One Penny Surprise (Saved By Desire 1) (7 page)

His concerned gaze met Luke’s. They both appeared to be thinking the same thing because they both turned to study their surroundings a little more closely.

“I chased someone out of the park,” Luke sighed. “Was he a diversion for the real killer who was still hiding in the woods? If everyone else is innocent, could we overlook the one person who might be guilty? After all, everyone else was out in the open. Visible. The hider was standing in shadows clearly with a need to hide. Was he waiting until the woman left the area to move the body out of sight?” He frowned at the spot on the path where he had last seen the corpse. “The corpse didn’t get up and walk himself home. Someone moved him, but it couldn’t be the woman because she wasn’t big enough or strong enough. I doubt it was the pick-pockets either. They were long gone.”

“For strangulation of this kind, on someone as big as you or I, it is safe to assume the killer is a man. It is highly unlikely a woman would have the strength. If she was involved she didn’t actually kill the man herself. Whether she was covering for the real killer is yet to be known. That said, we cannot lose sight of the possibility that they both may have been taken by the killer. After all, we all know just how vulnerable a woman can be out all alone.”

Luke felt an unfamiliar pang of unease shimmer through him. He had never felt panic like this before. Worry, yes; panic, most definitely not. It wasn’t in his nature to fret about anything, yet the thought of that stunning young woman ending up the same way as the corpse he had fished out of the river left him feeling strangely unsteady on his feet.

“Come on,” Barnaby sighed when Luke didn’t answer.

“Where are we going?” he asked. After one last look at the damp patch beneath his feet, Luke quickly followed his colleague.

“We are going to find that dead body.” Barnaby threw Luke a warning look. “Hopefully we won’t find that woman dead too.”

Luke fervently agreed and began to search the woods. They didn’t need to discuss it to know that it was the most likely place they would find the body. However, the more Luke searched, the more the cold hard knot of fear began to form deep in the pit of his stomach. It was sufficiently strong enough to leave him wondering how someone he had met only briefly; who had appeared in his life and brought with her more questions than answers; could have such a profound effect upon him.

“Here,” Barnaby called quietly about a half hour later. He kept his voice low in deference to a nanny walking her young charges along one of the paths just a few feet away and waited for Luke to join him. “Are you all right?” Barnaby asked when Luke appeared. His concern grew as he witnessed the paleness of his friend’s cheeks and the visible tremor in his hands. It was most unlike Luke to be shaken by anything; much less the sight of a corpse, many of which Barnaby knew Luke had handled in the past.

Luke nodded. He was relieved to note that the body Barnaby had just found was the man he had fished out of the river, and not Poppy. Determined to keep his mind on the task at hand, and off the disturbing emotions that were starting to unfurl deep within, Luke threw Barnaby a dour look.

“Do you recognise him?”

Barnaby studied the dead man’s face for a moment then shook his head. “He isn’t someone I have ever come across but, from the look of his clothing, I cannot see him taking a pint down at the Dog and Ferret, can you?”

Luke snorted and pushed to his feet. “He is one of the
ton.”

“We need to get Sir Hugo to take a look. If anyone is likely to recognise him, he will.”

“Sir Hugo is at home in Cornwall isn’t he? I thought I heard Marcus mention that one of the children had recently caught chicken pox which had spread throughout the entire family – including their father.”

Barnaby grinned at the mental image of his boss being covered from head to foot in small, red, and very itchy spots. “I am not sure. If he is still out of action then we will have to speak to Simon Ambrose. Now he is here because I spoke to him last week. His was grousing about the children wrecking the house.”

“He shouldn’t have so many of them,” Luke replied with a grin.

“Six at the last count,” Barnaby smirked.

Wild horses would never get him to acknowledge it publically but Luke rather envied Simon his lifestyle. Although his boss always moaned about the chaos his ever growing brood brought to his life, there was always an unholy light of mischief in his eyes that assured everyone that he didn’t care one bit what carnage was caused. They were his children, and he was proud of them. To Luke, children were always something that belonged to someone else. In his youth he had never once stopped to consider having a family of his own. However, now that he was getting on a bit, and the world was starting to feel a little jaded, he began to wonder if it was time to settle down.

Poppy’s face immediately sprang to mind, but he quickly blanked it out. It took far more effort than he wanted to acknowledge to force his attention back to the pick-pockets and the dead man, but he set the strength of his reaction to her being the mother of his children to one side to consider later. All right so she was beautiful but there were plenty of stunning women in the world. What was it about Poppy that brought about such keen interest? He couldn’t consider her anything more than a suspect in a murder right now. It was foolish to see her in any other light other than someone who had plenty to hide. Why then did he want to help her? Why then was he almost desperate to find her again just so he can reassure himself that she really was alright?

“Do you think the older gang of pick-pockets did it?” Barnaby asked, studying the bruising around the man’s neck. “This is done by an adult, or an older youth.”

“Not the ones I saw. They were really young. The oldest must only be about twelve and the youngest not much older than six or seven. I don’t believe any of them had the strength to do this, much less the interest. The gang I chased this morning were mischievous urchins. They are not ruthless enough for this. It could be the new gang, but if so why? They didn’t take his cravat pin or his coins.”

“Why were the gang you saw out this morning if they are innocent though?”

Luke shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe they are avoiding the older gang now working the area?”

His anger toward the pick-pockets wasn’t really directed toward them for their mischievous devil-may-care grins, or total disregard for the law, or even the insulting hand gestures they always gave people who shouted at them. They were, after all, a victim of their own circumstance. They didn’t ask to be born into impoverished families who couldn’t afford to feed or clothe them properly. They were invariably drawn into their life of crime by the surrounding people, and the dire circumstances that drove them to it. No, his anger was directly solely toward the gang-masters who ordered the pick-pockets around, took the majority of the money they stole for themselves, and battered the children who objected or didn’t do as they were told. The pick-pockets, to their masters, were merely a means to an end. To Luke, the children were as much victims as the people they targeted. He didn’t say as much to Barnaby but, even if he got into trouble with his bosses in the War Office, no pick-pocket he collared was going to face the magistrate. Their masters, however, most definitely would.

“I will go and see if I can find Simon.”

Barnaby was already shaking his head at Luke’s offer. “I think we need to scour the area first. I mean, he isn’t going anywhere is he? There is no reason to think that anyone is going to move him again. They wanted him out of sight. Well, he is out of sight. People are starting to appear in the park now - look. It would be a stupid murderer indeed who would brazenly carry a corpse over his shoulder in broad daylight for the world to see. Besides, we have to look around for the woman. She may be in here too.”

Luke conceded that he had a point and began to wander around the area to look for anything – or anyone else - the killer might have left behind. Both men began to walk in ever-increasing circles until, an hour later, they left the woods. Eventually they returned to the spot on the bank where Luke had left the body with Poppy.

“These are your drag marks from when you took him out of the river,” Barnaby murmured quietly as he squatted down to study the telltale marks in the soft earth.

Luke frowned down at them and put his booted foot alongside a solitary footprint barely visible in the grass just a few feet away.

“Well, unless the corpse has found the capability to walk again, he was helped by someone with smaller feet than me, but I doubt it was the woman.” Luke shook his head in disgust, fully sympathising with the look of confusion on Barnaby’s face.

Together they began to wander up and down the embankment, but couldn’t see any more footprints or marks to indicate that anyone had even walked on the grass recently. That solitary step had been put there by whoever had moved the corpse, Luke was sure of it.

“The killer must have hidden in the trees. I doubt he was the man you chased though.” Barnaby nodded toward the thick woods behind them and sighed in disgust at the density of it. It was going to take hours and more than two of them to complete a thorough search but they needed to find the murder weapon, and the woman.

“An accomplice must have been hiding around here somewhere. Probably deeper in the woods? Or further along the path? Who knows? One thing I do know for certain is that the man I chased didn’t have the time to come back here, move the carcass, and then vanish himself before I got back. Not even if he had the woman’s help.” As he said the words, Luke desperately wanted to deny that Poppy had any involvement in the killing. It irked him greatly to think that someone had led her into a life of crime but he also knew that it was foolish to discount anything right now. He had seen with his own eyes just how duplicitous women could really be and wasn’t prepared to be swayed by any pretty face – not even someone as captivatingly stunning as Poppy.

“I wonder if the accomplice appeared and scared the young woman away. She could have run in fear that the killer had returned and would do away with her,” Barnaby reasoned. He squinted into the distance while he contemplated that.

Luke nodded. It seemed entirely credible someone had scared her away. She had been incredibly nervous while Luke had been there, and he had done nothing that would frighten her. It was conceivable that she had been alone, scared, and had not wanted to be caught with a dead man who had clearly been murdered. Had someone scared her though, or had she run to protect herself from blame?

“Let’s scour the river bank further down. We should soon be able to tell if he was thrown into the river from within the park, or further upstream somewhere.”

“There is a canal that leads into this. He could have been dumped in anywhere along there,” Luke sighed. His eyes met Barnaby’s. The canal networks that fed the river running through the park led straight from the East End of London: Terrence Sayers’ patch.

“Who else was in the area this morning?” Barnaby asked when they met up at the far end of the woods.

Luke ran a weary hand down his face. “When I arrived I saw only the pick-pockets hassling Poppy. They accosted her because I think they thought she was an easier target than me. I chased them but then Poppy screamed again. I didn’t know if she was being attacked by more pick-pockets so came back. By the time I got here, she was nonsensical because she had found the body. She had hooked it with a stick to stop it floating away but didn’t know what else to do with it so had screamed.”

“And the rest, as they say, is history,” Barnaby finished on a sigh.

“Something like that.”

“Well, I think we have to find one of the pick-pockets you saw earlier. They may have seen someone else hanging around that you weren’t aware of. After all, they could have doubled back and returned to the park once they realised you were too old to catch them, but you would have been too busy with the body, and Poppy to notice.”

“It wasn’t a pick-pocket in the trees. The man I saw was an adult,” Luke warned.

“Fair enough. So we will keep an eye out for him too,” Barnaby declared firmly. “Given you had a better look at the pick-pockets though, I think we are better off starting with them.”

Together they began to make their way toward the main gates. Barnaby lifted mocking brows and eyed his friend’s attire. “Have I told you how dapper you look today?”

“God, don’t start that. I know I was born to be a workman. How in the hell anyone wears these monkey suits all day is beyond me,” Luke growled and glared when Barnaby sniggered. “It’s your turn next time. After all, they know what I look like now so I cannot be a lure again.”

That was enough to wipe the smirk of his friend’s face.

“We are going to have to be careful about which pick-pocket we choose for questioning,” Barnaby said. “If we catch one of the younger ones we are going to have to let them go after questioning. We could keep an older gang member in jail until this investigation is over.”

Luke was already shaking his head. “None of the gang I saw was old enough to be sent off to jail. You would never get a murder charge to stick because they just weren’t big enough for murder, and they hadn’t taken anything from either Poppy or, as far as I am aware, the deceased.”

The thought of any of the younger gang being subjected the harsh cruelties of life in jail was unconscionable to Luke. Although it would probably be a slightly better life than they had at the moment, there was less freedom in jail and more brutality from the wardens who were apt to give lashings as punishment. As far as he was concerned, jail was no place for any child, no matter what crimes they committed.