Well, it was not all he’d intended to do, Bea thought, for only a little while later, he was ransacking his employer’s personal possessions and stealing a small fortune that he promptly hid away in a neighbor’s house. Nevertheless, the mention of a letter was interesting and she pressed the housekeeper for more information.
Offended by the implication that she would read a fellow servant’s private correspondence, Mrs. Blewitt insisted she could relate no details about the missive. “And of course I did not ask. I would never pry. All I know is that he was extremely unhappy with the level of service he had received at the establishment and was determined to make sure the owners knew it.”
The owners, Bea thought, meaning the four younger Mayhew siblings.
She darted a glance at Kesgrave, who also considered the information significant, and asked if Mr. Mayhew knew about the letter.
Mrs. Blewitt’s eyebrows flew up to her hairline. “I should think not! Monsieur Alphonse was unconventional in many ways, but even he was not so freakish as to seek out the master of the house and tell him about an unsatisfactory shopping experience.”
But what if Mr. Réjane mentioned the letter to him during their quarrel? Perhaps Mr. Mayhew had reason to fear his brothers’ showing interest in his management of the bank.
Could he be hiding something?
Having extracted all the information she required from Mrs. Blewitt, Bea asked her husband if there was anything further he would like to know, and receiving a negative response, thanked the housekeeper for her time.
Clearly relieved to be dismissed, Mrs. Blewitt lowered into an awkward curtsey and bid them good day. Then she all but ran from the room.
As soon as she was gone, Bea turned to Kesgrave and said with barely suppressed excitement, “You know what we must do now.”
Smiling faintly, he said, “I know what we should do, which is question Mr. Mayhew about the letter to judge if it caused him concern, but I fear you are going to say something utterly foolish like break into Mayhew & Co.”
She beamed at him with approval. “Yes. We must break into Mayhew & Co.”
His shake of the head was swift and emphatic. “No.”
“Oh, but we must, for we cannot proceed in our investigation until we know what the victim knew,” she explained sensibly. “If he discovered something truly reprehensible about Mr. Mayhew while he was at the bank, then Mr. Mayhew would have cause to kill him before he could reveal the truth to his brothers. Perhaps he stood to lose everything. As you yourself have pointed out several times, Mr. Mayhew’s motive is weak. But money is a strong motive. If Mr. Réjane discovered something while he was at the bank, we must discover it too. It is imperative!”
Again, more calmly this time, he said no.
But a one-word answer wasn’t a reasonable argument, and she knew the duke would not expect her to abide by it. That he had a sincere respect for her intellectual abilities had been made abundantly clear on several occasions, and if he truly wanted her to agree with him, he would make an effort to apply logic to the situation. The fact that he did not indicated more than anything that he agreed with her.
“As you proposed two methods earlier, I will leave it to you to decide which is the more suitable approach,” she said graciously, “although personally I prefer the late-night option, for I find your ability to open any lock inexplicably stirring and relish the prospect of skulking in dark corners with you.”
“No,” he said tersely.
Oh, but his resolve was slipping.
Bea drew several steps closer to him. “Although most people bow eagerly to your coronet, there are limits to its influence, your grace, and I am certain convincing a man to admit to incriminating evidence is an inevitable boundary. It is up to us to uncover the truth, and the only way we can do that is to break into the bank and examine its operation for ourselves. Given your vast knowledge of financial matters and the deft way you handle your own accounts, I am sure you will spot the impropriety in a matter of minutes.”
“Now you are trying to flatter me,” he said accusingly.
She made no effort to deny it. “But only because you make it easy by excelling at so many things. If you weren’t quite so impressive, your grace, I would be reduced to less dignified methods.”
Curiously, he tilted his head and asked what could be less dignified than blatant flummery.
“Salaciously insinuating that the sooner we identify Mr. Réjane’s killer, the sooner we may resume our tour of the house, starting with the library,” she said mildly. “Fortunately, your excess of accomplishments spares me the necessity of such debased innuendo.”
But Kesgrave, whose eyes sparked with heat at the mention of the library, observed that his own opinion of himself had taken a sharp tumble recently. “For one thing, I am far too easily manipulated by my wife.”
Because it was all still just a little too difficult to fully comprehend—dull Beatrice Hyde-Clare ensnaring the impossibly handsome and excessively imperious Duke of Kesgrave—she assured him he need only wait a short interval and the weakness would pass. But Kesgrave, clearly convinced the affliction was permanent, sighed with a hint of weariness and said with firm decisiveness that it would not.
Chapter Eighteen
As the Harpers had made the strategic mistake of locating their fictional theater in a well-populated city in reasonable proximity to London, Bea suggested that the Erskines reside much farther afield—in the upper-north corner of Scotland.
“The county of Caithness has two municipalities of significant size, Wick and Thurso,” she explained, their coach lurching slightly to the left as they turned onto Catherine Street en route to Mayhew & Co. “The former has a thriving herring industry, so
