Death by Silver (46 page)

“Thank you. For all of this.”

“Can you tell us what happened?” Julian asked. He mixed a whiskey and soda, handed it to Ned, and made another for himself. Under the circumstances, alcohol seemed to be the best prescription.

Mrs Makins gulped down a mouthful of the whiskey, grimacing slightly, and nodded. “I was stupid,” she said. “That’s all. Bolster told me I should stay put, not go out, but – there were things I needed, and I didn’t like to ask, and, well, I went, that’s all. And Summers was waiting – that was the man you saw there, the big one. He grabbed me and put me in a cab – not a hansom, one of those old growlers, that weedy friend of his owns it. And they took me off to that house by the gas works, and said they’d cut out my tongue if I screamed, and break my fingers if I made any trouble. And then they said they’d kill me if I didn’t write what they told me. So I did.”

“And you didn’t tell them that they’d betrayed their own trap by making it sound as though you were afraid of Bolster,” Julian said. “That was well done.”

There was definite color in her face now, though whether it was from the whiskey or the praise he couldn’t be sure. “Thank you,” she said again, and Ned turned away from the tea tray, holding out the plate of little sandwiches. Mrs Makins shook her head, and he put them aside, came to sit on the end of the couch.

“Why did they kidnap you?” he asked. “What did they want?”

“It was because of Joe,” she said. “The job he’d been hired for, the one he was so worried about. And once Bolster told me there was a cantrip on the poison, I knew where he’d gotten it. It didn’t make any sense, but it had to have been there.”

“Where?” Ned asked, gently, when she seemed indisposed to continue.

“At the Mission,” she said. “Mr Ellis’s mission.”

Julian allowed himself a little sigh, leaning back against the cushions. Of course it would come back to Ellis in the end. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” he said, trying to match Ned’s tone, and she nodded.

“Joe had a job,” she said. “Not through Bolster, not like usual, but through Summers. He said there was a gentleman wanted a particular piece of antique silver – a collector, like – and he’d pay Joe five quid to get it for him, and he could keep all the rest of the silver for himself. The back gate would be left open one night, and then the rest would be up to him.” She shrugged. “Well, that was too good to pass up, so Joe said he’d do it, and sure enough he gets a letter back a few days later saying the gate would be open that night. And he went along, and the gate was open, so he lets himself in the kitchen door and heads for the study where Summers told him the object would be. The house was all quiet, everybody snug in their beds, and he was thinking it was going to be an easy, comfortable job, when he pushes back the study door and there’s a man lying dead on the carpet with a bloody great silver candlestick on the carpet beside him. ‘Bloody’s the right word, too,’ he said to me. ‘Gave me a turn, seeing it there practically winking at me, just begging me to take it, and no sign of the object I was sent to get.’ So he looked around very quick, and found it after all, some little silver box Joe said didn’t look all that nice at all. But he’d got it, and there was a dead man to worry about, so he grabs up his dark lantern and heads back down to the butler’s pantry and empties the shelves of everything he could carry and gets out quick and quiet as he can. He gave Summers the box the next morning, the man gave him his five quid, and Joe fenced the rest of the stuff. And that should have been the end of it, except for the dead man.”

Her glass was empty. Ned refilled it, and she gave a grateful nod. “He thought at first he was being set up to take the fall. I told him he ought to have a word with Bolster, then, but he said he didn’t want to talk to him just yet, since he’d taken the job for someone else. And then it looked as though the police were looking elsewhere, so he let it go. But it was weighing on him, especially once he read about it in the papers and heard that the family was being suspected. And finally he said he was going to talk it over with Mr Ellis.”

“Why Ellis?” Julian asked.

“He’s been good to us,” she said, and her voice broke on the words. “That’s why – I don’t understand, Mr Lynes. When our boy died two years ago, he saw him buried properly, and he said he’d take Polly, that’s our eldest, into the Mission if we wanted, help her better herself. She said she didn’t want to go, wanted a job in a shop if she could get it, and then she found one, so that was that. But it was good of him to offer. And he was kind – even the ones who failed, who couldn’t stick the Mission – and he was strict, no question, but he had to be, to make them keep the jobs –”

She broke off, shaking her head again, tears bright in her eyes. Ned patted her hand gently, and offered more whiskey, but she shook her head.

“No, I’ll be drunk.” She took a deep breath, drew herself up again. “Summers was one of them, you see, one of the Mission boys who didn’t make it, and he always said you could talk to him about anything, Ellis, I mean. So Joe thought he could talk to him, ask him what he ought to do, safe-like. Only the reverend gent poisoned him. And I don’t know why.”

She did cry then, harsh, painful sobs that shook her entire body. Ned embraced her, awkward around the arm of the chair, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

“Easy,” he said, and stroked her hair. “Easy, now.” He glanced up at Julian, a worried look, but Julian ignored him.

“Ellis thought Makins was trying to blackmail him,” he said. “That has to be it. From his point of view, here’s the burglar he hired to rob the house to misdirect the police showing up on his doorstep saying how worried he is about a dead man – of course he’s going to take it that way. Only Makins had no idea that Ellis was the man behind it all.”

“Ellis hired Joe?” Mrs Makins straightened slowly, wiping her face on her sleeve. Ned handed her his handkerchief and she took it gratefully. “I don’t –”

“Ellis was Summers’s principal,” Julian said. “And he killed Edgar Nevett.” He steepled his hands, pressing his forefingers against his lips as the pieces sorted themselves out into a coherent pattern. “Ellis found out that Edgar was planning to divorce Louisa, which would have upset a very nice and indeed lucrative arrangement – an arrangement that might well become even nicer and more lucrative if Edgar were dead and Louisa finally agreed to marry her faithful follower. So Ellis came up with the idea of making murder look like a different kind of killing, murder committed in the course of a robbery. He got Summers to hire a burglar to collect a piece of silver with the promise that he could have anything else he took –”

“And I expect he planted that piece in Nevett’s study,” Ned said. “Because he couldn’t otherwise be sure Makins would go there.”

“I expect you’re right,” Julian said. “And at the same time, he curses the candlestick – that must have been between when Reggie ran out and the family sat down to dinner.”

“There was time,” Ned said. “And Ellis was definitely there.”

“Only nobody was paying any attention to him,” Julian said, “because he was always around underfoot. They all have dinner together, Nevett goes to his study afterwards, and the enchantment is triggered as soon as he sits down at his desk. Only with the door closed, no one hears, and no one is going to disturb him if they can possibly avoid it, not after what seems to have been an awkward evening all around.”

“And Sarah Doyle leaves the back gate open,” Ned said. “Because Ellis told her to?”

Julian nodded. “I’d guess so. I don’t know what excuse he gave her – possibly for Reggie’s sake, so he could get in without getting into more trouble? – but it doesn’t matter. She’d have done it without question.”

“The poor girl,” Ned said.

“Yes.” Julian narrowed his eyes. “He needs the back gate open – why?”

“Because you can’t stand in the mews and pick a lock,” Mrs Makins said. “Not a good lock, anyway. They take too long, and someone would notice.”

“Of course,” Julian said. “But once Makins is inside, in the garden, it doesn’t matter because he can’t be seen from outside, and all the household is in bed. So he has plenty of time to pick the lock on the kitchen door, and slip inside. And from there, it’s what Mrs Makins said. Makins goes up to the study to find the silver box, and finds Nevett dead on the floor.”

“And that’s where the plan goes wrong,” Ned said. “Ellis thought he’d take the candlestick.”

“Except Makins had more sense than that,” Julian said. “He was a professional, he wasn’t going to have anything to do with someone else’s murder. In fact, I imagine that if he hadn’t been commissioned to get the box, he wouldn’t have touched anything. Am I right, Mrs Makins?”

She nodded. “He’d’ve got out in a hurry. He never held with violence. But it was five quid for the box, and once he’d gone that far, he thought he might as well take the rest of the silver. But he wasn’t about to touch that candlestick.”

“And so Makins gets away with the silver,” Julian said, “and the next morning Sarah Doyle finds Nevett dead. If the candlestick hadn’t been there, the police probably would have written it off as a burglary gone wrong, but Hatton had the sense to see there was something not right. And the whole thing starts to unravel.”

“You eliminated the servants,” Ned said, “and Victor thought it had to be one of the boys because he knew they had secrets of their own.”

“And Sarah Doyle knew that Ellis had asked her to leave the gate open, and was probably worried about whether or not she should tell someone,” Julian said. “She might even have asked him what to do, but, in any case, she was frightened enough to run away.”

Ned’s face was grim. “I know he didn’t kill her, but he’s responsible for her death all the same.”

“Yes.” Julian touched his shoulder, all he dared offer in the way of comfort. “And Victor would have hanged, if he’d gone to court with that confession.”

“So what do we do now?”

“The police, I suppose,” Julian said.

“I’ll testify,” Mrs Makins said. “Joe’s dead, it’s no harm to me. And I want that bastard dead.”

“Thank you,” Ned said, but he looked unhappy. “It’ll ruin Mrs Nevett. Whether or not she was having an affair, everyone will think she was. And Freddie – if anyone finds out –”

“But we have to do something.” Julian shook himself like a wet dog. “We should talk about it in the morning.”

“Yes.” Ned eased himself to his feet. “Mrs Makins, you’re welcome to the bed. I’ll sleep out here –”

“And I’ll head home,” Julian began, and Ned shook his head.

“I don’t think that’s sensible. Ellis has your address. Stay here tonight – you can even have the sofa.”

“We’ll see,” Julian said, but he couldn’t help feeling a certain relief.

They got Mrs Makins settled, and Ned collected spare quilts and a sofa pillow to make up a sort of bed by the fire. Julian poured them each a last whiskey and came to sit cross-legged on the floor beside him.

“I left you the sofa,” Ned said, and took his glass.

“I don’t fit on it much better than you do.” Julian took a careful sip of his drink, the whiskey warm and smoky on his tongue. “That’s what happened. It has to be.”

“Yes,” Ned said again. He clicked his glass against Julian’s. “Well done, Lynes.”

“And well done, you,” Julian answered. “I doubt I could have kicked that door in.”

Ned grinned. “Sometimes it’s handy being a sportsman.”

Julian glanced over his shoulder, saw the bedroom door firmly closed, the narrow gap beneath it dark. He leaned forward, cupped Ned’s cheek, rough now with the evening’s stubble. “Very,” he said, and kissed him thoroughly.

Ned responded with gratifying eagerness, but finally broke away with a gasp. “Lynes, we can’t.”

“I’ll keep you quiet,” Julian said, and bore him down onto the quilts.

In the morning, Ned and Julian picked themselves up from their nest on the floor and settled by silent mutual agreement at opposite ends of the sofa. Mrs Makins was still asleep, and the house was quiet, too early for the usual morning clamor of doors opening and feet tramping up and down steps.

The satisfaction Ned had felt the night before at the successful rescue was fading into the bleak light of very early morning; he felt stiff and cramped from sleeping on the floor, and not at all prepared to make an uncomfortable choice. He’d hoped to put it off until after breakfast, or at least after tea, but he was afraid even making tea over the fire would wake the sleeping woman in the other room.

“We have to do something,” Julian said finally.

“We do,” Ned said, bracing himself to face it. “We can’t let Ellis go on trying to eliminate witnesses.”

“Or us, for that matter.”

“That, too. But if we go straight to Hatton, we’ll bring down the house around the Nevetts’ ears. Reggie will be all right eventually – he hasn’t done anything wrong when it comes down to it, only foolish. And Victor will be cleared. But there’s Freddie to consider, and Louisa. Whether or not she’s really been having an affair with Ellis, everyone will say she was, and that’ll ruin her.”

“She’s inherited a decent living, I should think. At least she’ll have that.”