The River Knows (15 page)

“I’m afraid that it is not that unusual, Louisa.”

“Oh.”

He smiled. “If it matters, I can assure you that I do not have such an appointment.”

She reddened. “I never meant to imply anything of the kind, sir.”

He had embarrassed her enough, he thought. “Tell me more about the California Mine Swindle. I recall being impressed by the details that I. M. Phantom provided in the press. How did you learn so much?”

“As Miranda told you, I called upon her the day after I overheard the conversation. I did not really expect her to receive me, let alone trust my word. But to my surprise she not only invited me into her home, she listened to what I had to say. We came up with a plan.”

“What was that?”

“Miranda is nothing if not an excellent actress. When the men contacted her to get her to sign the final papers she acted the part of a naïve female who was only too pleased to have an opportunity to be involved in an investment scheme with two such distinguished gentlemen. I hid behind a service door in the drawing room, listening to every word and making notes.”

“What was your next step?” he asked, fascinated.

“I sent a cable to the editor of the newspaper in the town in California where the gold mine supposedly existed. He was kind enough to reply immediately, saying that there was no mine anywhere in the vicinity. He strongly suspected fraud and urged caution. He also said he would like the details for his paper.”

“That was when you got the idea of becoming a correspondent?”

“Yes,” she said. “I immediately made an appointment with the publisher and editor of the Flying Intelligencer. We met and discussed my offer to write a series of occasional news reports from inside Society, as it were, beginning with the notice of a swindle perpetrated by two very prominent gentlemen.”

“I assume he leaped at the opportunity?”

“Mr. Spraggett did not hesitate for even a second,” she said with a note of pride.

“That does not surprise me.” He contemplated her for a moment longer. “If it is not too personal a question, may I ask what happened to Mr. Bryce?”

“Sadly, he was taken off by a fever shortly after we were wed.”

Smoothly said, he noted, and with just the right touch of regret.

“My condolences, madam.”

“Thank you. It has been a number of years now. The pain of the loss has receded.” She pushed her spectacles higher on her nose and assumed a determined expression. “We must consider how we are going to approach Mr. Thurlow.”

“It would be best if you remained in the carriage while I talked to him.”

“Absolutely not.”

He nodded, accepting the inevitable.

“I had a feeling you would say that.”

18

Halsey Street proved to be a small, cramped passage in a modest part of town. Drenched in fog, it seemed to exist in some separate, isolated world. Louisa studied the scene through the window of the cab. The neighborhood appeared deserted. There were no pedestrians and no traffic.

Anthony ordered the cab to halt, opened the door, vaulted down onto the pavement, and lowered the steps. Louisa adjusted her veil and allowed herself to be handed out of the vehicle.

“Be so good as to wait for us,” Anthony instructed the driver.

“Aye, sir.” The man settled back and took a flask out of one of the pockets of his coat. “I’ll be here when you’re ready to leave.”

Louisa walked with Anthony through the swirling mist to the front door of Thurlow’s lodgings.

Anthony rapped sharply. There was no response.

“That is odd,” Louisa said. “I can understand Mr. Thurlow being out, but one would think that there would be a housekeeper about.”

Anthony studied the heavily draped windows with a speculative expression. “If there is a housekeeper, she may have gone shopping.”

Something in his tone caught her attention. “What are you thinking, sir?”

“That we will obviously have to come back another time.” He took her elbow and started toward the waiting cab. “Come along, Mrs. Bryce. I will take you home.”

“Hah.” She came to a halt, forcing him to stop, too. “Do not think you can fool me so easily, sir. You are plotting to get me out of the way so that you can return here to Halsey Street and break into Mr.

Thurlow’s lodgings to have a look around, are you not?”

“You wound me with your lack of trust, madam.”

“I shall do more than wound you if you try to keep me out of this.”

“If you think that I am going to allow you to break into Thurlow’s rooms with me, you are delusional. I will not be responsible for your arrest on burglary charges.”

Pointedly, she looked around the empty lane. “I see no sign of a constable anywhere in the vicinity. We are highly unlikely to be arrested if we are careful. No one will take any notice of us if we go in through the front door. If someone does happen to see us, he or she will simply assume that the occupant has let us inside.”

“The front door is most likely locked, Mrs. Bryce.”

“I’m certain that a person capable of breaking into an Apollo Patented Safe will have no great difficulty with a simple door lock. I will stand in front of you while you do your work. My skirts will conceal your actions.”

“And if someone does question our presence inside the house?” he asked.

“We will tell them that we are friends of Mr. Thurlow and had cause to be concerned about his health.”

“Huh.” He contemplated that for a few seconds. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

“We entered to assure ourselves that he was not ill,” she continued blithely. “Who would contradict us?”

“Thurlow, himself, perhaps, if he happens to walk in on us while we are searching the premises?”

“He is hardly likely to summon a constable once we inform him that we are aware he is involved in an extortion scheme.”

Anthony’s teeth gleamed in a wolfish smile. “Mrs. Bryce, you and I do tend to think alike when it comes to certain matters.”

“Indeed, sir.” She smiled, aware of a keen sense of anticipation. “Now, if you would be so good as to go about your business?”

“This shouldn’t take long.” He put his hand on the knob and twisted experimentally. The door opened easily. “Not long at all.”

Louisa frowned. “Mr. Thurlow must have neglected to lock the door when he left.”

Anthony pushed the door open wider, revealing an empty hall. Louisa did not like the heavy silence that emanated from the interior of Thurlow’s lodgings. She felt the hair stir on the nape of her neck.

Anthony glided into the shadowed opening. There was a predatory alertness about him that sent another little chill across her nerves. He, too, sensed that something was very wrong.

She followed him inside, raised her veil, and looked around.

Thurlow’s lodgings were typical of those belonging to a man of modest means. She looked into the parlor, which was quite small and sparsely furnished. A hall led to the kitchen and a rear door that likely opened onto an alley. A narrow staircase ascended upward into deep shadow.

Anthony closed the door. “Is there anyone home?” he called in a voice that was pitched to carry to the upper floor. The reverberating silence seemed almost suffocating.

Louisa ran a fingertip along the top of the hall table. Her glove came away slightly smudged.

“He employs a housekeeper, but from the looks of things I would say that she does not come around every day.”

“Which may explain why she is not here today,” Anthony said.

He went into the parlor and opened the drawers in the desk. Removing a sheaf of papers he rifled through them quickly.

“Anything of interest?” she asked.

“Bills from his tailor and other tradesmen to whom he owed money.” Anthony put the stack of papers back into the drawer and picked up a small notebook. He flipped through the pages. “Miss Fawcett was right. Thurlow is, indeed, an inveterate gambler.”

“What have you got there?” She tried to peer over his shoulder.

“A record of people to whom he owes money.” Anthony turned a few more pages. “Evidently he routinely gets into debt and then somehow manages to pay off his creditors.”

“He must win occasionally, in that case.”

“This record goes back nearly three years. A few of the debts are quite large. Several thousand pounds in some instances.”

Anthony returned the notebook to the desk drawer.

She trailed after him through the remaining rooms on the ground floor. Nothing appeared out of place. It was as if Thurlow had walked out the door only moments before they arrived.

When they returned to the front hall, Anthony started up the stairs. Louisa hurried after him. The oppressive sensation seemed to grow heavier.

At the top, Anthony halted, looking down the short hall to a closed door. Louisa stopped, too, unaccountably chilled.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Wait here,” he said quietly. “He may be asleep in bed. Gamblers keep late hours.”

She ignored the order, but she was careful to keep a respectful distance behind him. The last thing she wanted to do was walk into the room of a sleeping man.

Anthony seemed unaware of her presence. Everything about him was concentrated on the closed door at the end of the hall. He knocked once. When there was no response, he turned the knob. The door opened with a long, mourning sigh of the hinges. He stood in the opening, looking into the heavily draped and shadowed room. He did not move.

Dread tightened Louisa’s nerves. She did not want to go any closer, but she forced herself to move to the doorway. The unmistakable miasma of blood and death flowed from the room.

“You do not want to come any farther,” Anthony warned in a flat, cold voice.

She took a handkerchief out of her muff and held it to her nose. Then she looked past him into the room.

A man lay face up on the bed, blankets and sheets tumbled around his waist. There was something terribly wrong with his head. The white linen pillow case was saturated with blood.

A hellish vision seemed to shimmer in the air in front of her. Lord Gavin had looked just like this when he lay dead on the floor of her bedroom.

“Louisa?” Anthony’s voice was sharp and brutal. “Are you going to faint?”

“No.” She pulled herself together with an effort. “I won’t faint.”

The dead man’s arm was crooked at the elbow, she noticed, the hand not far from his head. The lifeless fingers were wrapped around the handle of a revolver.

“Dear God,” she whispered. “He took his own life.”

Anthony walked across the room to stand looking down at the body.

“Now this is interesting,” he said.

Louisa was shocked by the stunning absence of emotion in his voice. Anthony sounded as if he were making an observation on the weather. But his face, she saw, had gone very hard, his eyes stone cold.

“What do you mean?” she managed.

“I wonder what the odds are of two of Hastings’s employees committing suicide within the span of a little more than two weeks,” he said.

19

He watched Louisa avert her eyes from the gory scene. “Are you certain you’re not going to faint?”

“I told you, I will be fine.”

“Go back downstairs,” he said quietly. “There is no need for you to remain in this room.”

She did not respond to that suggestion. “He certainly fits the descriptions the young ladies gave in their journals. He was, indeed, an exceedingly handsome man. And he appears to have been in his late twenties.”

Anthony turned back to examine the scene more closely. The bullet had inflicted considerable damage to Thurlow’s head, saturating his blond hair with blood, but his face was still mostly unmarred. He had, indeed, possessed the sort of features that drew the eyes of women.

He turned back to Louisa. Her attention was fixed on a piece of paper on top of a waist-high chest of drawers.

“Did Mr. Grantley leave a note?” she asked softly.

“Yes, according to Fowler.”

He crossed to the desk, picked up the paper and read the suicide note aloud.

“‘I cannot endure the shame that awaits. My apologies to my family.’”

“What shame?” Louisa looked at him. “Do you suppose he meant his gambling debts?”

“He does not appear to have been overly concerned about them in the past. Why would he suddenly feel the need to kill himself now?”

She nodded. “That is a very good question.”

“This is no suicide,” Anthony said, looking around the room.

“I’m inclined to agree.”

“I wonder if Hastings got rid of both of his employees for some reason,” Anthony said.

“Perhaps he thought he had cause to fear them. Maybe he believed that they were plotting against him. That would certainly explain why he hired those two guards.”

“Yes.”

She looked at him with stark, somber eyes. “What shall we do now?”

“I will send word to Fowler immediately. He will want to know about this new development as soon as possible.”

She clenched her black muff with both hands. “Yes, of course.”

“But first,” he said, “I am going to send you home in the cab. There is no necessity for you to remain here until Fowler arrives. I can tell him everything he needs to know.”

A flicker of relief crossed her face before she composed herself. “Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

She gave him a shuttered look. “Do you intend to mention my name to him?”

“I see no need to do so.”

“I am only concerned about protecting my identity as I. M. Phantom,” she said smoothly.

“I understand.”

He put the note down on the chest of drawers and moved back across the room to take her arm. “Come, we must get you away from this place.”

He guided her back downstairs. In the parlor he paused at the desk to write a short note.

“Are you certain you will be safe here?” she asked. “What if the killer returns?”

The anxiety in the question caught him off guard. She was genuinely concerned, he realized, perhaps even frightened for him.

“The killer may or may not be Hastings.” He folded the note. “Regardless, I don’t think that he will risk coming back to the scene of his crime. At least not until after the body has been discovered and the gossip has spread.”