The Untamed Mackenzie

Chapter Thirteen

That afternoon, Louisa sat once more in Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ back sitting room. This time, though, Daniel was with her, and Louisa had come for a purpose.

The fact that Mrs. Leigh-Waters received Louisa at all encouraged her. Mrs. Leigh-Waters had always been a close friend to Louisa’s mother and to Isabella, one of the few to stand by Isabella when Isabella had left Mac.

Today, the lady was full of sympathy for Louisa and also for Hargate. “I wake up with palpitations thinking about that poor man,” Mrs. Leigh-Waters said, pressing a hand to her bosom. “What he must have suffered. It must have been quite distressing for you, Louisa, to watch him die. I am so sorry, my dear.”

She sounded sorry, but also a bit morbidly curious. “Indeed,” Louisa said. “Thank you.”

“And you, Mr. Mackenzie,” Mrs. Leigh-Waters said to Daniel. “So kind of you to stand by our dear Louisa.”

“Not at all,” Daniel said. He gave Mrs. Leigh-Waters his best I’m-young-but-very-intelligent-and-understanding smile. “Louisa is a favorite of mine.”

“Of mine as well.” Mrs. Leigh-Waters returned the smile, but with a glint in her eye. She looked back and forth between Louisa and Daniel with obvious interest. Daniel was nineteen, it was true, and Louisa years older than he, but such matches had been made. Once Daniel finished university and came into his majority, he would be a very wealthy young man indeed.

Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ eyes were truly gleaming now. Louisa broke in hastily, “What I wondered, if you’ll forgive me asking, is how you decided who to invite to the garden party? I saw people here I hadn’t in ages.”

Mrs. Leigh-Waters blinked. “My guest list was quite large, dear. My garden party is always an important Season gathering. I invite a wide circle, though I keep my list to those I like best.”

In other words, the gathering was large enough to be interesting, but exclusive enough for those invited to feel superior over those who had not been.

“What Louisa means,” Daniel said, “is that she’s surprised the Bishop of Hargate made your list. Louisa hadn’t thought you were particular friends. In fact, Hargate could be a priggish and condescending oik, God rest him.”

Mrs. Leigh-Waters flushed. “You are certainly forthright, Mr. Mackenzie.”

“But truthful. Hargate rose high in his profession very fast. My uncle Hart figured he called in favor after favor and bought his way to the top.”

Hart would know. He’d used similar methods himself on occasion, and he likely knew whose nest Hargate had feathered to become bishop.

“Well, your uncle Hart might not be wrong,” Mrs. Leigh-Waters said. “Hargate did ask my husband for a word in the right ear in exchange for him helping Mr. Leigh-Waters in certain matters. It’s often done, but with Hargate . . .”

“It was obvious and obsequious,” Daniel finished. “Is that why you invited him to the party? To repay what he’d done for your husband?”

“No, no.” Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ flush went deeper. “If you must know, I owed the bishop a bit of money, and he was needling me for it. I invited him at his request, intending to settle the debt here.”

“And did you settle it?” Daniel asked. He softened the abrupt question with a smile, took a sip of tea, and then gestured with his cup. “I mean, did you have the chance before . . . you know.”

“I did, as a matter of fact. I gave him his hundred guineas. Well, most of it.” Mrs. Leigh-Waters leaned toward them, lowering her voice. “Please don’t tell my husband.”

Louisa shook her head. “Never fear about that. Was it a gambling debt?”

“Pardon?” Mrs. Leigh-Waters looked surprised, then her face grew as red as the velvet curtains behind her. “Oh. Yes. Indeed. I had some very bad luck at cards and had to give Hargate a vowel for what I’d lost. I planned to pay him as soon as I could, but he was a bit impatient. For a man of the cloth, I must say, Hargate did not practice much forgiveness.”

In fact, Hargate seemed to excel at all the deadly sins, Louisa thought, pride and avarice being the top contenders. But some gentlemen went into the clergy not because they had a calling or deep faith, but because, if they went the right way about it, they could make a good living and gain power. Hargate had been a power-seeker and hadn’t much tried to hide it.

“I am sorry,” Louisa said. “I know this is difficult for you.”

Daniel gave Mrs. Leigh-Waters a cheerful smile. “At least your slate is clean. You were able to pay your debt, and all was finished.”

“Not exactly.” Mrs. Leigh-Waters put her hand over Louisa’s, her eyes welling with tears. “Dearest Louisa, I must beg your forgiveness. I couldn’t pay Hargate the entire amount. My pin money for the month was gone, and I could not ask my husband for more without telling him why. I didn’t want Mr. Leigh-Waters to know. He doesn’t approve of gambling.”

This was the first Louisa had heard of it. Mr. Leigh-Waters was often seen around card tables at Isabella’s parties, his wife the same. But Louisa smiled encouragingly and let Mrs. Leigh-Waters go on.

“Hargate threatened to go to my husband directly. I begged him not to. I asked what else I could give him, something to keep him happy until I could raise the rest of the money. He said—oh, my dear Louisa, I am so ashamed of myself now.”

Louisa thought she understood. “Did Hargate ask you to arrange for him to speak to me alone?”

“Yes. Oh, my poor darling, I’m so sorry. I knew he meant to propose to you. He often spoke of you as being the perfect bride for him. He wasn’t wrong—you’d have made a very good bishop’s wife.” Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes. “I agreed, I’m afraid. Anything to keep him from going to my husband.”

Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ distress was true but seemed a bit much for a woman who’d owed a debt from a card game. Most people in Mayfair owed each other for losses at whist, faro, hazard, the American game of poker, any sporting matches, or even which side of the street a cat would walk down. Gambling mania was alive and well in the haut ton. Louisa knew men who’d lost pieces of unentailed land, favorite horses, servants, and even houses, to their friends. The bets were squared eventually, often good-naturedly. Wives whose husbands frowned on their gambling did try to be covert, but sympathetic friends often helped them pay. Mrs. Leigh-Waters had lied when she’d said her husband disapproved of gambling, though, but Louisa couldn’t fathom why.

Daniel broke in, his voice quieter. “What did Hargate expect you to do, with respect to Louisa? Was letting him speak to her alone the end of it?”

Mrs. Leigh-Waters shook her head. “He wanted me to encourage her in the match if she proved shy. Talk her into it. Or bribe her, threaten her, whatever it took.”

Louisa’s eyes widened. “You promised him that?”

“I couldn’t help it.” More tears came, Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ large bosom rising. “I was desperate, my dear. And I didn’t see the harm. You told me yourself you’d decided this Season to look for a respectable husband. Hargate would have been a good match for you—would have helped you and your family.”

“At the expense of her happiness,” Daniel said. “If Louisa had accepted Hargate, I would have done anything to persuade her out of it.” He shuddered. “I couldn’t stick having Hargate for an uncle-in-law. Imagine having to be pleasant to him over pudding at Christmas. No, thank you.”

“I would have refused him,” Louisa said. “Hargate did try very hard to persuade me, telling me he’d forgive my family’s debts to him if I married him. My family has paid back most of what my father owed him, but he intended to squeeze me for the rest of it. Horrid man.”

Mrs. Leigh-Waters looked even more distressed. “Oh, Louisa, you mustn’t . . .”

“Speak ill of the dead?” Daniel asked, before Louisa could answer. “It’s not the done thing, no, but death doesn’t change what a person was in life. Hargate wasn’t above a bit of blackmail to get what he wanted. Key to most of his successes, I’d wager. He even tried to blackmail me once.”

Mrs. Leigh-Waters wiped her eyes. “He did? What about? I mean . . . Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Mackenzie. I don’t mean to pry.”

Daniel shrugged. “Youthful indiscretions. I’ve had so many of those I had to tax Hargate a bit before I pinned down exactly which youthful indiscretion he was threatening to tell my father about. I told Hargate to tell him and be damned. Which he did. My dad came down on me hard, but I confessed my sins, Dad and I argued, he forgave me, we had a whiskey, and all was well.” Daniel’s relationship with his father in a nutshell.

“Rather mean of Hargate,” Louisa said indignantly. “Did he ask you for money to keep quiet?”

“That and a word with Uncle Hart to hurry Hargate’s chances of getting into the House of Lords. Only room for so many bishops’ bums on the seats there. Someone has to die before another can come in the front door. Hargate wanted to be moved to the top of the list. I told him he was optimistic about Hart opening a way for him. Hart’s harder to blackmail than anyone I know. Trust me. I’ve tried. My ears still hurt from the drubbing he gave me.” Daniel rubbed the side of his head. “Of course, I was only ten at the time and not practiced.”

Daniel’s casual tone, dismissing blackmail as merely a nuisance, was having good effect on Mrs. Leigh-Waters. Her crying quieted, and she started to relax.

“Was he blackmailing you too?” Daniel asked her. “I’m sorry if he was.”

Mrs. Leigh-Waters nodded. “Please, please don’t tell my husband.”

“No.” Louisa squeezed her hand. “We understand.”

Mrs. Leigh-Waters looked at them watching her, then she jumped. “But if you are thinking I poisoned Hargate to keep him quiet, I did not. I paid him, as I said, and set up the appointment for him to meet you. I knew he might try for more money in future, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.”

Louisa wondered very much what knowledge Hargate had possessed that so shamed Mrs. Leigh-Waters, but she wouldn’t ask. The poor lady had suffered enough without having to worry that someone else knew her secret. Hargate was gone now, and Mrs. Leigh-Waters was safe from him.

“Never fear,” Louisa said. “I don’t see how you could have killed him, anyway, if the poison was in the teacup. How could you know which cup he’d choose? Or which I’d choose to give him? It was me who handed him the cup. I am, unfortunately, the most likely suspect.”

Louisa deflated. She’d come here hoping to learn much more. She’d discovered from their conversation that Mrs. Leigh-Waters did indeed have a motive for killing Hargate, but she had difficulty picturing Mrs. Leigh-Waters thinking of so intricate a way to administer the poison. Besides, would the lady risk killing the man in her own garden? In front of a large party of people?

Someone had. And that someone had shifted the blame squarely on Louisa.

“Thank you.” Louisa squeezed Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ hand again. “I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all this.”

“And I you,” Mrs. Leigh-Waters said. “Will you forgive me?”

“Of course.”

Mrs. Leigh-Waters let out her breath, her relief plain. Louisa and Daniel exchanged a glance, silently agreeing to end the conversation, and they took the rest of their tea in peace.

When Louisa and Daniel left Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ house, Louisa gave Mac’s coachman directions to take them straight to London and Scotland Yard. She would try to keep Mrs. Leigh-Waters’ confidences as best she could, but she wanted to tell Fellows what they’d discovered about Hargate. Immediately. As awkward as it would be to face Fellows again after last night, she wanted him to know.

Daniel agreed, and the coach headed east at a good clip.

When they reached Scotland Yard, however, the sergeant downstairs told Daniel that Fellows was out. So was Sergeant Pierce and Constable Dobbs. But they could always leave a message.

Daniel returned to the coach, where Louisa waited, with this information.

“I suppose I can leave him a message,” Louisa said, unhappy.

“No.” Daniel knocked on the roof of the coach and directed the coachman to the Strand. “We’ll wait for him in his own lair. Might be a while, though. I say we fetch food and drink on the way.”

Sergeant Pierce had suggested to Fellows that they go back to Richmond to reexamine the scene of the crime, but Fellows negated the idea. As he’d contemplated before, this was a crime of Mayfair. The players, and the answer, lay in that section of London.

Fellows began by visiting the Bishop of Hargate’s father, the Earl of Norwell, in Norwell’s Berkeley Square house. Norwell didn’t want to see Fellows, the butler informed them when he answered the front door. He also said that Fellows and Pierce should have gone down the stairs to enter the house via the kitchen.

Fellows did tell Pierce to go down—it never hurt to cultivate those below stairs and learn the household gossip—but Fellows remained squarely in the doorway.

“Tell his lordship that if he wishes me to find and arrest his son’s killer, and quickly, he’ll speak to me,” Fellows said to the butler.

The man looked aggrieved, but at last he obeyed. Pierce sketched a cheerful salute and departed for the kitchen.

The Earl of Norwell kept Fellows waiting in a reception room for at least half an hour before the butler returned and led Fellows up a flight of stairs to a study lined with books. The room’s high walls held a second floor of bookcases, reached by an iron spiral staircase.

Norwell looked much like his dead son, handsome and lean, though twenty years older. His hair was gray, his belly gone to fat from too much rich food and too much port, his black mourning suit making his pale face more sallow.

Norwell ran his gaze up and down Fellows, obviously not liking what he saw. “So you’re old Kilmorgan’s by-blow.”

Fellows made a shallow bow, hiding the sting. “I have that honor.”

Norwell grunted. “You look like him. Kilmorgan was a mean son of a bitch, and the current duke is no better.”

Fellows took this stoically. He’d come to like Hart more and more as he got to know him, but he knew he’d waste his breath defending him to Norwell. Norwell was the sort of man who made his judgments and stuck to them, come hell or high water.

“How can speaking to me help you catch a murderer?” Norwell asked. “It was the Scranton bitch who did it, and we all know it. That entire family is mad.”

Fellows clenched his jaw to keep his temper. “New evidence has come to light that tells me it was not Lady Louisa.”

“What evidence? You’re lying. The only reason you haven’t arrested her is that she’s connected with the Mackenzies, and you have an absurd loyalty to them.”

“No, Lord Norwell,” Fellows said in a hard voice. “I’m after the truth, no matter what. One reason I came here today is that I’d like to look over your son’s bedchamber. His valet told me he often stayed in this house when he'd be in Town only briefly and didn’t want to bother opening up his own flat. Is that correct?”

Norwell looked Fellows over again, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “You’re a bit above yourself, aren’t you, Chief Inspector? You might be a duke’s son, but you’re still a bastard.”

“Which has nothing to do with me looking at your son’s rooms.”

Norwell heaved a sigh. “What are you searching for?”

“I’ll know that when I find it.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“I’m leaving no stone unturned,” Fellows said firmly. “I want this killer found as quickly as you do and so am looking into every possibility. Don’t worry, I will do no damage to your son’s things, and leave everything as I found it.”

Norwell again looked Fellows up and down, in the most condescending way possible. He heaved another sigh, this one sounding as though it came from his toes, turned away, and pushed a bell on the desk. The butler entered almost immediately—Fellows suspected the man had been listening outside the door.

“Take the inspector up to Frederick’s old rooms,” Norwell said. “Stay there with him, and don’t let him steal anything.”

Fellows didn’t react at all to the statement. Norwell was grieving—Fellows allowed that. Otherwise, he’d be tempted to punch the man in the mouth. Fellows made himself turn his back and follow the butler out of the library without a word.

The butler led him up another flight of stairs. As they entered a large, dim bedchamber, Fellows bade him go down and tell Sergeant Pierce to come up. No one searched a room better than Pierce. He could find nooks and crannies that most missed, and he could do it rapidly and thoroughly. Fellows had always suspected that Pierce, in his youth, might have been a thief, but he’d never asked directly.

The butler looked put out, but he went. Slowly. The stairs creaked, one at a time, as he descended.

Fellows pulled open the heavy curtains, letting cleansing sunlight into the too-dark room. The room was musty—Norwell must have shut it up at his son’s death and not allowed anyone in. Grieving people often wanted to hide away their loved ones’ belongings.

The chamber was elegantly furnished, as befitting this Berkeley Square mansion. A tester bed with brocade draperies held prominence, a sofa stood near the fireplace, a writing table was positioned near the window, and a bookshelf full of leather-bound volumes took up part of one wall. Thick carpets covered the floor, and a dressing room with a wardrobe and a tall mirror opened off the main room.

Fellows took advantage of the butler’s absence to start going through the writing table. He pulled out drawers, sorted through the few letters he found, and turned the drawers upside down to look for anything hidden beneath. He finished soon, the contents disappointingly sparse. Hargate’s recent correspondence had been in his flat in Piccadilly, which Fellows had read when he’d searched there, but he’d found nothing of interest. Fellows wasn’t certain what he hoped to find here, in Hargate’s boyhood bedroom, but it was the one place Fellows hadn’t searched yet.

By the time Fellows heard Pierce’s step on the stairs, he was under the large bed, looking beneath the slats for hidden treasures. Nothing.

Fellows crawled out and brushed himself off, and was on his feet pulling out books from the bookcase by the time Pierce and the butler arrived. Pierce, who prided himself on his forthrightness, shut the door in the butler’s face. “Fetch us some tea, there’s a good chap,” he called through the door. “And coffee for the Chief Inspector. He don’t like tea.” He turned away and surveyed the room. “Anything, guv?”

“Nothing yet. See what you can make of it.”

Pierce went to work. Fellows trusted his sergeant’s skill, and for good reason. Pierce could feel every corner of a pillow without cutting it open, tell if a mattress or featherbed held any secrets. He checked every inch of wainscoting and the paneling around the windows, tested bricks of the fireplace, turned over chairs, and patted the curtains to see if anything resided between drapery and liner or inside the hems. Pierce flipped carpets up and tested floorboards, then went through the books and examined their bindings.

Undaunted by finding nothing, Pierce entered the dressing room. Fellows continued to look through the letters he’d taken from the drawer. Presently the banging and rustling in the dressing room stopped, and Pierce said, “Eureka, sir.”

Fellows didn’t get his hopes up. This had been Hargate’s room when he’d been a young man living at home. Pierce might have found nothing more than a university lad’s old stash of cigarettes or malt whiskey.

Pierce was crouching on the floor in the dressing room, having folded back the carpet. He’d lifted a loose board from the floor and now pulled out a square box that had been resting on the joists beneath.

The box was locked, but the lock was small and decorative, more to keep out those who would have respected his privacy anyway. Fellows put the box on the dressing table, took out a blunt tin nail he kept for such occasions, and quickly forced open the lock.

Would he find cheroots and love poems to long-ago schoolgirls? Fellows’ heart beat faster as he lifted the lid.

He found a notebook. He took it out, noting that it was clean and crisp. Almost new.

“Ah,” Pierce said. “Wonderful things, notebooks. Can tell you so much about a chap. His personal thoughts. Locked in a box under the floorboards.”

Fellows sat down on the chair at the dressing table and opened the notebook. As he’d suspected, it wasn’t a straightforward, written journal of everything the bishop had been up to, whom he’d angered, and who wanted to kill him. It was a series of cryptic notes, but Hargate had been kind enough to date them. He’d made the last entry the morning of the garden party.

“Bring the box,” Fellows said grimly. “We’re taking this.”