Page 34 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)
“D o you think she had him killed?” Devlin asked later, when Hero told him of her encounter with the abbess.
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” said Hero, more troubled by her visit to the Bridewell than she was willing to admit even to herself. “I don’t think I’d put anything past that woman. Do you think she could be telling the truth about Farnsworth’s ‘rooms’?”
“Well, it would fit with the French letters Gibson found in his pocket, wouldn’t it?”
“It would. So whom did he entertain there? A mistress? Or women he acquired more…” She hesitated, searching for the right word, and finally settled on “casually.”
Devlin met her gaze. “If a woman like Letitia Lamont knows about them, I’d say it was probably the latter. Wouldn’t you?”
She nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”
?Sebastian was at his desk, writing a quick note to Lovejoy, when he heard the sounds of a carriage drawing up before the house. He caught the imperious tone of a woman’s familiar voice addressing her coachman and set aside his pen. He listened as Morey moved to open the front door; heard the woman’s curt reply to the majordomo’s polite greetings.
“He’s in the library, is he?” she said. “Don’t bother; I’ll announce myself.”
Sebastian pushed to his feet just as a woman in a somber black hat and exquisitely cut carriage gown of black-trimmed, fine gray bombazine appeared in the library doorway. Her late husband, Martin, Lord Wilcox, had been dead for over five years, but she still wore half mourning for him in a display of affection and devotion that was utterly, almost offensively false. She had despised Martin for years and was heartily glad he was dead.
“Good morning, Amanda,” said Sebastian, coming around from behind his desk. “What brings you here today?”
His sister drew up just inside the doorway. Now in her mid-forties, she had inherited their mother’s golden hair and thin, elegant form, but her blunt features were all Hendon’s. With twelve years between them, the siblings had never been close, even when young. She had hated Sebastian from the day of his birth, and though it puzzled him growing up, he now understood it only too well. “To what do we owe this…pleasure?”
She stared at him long enough to make him remember that the side of his face still bore a yellowing bruise and half-healed abrasion from his would-be assassin’s cudgel. She said, “You are doing it again, aren’t you? Involving yourself in Bow Street’s investigation of Lord Preston’s murder.”
It had always enraged her that the man known to the world as her father’s son and heir should involve himself in such a plebeian activity. But unlike Hendon, who worried about the dangers Sebastian might encounter, Amanda was concerned only with herself and the effect her brother’s unseemly conduct might have on her own social standing.
“That’s right,” said Sebastian. “But given that Stephanie is now happily married, and with Bayard unlikely to enter into any matrimonial ventures in the near future—” He broke off. “At least, I assume that’s unlikely?”
“As it happens, you could not be more wrong.” She said it frigidly, for they both knew there was something not quite right with her only surviving son, the new Lord Wilcox. “Indeed, the betrothal should be announced next week.”
“Interesting. Congratulations. So that’s why my activities have brought you here today to badger me, is it?”
“I am not here to ‘badger’ you,” she said crossly, yanking off her gloves as she went to hold her hands out to the small fire he had kindled on the hearth.
“May I offer you some wine?” he said, going to where a collection of carafes and glasses rested on a tray.
“No, thank you.”
“I hope you won’t mind if I do.” He reached for one of the carafes and lifted the stopper before looking over at her again. “So, then, why exactly are you here, Amanda?”
“I am here because, despite all the experience you’ve had dealing with these things over the last five years, you seem to be making a ridiculous muddle of this. One would think you’d be better at it.”
He was getting confused. “Better at what?”
“Catching Preston’s murderer, of course!”
Not “Lord Preston,” he noticed, but simply “Preston.”
“Ah. I was forgetting you were friends with both Lady Hester and her brother.”
“Yes, good friends,” she said stiffly. “He was such a worthy, admirable man. I still can’t believe this happened to him.”
Sebastian studied her half-averted face. “When did you last see him?”
She brought up a hand to shade her eyes for a moment before letting it fall to her side. “It must have been last Friday. Yes, Friday.”
“Did he seem nervous to you in any way? Troubled? Preoccupied?”
“No, not at all. I don’t believe he had any premonition or warning of what was about to befall him. Who would have expected it, after all these years?”
“After all what years?”
She stiffened. “Are you being deliberately obtuse? Or are you so blinded by your friendship with the man that you refuse to see what is obvious to everyone else?”
Sebastian took a long, deep drink of his wine. “Hugh Chandler—at least, I assume you’re referring to Hugh—had nothing to do with what happened to Farnsworth. He had no motive to kill the man.”
She stared at him. “No motive? How can you say that? He was forced to pay twenty thousand pounds for his shameful, disgusting behavior. Twenty thousand pounds. ”
“That happened six years ago.”
“So the man was cold and calculating enough to allow some time to pass before he struck. Apart from which, you forget that with Lady Theresa a widow, he will now be free to marry the trollop.”
“They’ve been living together quite happily without benefit of clergy for years. I don’t think making it legal is as important to them as you evidently think it should be.”
“Really, Devlin? Really? You forget that, with Preston dead, Lady Theresa will now recover her dowry. It was quite substantial, you know, and I think you’ll find that your friend Major Chandler is very much in need of an infusion of cash.”
Sebastian took another long, slow sip of his wine. Perhaps because of his unwillingness to believe Hugh guilty of murder, this was one aspect of Farnsworth’s death that he had failed to consider. By law, a man retained control of his wife’s property in the event of a separation of goods or even a divorce. Or at least, he retained control of her property until his death, at which point it reverted to the estranged wife. And Sebastian knew only too well that Hugh was hurting financially; the reversion of Tess’s dowry would be an enormous relief to them.
“ Quite a substantial sum,” Amanda said again, oblivious to the effect her words had had on him.
“Anything else, Amanda?” He kept his voice bland. Bored. “Can you think of anything else that might shed light on what happened to Farnsworth?”
She stared at him. “At this point, don’t you have enough?”
“No.”
“Well,” she said, drawing on her gloves again with quick, angry jerks. “Let us hope that Bow Street has the sense not to allow this willful blindness of yours to prevent them from bringing that vile miscreant to justice.” She gave a regal inclination of her head, said, “Devlin,” and swept from the room.
Draining his wineglass, Sebastian went to stand at the window, his gaze on the raindrops pockmarking the puddles in the street as his sister waited, one foot tapping with impatience, while her carriage steps were let down.
“Damn,” he said softly. Damn, damn, damn.