Stolen Remains (28 page)

She pulled the folded missive from her reticule. “I have a letter that I found in Lord Raybourn’s study. It shows—”

“The viscount’s personal effects don’t interest me at the moment. I am on the verge of solving a complicated blackmail scheme that is of great importance to the Crown. I imagine whatever you have to show me can wait until we return.” Hurst stood. “Mr. Pratt, come.”

The paned glass inset rattled inside the door as it shut behind them. Violet blew out a breath in frustration as she shoved the letter back into her reticule. Chief Inspector Hurst was positively the most colorless, humorless, foul human being she’d ever known . . . and she’d worked with hundreds of corpses.

One moment he dismissed her, the next he thought she was of use to Scotland Yard, then once again he circled around to find her worthless. She wondered if he was married to some poor, unfortunate soul. If not, it was certainly of no surprise, and much to the relief of all womanhood. How could any woman tolerate his—

Wait, what was this?

Violet sat in the chair Pratt had just vacated and picked up the piece of correspondence from which Hurst had been reading. It was one of the blackmail notes, promising curses and scourges upon Monsieur de Lessep’s head if he did not comply with the blackmailer’s demands.

She read it again. And again. Then she pulled out Cedric’s letter and laid it alongside the blackmail letter.

The handwriting was the same.

Cedric Fairmont, heir to Lord Raybourn, was engaged in a common blackmail scheme? Could that really be true? Was this why he was murdered? Was Godfrey involved in it with him?

It still made no sense. Godfrey said that the two of them had gone from the Crimea to France before they’d returned to London. They were never in Egypt.

Unless Godfrey was lying. With him dead also, how could they ever know the truth of things?

And if Lord Raybourn had gone to Egypt—and was presumably still there—to negotiate on Britain’s behalf for the Suez Canal, how could it possibly be a coincidence that his son was involved in blackmailing the man in charge of the project?

Violet grasped the edge of the table to maintain her balance, so much was her mind reeling. Finding a clean scrap of paper in the mess on the table, she scrawled out a note to Inspector Hurst, explaining what she’d realized about Cedric.

Another thought leapt into her mind. If the stationer’s information was correct, the two detectives were probably now at Cedric’s lodgings, where they would presumably find no one.

For surely that wasn’t where Lord Raybourn was. No, it wasn’t possible. He couldn’t have been in collusion with his eldest son. What interest would Lord Raybourn have in a blackmail scheme against the Suez Canal’s mastermind?

She suddenly very much wished that Sam were here right now to advise her.

Stuffing Cedric’s letter back in her reticule, Violet went back to Raybourn House and retreated to her room. Perhaps it was time to pack her belongings, to return to St. James’s Palace, or, preferably, Brighton. Scotland Yard had its blackmail scheme under control, and no matter who murdered whom, all concerned parties were dead, so what was the point of Violet remaining in London? Besides, once Hurst realized the blackmailer was no longer among the living, he could then focus on the Raybourn House fiasco, and would then naturally push her aside. The queen would have to approve her departure, of course, but why wouldn’t she?

She opened drawers and began removing her things, piling them on the bed to put in her luggage. She eyed the stack of papers on the chest, and knew that they needed sorting before she packed them. Abandoning her clothes, she began going through the papers once again. One of Sam’s letters dropped to the floor. She knelt to the ground to pick it up, and noticed another letter that had disappeared just out of sight under the chest of drawers.

Violet grimaced at her own sloppiness as she reached under the furniture for it. Except it wasn’t addressed to anyone she knew and was in an unfamiliar handwriting. Putting Sam’s dropped letter on top of her stack of papers, she examined the other letter. It was addressed to a Marjorie Eckworth in Birmingham.

Was it a letter from Mrs. Peet that had never been mailed? She tapped the letter against her wrist, considering. Should she open it? It seemed disrespectful of poor Mrs. Peet, and yet, what if there was something noteworthy in it that might illuminate poor Mrs. Peet’s fate? The notion of the housekeeper having committed suicide had never settled well in Violet’s mind.

No, the letter must be opened. “Please forgive me, Mrs. Peet,” she whispered as she broke the seal. The letter was dated the day the housekeeper had been found in the kitchen.

Violet’s heart stopped beating for several seconds. This was not the letter of a woman who planned to kill herself, yet Mrs. Peet was dead mere hours after she wrote these words.

Shoving aside a pile of clothes she’d stacked on the bed, Violet sat down and reread Mrs. Peet’s letter. If Mrs. Peet hadn’t committed suicide, then she’d been murdered. And if she’d been murdered . . . why? What did she have to do with anything? Surely she wasn’t involved in the blackmail scheme or Cedric and Godfrey’s relationship. She must have known that Katherine was once married to Cedric, but what of it? Did Mrs. Peet know something else, some secret in the family that would devastate them if it got out?

Maybe Mrs. Peet wanted to escape to Birmingham because of this secret.

Retrieving her own notes and list of questions from the chest of drawers, she sat back down again, spreading the papers out on the stacks of clothing and willing something to jump out at her.

Nothing did. It all really came down to one question, didn’t it? Who would benefit from Mrs. Peet’s death? But the housekeeper had nothing, just a couple of worn dresses.

Except for the trunk of finery across the room.

But, once again, what did that have to do with anything? It wasn’t as though someone had killed Mrs. Peet and stolen the clothing, had they?

Violet went to the trunk and opened it. Everything was still there.

So there was no monetary gain to be had from Mrs. Peet’s death. What were other reasons someone might kill another person? Jealousy. Anger. Fear. To silence someone. What else? For the first time, she actually wished Inspector Hurst were here so she could discuss it with him.

Perhaps he was done with his futile search for “Mr. Smith” and had returned to Scotland Yard. Now tucking Mrs. Peet’s letters into her bulging bag, she went downstairs. To her surprise, both Stephen and Katherine were standing in the drawing room with luggage around their feet.

“Oh, hello, Violet. How fortunate we are to see you before we go,” Stephen said.

“You’re leaving?”

“For a short time. What with all of the scandal about to break about Cedric and Godfrey, on top of my father’s disappearance, I thought it best to take our leave out of the city for a while until it all simmers down.”

“But what of the rest of the family?”

“They can all do as they wish. My concern right now is to weather the storm and preserve the Raybourn title and reputation.”

Tick.

Like a clock gear, something turned into its correct place in Violet’s mind.

“What if your father returns home while you’re gone?”

“He’ll have the rest of the family around him. In fact, Nelly can explain her duplicitous behavior to him, since she is probably at the root of much of what has gone wrong.”

Tock.

“Where will you weather the storm?”

“We plan to take the five o’clock to Winchester. Katherine has a friend there.”

Tick tock.

Katherine tapped her husband’s arm. “Come, Stephen, it will take time to get to Paddington Station. Traffic is just beastly this time of day.”

“Right. If you will excuse us, Violet—”

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

Violet refused to move. “I’m sorry, but it seems like there are many things you should be handling on behalf of your family. Arranging for permanent servants here at Raybourn House, comforting your sisters, seeking out what has happened to your father, as just a few examples.”

Stephen frowned. “Violet, I do believe you are stepping outside your authority. I asked you to find my father, which you have not done, not to set yourself up as the judge of how I conduct my affairs.”

“It is as you say. However, there is something important you don’t know. I found a letter in Mrs. Peet’s room, a letter written to her sister that she obviously intended to post but never had a chance to do. It shows that Mrs. Peet had no thought in her mind of doing away with herself. Do you have any idea who may have wanted to kill Mrs. Peet, Stephen?”

“Kindly remember that you are a guest in my home, Violet. Of course I don’t know who would have wanted her dead.”

Violet turned to Katherine. “But you do, don’t you, Mrs. Fairmont?”

Katherine wrinkled her nose. “Killed her? I’d always assumed the grief over Lord Raybourn’s death drove her to her demise.”

“Mrs. Fairmont, I deal comfortably with dead people on a daily basis, but have little tolerance for deceitful living ones. Why did you kill Lord Raybourn’s housekeeper?”

Katherine opened her mouth to argue, but closed it again, her mind working furiously behind her eyes. Even in this deplorable moment, Katherine Fairmont was beautiful, like a delicate china vase. Violet could hardly believe what she was accusing this striking woman of doing.

“I find it difficult to believe that someone who sullies her hands with blood and putrefaction should consider herself the arbiter of justice. You have no understanding of what I have suffered, Mrs. Harper.”

“Kate, stop talking,” Stephen said.

Katherine paid no attention to him. “I told Stephen that hiring you to find Cedric’s body would lead to disaster, but he insisted that keeping you under his close eye would make you more manageable.”

“You knew it was Cedric’s body in the coffin all along, because you killed him.”

Katherine rolled her eyes. “Maybe you should stick to undertaking rather than disparaging innocent, grieving loved ones.”

Mrs. Fairmont was sadly mistaken if she thought she would intimidate Violet through sarcasm. She’d been through quite enough with this family already.

“You’re right. Had I figured it out sooner, you would have been languishing in Newgate all of this time, instead of reclining on a sofa while both your sister and brother-in-law were imprisoned. In fact, you might even be hanged by now.”

Katherine’s eyes grew wide and she clutched her throat. “Never!”

“Ah, but they don’t hang women anymore, do they? So you’d just be lounging about in your gray prison dress, hoping that Mr. or Mrs. Bishop will have forgiven you enough to bring you some extra food.”

“Violet, please, that’s enough,” Stephen said. “You’re needlessly frightening my wife, who hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Katherine continued to ignore Stephen, her attention fully focused on Violet.

“I don’t plan to go to prison, Mrs. Harper. What court would convict me after what I’ve been through?”

“What, exactly, have you been through?”

“First, Mrs. Harper, you must understand what enormous strain we’d been under, what with Cedric threatening to expose us as bigamists.”

“But you weren’t bigamists, not really. You had no idea he was still alive.”

“Yes, but I’m sure the newspapers would have seen it that way. You’ve already seen what they’ve done to us. He also bragged that he planned to make us all miserable, one at a time. I don’t know what happened to him after the war, but he came back an even worse man than the one he was when he left.

“With Cedric formally declared dead, I knew Stephen and I were in no way bigamists, but Cedric was quite unmoved, saying that he would work diligently to embarrass and disgrace both his brother and me. He intended to drive us into poverty and make us social pariahs. Because, of course, his humiliation of me wasn’t complete when he left for the war.”

“Mrs. Fairmont, I’m sure he didn’t consciously plan to humiliate you in your marriage.”

Katherine laughed, the sound like a sharp bark. “I congratulate you, Mrs. Harper, on being the one person who thought so well of Cedric. Of course, you only met him once he was dead, so there’s that.”

Violet was silent.

“I suppose I remind you of Queen Catherine of Aragon, married first to Prince Arthur, then marrying Henry VIII when his brother died.”

Except that Violet suspected Katherine was more likely to have Anne Boleyn’s fate, not her namesake’s.

“I wanted to protect the family. Not just myself and Stephen, but the others. Gordon Bishop is a yapping puppy, but didn’t deserve to be ruined. Stephen’s sisters are, well . . . even dead I suppose they would be quite unpleasant, yet I still couldn’t allow Cedric to tear us apart.

“Cedric lured me with the note I thought was from Stephen. After our terrible row, I’d been crying, so I excused myself from the study to find a handkerchief and instead went in search of one of Lord Raybourn’s pistols. He kept several tucked around the house. Fortunately, the one I laid my hands on was one of his most deadly. He thought it was a great secret hidden from everyone, the foolish old beetle-brain. With the pistol behind my back, I then told Cedric I was going to talk to Stephen about the situation, which he found uproariously funny. ‘Yes, my brother will be of great help to you,’ he said, and left the room. That was when I knew he had to go. He was almost at the bottom of the stairs, and I was just a few steps behind him. I said his name softly. He turned to me, and I pulled the trigger, hoping that the powder was still fresh inside and that it was loaded with shot. It was, and I was more than happy to see him fall to the ground, his face half gone.”