Chapter 1 #2
At first glance, nothing appeared amiss, yet Mary’s instincts prickled.
As she’d expected, the admiral’s chair behind the desk was empty, but curiously, the lamps were not only lit but turned high. Family gathering or not, she wouldn’t have been surprised to find the earl at his desk, working on his papers. Perhaps he had been but had stepped out for a moment.
She walked toward the desk. An odd metallic scent reached her and sent premonition flaring, then she noted the chair was swiveled sideways and papers were fanned over the desk as if swept to one side.
She halted before the desk with her hand, holding the list, hovering over the polished surface, then she saw a cloth-clad shoulder, tucked down between the chair and the desk.
Stifling a gasp, she leaned over the desk and saw a body slumped on the floor.
The earl had collapsed.
She dropped the list and rushed around the desk, then pulled up in horror at the sight that met her eyes.
The earl lay crumpled on the carpet, his skull misshapen, the back dented so deeply that bone showed white and brain matter was oozing free. A widening pool of blood was seeping into the thick carpet, forming a dark halo around his head.
Rooted to the spot, she stared in shock at her very dead employer.
The door opened.
Mary jerked her gaze from the awful sight to see the butler, Winslow, walk in, carrying a decanter of amber liquid.
Staring at Winslow, she opened her mouth and tried to find words, but her mind had seized.
Winslow frowned at her, then looked at the desk, at the empty chair behind it.
Pacing forward, the butler frowned even more.
Unable not to, Mary looked at the earl.
Tall and thin, Winslow followed her gaze.
She heard the hitch in his breathing when he saw…
The decanter clunked on the desk. Winslow, his face pale, his expression incredulous, leaned over the desk.
Winslow stared at the earl’s lifeless body, then lifted his horrified gaze to Mary’s face. “Mrs. Alder! What have you done?”
Curtis sat before the fire in his parlor, his gaze on the page of the book he was endeavoring to read, but the spitting of a log in the grate had jerked his mind out of the story, and the silence of the house had, as it sometimes did, wrapped about him and impinged in a way he’d never imagined silence—the simple absence of sound—could.
He’d bought the town house in Red Lion Square primarily because he’d thought he should.
He’d seen that the place was for sale, and when he’d been shown around the property, it had, somehow, felt right to him.
As if the house had been built for him, with a man like him in mind.
He hadn’t needed to be told that such a property was a wise investment for someone at his stage of life.
With a well-established and growing business and having moved beyond the age of forty, a house such as this was almost an expected purchase, as if the mere owning of it declared to the world that he had succeeded in life.
But had he?
Success came in many forms and on multiple planes. The silence…
The oppressive quiet seemed to mock him and, inevitably, prodded him into contemplating the true reality of his life. Into considering what his life was and what he would prefer it to be.
Into focusing on what was lacking—on what he was lacking.
His professional life and his business were thriving, but his private life was more by way of a blank page he hadn’t yet got around to filling in.
The truth was, he wasn’t at all sure what, exactly, he wanted within his personal sphere, other than that he wanted something to fill the empty space—both the space inside him and in the house around him.
He wanted something that would engage him, that would give a personal purpose to his life and leave him, at the end of every day, satisfied and supported. Happy and content.
He dwelled on the amorphous sense of what he needed for several minutes, then he grunted, shook his head at himself, and refocused on the open page.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
The battering of the knocker on the front door had him setting aside the book, pushing to his feet, and striding rapidly into the front hall. Mrs. McGinnis, his cook-housekeeper, would be tucked into her bed in the dormer room and snoring by now.
The knocking recommenced.
“I’m coming!” he called. As he strode to the door, he mentally reviewed his current cases; all had seemed relatively benign.
He couldn’t imagine which of the men he had out and about, gathering information on those cases, might need help, yet the tenor of the knocking screamed of a need for urgent assistance.
He reached the door, threw open the locks, and hauled the panel wide.
His gaze fell on his protégé, Julian Alder.
Curtis felt his eyes widen in surprise.
Shadowed eyes met his gaze. Julian’s young face was pale and drawn as he seized Curtis’s sleeve. “Oh, thank God you’re home! Mr. Curtis, sir, you’ve got to help. We have to save my mum!”
Looking past Julian into the dark night, Curtis saw a hackney, with a familiar jarvey on the box, waiting by the curb. Curtis nodded at Wallace, who nodded back and tipped his head toward Julian.
Curtis looked down at Julian, who he sensed was trembling. “Take it easy, lad, and tell me what’s happened. What’s this about your mum?”
His jaw setting stubbornly, Julian shook his head. “We don’t have time for a full report. They’ll take her away!”
Curtis’s attention sharpened. He’d met Mrs. Alder on two occasions. Two memorable occasions, at least for him. “They who? And to where?”
His tone had sharpened and hardened.
Julian dragged in a breath, held it for a second, then blurted, “The police! They’ll take her to jail because that dunderhead Winslow said she murdered the earl!”
“The Earl of Moran?” Curtis knew Mrs. Alder had until very recently been employed as companion to the dowager countess and that Mrs. Alder and Julian lived at Moran House, on Park Lane.
Frantically, Julian nodded. “She went to deliver a list to his study, just as she does every evening at ten o’clock.
Tonight, she went in to leave the list and, instead, found the earl dead.
I was upstairs, packing—we’re to leave in the morning like I told you—and Thomas, one of the footmen, came racing up to tell me that old Winslow, the butler, had found Mama standing staring at the earl’s body, and Winslow decided she’d killed the earl, and he sent for the police! ”
The act of reciting what he knew was helping Julian to calm and focus his mind. “I don’t know any more details,” he added. “I went downstairs, and everyone was shocked, but they confirmed what Thomas had said—that Winslow accused Mama of killing the earl and the police had been sent for.”
Beseechingly, Julian raised his gaze to Curtis’s face. “I didn’t know what to do, so I ran out and found Wallace”—he gestured at the hackney—“and came here.”
Curtis squeezed Julian’s shoulder. “You did the right thing.”
Julian searched his face. “You’ll help?”
“Of course.” Curtis moved back and reached for his hat and coat.
He settled the first on his head, shrugged into the coat, then, steering Julian ahead of him, stepped onto the narrow porch and closed the door.
“The first thing we need to do”—he urged Julian down the steps to the pavement—“is to call on some very able folk you and I both know.”
Approaching Wallace’s hackney, Curtis added, “If anyone can deal with this bramble patch quickly and without getting scratched, it’ll be them.”
Seated beside her husband, Barnaby, Penelope Adair sighed contentedly as their carriage rocked to a halt outside the door of their home in Albemarle Street.
They’d spent a very pleasant evening at the opera.
She glanced at Barnaby and, smiling through the enveloping shadows, admitted, “Although La Bohème will never be my favorite opera, you were right in predicting that Madame De Livra’s performance would be a delight. ”
Amused, he smiled back. “Sometimes, it’s necessary to wade through dross to experience a jewel.”
“Indeed.” She turned to the door as Connor, her groom-cum-guard, appeared and swung open the portal.
Barnaby rose and moved past her to descend to the pavement, then reached back and helped her down the steps.
On gaining the flagstones, she shook out her silk skirts and resettled her velvet cloak, then linked her arm with Barnaby’s, and they started for the steps leading to their front door.
“Hoi!”
They halted and looked along the pavement. At that hour, in that neighborhood, there weren’t many people about.
Recognizing the figure striding their way, his greatcoat billowing about his long legs and a grimly serious expression on his dark-featured face, Penelope exclaimed, “It’s Stokes.”
“And someone’s dead,” Barnaby murmured.
“So it seems,” Penelope replied. “I wonder who?”
She didn’t have to wait long to hear the answer. The instant Stokes halted before them, he bluntly stated, “The Earl of Moran has been murdered.”
“Moran?” Barnaby’s incredulous tone echoed Penelope’s astonishment.
Her wits whirled with the implications, and her eyes widened. “Good Lord!”
“Indeed.” Stokes had glanced around and confirmed that only their coachman, Phelps, and Connor were near enough to overhear, and he trusted both men. Returning his gaze to Barnaby and Penelope, Stokes added, “The Commissioner himself came to fetch me from home.”
In addition to being a high-ranking noble, Moran was a large and significantly wealthy landowner and, even more pertinently, was a major player in the government ranks in the House of Lords.
“Needless to say,” Stokes continued, “the pressure is already well and truly on to solve the case as soon as possible, and the pair of you are hereby conscripted.”
“Of course,” Barnaby murmured.
“Naturally,” Penelope concurred.
“Where was he killed?” Barnaby asked.
“In his study at his London house,” Stokes replied.