Page 28 of The Hazardous Measure of Love
‘To make himselfseeminnocent?’ James wrinkled his nose as he thought it through. ‘He was close at hand because of the reception and perhaps it seemed safer to make a point of calling at the house.’ He shrugged. ‘But if I was the guilty party the last thing I would want is the pack of us descending on the family with our noses on the scent.’
‘Perhaps it was a bluff,’ I suggested. ‘He invites you to investigate, Luc, but in such a way that it would seem insulting. You refuse, but think he must be innocent or he would not have done it.’
‘Whatever his motives, it will take us out of Town and allow us to assess Matthew’s inheritance.’ He grinned at me. ‘An expedition.’
‘But not an adventure, I very much hope,’ his mother said as she stood up. ‘I will put our preparations in train. When do you wish to set out, Luc?’
‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said, making her gasp. ‘I do not want to miss the funeral and I have hopes of hearing the will read.’
Lady Radcliffe threw up her hands. ‘Then do not blame me – or the servants – if we arrive to a dusty house with no proper provisions and find unaired beds, thick cobwebs and the servants carousing in the cellar!’
‘I had best write to Godfather,’ James said. ‘Kit can move back to my set at Albany for the day or two it will take him to finish all our errands here.’
‘I will see what I can do to help your mother,’ I told Luc.
‘Thank you. And I will go to the mews. I suspect we will need to hire another coach for the supplies.’ I heard him counting aloud as I went out. ‘One for the boys, their nursemaid, Nanny Yates. One for Mama, James, Cassie and me. One for staff. No, two more…’
* * *
I don’t know how we all did it, but by eight the next morning the coach full of staff and bedding, with the footmen seated on top, followed by the coach occupied by Cook, her assistants and hampers of provisions, were already on the road. Behind them was Luc’s curricle with a groom driving, another with a gig for James and two more men leading riding horses.
Garrick and Carola were remaining in London. As he said, someone had to manage the business of the earldom while Luc was gadding about enjoying himself.
We had breakfast and went to the two waiting carriages. The boys were fizzing with excitement that was only quelled when Luc promised they could take it in turns sit up with William the second coachman when we were out of London and on to quieter roads.
I had wrapped the evidence boards in brown paper and string, securely fastened with red sealing wax, and they had gone ahead with the other luggage under the care of the first footman. I had overheard Wilkins threaten him with permanent damage to his wedding tackle (notexactlyhow he put it) should they be misplaced, damaged or opened.
Wilkins had been left with the task of talking to the Tillingham staff, on the grounds that informal chats with neighbouring servants might extract more information than any of us might elicit. He was also going to discover whether any of the other households around the Square had encountered intruders or had suffered break-ins.
I very much doubted that they had, or, if something had occurred, that it was connected with the Tillingham murder, but the questions must be asked. ‘We haven’t done anything about the footman that Lord Tillingham dismissed,’ I said, snapping out of my meandering thoughts about whatever it was Sherlock Holmes had said about eliminating the impossible. Or was it the possible? Or was that Occam’s Razor?
‘I asked Garrick to see if he could trace him through the domestic agencies,’ Luc said.
‘He appears a more probable suspect than some random housebreaker,’ Lady Radcliffe agreed, looking up from the book she was reading. ‘But I fear someone in the family does seem the most likely culprit.’
‘Or Madame Vallaint,’ I said. ‘She strikes me as being the epitome of the woman scorned, especially if the Viscount did not satisfy her demands for diamonds as a pay-off.’
‘Hmm.’ Lady Radcliffe closed the book, keeping one finger in to mark her place. ‘I suspect that she would be more inclined to keep him alive so she could torment him with incessant demands for farewell gifts. I do not say that she might not have lost her temper and struck out if she had encountered him and they had argued violently – although that does not sound like Lord Tillingham to me – but I do not see her plotting such an undramatic and secretive murder.’
I was not so sure. I could imagine Madame getting into the back garden (although my mind did boggle a little at the thought of her climbing the gate), tapping on the window and then, when she had been admitted, attempting to seduce the Viscount back into her arms. If he had spurned her then she might have seized the paperknife and struck a fatal blow fortuitously, without knowing the right place at all. But no, we had eliminated the paperknife early on, I recalled.
‘The weapon. What about the weapon? We never looked for that, did we?’
Luc, who seemed to be following my thought processes – not always an easy task – nodded. ‘I did ask Grainger to check that all the kitchen knives were accounted for.’ He hesitated. ‘And they were. Assuming we can trust Grainger, that is.’
On that unsettling thought we all went back to our various occupations. Lady Radcliffe re-opened her book, James was playing against himself on a traveling chess board, Luc was reading a stack of correspondence and making notes and I was staring out of the window because I could never get enough of Regency sight-seeing.
I knew Luc kept a copy of a road book and a map in the door pocket of the coach, so I dug those out and studied them.
Which way would we go? Surely up what is now the Edgware Road to Bushey, then Watford – ‘We are going to pass through Welhampstead!’
‘We are.’ Luc looked up and grinned at my excitement. ‘It is the last stop to change horses, so we will not linger, but I promise we can return to visit: it is only fifteen miles or so from Rook’s Acre.’
We made the first change atThe Abercorn Armsin Stanmore, then again atThe Bellat Two Waters. I became laughably over-excited at seeing the horse-drawn canal barges on what I called Grand Union but which James told me was called the Grand Junction in that time.
Then I asked Lady Radcliffe if we could change sides so I could look out for Snook’s grave on Boxmoor Common. There was no sign of it and I remembered that the white stone over the highwayman’s last resting place was a relatively modern addition. All three Franklins were bemused by my interest.
‘Why mark a highwayman’s grave?’ Lady Radcliffe wanted to know.
