“I expect it was,” Dalziel allowed. “You reached there early this morning, and they kept you there, but not for very long.”
“They’d told me in the carriage at the start that they were just fetching me for some gentleman who wanted to ask me something. I couldn’t understand why I had to go to London, but they said they didn’t know what he wanted to ask—they were just carrying out his orders and doing what he told them. They told me he wasn’t one for explanations.” Ben paused, then slid his hand across the chair’s arm to grasp Madeline’s. “They told me if I knew what was good for me I’d tell him what he wanted to know, and quickly.” He looked at Dalziel. “They weren’t joking—I think they were trying to warn me.”
Dalziel raised his brows. “Sometimes one finds honor among thieves. So…they took you to meet the man this morning.”
Ben nodded. “They stayed with me in a smelly room through the night, then after ten o’clock this morning—I could hear bells pealing the hours—they said it was time to go and meet him.”
“Where did they take you?” The tension in Dalziel’s voice was hard to detect, but there.
“It was only downstairs. To another room—I didn’t see it because they blindfolded me, but it seemed cleaner.”
Dalziel exchanged a quick glance with Gervase. It sounded like a brothel—a cleaner room downstairs for meeting “guests,” a room that would have been deserted in the morning. Dalziel looked at Ben, and repeated, Gervase suspected for Madeline’s benefit, “You were blindfolded, so you didn’t see the gentleman—the one who questioned you.”
Throughout, Dalziel asked few questions. He made statements, told Ben’s story, and left it to Ben to correct or expand.
Ben shook his head, brow furrowed as he recalled. “He was a gentleman—he spoke like us.” Head on one side, he looked at Dalziel. “He sounded a lot like you.”
Dalziel slowly nodded. “A gentleman of the ton, a member of the aristocracy—that’s who we think he is. As you say, one of us. So he spoke with you—what did he say?”
“He told me that if I answered his question, he would order the men to take me into the streets a little way away and let me go. That I would be free to return to Cornwall and my family, as long as I answered his one question—he warned me he’d know if I was lying.” Ben blushed.
Dalziel smiled. “So you answered his question, and told him that you and your brothers found the brooch you gave your sister for her birthday on…which beach?”
Ben frowned at him. “How did you know that was what he wanted to know?”
“Because he’s a traitor I’ve been chasing for some time. And your sister and Crowhurst here realized it was something to do with the brooch.” Dalziel paused as Ben mouthed an “Oh,” then prompted, “So…which beach did you send him to?”
Ben shifted, then looked at Madeline. “I did lie—I didn’t want him finding our treasure, if there’s more of it buried in the sand, and I didn’t think you’d mind if I lied to him.” His jaw firmed. “He was a bad man, stealing me away like that.”
Madeline smiled, and squeezed the hand she still held. “It was perfectly reasonable to lie to him.”
Reassured, Ben looked at Dalziel. “I told him we found the brooch in Kynance Cove.”
Gervase caught the look Dalziel sent him, the faint lift of one brow. “It’s on the other side of the peninsula from Lowland Point—the beach where they found the brooch and where Charles and Harry are keeping watch.”
“Will they notice if our quarry heads down to this other beach?” Dalziel shifted forward, preparing to rise.
Gervase shook his head, doing the same. “It’s nowhere near. Our man could take a small army down to Kynance Cove and only a few farmers—”
“Shush! Wait.”
He broke off; glancing around, he saw Madeline waving them to silence.
Her gaze was fixed on her brother. “Ben—why Kynance?”
Ben squirmed, shot a glance at Dalziel—who reacted not at all—then glanced at Gervase, before looking back at Madeline. “Because it’s the cove the wreckers use. Not just to hide their stuff—there hasn’t been any this season—but their boats are in some of the caves, and they meet there, too.”
He drew in a breath, then looked at Dalziel. “I sent the man there because he was a bad man, and anyone with him will be bad, too, so if they’re going to stumble across any of our people, it ought to be the wreckers—they’re even worse.”
Dalziel was still for a moment, then he looked at Gervase. “You really have wreckers down there?”
Gervase felt his face grow blank as he envisioned what might occur. “Oh, yes.” He refocused on Dalziel. “It could be a bloodbath.”
Dalziel considered, then raised his brows. He looked at Ben; his lips curved. “A trifle bloodthirsty, perhaps, but overall that was very well done.”
Ben looked relieved; he turned to Madeline and grinned.