CHAPTER 21 #2
Bullies, observed Wrexford, were quick to lose all their bluster when the odds were not heavily stacked in their favor. Another furtive glance, and then with an ugly smile of surrender, St. Aubin drew a double-barreled pocket pistol from his coat and let it fall to the carpet.
“Now both of you step over to the sofa and take a seat,” commanded Wrexford. “I am looking for answers and am tired of finding only lies.”
* * *
Charlotte had often wondered what emotions she would experience if she ever encountered her husband’s tormentors. Rage? Hate? Her fingers tightened around the weapon in her pocket, its smooth steel blessedly cool against her flushed skin. The uncontrollable urge to take a life for a life?
She expected fire, but felt only ice. A strange alchemy. Perhaps time tampered with the elemental chemistry of revenge. In watching the two men take a wary perch on the sofa, she was suddenly, viscerally aware of only one sentiment—
“The pair of you have two choices,” announced Wrexford, wrenching her out of her own thoughts. “You may either tell us all about your smarmy schemes now, or you have us march you to Bow Street and let the magistrates squeeze it out of you.”
“And if we do tell you,” countered St. Aubin, “what do we get in return?”
“That depends on what your information is worth to us,” answered the earl coolly. “You had best hope it’s of considerable value.”
The reply sparked a feral glint in St. Aubin’s eyes, as he quickly tried to gauge how to manipulate the situation to his own advantage. Stoughton, however, was on the verge of panic.
She had always sensed he was the less clever of the pair. St. Aubin had taken care to hover in the background, allowing his partner in crime to do the actual filthy work.
“W-Wrexford, you must believe me,” stammered Stoughton. “I had nothing to do with any murders.” He wet his lips. “We came up with a plan involving the copying of a few paintings—a harmless one that hurt no one.”
Charlotte shifted her stance, willing the pulsing rush of boiling blood to recede.
Whether or not Wrexford heard the whisper-soft brush of her boots, his shoulders gave a menacing twitch. “I doubt Anthony Sloane would agree with that.”
Stoughton’s features went slack with fear. “H-How did—”
“Keep your gob shut,” snarled St. Aubin. To Wrexford he said, “What have you heard?”
The earl laughed.
“Sloane readily agreed to be part of it,” blurted out Stoughton. “We all were going to get what we wanted. It wasn’t our fault that he became unbalanced.”
“What was he going to get for his efforts?” asked the earl. “And what were you?”
“Don’t be a fool, Stoughton,” St. Aubin said through his teeth. “They know nothing—they can’t.”
“Canaday was more forthcoming than you,” said Wrexford. “I want to know the details of the art forgeries. And then we’ll discuss the matter of Holworthy and stolen books.”
For an instant, St. Aubin’s mouth pinched in uncertainty, but he quickly recovered his equilibrium. “If you want information from us, you will have to buy it at a fair price.”
Fair. The word was an obscenity coming from St. Aubin’s foul mouth.
“Which is?” queried Wrexford.
“We tell you what we know, and in return, you agree that we need not face the authorities. As Stoughton said, we know nothing about any murders. The art forgeries harmed no one. Sloane’s demise was because of his own weakness. He was a deranged dreamer whose wits were addled by laudanum.”
“No, they were deranged by the lies and false promises you fed him,” said the earl softly. “And I wonder what other poisons?”
Stoughton flinched. His brow was beaded in sweat. “I had nothing to do with—”
St. Aubin grabbed hold of his arm, causing him to fall silent. Wrenching him closer, he whispered something, and then Stoughton, biting his lip, sunk back against the cushions.
“Speculate all you like, Wrexford,” said St. Aubin, looking up at the earl with a smug smile. “The spineless slug is in the grave, and not a soul mourns his passing. As for you, you’ve naught but wild guesses to present to Bow Street.”
Charlotte drew a shaky breath. He was right.
“So, if you wish for information—though God knows why you think it will help you evade the gallows—you’ll have to agree to our terms.”
“I think not.”
To Charlotte’s surprise, he shifted again and cast a sidelong look at her. The wavering light caught the narrowing of his eyes. A wink of smoke-dark green seemed to flash a warning.
Her finger found the crescent curve of the trigger. Would that her nerves would match its steel.
“You see, Sloane is not unmourned. He has a son,” went on Wrexford.
“No! That can’t be!”
It took all of Charlotte’s self-control to mask her own shock.
Stoughton looked at her as if he were seeing a ghost. “S-Sloane had no son. I spent time with him and his wife in Italy, so I am sure of it.”
“An indiscretion, from before he was married, but no less kin.”
St. Aubin was looking at her, too, but his was a reptilian stare. The cold, opaque flatness of his eyes reminded her of a snake. No remorse within that primitive, predatory brain, merely an instinct to eat.
Keeping the brim of her hat angled downward, Charlotte forced her eyes elsewhere.
The muted pattern of the Turkey carpet, the graceful gilt-edged legs of the escritoire, the exquisite fragments of classical sculpture on the fluted marble pediments—beautiful but soulless within the confines of this god-benighted mausoleum to greed and power run amok.
A draft stirred the unlit chandelier overhead, setting the crystal baubles to a brittle clinking against each other. Like the rattle of long-dead bones.
The sound stirred a faint echo of Anthony’s agonies. Whatever the earl had in mind, she would try to play her part.
Wrexford’s voice rose again to silence her own inner whispers. “Here’s what I think, lad. One should never bargain with blackguards. Draw your pistol and shove it up against the skull of one of these miserable muckworms. Start with Stoughton.”
A wordless cry of pure, primal fear.
“We’ll give him to the count of three to start talking or go ahead and spatter his brains over the bust of Aristotle.”
“I’ve a better idea.” Keeping his pistol aimed at St. Aubin’s heart, Sheffield edged around the fancy furniture to pick up the double-barreled pistol from the carpet.
“Use this one. It will save the bother of reloading. And the authorities will simply assume that they came to blows over some personal matter.” A flash of teeth—not meant to be a smile. “Not a soul will mourn their passing.”
“You won’t—you can’t!” blustered St. Aubin.
In answer, Sheffield moved and handed the weapon to her. “Have at it, lad. I rather hope they keep their jaws locked.”
Charlotte thumbed back one of the hammers. The click sounded unnaturally loud in the dead silence. No doubt it was evil of her, but she felt a spurt of savage satisfaction as she shoved the short metal snout up against Stoughton’s temple.
His eyes were closed, and his body was trembling uncontrollably.
“One,” intoned Wrexford.
“They’re bluffing!” cried St. Aubin.
“Two.”
“Wait! Please!” Tears were now streaming down Stoughton’s ashen face. A pitiable sight, though Charlotte could muster no compassion. “I’ll tell you everything!”
“Go on,” ordered the earl. “But if I scent a whiff of a lie, I shall counsel the lad to be done with listening.”
The story was quick to spew out. “It was by mere chance that I encountered Sloane in Rome,” began Stoughton. “I was accompanying a friend on the Grand Tour—”
“You mean leeching off a friend, to escape creditors here in England,” cut in Sheffield. “Yes, I heard the story from Milton.”
“Bloody hell, you know how it is, being a second son with no blunt to cut a decent dash here in Town.”
“No more interruptions, Sheff,” counseled Wrexford. To Stoughton he added, “We care only for the facts, not your whinging.”
“Before I left England, Canaday and I were commiserating on how hard it was to keep from sinking into debt—The River Tick has a strong current and is damnable deep. And so much of a man’s wealth is entailed in the estate,” continued Stoughton.
“Canaday was especially upset about the moldering paintings hanging on his walls. They would bring a fortune if he were free to sell them. We talked about the need to be . . . creative in ways to fill one’s coffers. ”
Or criminal, thought Charlotte.
“I saw right away from his copies of Italian masterpieces that Sloane possessed a remarkable artistic talent—and it soon became clear that he yearned to return to England and win recognition for his own original art. So I had an idea.”
He paused to clear his throat with a raspy cough. “Brandy—I need some brandy.”
Sheffield wordlessly fetched a glass of spirits.
Stoughton gulped down a swallow and then resumed his story.
“It seemed to me that we could both help each other. So I offered to pay his way home. His wife presented a problem as she was a cold, calculating termagant. Try as I might, I couldn’t get her to warm to the idea, though a woman of her low birth should have been flattered by any attention from a gentleman. But Sloane finally prevailed.”
Another thirsty gulp. The glass was now empty. “Once he arrived back in England, I introduced Sloane to Canaday and”—a nervous glance at St. Aubin—“and other gentlemen who might be useful to him.”
Or, rather, to gentlemen who would use him for their own purposes, thought Charlotte. Anthony, at heart an innocent, could not see guile in others.
“So far I’ve heard nothing that might serve as a bargaining chip for your life, worthless though it is,” said Wrexford.
The warning spurred Stoughton on. “We had the connection to introduce Sloane to people who might help him gain admittance to the Royal Academy.”
But you didn’t.
“In return, all we asked was for him to copy some of Canaday’s Old Masters paintings—no hardship to him, as he did it as an artistic exercise to keep his skills sharp.
St. Aubin and I had friends on the Continent through whom we discreetly brokered the sale of the baron’s paintings to several collectors in the German principalities.
The copies were inserted into the original ornate frames, and Canaday kept the real paintings and shared his profits with the two of us. ”
“Sloane received no money for his labors?” interjected Wrexford.
Stoughton blotted his brow with his sleeve. “H-He received our patronage, which he felt was more v-valuable than a p-price for his paintings. It was all a very agreeable arrangement until—”
A feral growl from St. Aubin made him pause.
“U-Until he fell ill,” finished Stoughton lamely.
“You’re diddling us with half-truths,” exclaimed the earl in disgust.
“The English courts have no call to charge us with a crime,” began Stoughton.
“Be damned with playing cat and mouse. Pull the trigger, lad.”