Chapter 43
Forty-three
Grey
“What will become of Tiny?” Ellie murmured as Grey led her down the main corridor toward the buffet in the dining room.
“If I can’t strangle him. . .” Grey choked back his futile anger. “What becomes of a man brought up with no moral compass, given to following orders without question, like a sheep?”
“That’s sadly dangerous, especially when he has such useful talents.”
As they perused the buffet the Priory cook had laid out to keep the ravening hordes from plundering her kitchen, Grey’s clever companion sounded more sympathetic than angry.
“Perhaps he’ll learn to use his talents in prison.
” Still envisioning Ellie helpless and lying in a pool of blood in a dirt cellar, Grey lacked sympathy.
“We cannot prove he broke the curricle wheel, but we can prove that he assaulted us and covered up a crime. His rationale does not matter. Mort will have to learn to paint from the ground.”
“Percival did not admit to hiring Tiny to break the axle?” She filled their teacups and took a seat at the table when Grey pulled out a chair.
“That was not among the accusations flying yesterday,” he admitted, providing her with a plate of delicacies. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather question Percival without you present. This could become personal, and you don’t need to hear his language.”
She turned those wide topaz eyes up to him, and Grey’s knees weakened—but not his spine. He knew his duty. She had a mind of her own, but so did he. And he’d had his a lot longer.
She did not argue, thank all that was holy.
“While you are occupied, I shall find Mrs. Huntley and confer over the copying she wishes me to do. Perhaps after this is all over, you and I can discuss my work hours. I ought to be allowed some time off occasionally. I might help her on my own time.” She turned away and picked at a pastry.
She might as well have hit him over the head with her walking stick.
This was what he wanted, wasn’t it? An employee he could leave behind when he inevitably departed. Perhaps he’d try staying until the lease was up. The book still needed to be finished, although there would be an extra chapter to write.
He just. . . had no idea what he was doing.
Leaving her safely surrounded by servants, Grey carried his plate of bread, relish, and meat back to Hunt’s grandiose, bookless, new study and pondered the ceiling until the captain returned with his own repast. Shortly after, the ginger-haired bailiff arrived with a disheveled, protesting Percival.
Walker arrived last, with fresh ink and paper, dressed more like a gentleman than the captain.
“Eduard Percival, we are charging you with the manslaughter of George Comfrey and murderous assault on Cecil, Lord Greybourne. This is not a court of law, only a criminal proceeding to gather facts and evidence. We already have sufficient evidence to commend you to assizes.” Hunt looked bored as he recited the charges.
Swearing, Percival struggled against his bonds. Rafe shoved him into a chair and buckled his wrists to it.
Grey didn’t rejoice in seeing his nemesis finally called to account. His purpose here was to put an end to years of depredations. He’d discussed it with Hunt, and they were in agreement, for as much as they knew.
“I didn’t touch Comfrey!” Percy cried. “You can’t do this!” He glared at Grey. “It’s you, you’re doing this, aren’t you?”
Hunt sighed. “Greybourne has done no more than report being shoved into the river at your hands. Do you deny this?”
Percy wiggled against his bonds and grumbled. “He was attacking me. I fought back. It’s self-defense.”
“This may not be a court of law, but lying to a magistrate is a crime. We have witnesses who say otherwise, so I suggest speaking the truth for a change. What possible motive could you have for trying to kill men who have never done you harm? Do you have anything to say in your defense?” Hunt bit into his sandwich and waited.
Percival apparently had difficulty with truth, Grey observed, watching the Grub-Street hack struggle. His articles had always embroidered facts, making them more explosive and exciting than reality. Exclamation points were so distracting.
“It seems your prisoner communicates better with the written word, when he does not have to see the people to whom he’s lying.” Grey nibbled on a sweet roll. “Is that how you met Stew?”
Percy turned his glare on him. “We met in school. We met again in London after he praised my articles.”
Having learned from Eleanor’s amazing performance, Grey did his best to look attentive instead of murderous. “The one where you called me a fraud and a curmudgeon and a curse to all aspiring artists everywhere?”
Percy didn’t deign to answer.
Well, perhaps that had sounded more murderous than polite. Hard to sound courteous when one wanted to punch the scoundrel through his nose and out the back of his empty head.
Grey caught Walker’s eye. “If you will note for your records, the mentioned article came out approximately five years ago. A few months later, I was nearly maimed by a runaway hackney. The driver leapt from his seat and fled. He was never caught.”
“Did other articles follow?” Hunt asked with a degree of interest.
Grey struggled to muffle the rage building at the realization that all his lost years of loneliness had been caused by this degenerate and his heir, the heir to which he’d given everything.
Stew’s betrayal. . . He’d rationalize later.
Right now, with this evil incarnate sitting next to him, it took all his practiced detachment not to throttle Percival.
When he considered the harm he could have caused. . .
He wouldn’t allow the cad to see he cared.
He gestured with indifference. “At that time, I was living in town, visiting galleries, writing scholarly letters on matters like the recent use of more vivid color among English portrait artists. I may have been impolite in my mention of Archibald Jones, a new artist who portrayed his subjects in a vastly unrealistic manner that imitated previous generations.”
“It’s what his subjects wanted,” Percy said truculently.
Grey shrugged. “We are each entitled to our opinion. After the publication of my article, the flat I leased caught on fire. My interests had traveled elsewhere by then, so I merely moved on to my next subject. The pattern followed, whether I was in Manchester or Bath or lastly, Edinburgh. Who did you pay to rifle my assistant’s desk in Harrowby, by the way? ”
“I did not pay anyone,” Percy grumbled.
“Of course you didn’t, because you have no money of your own.
That’s where Stew comes in, isn’t it?” Grey leaned back in his chair and crossed his boots, contemplating his roll as if it were a masterpiece, using it as a focus to tamp down the fury rolling off him in waves.
“But you are the one more acquainted with the young artists in my classes. So perhaps what I should have asked was what did Stew pay you for, that you then used to bribe one of my students to find out what I was working on?”
Percy didn’t answer.
Hunt rapped his walking stick on his desk with finality. “Fine. We’ll let Percival take the blame for the incidents the baron reports. Arresting gentry never turns out well anyway.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Percy shouted again. “Yes, Stewart asked me to find people to do his bidding, but I didn’t do anything. He’s the one sporting blunt, not me.”
Hunt looked a little more interested. “Explain, please.”
That flustered the prisoner. “That’s all there is to it. He paid me to find people who might. . .”
“Put me in the river, so to speak?” Grey suggested casually. “But you are more interested in my book than Stupid Stew. Books are not quite his style.”
Percy glared. “You want to ruin me and my friends! You sit on your high throne, wielding judgment like a king, while we struggle to put food in our mouths. So, yes, I asked one of your students to watch for an opportunity to steal your notes. So, sue me.”
Because he couldn’t punch the lout who had ruined his life, Grey childishly flung a pickled onion at him.
Percy grimaced. That actually helped ease Grey’s pent-up rage, so he threw another, enjoying the smear of vinegar down the cad’s unshaven jaw.
“You and Stew both had education, were rewarded with good positions, and chose fast money instead of hard work. You lose. By the way, who paid for the bear trap?”
Hands tied behind his back, Percy couldn’t wipe the onion off his cheek. He tried to swipe it on his shoulder. “Tiny found that. We don’t have bears. It’s for deer. He thought it was funny.”
Of course, he did. The Bradfords had known that monstrous snare was there. Tiny had probably cleaned off the rust.
“So, let us be clear here,” Hunt suggested, his smirk at the onion waning with the deer trap revelation. “Stewart Greybourne paid you to hire criminals to cause grave harm to his benefactor. When they failed, you decided to steal the baron’s work and push him into the river yourself?”
“Stewart is an inept bird-wit who ran out of funds to pay me!” Percy shouted furiously. “I told him Greybourne would be here, asked him what he wished done, and he showed up, expecting me to do the work and be paid later! That book could ruin me. I needed blunt to leave the country.”
“And then you heard gossip about the riches supposedly still hidden in Bradford House and thought your mother might have left a bit to tide you over?” Grey asked in interest.
“Comfrey said my mother stole it years ago, but she’s dead, and he was always a liar and cheat.”
Ah, so Comfrey hadn’t been searching, just Percival, whose mother died before admitting that she stole the family’s savings.
Sniveling idiots weren’t worth murdering.
Grey lost interest in the proceedings. He wanted to see what Ellie was doing.
It would certainly be more interesting than Percy’s excuses.
Hunt nodded agreement at the cheating remark. “The bank verified Comfrey was keeping double books. Dishonesty apparently runs in the family. So you didn’t believe him?”
“I needed the blunt and saw no reason not to look for myself. Comfrey objected, which proved it had to be there.” Percival was nearly whining now.
“So, the two of you argued, he pushed you, you punched him, and that took care of that.” Hunt signaled Walker to note that down and waited for confirmation.
“If his mighty lordship hadn’t arrived, we could have got him to a doctor! She’s just around the corner. But I didn’t have time or means to haul the big lout, so that lackwit dumped him in a well, and there wasn’t anything I could do.” Percy gave up removing the onion juice and scowled.
That version didn’t include running away and leaving Tiny to do his dirty work. With irony, Grey agreed. “Well, right, my fault again. Obviously, my timing is bad. It all comes down to me.”
With Percy’s lunatic accusation, Grey shed years of guilt.
He had broad shoulders and had willingly accepted the burden of death and injury all these years—but no more.
Percy was caught in a fantasy he’d spun all on his own.
“Only later, you had another look around for the book while Mort turned the couch over in search of coins, right?”
His maracas had been disturbed and El’s papers had been out of order when Grey had finally stumbled upstairs after his unwanted swim in the river.
Percy shrugged and didn’t deny it. Grey’s accusation went into the notes. He added one more. “Rafe, you might note the tear in the prisoner’s left coat pocket. It appears to match the scrap we found at the scene of Comfrey’s murder.”
Percy glanced guiltily at his torn pocket. Evidence, of a sort. Another nail in Percy’s coffin.
“The book is with my publisher,” Grey continued. “Stew is bankrupt and won’t be supporting your crimes any longer. It might go easier on you if you tell the captain just what he told you to do.”
Finally understanding that Grey’s heir was in no position to support his reign of terror anymore, Percy collapsed and confessed, most likely exaggerating. Still, Stew’s litany of criminal activities was long and scurrilous and Grey wondered why he hadn’t hanged his cousin years ago.
Perhaps because he’d been told since childhood that he was cursed, and his desire to keep his friends and family safe gave Stew what he wanted—and admittedly, gave Grey the freedom he preferred.
That irresponsibility ended now.