The four exchanged glances, with Richards being the focal point for the other three.
Then all four returned their gazes to Julian, and Richards cleared his throat and said, “My lord, we couldn’t help but overhear all that was said between you and the others of your family”—he dipped his head to indicate Melissa, Felix, and Damian—“and the captain yesterday, down in the dungeon. Well, we couldn’t not hear. So we know the captain told you our secrets—the secrets he used to make us do his bidding in return for him not telling. Even though we did as he ordered, he told anyway.” Self-disgust colored Richards’s expression and touched the other prisoners’ faces, too. “We might have guessed he wouldn’t honor our bargain, but then, he had us over a barrel, as it were.” Richards refocused on Julian. “But of course, we also heard what he said about your family and the threats he made against you. Before we tell you what else we know of him, we wanted to make plain that…”
When he paused, clearly searching for words, Benton gruffly said, “That we know what it’s like being threatened like that, and you can be sure that not a word of what we heard will ever pass any of our lips.”
Richards glanced at her, and her chin firmed, and she nodded. “There.”
“Yes, well.” Richards looked back at Julian. “We wanted to be clear that despite all that we did, we never had any wish—not of our own—to harm you or your family.”
Reminded of Melissa’s comment that these four were Findlay-Wright’s victims, too—and if he had forgotten, she’d just squeezed his hand meaningfully—Julian inclined his head. “Duly noted.” He paused, then added, “We’re starting to understand your situation.”
Richards nodded. “So that’s that. Now, as to what we believe might have caused the captain to hang himself, it’s like this.” He glanced along the line. “Mitchell?”
The groom straightened on his chair and looked directly at Julian. “The captain told you that my brother was fighting in a regiment alongside his during a skirmish in India, and that my brother subsequently deserted. What he didn’t tell you was what came in between. As my brother tells it, the regiments were fighting in parallel along the sides of a ravine. My brother and two of his mates were scouting to the rear flank, right along the edge of the ravine, looking for enemy stragglers, when they spotted two Englishmen who walked out into a space on the ravine’s other side. Two officers from the other regiment. The senior officer turned to the junior one, and it was clear he was giving the man a dressing-down. The wind shifted, and they heard the senior officer say the words ‘court martial.’ Soon after, the senior officer dismissed the other man and started to walk off. The junior officer stood there a moment, then he pulled a pistol from his jacket, turned, and called to the senior officer, and when the officer paused and turned back, the junior officer shot him. A clean shot. The senior officer was dead before he hit the ground.”
Mitchell paused, and Julian realized they were all sunk in the tale. No one moved so much as a finger, let alone looked away.
After drawing in a breath, Mitchell went on, “One of my brother’s mates had called out, thinking to warn the senior officer, and in shock, they’d all sprung to their feet. The junior officer—and my brother and his friends recognized the man—saw them. He looked at them—took careful note of them—then he turned, picked up his dead senior officer’s body, and carried it away.” Mitchell blew out a breath. “The thing is, my brother and his mates didn’t know either officer’s name. But they did recognize the one who pulled the trigger. Carrot-Top Captain was his nickname, and the warnings in the camps were that you never got on his wrong side, or else you might get shot when next you were in the field, and who was to say it wouldn’t be by an enemy sniper?
“My brother and his mates were in a panic. Given what they’d seen—given who they knew pulled the trigger—they didn’t like their chances of surviving even another night in the camp. The enemy sometimes crept in, and men died. They were sure they’d be next. So they left—then and there, they struck out for the coast. They didn’t go back for their things. They just left. Of course, they were said to have deserted, but they figured that was better than being dead. They found places on a ship’s crew and made it back to England.”
Julian was already connecting the facts and was increasingly stunned by the mental picture he was assembling. “All three of them?” he asked.
Mitchell nodded. He met Julian’s gaze and held it. “My little brother is a carpenter now. He has a shop in Derby, and he’s worked hard and made something of himself. He’s married, and he and his wife have a little boy and another on the way. When I first saw Findlay-Wright here, I didn’t think anything of it. I heard he was an ex-captain, but there’re a lot of them about. But then he came and found me while I was exercising horses in the paddock, and he leaned on the fence and smiled and told me that if I didn’t do as he said, exactly as he said, he’d report my little brother to the War Office as a deserter and also say that he was responsible for the death of that officer. That he and his mates—and I know them all, and they’re all married with little ones—were the snipers that killed that man.”
“You were coerced into being his agent,” Melissa said.
“Yes.” Mitchell nodded. “I’m not proud of giving in, and I’m ashamed of what I’ve done thanks to him, but I couldn’t let him ruin my brother and his family—they’re all the family I have.”
Julian heard himself say, “I can’t fault you for that,” and knew it was the truth.
Mitchell looked faintly taken aback. Then he gathered himself and said, “That’s all I knew of what happened in India, until last night.”
Mitchell looked at Richards, who nodded, then straightened on his chair and looked at Julian. “The captain told you of my nephew. His father died when he was just a babe, and my sister and the boy came to live with me. I gave up being a footman and got a job with a solicitor so we could get a house and I’d be around more, and my sister cooked and kept the place neat. The lad’s my nephew, but more like a son to me, and he’s my sister’s whole life. She and I scrimped and saved and put him through grammar school. He’s bright and did well. Like Mitchell’s brother, he’s made something of himself, and we were all going along nicely until one evening, the captain came up to me as I was leaving work and told me he had evidence of my nephew’s…preferences, and if I wanted to keep him out of jail, I would have to do as he said.” He paused, then went on, “I knew he was evil, but I couldn’t bring myself to ruin my nephew’s and sister’s lives. I did what he—the captain—told me. I regret it, but…”
Julian nodded. “You felt you had no choice.”
Without meeting his eyes, Richards bobbed his head. “But I couldn’t figure out why the captain had singled out Ronald—my nephew. To have the evidence the captain had, he had to have followed Ronald for days. So without letting on as to why I wanted to know, I asked my nephew if he’d ever come across a tall man with carroty-red hair. He had to think for a while, but then he remembered. The only such man he’d ever met was the captain who accompanied Colonel Maurice Delamere’s body from India back to England. Ronald is the clerk at the War Office who deals with such matters, and he’d met the captain on several occasions while registering the details of Colonel Delamere’s death and arranging the pension for his widow, who the captain knew well and was advising.”
Richards’s words set every Delamere in the room stirring. They all exchanged glances. They’d all seen the light.
With his gaze on the rug, unaware, Richards went on, “Ronald’s a sympathetic soul, which is why he has that job. Dealing sensitively with the bereaved is something he’s good at. I think Findlay-Wright saw enough at those meetings to guess about Ronald, and that’s why he followed him. By the time Findlay-Wright spoke to me, he’d learned all about our family and knew I was the one to approach to blackmail to do his dirty work.”
Richards glanced sidelong at Manning.
Manning straightened and took up the tale. “We saw you bring the captain in yesterday and put him in the cell. Until then, until after you spoke with him, we hadn’t shared our stories with each other.” He grimaced. “I suppose we were all clinging to the hope that, somehow, the secrets we’d sold our souls to conceal would remain buried. But then we heard him tell you of them anyway, and after you left, we got to talking.” He glanced at Mitchell on his right and at Richards on his left. “Until then, neither Mitchell nor Richards had realized what your family’s name—the name of the family holding the earldom of Carsely—is.”
Mitchell pointed out, “We in the stables always hear you referred to as the earl, the countess, the dowager, and your brothers are Mr. Felix and Master Damian, and your uncle is Mr. Frederick.”
“And for me,” Richards put in, “it’s always the earl, the countess, the dowager, and Mr. Frederick, or his lordship, her ladyship, and so on. I haven’t been here long enough to realize that you’re Delameres. Or that Mrs. Helen is the widow Ronald met.”
Mitchell dragged in a breath. “But once we realized that…what I didn’t mention in my earlier story was that the ravine was narrow, and my brother and his friends saw the senior officer more than well enough to describe him. When they first got home, they told me the story one night over several pints—I remember it clearly. They said the senior officer wore a colonel’s uniform and was tall, dark-haired, and distinguished looking. All of them agree he had a scar across his jaw on the left side—he was angry, and when he clenched his jaw, it stood out like a small white stripe.”
Gordon made a choking sound. He pushed to his feet, spun blindly around, stalked behind the chairs to the window behind the desk, and with his feet braced apart, stood looking out. His arms were rigid by his sides, his hands tightly fisted.
Everyone’s attention had been caught by the movement, but when Gordon didn’t turn back or say anything, Julian looked once more at their erstwhile prisoners. “You figured it out—that Findlay-Wright was the captain who Mitchell’s brother and his friends saw murder Colonel Maurice Delamere on the lip of an Indian ravine.”
With something akin to sympathy in his eyes, Manning drew his gaze from Gordon, refocused on Julian, and nodded. “We put it together between us. We whispered—we didn’t want him to hear. Not at first. Then later, once we’d had our suppers and they’d taken the lanterns and the place was dark for the night, we told Benton our story.”
