Mina Wentworth and the Invisible City (4 page)

She was incredible.

Rhys had grown up hard and received nothing for free, and he’d given the same back. Though an earl’s daughter, Mina hadn’t had it any easier—and in some ways, she’d had it worse. Except for her family, almost everyone in England had looked upon her as if she were shit, simply because she resembled the Mongols who’d once occupied the country. Yet she still fought for Englishmen. Sought justice for them. She gave back more than they deserved.

Mina gave
him
more than he deserved. Rhys didn’t fool himself on that point. And he wished to God he knew how to be more for her than a terrified husband who feared for her life every fucking day.

But perhaps he just ought to be grateful that he hadn’t yet descended into hysterics. The thin, balding butler who stood at Redditch’s front door was just short of it. With wet eyes and cracking voice, he asked them inside after Mina identified herself—and she didn’t give his name at all, Rhys noted with amusement. It didn’t matter. Once inside the foyer, the man immediately looked to Rhys. The other servants had lined up on the stairs, most appearing frightened, some weeping openly.

“His lordship’s in the garden, Your Graces. I’ll escort you there.”

Mina didn’t move. “Just a moment, Mr . . . ?”

He stopped, wringing his hands. “Prescott, ma’am.”

“Mr. Prescott. You oversee the domestics in this household?”

His gaze flicked to Rhys before returning to Mina’s face. “Yes, ma’am. Eighteen men and women.”

She looked toward the stairs. “I only see thirteen. Where are the others?”

Prescott glanced round at the servants, almost seemed surprised that they weren’t all there. Almost immediately, the man seemed to steady. “Cook and her girl are in the kitchens, ma’am. I sent James and Reginald after the physician. Mrs. Kenley is locking up the rooms.”

“Mrs. Kenley is the housekeeper?”

This time, the butler didn’t look to Rhys before answering. “Yes, ma’am.”

“All right. Mr. Prescott, after I’ve seen to Lord Redditch, I’ll need to interview every member of your staff. I ask that they don’t speak of the incident with each other until I’ve had a chance to question them. Will you please make certain of it? Then I’ll ask you to show me to the garden.”

With a short bow, the man immediately complied. God, that had been beautifully done. Rhys would have ordered the butler to find his balls. But with a few simple questions, Mina let the man find them on his own
and
steered him into recognizing her authority.

Now he watched her study the servants, as if measuring the authenticity of their grief. In person, Redditch had been an affable, fair-minded man. The servants’ distress suggested that he’d been the same at home.

Prescott returned, his expression stoic. “It is as you requested, Your Grace.”

“Inspector, please.” She corrected him in an easy tone, and continued before the butler had a moment to worry if he’d erred or offended, “Is his lordship’s family at home?”

Redditch had told them during dinner that his wife and son were in the country, avoiding the heat and London’s smoky air. She nodded when the butler told her exactly the same thing. No discrepancy there, then.

“And did you see what happened to his lordship?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Did anyone see it?”

The butler shook his head. “I only went out to the garden after I saw the brass wheel rolling past the library window. But James, the footman, said that he heard his lordship crying out for help shortly before that. He’s the one who found his lordship’s body.”

A brass wheel?
A slight furrow formed between Mina’s eyebrows. She quickly met Rhys’s eyes, as if to confirm that she’d heard correctly. But though he nodded, she didn’t immediately pursue more information about the wheel.

“When did you last see his lordship alive?”

“At half-past seven, when he informed me of his intention to walk in the gardens.”

“What did you do then?”

“I took my dinner. When I finished, I walked through the parlor and library to make certain that everything had been straightened after his guest departed.”

“He had a visitor? Who?”

The butler hesitated for a moment, as if uncertain whether to divulge the information. Rhys glanced at Mina, saw the speculation in her gaze. Had Redditch taken a lover while his wife was away? Someone might consider that reason to kill a man. God knew Rhys would kill any man who ever touched Mina.

If she didn’t do it first. He knew she’d never invite another man’s touch, which meant she’d shoot any bastard who dared without permission. Rhys would only be left with an unconscious man to beat into a pulp or a corpse to rip apart.

Not ideal, but still satisfying.

“Who was he with, Mr. Prescott?” Mina’s tone had steel in it.

The butler folded. “Mr. Percival Foley came for dinner, ma’am.”

Rhys saw that she recognized the name—and no surprise there. Redditch had mentioned the man several times the night before. A bounder and the owner of a spark lighter manufactory, Foley planned to install automatons that threatened to displace his laborers. But though Redditch had spoken of Foley, the viscount hadn’t said anything of an upcoming meeting.

“Did you expect Mr. Foley tonight or was it an impromptu arrangement?”

“We expected him, ma’am. He accepted his lordship’s invitation almost two weeks ago.”

“When did he arrive?”

“At seven o’ clock.”

“And when did he leave?”

“Only a few minutes before his lordship took his walk in the garden.”

“He left at seven-thirty, after only a half hour in this house? That’s hardly enough time for dinner.” When the butler hesitated again, Mina pressed, “Did they argue?”

“I shouldn’t say—”

“You should, Mr. Prescott, so that I may find who killed your employer.”

“They didn’t argue. Not loudly enough to be heard, at any rate. But Mr. Foley appeared unhappy when he left the library, where they’d been speaking. He refused to stay for dinner, and made the excuse of a meeting with his solicitor.”

“And after he left, what did his lordship do?”

“He remained in the library for a few more minutes. Then he went to the gardens.”

“Will you show us the gardens, Mr. Prescott?” When he nodded, she gestured for him to precede her down the hall. “Does he often walk outside in the evening?”

“Almost every night after dinner or after his guests left.”

“And you used the opportunity to take your dinner before making certain the rooms were in order, yes?” When the butler nodded, she asked, “How much time passed between your last seeing his lordship and when you saw the brass wheel from the window?”

“Forty-five minutes, perhaps. I was standing beside the desk when I saw the wheel roll past. No, no—that is not accurate.” A frown creased his narrow face. “I heard it first, a loud clicking, though I didn’t know what it was. I recall looking up, trying to place the sound, and that was why I faced the window.”

He showed them into the library, where more paintings than books filled the walls. Heavy green drapes framed the window behind a large desk. Through the reflection in the glass, Rhys saw grass and shrubs lit by gas lamps. A set of double doors led outside.

Mina moved to the window and looked out. “And the wheel was clicking?”

“Or a machine shaped like a wheel. It was large—as tall as man, perhaps, and made of brass or copper. I saw only the side of it. The part facing me was flat, but the body of it was round and solid, rolling over the ground.”

Mina glanced at Rhys and he shook his head. He’d never heard of such a thing. She turned to the butler again. “Were there any markings?”

“There were lines on the side that came together in the center—like a tart cut into pieces. Not like spokes. I couldn’t see through it.” He shook his head again. “I didn’t see more than that; it rolled past too quickly. And I was standing there, still perplexed by the sight of it when I heard the footman come into the house, shouting that he’d just found his lordship’s body.”

Mina nodded and started for the double doors. “Thank you, Mr. Prescott. Wait here for now, please. When the footman returns, make certain he doesn’t speak with any of the others until I have an opportunity to interview him. My assistant, Constable Newberry, should be arriving soon, as well. Please show him through to the gardens immediately.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

Rhys followed her outside. She paused on the slate tiles that formed a path through the enclosed garden. Tall stone walls separated Redditch’s lot from those beside him. At the center, a marble cherub spit water into a fountain. Only recently planted, the garden itself was sparse, with a few young trees, low shrubbery, and grass to justify its name. The space had been laid out with the obvious plan of cultivating more. Perhaps that had been Redditch’s intention for the next spring. A damn shame that he wouldn’t see it.

In the southeast corner, a pale cloth covered a body-sized lump. Rhys nodded toward it, but saw that Mina’s sharp eyes had already found the body. Still, she didn’t yet move in that direction, her gaze scanning the rest of the garden.

“A giant brass wheel,” she said quietly. “Have you heard of a similar machine used in that way?”

“No.” But four yards ahead of them, a path of crushed grass caught his attention at the same moment Mina began moving toward it. “But I don’t think Prescott was too far off.”

Without stepping off the slate tiles, she crouched beside the three-foot-wide swath of flattened grass. She pointed to a narrow strip of grass that was not crushed as the others, then another, all evenly spaced along the wheel’s path. “It’s not completely smooth. It must be shaped like a gear, and these the uncrushed sections are from the valleys between the cogs . . . but no, the spacing isn’t right. It runs on a track, perhaps—and these flattened sections are the plates. Hopefully they will lead us on a path back to their owner.”

The viscount lay in the corner, near the wall. Aside from removing the covering, Mina didn’t immediately touch him, but studied the body. Redditch wore a black suit similar to the one he’d worn the previous night, with a linen cravat and a bounder’s trousers instead of breeches. Blood surrounded a dark, gaping hole in his chest. Mina bent over him, eyes narrowed.

“The entry wound is an inch and a half in diameter. This isn’t from a bullet. Or if it is, the largest bullet I’ve ever seen.”

In the smugglers’ havens of Australia, Rhys had seen musket balls almost as big, but firing one would have made considerable noise. “No one mentioned hearing a gunshot,” he said.

“Perhaps he was impaled on a metal rod of some sort.” She glanced around the area again, as if looking for a tool that matched the wound. “I don’t think it went all the way through his body. There’s not enough blood beneath him. But I can’t be certain without turning him over, and I’ll wait for Newberry to arrive and take photographs before I do.”

She briefly examined his hands, his mouth, and face. Redditch’s bronze skin had turned waxy in death, his features slack and eyes open. She closed his eyelids before standing, looking down at him.

“Damn it,” she said quietly. “He seemed a decent sort, didn’t he?”

Rhys supposed Redditch had been. He didn’t often think of people in that way—there were simply those who were necessary to him for some reason, those he protected or were useful to him, those few he cared for—and the one woman he loved. Redditch might have been useful as a political ally, but so were many other members of society. Unlike many of the others, however, Rhys wouldn’t have minded passing more time in the man’s company.

But he knew that to Mina, Redditch had represented something more. The first time she’d seen the viscount in person, she’d been fascinated by the darkness of his skin, his native blood. She was too familiar with the docks to be surprised by his race in general—a good portion of the sailors coming in from Manhattan City were either native, Liberé, or mixed—but it had been her first time seeing it in a member of the aristocracy.

And it hadn’t just been the fact of his native blood, Rhys knew, but that no other New Worlder had thought a thing of it. Unlike Mina, who’d endured stares and hatred her entire life, Redditch hadn’t likely encountered the same. Centuries ago, he might have, when the first trade agreements with the native confederacies had been sealed with marriages, strengthening political ties. But now, marriages between New Worlders of native, European, or African descent took place for all the usual reasons—money, religion, progeny—and for the damn lucky ones, the same reason Rhys had married: love.

Seeing the native viscount and learning his story had given Mina hope that England might eventually be the same—for her, for Anne, for their children. Hell, it had given Rhys hope, too.

Now he hoped that this murder wouldn’t take away Mina’s optimism. He hoped that when she discovered who’d killed him, the reasons wouldn’t have a thing to do with Redditch’s ancestry.

“He did seem the decent sort,” Rhys finally said, and meant it when he added, “I’m sorry he’s gone.”

Her gaze flattened again. “Hopefully I will make someone else a lot sorrier.”

Rhys had no doubt she would. He walked with her as she followed the crushed path across the grass, and wondered how the Black Guard felt about aristocrats with native blood. The brotherhood wanted a purified country, settled by Englishmen with no nanoagents infecting their blood. But in his lifetime, Rhys had run into plenty of men who thought “pure” meant no native blood, no Liberé blood. Did the Black Guard feel the same way?

He couldn’t know. The one member of the Black Guard they might have asked had committed suicide in his cell while awaiting trial.

But though he wondered, he wouldn’t suggest the Black Guard’s involvement now. If it began to look as if the brotherhood had been involved, Mina would come to that conclusion, too—but she’d use evidence, not conjecture.

“And that’s Newberry,” she said, tilting her head. Faintly, Rhys heard the puttering of the police cart. “Good. I’ll ask him to take pictures of these tracks, too, before the grass recovers. At least they tell us how the wheel got in and out.”