The Peculiar Case of Lord Finsbury's Diamonds: A Casebook of Barnaby Adair Short Novel (The Casebook of Barnaby Adair) (9 page)

 It was entirely possible that Mitchell had engineered his first meeting with Finsbury and built on that. “And if that’s the case,” Barnaby muttered to himself, “what’s to say that anything Mitchell told Finsbury is fact and not fiction?”

 A moment passed, then Barnaby mentally shook himself and started walking. There were other people he could ask about Mitchell. No man was an island, especially not in London society, not at any level.

* * *

“F
innegan?”

 The coachman who had just climbed down from the box of the coach in the yard of the White Hart Inn turned to look at O’Donnell with a certain incipient wariness. “Aye. And who wants to know?”

 O’Donnell let his lined, round face crease in a knowing smile. “No trouble. I’m just following up on one of your recent passengers for a friend of mine.”

 All true, but Finnegan would take the words to mean that O’Donnell was working for one of the underworld crime bosses.

 “That so?” Finnegan hesitated, then shrugged and leaned back against the body of his coach. “So what d’you want to know?”

 O’Donnell glanced around the yard. Located off Holborn Circus, the White Hart Inn was the terminus for the line of coaches that stopped at the coaching inn in Hampstead village on their journeys up and down the Great North Road. The yard was teeming with passengers, ostlers, coachmen, and guards, and the noise was palpable, but the area around the recently emptied coach was, for the moment, reasonably private. Sliding his hands into the pockets of his nondescript breeches, O’Donnell looked at Finnegan. “Your clerk said you were on the box of the London-bound coach that halted in Hampstead village in the afternoon two days ago.”

 Finnegan nodded. “Aye. I was.”

 “My gent got on at that halt and traveled down to town with you.”

 “Oh, aye—I remember him. The coach was full and the only seat to be had was up on the box beside me. He seemed glad enough to take it.” Finnegan returned O’Donnell’s regard. “Dark-haired bloke, leanish, tallish, gentl’man to judge by his face and accent.”

 Careful to hide his rising excitement, O’Donnell nodded. “Sounds like him.” He paused, then took a chance and asked, “How did he seem to you?” Finnegan appeared to be observant as well as amenable and ready enough to talk.

 “Hampstead was our last stop before town so we didn’t have that much time to get cozy, but he was in excellent spirits. Grinning fit to burst the whole time and ready to chat as if all the world was going his way—I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d said he’d won the lottery.”

 O’Donnell blinked; that was not what he’d expected to hear. Tucking the surprising observation away for later examination, he blandly asked, “Did you get any idea of which way he was headed from here?”

 Finnegan regarded O’Donnell steadily for several seconds, then, lowering his voice, said, “He seemed a nice enough bloke. You and your friend wouldn’t be looking to bring him any grief?”

 O’Donnell promptly put his hand over his heart. “I swear on me old mum’s grave, m’mate and I have absolutely no wish to harm a hair on the gent’s head. We’re looking for him more in the way of doing him a good turn.”
Namely finding out who murdered him.

 Finnegan studied O’Donnell for another long minute, clearly weighing his sincerity, then nodded. “In that case, I can do you one better than which way he went. He didn’t come all the way to the yard. We was caught in traffic and crawling down Tottenham Court Road when he asked if I’d let him off at the corner of Great Russell Street. We’re not supposed to let passengers off except at the appointed halts, but we was all but at a halt anyway and he said his lodgings were across the road in Great Hanway Street.”

 O’Donnell felt as if
he
had won the lottery. “That’s”—he could hardly believe his luck!—“a huge help. Here.” He hunted in his pockets, pulled out three shillings and handed them to Finnegan. “Have a drink on me and m’mate.”

 Finnegan accepted the coins with a faint shrug. “Hope you find your gent.”

 O’Donnell merely raised a hand in farewell and plunged into the crowd. Thrilled to his boots, he made his way as fast as he could to the road.

 Great Hanway Street was a mile or two back along the road. Hailing a hackney, O’Donnell called the direction to the jarvey and scrambled in. And grinned.

 If he recalled aright, Great Hanway Street was a very short street.

* * *

A
fter lunch, Frederick and Gwen managed to avoid all the others and the increasingly open speculation over who had murdered Mitchell and why, and together took refuge in the rarely used smaller parlor.

 Although the Holland covers normally protecting the furniture had been removed, the curtains remained half-drawn and the room was awash with the encroaching gloom of an early December dusk.

 Her linked fingers twisting, prey to a mounting anxiety she was finding increasingly difficult to hide, Gwen walked to one of the narrow windows and absentmindedly peered out.

 The view was of the garden on the opposite side of the house from the wood—but beyond the trees and bushes bordering the lawn sat the barn, its roof visible above the treetops.

 Abruptly turning away, Gwen wrapped her arms tightly about her and valiantly battled to suppress a shiver. She failed.

 Having closed the door, Frederick crossed the small room and urged her into his embrace. “Gwen—sweetheart.”

 He didn’t say anything more, but he didn’t have to; Gwen laid her cheek on his chest and, closing her eyes, let herself draw strength from the comfort he wordlessly offered.

 After a moment, eyes still closed, she murmured, “I can’t believe that I’m even thinking that the murderer might have been Papa.”

 Running one palm soothingly up and down her back, Frederick dipped his head closer to hers and quietly stated, “No matter how…unwelcoming, and, let’s face it, disapproving your father has been toward me, not even by the wildest flight of fancy could I imagine him setting a trap for Mitchell and then striking him when he was down.”

 Gwen blinked and opened her eyes.

 Seeing he had her attention, Frederick continued, “You
know
your father—you know what he’s like. He’s often pompous and stuffy, and a relentlessly rigid old stick, and part of that, of the way he sees himself, requires an unbending adherence to the gentleman’s code.” He paused, then went on, his voice firmer, his tone certain, “He could never bring himself to be such a coward.”

 After a moment, he felt Gwen nod.

 “You’re right,” she whispered, her fingers curling about his lapel. “He couldn’t have—simply
wouldn’t have
—done it in that way no matter his reasons. But…” She looked up and searched Frederick’s face. “It looks bad, doesn’t it? Who else could it have been?”

 “That will be for the police to find out, but”—raising one hand, Frederick lifted Gwen’s fingers from his chest and lightly squeezed—“with Adair on the case, I believe he’ll see the…all-but-impossibility of your father killing anyone as Mitchell was killed.”

 Gwen gripped Frederick’s fingers in return and determinedly drew in a deeper breath. She wasn’t normally the anxious sort but she was so worried—and on so many counts. Returning her gaze to Frederick’s face, she searched his expression, his eyes, then murmured, “The police might take weeks, even months to catch the true killer, but the story of the murder and the suspicion that Papa might have been responsible will start circulating within an hour of the others leaving here and you know what society will make of the tale in the interim…indeed, even once the real killer is caught. The scandal will be horrendous—the family’s standing and Papa’s honor will be irrevocably damaged—and no one will care about putting things right even once the truth is known.”

 Frederick understood her concern, understood what lay beneath it, and knew of only one way to meet the threat. Tightening his hold on her, he locked his gaze with hers. “Scandal is as scandal does, but, regardless, I don’t care. I want to marry you, Gwen—I always have and I have absolutely no intention of allowing the actions of some cowardly murderer to steal any of our future—the future I want us to have.”

 “But society—”

 “Is often an ass, and unless you tell me living within it, here in London, is essential to you, if worse comes to worst, we’ll simply turn our backs on it.” He allowed cynicism to color his voice. “Society may be rabid when talking up a new scandal, but it also has a very short memory.”

 Looking into his eyes, Gwen felt something inside her ease. “That’s true.” She paused, then rather shyly asked, “So what do you think we should do?”

 “Stay our course.” His reply came without hesitation, in a tone that rang with determination. “When the police return tomorrow, we tell them what we’ve found, then we leave them to get on with their job and we hold ourselves ready to do whatever we need to do to secure our future—the future we both want.”

 He hesitated, then more quietly asked, “You want what I want, don’t you?”

 “Yes.” It was her turn to answer spontaneously. Lifting one palm to his cheek, she let her eyes speak the volumes her tongue couldn’t find the words to express. “Oh, yes.”

 She stretched up on her toes as he bent his head and their lips brushed, touched, then meshed. Melded as they sank into the kiss, as she parted her lips and welcomed him in, and he came and claimed and she inwardly sighed.

 The engagement spun out, the merging of their breaths a heady delight, one that stole the air from her lungs and left her giddy. Left her senses waltzing in pleasure and nascent joy, the caress an unwavering confirmation.

 Earlier, they’d shared a pledge, had wordlessly plighted their troth; now they reaffirmed their direction with resolution and determination.

 Footsteps approached, heels clicking on the floorboards.

 On a smothered gasp, they broke apart—and rapidly smoothed their hair, settled their clothes and, stepping apart, turned to the door as it opened.

Agnes walked in. She looked first at Gwen, then at Frederick. Then one brow faintly arched and she crisply stated, “There you are. The others want to play whist and we need two more for the tables.” Turning, she swept back through the door. “Come along.”

 Like children who had barely escaped being caught in a forbidden act, Frederick and Gwen exchanged a glance overflowing with relief and suppressed delight and obediently followed Agnes from the room.

* * *

S
tokes had just returned to his office after a day in and out of the witness box when Barnaby appeared in the open doorway.

 Glancing up as he sank into the chair behind his desk, Stokes waved his friend to the chair before it.

 Barnaby’s face gave little away as he moved into the room, but his disaffected slouch as he subsided into the chair spoke volumes.

 Somewhat surprised, Stokes arched a brow. “No luck?”

 Barnaby’s very blue eyes met his. “Mitchell is an impossible man.”

 Stokes widened his eyes. “What do you mean?”

 “No one knows him. No one even knows
of
him. Which, frankly, is ridiculous.” Frowning, Barnaby shook his head. “Given Mitchell’s age and Lord Finsbury’s description of his background and style, I asked everyone I could think of, and I canvassed widely enough that I should have found at least one person—if not several—who knew him or his family, or had heard of him at school, or at university, or at their clubs. I even ran Carstairs to earth and he got me into the army records, but Mitchell never served in any regiment.”

 Barnaby ran his hands over his face. “In the end, I found Hendon, and Frobisher was there as it happened, and the three of us did a quick and highly illegal scan of the combined ports’ shipping logs, but there’s no record of a Peter Mitchell arriving over the last months from any of the colonies or from the Americas.

 “Oh, and before I forget, contrary to Finsbury’s supposition Mitchell isn’t a member of White’s, nor has he ever been seen there with anyone bar Finsbury himself.”

 Stokes stared. After a long moment during which Barnaby returned his gaze steadily, Stokes murmured, “It’s starting to sound as if—”

 He broke off as footsteps came striding along the corridor—not quite running but with a rhythm rapid enough to convey a degree of enthusiasm not normally associated with the more rarefied levels of Scotland Yard.

 A second later, O’Donnell, in mufti, appeared in the doorway. He was grinning.

 He snapped off a salute to Stokes. “Sir!” O’Donnell nodded to Barnaby, who had swiveled in the chair the better to appreciate his arrival.

 Stokes didn’t need to ask if his sergeant had anything to report; success radiated from O’Donnell’s every pore. Holding up a hand as if to stay the tide, Stokes advised, “Step inside, close the door, then take a deep breath and start at the beginning.”

 O’Donnell’s grin didn’t fade as he eagerly obeyed. “I was lucky enough to find the coachman who had driven Mitchell back to London.”

 Watching O’Donnell settle into a regulation at-ease stance, Stokes reflected that there was no luck about it; there was a reason O’Donnell was one of the best on the force when it came to plain-clothes work.

 “I met him—Finnegan—in the yard at the White Hart and he remembered Mitchell well. The coach had been full when it reached Hampstead, so Mitchell had to sit beside Finnegan on the box seat, and according to Finnegan, Mitchell was in excellent spirits, grinning and happily nattering away.”

 “He was happy?” Barnaby was taken aback.

 “Nary a cloud on his horizon, apparently,” O’Donnell averred.

 “But he’d just been evicted…ah, I see.” Barnaby glanced at Stokes. “Our dear wives were correct. Mitchell engineered his departure from the house party.”

 “Which leaves us to wonder why.” Stokes nodded to O’Donnell. “Go on.”

  “So Finnegan drove back to town but the coach got held up on Tottenham Court Road, and as it was barely crawling, Mitchell asked Finnegan to let him down at the corner of Great Russell Street.” O’Donnell drew a portentous breath. “And Mitchell mentioned that his lodgings were just across the road in Great Hanway Street.”