Leslie Lafoy (35 page)

Belle swallowed and banished the ever-present threat of tears. She would give Inspector Larson her explanation and the evidence to support it. Calmly, rationally. She would make him understand that he’d been pursuing an innocent man. And when that realization dawned on him, she’d enlist his help. No officer of the law could refuse to admit a mistake. Not when offered the chance to pursue—and apprehend—a clearly identified and obviously guilty suspect.

The group of uniformed constables stood at the base of a set of stone steps that led from the public walkway to the door of what looked to be a fashionable inn. As they neared the men, Carden said softly, “I’ll negotiate our way past.”

She nodded, grateful that he was willing to take the lead and allow her time to organize her approach to Larson. She’d met him only once—the morning he’d questioned her about Mignon’s murder. Directed there by Mignon’s landlady, he’d arrived at the door of her rented room, perfunctorily introduced himself, and then bluntly informed her that her cousin had been beaten to death in an alleyway the night before.

In hindsight, she could see that she’d reacted just as he’d intended. She’d stared up at him, stunned and yet not wholly surprised, and answered all of his questions without giving her responses even the slightest consideration. She’d been honest, telling him why she and Mignon were in London. She’d suggested that someone from New Orleans might well be responsible for her cousin’s fate, but when she hadn’t been able to supply a name with any certainty, he’d smiled thinly and begun to ask her questions about Barrett Stanbridge. The name that had meant nothing to her that morning, she realized, now meant everything.

Carden drew her to a halt before the group of officers, introduced himself as Lord Lansdown, her as Mrs. Henri Dandaneau, and then informed the gathering that they had important information to relay to Inspector Larson regarding the murder he was presently investigating. At his name the men visibly straightened, at hers they slid a glance in her direction. At Carden’s request to be allowed entrance, they all looked at one of their own, a short, lean, dark-eyed man with a jagged scar that ran from just beneath his right eye, over the bridge of his nose, across and down his left cheek to disappear into a dark beard.

Something about him seemed vaguely familiar. Belle met his assessing gaze and gave him a tightly polite smile as her mind tried to put him in a place she’d been or among a group of people she’d met. At his crisp nod and motion to follow him up the stairs, she reluctantly put the conundrum away and focused her thoughts on how to best approach the inspector.

Without a word, the man led them inside the door and up the carpeted stairs to the second floor. Halfway down the hall, he motioned for them to stop and then disappeared through an open doorway. Carden’s hand still cupping her elbow, they moved into the doorway before obeying his silent command. The possibility that he might be a mute was squelched as Belle watched him step to Larson’s side. While she couldn’t hear his voice, she could plainly see that Larson did.

Tall, white haired, and seemingly dressed in the same black suit he’d been wearing the last time she’d seen him, Larson stiffened and let his gaze shift toward the doorway. His bushy white brows knitted over the bridge of his nose to become one as he scowled down at his subordinate and offered what looked to be a single-word response. The man with the scar nodded rather emphatically and said something else. Whatever it was, it clearly surprised Larson. His brows went up and the thin line of his lips shifted to the side.

The exchange continued, but Belle abandoned it, focusing instead on the larger world of the room in which it was taking place. There were two other men there, both considerably younger than Larson, both in black suits, both scribbling notes in small brown leather books as they moved around the badly rumpled bed. Or more accurately, she realized, the body on the floor beside the bed.

Only the lower limbs stuck out from beneath the bloody, crumpled coverlet. Belle considered them, carefully noting the particulars. The dead person was a woman who had, in life, considered the fashionability of footwear more important than the comfort they afforded. They were new shoes; the soles were barely scuffed. Belle looked past them, higher. The legs were oddly bent and at a slight angle off the floor. Death had visited some hours ago.

Isabella glanced up the body, noting the blood pattern on the cover, and then back down. Death had come from behind as the woman had stood beside the bed. The knife had slashed across her throat and she’d crumpled, grabbing the bedding with desperate, dying hands. Whoever had cut her hadn’t let her fall uncontrolled, though. Otherwise, the body would be more contorted. No, they’d lowered her down, placing her on her back and half-arranging her as though providing for her comfort at that point could make up for having so brutally killed her.

“Belle,” Carden whispered. “Perhaps you should step back.”

“I’ve seen death before,” she said, drawing her elbow from his considerate grasp. “Far too many times to be overly distressed by it,” she added, moving forward into the room.

Larson gave the scarred man a quick nod at her approach and he scampered past her and out the door. His gait again triggered the sense of familiarity, but Belle deliberately set it aside, knowing that she needed to direct her full attention on Larson.

“Lord Lansdown, Mrs. Dandaneau,” he offered with a most abbreviated bow in each of their directions as they came to a halt in front of him. “The sergeant tells me that you believe you have information concerning the murder of this unfortunate woman.”

Belle nodded, took a steadying breath, and began. “The coverlet hiding her face prevents a positive identification, but I can guess that she’s either Emma or Rose de Granvieux.”

He motioned to one of the younger men and the coverlet was discreetly drawn back. Belle’s stomach heaved, but she looked away quickly and forced herself to speak. “It’s Rose. The older of the two sisters.”

“And how is it that you know her?” Larson asked, as the coverlet was dropped and the younger men scribbled in their notebooks. “Was she also your cousin?”

“We grew up together in New Orleans.”

“It would seem that something about American women invites a gruesome fate. Was she also in search of a pirate’s treasure, Mrs. Dandaneau?”

“I have reason to believe so,” Belle replied, deliberately ignoring his insult. “She and her sister, Emma, and Mignon’s last lover, Emil Caribe, all came to London in our wake.”

He hummed in a dismissive sort of way and then looked past her to Carden. “Might I ask you, sir, just where your friend Barrett Stanbridge might be?”

“We don’t know precisely. Not at the current moment, anyway.”

“We?” Larson repeated, his gaze snapping to Belle’s, his brow cocked. “Am I to presume that you have made the acquaintance of Mr. Stanbridge since last we met?”

She wasn’t going to provide him the details of their relationship. Not now, not ever. They were none of his business, none of his concern. Instead, she reached into her skirt pocket and withdrew the ransom note. As she handed it to him, Carden supplied, “That was wrapped around a rock and tossed through the window of my home early this morning. Apparently Barrett was on his way to collect me before finding you and he was taken captive along the way.”

Larson didn’t reply, but skimmed over the note. “Land grant?” he asked, finally looking up to meet Belle’s gaze.

“That’s the treasure Lafitte left us—Mignon and me, through our grandmama,” she explained. “A grant from President Madison of a half million acres in the Western territories.”

“Presumably worth a considerable sum,” the inspector ventured dryly.

“It would be especially attractive to people who have survived the ravages of war and emerged with nothing but memories of a far grander time. The desire to live well and comfortably again can be quite overwhelming.”

“Would you count yourself among those overwhelmed people, Mrs. Dandaneau?”

“My only desperation, Inspector, concerns Barrett,” she provided, anger thrumming through her veins. “I’ve been to the solicitor this morning and had the transfer drawn as demanded. The treasure means nothing to me compared to Barrett’s life.”

He gave her a smile that suggested he found her declaration decidedly boring. Again his gaze shifted to Carden. “And why was Mr. Stanbridge on his way to see me? Perhaps to surrender himself and unburden his conscience?”

“According to his man,” Carden replied evenly, crisply, “he intended to tell you about the presence of the de Granvieux sisters and Emil Caribe.”

“Being in London is no crime,” Larson countered. “People are free to come and go at will. There is nothing about this woman’s presence in our city to suggest it was motivated by sinister intentions.”

“As far as you know at the present moment,” Belle pointed out. “According to the officer at your precinct desk, Lord Lansdown and I missed you by only minutes this morning. Since we came directly here in your wake, we can logically infer that you haven’t had time to ask anyone anything.”

“I think it might be the acerbic tongue that draws mayhem to American women.”

Fire shot through her veins and flared behind her eyes. Before she could think better of it, she retorted, “We have a very low tolerance for groundless senses of superiority. Would you care—in the interests of justice—to stow yours and listen to what I have to tell you? With something that approximates an open mind?”

Behind her, Carden sucked a hard breath between his teeth. Larson glowered at her in silence. She didn’t wait for Carden to intervene or Larson to grant her permission. And, knowing that there was nothing to be gained from holding back any of the significant details, she told him everything—about Mignon’s life and how it had connected to the desperations and desires of the de Granvieux sisters and Emil Caribe. She told him why Mignon had left the theater with Barrett, the bits of the map she’d hidden around his home and property, their return to find the last two missing pieces and the murder of the man in the yard. She told him about the chocolates she’d found in Mignon’s things and the peppermint wrappers that had been in the dead man’s pockets and how it hadn’t made any sense until O’Brien had provided his report. Of how Barrett had taken the land grant with him when he’d left early that morning and how he’d intended to present it as proof of motive.

And then—withholding the fact that the information from O’Brien was thirdhand—she told him that they’d known the minute the precinct clerk had told them of the murder on Queen’s Way that the conspirators had turned against each other just as O’Brien had so casually predicted. Meeting Larson’s carefully guarded gaze, she listened to her instincts and took a chance.

“I can’t tell you for certain what happened this morning, Inspector,” she began, “but I can make a reasoned guess or two. Barrett walked into a trap that had been laid for him outside Lord Lansdown’s home. There was probably one laid outside his own, that of Mr. John Aiden Terrell, and that of his parents, too, just to make sure they didn’t miss him.

“The intent was to take him hostage and exchange him for either the map or the treasure itself. When they found the land grant on him, they realized that the treasure wasn’t the immediately convertible reward they’d hoped it to be. But they were resourceful and determined enough to think of a way to make it so. They demanded a transfer to the bearer and allowed me the time necessary to have it legally prepared.”

Larson said nothing; he simply considered her, his ice-blue eyes appraising but otherwise expressionless. “It was after the ransom note was written that Rose was murdered,” she went on. “She’d served her purpose in writing it. And her death was meant to serve as her last one by consuming your time and efforts in investigating her murder, by trying to make Barrett accountable for it instead of looking at her sister and her lover.”

Belle pointed to the desk in the corner of the room. “I’ll wager your monthly wages that in the drawer you’ll find paper matching the one on which the ransom note was written. I’ll wager you two months’ that the top sheet, when angled into the light, will be an indented copy of the text you’re holding in your hand.”

Larson blinked, slid his mouth to the side and then made a sharp motion with his left hand. One of the young detectives instantly moved across the room and pulled open the center drawer. Belle barely kept herself from sagging in relief when he withdrew several sheets of paper the exact color and size of the one Larson held between his right thumb and fingertip. The senior investigator cocked a brow and his assistant tilted the paper into the afternoon light. And read aloud from the blank sheet the ransom demand, word for word.

Larson’s gaze came back to her. “I find your knowledge to be a cause of grave suspicion, Mrs. Dandaneau.”

The blind bastard. She bit her tongue and searched for a response that might be considered diplomatic. Finding none, she gambled again. “Emma’s dead, too,” she offered. “Three months’ salary says that you’ll find her body somewhere near Emil’s lodgings on Shaftesbury. How he killed her, I can’t say, but it doesn’t really matter a great deal. She served her purpose, as well.”

“And that was?” Larson asked coolly.

“Emil didn’t have money on which to travel and live,” she explained, straining to keep the impatience from her voice. “Emma and Rose did. From what their father left them. They were his purses and his message couriers. When you finally get around to questioning the clerks at Nickel’s Sweet Shop, you’re going to discover that it was Rose and Emma who frequented the establishment. No one there has ever seen Emil Caribe. He used them to finance his hunt for the treasure. Used them as shields. They carried the instructions to his hirelings. The ransom note is in Rose’s hand.”

“So,” Larson drawled, “there is no evidence to tie him to any criminal activity of any sort.”

“Precisely,” she snapped. “By deliberate design.”

“It seems to me,” Carden offered ever so breezily from behind her, “that it’s a brilliant enough plan and one quite likely to succeed. Based on the assumption, of course, that the constabulary isn’t sharp enough to see past the surface of things.”