Seventeen
Demon led The Gentleman and his grisly burden back to the stables. It took him and two of his men to lift the man free of the saddle; they laid him out in the back of a hay cart.
Carruthers came hobbling out of the tack room, where he’d been imbibing medicinal brandy. He looked down at the man, nodded. “That’s him. Cheeky, vicious sod. Not so cheeky now. Looks like retribution caught up with him pretty quick.” He glanced at Demon. “Any idea who did it?”
Demon thought of the other rider they’d seen, but could anyone slide a dagger through a man’s heart, and within minutes appear so unconcerned? He shook his head. “No idea. But he was out of our sight for a good while. No saying who he might have met up with.”
“Strange-looking dagger, that.” Carruthers eyed the hilt that protruded from the man’s chest.
“It’s ivory.” Demon bent and looked more closely at it, and any doubt this man was involved with the Black Cobra vanished. The hilt was the same as the daggers that had put paid to first Larkins, then Ferrar, whom they’d originally thought was the Black Cobra.
The sound of riders approaching, followed by a shout, “Ho! Cynster!” had Demon straightening, then striding quickly out of the front doors to the area before the stable.
Logan dismounted as Demon appeared. For the first time in days, Logan grinned.
Demon’s gaze reached him and his old friend’s face lit. “Logan Monteith! Sorry-
“We escaped a fire, and a few other inconveniences, hence our sorry sartorial state. But I hear you’ve grown sober.” Logan offered his hand, and it was crushed in Demon’s long-fingered grip.
“Not a bit of it!” Demon thumped him on the back and wrung his hand. “As I heard it, it’s you who’ve been getting serious these past months-and into serious danger, too.”
“Sadly, that’s true. Apropos of which…” Releasing Demon, Logan turned to the other three, who by now had dismounted and stood watching them with varying degrees of humorous understanding. “Allow me to present Captain Linnet Trevission, captain of the
Linnet gave Demon her hand. “A pleasure, sir.”
Grasping her fingers, Demon bowed gracefully. “The pleasure is all mine.” Straightening, he eyed Linnet’s breeches. “I warn you, my wife, Flick, will be after your tailor’s direction.”
Brows faintly arching, Linnet inclined her head, and Logan continued the introductions.
Although Demon hadn’t met Charles or Deverell before, he knew of their mission.
“So,” Logan asked, “what’s been going on?”
“You’ve heard Delborough’s through safe and sound, but sacrificed his scroll-holder in a trap we hoped might capture Ferrar, but his man, Larkins, got caught instead, and then Ferrar killed him and got clean away?”
When Logan nodded, Demon went on, “Yesterday, Hamilton came up from Chelmsford via Sudbury. The fiends had set up an ambush outside Sudbury, but we were there in force, too, and Miss Ensworth, who’s traveling with Hamilton, managed to leave the scroll-holder and tempt Ferrar to take it, which he did. While my cousins and I dealt with the cultists at the ambush site, others”-Demon nodded at Charles and Deverell-“Wolverstone and some of your erstwhile colleagues, followed Ferrar, hoping to find his lair, but then he was murdered in the old abbey ruins at Bury St. Edmunds, and all that was found was his body.”
“Ferrar’s
Grimly Demon nodded. “As of yesterday afternoon.” Shrewd blue eyes surveyed them. “I know you were expected in today from Bedford-dare I assume the reason you’re here now, so bright and early and in such sartorial straits, is because you were chasing a man, tallish, black hair, black coat, a gentleman at first glance?”
“You’ve seen him?” Logan asked.
“He’s dead, too.” Demon tipped his head toward the stable. “Come and take a look.”
Demon led them to the cart. Logan stood at the cart’s foot, Linnet by his side, and looked down at the man they’d last seen riding out of the alley in Bedford.
Charles examined the dagger, the wound. “This happened recently.”
“Less than an hour ago.” Demon told them all he knew of the man’s actions to the point where he’d found him slumped dead in his saddle.
He sent a stable lad to fetch the man’s horse. While they waited, he asked, “Incidentally, how did you know to come here? Did you actually track him this far?”
Logan shook his head. “I tracked him out of Bedford, and we got sightings on this side of Cambridge, but we lost him approaching Newmarket. But when we rode into the town, it was buzzing with the news that someone had dared steal a horse from your stable. That seemed too great a coincidence-we know these people appropriate goods, horses, anything they need, as they wish. People in town pointed out the way here.”
Demon waved at the black horse the stable lad led up. “The blighter left this one when he took ours.”
Logan, Deverell, and Charles studied the horse; they all nodded. “That’s the one he was riding at Bedford,” Deverell said.
“So he was riding this way,” Charles said, “not because he was fleeing us, because he thought he’d left us soon to be dead in Bedford, but for some other reason.”
“Presumably to deliver the letter he took from us to someone.” Deverell eyed the body. “He hasn’t still got it, has he?”
“Inside coat pocket,” Linnet said. “That’s where he put it.”
Deverell touched the man’s coat, then eased it open enough to feel inside while leaving the dagger in place. “Nothing there.” He patted the man’s other pockets. “Or elsewhere. It’s gone.”
Logan frowned. “I think we can assume that whoever he delivered the letter to rewarded him with that dagger.”
“We were chasing him at the time.” Demon shrugged. “He might have been killed for the same reason Larkins, and presumably Ferrar, were-sacrificed because they’d been seen, and could, almost certainly would, be taken up at some point.”
“And questioned.” Charles nodded. “That makes sense.”
Linnet glanced at Logan. “Do you recognize him?”
Eyes locked on the man’s face, Logan grimaced. “He looks vaguely familiar. I might have seen him in Bombay- we were there for five months. He might have been a friend of Ferrar’s. If he is, Gareth or Del would have a better chance of placing him.”
Demon nodded decisively. “We’d best get his body to Elveden, then. There’s a washroom if you’d like to tend to your accumulated wounds and wash off the worst of the smoke streaks while I get the horses put to, then we can ride on together.”
It was midmorning when the five of them rode up to the sprawling Jacobean manor house hidden away in its extensive park; they’d ridden ahead, leaving the wagon carrying the body to follow as fast as it could. Crisped by the recent frost, snow still lay in pockets beneath the trees; Demon had mentioned there’d been a heavy fall a few days before.
Emerging from the forest into the graveled forecourt, Linnet studied the rambling house with its many gables and haphazard wings, and sensed it was ancient; an aura of permanence, of long-established peace, seemed to emanate from it. Courtesy of the dull day, lamps were lit inside; through the many paned windows, the interior of the house seemed to glow with warmth and welcome.
A warmth and welcome that came tumbling out to greet them. Phoebe and Penny were already in residence; they must have been sitting in a window somewhere, for they came rushing out to embrace their husbands, disregarding residual smoke streaks and bloodstains to exclaim over various scratches and gashes, then they
