Page 33 of Dark Tidings on the Thames
“We’ve sent for your father,” Wooten added. “But do you truly wish for him to hear all the details of your recent behavior? Do you want him to hear us discussing the possibility that you killed Miss Glynn Foulger?”
Arnold straightened right out of his slouch. “Wait! What? You think Ikilledthat girl? You cannot! I didn’t!”
“Why should we believe you?” Wooten asked. “We know you were harassing her.”
The young man scowled and crossed his arms. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do.” Wooten spoke calmly as he ticked items off his fingers. “We have multiple witnesses who saw you skulking about after Miss Foulger. We have others who saw you coming and going from Paternoster Row, where you had some very nasty broadsheets printed, all featuring the young lady.”
“I did no such thing,” Arnold said loftily.
“Tsk, tsk. where is your honor, man?” Niall slapped down one of the broadsheets that Kara had collected at Jeanette’s boardinghouse. He shook his head. “Getting caught in an outright lie? Bad enough. But besmirching the names and reputations of innocent young women?” He tapped the broadsheet. “And while this one is vile enough, I’ve seen the investigator’s collection of the ones you posted featuring Miss Foulger. Vulgar, indeed.” He shook his head. “No one loves a bully, Mr. Arnold.”
“The artist incorporated his signature into this one and a couple of the others. One of my constables is right now knocking on his door,” Wooten said. “We’ll have his statement within the hour, stating who paid him to create such disgraceful images.”
Suddenly Arnold slammed his hands down onto the table between them. “She should have taken me up on my offer, then, shouldn’t she? It was the height of stupidity for her to refuse me. A lowly Covent Garden merchant? And with that scar? She’s lucky I made the offer at all!” Neither Niall nor Wooten responded, but the young man continued, his lip curled. “It was ludicrous that she should turn me down.”
“Making such an offer to an innocent woman strains the tenets of gentlemanly behavior,” Niall said. “Refusing to accept her rejection with any sort of grace breaks them absolutely. But the way you havebehaved?” He allowed his disgust to show. “Beyond the pale, sir.”
“It was her own fault, in any case,” the young man said sullenly. “She led me on.”
“How so?” asked Wooten, his brow raised.
“She made a showpiece of a custom arrangement for me. She asked all sorts of questions about the woman I intended it for and about our relationship.”
“Did Miss Foulger proposition you?” asked Wooten.
Arnold frowned. “No.”
“Did she suggest that she should take the place of the young woman you spoke to her about?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see Miss Foulger flirting with other men? Or accepting illicit proposals from them?”
Arnold shifted in his seat.
“Did you?” demanded Wooten.
“No!”
The inspector gave a snort.
“She spoke kindly to me,” Arnold said.
“So, Miss Foulger did business with you, sir. She did a thorough job of it. And shespoke to you kindly? And somehow, in your mind, this translated to herowingyou?” Wooten sounded incredulous.
“God save the good women of England, if this is how you treat every one of them that spares you a kind word,” Niall said on a sigh.
“And what, exactly, did you think this young Jeanette owed you?” Wooten asked, pointing to the image of the redhead in the newest broadsheet.
The young man pursed his lips and said nothing.
“You were at Jeanette’s home posting this on her door and presumably throughout her neighborhood. How did you know where she lived?” asked Niall. He paused, and when the boy said nothing, he continued. “You followed her home, didn’t you?”
“You might as well answer, given that you were apprehended at her door,” Wooten said.
Arnold merely gave a curt nod.
