Page 21 of Deadly Murder (Angus Brodie and Mikaela Forsythe Murder Mystery #14)

Thirteen

I caught His Highness’s reaction, eyes narrowed, lips parted as if he was about to deny any knowledge of the Four Horsemen. Then, he looked down at the desktop, his left hand clenched in a fist, and the frown amid the grey streaked beard that was almost a grimace of pain.

A moment passed, then another. Edward Albert, Prince of Wales, and heir to the throne, sat down heavily in the chair behind the desk.

“Sir Knollys,” he called out and his personal secretary appeared as if he had been waiting just beyond that door, which of course, he had.

“You will cancel my next meeting, and I am not to be disturbed until I send for you.”

“That would be the meeting with Mr. Gladstone?” his secretary inquired, to make certain of the instructions.

I recognized the name of the prime minister.

“If he has not yet left his office, a reschedule will be necessary. If he arrives, please make my apologies,” the Prince of Wales replied. Then repeated, “We are not to be disturbed.”

Several moments of silence followed after Sir Knollys left as His Highness appeared to gather himself and consider what he would say in response to Brodie’s last question.

“There are matters that might be best spoken of between men,” Prince Edward eventually replied. “Perhaps the young lady would like to see the gardens in the solarium.”

Perhaps? It was not a suggestion. And while I might have insisted on remaining while Lily toured the gardens, I decided to accompany her.

I was confident that Brodie would ask the questions we had discussed. Still, it was the idea of being set aside, as women often were, that frustrated me, people assuming that we had no brains or the stomach for the deeds of men.

“Of course,” I politely replied.

I caught that bemused expression on Brodie’s face as Lily and I departed. He had obviously been waiting for me to make a comment that might have been considered inappropriate.

However, I thought our time might be just as useful for something I had in mind.

“Ye let them just send us off!” Lily exclaimed after the library door closed behind us.

“There are times we must pick our battles. This was one of them. Mr. Brodie will provide the details afterward. However…” I added as I glanced about for any among the staff, including Sir Knollys, who might interfere with what I intended.

“Do we wait for Sir Knollys to show us the way to the solarium?” Lily inquired.

The head stablemaster had been questioned after the dreadful incident during the birthday celebration.

Yet, I know well enough there were things that might have been overlooked or simply not mentioned.

And returning, specifically to inspect the stables, might be hindered by someone watching over my shoulder.

“I believe a visit to the stables could be far more interesting.”

“The stables?” Lily replied. “Are we supposed to ask permission?”

“There does not seem to be anyone presently about to ask.” I caught her confused expression.

“You do know the way to the stables?”

She smiled and we proceeded toward the solarium, then left Marlborough House by way of the glass doors on the far side that opened out onto the green, with the long row of stables and the coach barn beyond.

The lawn was soggy, my boots sinking in as I gathered up the hem of my skirt and crossed it quickly, arriving at the main stable building where Lily had followed the man that previous night.

“It was just here that I encountered the stablemaster and lost sight of the man as he cut through the hedgerow and disappeared,” Lily explained.

“What are we looking for?” she then asked.

“He came this way and then disappeared,” I replied. “Look for anything out of the ordinary that might tell us how he accomplished that.”

What I hoped we might find by daylight was not within the stables proper but perhaps along the east side that led to that hedgerow and the woods beyond.

I slowly rounded the front of the stables, scanning the ground as we gradually approached the hedgerow behind the stables and coach house.

The gap in the hedgerow was almost indiscernible, yet there were several branches that had broken away where someone could have passed through.

“How did ye know he would have come this way?” Lily asked.

“It is the only way he might have come without being seen by the guards along the wall.” Short of explaining that I’d had my share of escapes in the past, I simply explained that it was very like the forest at Sussex Square.

I pushed through that narrow gap. Branches snagged my hair and skirt as Lily followed. We eventually emerged into the woods behind the hedgerow.

It was filled with deep shadows as light barely reached through the canopy of the trees overhead.

“What do we look for now?” Lily inquired.

She had mud on her skirt. I could only imagine what I might have accumulated breaking through the thick hedge.

“There has to be some place where the man you saw passed through, a path perhaps, more broken branches. Search in that direction.” I indicated the direction to the right as I moved to the left.

“No more than twenty paces,” I cautioned as we both set off. “He managed to leave quickly, so there should be some indication of the way he passed through.”

I scanned the low hanging tree cover and the ground as daylight overhead continued to fade with the late hour. I found nothing.

Was it possible the murderer had escaped in a different direction?

It was then Lily called out. I immediately backtracked and followed the direction she had gone. I found her standing beside a large oak that had shed most of its leaves with the change of the season.

One of the low branches, thin and only a few feet off the ground, had snapped off. Just beyond was another broken branch, as if something or someone had passed into the tree cover.

“Let’s see what we can find,” I replied as I gathered my skirts in hand and entered the tree cover of oaks and pine.

The forest was thick and dense, and several times our way was blocked. We then found more branches and low scrub that had either been snapped off or pushed back and continued on before coming to a stop once more. We both searched the surrounding tree cover.

“This way, the grasses on the ground appear to have been stepped on,” Lily announced.

I nodded and she pushed ahead. We had gone no more than a few paces when I suddenly came up behind her as she stopped. She held something in her hand.

It was a neck scarf. There were no discerning marks to identify it, yet it did not seem to have been there long as it was not muddied or stained, and not what one expected to find deep in the dense cover of trees.

“It could have been lost when His Highness and his companions were last hunting,” I told her.

“Or by the man I saw that night?” Lily suggested.

“Perhaps.” I carefully folded it and put it in my bag.

We then continued through the tree cover until we reached the high stone wall that surrounded Marlborough House, the grounds, and that forest of trees.

Lily let out a sound of frustration.

“Do ye think the man might have gone over the wall?”

Almost anything was possible, I thought. Still, it would be difficult with the description of the man she had seen fleeing that night with an obvious limp, perhaps from some previous injury, that might have prevented an easy escape.

Or did he possibly have assistance?

“Here!” Lily called out. She had discovered two sets of footprints in the mud on the ground below the wall.

One set was quite large, perhaps from a work boot and deep in the mud. The man wearing it would have been of considerable size.

The second set of prints was somewhat smaller, no doubt made by someone of less height and weight, and one foot seemed to have dragged across the mud.

The man with a limp?

I looked up at the wall. It would have been no difficult task for a taller man of good strength to scale the wall.

An accomplice perhaps who had accompanied the murderer? And then helped him escape?

I took out my notebook and pen.

It was rapidly growing dark as I measured then quickly sketched both sets of footprints that might well not be there after the next rain.

We then made our way back through the forest, that thick hedgerow, and arrived back at the stables as darkness fell.

Lights had come on all along the grounds including the green behind Marlborough House.

One of the house stewards greeted us as we arrived. He looked at us with some alarm, then his expression flattened in that way of royal guards and servants.

Sir Knollys arrived as well.

“Lady Forsythe?”

There were times when a small stretch of the truth was necessary in the scheme of things.

“The solarium is magnificent, Sir Knollys. My compliments to the gardener and his staff,” I told him. “We decided to take a stroll about the gardens in the last light. Magnificent. However, we took a wrong turn. Yet here we are.”

“In consideration of recent events, Lady Forsythe, it might have been wiser to remain in the solarium where there are those who might provide assistance if you should need it.”

That stern gaze took in my somewhat disheveled appearance from trekking about the grounds and forest.

“I appreciate your concern,” I replied as the steward we had first encountered stood at attention with a somewhat startled expression at the sight of us. “However, as you can see, we have arrived quite safely.” And before he could comment further, “Is Mr. Brodie still with His Highness?”

“They have just concluded. Allow me to escort you to the library,” he stiffly replied.

The expression on Brodie’s face as we arrived was most entertaining. There was a comment that he chose not to make at our somewhat disheveled appearances. Instead, he nodded to Sir Knollys.

“Thank ye, sir,” he said instead and escorted us to the main entrance to the palace.

Our driver had waited at the edge of the courtyard and promptly swung the coach about. Brodie assisted Lily, then myself, into the coach and climbed in after.

“I am almost afraid to ask where the two of ye have been.” He handed his handkerchief to me.

“There is mud on yer right cheek.”

That might also explain the look from Sir Knollys, I thought.

“We went on a walk,” Lily explained.

“A bit of an adventure?” he replied with an amused expression.

She looked over at me as the driver traversed the courtyard and then out onto the driveway and stopped at the gatehouse at the front entrance of the stone wall that surrounded the estate.

“You might have the driver turn to the north,” I suggested.

“And that would be for wot reason?” Brodie replied. “Although I am certain there is a very good reason the both of ye look as if ye’ve just crawled through a hedgerow.”

Not far off.

“It is in the matter of the other evening and the possible means by which the murderer managed to escape,” I explained.

“Show him the scarf we found,” Lily added.

I removed the folded scarf from my bag. While there was only the light from the lantern inside the coach and the streetlamps at both sides of the gatehouse, it was enough for him to discern what it was.

“Where did you find this?”

“Lily found it beyond the hedgerow behind the stables. It had not been there long and might possibly be important.”

“Show him the sketches ye made,” she added excitedly. “There were footprints in the mud at the far wall just beyond the tree cover behind the stables.”

I handed him my notebook. “It does seem as if perhaps another man was present that night who met the attacker there. The man with the limp might have had some difficulty escaping over the wall.”

Brodie studied the sketch I’d made, somewhat crude I admit, then leaned out the window of the coach and directed the driver to take the roadway the direction I had suggested.

It was not difficult to find the section of the wall that ran behind the stables and that thick line of trees with branches that hung over the top of the wall that would have no doubt hidden the two men as they fled.

Brodie had the driver stop and stepped down from the coach. Lily and I followed.

She looked at me with a grin, dark eyes gleaming with excitement, as we made our own search of the wall, the sidewalk that ran below it, and the ground with that line of trees, beyond to the roadway.

Brodie found marks on the wall where it appeared that something or someone had scraped the stones, perhaps as they climbed over and then dropped to the sidewalk.

“And two sets of muddied boot marks on the sidewalk just here,” he commented.

He then looked past the sidewalk to the space that separated it from the road with the row of trees. He pulled the small handheld lamp he carried and shone the beam across the ground between two trees opposite those two sets of dried prints on the sidewalk.

“More marks here,” he pointed out as he crouched down for a closer look.

One set of prints was quite large and deep, the same as those Lily and I had found on the ground on the opposite side of the wall. The second set was not as large with a long mark in the mud as if the other man had dragged his left foot!