stokes and out of the window.
Stokes glanced at him.
Barnaby’s lips lifted in a small, coolly satisfied smile. Briefly, he met Stokes’s inquiring gaze, then tipped his head toward the window. “I believe our search is redundant.”
Stokes and Lord Finsbury turned to look.
Barnaby watched as Riggs followed suit—and took in the sight of Kitty Mallard being marched to the house, her arm firmly gripped by one of Stokes’s burly constables. Kitty was wearing her hat and coat; Duffet, walking on her other side, was carrying a battered traveling bag.
From their direction it was clear they’d come up the path from the village.
Even from a distance, Kitty looked pale and almost as haggard and worn down as Lord Finsbury.
What interested Barnaby even more was Riggs’s reaction—the blood drained from the butler’s face and he all but visibly deflated. Just for an instant, desperation stood clearly etched on his features, but then he drew in a breath, straightened, and his usual, rather stone-faced butler’s mask slid back into place.
Kitty and the two constables were admitted to the house. Seconds later, a brisk knock sounded on the study door.
Still standing somewhat stunned behind his desk, Lord Finsbury called, “Come.”
The constable who had remained on duty in the front hall looked in. He dipped his head to his lordship, but addressed Stokes. “Sir—the others want to know where you want Miss Mallard.”
Stokes glanced at Lord Finsbury. “With your permission, my lord, Mr. Adair and I will interview Miss Mallard in the estate office.”
His lordship nodded. “Yes, of course.”
Stokes looked at the constable. “Where did they find her, Jones?”
Jones nodded at Barnaby. “Right where Mr. Adair thought she would be—at the coaching inn waiting for the London coach to come in. Phipps said they got there just in time—another five minutes and she would have been away.”
Stokes humphed.
With a brisk salute, Jones closed the door.
Stokes turned to Lord Finsbury. “By your leave, my lord, we’ll interview Miss Mallard, and with luck we’ll have the case solved within an hour and be able to leave you and your guests in peace. Perhaps you might reassure them that all is in hand?”
Slowly, Lord Finsbury nodded. “Thank you. I will.”
“I will report on our progress before we quit the house.” With a graceful nod, Stokes turned and, collecting Barnaby with a look, strode to the door.
Rapidly parting from his lordship, Barnaby followed Stokes. The estate office lay toward the back of the house off a different corridor from the front hall. Returning to the hall and discovering Jones still hovering by the front door, Stokes paused to confirm he wanted Jones to remain on duty there. “Just in case.”
Not yet sure how to align the most recent puzzle pieces he believed he’d now discerned, Barnaby walked beside Stokes toward the estate office. Coming within sight of the door and seeing Duffet standing guard outside it, Barnaby murmured, “It might be wise to ask Duffet to take special note of anyone who tries to approach the office on whatever pretext.”
Stokes slanted him a glance. “The butler?”
Barnaby shrugged. “There’s something there, but exactly what, and how it ties into everything else, I’m not yet sure.”
Stokes’s gaze turned long-suffering. “Just tell me when you are.”
Barnaby grinned.
Stokes paused to give Duffet the suggested instruction, then led the way into the room.
* * *
K
itty Mallard had stopped crying, but the evidence of grief—whether compounded by guilt or not—lay deeply etched on her face. But Kitty wasn’t a silly young thing; she was at least thirty years old, mature and experienced, and she knew the ways of her world.
She sat in the chair before the desk in the pokey estate office, with Phipps, Stokes’s other constable, standing at attention at her back. She’d removed her bonnet and unbuttoned her coat. With her bonnet in her lap, she watched with no apparent emotion bar resignation as Stokes settled in the chair behind the desk and Barnaby sat in the chair to Stokes’s right, angling the chair the better to observe Kitty’s face.
Stokes met Kitty’s gaze, read the weariness therein, took in the defeated slump of her shoulders. After a moment, he said, his tone mild, “Perhaps, Miss Mallard, we might start with the question of why you took the position of parlormaid in this household.”
Kitty met his gaze directly. When she spoke, her voice was low—lower than it had been two days before—and faintly hoarse. “Fletcher. It was a part of his plan.” She paused, her gaze growing distant, then continued, “He’d heard of the Finsbury diamonds from some of his old dears several times over the years. He was growing older and he knew he wouldn’t have much longer in the game.” Her lips twisted cynically. “Charm will only go so far once the handsomeness fades.”
She drew an unsteady breath and went on, “So he decided to try for the diamonds. It wasn’t our usual caper, which we figured would help keep the police off our necks, but in his wilder days Fletcher had learned to crack safes, so…he set to and ferreted out all he could about the Finsburys, but it quickly became clear that, with one thing and another, we needed information from inside the house. That was always my role. Fletcher came to the village and persuaded the silly thing who was parlormaid before me into leaving for a better post. Easy enough to arrange through an agency in town, and then I stepped in.”
In a tone that held little animation, Kitty led them through her surreptitious searching; as she kept mentioning, it had all been very easy. Locating the safe, sending word to Fletcher of the make and type. “And, of course, I learned all I could from the staff. It was common knowledge Miss Agnes and Lord Finsbury had a difference of opinion over Miss Gwendolyn and who she should marry. Miss Agnes was all for giving her time to find the right gentleman while his lordship wanted her to marry money, and soon. He’d got a tick in his ear about looking further afield than the local gentry—looking at gentlemen who’d made their fortunes through investments and business in the colonies and such.” Kitty paused, then said, “I wrote it all down for Fletcher—the role was all but tailor-made for him.”
Kitty’s lips curved slightly in faint, clearly fond, reminiscence; Stokes glanced at Barnaby and gave Kitty a moment to savor the past before he prompted, “So Fletcher bumped into Lord Finsbury, introduced himself, and put himself forward as the perfect candidate for Miss Finsbury’s hand.”
Her smile deepening a fraction, Kitty replied, “You’re not giving him enough credit—smooth as silk, he was. I told him what days his lordship went to town and that his club was White’s. Fletcher would have had no trouble—he’d done it before, getting into friendships with gentlemen to gain access to ladies of their families. That way, the ladies see him as someone their nearest and dearest have vouched for—gains their trust instantly, you see.”