The Runaway McBride (22 page)

“What is it?” Dobbin asked.

Faith pulled herself to her knees and felt with her hands. “A man, a vagrant, I think.” Even as she said the words, she began to have her doubts. “He’s terribly cold.”

Alastair crouched down beside her. He, too, felt with his hands till he found the man’s wrist. After a few moments, he said, “There’s no pulse. He’s dead, I’m afraid.”

 

 

James left Hughes’s study with mixed feelings. The fact that
he’d been cajoled into making a substantial donation to the upcoming expedition didn’t bother him in the least. What did bother him was what he had learned about the red-haired man who had approached Faith before the lecture. He was none other than the gentleman she’d gone off with after she’d left Lady Beale’s employ.
Dobbin, the donkey,
he thought savagely.

Why hadn’t she told him Dobbin’s name when he’d asked her who the red-haired man was? Why keep it a secret?

He wandered from room to room, his eyes peeled for the sight of her saucy bonnet with its white feathers. When he failed to find it, he searched the crowd for the man with red hair. There was no sign of Dobbin, either. He was on the verge of becoming annoyed when the man who had been pointed out to him as Jayne Coltrane’s brother stopped in front of him.

“You’re James Burnett, are you not?” said Coltrane. “I’m Larry Coltrane. How do you do? I’ve just heard from our host of your generous contribution to our fund.”

Larry Coltrane was much younger than his sister, a good ten years by James’s reckoning, perhaps in his mid-forties. There was one thing in his favor. He didn’t have red hair. In other respects, Coltrane was not the sort of man James was drawn to. He was too handsome, too urbane, and too sure of himself. At this particular moment, he was also an obstruction that James was impatient to get around so that he could find Faith.

On the other hand, this might be his only chance to put a few moot questions to Mr. Coltrane. He held out his hand. “How do you do, Mr. Coltrane. I believe you were a member of the last expedition Miss Maynard was part of? ”

“I was the official photographer,” Coltrane replied. “We are not all wealthy, you know. Some of us have to earn a living. I earn my living with my camera.”

“Then you’re not a true Egyptologist?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“What about your sister? ”

“Jayne?” Coltrane looked surprised. “She, Madeline, and Elsie Cowdray were the driving force behind this group. That was how it got started, with three determined women who did not wish to be treated as decorative ornaments. Trust me, Mr. Burnett, they were not afraid to dirty their hands on digs or pull their weight when things got rough.”

“Yet there was, I believe, a falling-out between Madeline and your sister? ”

Coltrane nodded. “They both wrote for the newspapers. I suppose you’d call it professional rivalry.”

“Were you there when Madeline died? ”

Coltrane nodded. “We were all devastated.”

For the first time, James had the sense that Larry Coltrane’s mask had slipped. He meant what he said. Madeline’s death had been a terrible blow to him.

“You were in love with her,” James said simply.

“I was in love with her,” Coltrane replied. A moment of silence went by. “And she was not easy to love. I don’t think Madeline had it in her to love anyone. It came as no surprise to me to learn that she had left her husband and daughter for adventure in Egypt. That was just like Madeline. I hope her daughter will forgive my sister’s coldness. She looks so like her mother that I’m afraid Jayne said things she ought not to.”

He sipped slowly before he continued. “Strange business, wasn’t it, Miss McBride discovering that she was Madeline’s daughter after all these years? Lady Cowdray told us that Miss McBride believed her mother had died in a boating accident?”

James replied noncommittally that that was so. There were more questions in the same vein, and it was becoming clear to him that this was why Coltrane had sought him out, not to pass on information but to ferret it out. He wanted to know how much Faith knew about her mother’s secret life. James told him that Faith knew only what she’d been told by Lady Cowdray. No mention was made of Madeline’s diary.

When the questions had dried up, Coltrane moved away with a nod and a smile. James watched him go, wondering what, if anything, Coltrane had to hide.

The next few minutes were spent looking for Faith. When he couldn’t find her or Dobbin, he became alarmed. He was on the point of going through the doors to the terrace, when his host entered followed by a group of gentlemen.

“I had hardly time to light my cigar,” Hughes said, “when the rain came down like a river in spate. Look at me. I’m wet through.”

“Did you see Miss McBride?”

Hughes stopped in his tracks. “Miss McBride? No. As I said, I was only out there a few minutes. Excuse me while I change.”

James pushed open the French doors as far as they would go and looked out. It took a while for his eyes to become accustomed to the dark. It wasn’t dense. Shadows moved within shadows.
Where are you Faith? Where are you?

He couldn’t focus. There were too many people making too much noise. He shouldn’t have wasted time talking to Larry Coltrane.

It had worked for him once before, when he’d entered the mind of a killer. Twice, if he counted what had happened with Faith earlier.

His mind went blank; then he saw her. She was moving toward him. In his mind’s eye, he could see her approach the French doors, and not only her. There was a man right behind her. On that thought, he went through the French doors like an arrow from a bow.

He did not have far to go when they emerged from the shadows. His alarm died, now that he saw Faith was safe, and he was tempted to grab her by the shoulders and give her a good shaking. What stopped him was the look on her face. Her relief at seeing him would have been evident to a blind man.

“James!” she said and hiccupped, then she walked into his arms. Against his throat, she whispered, “We took shelter in the boathouse. It was awful.”

It was left to Dobbin to tell him what was so awful. “There’s a body—” Dobbin stopped to draw air into his lungs. “There’s a body of a man in the boathouse. Miss McBride tripped over him. We had no light, so we couldn’t tell who he was. All I can tell you is that he wasn’t breathing.”

James bit out orders as though he were instructing the navvies on one of his railways. “Dobbin, take Miss McBride back to the house. Have someone sit with her till I get back. Then tell Mr. Hughes what you have just told me. We won’t send for the police just yet, not till we see what we’re dealing with.”

Faith made a weak protest, but Dobbin seemed to know it would be useless to argue.

As soon as their backs were turned, James drew his revolver from an inside coat pocket, grabbed a lantern that marked the path, and moved briskly toward the river.

The body was lying facedown, just inside the door. It seemed to him that whoever it was had been on the point of leaving when he was struck from behind. It looked as though he’d been bludgeoned to death with a hammer or something like it, but there was no hammer near the body.

James went down on his haunches and turned the body over. The sightless eyes that stared up at him belonged to Robert Danvers.

He sat back on his heels. Robert Danvers, he reflected now, had the habit of being on the scene whenever Faith appeared. He was a regular at St. Winnifred’s. He’d been there, in her classroom, when he and Faith were locked in the cupboard. He’d been in the Burlington Arcade when Faith exited Madame Digby’s.

And now the poor blighter had turned up here.

“What game were you playing?” he said under his breath. Then, brows furrowed, “Whose game were you playing? ”

It was well after midnight before James and Faith entered the
cab to take them home to Berkeley Square. They’d had to wait their turn to be interviewed by the police, then hang around for everyone else to be interviewed as well. At first, the police seemed highly suspicious of Faith and Alastair Dobbin, since they had not only found the body but also knew the murdered man. The police surgeon put a stop to that line of questioning; he could tell from the blood on the murdered man’s clothes and the temperature of the body that Danvers had died at least an hour before Faith and Mr. Dobbin entered the boathouse and probably longer. It was true that Faith and Dobbin knew the murdered man, but so did many of the members of the Egyptology Society. Danvers wasn’t a member, but he occasionally turned up at public lectures or other events. Though, on this occasion, no one remembered seeing him.

“What it comes down to,” said James, “is that anyone could have murdered Danvers before the lecture.” He thought for a moment. “Or long before that, when I think of what the police surgeon said. And who knows where everyone was at the critical time? ”

A shiver passed over Faith, then another. She was still in her wet clothes, but James had draped his own coat around her to stave off her chills. “But why would anyone want to murder Robert? He was well-mannered and pleasant.” She looked up at James. “I can’t stop thinking about his parents, especially his mother. Robert was all she had.”

“Well, she has her husband now.”

She shook her head. “I suppose.”

He hadn’t intended to put his own questions to her until they were home and she had changed out of her wet garments, but she had opened a door, so he said simply, “You don’t like Robert’s father?”

“No. I do not. I don’t understand why he serves on our board of governors. He certainly isn’t in sympathy with the aims of the school. He is too authoritarian. I can only imagine what he is like at home.”

James shrugged. “Danvers Sr. is a pillar of the banking community. Serving on boards of governors comes with the job. Some men like the prestige. Others like the opportunities it gives them to mix with other influential men.”

“I shouldn’t have criticized him. I really don’t know Mr. Danvers. I could say the same about Robert. I mean, he only attended special events at St. Winnifred’s, so I was barely acquainted with him. I can’t say that I particularly liked him. I mean, I didn’t particularly dislike him—” She broke off and shook her head. “None of that matters. He was a young man. His death isn’t only tragic, it’s heinous. I can’t seem to take it in.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I feel so guilty—”

“Guilty! What do you have to be guilty for?”

She sniffed. “I should have made more of an effort to get to know him, and now it’s too late. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill him. How are we going to explain it to the girls at school? They’ll all be devastated. Robert was very popular with the girls.”

She sucked in a breath. “Lily! I must write to Lily at once and tell her what has happened.”

He grasped her hand and squeezed it. “But not tonight. You’re too overwrought to put your thoughts down on paper. Wait until tomorrow.”

She nodded slowly. “Yes. I’ll write to Lily tomorrow, but who is going to tell the girls? Most of them have gone home for the holidays, but there are always a few who have no homes to go to. Who will tell them? ”

“The police have everything in hand. They won’t thank you for interfering. Remember, Faith, this is a murder investigation.”

She became preoccupied with her own thoughts after that, and James did not attempt to draw her out, though he found her assessment of Danvers interesting. He was more concerned with the shivers that had now taken a firm hold of her. She was still in shock, and the effects of the minuscule brandy he had forced her to drink before the police arrived were now wearing off.

There was a porter on duty when they arrived home, but there were no lights on the upper floors as James expected. “Is the family here?” James asked the servant. “Did they make it back from the wedding with my aunt?”

“No, sir. It’s not surprising; they say there’s a pea soup fog all the way to Henley.”

“Who says? ”

“The butler, sir. Would you like to speak to him? Shall I waken him?”

“That won’t be necessary.” From the deathly silence in the house, James guessed that all the servants had gone to bed, too. “But get one of the maids to help Miss McBride change out of these wet garments.”

The porter eyed Faith curiously. “Caught in the rain, were you, miss?

James’s voice was rough with impatience. “Just get one of the maids to see to Miss McBride. And get the lamps lit.”

The porter turned smartly and hastened up the stairs.

Faith spoke in a tight little voice. “He was only trying to be polite. It was good of him to care. And now one of the maids has to be wakened from her sleep when it isn’t necessary. I’m well able to look after myself.”