Chapter Thirty-Four. Missing Men
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Missing Men
AS I stepped out onto the street outside the Randolph Hotel, my stomach knotted.
Not only had I been used in France, I had been expendable.
Risked—without warning—lied to, and sent on a recovery mission.
Whether or not I survived was immaterial.
My sole use was to bring back that dying man.
I struggled to link the then and the now—we were no longer at war, but there was unrest in Oxford.
Unrest in Britain itself, a great roiling undercurrent of social and political tension beneath the storybook surface.
My gaze traveled up the facade of the Ashmolean, glittering in the morning sun.
If Frederick Reaver was connected to that shadowy arm of the government, the peculiarities about the man, his habits, and the secretive nature of his past all suddenly made a great deal more sense.
I doubted the British government was interested in the trafficking of antiquities, nor that they would kill a man like Julius Harker in such a grotesque way—but what if Harker hadn’t been the target of these men at all?
What if it was someone else—someone a great deal more powerful?
My stomach sank.
More clues, and still I was no closer to finding the killer, though I could be reasonably assured that it was not Frederick Reaver.
For while I did not think kindly upon the scarred man and his associates, my mistreatment during the war had been a strategic decision, a means to an end rather than capricious cruelty.
And what is more capricious than taking out a man’s tongue and locking him into a box? That was a crime of passion, of rage.
There were two different things at play here in Oxford, and I was not afraid of Frederick Reaver. Not anymore.
I entered the Ashmolean again, determined to get answers about the scarred man from Reaver. If what Hari said was true—that the scarred man was somehow tied to British Intelligence—interfering in such a way was the height of recklessness. But I was out of options if I was to find Leona.
“What do you mean?” I furrowed my brow, studying the young guide standing at the main desk. He couldn’t be twenty, if that. Fresh faced and round, still more boyish than a man in full.
“I’m sorry, miss. But, as I said before, Professor Reaver left yesterday afternoon in a hurry.”
“About when, would you say?”
He rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand thoughtfully, before glancing up at the high carved ceilings of the main entrance. “One. Perhaps two? A pair of well-dressed gentlemen came in asking to speak to him. He left right away.”
One or two? After I had spoken to him—certainly—but curiously enough, before the mysterious scarred fellow arrived.
Two men … Lord Amberley and his son. It had to be.
That was roughly when they would have come to invite him to last night’s ill-fated party.
“Was it a father and son, the older man was balding?”
The guide gave me a nod. “I think so, miss. I didn’t get a good look at him, but I got that impression yes. The younger one was bored, as if he had better places to be, the older did most of the talking.”
“And the Professor has not been back since?” My mind raced. Amberley certainly had a motive to kill Julius Harker and the position to attract the attention of the government. Not to mention his son’s newly discovered penchant for cocaine.
Could it be that simple?
The young man shook his head again. His voice was low, as the galleries were all but empty today. “Not as I’ve seen, though he often does use the side entrance if he’s working late. I’m sorry if you’ve come all this way for naught. Shall I tell him you were looking for him, if I see him?”
“No … no, I’ll just try again later,” I said with a smile I did not feel, before disappearing out the door and back across town in the dying golden hues of the afternoon.
“LORD HAVE YOU, maid!” Mrs. Penrose turned to face me as I burst into the warmth of the kitchen. The air was filled with the faintest scent of ginger and cloves coming from the plate of biscuits sitting alongside the range. I cautiously glanced around the empty room.
It was quiet.
Too quiet, considering there was supposed to be a prisoner in this house.
“Where is the inspector? What have the pair of you done with him?”
Mrs. Penrose cocked her head toward the drawing room and removed her apron, hanging it on a hook by the back door. “Oh, Owen trundled him off into the sitting room earlier today. Thought to give me a bit of space to fix our tea in peace without all the grunting and sweating.”
I ignored this newfound familiarity between Mrs. Penrose and the old man. “And Ruan, is he with them? Did he learn anything from the inspector this morning?”
Mrs. Penrose placed her hands on her hips. “No, my lover. I haven’t seen him since he took off after you this morning. But I’m sure he’ll be home dreckly.”
Took off after me? A peculiar numbness took over my fingers as I flexed them against my thigh. “How long ago did he leave?”
Mrs. Penrose brushed a stray wisp of long graying hair from her temple. “Why, almost ten minutes after you did. He told Owen that he was going to the Randolph. Didn’t want you dealing with that imposter nonsense alone.”
The heat rose into my cheeks. “He told you about the imposter?”
“He didn’t have to say a word. It was written all over his face. There’s not a thing the lad wouldn’t do for you. Surely you know that.”
Mrs. Penrose gave me an affectionate smile, fully misreading the surprise on my face.
It wasn’t that Ruan had followed me that concerned me—it was that Ruan hadn’t made it to the hotel that did.
I’d been with Hari for well over an hour.
Ruan should have arrived long before we received the note from the imposter.
My hand went to my chest, rubbing at the scar as I struggled to come up with any other possible explanation. Perhaps he’d gone to see Emmanuel Laurent.… Perhaps he’d gone to the museum on his own and we’d simply missed one another. Perhaps … perhaps … perhaps …
The radiator popped and cracked, the room growing stiflingly warm. My clumsy fingers struggled with the wool of my scarf as I tugged it from my neck, setting it on the table alongside Fiachna. “And he hasn’t returned? Sent a note around? Anything?” My voice grew shrill with the last word.
She took me by the arms. “Are you worried for him? He’s a good strong lad, I’m sure he’ll be all right. Why don’t I fix you a cup of tea while you wait on him to come back? Perhaps he went to pick up a Christmas gift?”
I raised a brow. There was no world in which Ruan would be doing last-minute Christmas shopping when we were in the middle of a murder investigation.
He’s likely with Emmanuel Laurent, Ruby.
The rational voice in my head did little to soothe my fears.
I could not raise my eyes from the stone flags of the kitchen floor.
“No. No tea, thank you.… I’m sure you’re right.
” I swallowed hard, willing it to be so.
Yet disappearing was unlike him, especially as adamant as he was about not leaving Annabelle alone.
My pulse rioted in my very veins as I pushed open the door to the snug where Mr. Owen was sitting. A serial novel in his lap and his old Webley revolver on the side table. Ordinarily the sight would give me a little comfort, but now it only underscored the peculiarity of Ruan’s absence.
He slid his wire-rimmed glasses down his nose. “Successful outing, my lamb?”
“You could say that.” I drew closer to the sweat-soaked inspector.
His already porcine face had grown dark pink above the gag shoved into his mouth.
“You think he’s all right? Should you … maybe loosen his restraints?
I mean to ask him some questions and would like him conscious enough to answer them when I do. ”
Mr. Owen shrugged, turning a page in his book. “I do not care how he fares. The villain tried to hurt that poor lass upstairs. If you ask me, he deserves a great deal more than what he’s received thus far, and I’ve half a mind to give it to him myself.”
While I didn’t disagree that the inspector deserved retribution for what he did to poor Annabelle, vengeance was not ours to deliver.
Mr. Owen took a sip from a chipped gold-rimmed teacup and set it down on the table beside him.
“Has he said anything useful?”
Mr. Owen’s white mustache twitched as he stood with a groan and grabbed another log, throwing it onto the fire. “If you count swearing and threatening me with dismemberment as useful.”
No. No, I daresay I didn’t. “Perhaps it’s for the best he’s gagged.”
Mr. Owen let out a dark laugh, his fingers wrapped around an old iron poker, and jabbed at the orange embers at the bottom of the grate, sending up sparks. “I think you’ll find more information from the lass than this one.”
I brightened immediately. “She’s talking?”
“Aye, asked Dorothea for a bit of broth this morning.”
I threw my arms around his neck, giving him an uncharacteristic hug. “Oh, Mr. Owen, you have no idea how happy that makes me.”
I darted up the stairs to the makeshift sickroom and pushed open the door.
Ruan had not slept in here in days and yet it still smelled of him.
His herbs, his salves, his silly ginger candies.
My eye caught on his worn British Expeditionary Force haversack sitting in the corner.
A fresh box of medicines sat atop the dresser.
That bone-deep wariness returned in force.
Everything was precisely as it should be, but Ruan himself had vanished.
The girl slept easily in the narrow bed. Her breathing steadier and stronger than it had been when we first brought her here. I pulled the sheet up over her legs, and gently lifted the nightshirt we’d dressed her in to inspect the bandages at her belly.