Page 38 of A Duchess of Mystery (The Mismatched Lovers #3)

The landau moved off, the gravel crunching under its wheels, passing a rider in a shabby brown coat heading around to the stables.

A tradesman, perhaps. Richard had other things to think of.

Was he being a fool? A fool taken in by a pretty face?

Perhaps. He sat back against the upholstered interior as the horses ate up the road across the park, still not sure he was doing the right thing.

That old adage his nurse had been wont to remind him of surfaced. Let sleeping dogs lie .

He shook his head to dispel his doubts. If he didn’t do this investigating, then the man in the employ of that woman was going to, and neither he nor his employer seemed to have any scruples about falsifying evidence if they had to, and paying for it.

The fact that he was sure evidence must be frequently falsified in courts across the country in order to gain a conviction did nothing to improve his confidence.

He closed his eyes for a moment, hoping his headache would begin to improve. It didn’t.

He soon discovered that Colonel Jarvis, the elderly magistrate who had eventually been called to the castle on the morning Marcus’s body had been discovered in the library, lived some seven miles distant, to the west of Newbury.

A good hour’s drive. He owned a substantial Palladian style mansion set in a small park on land that gently sloped down towards a river, by way of a mound that might well have been the motte part of an ancient motte and bailey castle.

At any other time this glimpse back into history would have fascinated Richard, but not today.

Dickens brought the landau to a gentle halt outside the porticoed entranceway of the house, and Richard wasted no time in descending and hastening under the shelter provided by the elegantly peaked roof.

The door was already being held open by the colonel’s butler, so he hurried up the wide stone steps and into a spacious front hall.

The butler closed the door behind him and bowed. “Your Grace.”

Did everyone in this blasted place know who he was?

The thought that it would be nice to be able to go incognito surfaced, only to be brushed away.

His likeness to the previous incumbent was never going to allow that.

Being a duke was to be almost constantly in the eye of the public.

The only thing worse than that would be to be a member of the royal family.

Which brought back to him the Prince of Wales’s interest in Isabella.

Richard addressed the fellow, who looked as venerable as his employer. “Good morning.” If it still was morning, of course. Richard didn’t bother to check his fob watch. “I wonder if Colonel Jarvis might be at home?”

The butler bowed again. “If you would be so kind as to wait in the drawing room?” He indicated a pair of double doors to the left, one slightly ajar. “I will go and enquire about the colonel’s availability, Your Grace.”

Richard obliged and went into the drawing room, the butler discreetly closing the door behind him as though he feared such a rare creature as a visiting duke might escape before he returned.

A pleasant room, it was somewhat in need of redecoration and possessed a decided aroma of old tobacco.

A thick Turkish rug covered the floor, and some of the furniture had a dilapidated look to it.

Yet it was a comfortable room that seemed to fit with the persona of a retired soldier.

It had the effect of making him feel more at ease with his mission.

He walked over to one of the long windows and peered out into the rain-washed world. This would have afforded him a pleasing view of the park, had not it been obscured by the misty drizzle.

He didn’t have long to wait.

The door opened to admit the elderly gentleman he’d so briefly met the night before.

Colonel Jarvis’s military service must have been long behind him now, as surely he had already attained his three score and ten and possibly a bit more than that.

Even though the hour was now late, he was dressed as though he’d not long arisen.

On top of his white hair, he wore a small round hat liberally decorated with embroidery and sequins, and an ornately patterned silk banyan covering his shirt and breeches gave him the appearance of an Indian potentate.

If Richard had been forced to guess, he would have hazarded that the colonel had come by his rank in India some time in the last century.

“Your Grace.” He presented a welcoming smile, courteous, but not overly familiar. A man who kept people at a distance. His bow was formal.

“Colonel.” Richard returned the bow. “I hope you don’t mind me calling upon you without notice.”

The colonel shook his head, curiosity in his gaze. “Not at all. An honor. I’m feeling very popular this morning. Please, take a seat, and I’ll ring for refreshment. What will you take? Brandy?”

Richard, who was not a big drinker, particularly not in the mornings, shook his head, at the same time as a tiny nagging thought arose about why the colonel would call himself popular today. “Tea would be most acceptable. Thank you.”

Was that a look of disappointment on the lined old face? “Tea it is then.” He did have the sort of red nose, covered in broken veins, that indicated he might be a tippler.

Richard had already decided to take the bull by the proverbial horns.

No point in being coy. When the tea had been ordered and they were alone again, he leaned forward in his seat.

“I gather you were the attending magistrate when my cousin killed himself.” Best to avoid any suggestion he’d died a different way.

The colonel’s rheumy old eyes sharpened.

“I wondered how long it would take you to come over here and ask me about it.” He harrumphed.

“Did think we might have had the chance to talk a little more last night, but I noticed all those matchmaking mamas were keeping you busy meeting their daughters.” He chuckled, which made him cough.

“What it is to be young and supremely eligible. Glad no one’s likely to think that about me any longer. ”

Richard smiled in agreement. “It was a little tiresome at times. I imagine, though, that you must understand that I have a natural curiosity about what has led me to my new position in life.”

“I daresay you have. The old duke, although one can hardly call him old, just a whippersnapper really, cut down in the prime of his life. Most unexpected. Most disturbing.”

“Indeed. Maybe you could tell me what happened that day from your own point of view? The official view of it, as everyone else I’ve spoken to has either been a servant or a female, and we know how inclined to emotion they can be.

A sensible, man’s view is what I need.” Flattery might get him everywhere.

The colonel leaned back in his chair, with an air of being the required sensible man, and rubbed his chin, his fingers rasping over a goodly amount of stubble.

He didn’t look as though he’d found time to be shaved that morning.

Who had been here earlier, disturbing him?

“I’m afraid I didn’t arrive until the middle of the morning, so I can’t speak for what went on before that, you know.

I can only tell you what I saw when I arrived, and how I organized things.

There’s a fair amount to do after an unexpected death, I can assure you. ”

“As a soldier, I’m not unused to the prospect of sudden deaths. Although in battle, they are at least to be expected from time to time, although that never makes them any easier.”

The colonel nodded. “As you say. As you say. Military man myself. Well, as I was taking my breakfast that morning, I received a groom from the castle bearing a message. It was about a quarter before nine, I’d say.

Told me there’d been an accident at Stourbridge Castle, and I was required.

I questioned the lad a bit further and discovered it was a death I was to be dealing with, but he didn’t know whose.

” He harrumphed again. “Well, I was hungry and, if the fellow was dead, he wasn’t going to be running off anywhere, so I had the groom wait while I finished my meal. No use going off half-cocked.”

Richard had to suppress a smile. The colonel didn’t strike him as the sort of man who would venture far without either sustenance or lubrication. He was sipping at his tea as though he feared it might contain poison. “And what did you find when you arrived at the castle?”

The colonel shook his head. “I wasn’t there until at least half past ten. It’s quite a way from here to the castle, you know, and the roads are not of the best. Might even have been eleven. Yes, I think it was. Now I think about it, I recall hearing a clock somewhere strike the hour.”

Richard couldn’t help a raise of his eyebrows. So the old man hadn’t even bothered to consult his fob watch. Not very efficient. But that might bode well for Isabella.

The colonel shifted a little in his seat as though his old bones pained him. “That land agent fellow, Sanders, I think he’s called, told me it was the duke and took me into the library. Seemed keen to get me in there. They’d had the sense not to move the body, which was a good thing.”

“What position was it in?”

He scratched his head for a moment. “Near the desk, on its back, arms out to the side. But I can do one better than that. I’m not a total fool, you know.

I had my man, who’s gifted in the artistic department, draw a sketch of the scene.

I can show it to you.” He heaved himself out of his chair and went across the room to where an escritoire stood against one of the walls.

“You’re in luck. It’s in here.” He rummaged about.

“You’re not the only person who’s come asking me about this today, you know.

Seems a popular subject around here all of a sudden. ”

Richard’s ears pricked, and his stomach did an awkward roll. “Really? Who else has been asking questions?”

The old man turned, something in his hands, and gave a shrug.

“Let me think. Not so good at remembering names nowadays, I’m afraid.

Ah. I know. Said his name was Barker. Made me think of a dog I had once by that name.

That’s it. Silas Barker. Asked me all about that day, same as you’re doing.

” He wrinkled his sizeable nose. “A rather low-class individual. Not a gentleman by any means, but very keen to find out what I could tell him. Very keen indeed. Even though I couldn’t see what it had to do with him. ”

He frowned at the memory as he handed a sheet of thick, good quality drawing paper to Richard.

On it, someone had sketched the layout of a room, presumably the library at Stourbridge, in plan, as though seen from above, with the body sprawled beside the desk.

The colonel was right. His man did have an artistic flair, and an eye for detail that his master lacked, too.

Clearly marked, beside the outstretched right hand, lay a pistol, with an arrow leading to a remark at the side of the sketch— “dueling pistol, one of two recovered—probable cause of death.” Even if the colonel was not particularly efficient, it seemed his man was.

However, one thing about the sketch had already struck Richard. Enough to set his heart pounding with anxiety. He glanced up at the colonel. “And this was exactly how you found everything. No one had touched or moved anything after he was found?”

He nodded. “I daresay. Evers, my man, takes his job seriously, you know. A boon to me. Insisted on doing a plan of the whole room and questioning the servants, even though it seemed obvious to me it was either an accidental death or suicide.” A puzzled expression slid over his face.

“Don’t know why, but the man Barker seemed very interested in all of this too.

Wanted to take Evers’s drawing with him, but I said he couldn’t.

Evers needs to keep it filed in his office.

So he made a ham-fisted copy. Not as gifted as Evers, though.

Which reminds me—I need to put it back or he’ll be scolding me for losing it. ” He harrumphed again.

Richard had the distinct impression that Colonel Jarvis would not be providing anything more of use here. His presence at the castle had been nothing more than a formality. Evers was the man with the information. “Would it be possible for me to speak to Mr. Evers, do you think?”

The colonel nodded, a look of unmistakable relief on his face.

“Of course. He’ll be in his office doing something useful, no doubt.

He seems to find a lot of things to do he deems useful.

I don’t interfere. He’s very efficient and a great help to me, so I leave him to it.

I’ll get my butler to show you the way.” He smiled.

“And if you could give him back the drawing, I would be grateful.”