He went to stand by the window, looking out into the garden. In spite of the veil of fatigue that drifted about him, his strong, sleek shoulders were set in stern, unrelenting lines.
“Both of whom are quite elderly and frail,” he said flatly. “I do not believe that either of them possesses the strength or determination necessary to crush the skull of a younger, stronger person with a poker, let alone overturn a heavy table and a number of chairs.”
She hesitated. “You spoke with them?”
“There was no need to interview them personally. I made some discreet observations and inquiries in the streets where they live. I am convinced that neither of them is involved in this business.”
“Well, I suppose it is rather unlikely,” she admitted.
“Tell me what occurred in the course of the séance,” he said quietly.
“There is not much to tell.” She widened her hands. “Just the usual sort of rappings and tappings. One or two manifestations. Some financial advice from the spirit world.”
“Financial advice?” he asked with unexpected sharpness.
“Yes, Mr. McDaniel was told that he would soon be offered an excellent investment opportunity. It was nothing out of the ordinary. Sitters are often informed by the spirits that they may be in line for an unexpected inheritance or that they will receive money from some unanticipated source.”
“I see.” He turned around slowly and looked at her with an expression that would not have been out of place on the face of the devil himself. “So the subject of money arose, did it?”
She clenched the chair back so tightly that the blood was squeezed out of her knuckles. She could scarcely breathe. Was he going to go to the police to lodge a charge of murder against her and her aunts?
She knew now that the three of them were in grave danger. They were all innocent, but she did not doubt for a moment that if a gentleman of Adam Grove’s obvious power and position accused them of murder, they would be in desperate straits.
They had no choice but to flee London immediately, she decided, thinking quickly. Their only hope was to disappear again, just as they had three years ago. She tried to recall how much money was on hand in the house. As soon as Adam Grove departed, she would send Mrs. Plummer out to obtain a train schedule. How quickly could they pack?
Adam’s black brows came together in a heavy line. “Are you all right, Mrs. Fordyce? You look as if you are going to faint.”
Rage spiked through her, briefly suppressing her panic.
“You have threatened my life, sir, and the lives of my aunts. How did you expect me to react?”
He frowned. “What are you talking about? I have made no threats, madam.”
“You have as much as accused one or all of us of murder. If you take your suspicions to the police, we will be arrested and thrown into prison. We will hang.”
“Mrs. Fordyce, you are allowing your imagination to run away with your powers of reason and logic. I may harbor some suspicions but there remains the little matter of evidence.”
“Bah. None of the three of us can prove that she did not return after the séance to murder the medium. It would be our word against yours, sir, and we are both well aware that three ladies in our modest circumstances who lack social connections would not stand a chance if a man of your rank and wealth chose to point the finger of blame at us.”
“Get hold of yourself, woman. I am in no mood to deal with a case of hysteria.”
Her fury gave her strength. “How dare you tell me not to succumb to hysteria? My aunts and I are facing the gallows because of you, sir.”
“Not quite,” he growled.
“Yes, quite.”
“Hell and damnation. I have had enough of these theatrics.” He took a step toward her.
“Stop.” She gripped the back of the chair with both hands and swung it around so that it formed a barrier between them. “Do not come any closer. I will scream bloody murder if you take one more step. Mrs. Plummer and the neighbors will hear me, I promise you.”
He halted, exhaling heavily. “Kindly calm yourself, Mrs. Fordyce. This is all very wearying, not to mention a waste of everyone’s time.”
“It is impossible for me to be calm in the face of such dire threats.”
He gave her a considering look. “Did you, by any chance, ever pursue a career on the stage, Mrs. Fordyce? You seem to have a distinct flair for melodrama.”
“Oddly enough, I find a dramatic reaction entirely appropriate in this situation,” she said through her teeth.
He studied her for a long moment. She got the impression that he was recalculating some secret scheme.
“Breathe deeply, madam, and compose yourself,” he said finally. “I have no intention of having you or your aunts taken up on a charge of murder.”
“Why should I believe you?”
He rubbed his temples. “You must trust me when I tell you that justice is not my chief concern here. I am content to leave that problem for the police, although I doubt that they will be successful. They are reasonably efficient when it comes to catching ordinary murderers, but this was not an ordinary killing.”
She sensed that he was telling the truth. Nevertheless, she did not release her grip on the chair. “If you did not come here seeking justice for Elizabeth Delmont, what do you want, Mr. Grove?”
He watched her with cool speculation. “My only goal in this affair is to recover the diary.”
She did not try to hide her confusion. “What diary?”
“The one that was stolen from Elizabeth Delmont’s house last night.”
She puzzled that out as best she could. “You seek Mrs. Delmont’s diary? Well, I assure you, I know nothing of it and neither do my aunts. Furthermore, I can tell you with absolute certainty that I did not notice any diary in the room at the séance last night.”
He contemplated her for another moment and then shook his head, as though he had reluctantly accepted defeat.
“Do you know, I believe you may be telling me the truth, Mrs. Fordyce. Indeed, it appears that I was wrong about you.”
She allowed herself to relax ever so slightly. “Wrong, sir?”
“I came here this morning in hopes of surprising you into admitting that you had taken the damned diary. At the very least I thought you might be able to give me some notion of what had happened to it.”
“Why is this particular diary so important to you?”
His smile was as sharp and deadly as a knife. “Suffice it to say that Mrs. Delmont presumed to think that she could use it to blackmail me.”
Mrs. Delmont had evidently allowed greed to overwhelm caution and good sense, Caroline thought. No sane, sensible person would take the risk of trying to extort money from this man.
“What made you think that I might know something concerning its whereabouts?” she demanded.
He widened his stance and clasped his hands behind his back. “You and the other sitters at the séance were the last people to see Elizabeth Delmont alive, aside from the killer, of course. I learned from one of Delmont’s neighbors that the housekeeper was given the night off.”
“Yes, that’s true. Mrs. Delmont herself opened the door to us. She said she always gave her housekeeper the night off on séance evenings because she could not go into a proper trance if there was anyone other than the sitters present. Indeed, the comment made me wonder if perhaps—”
“Yes?” he prompted. “What did it cause you to wonder about, Mrs. Fordyce?”
“Well, if you must know, it occurred to me that perhaps Mrs. Delmont did not like to have her housekeeper present while she conducted a séance because she was afraid that the woman would become wise to her tricks and perhaps expose her in exchange for a bribe. Psychical investigators have been known to pay the servants who work for mediums to spy on their employers, you see.”
“A clever notion, Mrs. Fordyce.” Adam looked approving of her logic. “I suspect that you are right. Mediums are notoriously secretive.”
“How did you learn my name and address?”
“When I discovered the body, I also found a list of the sitters who had attended the final séance. The addresses had been put down alongside the names.”
“I see.”
Her imagination conjured up a disturbing image of Adam Grove methodically searching Mrs. Delmont’s parlor while the body of the murdered woman lay crumpled on the floor. It was a chilling vision, one that said a great deal about Grove’s nerve. She swallowed hard.
“I spent the remainder of the night and the early hours of this morning talking to servants, carriage drivers and . . .” He hesitated, as though choosing his words carefully. “ . . . others who make their living on the streets near Delmont’s house. Among other things I was able to verify Mrs. Delmont’s housekeeper was busy attending her daughter, who was in the process of giving birth last night. Her alibi is unshakable. That left me with your name, Mrs. Fordyce.”
“No wonder you look so weary,” she said quietly. “You have been up all night.”
He absently rubbed his stubbled jaw and grimaced. “My apologies for my appearance.”
“It is hardly a matter of importance, given the circumstances.” She hesitated. “So you came here today with the intention of confronting me in this alarming manner. Your goal was to frighten me and thereby trick me into revealing some dreadful conspiracy, wasn’t it?”
He shoved a hand through his short, dark hair, showing no sign of remorse. “That was more or less my plan, yes.”
Uneasily aware that he might not have abandoned the notion entirely, she searched her brain for other possible suspects.
“Perhaps Mrs. Delmont was the victim of a burglar who attacked her after he broke into the house,” she suggested.
“I searched the place from top to bottom. There was no evidence that the doors or windows had been forced. It appeared that she had let the killer in.”
The offhand manner in which he delivered that information deepened her sense of unease. “You certainly made a number of close observations last night, Mr. Grove. One would have thought that the proximity of a savagely murdered woman would have made it difficult to think and act so methodically and logically.”
“Unfortunately, it appears that I did not make any especially useful observations,” he said. He went toward the door with a purposeful stride. “I have wasted your time and my own. I would take it as a great favor if you would refrain from discussing this conversation with anyone else.”
She did not respond to that.
He stopped, one hand on the doorknob, and looked at her. “Well, Mrs. Fordyce? Can I depend upon you to keep our discussion confidential?”
She braced herself. “That depends, sir.”
He was cynically amused. “Of course. You no doubt wish to be compensated for your silence. Name your price, Mrs. Fordyce.”
Another flash of anger crackled through her. “You cannot buy my silence, Mr. Grove. I do not want your money. What concerns me is the safety and security of my aunts and myself. If any one of us is placed in danger of arrest because of your actions, I shall not hesitate to give the police your name and tell them every detail of this discussion.”
“I doubt very much that the police will give you any trouble. As you suggested, they will likely conclude that Mrs. Delmont was murdered by a burglar and that will be the end of it.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Because that is the simplest answer, and the officers of the law are known to prefer that sort of explanation.”
“What if they find the list of sitters and proceed to make them all suspects, as you did, sir?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “They won’t find the list.”
She stared at the paper. “You took it?”
“I am quite certain that none of the names on this list would be of any practical use to the police.”
“I see.” She did not know what to say.
“Speaking of names,” he said rather casually. “I should tell you that it would not do you any good to give mine to the police.”
“Why?” she asked coldly. “Because a gentleman of your obvious wealth and position does not need to worry overmuch about answering questions from the police?”
“No one is above the law. But that is not the reason why I advised you not to give them my name.” His mouth curved in a cryptic smile. “The problem is that Mr. Grove does not exist. I invented him for this interview. When I walk out your front door today, he will vanish just like one of those ghostly manifestations that are so popular at séances.”
She sat down quite suddenly, head whirling. “Good heavens. You gave me a false name?”
“Yes. Will you be so good as to indulge me with an answer to one last question?”
She blinked, still struggling to collect herself and her scattered thoughts. “What is it?”
He held up the paper that he had taken from her desk. “Why the devil were you making all these notes?”
“Oh, those.” Glumly she surveyed the page he held. “I am an author, sir. My novels are serialized in the Flying Intelligencer.” She paused. “Perhaps you read that paper?”
“No, I do not. As I recall, it is one of those extremely irritating newspapers that thrives on sensation.”
“Well—”
“The sort of paper that resorts to printing news of illicit scandals and lurid crimes in order to attract readers.”
She sighed. “I expect you prefer the Times.”
“Yes.”
“No surprise there, I suppose,” she muttered. “Tell me, don’t you find it rather dull reading?”
“I find it accurate and reliable reading, Mrs. Fordyce. Just the sort of newspaper reading that I prefer.”
“Of course it is. As I was saying, the Flying Intelligencer prints my novels. I am required by the terms of my contract to supply my publisher, Mr. Spraggett, with a new chapter every week. I have been having some trouble with one of the characters, Edmund Drake. He is very important to the story but I have been having difficulty getting him down properly on paper. There has been something rather vague about him, I’m afraid. He requires sharpening up.”
He looked reluctantly fascinated and, perhaps, bemused. “You took notes about my appearance and attire so that you could apply them to the hero of your story?”
“Heavens, no,” she assured him with an airy wave of her hand. “Whatever gave you that idea? Edmund Drake is not the hero of my tale. He is the villain of the piece.”
THREE
For some wholly irrational reason, it annoyed him that she had cast him in the role of the villain.
Adam Hardesty brooded on the disastrous encounter that he had just concluded with the very unexpected, very intriguing Mrs. Caroline Fordyce while he made his way home to the mansion in Laxton Square. He was well aware that the lady’s opinion of him should have been at the bottom of his long list of problems, especially given the rapidly rising tide of disasters that he was attempting to hold at bay.
Nevertheless, knowing that Caroline Fordyce considered him an excellent model for a villain rankled. His intuition told him that it was not his fierce features alone that had given her such a low opinion of him. He had the distinct impression that Mrs. Fordyce did not hold men from his world in high esteem.
She, on the other hand, had commanded his immediate and cautious respect. One look into her intelligent, curious, exceedingly lovely hazel eyes had told him that he was dealing with a potentially formidable adversary. He had warned himself to take great care in his dealings with the lady.
Unfortunately, respect was not the only reaction Caroline Fordyce had elicited in him. She had aroused all of his senses at first sight. Exhausted as he had been after the long night of fruitless inquiries, he had nevertheless responded to her in a very physical, extremely disturbing way.
Damn. He did not need this sort of complication. What the devil was the matter with him? Even as a youth
he had rarely allowed himself to be controlled by his passions. He had learned long ago that self-discipline was the key to survival and success both on the streets and in the equally perilous world of Society. He had established a set of rules for himself and he lived by them. They governed his intimate liaisons just as they did everything else in his life.
His rules had served him well. He had no intention of abandoning them now.
Nevertheless, he could not stop thinking about that first glimpse of Caroline Fordyce and wondering at the compelling sensations that had gripped him. The image of her sitting at her dainty little desk, illuminated by the bright glow of the morning sunlight, seemed to have become fixed in his brain.
She had worn a simple, unadorned housedress of a warm, coppery color. The gown had been designed for ladies to wear in the home and therefore lacked the ruffled petticoats and elaborately tied-back skirts of more formal feminine attire. The lines of the prim, snug-fitting bodice had emphasized the feminine curves of her high breasts and slender waist.
Caroline’s glossy golden-brown hair had been drawn up and back into a neat coil that accented the graceful line of the nape of her neck and the quiet pride with which she carried herself. He calculated her age to be somewhere in the mid-twenties.
Her voice had touched him with the impact of an inviting caress. From another woman it would have seemed deliberately provocative, but he sensed that the effect was not premeditated in this case. He was quite certain that Caroline’s manner of speaking was an innate part of who she was. It hinted at deep passions.
What had become of the late Mr. Fordyce? he wondered. Dead of old age? Carried off by a fever? An accident? Whatever the case, he was relieved that the widow did not feel compelled to follow what, in his opinion, was the extremely unfortunate style for elaborate mourning that had been set by the queen after the loss of her beloved Albert. Sometimes it seemed to him that half the ladies in England were attired in crepe and weeping veils. It never ceased to amaze him that the fair sex had managed to elevate the somber attire and accessories indicative of deep sorrow to the very pinnacle of fashion.