Thirty-six
Rafe
Rafe didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or bellow as he followed the half-dressed, terrified valets from the attic to join their griping—not terrified— employers in the gloom of the next floor.
The stench in this drafty lower hall wasn’t quite as overwhelming as in the low-ceilinged attic.
In candlelight, the drifting ghosts writhed in accompaniment with shouting nightshirts and caps, creating a spectral chaos.
He counted heads. The swine Humphries was nowhere to be seen in the teeming madness. Although another head appeared to be. . . on the floor?
Once he worked out that the shadows didn’t deceive him, he noted the head near the floor was the bespectacled bookkeeper, who no longer wore spectacles and appeared to be throttling a headless effigy.
A scarecrow whizzed past Rafe’s nose, startling him into looking around again. Gray balls of stink darted over his head.
In the dim light and confusion, valets dodged the puppets, shrieking like hysterical females. Law and order started with order.
“Downstairs,” Rafe thundered, in his sergeant’s full-throttle battle cry. “Downstairs, the lot of you.”
Given permission, two of the valets fled for the lobby. The lawyer obediently trotted after them. His manservant evidently had other ideas and lingered to watch the show. The gambler and the money-man argued and refused to go anywhere. And Perser remained on the floor, killing a dummy.
Rafe wanted to drive out his murderous, thieving guests, but he’d rather not physically fling them down the stairs.
Gladstone and Featherstone stepped aside as Haggarty’s gray-haired, sturdy valet grabbed the now-weeping Perser by the back of his night shirt and hauled him upright.
Rafe recognized authority when he saw it. Wilson was no mere servant. He had to be another damned bodyguard, at the very least, but one more competent than the churlish Jones or pretty-faced Tatum, now quivering in superstitious fear downstairs.
While Fort and Arnaud remained hidden, Fletch stormed up the stairs with the big stick from behind the bar and waved it at the malingerers, shouting. Pondering Perser and the fallen strawman, Gladstone and Featherstone refused again. So much for searching rooms.
Humphries still hadn’t appeared. But there were other mysteries here.
Stomping down the corridor, Rafe flung open the library door and gestured at Fort to abandon his hiding place. To his surprise, Lavender and Lord Greybourne were with him. His lordship was leafing through books. Lavender waited expectantly.
“Leave Miss Marlowe in here,” Rafe ordered. “Better yet, take her home.” He knew that wasn’t happening. The manor ladies were strong-willed, even the young ones.
Young Andrew limped out of an empty chamber down the hall.
Rafe rolled his eyes. Why not invite the whole dratted village?
Peering around the door frame, Lavender appeared more entertained by the circus than fearful, but Rafe knew his duty.
He gestured for the gimp to lead the manor’s favorite pet down to the kitchen and Verity.
She had no reason to be up here with dangerous men in their nightclothes.
The damned duke’s son was responsible for this chaos and needed to sort it out.
Rafe had no notion what to do with the scholarly baron.
By the time the partners in madness joined the crowd, the handsome gambler had shrugged on a brocade dressing gown.
The older money man wore a nightcap and woolen nightshirt, with his feet still encased in warm stockings, practical in the late October chill.
Still arguing, in hushed voices now, they dodged the remaining scarecrow and ignored flying stinkballs.
No imagination whatsoever. And Ar naud must still be amusing himself with the rope lines.
“Where’s Humphries?” Rafe demanded, while studying the short bookkeeper dangling, sobbing, from Wilson’s grip.
Without his glasses, Perser seemed different.
Perhaps it was the lack of fussy, old-fashioned clothing two sizes too large.
In his thin nightshirt, the bookkeeper now appeared a decade younger and stronger.
“I can’t arrest anyone for strangling a dummy.
Where’s Humphries?” Rafe asked again, fearing the worst.
A lantern opened at the end of the corridor, near the American’s room, and Arnaud finally emerged. Wordlessly, he tried the American’s bedchamber door. It opened without need of key. Arnaud intelligently waited for Rafe to join him.
“Featherstone, take your weeping bookkeeper downstairs. You, Wilson, come with me. The rest of you, go down with the others, where there’s a fire.
” Rafe didn’t bother apologizing to his pestiferous guests.
Once upon a time, his only dream had been to be a cheerful innkeeper, welcoming weary travelers, and feeding them the best food on the road.
These days, he was happy if he didn’t have to hang anyone. With the magistrate still out of town, arresting people seemed pointless or he would have done it by now, out of spite. Although the manor would run out of cells to put them all in.
Gray-haired Wilson studied Rafe for half a second before acquiescing and shoving the feebly struggling Perser into the gambler’s hands.
Looking as if he’d rather strangle his bookkeeper, Featherstone, warm in his fancy dressing gown, dragged Perser away.
Bleary-eyed, wearing only cap and nightshirt, the shivering money man remained, swaying uncertainly.
Stepping from the shadows, Greybourne offered him an arm.
After assuring himself Lavender was on her way to safety, Fort joined Arnaud at Humphries’ door. Shoving it wider, Rafe strode in first, following closely by the mad puppeteers. Clutching the baron’s arm, Gladstone stumbled in last.
The stout man in the bed did not wake.
“He appears to be asleep or passed out,” Fort murmured. “When I was in here earlier, his valet was filling a whisky glass and practically pouring it down him. Humphries was complaining quite clearly at the time. Laudanum, maybe?”
Good to know the particulars. Rafe let the duke’s son check on the big man in the bed.
Humphries wasn’t snoring. He didn’t appear to be breathing.
Rafe had seen enough dead men and didn’t want to investigate more, so he memorized the position of everything in the room, while eavesdropping on Gladstone and the baron.
They appeared to be discussing the quality of the inn’s ale.
Good to know what was important at times like this.
“He has a pulse,” Fort reported.
Surprised, Rafe didn’t know whether to be pleased or not. Not having a dead body in one of his beds was probably a good thing.
“We should call Dr. Walker,” Fort continued. “The pulse feels weak to me, and there’s something wrong with his mouth.”
Gray-haired Wilson verified the pulse and nodding grimly, actually performed as a servant should and left to find a messenger. Or escape, but Rafe was betting the lawyer’s valet was too savvy for that.
“Apoplexy,” was Gladstone’s drunken conclusion as he leaned over the bed, breathing whisky fumes. “Man his size shouldn’t give in to his distempers.” He straightened and stumbled for the door. “Where’s that fire? And Featherstone? This is bad.”
The cold and shock had dissipated his dissipation, Rafe surmised. The financier didn’t need any aid to stagger out.
“Search this room,” Rafe murmured to his remaining audience. With the visitors gone, he meant to take advantage of the unconscious man’s inability to object. “I want to search Perser’s.”
A bookkeeper strangling the caricature of a servant—in the same way two men had been murdered—required investigating.
Given permission, Fort immediately dived for the wooden box under Humphries’ bed. Greybourne had already positioned himself to examine the desk’s contents.
Arnaud followed Rafe. As the magistrate’s cousin, he made a good witness. Rafe was grateful the artist understood that. He hadn’t wanted to order the French count about. Arnaud wasn’t precisely the obedient sort.
The bookkeeper had left his door wide open. Inside, not in the luggage room where it belonged, his trunk filled the small space not occupied by the bed and washstand. While Arnaud rummaged through baggy coats and breeches draped over furniture, Rafe tested the trunk. It wasn’t locked.
“Searching without permission ought to be illegal,” he muttered, pulling out stacks of ledgers and invoices. He’d had no training and just did what a man of sense might do, but rifling a man’s belongings felt wrong.
A small notebook filled with notes called to him, and Rafe instinctively shoved it into his pocket—as Fort had with the architect’s notes earlier. The younger man had a good investigator’s head on his shoulders.
“We search for the poor man’s own welfare,” Arnaud suggested. “Someone who strangles effigies has the loose boards in his attic. We look after his best interests.”
More lunatics. That sounded about right. At least this one hadn’t poisoned anyone. Yet. Fretting over the way Humphries mouth had sagged, Rafe continued emptying the trunk.
Oddly, he found Perser’s clothes buried under the ledgers.
He dumped the wrinkled mass on the floor and searched the trunk for hidden panels, but it wasn’t particularly sturdy and had no thickness anywhere to indicate a hiding place.
But inside the torn lining he found. . .
wire? A garrote? Evidence? Would Hunt accept this as sufficient to send the bookkeeper to assizes?
Arnaud picked up one of the wrinkled coats Rafe had discarded and compared it to the one hanging on the chair. “Why does he wear the clothes too large when he has ones to fit?”
Puzzle pieces fell in place. “Disguise. You’ve seen Lavender turn herself into a drudge with spectacles and ill-fitting attire.
Add spectacles. . .” Rafe held up an overlarge wire-rimmed pair on the night table.
“I wager he doesn’t need these. We can test him later. But why, if he’s just a bookkeeper?”