Chapter 25
Our next step was to speak to Jemmy. Unfortunately, Anderley had gained nothing from his evening drinking with Mr. Simpkins except an aching head.
Which meant either Jemmy’s valet was better at minding his tongue than we’d hoped or he didn’t know anything of use.
Of course, his not knowing anything wasn’t proof that there wasn’t anything to know. Jemmy just might not have trusted him.
Whatever the truth of the matter, we had a number of queries to postulate to the younger Mr. Birnam. Except that he could not be found.
When the hour of luncheon had come and gone and he still had not appeared, I might have grown worried but for the fact that I’d since learned that Jemmy had been summoned by his father earlier that morning.
I assumed that he’d revealed the same truth he’d informed Matilda of the previous evening and that Jemmy had not taken it well.
Given my suspicions about what Jemmy had told me about Miss Whitlock’s and his past, I could understand why.
If I were in his shoes, I could think of one place I might have gone to escape.
I wondered if Jemmy had discovered it earlier in the week during one of his rambles and sought solitude there as well.
So I requested that Bowcott have a picnic basket packed for me, and I set off through the woods.
I might have asked Gage to join me, but he and Anderley were busy attempting to corner Paget again to try to extract further answers.
At the edge of the forest, beside a rippling stream, one of the previous owners had built a folly.
The octagonal Gothic pavilion boasted tall windows on seven of its sides with a door on the eighth.
It was topped by pointed arches like a crown, and ivy clung to the brick surfaces between the glass.
Just outside, a small cascade had been created, directing the brook tumbling musically over the rocks.
As I rounded the bend, I could already see that my suspicions had proved correct.
Jemmy was seated on the bench inside, gazing out at the tiny waterfall.
It was clear from the way the muscles in his back turned rigid that he’d sensed my approach, but I rapped on the door nonetheless before pushing it open.
“I come bearing gifts,” I said, hoping to circumvent any aggravation he might be feeling at my intruding on his seclusion.
He turned to see me holding the basket aloft.
“I thought you might be hungry,” I added, passing him the basket before sitting next to him on the bench with my knees facing in the opposite direction.
He accepted my peace offering with a softly worded “thank you,” and then lifted aside the plaid fabric tucked over the basket’s contents. There was a bottle of ale, a few slices of ham, a hunk of cheese, an apple, and two rolls of crusty bread.
I sat listening to the gentle rush and burble of the stream outside while he prepared himself a sandwich, all the while, eyeing me as if I was a snake poised to strike.
“Obviously, you’re here to ask me more questions about Miss Whitlock,” he muttered sullenly.
I turned to meet his dark eyes, thinking he would be a much more attractive man if his face wasn’t perpetually sporting a sour expression. “She deserves justice, doesn’t she?” I asked evenly. I tilted my head. “Or do you believe her life was expendable?”
His gaze dropped to the food in his hand, though I knew his serious contemplation was for my question and not the ham. “No. It wasn’t expendable,” he answered before taking a bite of the sandwich.
I allowed him to chew and swallow a few bites before posing my next query. “Your father told you the truth this morning. About Miss Whitlock being his daughter.”
He stared mutely ahead.
“But you already knew, didn’t you?”
His gaze darted to mine warily.
“She told you all those years ago before she was sent away. She trusted you. Or she noticed you exhibit the same biological anomaly she and your father do, and she thought that would convince you.” I reached for his hand, touching the immobilized top joint of his fingers which caused him to hold the sandwich peculiarly.
“But you refused to believe her. That’s why you called her a deceitful liar. ”
His shoulders bowed. “I was so angry when she tried to tell me. I just…I didn’t want to believe it.” He glanced sideways at me, shame tightening his voice. “I was a little in love with her, you see. And here she was telling me I was…her brother.” He choked on the words. “I…”
“You were confused and perhaps a little humiliated,” I finished when he couldn’t. “It’s understandable.”
He seemed surprised that I wasn’t chastening him. “I suppose it was easier to think she was lying than to accept the truth.” He frowned. “But I think part of me knew it anyway. And that unsettled me.”
“Did you say anything to your father or mother?”
“Then? No.” He shook his head fervently. “No, I didn’t tell anyone.”
He was too mortified to do so.
“I’m sorry, then.”
His brow furrowed in incomprehension.
“For your loss. Miss Whitlock…Portia…was your sister, and it sounds like, at one time, a friend.”
He turned to stare out the window toward the cascade, nodding numbly. His emotions were plainly still conflicted when it came to Portia, but one thing was clear: he was grieving. For what had been, for what he’d mistaken, and for what would never be.
“You didn’t kill her, did you?” I felt certain I already knew the answer, but the question still needed to be asked.
He turned to look at me blindly at first, struggling to return to the present.
“No. No, I…resented her. Resented what she’d made me feel.
But I could never have physically harmed her.
I couldn’t.” His gaze dipped to the sandwich forgotten in his hand and he scowled.
“But you should know.” His dark eyes lifted to mine, stark with torment. “Father faked that archery attack.”
I straightened. “You know this for certain?”
“I saw him pull the arrow from the lawn. I watched him fall to the ground.”
“Did he know you saw?”
“I don’t know.” He glowered unhappily. “But if he did, he obviously counted on me keeping my mouth shut.”
I touched his arm, drawing his attention back to me. “Thank you for telling me.”
He nodded, his expression troubled. I wished I could reassure him, but I was afraid there were no words capable of that. And I needed to tell Gage what I’d learned.
I hurried back through the forest, keeping my eyes trained on the path before me, lest I twist an ankle on an exposed tree root.
The sky was darkening with roiling clouds, heralding the approach of rain.
Meanwhile, my thoughts churned with the possibility that Birnam had been the murderer all along.
The prospect of it being a filicide was nauseating.
When we confronted him, I could already envision his blustering denials.
Then I realized that the sound of shouting wasn’t only in my imagination.
Lifting my skirts, I hurried around the shrubberies lining the edge of the parterre garden to find Trevor had hoisted Mr. Thorndike up by the lapels and was screaming into his face.
“Where did you get this?” When Thorndike’s answer wasn’t quick enough for his liking, he shook him before repeating himself. “Where did you get this?”
“I-I-I don’t know what you’re talking about?” Lord Gage’s secretary stammered.
Trevor’s outburst had garnered a crowd of spectators who looked on in shock and bewilderment. Among them was Gage, who pushed his way through as I approached from the other side.
“Trevor, what are you doing?” I demanded.
“I caught this…cur attempting to slip this piece of foolscap into my pocket.”
Gage had managed to separate the two men, and now my brother brandished a rumpled piece of paper in the air.
“I was doing no such thing,” Thorndike protested, which only drew more of Trevor’s ire as he made another lunge at him.
“You were!”
“Whoa!” Gage yelled, separating the two men once again. “Control yourselves,” he ordered. “And let me see that.”
Trevor relinquished the paper to him but never removed his blistering glare from the secretary.
Gage scanned the page before casting a look of misgiving my way.
When he passed me the paper, I understood why.
It was the missing note that Miss Whitlock had allegedly slid beneath Mr. Birnam’s door on the evening she was attacked and killed.
“Both of you, come with me,” Gage instructed Trevor and Thorndike.
Trevor did so willingly, while Thorndike was more reluctant.
I followed them across the garden and up the stairs of the terrace, clasping the note close to my chest. The guests stood in clusters, whispering to each other as we passed.
Matilda, in particular, appeared worried.
I wondered if Trevor had spoken to her since our conversation the previous evening.
Gage paused just outside the red saloon to issue instructions to Bowcott, requesting that Mr. Birnam and Paget be escorted to the study. Lord Gage already stood waiting for us at the opposite end of the great hall.
Once the five of us had gathered in the study with the door closed, Trevor let fly with his accusations again. “Where did you get this?” He gestured toward the paper I now passed to Lord Gage. “And why were you attempting to slip it into my pocket?”
Perhaps realizing that denials would do him no good when he’d been caught red-handed, Thorndike changed his tune. “Someone slipped it into my pocket. The one inside my coat. It must have happened while it was hanging in my office.”
Lord Gage looked up from the missive to scowl at his secretary. “And rather than bring it to our attention, you thought to instead put it into Mr. St. Mawr’s pocket?”