The Courtship (23 page)

“What do you do, Douglas?”

“I take them riding.”

Lord Beecham frowned as he looked out the carriage window. He didn't know why he had said that. It didn't matter. It was not relevant to him or his life, at least for another ten years or so. Forty-five would be a good age to bring his heir into the world.

The British Museum was vast in size and very dim inside. Every footstep on the stone floors replayed itself a dozen times all around, each new echo more menacing than the last. It was also damp. There was no need for Douglas to tell his wife to keep her cloak shut, she was fisting it tightly beneath her chin.

“It is better in the back rooms,” Lord Beecham said. “There are fires and many branches of candles. It's downright cozy in the room where I usually meet Reverend Mathers.”

“A few more windows might make this place less dreary,” Alexandra said. “Perhaps some warm draperies.”

“Only very serious gentlemen come here,” Douglas said, nodding to the porter. “They need only their intellectual fervor and they're content. Show the stoics a warm drapery and they would doubtless shudder.”

It took them five more minutes to walk through the large rooms, all of them empty as gourds. They paused every couple of steps to look at some artifact on display, but mainly, it was so dreary and chill, they just kept walking. There were perhaps a dozen men dotted throughout the rooms, speaking in small groups or hunched over manuscripts.

Lord Beecham veered off to a small room off the main sweep of the museum. The door was shut. Lord Beecham lightly knocked, then opened it. He was suddenly haloed in warmth. He saw the brisk fire burning in the fireplace, casting shadows throughout the room.

“Reverend Mathers?”

There was no answer.

They all stepped into the room. There was a long table running along the entire side of the room, several branches of candles set at intervals along the table. There were dozens of books, in haphazard stacks, some piled neatly by a clerk's hand, others sitting alone, one very ancient tome still settling in its dust, its pages parted as if fingers had just roved through them to find a certain section.

“Oh, dear,” Alexandra said and stepped back against her husband.

Reverend Mathers was seated at the far end of the bench, in the shadows. He was hunched forward over a blood-red, very large vellum-bound book. But he wasn't studying or reading or writing with the sharpened quill held loosely in his right hand.

He looked to be sleeping, but they knew he wasn't.

He was dead, a thin stiletto stuck out of the middle of his back.

 

“Lord Hobbs will be here any moment,” Lord Beecham said quietly to Alexandra and Douglas. “He became a magistrate on Bow Street not long ago. He is a good man, intelligent enough to know when he doesn't have the experience to deal well with something, and he doesn't give up. Do you remember the theft of Lady Melton's ruby necklace some six months ago? Lord Hobbs came himself, spoke with everyone present, then assigned one of his runners to ferret out the facts of the case.”

“Were the rubies recovered?” Alexandra asked as she took another drink of very strong India tea. She was sitting in on a pale-green brocade sofa, her husband next to her. Lord Beecham was watching a tall, very thin man, dressed all in a soft pearl gray, being ushered into the drawing room by his acting butler, Claude, who was looking particularly tight about the mouth. “A murder,” Lord Beecham had heard him whisper to himself earlier. “What will become of all of us with the master involved in a murder?”

Lord Beecham stepped forward as he said to Alexandra, “Oh, yes. The Bow Street Runners, for the most part, are canny and know all the villains and criminals who roam the London alleys. Lord Hobbs is one of the gentlemen who keeps them assigned to cases.”

“Lord Hobbs.”

There were pleasantries, always at least twoscore polite words before one eased into things, Lord Beecham thought, as he mouthed his own feelings about King George III going mad for the last time and his eldest son, yet another George who was a fat, very unpopular buffoon, being appointed Regent.

There was no chance to continue on to Reverend Mathers's murder, for there was Claude, clearing his throat at the drawing room door.

“My lord.”

“Yes, Claude?”

“Goodness, Claude, just stand aside. This is very important. Move!”

And there was Helen, dressed in a sky-blue pelisse, a matching bonnet atop her blond hair. She was flushed, impatient, waving her white hand at Spenser's acting butler.

He couldn't believe it when she came dashing through the door, his beautiful big girl, his Valkyrie, his own angel who was surely an Amazon. She was actually here. He had not realized how very much he had missed her.

He stood there and nearly bowed in on himself with bone-deep pleasure.

Something had happened to bring her here, but he didn't want her to spill it in front of Lord Hobbs.

“Welcome, Miss Mayberry,” he said.

H
ELEN IMMEDIATELY SAW him, and no other, and went right to him, her hands outstretched. “Spenser, oh, dear, I had to come myself. Oh, you will not believe this, I—” She broke off at the sight of the tall, austere gentleman dressed all in gray. She looked him up and down, blinked, and said, “That is a charming affectation.”

Lord Hobbs, known among the Bow Street Runners as a man with ice in his veins, froze, sputtered, then laughed. “Why, thank you, ma'am.”

“Miss Mayberry,” Lord Beecham said easily, “I would like you to meet Lord Hobbs, a magistrate from Bow Street. He is here because something very bad has happened.”

“A pleasure, Miss Mayberry,” Lord Hobbs said, and smiled at the incredible creature staring him right in the eye. He bowed, kissed her hand.

Lord Hobbs was not the least bit on the short side, Lord Beecham thought, and wasn't certain whether he should be worried or not.

“Yes, my lord. Why are you here? You are a magistrate from Bow Street? What has happened to bring you here, of all places? Spenser, are you all right?”

“Yes, Helen, I am fine.”

“Yes, Miss Mayberry, I am indeed from Bow Street.”

“Douglas? Alexandra? What are you doing here? What is happening?”

Douglas rose, patted Helen's arm even as Alexandra said from behind him, “We are all here to assist you, Helen. The four of us together can overcome anything. Stop fretting.”

Douglas said in that low, soothing voice of his that always settled down the twins, “Helen, calm yourself.”

“All right, I am now calm. Spit out everything.”

Lord Beecham managed to sort everyone out, get them seated, and order tea from Claude, who was still standing stiff as a statue in the drawing room doorway, the way old Crit had taught him.

“Now,” he said pleasantly, drawing everyone's attention, “I will go through what happened. Sir, feel free to interrupt if you have questions. You as well, Miss Mayberry. Now the earl and countess and I were to meet Reverend Mathers at the British Museum. When we came into the room we saw him slumped over the worktable, a stiletto sticking out of his back, right between his shoulder blades. He was still warm, though that might not mean that he had just been murdered. It was very warm in the room and the door was closed, keeping all the heat within.”

Helen sat in a pale-blue brocade chair, her hands folded in her lap, speechless. She was staring at him, at no one else in the room. Her face was flushed. A single long tress of blond hair had come loose from the pile of plaited braids on her head and was trailing down her back. She looked shocked, terribly shocked. Not frightened, just disbelieving. He knew exactly how she felt. He just shook his head at her.

Lord Hobbs said, “I know you remained with the body until one of my runners arrived, Lord Beecham. Since you were the one working with Reverend Mathers, did you search to see if anything was missing? Something taken by the murderer?”

“Yes,” Lord Beecham said, realizing there was no reason to withhold basic information from Lord Hobbs. “Reverend Mathers and I were working on the translation of a very old scroll that Miss Mayberry here had discovered close to her home in Essex. Reverend Mathers had made a copy so that he could work on it by himself. It was gone.”

Helen turned paper-white. “Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, no.”

“This copy of the scroll—did it contain information that was valuable?”

“It is possible,” Lord Beecham said. “Its importance lay in its remarkable age. It is an immense archaeological find, sir, one of tremendous value for that reason alone.”

“Perhaps,” Lord Hobbs said thoughtfully, unable to look away from Miss Helen Mayberry, “it was a colleague of Reverend Mathers who became jealous of this find? They perhaps argued and he stabbed him?”

“If it were a colleague,” Helen said, sitting forward, “would he not want the original scroll and not a simple copy?”

“Yes, you are right, of course,” said Lord Hobbs, and the look he fastened on her held far too much admiration for Lord Beecham's taste. Lord Hobbs turned his formidable attention back to him again. Lord Beecham said, “What is most likely is that some people believe the scroll the key to finding a vast treasure. Is this true? None of us has any idea if it is or not.”

Lord Hobbs studied his long fingers, the short, well-buffed nails, then he looked at Miss Mayberry. “Ma'am, where did you find this scroll?”

“In a cave right on the beach.”

“I see. You have no idea why it was there? No idea what the scroll might contain?”

“None. It is written in an ancient language that I could not read.”

“And that was why I was working with Reverend Mathers,” Lord Beecham said.

“I see,” Lord Hobbs said again. “You will give me names of men who you believe wanted to know more about this scroll, Lord Beecham.”

“I know of only two names, sir. Reverend Titus Older and Jason Fleming, Lord Crowley.”

To everyone's surprise, Lord Hobbs cursed very quietly under his breath. He saw Lord Beecham's raised eyebrow and said, “Reverend Older is probably sunk in debt again. Curse the man, I will have to find out just how deep a hole he finds himself in this time. And Lord Crowley, not a good man, my lord. A very bad man, if one were to believe just some of the gossip about him.”

“I would imagine,” Douglas said, “that at least eight out of ten of the stories told about him are the truth. Some three years ago, Lord Crowley tried to swindle a consortium put together to build a canal up near York.”

“What happened, my lord?”

“When I discovered he was lurking in the shadows, I immediately investigated. I myself had some five thousand pounds invested. I did not want to lose it.”

“You unmasked him?”

Douglas nodded. “He managed to escape blame. Everyone knew what he had done, but the proof conveniently disappeared. One member of the consortium ended up dead, supposedly suicide, but we all doubted that it was. Again, there was no proof that Crowley was the murderer. You are right, Lord Hobbs, he is a very bad man. He also bears grudges.”

“One is toward you?”

“Oh, yes. Some four years ago, he wanted to marry my sister, but she, a very smart girl, simply told him that he was much too old for her, and that he gambled. She would never marry a man who gambled. He wasn't happy with this outcome. I heard it said that Crowley decided that no female could speak her mind like that, and thus he believed that I had put the words in her mouth and, fortunately, blamed me and not Sinjun, my sister.”

Lord Beecham said, “He is forever in need of money. He has buried two wives, both of whom brought him sizable dowries.”

“Do you believe he killed his wives?” Lord Hobbs asked.

“It wouldn't surprise me,” Douglas said. “His luck at cards is rotten, not at all a surprise, given that he has the gambling fever. He cannot make himself stop.”

“Yes,” said Lord Beecham, “he is always convinced that his luck will change with the turn of the next card.”

Lord Hobbs rose and began to pace the length of the lovely Aubusson carpet. “So it is possible that both of these gentlemen could believe that the scroll is the key to vast wealth?”

Everyone nodded.

“I hesitate to believe that Reverend Older could stab a man in the back. He is a man of God no matter his lapses.”

Douglas said, “Man of God or not, I have put one of my footmen to follow Reverend Older. Lord Beecham has done so as well. We will also have Crowley followed.”

Lord Hobbs nodded. “That is very wise. I will assign one of my canniest runners to this case. He can work with your men, direct them, if you will. Solving this case is vital. It doesn't look good for a man of the church to be murdered in the British Museum. Mr. Ezra Cave will come to introduce himself to you so you will know who he is. I bid you good day.” He stopped to stand directly in front of Helen. “I hope to see you again, Miss Mayberry.” That cold, deep voice of his had miraculously turned as warm as a mild spring day, Lord Beecham thought—the poaching bastard. “Are you currently residing in London?”