Page 82 of A Proposition for the Comte

Chapter Eleven

Charles Mountford arrived at the Luxford town house the evening they did and he looked flustered and worried. Aurelian had sent him a note asking for a meeting.

‘Thank you for coming so promptly. I appreciate it.’

‘You left a mess at the tavern on the northern road, de Beaumont. Six men dead and another who could identify you when asked. Cummings is livid and wants your head.’

‘My head and Violet’s, it seems. But what he does not realise is we have evidence that he is a part of the plot to hide the lost French gold. He was an accomplice of Viscount Addington and I think a woman called Antoinette Herbert is still blackmailing him into doing her dirty work. I am almost certain others are involved, as well.’

‘Others?’

‘Cummings, for all his double-dealing, isn’t the killer. Antoinette Herbert is paying somebody else to do that. I had thought at one point it might be you.’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘I realised that when you came to warn me that Violet was in danger.’

‘So they were trying to set me up, too?’

‘It seems so.’

‘Yourministèresent me a letter explaining the problem of the missing gold. If Cummings is involved, he would have seen that missive.’

‘Which may be the reason this has suddenly all escalated.’

‘You think he warned Antoinette Herbert?’

‘I saw her at his town house last week. She left in the early morning.’

‘She is his lover?’

‘She was Harland Addington’s lover, too.’

‘Good God. I will have her house searched.’

‘I don’t think she would keep the gold there.’

‘Where else, then?’

‘She’d need someone who was used to handling such things.’

This thought rebounded into others and Lian remembered the jeweller Whitely’s fear and wariness when he had registered Violet’s presence in his shop. Whitely was a big man and, when Lian had shaken his hand on entering his premises, his palms had been calloused and hardened. Like a soldier. Miller had been a soldier, too. Could there be some connection there?

Whitely knew the work of George Taylor and he had been an associate of Harland Addington. It suddenly all made sense.

‘Douglas Cummings has summoned me to appear tomorrow morning before him to answer to six cases of murder. I did kill four of them but that is because they had kidnapped Violet and were trying to kill me. Eli Tucker saw to the rest.’

‘Is she all right? Violet?’ Mountford’s question was tightly asked.

‘She is now but the past days have been difficult for her, to say the least, and so she is resting upstairs.’

‘Where are you meeting Cummings tomorrow?’

‘At his house, which I thought unusual.’

The Minister shook his head. ‘Sometimes we speak to those from a higher echelon of society in an informal environment. Given your title, there is a precedent for it.’

‘If you were to be present it would be more formal.’