Page 83 of The Trick of the Treasure
“Joshua isnotdead,” Audrey whispered. “Tell me you made it up. Joshua is not dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Constance said helplessly. Tears were spilling unnoticed down Audrey’s cheeks. “We didn’t know it would upset you like this.” Was the woman weeping for Clarke—whom she called Joshua—or because she suspected Tybalt of his murder?
“Did you shoot him when you took the treasure from him?” Solomon asked Tybalt.
“Dash it, I didn’t even know he was dead!” Tybalt exclaimed. “Where and when was he shot?”
“In his own home. There was no sign of the treasure, but his bag was packed—before someone flung the contents all over the room.”
Audrey let out a low moan and would have collapsed had Constance not put her arm around her.
Tybalt was staring at Audrey. “Hewas the one? Samuels?”
“Whatone?” Solomon demanded, but Tybalt’s attention was all on Audrey, pity and hopeless love softening his harsh face. “Captain!”
Tybalt spared him a glance. “What?” he asked without interest, returning his gaze to Audrey, now being coaxed back onto the sofa by Constance. He took a flask from his pocket, unstoppered it, and thrust it into Audrey’s hand. “Drink,” he said gently. “Just a spot. We have to decide what is best to do.”
When he urged her hand upward, she drank obediently like a child, just one swallow. She didn’t choke on its fire, but it did seem to shock her back into awareness.
“To do?” she said. “I don’t care now. No wonder he didn’t come…”
“You were waiting for Mr. Clarke,” Constance said cautiously. “Not Captain Tybalt?”
“Then what, sir, broughtyouhere?” Solomon demanded.
“I have friends in Lloyd’s house who sent me word that Miss Lloyd had disappeared,” the captain said.
“Garrick,” Solomon guessed.
Tybalt did not deny it. “I guessed she would have come here. It’s where she brought her orphans and poor children to enjoy the seaside. Her one escape from that house.”
Like Constance, Solomon was clearly trying to revise their theory, taking Audrey’s very odd romance with the mere carpenter into account. “You are telling us, captain, that Samuels stole the treasure without your help?”
“Of course he did,” Audrey said unexpectedly. “It was my idea, but Joshua carried it out perfectly.”
“Youridea,” Constance repeated, exchanging glances with Solomon. “How did that come about?”
“I never begrudged my brother anything,” Audrey told her. “I was content to give him my inheritance from my parents, along with that from my godmother and my aunt. He spent it all on his expeditions, of course, which are terribly important to him. And he has found some remarkable items. So when old Silas Cauley gave him the treasure map, I really believed the treasure was there and that Barnabas would find it. I knew Cauley, you see, through my sailors’ charity. So did Joshua.”
“So you came up with the idea to steal it?” Constance said gently. “Because Barnabus had taken your inheritance from you?” And with it, any chance of an independent life in a home of her own.
But Audrey’s watery eyes widened. “Oh no. Well, Joshua might have. I’m afraid I only did it for revenge, because of what he did.”
“Which was what?” Solomon asked, coming to sit down at last.
“He evicted the Clarkes from the land they had held for generations. Just because Joshua and I wanted to marry. Joshua had almost finished his apprenticeship, but Barnabas ended that too. Joshua went to sea for a few years to make some money, which he saved to begin his own carpentry business—or at least, that which he didn’t give to his struggling family. He is very good, you know.” She closed her eyes. “Was…”
“Did he make you the sculptures Rachel said were gone from your room?” Solomon asked.
She nodded. “Each time he came home, he made me one. But inevitably, we lost track of each other. I didn’t know where he was until I ran into him a couple of years ago at a sailors’ charity.” She smiled. “We were no longer young, but it was just as it had used to be when I was seventeen. Better, because we understood so much more. We were going to get married, despite Barnabas’s objections. Joshua had enough money by then to keep us both in that comfortable little house. But I knew…”
She trailed off, her eyes bleak again.
“Knew what?” Constance prompted her.
“That Barnabas would never leave us alone. He would find a way not just to cover up such a mésalliance, but to end it. He would find us, and destroy Joshua all over again. Then he—Barnabas—started talking about old Cauley’s buried treasure. He decided to take Sydney with him—to make a man of him, apparently—and I knew how to do it when I saw the size of Sydney’s trunk. I knew Joshua would easily be able to copy whatever vessel the treasure was found in—Cauley claimed it was wooden—and find some way to hide the real chest inside Sydney’s large trunk during crucial times.”
“Of course, you had been aboard theQueen of the Sea,” Solomon said quickly. “So you knew the layout of the ship, and where the crew’s quarters were in relation to the captain’s and the passengers’?”
