"It might upset her more if she heard he'd returned, and he seemed ashamed to face her."
"There's something in that," Sir Malcolm owned. "I suppose we could at least go up and find out if she's awake and well enough to see him."
The three of them trooped upstairs and knocked at Mrs. Falkland's door. Martha opened it, then stopped dead, staring. "Mr. Eugene!"
"I've—I've come back, Martha."
"So I see, sir." She came out and shut the door behind her, looking grimly at Julian as if to say,
So much for his alibi!
"Martha?" called Mrs. Falkland from her room. "Who is that with you?"
They all hesitated and looked at each other.
"Martha!" Mrs. Falkland's voice rose urgently. "Who is it? Not Eugene!"
Martha reluctantly opened the door a crack. "It
is
Mr. Eugene, ma'am. He's come back unexpectedly."
"No! He can't have!
No!"
That was too much for Eugene. He turned about and started to flee, but ran straight into Julian. They looked at each other, Eugene's eyes pleading, Julian's remorseless. Eugene swallowed hard, turned back, and opened Mrs. Falkland's door.
She was half sitting up in bed, her shawl fallen off her shoulders. Her eyes, large and bruised-looking in her white face, stared across at him. "How long have you been here? Why aren't you at school?"
"I ran away. I've been back since yesterday." He took a few halting steps into the room. "I didn't do it, Bel!"
She struggled up into a sitting position. "Come here."
He hung back an instant, then went to her. She looked beyond him to Sir Malcolm, Julian, and Martha in the doorway. "Please come in, all of you. I have something to say. My brother is innocent of this crime." She took Eugene's hand and looked fiercely at the others. "I don't care how circumstances may tell against him. No one will ever convince me he did anything to harm me or my child. Whoever accuses him insults me, and will answer to me."
She lay back against her pillows. "I'm tired now, and I wish you all please to go away—except Eugene. Will you stay a little," she asked him, "and just sit quietly by my bed?"
"Yes, of course," he said huskily.
There was nothing for the others to do but bid her goodnight and go out. Martha was fuming. "Loyal to a fault, is Mrs. Falkland! Putting her trust in that boy!"
"Have you any reason to doubt him?" Julian asked.
"Doubt him? It's plain as a pikestaff it was him that caused her accident!" She stood, hands on hips, and looked at him challengingly. "Who else had anything to gain by it?"
*
"Who else had anything to gain by it?" repeated Sir Malcolm, when he and Julian had retired to the library. "There's no getting round it: Eugene was the only person with a motive to destroy Alexander's child."
"That's true, so far as we know. But I don't believe he's guilty."
"You don't? Why not?"
"Well, first, because I'll lay any odds he knew nothing about the accident until I told him of it. I don't believe he's a good enough actor to counterfeit such shock and concern. But principally, I don't think he drove those nails into Mrs. Falkland's saddle—because I think I know who did."
"Who?" asked Sir Malcolm excitedly.
"I should rather not tell you just yet."
"What? Why not?"
"Because I haven't yet determined whether the same person killed your son."
"But surely that's overwhelmingly likely!"
"On the contrary, I can easily imagine the two crimes being committed by different people. For example, suppose Luke loved Mrs. Falkland with more than a servant's devotion and killed Alexander in a fit of jealousy. The very motive that made him commit that crime would forbid his doing anything to harm Mrs. Falkland. But let's say someone close to Alexander—his friend Mr. Clare or his loyal servant Valere—found out the reason for his murder and blamed Mrs. Falkland? That person might have tampered with her saddle in order to punish her—might not even have known she was in the family way. In fact, if he
had
known, he might have spared her for the sake of Alexander's child."
Sir Malcolm clasped his head in his hands. "This certainly has got complicated! We haven't yet solved Alexander's murder, and now we have two crimes to investigate!"
Three, thought Julian—we still don't know how the Brickfield Murder fits in. But this did not seem the best time to remind Sir Malcolm of that.
"All you've said makes sense," Sir Malcolm admitted. "But I still don't see why you shouldn't tell me who you think caused the accident. It will drive me distracted, not knowing."
"You'll agree that, until we know if the same person killed your son, it's important to keep my suspicions dark?"
"I suppose so."
"Well, if I tell you who I think caused the accident, can you meet that person, talk with him or her, as though you knew nothing of my suspicions?"
"No. No, I couldn't possibly. You're right, you'd better not tell me. But wait—how do we know Belinda isn't still in danger? If the attack was directed at her, and not solely at her child, the attacker may strike again."
Julian pondered this, then shook his head. "It wouldn't help her to voice my suspicions. In fact, it could only increase the danger, if there is any."
"How can that be?"
"Will you take my word that's it's so? Believe me, I wouldn't hazard her safety." He paused. "All the same, I should keep a close watch on her. We know she has at least one enemy near at hand."
"Who?"
"Herself. She's a very strong woman, but her despair may be stronger. I shouldn't leave her alone."
"We won't," Sir Malcolm said fervently. "But, Mr. Kestrel, there has to be a limit on this secrecy of yours. The surgeon says Belinda won't be able to walk on her ankle for another week. If you haven't found Alexander's murderer by then, I think you should tell me whom you suspect of causing her accident. I don't want her up and about, perhaps running into the villain without knowing it."
"Very well." In reality, Julian knew he had less time than that. He had bet Oliver de Witt five hundred pounds that he would solve Alexander's murder in a week, and there were only five days left. The contest was useful, since it distanced him a little from the investigation, and distance was the essence of perspective. Of course, he would like to win. Five hundred pounds was a large sum to gain—or lose. If de Witt won, he would be insufferable; he would dine out on his victory for weeks. Julian would not give him the chance. Five days might not be long—but it would have to be long enough.
19: Vance Turns Up a Trump
Julian dined with Sir Malcolm and returned to London quite late. In the morning he considered what his next move should be. It was all very well to have a theory about who had caused Mrs. Falkland's accident; he had to make sure the facts would bear it out. There were stories to verify, whereabouts to check—
The street door-bell rang. Dipper went down to answer it and returned with Peter Vance. "Good morning, sir!" Vance greeted Julian, taking off his hat with a flourish. "And a fine morning it is, too!"
"You seem in high feather."
"Well, as I say, sir, it's a fine day. Such a fine one, you might like to come outside with me and see how I got here."
Intrigued, Julian accompanied him downstairs. Waiting in the street was a rickety gig painted black and white, drawn by an old roan horse with a snip of white on his left nostril and a splint on his near foreleg.
"My dear Vance," marvelled Julian, "you excel yourself! Next time I want a miracle worked, I shall come to you at once. Where did you find them?"
Vance rocked back and forth on his heels, grinning. "Well now, sir, I told you I was going to nose about among the coachmakers in Long Acre and see if our gentleman tried to palm off the gig and horse on any of them. The third one I visited got into a pucker as soon as I started asking questions. So I pressed him, and he admitted he'd found just such a gig and horse. Said he was keeping 'em on his premises till the owner came to claim them. 'Course, he wasn't doing nix-my-doll to find the owner, but he wouldn't, would he, sir? If nobody claimed the gig and horse, he could sell 'em and pocket the money. They ain't much to look at, but they've got a few good years left. Lucky for us, though, sir, the coachmaker hadn't the pluck to sell 'em straightaway. He thought he'd wait for a bit and make sure the owner didn't turn up. So there they were, sir, just waiting for me in his stable."
"You've certainly turned up a trump. How did the coachmaker find them?"
"He says he got up one morning and saw 'em in the street. He lives in Long Acre, next door to his workshop and stables. At first he and his men took no notice of 'em. It was raining—had been for hours—and he thought the driver must've left 'em in the street and gone inside somewhere to get warm and dry. But as the morning went on and nobody came to collect 'em, he decided to take 'em in himself—for safe-keeping, so he says."
"It had been raining for hours, you say? Then it may well have been the morning after the Brickfield Murder."
"May have been? Bless you, sir, it was! The coachmaker knew the date: Saturday, the sixteenth of April. I expect he was keeping track of how much time had gone by, thinking he'd sell the gig and horse if the owner didn't turn up—say, in a month."
"It was devilish clever of our gentleman, abandoning them like that," said Julian. "We thought he might try to sell or store them in Long Acre, but this was far simpler. He didn't have to make terms with anyone—he simply stopped the gig, jumped down, and walked away. If it were still dark, no one would have got a good look at him. Even if dawn had broken, in a heavy rain people aren't looking about them—they cover themselves with shawls or umbrellas and walk with their heads down. Besides, there's always a bustle in Covent Garden at that hour, with the market gardeners bringing their produce into town, and the libertines skulking off home. If our gentleman was implicated in the Brickfield Murder, he couldn't have found a better time or place to be rid of his means of transport."
"I'd say he was more than implicated, sir—he was in it up to his ears. Look'ee here."
Vance beckoned Julian closer to the gig. The wheels, the upholstery, and the broad apron where the driver put his feet were all caked with old, dried mud and traces of reddish clay. "That's brickearth, that is, sir. It's a mercy the coachmaker never cleaned it off. He was so afraid he'd be accused of trying to disguise stolen goods, he didn't lay a finger on the gig except to bring it indoors. You'd think that, once news of the Brickfield Murder got out, he would've tumbled to it that there was something rum about a gig with brickearth spattered on it, abandoned on the very morning after the murder. But some folks never see past the ends of their noses. I expect all he thought about was what the gig might mean to him in profit."
Julian walked slowly around the carriage, peering closely at the splotches of mud and clay. "This certainly gives our gentleman some explaining to do—if we could find him." He went around to inspect the horse and patted its neck in some amusement. "If you could only talk, my dear fellow, you would now be our most valuable witness."
He turned to Vance. "Let's take stock. What do we know about our mysterious driver? We know that at about nine o'clock on the night of Friday, April the fifteenth, he drove this gig to the entrance to Cygnet's Court. He went into Cygnet's Court, leaving Jemmy Otis holding the horse. He came out carrying a sleeping or unconscious woman, dressed in a cloak and bonnet and white slippers decorated with gold thread. He put her into the gig and drove off with her. That same night, Mrs. Desmond and her maid, Fanny, disappeared from Cygnet's Court, and a woman about Fanny's age was murdered in a brickfield near Hampstead. In the morning, the gig was found covered in mud and brickearth, and traces of brickearth have turned up in Mrs. Desmond's house. All of which suggests, first, that our gentleman spirited away either Mrs. Desmond or Fanny; second, that he was involved in the Brickfield Murder; and, third, that Fanny was the brickfield victim."
"S'pose our gentleman did take Fanny all the way to Hampstead and do for her there, sir. Why did he come back here and track mud and clay through Mrs. Desmond's house? We most likely never would've made the connexion between the Brickfield Murder and Mrs. D. if it hadn't been for that."
"I've been wondering about that myself. Perhaps he came back to remove Mrs. Desmond's things, to make it appear she and her maid had simply moved away of their own free will."
"What would Mrs. D. have been doing all that time?"
"I don't know. It depends very much on whether she or Fanny was the woman Jemmy saw taken away in the gig. Logically it ought to have been Fanny, since she fits the description of the brickfield victim. But why would she have been wearing gold-threaded slippers? And given that the Brickfield Murder was committed between two and eight in the morning, and even this super-annuated horse could have reached Hampstead in under an hour, what was the driver doing for anywhere from four to twelve hours between his departure from Cygnet's Court and the murder?"
He peered into the gig again and shook his head. "I'm wrong in any case. The driver couldn't have come back to remove Mrs. Desmond's things, because the mud stains haven't been disturbed by any large objects being packed in here. There are only the driver's footprints on the apron and the smear of mud and clay where he sat—"
Julian held up a finger. "Why, Vance, that may be why he went back to Mrs. Desmond's house. If the gig was splashed and soiled to this extent, imagine the state the driver must have been in. His clothes would have been soaked with mud and clay—blood too, if it was he who committed the Brickfield Murder. Smashing a woman's face must make an appalling mess. I'll lay you any odds he returned to Mrs. Desmond's house to clean himself, perhaps change his clothes. And the reason he went straight up to her room is that the washstand is there."
"I believe you're in the right of it, sir!" Vance clapped Julian on the back, then drew away, embarrassed but amused. "I beg your pardon, sir. My feelings got the better of me."