The Runaway McBride (26 page)

She squeezed his hand, and her eyes searched his. “Tell me what’s going on.”

He sighed. He shrugged. He shook his head. He knew one thing: he wasn’t going to scare her out of her wits by talking of premonitions and changing the future, so he gave her a slightly distorted version of the truth.

“Someone wants to hurt me,” he said, “and I dream about it. I think I told you once that my grandmother was a witch, and I inherited some of her powers? You thought I was joking. Well, this is how her gift works. I dream about the future so that I’ll be prepared to defend myself when I come face-to-face with the person who wishes me harm.”

“He doesn’t wish to harm only you, James.” She leaned forward as if to make her point. “He is after me, too. I was in the dream, remember?”

“But it was my dream, not yours.”

“A dream that we shared. How many people do you know who share their dreams? ”

He was surprised that she accepted his reference to his psychic powers without question. He’d expected her to reject that part of his account and substitute something more mundane. It was what he would have done in her place.

“You don’t think that sounds far-fetched? I mean, that I have second sight?”

She answered him seriously. “Of course it sounds far-fetched, but I’m part Irish. I know there are things in this world that defy explanation. Besides, in the dream, I knew you had special powers, but you weren’t using them. Is it true? Can you divine the future? Or was it just part of the dream?”

“It’s true, up to a point. I can’t tell who the villain is or what the end of the dream will be.”

They went back and forth, recounting different parts of the dream as they occurred to them. At one point, she suggested that they should try to sleep their way into the dream again.

“Don’t you see, James, it will give us a chance to look around, take impressions, and maybe see the villain’s face.”

He made a violent motion with one hand. “You can forget about that! Haven’t you heard of people dying in their sleep when they were in the peak of health? It does happen.”

There was a long silence as she considered his words, then she said slowly, “Is this dream going to become real? Is there a house like the one we dreamed about? Are we going to be lost in a maze of corridors? ”

He made light of it. “Hopefully, no. But just remember, if you find yourself in a derelict building, waking or sleeping, call my name, whisper it, or just think it, and I’ll come running. I mean that, Faith.” The look on her face prompted him to add, “It was a dream, just a horrible nightmare to warn me of danger. Now, let it go, and think about something else.”

“I don’t want to go to sleep.”

“I don’t blame you. Would you like a book to read?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I could read Dickens, and that’s all there is to read here.”

“There is your mother’s diary.”

“I suppose.” She didn’t sound very enthusiastic. “Are you going back to your own room? ”

“No. I’m going to sit right here and read
A Tale of Two Cities
.” And he was going to make quite sure that he didn’t fall asleep clutching her hand. He wasn’t going to drag her into that hell again.

“What about your family? What are they going to think if they find us here together? ”

“I don’t think they will be home before it’s light, but even if they are, I’m sure they’ll understand why I didn’t want to leave you alone, not after what happened at the Hugheses’ house tonight. I’m going to turn up the lights and leave the door wide open. Now, where do you keep your mother’s diary? ”

Her slow, tremulous smile became a broad grin. “Thank you. It’s locked in the wardrobe”—he was at the wardrobe before she had finished speaking—“but it’s hidden in the folds of Margaret’s dressing robe. I keep the key in the top drawer of my escritoire.”

She looked baffled when he opened the wardrobe without the key.

“The lock has been forced,” he said. He began to shake out all her clothes. “There’s no diary here.”

She scooped her dressing robe off the floor and shrugged into it as she quickly crossed to the wardrobe. Then she, too, shook out every garment.

“Someone has taken it,” she said faintly. “Who could have done such a thing?”

“Who else but Robert Danvers? ”

“Robert stole the diary? But why?”

“Because someone either asked him to or paid him to do it. Sadly, he paid with his life.”

She drew in a long breath as she thought this through. “Wouldn’t someone have seen him if he’d broken into the house? The servants? One of us? ”

“Not if he chose his moment with care.”

Without thinking, she sank onto the upright chair beside the writing table. “The Burlington Arcade!” she exclaimed with feeling. “What a fool you must think me.”

“What about the Burlington Arcade? ”

“When he walked me to the carriage, I practically told him when the house would be empty. We were trying to arrange a time when he could bring his mother to see me. Of course, she didn’t come. I thought the fog had kept her at home.”

“When did you last look over your mother’s diary? ”

“Yesterday. I made a few notes—not that it got me anywhere. That blasted code still has me stumped.”

He edged one hip onto the flat of the desk and narrowed his gaze on her face. “Danvers knew the house would be empty this evening. He must have stolen the diary when we left for the Hugheses’ house.” He paused as a picture formed inside his mind. “He would invent some pretext for getting inside the house, something that wouldn’t arouse the servants’ suspicions. Then he’d go through the bed-chambers one by one until he found yours. Once he had the diary, he would lose no time in handing it over to the man who killed him. And that man must have been at the lecture this evening. Yes, I see it now. They arranged to meet at the boathouse to make the transfer.”

She suppressed a shudder. “What could be so damning in that diary to cause these horrible events?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

Her shoulders slumped. “That’s easy to say, but how?”

He tipped her chin up with one finger. “You can begin by telling me exactly what Mr. Danvers said to you when you met in the Burlington Arcade. Leave nothing out.”

The family arrived home before noon the following morning
and, as expected, James’s aunt was with them. Faith was glad of the distraction. Her mind kept veering from the murder of Robert Danvers to what had happened afterward when she and James arrived home. Murder, dreams, nightmares, and a wondrous night of pleasure: it was all too much to get her mind around. Then Aunt Mariah breezed into the house, filling it with her own special energy.

After a late luncheon in the garden room, Harriet went off to play while the others sat around the table, drinking tea and coffee. Up to this point, the conversation had revolved around the wedding just past, but when there was a lull in the conversation, James seized the moment and told his family in as few words as possible that Robert Danvers, the son of the banker, had been brutally murdered the night before at a house on the South Bank, and that Faith had discovered the body.

The silence that followed these stark words was absolute. They might not have known Danvers Jr., but his father was a well-known figure in the commercial world. As suddenly as the silence had fallen, it shattered as everyone burst into speech. Bit by bit, the story was told. James did most of the talking, with Faith filling in details as they occurred to her.

Speculation was rife about who might have committed such a heinous crime. It was a vagrant, a jealous lover, a wronged husband. There was no end of suspects, but all of them were nameless, faceless strangers. No one at the table could conceive of it being someone they knew.

“You haven’t said anything, Roderick,” said James. “You knew Danvers, didn’t you? ”

“Knew him?”

“You told me once that you didn’t much care for him.”

Roderick leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs. “I knew him slightly, but he never acknowledged the acquaintance. He was a lot older than me, so that may explain it. But you’re right, I didn’t care for him. He had too much money to play with and was too obvious with it.” He shrugged. “If I were a policeman, I’d be looking for someone who knew that Danvers always carried a wad of notes on him.”

A thought occurred to James, but before he could voice it, Margaret rushed in: “What do you mean, he had too much money to play with? Are you back at your old tricks, Roderick? Are you gaming at cards and betting on horses? ”

Roderick noted the frown on his brother’s brow, and his lips curled in a world-weary smile. “What else is there for a young man to do in this thriving metropolis? I go where my friends go.”

Margaret flashed a look of appeal at her husband, but the only help she got from that quarter was an indifferent shrug.

Faith smoothed out her napkin as she tried to control her indignation. By her lights, Mr. Burnett was an appalling parent and even worse as a husband. She didn’t think he should give Roderick a public dressing down, because she didn’t think the boy was half as wicked as he made himself out to be. What Roderick needed was a little fatherly interest, a masculine mentor whom he could respect and look up to. She might not know much about boys, but she did understand young girls. At St. Winnifred’s, they’d had their share of rebels and never gave up on them.

It was left to Aunt Mariah to defuse what was turning into an unpleasant scene. “Of course Roderick goes where his friends go, and quite right, too. I never met the man yet who did not indulge in a few follies when he was a boy. He’ll grow out of them.” She looked pointedly at James.

He acknowledged the hit with a slight inclination of his head. “Quite,” he said. “The real trouble will start when Roderick becomes interested in girls.”

“Who says I’m not?” drawled Roderick.

Margaret’s look of dismay had everyone chuckling.

At this point, Aunt Mariah diplomatically led the conversation away from young men and their follies to what they had been discussing earlier. “Poor Mr. Danvers. What could have induced him to meet someone in a boathouse? He must have had an appointment with someone from the house.”

“That narrows it down to a hundred suspects,” said James dryly.

“Nonsense!” replied his aunt. “He didn’t know all the people at the house, did he? No, this was someone he knew and trusted.”

“Perhaps,” said Mr. Burnett, “this acquaintance wanted to borrow money, and when Mr. Danvers refused to oblige, they quarreled, and he killed him.”

James reached for the coffeepot and poured himself a fresh cup. They were edging closer to his own theory but not close enough. His family knew nothing of Madeline Maynard and her diary or that he suspected Danvers had stolen it. It wasn’t a suspicion; he was sure of it, and now he knew how it was done.

He’d questioned the butler and learned that just after he and Faith had left for the meeting of the Egyptology Society, a young detective had come to the door claiming that the police were searching the area for a thief who appeared to have entered the back lane and slipped into a neighbor’s garden. It was his duty, the detective said, to search the premises. The butler and servants were told, for their own safety, to remain belowstairs until he had completed his task. They had complied, leaving the imposter free to roam the house at will.

And he was an imposter. As soon as he got the story from Butcher, James had made enquiries that very morning at the local police station. No one had been assigned to search the houses in Berkeley Square.

He was jarred from his speculations by a question that had been put directly to him. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking at his aunt, “I didn’t quite catch that.”

“I said that I presume you and Faith will be going to the funeral? ”

“The funeral?” He looked at Faith.

“Yes,” she said, answering the question in his eyes. “I’m sure that my friend, Lily, will want to be there. I’ll write to her today to let her know what has happened.”

“And I shall come, too,” said Aunt Mariah. She looked at their blank faces and went on to explain herself. “I bank with Mr. Danvers Sr., so we have a nodding acquaintance, and I did meet young Mr. Danvers on Speech Day.” She lifted her shoulders in a tiny shrug. “All right, I’m curious. Have you considered that the murderer might be there? We old ladies must take our excitement where we can find it.”

“Is that wise?” asked her brother, who had one eye on the clock. “Murderers don’t like people looking over their shoulder.”

“I shall be a model of decorum. Besides, James and Roderick will be there to watch over Faith and me.”

“What?” Roderick had been leaning back in his chair again, but he was so startled by his aunt’s comment that the chair fell forward, almost unbalancing him. “But I hardly knew the man. Why can’t you go, Father?”