Page 28

At last, the front doorbell heralded Stokes’s arrival. He walked in, studied them for a moment, then admitted, “I could do with a scone or two myself.”

Penelope waved him to a chair and poured him a cup of tea while Barnaby passed the scones and jam. “I suppose,” she said, setting down the teapot, “that we should wait for Jordan before sharing our findings.” She glanced toward the door.

“Probably best,” Stokes mumbled around a scone, “unless you want to repeat everything.”

Barnaby caught her gaze and smiled understandingly.

She pulled a face and raised her teacup, then to her relief, the doorbell pealed again.

A second later, Jordan walked into the room.

“My apologies. After leaving the Cardwells, I realized I should report to Roscoe, and the traffic wasn’t helpful getting back and forth.

However”—Jordan subsided into the armchair Penelope waved him to and, with obvious gratitude, accepted a teacup and saucer and a plate with a scone and a dab of jam—“I’m glad I made the effort.

Roscoe had an insight that, I suspect, will prove very helpful, but first.” Jordan eyed Barnaby and Penelope as he raised the scone toward his lips. “What did you two learn?”

“We called on the Moubrays first,” Penelope said, “and that was quite enlightening.”

“Both Moubrays—Sir Ulysses and Mrs. Moubray—were at home and received us,” Barnaby said. “Both seemed genuinely shocked by the news of Thomas Cardwell’s murder.”

“Indeed,” Penelope affirmed. “And Sir Ulysses was even more thunderstruck to learn of Harrison’s connection with the gun-running scheme and the use that his warehouse on Brennan Road?—”

“Which he admitted was his,” Barnaby interjected.

“—had been put to.” Penelope added, “Sir Ulysses served in the army on the Subcontinent, and I suspect he’s one of those military types who find civilian life a touch incomprehensible.”

Barnaby nodded. “That was my reading of the man, too. But in all he said and in his reactions to our revelations, I detected nothing to suggest that he might have been involved in Cardwell’s murder. In truth, I doubt he would have remembered Thomas if his wife hadn’t jogged his memory.”

“I entirely agree,” Penelope said. “Although rather mousy and outwardly retiring, Mrs. Moubray is significantly more observant than one might think. She and I managed a private interlude, and her descriptions of Sir Ulysses and Harrison and, indeed, the other two young men were, I judge, very close to the mark. As Ruth had with Gibson, Mrs. Moubray had noticed Harrison’s recent displays of unexplained wealth.

However, she didn’t mention the matter to her husband as she didn’t want to exacerbate the rift between them. ”

“Rift?” Stokes asked.

Barnaby explained, “Sir Ulysses had fond hopes that Harrison—the Moubrays’ only son—would follow Sir Ulysses’s footsteps into the army, but Harrison has refused to have any truck with that, opting instead to live the life of a gentleman about town, which endeavor is largely outside Sir Ulysses’s comprehension. ”

“I can imagine that.” Jordan glanced at Penelope. “Did the observant Mrs. Moubray have any further light to cast?”

Penelope nodded. “She remembered Keeble, whom she and her husband have met but only through the link between Harrison and Josh. From her comments, I gather Sir Ulysses rather looked down on Keeble as, it seems, Keeble’s father was a merchant.

Sir Ulysses had not encouraged Harrison’s friendship with Josh Keeble, but he entertained fewer reservations about Gibson, given the Cardwells are an old, established gentry family. ”

“So,” Stokes dryly remarked, “Sir Ulysses is high in the instep.”

“Palpably so,” Barnaby replied.

“One particular and relevant insight that arises out of that observation,” Penelope said, “is that, as Mrs. Moubray stated, if Sir Ulysses had wanted to speak with Thomas, Sir Ulysses would have summoned Thomas to attend him either at his home or at his club.” Penelope looked at Barnaby, Stokes, and Jordan.

“From all we learned about Sir Ulysses, that rings very true.”

Stokes frowned. “So if Sir Ulysses had learned about the gun running and wanted to speak with Thomas…”

“Exactly.” Penelope nodded. “For a start, why would Sir Ulysses think to speak with Thomas about the gun running? But assuming that for some reason he did, then Sir Ulysses is not the sort to go calling at a younger man’s office. He’s regulation army—he would expect the junior man to come to him.”

Stokes slowly nodded. “Yes, I can see that.” He raised his gaze to Penelope’s and Barnaby’s faces. “So what did you learn about Keeble?”

Barnaby glanced at Penelope, then at her urging, commenced, “He’s a widower, and he’s devoted to steadily ascending the social ladder.”

“Rung by sure rung,” Penelope put in. “I sensed his campaign in that regard is very carefully constructed and executed.” She looked at Jordan and Stokes.

“For instance, I asked if he’d thought about Josh marrying, and he replied, ‘Not yet.’ It’s clearly a step in his overall plan to socially advance himself and Josh—they’re the only two in the family—but Keeble Senior isn’t the sort to rush into anything. It’s all very calculated.”

“To me, it seemed that he uses his late wife’s higher social status as an excuse,” Barnaby said, “in that, had she lived, it would be what she would have wanted.”

Penelope nodded. “That’s true. However, with respect to the gun-running scheme and Thomas being killed, Keeble appeared truly shocked. Rattled and even distressed.”

“It took some effort to reassure him that Josh’s name is unlikely to be made public,” Barnaby said.

“I suppose,” Penelope said, “that given his plans to advance the family socially, the prospect of having their name feature in some news sheet in association with gun running and murder would, indeed, be upsetting.”

Her mock-earnest tone made Stokes and Jordan smirk.

“Interestingly,” Barnaby said, “when we inquired if he knew Thomas, while Keeble gave a similar answer to the Moubrays—having only encountered Thomas at school events—Keeble added that he knew Thomas’s office was in Broad Street.”

“Oh?” Stokes perked up.

Penelope smiled at him and shook her head. “Keeble pointed out that as he’s a financier and, therefore, often in the area, Thomas’s office would be hard to miss.”

“Hard to claim not to have been aware of it,” Barnaby said. “But Keeble denied ever interacting with Thomas professionally, having an office of his own and no need of the services of another man-of-business.”

Penelope looked from Stokes to Jordan. “That’s all we learned from Keeble and the Moubrays. So”—she arched her brows at Jordan—“what useful insights did Roscoe offer?”

Jordan set down his empty plate and took a sip of his tea.

“Before we get to Roscoe,” Stokes said, “was there anything of note at the Cardwells?”

Jordan shook his head. “No. Nothing that seemed pertinent, just the family trying to band together and get through this terrible time.”

Barnaby had been mulling over the facts they’d collected thus far. “So was it learning about the guns that sealed Thomas’s fate, or was it something else entirely?”

Stokes pointed out, “The gun running certainly qualifies as Thomas’s ‘nefarious activities,’ and little else we’ve come across fits that bill.

However, I agree that we need to prove that Thomas did, in actual fact, learn about the guns.

Until we have solid proof of that, we’re trying to stitch together a story with unconnected threads. ”

Jordan nodded. “We need to get to the bottom of this—identify the reason that Thomas was killed—not least for the Cardwells and, perhaps strangely, most of all for Gibson Cardwell.”

Stokes regarded Jordan shrewdly. “Having an attack of the guilts, is he?”

“Very much so.”

Penelope was frowning. “The only place that Chesterton and Gibson, Harrison, and Josh met was at the Fox.” She looked at the men about her. “So the Fox is the only place where Thomas could have spotted Chesterton and picked up his trail and followed Chesterton to the warehouse and found the guns.”

Stokes grimaced. “We need to find someone who saw Thomas following Chesterton away from the Fox. That’s the very least we need.” He jotted in his notebook. “I’ll send Morgan to ask at the Fox. Depending on how good Thomas’s disguise was, someone there might have noticed him.”

Jordan’s expression stated that he was mentally surveying the sequence of events they were endeavoring to construct.

“For the sake of our case, let’s say that Thomas did see Chesterton at the Fox with Gibson and subsequently followed Chesterton from the Fox to the warehouse.

That had to have been on the Sunday night—thirty-six hours before he was murdered—because on Monday, Thomas sent his letter to Roscoe, and Thomas was killed on Tuesday morning. ”

Barnaby nodded. “That’s Thomas’s timetable as we know it to this point.

And assuming we do, indeed, find sound evidence that Thomas followed Chesterton and learned about the guns, given the timing, that makes the motive for Thomas’s murder his knowledge of the gun-running scheme.

” Barnaby looked at the faces about him.

“Presumably, that knowledge made Thomas a threat to someone.”

Jordan glanced at Penelope, then looked at Barnaby and Stokes. “That’s the perfect opening to reveal Roscoe’s insights. When I told him about Chesterton and the gun-running scheme, Roscoe’s immediate question was ‘Who are Chesterton’s backers?’”

Staring at Jordan, Stokes slowly sat up.

On the sofa, Barnaby and Penelope straightened.

Noting their reactions and the dawning comprehension in their expressions, Jordan continued, “Roscoe contends that, for an operation of such size and scope, Chesterton wouldn’t be the one filling the purse.

He’s just a middleman enabled by the syndicate providing the cash.

And given the nature of the scheme and the amounts involved, it’s all but certain the members of that syndicate are wealthy and potentially powerful gentlemen. ”

Stokes grunted. “And if anyone would understand such a setup, Roscoe would.”

“If you think about it,” Barnaby said, his tone enthused, “all those guns would have cost a pretty penny.”

“More,” Stokes stated. “Significantly more because of being illegally sourced.”

In the tone of one summing up, Penelope stated, “So Chesterton must have had backers, and whoever they are, Thomas learning about the gun running and being intent on informing the authorities would have featured as a definite and very likely highly significant threat to them.”

Stokes shut his notebook with a snap. He glanced at the clock, then looked at the others. “First thing tomorrow, we interview Chesterton again.”