Page 17 of A Duchess of Mystery (The Mismatched Lovers #3)

A fter leaving the reliable Douglas in the capable of hands of Baxter, whom he found helping Old Amos in the stableyard, Richard repaired to the estate office.

He found Philip still there, seated at his large oak desk and working over the estate accounts, a rather harassed expression on his face.

No doubt the paperwork involved in a change of ownership was substantial, and, on top of that, the accounts would require a lot of work right now, as the Michaelmas quarter day was fast approaching at the end of the month.

All the tenants would be coming into the office before long to pay their quarterly rents, and Philip would have to be ready for them.

“Your Grace.” Philip rose to his feet, but Richard waved him down again.

“No need to get up nor to call me ‘Your Grace’ every time you clap eyes on me. My name’s Richard, and, as I believe we two will be working closely together from now on, I think I’d rather you called me that. It’s going to take a long time for me to get used to being a duke.”

Richard nodded back in affirmation. “I’ve just come back to tell you my visit to Mr. Allsop went well, and that I’m back, a little more informed than I was before, a whole heap of papers signed, and ready for whatever introduction you might think necessary for becoming a duke so unexpectedly.”

Philip settled back into his seat, a look of relief on his face.

Perhaps he’d expected a new duke to want a new land agent, or at any rate, to be more trouble than Richard was proving to be.

“Mr. Allsop’s a good man. He knows the estate well.

He should, as he took over management of the legal side from his late father.

The estate has been in their hands for several generations now. ”

Richard had no intention of upsetting the running of the estate, although he did want to learn a little more about it.

Had Marcus shown any interest in it beyond pocketing a tidy income from it?

Most likely not. “I found Mr. Allsop a little disorganized, I thought. Apparently his clerk has had the temerity to die, and he hasn’t yet appointed another in his place. ”

Philip raised his bushy eyebrows. “Really? I hadn’t heard. It may not be that easy for him to find a replacement of such caliber in so small a town as Newbury. Although it has a good grammar school. St Bartholomew’s. I was there myself and received an excellent education.”

Richard, not really interested, at this point in time, in the availability of grammar school education for local boys, settled into the leather-upholstered seat on his side of Philip’s desk and leaned back in it.

“He was able to tell me a little of what went on when my cousin died. However, as he wasn’t there that day and didn’t even see the body, I find myself in need of further clarification.

I take it you yourself were present? And that you saw the body? ”

Was he mistaken, or did this question cause Philip to shift in his seat as though uncomfortable?

Richard was a master at disguising his true thoughts though, and he maintained his lazy lounge as he leaned further back in his chair.

He’d perfected this appearance of disassociation a long time ago, courtesy of Marcus.

The last thing he’d wanted to do with his bully of a cousin was show him how he was feeling.

Philip wetted his lips. “It’s true. I was there. Later on. And I did see the body.” His dislike of having to admit this was obvious. “Mr. Atkins had locked the library door, but he let me in to see.”

Richard stretched his legs out, eyeing the mud that still bespattered his boots.

He needed to get Baxter installed as his valet as quickly as possible, not to mention provided with a suit of clothes suitable to his new role in life.

Both of them needed to get used to his being a duke and having to look their parts. “Later on? How much later?”

Philip clasped his hands on the table, the whitening of his knuckles betraying the tension in his body. “Several hours later. The duke, His Grace… Marcus… was killed about three in the morning, I believe. No one called me until some time after seven.”

Richard allowed his eyebrows to form the next question.

Philip shrugged. “I think they were all too shocked, and panic prevented them from acting as efficiently as they should have done. Also, he was very definitely dead, so I suppose they saw no need for haste. It wasn’t as if a doctor was required.”

A sensible reaction, or one that would have given time for them to think up a good cover story. “Who is ‘they’?”

Philip shifted in his seat again. “Mr. Atkins, Mrs. Barnes, the housekeeper. Old Amos.”

Three of them? But not Isabella, who was supposed to have been the one who’d discovered the body.

Where was she at seven in the morning when Sanders had been woken up and told what had happened?

And one of them had been Amos? Why had he been involved in this?

Surely out in his accommodation in the stable courtyard he wouldn’t have heard the report of a gun.

Or maybe he had due to the stillness of the night.

Although, if he had, surely all the servants would also have heard it, and there would have been more than the three of them there.

A bit of a mystery to be unraveled here, if he was to do his duty by the Prince of Wales’s office.

Richard pressed on. “But you know what happened? You must all have talked about it? Someone must have sent for the constable? A magistrate, perhaps?”

Philip licked his lips again and regarded his hands.

“Her Grace was the one who found the duke, after he…” Hesitating, he looked up.

“I believe Mr. Atkins also heard the shot, but being of advanced years, was slow to react. When he came up from the servants’ quarters, he found the duke lying on the floor in the library.

Dead. It was already too late to help him. ”

This was like getting blood out of a stone.

There was something here Sanders wasn’t revealing.

Something he knew, or suspected, but didn’t wish to divulge.

No one Richard had spoken to so far seemed to want to tell him what had happened.

Were they all hiding something? “I gather he’d been shot. ” That, at least, couldn’t be hidden.

Philip nodded, a look of determination sliding across his face. “He’d shot himself in the head.” He grimaced. “It was not a pretty sight. I took a quick look only, to verify it was indeed His Grace. It was, as far as I could tell…”

“And you concluded he had inflicted the injury himself? It was that clear?”

Philip shifted in his seat again, color rising to his cheeks. “The pistol, one of a pair of dueling pistols he had, was still in his hand when I saw the body. Well, just beside his hand as though he’d dropped it as he died. I can assure you that the duke had shot himself.”

Richard raised his eyebrows again. “If you say so.”

Philip’s shoulders sagged as he exhaled. “It’s the truth.”

Was it? Something about Philip Sanders whole disposition shouted out that he was hiding something.

Perhaps something unimportant, but definitely something he didn’t want to share.

Richard tried a commiserative smile. “But you were not shown the body for several hours? When was a constable sent for?”

“As I’m the land agent, they waited for me before that was done.

I sent for Hooper, that’s our local constable, once I’d verified it was indeed His Grace.

I also sent for our nearest magistrate—Colonel Jarvis.

He’s one of the three that serve Newbury.

As there was no urgency, we waited until a reasonable hour to do that.

Nothing would have been gained by getting either of those gentlemen out of bed in the middle of the night. ”

“I understood it was the duchess who discovered the body. Where was Her Grace when you arrived?”

Sanders fidgeted again. “Mr. Atkins and Mrs. Barnes had sent Her Grace and Lady Dora upstairs to their bedrooms. I believe they both went to Lady Dora’s room.

They were deeply shocked by what they’d seen.

Understandably so. I myself shall never unsee it.

Mrs. Barnes said it was best if they both took some laudanum to help them sleep.

She had gone with them and administered it.

They were both sleeping when I arrived. Mr. Atkins had taken charge of the house.

He is a very capable man despite his advanced years, or perhaps because of them. ”

“Did you have any opportunity to ask Her Grace how she came to be the one who found him?”

Philip’s face took on a defensive expression, a little hounded.

“I did, but not until later in the day, when the constable had been, and Colonel Jarvis. They weren’t with us until the middle of the morning, when the ladies were still sleeping.

And of course, the body had been removed and the room cleaned.

” He shook his head. “I couldn’t have the ladies seeing the mess on the rug.

Atkins had it burned. You will see there’s a new one there now if you care to examine the study. ”

So they had called in the authorities in the end. Sander was probably right in saying there’d been no necessity to do so until daylight hours, but all the same… “And when you did speak to her, what did the duchess say had made her come downstairs?”