Page 69 of The Duke and Lady Scandal
He laid it on the counter and then made his way to the door.
“Good day to you, Miss Prince,” he all but shouted over his shoulder.
Allie scooped up the box he’d left and slid off the lid. Inside, a rather crude-looking stone sat on a little pillow of black satin. It was larger than she’d expected, and when she took it out, the stone was heavy and cool against her palm.
Lord Holcroft and the whole matter of his uncut stone seemed quite simple now. Quite believable, and she felt like a fool for all the assumptions she’d made about the rather jolly man who simply wished to create a gift for his daughter.
She scooped up his calling card. The same crimson hue with gilded writing, but one significant difference. This one listed an address. Number eight in Grosvenor Square. Perhaps the other had just been a misprint.
Holcroft looked odd, but he was nothing more than a new customer.
Though that left the man at Hawlston’s an odd and unsettling mystery.
Chapter Fifteen
After questioning the night watchman at the jeweler’s, Ben felt a bit of sympathy for the man.
Mr. Boscombe readily admitted to drifting off and carried an enormous weight of guilt for the thieves getting as far as they had, even if they’d been unable to crack the safe and abscond with the jewels.
But he’d not seen either of the men’s faces and insisted that they hadn’t spoken a single word. At least in the few moments of him waking up to the horror of the break-in and being thrashed on the skull until he lost consciousness.
Ben had taken time to examine the area of broken glass and the scratches and dents made on the safe. Though it had, unfortunately, all been tidied, he’d looked for any clue that might have been overlooked—a bit of torn fabric, something one of the thieves unwittingly dropped, or even more of the damned newspaper clippings.
But he’d found nothing.
The only notable aspect of his visit was his examination of the safe. The scratches and dents could all be explained by something as simple asa crowbar, but, oddly, they weren’t near the safe’s lock mechanism. The thieves had simply gone at the door with brute force, as if they thought they could tear into the metal and didn’t bother with the lock itself.Thatmade no sense.
He had two detective constables checking in with known thieves who might dare a theft of the Crown Jewels. Though he’d already had a few of his regular informants making such inquiries since Alexandra’s first visit to Scotland Yard. Thieves did like to boast, so it stood to reason that word of such an audacious attempt would have already spread.
So far, they’d come up with nothing.
But one man knew something, or at least he’d been close to someone who did, and as much as Ben didn’t fancy risking another beating from his brutes, he had to speak to Jack Demming again.
He made his way to Southwark and visited the man’s haunts with no success. Then he recalled that Howe’s mother lived in Southwark. Ben had memorized everything in the file about the man whose death still weighed on his conscience. And now, from Demming himself, he knew that lady who lived not far from St. George’s Cathedral was Demming’s mother too.
Ben waited at a park within sight of the woman’s address for nearly an hour and was on the verge of simply knocking when he was finally rewarded. Demming strode out the front door, lifted his collar against the nip in the air, and headed north.
He kept expecting the man to hail a cab, but Demming walked like a man possessed by a purpose. Within a quarter of an hour, Ben was warmed from the walk and recognized that Demming was heading toward Waterloo Station.
It was easy to blend in among the crowd filling the busy station, but easier still to lose sight of Demming too. The man didn’t go to the main ticket counter, he approached a special station—the Necropolis station.
Ben’s gut clenched when he spied the station’s familiar sign. He knew the place where Demming was leading him.
The special terminus allowed travelers to board trains set aside to convey them to Brookwood Cemetery. It was one of the largest cemeteries near London, designed to help diminish the overcrowding of London’s older cemeteries. The land for Brookwood was spacious enough for thousands of plots, and Ben knew Amos Howe had been laid to rest in its grounds.
George had been too. Helen had been impressed with the philosophy behind its design and the fact that it had not been set aside exclusively for the rich or the poor.
After Demming’s train departed, Ben bought a ticket for the next.
He knew where he’d find him. He’d been to Howe’s grave once before to pay his own respects.
Though as the train wound its way toward Surrey, guilt gnawed at him. He crossed his arms, thenloosened the knot of his tie, but nothing would ease the tension. He’d not visited George’s grave since the burial, all in an attempt to avoid the guilt that assailed him now.
But emotions couldn’t be willed away. Meeting Alexandra had shown him that. He couldn’t deny what she evoked in him no matter how hard he tried, and he had no desire to try.
Even if he told himself he’d mastered stoicism at work, it was an illusion. He cared deeply about the victims he encountered in his work, about finding answers, solving cases.
And he couldn’t bury the guilt he felt over George’s death deep enough to save himself from facing it.
