Chapter Fifteen
Portman Square
Marylebone, London
Gabriel looked up from the papers he contemplated in his office when Mary entered the room. “You are a breath of fresh air and just the distraction I need.” As she came near, he grabbed her hand and maneuvered her between the edge of his desk and his body the instant he gained his feet.
“You know we don’t have time to get up to scandal,” she said, but she rested her hands on his chest and slowly slid them upward toward his shoulders. “The children will come looking for me before long. We have the outing to Hyde Park this afternoon.”
“More’s the pity.”
Still, with a glance to the open door, he scooted closer to her, lowered his head, and fit his lips to hers.
Those two pieces of flesh were so pillowy and soft, and when she returned his kisses as she slid her arms about his shoulders urged him to go ahead and lose himself in her.
However, when he pushed to deepen the embrace, she pulled back.
“We have to stop,” she whispered then followed the statement by pressing a quick line of kisses beneath his jawline.
“Where is the harm if we take a half hour for ourselves?” He rested his forehead against hers just before he edged away even though his shaft was rapidly hardening.
“While I agree, I don’t want to risk being discovered by our children.” The smile she gave completely dazzled him as she drew her fingertips down his chest. “Solve the case, Inspector, then our time will be more free for other things.”
“Right.” With a sigh, Gabriel collapsed onto his chair, and as his body sank into the soft leather, he glanced toward the notes he’d made while going through his notebook. “Perhaps we should discuss what we’ve learned. “Bring your notebook here?”
“Lucky for you, I already have.” Then she removed said book from a clever pocket she’d sewn into the skirting of her plum-colored day dress. With another grin, she scuttled around his desk and then sat in one of the leather chairs. “What shall we start with?”
How much did he adore her? “Well, I’ve been thinking about our wealth of information. They aren’t exactly clues, or so we think, but they will have formed a pattern. We only need to study them further until we see it.”
“Then let’s begin with Mr. Corbett.” She flipped to a specific page in her notebook while he found his own notes. “Why was he killed?”
Mary tilted her head slightly to the right. “To silence him; he knew too many secrets.”
“Yes, or to prevent him from exiting the family?”
She frowned. “Meaning what? The only one to leave the fold was Lord Arsdale.”
“That we know of. We weren’t able to interview Boddingford’s middle daughter, but it’s telling she’s out of pocket and hasn’t come home, even though her father died. Then there’s the first son and heir. He threatened the duke that he’d go away, regardless that he was next in line for the dukedom.”
“True.” She flipped through a few more pages. “And the duchess wasn’t too broken hearted about her husband’s death. For all intents and purposes, she’s free.”
“There is that. Additionally, she always pushed back on our attempts at questioning her. Is she covering for herself, or simply not interested in her dead husband?”
“It could go either way. Then there is Viscount Tifton. Do you think if he were honest with himself, he would choose to be happy with the groom or someone like him over doing his responsibility by society?”
Slowly, he nodded. “If he was, then he might choose to leave as well.”
The sound of another page turning filled the silence. “The servants would have freedom to leave now that the duke is gone. They’d have no one threatening their peace or positions.”
“True.” He frowned at his notes. “But none of that explains definitively if the duke indeed killed Mr. Corbett.”
“Perhaps not, and we may not know the answer to that, just like we might not be able to solve the duke’s murder.” She sent him an empathetic look. “Some cases are destined to remained unsolved.”
“I don’t accept that.” Shaking his head, he slammed his notebook closed. “At least Henry is no longer in danger.”
“That is a good thing. The poor young man was lost without his wife,” she said with a soft smile.
“I don’t blame him. It’s how I feel when you’re not with me.
” When he winked, a faint blush went through her cheeks that was as charming now as it had been when he’d first met her.
Then he noticed a slight bulge in his notebook.
Taking it up once more, he gave it a shake.
The button fell out along with the small scrap of black fabric.
“Didn’t someone say something about a button during our interviews? ”
“Let me check.” Mary quickly flipped through the pages of her notebook.
“Here it is. Adelaide mentioned while she waited for the viscount at his father’s house that the butler had one mismatched button on his uniform, and it proved a welcome distraction from listening to Tifton and Boddingford argue. ”
“Right. Could Cravitts have had something to do with the murder, or had he merely lost the button while attending to the body?” He frowned as he looked at his notes. “Yet the stab wounds themselves bother me.”
“Why?” Mary glanced at him. “I mean, it’s odd someone was stabbed so many times.”
“Not only that but each of the wounds varied. Some were deep, some were shallow, almost as if the killer had hesitated at first before the confidence came in.”
“How many stab wounds in total?”
He shrugged. “Eleven, perhaps twelve?”
Mary shook her head. “The killer must have truly despised the duke if they stabbed him that many times to make certain he was good and dead.”
“It’s maddening…” His words trailed off as he continued to go through his notes and those that Adelaide had transcribed into a report of sorts. “Good God.”
“What?” Interest flashed over Mary’s features.
“It wasn’t one person.” Why had he not seen it before?
“You will need to explain further, Bright, because I don’t understand.”
“Of course.” He nodded as he tidied the notes. “They were working as a team.”
“Gabriel, slow down. Who was working together?”
His mind worked at a frantic pace now as he pieced the puzzle together. “The housekeeper and butler. In fact, I suspect they’re married.” But that was only part of the story. It was amazing and horrifying in its simplicity.
“I’ve seen that look before; it means you’ve solved it.” Mary rose to her feet and came around his desk and met his gaze. “Married to each other?”
“Yes, even though they have different surnames. They probably wished to keep that secret for whatever reason. Hell, everyone in that household keeps secrets about something.”
She laid a palm against his cheek and forced him to look at her, no doubt to keep him focused. “To what purpose? Didn’t the duke kill Mr. Corbett?”
He nodded. “I fully believe that he did, but consider this: what if they’d confided their plan to Mr. Corbett?
Meaning the housekeeper and butler. Perhaps he was in the servant’s hall one day sharing his own troubles regarding what the duke had asked him to do?
The theme running through the household was that everyone hated Boddingford.
” He took her hand and kissed the back. “What if they shared their problems with him, as well, had concocted a plan to rid them all of the duke, and they wanted him to be a part of it?”
A gasp came from his wife as her eyes widened. “A group killing between the three of them?”
“It makes sense if you think about everything in a larger scope.”
“I just can’t think that Mr. Corbett would have agreed to that. Obviously, we didn’t know him, but from what Henry said about him, I rather doubt he was that kind of man.”
“Fair enough.” He tugged her into his lap so that her legs hung to one side of the chair.
Being in such close proximity to her awakened tiny fires through his blood.
“Let’s say Mr. Corbett refused the offer.
He was a good man, making a decent life because he had a child on the way, and I suspect he was trying to how his wife that he was nothing like her family, which was probably what she needed. ”
“If that is what happened, did the housekeeper and the butler wish to kill Mr. Corbett, then, if he had refused to join them?” As she spoke, she fiddled with his cravat, and it was highly distracting.
“Perhaps, but if one of them knew the duke wanted Mr. Corbett dead as well, perhaps they goaded Boddingford into it to serve their purpose as well.” It was diabolical to think about, but with this family, nothing surprised him.
“How wicked and yet sad at the same time.” Mary frowned, and he could almost see her brain working on the problem. “Let’s posit that it happened as you’ve said. No doubt they didn’t count on Mr. Corbett pouring out his troubles and concerns to Henry, and they couldn’t risk secrets getting out…”
“Indeed.” Everything was coalescing together, and excitement buzzed at the base of his spine. This was one of his favorite things about solving crimes, doing it with Mary. “So one of them was dispatched to try to either kill Henry or wound and rattle him enough to keep him quiet.”
“I still shudder to think of how close Henry came to losing his life.” Concern reflected in her eyes. “That would have been devastating, and I can’t imagine what Mr. Corbett’s family is going through, what his wife is.”
“Murder is tragic and highly unnecessary.” He paused to consider his next words.
“The housekeeper and butler didn’t know that Henry was related to me.
They have wildly underestimated the fact that I wouldn’t give up, especially on what appears to be an unsolvable case.
” Now that he assumed he’d puzzled everything out, he was anxious to put the whole thing to rest.
“Hmm.” As a frown tugged at the corners of Mary’s lips, doubt began to creep into his consciousness. “It’s a good theory, and you are quite clever to think of it, but I’m not convinced.”
“Fair enough. Defend your theory.” It was how they came to the correct conclusion.