Page 80 of Beneath the Devil's Mask
“Perhaps what happened to Briggs will finally be the leverage I need to get my bill through Parliament. He is the Hook’s third victim. Surely now?—”
“Don’t, Nick,” Mandell snapped. “I am in no mood to listen to one of your homilies about the social benefits to be derived from murder.”
“Damn you, I have never said anything like that,” Nick protested hotly. “Of course, what happened to Briggs wasdreadful. But if some good could come of it, if the House could at last be brought to realize ...”
When Mandell shot him a dark look, Nick bore enough sense to subside, but he added, “Besides, what makes you so self-righteous all of a sudden? You have probably wounded Briggs with that cutting tongue of yours far worse than anything the Hook did to him.”
Nick’s words struck too close to the mark. Mandell flinched, but he drew himself up icily. “Yes, I daresay you are right. But I think Briggs’s family has enough to endure without the pair of us quarreling on their doorstep, I bid you farewell, cousin.”
Mandell brushed past Nick. He started to stalk away along the pavement when he was halted by the sound of Nick’s voice.
“Mandell!”
Mandell glanced back. Nick stood poised by Briggs’s steps. He still looked flushed with annoyance, but there was an unaccountable sorrow in his eyes as well.
“I am sorry,” Nick said. “I did not mean to sound so callous. I guess I never realized how much you cared about Briggs.”
Mandell started to voice his usual denial, but he ended by saying softly, “Neither did I.”
“If I had only known—” Nick broke off. He looked as though he wanted to say something more but ended by shaking his head sadly. “You are right. This is not a good time or place to talk about anything,”
He turned to walk away himself in the opposite direction. Apparently, he had forgotten his own intention to visit Briggs or had decided against it.
Mandell stared after Nick. It occurred to him that Drummond was behaving rather oddly. It was not like the impetuous Nick to hold back with anything he desired to say, no matter what the circumstances. Mandell was left with a strange sensation of a distance widening between them, a distancethat stretched much further than the yards of pavement that separated them.
It only added to Mandell’s feeling of being isolated and alone, but he attempted to shrug the emotion aside. He was being foolish, he chided himself. Likely Nick was, as he had said, preoccupied with some blasted political matter. Even as he turned the corner, Drummond consulted his pocket watch and hastened his steps as though he had forgotten some important meeting.
It was the sight of that pocket watch that drove thoughts of Nick and everything else out of Mandell’s head. His breath quickened as he was assaulted by the memory that had eluded him earlier in Briggs’s bedchamber.
But now he could recall it so clearly—Briggs performing the same action at the tavern last night, checking the time on his watch, urging Mandell to leave. The same watch that now sat ticking upon Briggs’s dressing table hours after he had been assaulted, supposedly by one of the most notorious brigands in London.
As the full implication of this struck Mandell, his brow knit in a heavy frown. What manner of villain was he dealing with here? What kind of a common footpad would carve up a man to rob him, only to leave his victim still in possession of a solid gold watch?
The last minutes of daylight faded. Clarion Way was enveloped in a purple mantle of twilight, the first stars winking in the sky.
“Seven o’clock and all’s well,” Obadiah called out. But the old watchman no longer intoned the time with the confidence and serenity he had felt before Bertie Glossop’s murder. Now, if a stray cat so much as brushed against his legs, he startled half out of his skin.
When he saw the gentleman in the long black cloak come striding up the street, Obadiah’s heart gave a flutter of fear, although there was nothing furtive about the man’s movements. It was only the marquis of Mandell approaching his own front gate.
But the haughty marquis had ever made Obadiah nervous and he was quick to step out of his lordship’s path. He expected Mandell to sweep on past, taking no more notice of Obadiah than he ever did.
To his astonishment, the marquis came to an abrupt halt and nodded in his direction. “Good evening.”
Even then, Obadiah glanced about to see whom his lordship might be addressing.
“I am talking to you, sir,” Lord Mandell said with a tinge of impatience in his voice. “You are the night watchman, are you not’?”
“Well, I-I—,” Obadiah babbled. He had always been in terror of Mandell’s fierce dark gaze. But seen up close, he realized that the marquis’s face possessed none of its usual hauteur. His eyes were dulled with a bone-deep weariness, a feeling Obadiah knew all too well. It gave him the courage to reply.
“Why, why, yes, milord.” Obadiah managed a nervous but respectful bow. “I am Obadiah Jones, your lordship. At your service.”
“You, I believe, are the one that I heard found Albert Glossop’s body. Do you remember the night he was killed?”
The question astonished Obadiah into blurting out, “How could I ever forget it, sir? T’was the most terrifying night of my life, finding young Mr. Glossop that way, all bloodied over and seeing that villain run away, laughing like some pure devil from hell.”
The marquis’s eyes narrowed. “You actually saw the Hook then?”
“‘Deed I did. All garbed in black he was, like some phantom, that strange hat flopping over his eyes.”
