Page 75 of The Murder of Thomas Cardwell
Stokes frowned and looked at Penelope. “But why did Keeble declare it ruined?” He looked at the garment hanging from Barnaby’s hands. “Is it damaged in some way?”
“Not so anyone would readily notice.” Penelope leaned forward, caught the skirt of the coat, and held up the inside hem. “Here, see? A smear of blood. Almost certainly, Keeble got that when he crouched beside Thomas to check that he was dead.”
Stokes’s smile grew wolfish. “Excellent.”
“And I can also confirm that he has the right sort of top hat,” Penelope said. “You will have seen it yourself when he left the church.”
Barnaby and Stokes nodded. “We did,” Stokes said.
The sound of footsteps pattering along the corridor reached them, then the door was flung open, and Jordan and Ruth rushed in, their faces alight with determination.
“Good,” Jordan said. “You’re all here.”
Ruth reached into her large reticule and drew out and brandished a pair of bloodied gloves. “We found Keeble’s gloves, and they’re covered in blood.” Her voice broke. “Thomas’s blood.”
Barnaby handed the coat to Stokes and reached across and gently took the gloves from Ruth. “Where did you find them?”
“And how did you know to look for them?” Stokes asked.
Penelope explained about the information they’d unexpectedly received from Keeble’s footman. She looked at Barnaby. “Once Keeble is in custody, we must go back and reassure his staff. They’ve been nothing but honest and sensible and helpful.”
Barnaby nodded. “We can speak with Josh about what to do about them.”
“He seemed a good sort,” Penelope said. “Hopefully, he’ll keep them on.”
Jordan stepped up to explain how, reasoning that the gloves would have been very bloody and that Keeble would have disposed of them as soon as he possibly could, Jordan and Ruth had combed the alley behind Thomas’s office, unfortunately in vain, but then an urchin had asked what they were looking for. “When we told him, he directed us to one of the local beggars. He had the gloves. He’d found them stuffed into a crevice in the wall just along from the rear door of Thomas’s office. For a fee, he surrendered the gloves and was happy to show us exactly where he found them.”
By then, Ruth had recovered her equanimity. “And best of all, they’re monogrammed.” She pointed to the gloves.
Barnaby turned them over and found the embroidered initials. “EK. Earnest Keeble.” He checked for a label and found one. “The glover’s label is here, too, so we won’t have any difficulty proving these are Keeble’s gloves.”
“His entire household knows those gloves,” Penelope said. “And almost certainly, Josh will, too.”
More footsteps had them all looking at the open doorway.
O’Donnell and Morgan arrived and, with satisfied expressions on their faces, nodded to everyone, then approached the desk and handed Stokes two formal-looking sheets.
“The signed statements from Stan and Lottie, sir,” O’Donnell said.
Morgan added, “By the time we reached here, both were a bit torn over not testifying in court, it being a murder case and all, so they signed these readily enough.”
“Walsh has gone with them to see them off back to the Fox,” O’Donnell reported.
“Good.” Stokes rose, gathered the statements, the coat, and the gloves, then surveyed the crowd in his office. “An excellent morning’s work all around. I’m off to see the Commissioner to get permission to act on this evidence.”
Stokes moved toward the door, and the others made way for him to leave the office.
Once he had, O’Donnell and Morgan eagerly asked about what Penelope, Jordan, and Ruth had found, and the company spent several minutes trading stories of the morning’s events.
Then Stokes was back, his expression caught between a satisfied grin and a frown. When everyone looked at him, he grunted. “The verdict is that, yes, we can arrest Keeble for the murder of Thomas Cardwell. The caveat is that, today being Sunday, we can’t do so until tomorrow.”
Barnaby thought, then waggled his head. “The delay shouldn’t be an issue.”
“No,” Stokes admitted, “but the other point the Commissioner made, once he’d taken a gander at our evidence, is that he feels the case, while being strong on the physical evidence, is weak when it comes to motive.”
Penelope pursed her lips. “He’s right about that.” She glanced at Jordan. “As we concluded yesterday, Keeble must have an extremely powerful motive we’ve yet to uncover.”
Jordan nodded. “And that motive has to derive from his business, and any evidence of it will be buried in his ledgers.”
