Right, no yoga in the lime walk at six in the morning then. No singing in the bath and no hanging out the undies to dry…
I had my simmering hormones under control – my goodness, but that man could kiss – by the time Garrick appeared from the kitchen area. Garrick isn’t a gentleman’s gentleman in the Jeevesian mould, more a battered domestic god with a side-line in blunt instruments and probably a knife in his boot. I’d take him over any virtual personal assistant yet invented – and no-one could hack into Garrick. Or they could try, then limp aw
ay afterwards.
‘Luncheon at noon, my lord? Will Mr James be joining you?’
‘Yes, and I expect so,’ Luc said and filled Garrick in on the morning so far. I added what I had gleaned from Mrs Kentish. Garrick seemed to operate like a sergeant to Luc’s major when there were some underhand dealings underway and sometimes he just behaved like a friend. One day I’d get to the bottom of that relationship.
‘Distressing, my lord. Most unpleasant for you, Miss Lawrence.’ The man was a master of understatement.
‘Worse for Mr Coates,’ I said as the door to the service area closed behind Garrick. ‘Luc, is there any risk to James in this? The landlady knew George was not the marrying kind and her first thought was to send for James. I’m frightened for him. I don’t like the joined-up thinking there.’ Oh dear, and there was another phrase I’d added to Lucian’s vocabulary. I could only hope he never used any of them in writing, to the confusion of future dictionary compilers.
‘I sent him to the Coroner and magistrate with my cards with notes on them. I think he will be seen as my messenger. Mrs Kentish has been discreet so far, there’s no reason to think she will be careless once she’s over the initial shock.’
The clock struck twelve and I could hear Garrick moving about laying the dining table. ‘I’m starving. I skipped breakfast because I wanted to go to the library with my sister and then all I had was a sticky cake in the coffee shop.’
‘You have coffee shops? For ladies?’
‘For anyone. They are very popular.’ I was careful what I told Lucian about the future because I still had no idea what it might be dangerous for him to know. What if he invented something after I’d been careless and that changed the entire course of history? Last time I had never quite got over the chilly feeling that I might blink out of existence at any moment because I’d done something that resulted in my so-many-times grandmother missing meeting the man she should have married or made some other minuscule but disastrous change. Still, coffee shops seemed harmless enough. ‘Anyone goes in to them, including parents and children and a lot of people pick up coffee to take with them on the way to work. In fact – ’
The front door slammed, then the drawing room door was flung open. James stood there, white-faced, Garrick behind him. ‘He’s dead, Luc.’
‘Who?’ Luc took him by the arm, steered him into a chair while I sloshed brandy into a glass and passed it over.
‘Philip Talbot,’ James said, his teeth knocking against the rim of the glass for a moment before he steadied his hand. ‘Lying there in the middle of his consulting room, head smashed in with a poker, blood and brains all over a very nice Chinese silk rug.’ He stopped abruptly and took another gulp. ‘Sorry, Cassie.’
‘That’s murder,’ I said. Whatever else having one’s head broken open with a poker was, it wasn’t suicide or accident. ‘Hell – George’s note.’
‘Oh, God. Philip – what have I done?’ Luc quoted, looking sick. ‘He killed Coates and then hanged himself?’
Garrick poured more brandies, including one for himself, handed them round, topped up James’s glass and we all sat down in a silent, horrified semi-circle around the cold hearth.
‘Timing,’ I said after a gulp of spirits had cleared my throat. I hadn’t known George, but he had been James’s friend and I wanted to get that look off his face. ‘We need to establish timing. One ambiguous note isn’t proof of anything.’
James gave himself a shake. ‘Yes. Timing.’
‘Did you see the body? Was the blood dry?’
‘It was dry.’ His voice was steady now. ‘But sticky.’ He held up his right hand, the palm revoltingly stained. Garrick was out of the door and back with a bowl of water and a cloth within moments while the three of us just sat and stared at the reality of a brutal death.
‘Not dry, then,’ I managed, not looking at the pink swirls in the water as James washed. ‘How warm was the room?’
‘It is part of his house, but with a locked door between,’ James said, tossing the towel aside. ‘He uses the rooms on one half of the ground floor and there’s a separate entrance for patients at the side. I do not know how it is heated but it must have been warm – it didn’t strike me as cold, or too hot.’
‘Was he stiff?’
‘I don’t…’ He frowned, thinking. ‘No. Yes, a little – but not stiff like George was. I grabbed his shoulder – he was face down – pushed him onto his side. I mean, it was hopeless, you only had to see the back of his head, but I had to be certain. His arm almost flopped.’ He looked up, round at our faces. ‘But that means he was killed after George. George did not do it.’
Chapter Three
Everyone looked so relieved that I felt a complete heel, but I had to say it. ‘It looks as though Philip died after George but we can’t be certain. Temperature, state of health, how much exercise the person had just before death, how they are killed – it all makes a difference. We need more evidence. Who found him?’
‘I did,’ James said. ‘Along with his manservant. I called on the Coroner, saw his officer and gave him Luc’s card and the news about George. He said he’d deal with it all, so I went straight on to Philip’s house to break it to him. I went to the front door, of course, and his man hadn’t seen him today, said he must have been working in the consulting rooms since early. Apparently he often did that. There’s a connecting door between the main house and that section and it was locked, as usual, but the man had a key to be used only in emergencies. He seemed concerned that Talbot hadn’t rung for coffee yet.
‘When I told him I was there because of a death, and when our knocking didn’t get a result, he got the key. Then – ’
‘No, wait.’ Lucian held up one hand. ‘Who else knows?’