Chapter Four
Dear God, what a coil.
Gabriel shoved a hand through his hair as he wended his way through the manor house until he came to Titterford’s study on the second floor. Located in the small part of the L-shaped structure, it was quieter here than the main part of the house. Apparently, the addition had been done by the viscount’s father, and instead of being three stories high, it only featured two.
When he reached his destination, he knocked on the partially opened door. “Titterford, we need to talk.”
“I had a feeling you’d show up sooner or later.” The viscount waved him inside the study, and with a sigh, the older man leaned back in his leather chair. Illumination from a candle on his desk caused the silver threads in the man’s black hair to glimmer. “Have you solved it?”
“Hardly.” Gabriel snorted. “I am not that good, unfortunately. However, the footman I sent out to summon the county constable does have favorable news.”
“Oh?”
He nodded. “Apparently, the squire is currently on holiday and won’t return until late July. The next man on the list to step into that position is you.” One of his eyebrows lifted in challenge. “So, I must ask: do you wish to investigate this case?”
“Dear God.” Some of the color drained from the viscount’s face. “I wouldn’t have the first idea of how to start such a thing. There was a meeting regarding duties, of course, but that was years ago, and just now, my family is suffering from nerves and reaction.”
“There is no need for an explanation, my lord.” Many men who were tapped to step in as constables were never prepared. “I am fully able to take up the investigation in your stead, for I am a former Bow Street inspector and now consult with them, and I do take private cases.” He rubbed a hand along the side of his cheek. “There is no shame in having your loyalties with your family at this horrible time.”
The viscount’s expression brightened. “Then you will do the investigations?”
“Of course. However, I might caution that the nuptial ceremony and breakfast need postponing for a few days until we can assess who did this horrible thing in your house.” It wasn’t ideal, but then murder never happened at a convenient time, did it?
“While I agree with you, the ladies will fall into hysterics from it.”
“No doubt they will, but if your family is also in danger, we simply can’t have festivities which might end in sorrow.”
The viscount nodded. “I’m grateful for you stepping in, Inspector. Good man.”
“Thank you, and since I am a part of the wedding party and we will imminently become in-laws, I will wave my customary fee.”
“Much appreciated.”
Gabriel allowed a small smile. “Well, then, my wife and I will start our investigations, but I must say that none of your guests are allowed to leave the manor itself until we speak with them individually and clear them of suspicion. If you could make an announcement to that affect?”
“Of course.” The viscount looked as if he could cast up his accounts.
“Never fear, Titterford, we’ll see this through to the end.” He removed a small, leatherbound notebook and the nub of a pencil from an interior pocket of his bottle green superfine jacket. “What can you tell me about the deceased?”
Titterford leaned forward, planted his elbows on the desktop and then clasped his hands. “He is a twin. Four and twenty years old. Name is Edwin Rightenour.” The scratch of Gabriel’s pen filled the sudden silence in the space. “He was born two minutes ahead of his brother, Robert, and that makes him the heir apparent for his father, Viscount Parsington, who is allegedly on his death bed. Er, rather he was the heir apparent.” Titterford shook his head. “Terrible business and bad luck on the eve of a wedding.” He cleared his throat. “Of course, my family knows theirs and is close. In fact, his parents are due to attend the wedding on the morrow.”
Gabriel nodded. “Are they from the area?”
“Yes, actually. Their property borders mine. And the viscountess plans to split her time between there and here, for her husband is quite ill, as I’ve said.”
“I see.” He scribbled more notes. “I will need to talk with her when she arrives.”
“Of course.” Concern etched through the other man’s face.
“What is it?”
The viscount shrugged. “Nothing, I suppose, but there was a time when I thought my daughter would marry Edwin…”
It was as if Gabriel had been hit in the gut, for that knowledge didn’t bode well for the investigation. “Priscilla and Edwin were friends?”
“Oh, yes. Grew up in each other’s pockets since we are neighbors. ”
“I see. If you’ll excuse me? I need to start my investigation. Your guests can enjoy tea and other entertainments within the house, but no one goes outside until I’ve spoken with them. And I will need a list of all invited guests to the house party. Within the next hour, if you please.”
“Of course. Godspeed, Inspector, and give me regular updates.”
Ten minutes later, Gabriel returned to the parlor. Mary was already there, and the footman Jon stood at the door. He nodded at the young man. When his gaze connected with his wife’s, his spirits lifted, for this wasn’t going to be the traditional case, not when Henry or his intended might be involved.
“Ready to begin, sweeting?”
She nodded and gave him a smile while holding up her own notebook. “I am.”
“Let us examine the body then I’ll have Jon remove it to the icehouse for preservation until his mother arrives.” Briefly, he explained to her who he was, and what was happening with the young man’s parents.
“That is unfortunate.” Mary met him at the body. She kneeled to one side, careful to avoid the pool of blood.
He kneeled beside her and gently encouraged the corpse onto its back. With the tip of his pencil, he peered beneath the lapels of the young man’s jacket, examined the folds of his cravat. “Ah, look here. There’s a long blonde hair on his shoulder.” Indicating the hair while Mary recorded it in her notebook, he continued. “Clearly stabbed in the heart with what Miss Davenport described as a piano tuning fork.” Who was also a blonde.
Since Mary wore gloves, she tugged on the murder weapon until it came out of the body. She held the bloody instrument up between them. “But here’s the rub. The ends of the fork aren’t that sharp, so it would have required considerable force to penetrate layers of clothing as well as puncture the skin and organs beneath.” She laid it on the carpeting on her other side.
“Then you theorize that the murderer must be a man, on strength alone?”
“No.” She shook her head. “If a woman is in enough of a rage or if she’s frightened, she could summon that sort of strength.”
“Noted, and something to keep in mind.” Methodically, he shoved aside enough of the clothing so he could see the chest beneath. “Two punctures consistent with the piano fork.” Then he picked up one of the corpse’s hands. “Ah, look here. Scratches as well as what looks like bruises consistent with a defense especially on the knuckles. ”
Mary wrote a few notes on her page. “The scratches seem as if they’ve come from a blade of some sort.”
“This is true, but was that attack by the same person who killed him?”
“No way to say right now.” She frowned. “What is this?” Pulling the collar and cravat away from one side of his neck, she indicated a reddish-purple bruise with a gasp. “A love bite?”
“How interesting. Was he in this room for a tryst that went bad?” Which would mean Priscilla would be their prime suspect.
“Difficult to say so early in the investigation. And look there.” She indicated another area of bruising on the other side of the neck. “Does that appear as fingers to you?”
“It does indeed, but see here?” He pointed with his pencil nub at a crooked bruise. “It is as if this particular finger was broken at one time and never set properly. How interesting.”
“I’ll note it.” She scribbled in her notebook. “Turn his head for me?”
“Why?”
“I want to know if there is a wound at the back.” When he did as she asked, his fingers of one hand came away with blood on them. “Damn.”
She nodded. “Indeed, which means he did fight with someone. Or two someones.” As Gabriel wiped his hand on a handkerchief she handed him from her reticule, Mary continued. “It could be that there as a scuffle and he was pushed. Perhaps he hit the back of his head—”
“—and perhaps his assailant grabbed the tuning fork, or—”
“—if he was holding it himself and he fell forward initially, that would have been enough force to stab through the clothing and into his body,” she finished, for in this, they were always in the same train of thought.
He nodded. “But who? And did someone move him onto his side? Perhaps to check his vitals? And where did the damn fork come from?” These were all questions that needed answering. Struggling to his feet, Gabriel strolled the immediate area around the body. “Was the window open when we first came into the room?”
“I believe so.” She frowned as he drifted to the window. “Is it now?”
“Yes.” Going closer, he examined the sill. “There is a scuff mark here and a trace of mud. Perhaps related or not. We won’t know until we have more information.” Then he crossed the room and called for Jon. When the footman came in, he said, “I’ll need you and some of the other footmen to remove the body to the icehouse. It will preserve the corpse for a bit in the event we need to refer back until the family can claim it. Also, have the butler fetch Henry Bright to this room for me.”
“Right away, Inspector.” Then Jon dashed off to presumably follow orders. ’
Mary moved to a low sofa farther away from where the body lay. When she sat and arranged her skirting, she blew out a breath. “Questioning Henry is going to be a challenge.”
“I know, but it must be done. I don’t want anyone crying foul that I didn’t do my due diligence merely because he’s my son.” When Henry appeared in the doorway, Gabriel gestured him in. “Thank you for coming so promptly.”
“How could I not? I knew you would ask for me in short order.” Worry lay stamped over his face. “I could be sick.”
With a nod, Gabriel gestured him onto the sofa next to Mary. “You know why you’re here, so there’s no need for preliminaries.”
“Yes.” Henry nodded. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees with his hands dangling between his splayed legs. “Get on with it, for this is already the worst day of my life.”
“I can only imagine, but I’ll try to make this quick.” He consulted his notebook even as his chest was tight with fatherly concern and protection. “You had said you and Priscilla came here to have a private talk and indicated you were having a spat. Why is that?”
Henry’s expression hardened. “She lied to me.”
“About?”
“I’d rather not say in deference to protecting her reputation.”
Well, damn. “Fair enough. When was the last time you saw Edwin?”
His son shrugged. “A few hours earlier outside in the maze.”
While the interrogation went on, Mary took notes, but she didn’t appear happy about it.
“Why were you out there?”
“I had arranged to meet with Priscilla at the heart of the maze.”
Mary chuckled. “Like father like son.”
Other than a slight grin, Gabriel ignored her comment, as did Henry.
“What happened when you arrived out there?”
Annoyance warred with anger on Henry’s face. “She was talking to Edwin there instead. Arguing, really.”
Gabriel frowned. “Why?” Silence followed the inquiry, so he continued. “Was that the crux of your argument with her? That she met with another man when she was supposed to be seeing you?”
“You should ask her; I’m by turns livid and heartbroken because of it.” He raised his eyes to Gabriel’s, and they practically implored him to stop the investigation, and that plea tugged at his heart. “Can you please act as my father and my counsel for one moment instead of an investigator, and tell me what I should do? I’m supposed to marry her tomorrow, yet I feel that everything is falling apart.”
“Oh, darling, please don’t fret,” Mary murmured as she touched a hand to his. “Things will come out right even though you can’t see it right now.”
Gabriel’s heart squeezed, for he appreciated his wife so much. She’d taken Henry under her wing so to speak without hesitation. “Honestly, the wedding will be postponed. Your soon-to-be father-in-law and I agree about that.”
Moisture glimmered in Henry’s eyes, and he had the look of a frightened young boy. “I understand that, and I’ll marry her eventually, but how can I when she lied to me about knowing Edwin so intimately?” The catch in his son’s voice left him at sixes and sevens. “About their history beyond her sister being married to Edwin’s brother?”
“What?” He threw a glance to Mary, who shrugged. “How the devil did I not know that?”
“I believe we discussed that at dinner one night after Henry announced his engagement, but your mind, while on a case, doesn’t necessarily take in other information that isn’t relevant to that.”
That was true. He blew out a breath. “I apologize for that.” Then he focused once more on Henry. Though the young man might feel his relationship was fracturing, Gabriel had a duty to find out who murdered Edwin, the would-be Viscount of Parsington. “Let’s take a breath and a pause, hmm? Right now, in this moment, I am Inspector Bright, this is true. So I must ask you this: take off your gloves. Let me see your hands.”
Henry frowned. “Why?”
He huffed in frustration. “Edwin had defensive wounds on his hands, bruising on his knuckles. Did you fight with him?”
With jerky movements, Henry removed his gloves. “I won’t lie and say I didn’t take a swing at him, but that was all. As a warning to stay away from Priscilla.” He offered his hands for inspection, which Mary did. Aside from a trace of redness on two knuckles of his right hand, there was no trace of a harder beating.
Relief twisted down Gabriel’s spine while Mary scribbled notes.
It was his wife who took up the reins of the investigation. “Why did you have a squabble with Edwin, Henry?” Her tone was soothing and soft. “No doubt you felt the need to protect Priscilla, hmm?”
“Yes.” He nodded and focused on her. “He tried to steal my fiancée, quite blatantly in front of me, tried to talk her into marrying him, said that it made sense because his brother had married her sister. And that it was a logical step.”
“Your ego was hurt.” It wasn’t a question, but she took his hand in her free one.
“Yes, and my pride. ”
She offered a faint sympathetic grin. “And now your heart is bruised because you feel she lied to you.”
“She did. Although I knew who her sister was wed to, Priscilla never once told me that she’d known Edwin before, and intimately.”
Well, damn. The more that came out, the more perilous things grew for his intended. Gabriel wrote a few notes on a page of his notebook.
Mary nodded. “I understand, but now you think she might have lied about loving you . You fear that everything you’ve built with her might be a lie too.” She squeezed his fingers while Henry nodded, apparently too broken to speak. “You’re not a killer, Henry, though this is the second time we’ve had to question you after being found with a dead body.”
Chuckles cycled through the room and broke the tension.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “Do you know if anyone else at the house party thought of Edwin with less than honorable intent?”
“Anyone? Everyone?” Henry’s snort held no mirth. “Quite frankly, Papa, Edwin was not well liked. He was a prick and a bastard who acted as if the world owed him something. He also had the mentality of thinking he could take whatever—and whomever—he wanted because he was him.”
That was a bit of a shock, but he nodded. “Noted.”
Mary released Henry’s hand. She gazed at him with fondness. “Your father and I will solve this case. I promise, and what you need to do is talk candidly and from the heart with Priscilla. Communication is essential.”
“After we question her, of course,” Gabriel added as knots of worry pulled in his gut.
“Of course.” She smiled then bussed Henry’s cheek. “Don’t give up even if things seem bleak at the moment. Love, true love, is worth fighting for, and I believe you have that with Priscilla. Now go and get your tea. Try not to worry.”
“One last thing, though,” Gabriel said as his son launched to his feet. “Why did Priscilla have the piano tuning fork with her in this parlor when there is no instrument here?”
Henry shrugged. “I don’t know that it was her who brought it into the parlor. She’d complained to me yesterday that she’d misplaced it. I told her we would search for it, but things got out of hand, and we forgot.”
He made another note in his book. How very odd. Did that mean the murder was premeditated and that Priscilla wasn’t exactly guilty? Or was she working with someone else? More questions than answers. “Thank you for your time. Try not to think overly much about this, and I realize it’s a difficult time, but Mary is right. We’ll get through it to see happiness at the end.”
“Thank you, Papa.” With a nod, Henry exited the room at a brisk walk.
Before he could talk with Mary, Jon and two other footmen entered the room with a wooden ladder and a couple of muslin sheets. In silence, the group worked to heft the body onto the ladder, then once the corpse was wrapped and covered with sheets, they carried poor Edwin out of the room.
“This is going to be a highly emotional case, I fear,” Gabriel said as he took one of Mary’s hands and tugged her into a standing position.
“Well, stakes are quite high and everyone is worried.”
“About the nuptial couple or for themselves, I wonder.” He shook his head. “You never fail to amaze me with your capacity to embrace us all, to help patch us up, to love us.”
She smiled up at him, but concern shadowed her blue eyes. “It is the least I can do.” With very little urging, she went into his arms. For long moments, he simply held her, and that tactile feel of mutual support encouraged him. Eventually, she pulled away. “Shall we question Priscilla next?”
“No. Let her compose herself for a bit. Next, I would like to talk with the victim’s brother. If what Henry said is true, every person at this damned house party has reason to see Edwin dead.”
Which would make for long days and nights conducting the investigation and wouldn’t leave much time to keep the flames of his own relationship alive.