Sari Robins - [Andersen Hall Orphanage] (28 page)

Marcus almost smiled. The man was good. And the offer was more tempting than he would ever have supposed. This would certainly provide a nice excuse for an extended stay in London with Cat before returning to duty.
Returning to the Peninsula.
The thought left him cold.

Leaving London meant leaving Cat. How far was he willing to go for her hand? He needed some time to canvass his efforts and figure out his campaign. Dagwood might just buy it for him.

“Just a few days,” Marcus acquiesced, his tone terse. Dagwood didn’t need to know that he was doing him any favors.

“Excellent!” Dagwood slapped his knee. “Who better to catch a thief than the master thief?”

“Yes,” Marcus muttered, wondering what he’d just signed up for. “Who better?”

M
arcus and Dagwood went directly to the scene of the crime, the residence of Mr. Dickey and Lady Frederica Caddyhorn. Marcus had never met the couple, but from the Mayfair address and elegant furnishings, could tell that they were not without means.

He and Dagwood waited in the portrait gallery as a manservant droned on about the restigious family lineage. The servant wore his brown-and-gold uniform like a badge of honor, obviously impressed with his employers and their imposing lineage. Marcus suspected that the oratory was par for the course for him.

“In sum, charitable to a fault was honorable Lady Margaret.” The manservant’s nasally voice echoed in the long rectangular gallery, as he motioned to the picture overhead. In it, the dark-haired, gray-eyed lady looked almost as bored as Marcus felt.

Inhaling dramatically, the servant moved toward the next picture on the wall. By Marcus’s accounting that made seven portraits thus far.

“Where the hell are they?” Marcus muttered under his breath for Dagwood’s ears only. “You’d think that they would want to meet with the men investigating their burglary. You are the bloody Solicitor General, for heaven’s sake.”

Dagwood’s face was the mask of patience as the manservant stood beneath the next portrait waiting for them. “The position of Solicitor General is bestowed, Dunn. Don’t forget, I am still a commoner.” He coughed into his gloved hand. “Some in polite Society believe that it is due course to have others wait upon their convenience.” He grimaced. “But, I must admit, this is a bit over the top.”

As they drew near, the rotund servant waved a meaty gloved hand up at the picture. “This is the late Baron Coleridge.”

Marcus glanced up at the portrait. A dark-haired, slate-eyed gentleman in a hunter green coat with gilded buttons stared back at him. The deceased baron had a handsome enough face, with a robust nose, firm mouth and dimpled chin. Bored, Marcus’s eyes shifted back to the droning servant.

The man sniffed. “He was the brother to Mr. Caddyhorn.”

Marcus’s eyes drifted back to the portrait. There was something familiar about the man’s countenance.

“A terrible carriage accident befell him—”

Something nagged at Marcus’s memory. He had never met the late baron, he was sure. Could the man have been one of his father’s donor’s? The man had never served on the board of trustees of Andersen Hall, of that Marcus was certain. Marcus yanked on the thought like a seamstress pulls at an errant thread, but it would not unravel. “Was he the only victim?” Marcus stepped closer, trying to decipher what was niggling at him. The man vaguely looked
like Cat’s brother. But many people had gray eyes and dimpled chins.

“Nay. His wife died of injuries the next day.”

Marcus looked around. “Where is her portrait?”

The manservant coughed into his white-gloved hand. “She is relegated to the east vestibule.” He waved to his right. “Around the corner and down the far passage, if you wish to view it.” The man didn’t appear interested in making the journey.

Dagwood glared at the opposite doorway, as if staring at it might summon the absent Caddyhorns. Over his shoulder, he asked vaguely, “Why? Was she a commoner?”

“Her lineage was good enough, but her father was in
trade
.” The man said the word as if it were a disease.

“Were there any children?” Marcus pressed, a strange idea swirling into his mind. But many people were distant relatives in London. Resemblances were commonplace.

“Wait a moment.” Dagwood turned to the manservant, his face suddenly interested. “I heard something about Mr. Caddyhorn seeking his brother’s title. Why is a petition required?”

“A tragedy…” From the man’s tone it was obviously an oft-told story. “Baron Coleridge’s young son drowned—”

Marcus felt an inward disappointment somehow. But nay, it had been a far-fetched thought anyway. “Was he the only child?”

“No.”

“What happened to the other?”

The stout manservant’s face tinged pink. “Well, there was a girl, older than the lad. But she’s dead, too.”

Marcus shot Dagwood a look, raising his brow. A foul wind hovered around the Caddyhorns, it seemed. “How did she die?”

“She drowned.” The manservant’s face contorted, as if he suddenly realized how odd it sounded.

“Two children drowned?” Dagwood’s tone had taken on a prosecutorial edge.

Marcus gladly stepped aside and let Dagwood do the questioning.

“How? When?” the Solicitor General asked.

“Together.” The manservant swallowed. “I wasn’t in service then, I simply heard the tales…”

Dagwood stepped closer, raising his quizzing glass to his eye and glaring at the man. Marcus had to give Dagwood credit; the manservant practically quaked. “What tales?”

Sweat popped out on the manservant’s brow, and he glanced at the empty doorway as if to beckon help. “Well, the children, they ran away…”

“When?”

“About fifteen years ago or so.” He mopped his brow with his gloved hand. “Or maybe it was thirteen. I don’t know, for certain.”

“What time of year?” Marcus asked, trying to determine the weight of the motivation for their flight.

“Around Christmastide.”

“In the dead of winter…” Marcus murmured. “Something had to compel them not to return, you’d think…”

“Well, the girl was mad.” The manservant yanked at the stiff collar of his uniform. “Crazy as a loon, they said. Dragging off her young brother in the winter’s night.”

“Crazy,” Marcus muttered, recalling the faces of the children at Andersen Hall. “Or desperate.”

“So what happened to them?” Dagwood demanded.

“Their tracks led to a riverbank. They were never found.”

Marcus looked up. “No bodies?”

“Nay. Some say they were eaten by wolves.”

Could it be? It was so far-fetched…

Dagwood shot Marcus a skeptical look. Then he turned to the servant. “It’s been many years, why the need for the petition for the title to pass?”

The manservant shifted from foot to foot, his face miserable.

“I can find out well enough from fifty different sources,” Dagwood chided. “No one has to know it was you who told.”

“Lady Huntington.”

Dagwood nodded. “Ahh,”

“Ahh, what?” Marcus asked.

“Lady Huntington is notoriously stubborn and her husband is an influential member of the House of Lords. If she chooses to impede someone, she is willing to labor to do it.”

“Why should she care?”

“She is a distant relative of my employers.” The manservant coughed into his fist. “And she was very close with the late Baron Coleridge’s wife.”

“The one whose portrait is relegated to the east vestibule?” Marcus enquired.

“One and the same.”

“So she took issue with how Lady Coleridge was treated by your employers during her lifetime and does not wish to see them profit by her death,” Marcus concluded.

“That’s the sum of it. Lady Huntington is not exactly a favorite in this household,” the servant supplied in modulated tones.

“There you are!” a deep voice cried from the entryway.

Marcus turned.

Clutching his satchel to his chest, Mr. Gillis practically
stampeded toward them with a wiry gold-and-brown-uniformed servant struggling to keep up from behind. Gillis halted before them, his black shoes scuffing the shiny hardwood floor. “Don’t say a word, Marcus!” he wheezed. “Not a word!”

Dagwood turned to both servants. “If you would excuse us?”

The servants couldn’t seem to escape fast enough.

“Calm down before you get an attack of the heart, Gillis,” Marcus chided.

And Marcus was not jesting. The pudgy man was panting and huffing, his plump face shiny with sweat and his clothes looked as if they’d been trampled, they were so wrinkled and askew.

Dagwood frowned, obviously not happy to see the second man in London to know his secrets. “There is no need for dramatics, Mr. Gillis, Dunn is not under arrest.”

Still huffing, Mr. Gillis adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles on his bulbous nose. “He’s not?”

Dagwood turned to Marcus. “I’m going for a walk to see if I can’t ‘happen upon’ our hosts. I will leave it to you to explain.” He strolled off in the opposite direction from that the servants had taken.

Gillis looked up, craning his head. “Truly? You are not under arrest?”

“I appreciate your rush to my defense, Gillis. But I do wish you’d have more faith.” He lifted a shoulder. “Truth be told, I am giving Dagwood a bit of assistance.”

The attorney’s mouth opened, then closed. His lids fluttered behind his spectacles, his gaze disbelieving.

Marcus scowled. “I would not breach my vow, Gillis. I have not assumed the mantle of the Thief of Robinson Square for seven years.”

“But, I thought…” He scratched his mussed graying
hair. “I heard it was the Caddyhorns burgled and that the feather was left, your calling card, so to speak. And well, I thought it had to be you.”

Marcus straightened, recalling that elusive sense of familiarity and his far-fetched notion. “Am I supposed to be acquainted with them?”

“You mean you don’t know about…?” His voice drifted off, making Marcus want to grab him and shake the end of the sentence out of him.

Instead, he gritted his teeth. “Please enlighten me, Mr. Gillis.”

“I assumed that Miss Miller must have told you…” the attorney muttered, his head wobbling.

Marcus’s insides suddenly went cold. “What would Cat have told me?”

Gillis looked up. His eyes were watery and he bit his lip as if on the verge of tears. “I miss your father. So much…” Still clutching his case, he removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “If they had anything to do with it…”

“Please tell me what you’re talking about, Mr. Gillis,” Marcus urged.

Replacing his spectacles, the attorney sniffed, composed once more. “Your father was challenging the Caddyhorns’ petition for the title. He asked me to keep the reportage…in case.” His voice caught. “If anything happened to him.”

Marcus started, stunned. Renfrew’s protests reared in his mind. If Renfrew hadn’t hired his father’s killer…

Gillis continued, “I knew that your father had given you your journal, so I presumed you’d taken up your old persona—”

“My journal?” Marcus stepped backwards, feeling like he’d taken a blow. “My father burned it.”

“But it was in the—” Gillis sighed. “You haven’t read the will.”

Looking away, Marcus bit out, “I haven’t…been able to face it.”

“Many relatives are loath to read a dear one’s will,” Gillis’s tone was matter-of-fact. “For fear of what it might say or to have to acknowledge the death…It’s a common enough reaction.” He shook his head. “But if you aren’t the thief, then who is?”

Marcus met the man’s eyes. “What did the will say, Mr. Gillis?”

“The document is a fairly straightforward business. A few personal items to some of the staff and friends and any funds he had available went to Andersen Hall. But regarding you…” Clutching his case, Gillis held up a finger of his brown-gloved hand. “First, his prized book collection.”

Marcus’s heart skipped a beat. “He gave me his books?” His father had loved those tomes as if they were his flesh and blood.

“I had suggested that he donate them to the orphanage, but he wanted you to have them.”

“I can’t believe that he entrusted me with his library…”

“Two.” Gillis raised another finger. “Your father gave you your mother’s wedding ring, in the hopes that someday you would start a family of your own.”

Catherine’s lovely face flashed in Marcus’s mind. It would be so fitting, so
right
for her to wear it. A lump formed in his throat. His father would have been so pleased about him and Catherine. Oh, how joyous Uriah Dunn would have been that they would have his grandchildren…

Marcus coughed into his fist to hide his discomfiture. He refused to fall to pieces in front of Gillis. “What else?”

“A letter. He would not let me read it, but he told me that it was an—” The attorney cleared his throat, obviously displeased. “Apology. For what happened seven years ago. With it he included the only key to the master’s closet. Therein lies your journal, hidden for the past seven years.”

“Why didn’t he burn it?”

“Said he couldn’t. That it wasn’t in his nature to destroy a ‘masterpiece.’”

Dumbstruck, Marcus shook his head. “He called it a masterpiece?”

“Yes. He told me that he regretted that he’d driven you away and hoped that someday you could forgive him.”

Something deep inside Marcus’s chest twisted with bittersweet agony; his father was asking for his forgiveness. He let out a deep breath, astounded by these revelations. “When did he write this will?”

“The day after your return. He told me that the master closet had been sealed for years, but that he’d recently had the cupboard cleaned so that you could get to his hiding place when the time came. Miss Miller had just locked it and given him the key.”

The Caddyhorn burglary was too perfect, too much his original style, and it was too much of a coincidence that the hiding place had been recently opened. Who had his journal?

He had been careful not to include anything personal in the book to mark it as his. So he doubted that anyone could know that he was the original Thief of Robinson Square. So who had assumed his nom de guerre?

Then it dawned on him. “Cobwebs,” Marcus whispered. “Cat had cobwebs in her hair.”

Timmy had complained about Cat tearing off in the night. She’d been carrying men’s clothing. Covering his eyes, Marcus shook his head. Would she be so bold? So wretchedly reckless? But why?

“What does Cat, Miss Miller, know about my father and the Caddyhorns?” Marcus demanded, looking up.

“She knew about his efforts to stop the title petition…” Gillis’s pallid cheeks blotched red. “And I suppose, I
may
have intimated that the Caddyhorns intended your father harm. I must confess since her visit I have been plagued by the horrible notion that they are somehow involved in your father’s murder.”

His insides turned to ice. The Caddyhorns. Not Renfrew. Could it be?

“Your father shared many of his secrets with Miss Miller, but I doubt he ever told her about you being the thief,” Gillis avowed, then eyeing the doorway, lowered his voice. “Do you suppose that she discovered the journal and gave it to someone? Certainly Miss Miller couldn’t be the burglar.”