Chapter 44
A Most Informative Discussion
How was the truth to reach him? How, in all the peculiar disadvantages of their respective situations, would he ever learn of her real sentiments?
Jane Austen, Persuasion
Do you want help?
Layng’s question still rang in Tauton’s ears as he heaved himself up the stairs at the King’s Swan.
Tauton had left the Green Briar and gone straight to the City police station, and Layng’s office. The man himself was out, presiding over a separate inquest, which left Tauton with nothing to do but pace in angry circles until he returned.
“What’s happened?” Layng had closed the door immediately.
“What hasn’t?” Tauton answered grimly, and then went on to tell him how Harkness and Miss Thorne had gone missing, and how it looked fair to have been some one of Mrs. Lynn’s confederates who managed the disappearance.
Do you want help?
Layng hadn’t asked this immediately, of course. First, there’d been a great deal of cursing and then some other questions as the coroner tried to extract as many details as Tauton had. These were frustratingly few, which led to more cursing.
I can call up a dozen constables, and the militia if we want them. Search the countryside hereabouts. Not that many places they could be hiding. …
Whatever happened next, it would all rest on the answer Tauton had given to the coroner, and Tauton would never be able to forget that.
Because he’d stood silently for a moment, listening to the inner voices that came from nigh on thirty years of walking London’s streets and seeing all sorts of schemes, great and small.
“Best not,” Tauton had said. “We don’t want to panic them. They’re already for the drop, and they know it, so what’s two more bodies in the ledger?” Even now he was amazed at how coldly he’d spoken those words. “We find where they’re at first, and organize the raid afterward.”
And Layng had agreed. So, there’d be no constables searching the countryside.
And so if Harkness and Miss Thorne weren’t found in time, it was his fault.
Well then, you’ll just have to make sure they are found, won’t you? Tauton curled his hand into a tight fist and banged the side against the prisoner’s door.
“Come!” called a lady’s voice from the other side.
Tauton pulled out the key given to him by the constable at the foot of the stairs and unlocked the door.
The room on the other side was plain but clean. The woman was well-dressed and her hair neatly styled. She sat on the bed, her attention seemingly occupied by reweaving a bit of the basket in her hands. She did not look up until he’d shut the door again.
But when she did, Tauton recognized her at once.
“Well, well. Hullo, Sylvia.”
“Do I know you, sir?” she asked coldly.
“As it happens, you do. Samuel Tauton.”
Mrs. Lynn froze in place. Tauton lowered his bulk carefully onto the stool beside the door.
“You’ll forgive me, I’m sure,” he said. “Knees just ain’t what they used to be. How do you do, Mrs. Westerford?”
“Lynn,” she said. “My name is Mrs. Lynn. And I’m afraid if we ever knew each other—Mr. … Tauton, did you say?—I have forgotten.”
“Well, I’m not surprised.” He grinned. “You were rather busy the last time we met. Let me see, that would be seven years ago now. At Newmarket, it was. You’d just talked a gent into laying good money on a bad horse, and picked his pocket afterward.”
Nice little double game it had been, too. He smiled at the memory, the way a craftsman might smile at fine workmanship. Tauton had always suspected she’d been working with the bookmaker, but couldn’t prove anything. Now he found himself wondering if that bookmaker hadn’t been this fellow Wallace.
“Had a little girl with you, then,” he said. “Pretty quick on the dip she was, too. What’s happened to her?”
She didn’t answer that, not that he really expected her to. Instead, she gave him another cold, imperious stare.
“What do you hope to accomplish by this slander, sir? Or are you simply in the habit of humiliating helpless women for sport?”
“You may believe me, Mrs. Westerford … sorry, Mrs. Lynn, I’ve got no interest in humiliating anybody. But some friends of mine have gone missing, and I’m trying to find them.”
“Friends of yours?” She snorted, as if the idea of Tauton having friends at all was too ridiculous to be contemplated.
“Miss Thorne and Mr. Harkness,” said Tauton.
And just like that, Mrs. Lynn’s mask shattered. Her face went dead white and she clutched at the basket in her lap like it was the only thing keeping her from falling over.
“They’re missing?” she croaked.
Tauton nodded gravely. “Since this morning. We were supposed to meet at Lansdown, but they never arrived. You may imagine we’re all deeply concerned, especially since there’s already a pair of deaths connected with you and the Kinsdales.
” He leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees.
“I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on their possible whereabouts.”
“What light could I shed? I’ve been here the entire time. I’ve had no visitors, no notes—”
“Ah, now,” he stopped her. “That’s not entirely true, and we both know it.”
She was considering lying. He could see it. But she saw the gleam in his eyes, and changed her mind.
“Oh, that,” she said. “Yes. Well, that was not really a visitor. It was more in the nature of an opportunity for Elizabeth Kinsdale to point and laugh.”
Tauton considered the woman in front of him for a long time.
She was remarkably poised, all things considered, but she was tired, and not a little afraid.
At the same time, he could sense her anger simmering just underneath the surface of all that confidence.
He’d seen this combination before in other prisoners.
Mostly they were the ones whose partners had hung them out to dry.
“Well, would you say maybe she’s the one we should be talking to?”
She knew what he was suggesting. He could read it in her eyes. He’d just offered her the opportunity to turn on her confederates. Odds were she’d laugh in his face. But Tauton waited, and Mrs. Lynn did not laugh. But neither did she answer.
So, Tauton shrugged and got to his feet. “Well, perhaps I’d best take my leave. I don’t seem to be helping here. Good luck to you, Mrs. Lynn. I’m glad to see you’re putting a brave face on things.”
She let him unlock the door and pull it halfway open before she spoke.
“It was all a mistake,” she said. “I knew it from the beginning, or nearly the beginning.”
Tauton closed the door and turned to face her again.
Her jaw had hardened from fear and anger.
Tauton waited. He wasn’t as famous for it as Harkness, but he could be very patient when need arose.
It was a hard thing to inform on your confederates, and a dangerous one.
As urgent as matters were, he could still grant her a moment to reconcile herself to the idea.
“It was, as I have told you, Elizabeth Kinsdale who came to see me,” said Mrs. Lynn. “This entire mess was her doing. Hers, and that man of hers.”
“What man?” he barked.
“His name is Nathanial Spence. He served her family as head groom. Until, that is, she and he made the age-old mistake of falling in love.”
I might have known. Tauton settled carefully back onto the creaking stool. “Go on.”
“Ordinarily, I never would have taken up with such a pair, but I was very low at the time and a bit desperate. She was able to name a mutual acquaintance whom I trusted, and she begged me for help.”
“Begged you for help?” echoed Tauton.
“I know, how very strange.” Mrs. Lynn’s smile was filled with bitter irony.
“What’s worse is that was what did me in.
It made me curious. What help could I be to this young lady?
” She fussed with the basket’s loose reeds again.
“But then she told me her name—Elizabeth Kinsdale. Sir Anthony was very much the talk of his neighborhood at that time, and if he wasn’t dead now he’d have expired on the spot to know what sort of talk it was.
The butt of every joke. They were actually selling prints that caricatured him in the post office.
” She paused. “I don’t suppose he recognized himself,” she murmured.
“A more willfully blind man I never knew.”
“But his daughter found you—”
Mrs. Lynn shook herself. “Yes. She said she’d heard about me from her man Nathanial Spence.
She told me that she and Nathanial wanted to elope, but that they needed money.
She told me about their plan to run a horse swap at the village fair, and that if I helped them, I would be cut in for a substantial share.
“Well, what could I say to that?” Mrs. Lynn’s attitude of innocence and incredulity was truly impressive.
“I asked her some questions, and it was clear neither she nor her man had any experience, and I thought, well, here is the answer to all my prayers. A young woman in need of my particular expertise with a line on a game just waiting to be played. I agreed to help, with conditions, of course.”
“Of course,” said Tauton blandly.
“And so, I set to work on the girl.”
“And her father?”
Mrs. Lynn smiled. “Oh no, that came rather later.
First, I had to tutor the precious Miss Kinsdale as to how such a game is actually played, and how long it takes before one starts turning a profit.
She was very impatient, and very angry. She wanted to run away with her man, yes, but more than that, she wanted to leave her father and her family flatfooted.
“But, despite this, she proved to be a good student and it was not too long before I was introduced to the rest of the family as her new bosom-beau, and matters proceeded very smoothly from there.”
“What was the plan?”
“As I said, it was to be a swap. Mr. Spence had found a horse that could very well pass for Kinsdale’s Pride.
He demonstrated to my satisfaction that he possessed the skills to train a potential winner.
We used the card parties—I assume your Mr. Harkness has told you about the card parties?
” Tauton nodded and she continued. “We used the money raised there to pay for the care and feeding of the animal. If the scheme was to work, we had to be able to show at least some of the pigeons that our doppelg?nger existed, and we needed her in good enough shape that it was plausible she could win the sweepstakes. That, unfortunately, was a somewhat costly proposition.”
“So, it wasn’t true that you were taking your share off the top?”
Mrs. Lynn didn’t answer. Again.
“It all worked exceedingly well, for a time,” she told him.
“The rich patrons came to the parties. I had my people look them over and pick out the likeliest. Elizabeth would contrive to run into one or two at some innocuous spot. She’d feed them the story about the switch.
If they insisted, she would arrange to show them the doppelg?nger.
Her man kept one eye on the horse at Lansdown, and another on our doppelg?nger, and we were—if you will excuse the expression—raking it in. ”
Tauton could not help but notice that not once during this whole story had Mrs. Lynn mentioned her brother, Wallace, or her daughter, Miss Smith.
Well, well, blood’s thicker after all.
“What was the plan if the doppelg?nger lost?” he asked.
She smiled sweetly. “Oh, my dear Mr. Tauton, you cannot think we were actually going to run the race! That was the part of the plan that Elizabeth seemed to relish the most. We were all to disappear with the money the night before the race and leave her father, and Lord Casselmaine and both sisters, to take all the blame.”
“What went wrong?”
Mrs. Lynn smiled sadly. “Mr. Tauton, do you know what is the most unfortunate truth about persons in my profession?”
Tauton could think of several answers, but understood none of them were wanted just now. “What is that, Mrs. Lynn?”
“We are always convinced we are the smartest people in any room. It may seem like a contradiction, but this can make us very easy to fool.” She sighed, and for a moment Tauton was certain he saw real regret weighing down her lively features.
“I didn’t realize what Elizabeth’s true plan was.
I didn’t understand that I was being set into place as a scapegoat so she could murder her father. ”
Tauton waited.
“That was their true plan from the beginning, you see. Elizabeth pushed her father out that window and blamed me.” She faced Tauton fully and met his gaze.
Tauton could read her intentions as easily as if she were an actress playing her part on the stage.
Mrs. Lynn wanted to be seen and heard fully.
She needed to be believed, and she understood this was her very last chance.
“If you want to catch who killed Sir Anthony Kinsdale, you need to find his oldest daughter.”