Page 22 of Ambition (The Chaplain’s Legacy #6)
“Quite so. Three separate events, then, but deriving from the same cause, and two men with only partial alibis. Suppose they were working together? The smuggling… they must both have been involved in the smuggling. We know that Kent Atherton was… no, he is a part of the operation. Eustace must have known about it, at the very least, since the tower was his. So either he turned a blind eye or he took a share of the profits. Maybe he was more actively involved… we cannot say. But they must both be part of it. So suppose that Nicholson found out about it and threatened to betray them to the Excise men.”
“More likely he wanted a cut,” Neate said. “He is all about money, the sainted chaplain. Pay out a large sum or Customs and Excise will be told what is going on here.”
“Blackmail! Yes, yes! Very likely! So Eustace leaves an axe hidden in the urn at the castle, and Kent slips out of his room one night and does the deed, knowing that Eustace has a solid alibi. Back to his room, clean nightshirt on in time to appear with everyone else when the screaming starts. Then he tells us he thought he saw someone running down the main stairs.”
“Which no one else saw,” Neate added.
“Precisely. But then, Miss Peach finds out what is going on, and Kent… or Eustace, or both, strangle her, and get the body to Tonkins Farm. It would be easier with two people, I should think, to manage that undetected. Eustace stole the books while Kent had an alibi. And then…”
“And then they shot Bertram, and for what reason precisely?” Luce asked sweetly.
“Eustace wanted to marry Bea Franklyn,” Michael said at once. “He was jealous of Bertram, and decided to get rid of him. He arrived on the scene very swiftly when she noticed someone watching her in the woods, so he could have been following her about. And he proposed three times, after all.”
“She also refused him three times,” Luce said. “Why would she accept him at the fourth attempt, even if Bertram is out of the way?”
“I agree,” Pettigrew said. “Eustace is clever, so I doubt he would take such a phenomenal risk for the slender hope of winning Miss Franklyn’s hand in the end.”
“Then it can only be that Bertram discovered something about the smuggling ,” Michael said. “Pettigrew, you are looking smug. Where are the holes in my argument?”
“Two holes,” he said, with the satisfied smile of a cat seeing the mouse approaching.
“Any Excise man is going to be very, very wary of approaching two sons of a belted earl, even if they are smuggling. He has to have an eye to his own career, and making a mistake of that magnitude would end it very swiftly. I doubt that would be much of a threat, to be frank. As for blackmail… Michael, you have not properly considered Nicholson’s character. ”
“He was a devious rogue, up to no good in a multitude of ways,” Michael said savagely.
“So he was, but remember when you were first here? I was still in town then, but your letters were full of ‘the sainted chaplain’. No one had a bad word to say for him. However much deviousness he was up to, it was all secret. Stealing the tenants’ rent money — secret.
Cheating the late earl at piquet, which he assuredly did — secret.
Making paste copies of his wife’s jewellery — secret.
Collecting money for non-existent charitable works — secret.
His brothel at Pickering, the profits funnelled through legitimate businesses — secret.
Even his illegitimate son — secret, until the lady got drunk one night.
But blackmail — that is not secret at all.
It is a nasty, underhand business, and blackmailers are thoroughly disliked — hated even.
It is an excellent motive for murder, but it is not a secret, not from those subjected to it. Nicholson was no blackmailer.”
Michael sighed. “I do not know why I remain friends with you, Pettigrew, when you puncture my theories with such enthusiastic glee.”
“Oh, not glee, my friend,” Pettigrew said, grinning.
“Never that. Enthusiastic, perhaps, for that is my r?le in this little band of investigators, to bring my superior intellect to bear on your wilder flights of fancy… Ow!” he cried, as Michael threw a cork at his head.
“But I do it more in sorrow than pleasure.”
“Of course you do. Sandy, stop laughing, will you? You all enjoy seeing me humiliated, I am sure. It must be very entertaining to listen to me build what seems like a very convincing case, only to have Pettigrew puncture it with a wave of his well-manicured hand. It is only an intellectual exercise to you, my friend, but to me — this is personal . I cannot rest until I have exposed this murderer once and for all.”
“I know that,” Pettigrew said, his face wiped of all amusement. “I know it very well, and we all feel the same. This heinous crime must be dealt with under the law, and the perpetrator brought to justice. But we have not yet got the complete picture. There is one fundamental piece missing.”
“Which is?”
“If Nicholson was not murdered because of blackmail, and I am tolerably certain that is the case, then why was he murdered? Until you can answer that question with absolute assurance, you will never solve the mystery, and all this theorising avails you nothing.”
Michael jumped up and paced across the room.
“Very true, so we must leave no stone unturned. Every loose thread must be followed to wherever it leads. Pettigrew, I should like you to go to Northumberland to talk to Sir Reginald Wilkes at Warriston Hall. I am sure you can find a good excuse to approach a baronet.”
“What information do you want precisely?”
“Anything you can find out about Miss Rosamunde Wilkes. More specifically, what she looks like so that we might have some idea if Eustace’s lady really is Miss Wilkes.
Sandy, I want you to go to Scarborough, with James as your valet.
You are a wealthy merchant from Edinburgh, having recently concluded some business in Newcastle and now looking for a little entertainment of the female variety.
I want you to investigate all the high-class brothels in the town. ”
“Michael!” Luce said, scandalised, as Sandy laughed delightedly.
“He need not avail himself of their services,” Michael said hastily. “I merely want to locate Mrs Mayberry and her so-called nieces.”
“The light-skirts from Nicholson’s Pickering house?” Pettigrew said, leaning forward interestedly. “I thought we agreed that nothing was stolen when they left Pickering so abruptly, so we would not pursue them. I also thought we did not know where they had gone.”
“Yes, but it is astonishing how talkative ostlers and postilions can be when plied with beer,” Michael said with a smug grin.
“The ladies went to Scarborough in two hired chaises and a luggage wagon, so I think it very likely they established themselves there. A resort by the sea, with visitors coming and going all year — what more likely setting for a discreet brothel? Luce, you look disapproving, but Sandy is a grown man. He can decide for himself how closely he wishes to keep to the path of virtue.”
“Oh, it is not that,” she said. “Sandy has been given strong principles by his kirk in Edinburgh, so I am not afraid of him straying. It is this pursuit of Miss Wilkes. Did you not say just a few minutes ago that you accepted Mr Eustace’s alibi? Yet now you seem to be suspicious of him again.”
“Until I can be sure of the murderer’s identity, I am suspicious of everyone,” Michael said quietly.
“But Mr Eustace has been so helpful to us!” she cried. “He looked everywhere for poor Peachy, even more thoroughly than we did, and he it was who found her sad remains and allowed us to bury her decently and grieve for her. I shall never forget what he did for her, never!”
“I do not forget it, either,” Michael said quietly.
“But there is something else I cannot forget. In this whole investigation, of all the people we have talked to, only three people are known to have lied to us. One was the foolish Tom Shapman and his false confession, and we have dealt with him. But there was also Mrs Mayberry, who told everyone that Nicholson never went to the house at Pickering, yet we found his office there, with records of his Pickering businesses and the safe with all those gold bars. And then there was Mr Eustace, who put forward Daisy Marler as his alibi, to try to keep us away from Miss Wilkes.”
“He had good, honourable reasons for that,” Luce said. “He was protecting a lady’s reputation.”
“True, but he still lied. And therefore we must be absolutely sure that he is not lying to us about Miss Wilkes. That is what Pettigrew will determine, and Sandy and James will find out if there is anything untoward about Mrs Mayberry and her young ladies. And then, with luck, we can forget about them.”
Luce nodded, not entirely convinced, but unwilling to push the point.
“And what will you be doing, Michael?” James Neate said.
Michael grinned. “I shall be conducting a little experiment. I should like to know just how long it takes to run to the cheese store, fire a gun and then get back into the house again. And I should also like to know how well the gunshot could be heard from all these different rooms.”
“Everyone claims to have heard the shot,” Pettigrew said.
“So they say, my friend. So they say. But there is no substitute for trying it myself.”