Chapter Fifteen
With a groan, Gabriel came back to consciousness and nearly cast up his accounts from the pain in his head. What the devil happened? Then his nose wrinkled from the foul smell of… what the hell was it? Where am I? It was somewhat dark inside the building. There were a few narrow windows toward the ceiling, but they didn’t let in much sunlight even if they had no glass in them.
Dear God, the smell! It was a mix of damp, rotting straw and something so foul he could not begin to place it. Then the soft sound of clucking gave him a clue. He was in the damned poultry house, but that didn’t explain why he couldn’t move his arms or legs.
Temporarily ignoring the agony going on inside his head, he tried to feel his way around and puzzle out the problem. His wrists were bound together with rough rope while his arms were secured behind his back to a wooden post in the middle of the building. What purpose it served with the chickens, he had no idea, unless there was a hook above his head for a lantern. And it appeared his ankles were bound as well, secured to the pole like his arms. More troubling was the fact that he seemed to have been stripped to his waist. Pain radiated through his arms and chest, for his attacker had apparently slashed him a few times with a knife, just like the wounds on Kendrick’s chest and arms.
Slowly, memories came back to him, and he had to wade his way through the pain in his head to analyze what had happened.
After he’d spoken with Kendrick and that damned pact he and his friends had made, he tracked Mr. Forsythe to earth and finally found him in one of the lower corridors. And that had been when Gabriel had accused the other man of murdering Edwin. Beyond that, he’d also accused him of intending to kill Kendrick.
They’d argued, quite loudly, then Forsythe demanded proof. When he’d agreed and said he needed his notebook as well as Mary’s, the other man agreed, said they should go into the library where Gabriel could summon a footman to retrieve both items, Gabriel had willingly gone with him. Seconds later, he’d been hit on his right temple and the world had faded away.
Now he’d woken here in the damned poultry house, tied to a pole, with pain filling the entirety of his head .
Well, I’ve been in worse places.
As he wriggled his hands to test the bonds at his wrists, he glanced about his temporary prison. Two wooden shelves lined three of the four walls. On top of each shelf sat about six or seven nests with hens in most of them. Other chickens wandered about the floor, pecking at cracked corn that had been scattered around. In a corner was a dish of water one of the birds was partaking of. As far as he could discern, an outline of sunlight perfectly told him where a door was located.
Only one way in or out.
Then the door opened, and for a few seconds he was blinded by the sudden introduction of illumination. Quentin Forsythe came into the small building. “Ah, welcome back to the land of the living, Inspector. I’m glad you are awake, for I don’t gain nearly enough enjoyment torturing someone if they are unconscious.”
Fear prickled along his skin causing the hair to vibrate. Truly, this man was more deranged than he’d originally thought. “There is no honor in that, Forsythe. If you wish to make a statement, at least inflict your damage while having to see my eyes.” At least he’d left the window halfway open to emit light. Immediately, that made his situation slightly better.
“I gave up on honor a few years ago.” He flexed his hands, which were hidden by black leather kid gloves, then he grabbed an impressive switchblade knife from the nearest chicken nest. No doubt he’d ordered such a weapon from a craftsman on the Continent, for they had been in circulation for a few years. Why hadn’t he noticed before the precision of Kendrick’s wounds? That they could have only been made by such a thin blade? “I have found revenge much more freeing.”
Gabriel tried to manipulate his bonds, but they held tight around his wrists. “Revenge will never fill the hole in your heart made from betrayal or disappointment. You had a choice to change course, but you decided on destruction.”
“Not destruction. Justice. Righting an old wrong, if you will.” Slowly, Forsythe came forward as he flipped his knife through his fingers, almost as if he were a magician. “No man is better than another.”
“On that, I agree with you.” Watching the play of light and shadow off the blade, Gabriel finally fixed his gaze on the other man. Was he insane or was he merely lost in the delusion of a fantasy where he was the hero? “However, no man is also above the law. You will hang for what you’ve done.”
Forsythe snorted. “I rather doubt that. As far as I know, you are the only one who has figured out the puzzle, Inspector. And you won’t be long for the world, so there is no chance you can share your discovery.” He snickered. “And in the event you wondered, yes, I did suffer a broken finger while in prison. I knew that would be damning when I snuck into the ice house to see the body, and there was that broken bruise on Edwin’s neck.”
Well, damn, at least he’d been correct in that.
For long moments, Gabriel stared the younger man down, and when that failed to intimidate him, he narrowed his eyes. “So then your plans are to torture me before you usher in my demise? Why?” No amount of rubbing the ropes at his wrists against the wood of the post encouraged them to fray.
He didn’t answer. Instead, Forsythe asked, “You believe you are cleverer than I am, don’t you, Inspector?”
“I don’t think that, but I believe the trail of evidence has shown such. You were quite smart about planting the piano tuning fork as well as the blonde hair on the body.”
Forsythe shrugged. “The love bite on his damned neck inspired me.”
“Did you steal the fork originally or was that Edwin?”
He stopped twirling the knife and then seated it firmly in his palm. “Edwin did it in an attempt to have Miss Davenport, or rather Mrs. Bright, talk to him. The stupid man was desperately in love with her even though he’d dipped his wick into seemingly every woman in skirts he’d come across in the past few years.”
“And because you wished for revenge on the man, you thought it the perfect instrument to kill him.”
“I’ll admit, that was the original plan except he was already well on his way to dying by the time I stabbed him with it, and it took some doing.” For more than a few moments, Forsythe remained silent then he took a couple of steps forward, bringing him within two feet of Gabriel. “We’d argued, of course, because that was all that was left of our previous friendship. When trying to cut him with my blade didn’t work—he’d learned a few self-defense tricks—I tried to strangle him, but he lost his footing. The force of me coming at him shoved him into the table.”
“Where he caught the back of his head on the corner and broke the base of his skull and punctured the skin,” Gabriel finished for him.
“Yes, and the fork was meant to keep you pursuing other suspects.” Without warning, he lunged forward and slashed at Gabriel’s chest with the tip of his knife.
He hissed in a breath, for there was a bit of hot pain, but it was the drops of blood that oozed slowly down from the fresh wound and tickled through the hair on his skin that annoyed him more. “So Edwin was your first victim in your insane need for justice. ”
“I was compelled, Inspector.” Forsythe lashed out again, this time drawing a thin line of blood from Gabriel’s shoulder. It was akin to being flayed alive by a monster butterfly whose wings were made of razorblades. “After all I did for him and his brother, he never once offered to help me get out of Newgate, and after I had served my sentence, he wanted nothing to do with me within society.”
Everything was becoming clear to him. “Ah. You took the blame during the incident at Carlton House so the twins wouldn’t have their reputations destroyed by incurring Prinny’s wrath.”
“Perhaps you are as good as the rumors say, Inspector. Congratulations.” Forsythe followed the praise with another slice of his knife, this time to Gabriel’s left side. There was nowhere to hide from the attacks, so he had to endure until he could formulate a plan.
“Would you have killed Kendrick too if you’d not been interrupted?”
“Yes.” There was absolutely no hesitation on his part. “All three of them are guilty of the same crime.”
Gabriel blew out a breath. “Which was?” At times, it was tedious listening to a murderer go through his or her reasoning. Regardless of the state of their minds, killing someone was a crime, and the bragging about why was unnecessary.
“Being titled and privileged!” Forsythe lashed out again, and this time the blade cut beneath Gabriel’s jaw. That one particularly stung.
“That isn’t a crime. It is fate.” The metallic scent of blood flooded his nose, and combined with the constant ache in his head, the urge to cast up his accounts grew strong.
“You are not comprehending me correctly, Inspector.” He lashed out with the knife and made yet another thin cut that went across Gabriel’s navel. “Titles and privilege yield coin.”
“Ah.” Gabriel nodded, and ignoring the pain was becoming more and more difficult. “Coin changes everything, and those without it get left behind. Is that what you mean?”
“Exactly. You are quite the intellect.” Finally, the other man folded the knife into the handle then tucked it into his waistcoat pocket. At least it meant a surcease to the constant cutting. “On top of that, both of the twins were ungrateful. I made the sacrifice for them, though, because I thought our friendship meant something!”
“And that was the reason for the signet rings.” The pact had held the five young men together, to signify a friendship that was supposed to last throughout the years.
“Yes! I told the constable and Prinny’s men that the prank was my idea, that I was the one who stole that painting, to spare the twins, to keep them from scandal.”
“What was the painting of that caused such a scandal to begin with?”
Forsythe shrugged. “A portrait of the Regent, completely nude with the exception of a crown and a signet ring.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows rose. “Where did you find it? Was it displayed on the wall?”
“God, no. It was in Prinny’s bedchamber, behind draperies.” Though the subject matter was weighty, Forsythe’s lips twitched with amusement. “We were there to search for valuables to pawn for coin, but when we saw that, we knew we had to have it.” With a sigh, he retreated a few steps from Gabriel. “Regardless, I thought the twins were my friends; I assumed they would have done the same for me, yet when the Regent’s men came ‘round, the Rightenours didn’t hesitate to agree with my lie. They left me to my fate in Newgate with the other two. Yet a few days later, Kendrick was free, sprung by even more coin by his family because his father refused to have such a scandal against their name.”
“What are you more upset with: the fact the boys didn’t share a level of friendship as you or that you and your family didn’t have coin enough to bribe your release?”
“Damn you, Inspector!” With a bit of madness reflected in his eyes, Forsythe closed the distance and landed Gabriel a punch to the chin that had his head bouncing off the wooden post.
The added pain sent him over the edge. Barely had he turned his head away from his body than he retched. Hanging his head and breathing deeply, he attempted to calm his body, for a chance at escape wouldn’t come if he was too anxious or his strength was sapped from the violence. “That wasn’t necessary.”
“It was, and your responses have only driven home the fact that divides in classes will slowly tear this country apart.” He shoved a gloved hand through his hair. “I’m so tired of pricks with titles, men with more coin than sense, men with more intelligence, thinking they can use people and do whatever they want in this world without consequence.”
“There are always consequences, Forsythe.” Gabriel’s jaw hurt; his body ached. All he wanted in this moment was to break free of his bonds and pummel the stuffing out of this man.
“Well, I became their consequence. I am taking retribution where fate did not.”
“Unfortunately, the world and the law doesn’t operate in such a way.” The bonds wouldn’t give; he was effectively trapped there until either the madman released him, or help came. “Murder is wrong, no matter what that person did to another. You are not God, and you are not the law. ”
“I’d hoped the law would have done what it should have, but it didn’t, and then life left me behind. Hell, Stuart died because of the lie, because of privilege, and now the rest will pay.”
“That makes no sense.” Clearly, Forsythe’s mind had warped, perhaps in prison, perhaps before that. One would never know.
“Don’t think to lecture me, Inspector. The law favors the rich. Even you must know that. You are a viscount’s son. I’m sure that helped you through life where a lesser man might not have had your same luck.”
“Not true. I never took a dime of my father’s money when I started my career at Bow Street. I worked my way up through the ranks on my own merits, and when my father died, I refused any coin from my brother as well, no matter how bad life got.”
“Bah.” Forsythe shook his head. “Lies.”
“You are free to believe what you will, of course, but I must uphold the law. Without rules, there is chaos.”
“You are a fool, Inspector, but take heart. In moments, you will be dead, so none of this will matter, and I will be free to go after Robert as well as Kendrick, for I will have justice.” As he spoke, he took an amber glass bottle from one of the empty nests and began splashing some sort of liquid over the straw and nests closest to him. Chickens squawked in outrage while a pungent but unmistakable scent wafted to Gabriel’s nose.
Dear God, it was whale oil, which is what filled lanterns because of its clean burning properties. “What the hell are you about, Forsythe.”
“I’m going to make certain you burn, Inspector, for then you will have time to think about what your interference has done.” He continued to splash the oil around the room, and when the liquid ran out, he grabbed another bottle and doused the other side. “You must understand that someone needs to show the lower classes that there are options, and we need to start making examples of the upper class, to show how damning their actions are.” Then he poured oil over Gabriel’s boots. “We need to take back our power in a world skewed to those who have coin or are highborn, those who don’t care about the rest of us.”
The situation had gone from bad to worse. “You made choices, Forsythe. You could have left the past in the past and made something of yourself, but you didn’t.”
“What choices? I’d been in prison!”
“Yet you still move throughout society, I am assuming as a gentleman.” Gabriel tried his bonds again, but they hadn’t loosened. “If you want sympathy, you’ve looked to the wrong person. We all have challenges in our lives. It is how we overcome them that shows the world the sort of men we are. ”
“Shut up!” Forsythe threw the bottle in Gabriel’s direction. It caught him in the left kneecap, and hurt like the devil. “I can only be who I am.”
“Very well. Then you will forever be known as a murderer.” His damned bonds refused to give, no matter how hard he rubbed the rope against the post. “I am a self-made man; you could have been the same.”
“You were given opportunities someone such as I never had.”
“Wrong. I went into the military and used those skills to work with Bow Street.” The urge to retch grew strong again, but he kept on. “Those were my choices. Those things forged me into the man I am today. I chose not to rely on my privilege because I don’t believe in not working for what I want. You had that opportunity as well, but you wasted that energy on revenge, on a skewed sense of justice.”
For long moments, the other man remained silent as he walked around the room to face Gabriel once more. “It’s too late now, isn’t it.” Hesitation reflected in his eyes.
Could he talk the man down enough to have him release the bonds? “No, it’s not, but you will go back to prison, and this time for murder, so you won’t be released after time served.” In fact, for the murder of a peer’s son, he would probably hang for the crime. “ They will try you on murdering Edwin as well as attempted murder of Kendrick and of me.”
The other man’s expression hardened. That moment’s hesitation was lost. “Oh, yours won’t be attempted, Inspector. It will go through.”
Damn, I couldn’t get through to him.
“Think this through, Forsythe. Don’t let people remember you as this man.” Why the hell wouldn’t the rope fray?
“What is done is done. At least I got to tell my story, but I will leave you with this. I won’t stop until Robert and Kendrick are dead, and my revenge, my version of correct justice, is complete. For myself and for Stuart, because that is what’s right.”
Panic rose to fill Gabriel’s chest while icy fear twisted down his spine. “That is largely debatable, but doing such won’t make you feel better.” He blew out a breath. “You are hurting, Quentin. Work your way through grief another way.”
“Perhaps it won’t, but at least they will have suffered as well.” His smirk portrayed a level of diabolical derangement that gave Gabriel pause. “As for you, your immediate future will prove as bright as your name.” From the empty nest, he pulled a box of matches. “Goodbye Inspector. Too bad your wife will be a widow before your first anniversary. Terrible shame leaving your children fatherless—again. ”
Then he moved to the door, lit a match, dropped it, and slammed the door, just as the poultry house erupted into flame.