Page 66 of The Devil in Oxford
No one would miss them here. The entire place was coated with a fine sheen of dust. It didn’t look like anyone had been here in months. And yet if that was the case, then how did these letters get into the box to begin with?
Peculiar, when you come to think of it.
“Where do you suppose he’s been living?” Ruan asked, evidently overhearing my train of thought.
“Would you stop that?” I grumbled, shaking my head before letting out a weary sigh. “I suppose we’ll have to figure that part out too, won’t we?”
“Ruby…” Ruan asked softly. “You asked if Aldate was Reaver, but what if this Aldate person is actually Leona?”
I opened my mouth to say no, then paused. I laid a hand over my pocket. They were typewritten. Unsigned. The cadence, the sentences. He was right. Itcouldeasily be Leona—and if it was, then I’d learned no more than I already knew. I raked a hand through my hair, tugging at the roots. Both Reaver and Leona worked at theAshmolean, both were experts in ancient Egypt. However, of the two, Leonacaredfor Julius Harker. Cared for Mr. Mueller. Suddenly her guilt for Mueller’s fate became clear, and why she did not want him to suffer for what she’d done.
My mind raced. Scrambling to piece together all the tiny clues I’d amassed over the last few days. The conversations. The things I’d seen. The things I’d found. Reaver and Leona had been arguing. Mary had said it was growing worse by the day until Harker died. Leona was not supposed to be at the exhibition that night—she had hidden her presence from Reaver, had likely been hiding a great deal more than that. I squeezed my eyes shut. The rage in Frederick Reaver’s expression tonight took on a far more sinister light.
“My thoughts exactly,” Ruan finished.
My jaw worked unpleasantly as I realized I’d not spoken in quite some time.
“Sorry.” He gave me a rueful look.
“You think Reaver went to her house, they argued… Annabelle got in the way…” I searched his eyes, wishing that the grim possibility was not the likeliest answer.
“Now we just have to wait for Annabelle to wake, so we can prove our hypothesis.”
I turned away, snapped the trunk shut, the sound echoing in the tomb-like sitting room. “Then we’d better get back, hadn’t we?”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONEThe Best Defense…
SNOWfell in torrents as we raced through the streets of Oxford back to the townhome. Everyone with a lick of sense had long been asleep, leaving us alone in the night. A lone dog howled in the distance as we crunched along in the newly fallen snow. My teeth chattered. Neither of us said a word, both struggling to make sense of what we found in Julius Harker’s home. No matter how badly I wanted to paint Frederick Reaver as the villain, something deep down told me he was not. A dreadful man, yes. A cad of the highest order? Also yes.
But he wouldn’t harm Leona. That was the piece that did not fit. He cared for her, he would not have done anything to risk her. He’d more or less told me the same in his office.
The clues had been there all along. The tenderness in the way he touched Leona the night of the exhibition. The way that her name subtly affected him, even when he wore his chilly mask. “We have to find out who his buyer was…”
“Hiswhat?” Ruan asked incredulously.
“Regardless of whether it’s drugs or antiquities he’s dealing in, someone was buying from Harker.” My sigh was visible in the night air. “We’ve been going about it all wrong. I’ve been trying tofigure out the why of the crime, thinking it would lead me to the killer’s identity. But all that’s done is take us in circles. We need to change tack and figure outwhomight have done it, then we can worry about why.”
Ruan made a strangled sound in his throat before muttering something in Cornish that sounded an awful lot like a prayer to his old gods.
The townhome was the next street over. I dipped into a narrow alley to cut the distance. It was dark between the tall buildings, and just wide enough I could touch both sides if I extended my arms. A fat rat scurried ahead, disturbed by our presence, and climbed up the wall, disappearing into the darkness. There was a time when rats frightened me, but during the war I saw enough of the things that they’d become rather commonplace now.
“How do you think you’re going to find outwhokilled Harker, if we don’t know why?”
I paused, turning back to him, resting my hands on my hips ready to ask if he had any better ideas, when I noticed an unusual glow coming from the townhome. Something large brushed my ankles. I glanced down half expecting to see the damn rat had returned, but instead it was Fiachna. He butted his head against me and let out a throaty meow.
“What are you doing…?” I scooped him up into my arms. As I stood, I realized how he’d gotten out. The door to the townhouse was wide open, all the ground-floor lights burning bright. Panic climbed up my throat as I held onto my oversized housecat, running my fingers through his coat and struggling to make sense of the scene.
Mr. Owen and Mrs. Penrose were asleep when we left, and Annabelle was in no condition to be turning on or off lamps.
The house had been dark.
I broke into a run, cat in my arms, until I reached the doorwayand came to a skidding halt. Fiachna wriggled his way out of my grasp with an aggrieved meow and hopped onto the cold floor.
Mr. Owen stood in the middle of the kitchen, clad in his long white nightshirt, his sturdy legs bare from the thigh down. My—well,his—revolver pointed at the chest of a man bound up with kitchen twine.
Mrs. Penrose, for her part, stood over the intruder with a heavy copper pan gripped in her hand. Gauging by the knot already growing on their captive’s temple, she had already employed said pan at least once. Fiachna purred loudly before hopping up on the table, his fluffy tail proudly flicking in the air.
“May I ask what happened here?” I stepped around Mr. Owen to get a better look at their prisoner and my heart sank.
