Page 10

W hen they reached Finsbury Circus, at Jordan’s direction, Gelman melted into the trees and bushes in the central park to keep watch just in case anyone had followed them.

He climbed the three steps and, ignoring the swathed knocker, tapped firmly on the door.

The same maid who had opened the door earlier did so again. She looked even more peaky, but recognized Jordan and immediately stood back to allow him to enter.

He did so, then paused, intending to tell the maid not to be so trusting, but the words vanished from his head as Ruth Cardwell appeared in the drawing room doorway.

She blinked in surprise. “Oh. I wasn’t expecting…” She looked past him to see the maid shutting the front door. As her gaze returned to Jordan, surprise even more evident on her face, he raised the basket and offered it to her. “I hope this will help in some small way.”

Ruth accepted the basket, peeked beneath the checkered napkin, then smiling faintly, glanced at him from beneath her lashes. “Thank you.” Her voice was still husky with tears. “That’s very thoughtful. Cindy?”

Ruth held out the basket, and the maid hurried to take it from her.

Her hands now free, Ruth clasped them at her waist and turned to Jordan. “I’m afraid Mama is lying down upstairs.”

Jordan was aware that meetings between an unmarried lady and a gentleman were usually conducted with someone else present, but Ruth wasn’t a young young lady, and what he had to say was too important.

“Actually,” he confessed, “it’s you I came to see.

” When, unsurprisingly, she frowned, he continued, “I’ve been looking at your brother’s ledgers”—he caught and held her gaze—“including those you brought to the office this morning.”

She blinked, then her periwinkle-blue eyes widened. “Ah.” After a second of searching his face, her lips tightened, and she stepped back and waved him into the drawing room. “In that case, perhaps we do need to talk.”

She led him deeper into the room, but didn’t halt by the fireplace.

Instead, she continued through an archway into what he thought would be termed a garden room.

A small chamber with a fireplace sharing the same flue as the drawing room hearth, the room had as its dominant feature a well-positioned bow window overlooking the house’s side garden.

Eschewing the twin armchairs angled before the small fire, Ruth walked into the bow of the window and halted, her gaze fixed—Jordan suspected unseeingly—on the vista outside.

He halted beside her, standing more or less shoulder to shoulder with her.

When she crossed her arms over her chest and didn’t say anything, he ventured, “I work in an unconventional household, and while I keep the ledgers for all my employer’s businesses, his wife keeps the accounts for the many charities in which they’re involved.

” He glanced sidelong at Ruth, but all he could see was her profile.

“Consequently, I’m very aware that women—ladies, even—are more than capable of accurately managing complex accounts.

I’m also familiar with how numbers written in a feminine hand look. ”

When she still said nothing, he baldly stated what, to him, was now obvious. “You kept most, if not all, of Thomas’s accounts.”

Finally, her lips twisted, and she turned her head and met his gaze.

Then she sighed and closed her eyes. “Yes, I did.” Returning her gaze to the garden, she went on, “Thomas was the one who understood business in the wider sense, but I was much better than he ever was with figures. So we worked together. He was the one who dealt with clients, who talked them through any difficulties I discovered and coached them in how to rectify any problems, but I was the one who did the sums and identified those difficulties and problems.”

“So you were, in effect, his silent partner.”

“Yes.” She tightened her hold on her elbows. “I suppose you could describe it that way.”

He paused, thinking through what the revelation meant. “So if any of your brother’s clients were engaged in any, as he labeled them, nefarious activities, you would know.”

She tipped her head consideringly, then pointed out, “I only know what shows in the figures, and it’s March, so there’s at least two months’ worth of income and expenses I haven’t yet seen.

However, regardless, if some client was engaged in nefarious activities, I would think they’d be clever enough not to put those figures through their official books. ”

Jordan grimaced. “True. Yet there’s no denying that, somehow, Thomas stumbled on something illicit enough to have got him killed.

” He fixed his gaze on her face. “And if it was one of Thomas’s clients who killed him or had him killed, if they believe he discovered their secret through the accounts, and they realize, as I did, that it’s you who keeps those accounts, they may feel they need to ensure your silence, too. ”

When she only frowned, he pressed. “You need to tell the investigators—Stokes and the Adairs.”

She shifted to face him so she could frown directly at him.

“I find it difficult to believe I’m in any danger.

As I just admitted, I know all the clients’ accounts, and to my certain knowledge, none contain any evidence of suspicious or illicit activity.

And,” she continued, when he opened his mouth to argue, “while I’m not personally acquainted with Thomas’s clients, I knew Thomas very well.

He was a cautious man and very careful in choosing whom he worked for. ”

Jordan studied her and ended up frowning in reluctant agreement. “He was a very upright character, wasn’t he?”

“Very. I’ve known him to decline to act for potentially lucrative clients because he wasn’t sure of the…upstanding nature, if you like, of the business’s owners.”

Jordan was staring at her face, wondering if he should push for her to speak with Stokes and the Adairs, when they heard the front door open, and the sound of two hotly arguing male voices reached them.

Ruth’s eyes flew wide.

Raising his head, Jordan recognized Bobby Cardwell’s voice declaring, “It wasn’t me who had a yelling match with Thomas only last week.”

The sound of the front door slamming cut through a reply that ended with “everyone knows he and I have been at loggerheads for years.”

“Yes!” Bobby hissed. “Because you’re so intent on being just like Papa. Dissolute, profligate—an infinite drain on the family’s coffers.”

“As if you’re not just as bad, little brother.”

“I’m not! It was you Thomas had to do battle with every month, every quarter. I don’t know why we need you back here.”

“I’ve only come to see Mama and Ruth,” the older voice stated. “You can take yourself off if you wish.”

Jordan took a large step back to where he could see through the archway into the drawing room just as an elegantly accoutered gentleman sauntered in from the front hall. In an obvious huff, Bobby Cardwell stalked in at the man’s heels.

Jordan’s movement shattered the spell that had held Ruth frozen, and she rushed to interpose herself between him and the archway and, beyond that, the drawing room, the newcomer, and Bobby. Walking forward, head rising, she stated with some asperity, “We have a visitor, you two.”

Jordan followed her out of the garden room.

Bobby Cardwell recognized him. Bobby’s mouth fell open, then snapped shut, and he looked faintly ill.

The other man—a gentleman as much as Bobby and Jordan himself were—watched Jordan approach through narrowing eyes.

The man was wearing a long dun-colored coat and carried a silver-topped cane.

His dark hair was elegantly coiffed, and the suit beneath the coat was, to Jordan’s experienced eyes, decently tailored and mildly expensive.

Most interesting of all, although his coloring was not identical, the man’s face bore a strong resemblance to Thomas Cardwell’s.

Before the man could demand to know who Jordan was, Ruth stated, “Gibson, this is Mr. Draper, who is assisting Scotland Yard with their investigation into Thomas’s murder.”

Instantly, the man’s aggression ebbed, and he blinked and studied Jordan anew. “He’s a policeman?”

“No, I’m not.” Jordan didn’t offer to shake Gibson Cardwell’s hand.

“I work for a powerful gentleman whom your brother Thomas asked for advice. However, by the time I reached his office, Thomas had been killed. My employer as well as the police would like to know why Thomas was slain and by whom. Because of that, I’m temporarily seconded to the force. ”

Gibson frowned and bit his lip.

When none of the Cardwells volunteered anything more, Jordan asked, “I take it you’re related to Thomas Cardwell?”

Frowning, Gibson stated, “I’m his older brother.”

Jordan glanced at Ruth’s face and saw the consternation she couldn’t hide. This was what she and her mother—and Bobby, too—had been trying to hide.

Jordan focused on Gibson. “Judging from what I just heard, you and Thomas didn’t get along.”

Gibson, who had to be somewhere between Ruth’s age and Thomas’s, plainly looked to Ruth for help. When she pressed her lips tight and didn’t oblige, and Bobby simply glowered at him, Gibson reluctantly offered, “We didn’t see eye to eye about funds, but that’s hardly unusual within a family.”

“You don’t live here, I take it?” Jordan remembered how Ruth and her mother had replied to the investigators’ questions. They’d spoken only of the family members who lived in the house.

“No,” Gibson admitted. He looked at Bobby. “Bobby came to fetch me. He told me Thomas had been murdered.”

“Indeed?” From Bobby’s face, Jordan guessed he’d been ordered to fetch his older brother. “So where do you live? What’s your address?”

Increasingly reluctant but getting no support from either of his siblings, Gibson eventually volunteered, “Number fifteen B, Falcon Street. I share a flat with two friends.”