“We need to talk to the duke’s sister, but she’s in the country,” I said. I hoped I didn’t sound bitter at the prospect of traveling four days to meet someone who’d probably refuse to talk to me, but I didn’t want to leave my shop for that long for a trip that would probably prove fruitless.
“Where’s the family seat?” Sir Broderick asked, stirring in his wheeled chair by the fire.
“Northumberland.”
“Frances, see if you can learn who the duke’s half sister, Margaret, was friendly with before she left town, and whether they’ve exchanged letters with her since.”
I looked around the room. “I’ll talk to Julia Waxpool. As she’s a debutante, Drake might be blackmailing or stealing from her, and her grandfather is on the list Lord Hancock gave us. I’ve heard she was acquainted with Lady Margaret. With luck, I’ll be able to find out what she knows about Victoria and Margaret and whether there were truly bad feelings between them.”
Turning to Emma, I added, “Could you follow up on where Edith Carter was born and if she’s ever been married?”
“Do you think chasing down the person who brought the problem to our attention is a wise use of our time?” Sir Broderick asked.
I nodded. “She knows more than she’s told us, she’s lied to me, and I want to get that problem out of the way before we take on all of polite society.”
Sir Broderick smiled. “Tomorrow, Emma, please find out everything you can about Edith Carter. After that, you may be too busy watching the bookshop in Georgia’s absence to do much sleuthing for us.”
Frances Atterby said, “Perhaps I can help Emma. I may not know the book business, but I know how to wait on people. And my son’s wife has been making noises again that I’m underfoot and should be sent away to her family’s farm to mind the chickens. Me? On a farm? Can you imagine anything worse? I can’t allow that. And I can’t stay not busy.”
Emma and I made murmuring sounds. Frances might look like she was getting older and should be slowing down, but she wasn’t. More to the point, she didn’t want to.
The widow of a London hotel manager, Frances had come to the Archivists to find her husband’s killer. It had taken us two years to bring the monster to justice, and in the meantime, her son kept telling her to sit down and put her feet up while he and his wife ran the hotel. Accustomed to an active life, Frances transferred her considerable talents and energy to the Archivist Society. As she told us, her son never noticed and her daughter-in-law didn’t care.
“After you check on those young ladies for Sir Broderick, Emma and I would be glad of your help.”
Sir Broderick said, “If there’s nothing else, we can call it a night. Georgia, I’d like you to wait a moment, please.”
Oh, great. What had I done? Or not done? Emma nodded to me and walked downstairs talking to Frances. I pulled up a chair across from Sir Broderick, letting his body block the worst of the heat from the fire. Sweat still rose on my scalp and under my corset.
“Georgia, I need to tell you something. From that time.”
I knew what time he meant. Both of our lives had been irretrievably altered.
“Do you remember Denis Lupton?”
“I remember he had a bookshop on Piccadilly. He was murdered not long after my parents—” I gulped down a sob. Those days had been too much with me lately.
“His killer was never caught,” Sir Broderick said.
“I remember every bookseller in London was terrified for weeks afterward. In the end, life returned to normal.”
“Your father had a message from Lupton a few days before he was taken prisoner. About a Gutenberg Bible.”
I grabbed the arms of the chair I sat in to prevent me from leaping up. “What did Lupton want? What did my father answer? And why have you waited until now to tell me?”
“I don’t know what the message said, but your father was frightened. He told me he sent a message back to Lupton saying no. Your father wanted nothing to do with whatever Lupton proposed.”
He’d ignored the question I most wanted answered. “Why have you waited until now to tell me this?”
“Because if I had told you before, you’d have gone off chasing the wind in hopes of finding the murderer. Now you’re doing it anyway, so you might as well know what little I learned.”
I settled back in my chair, ready to hear the rest. “You’re certain this concerned a copy of the Gutenberg Bible?”
“Yes. I do know that much. Later, I learned Lupton’s shop was ransacked when he was killed. A tall, well-built man in a top hat was seen strolling away just before the body was found, but he wasn’t carrying anything. Could the murderer be your abductor? I don’t know.”
“Had you considered talking to Lupton about the Bible?”
“When you came running in here that day, I decided to question your father and Lupton as soon as we freed your parents. Instead, I found myself in agony with mangled legs. I was bedridden for months. Everyone who came to see me hovered, waiting for me to die.” He smiled. “Except you, Georgia. Your determination to right wrongs, and forcing me to help you, saved my life and gave me a purpose for living.”
I couldn’t bear to have him thank me. I’d failed him as badly as I had my parents. “When did you find out the details about Lupton’s murder?”
He brushed my words away with one hand. “No, Georgia, I need to say this. You saved my life twice, once at the house where your parents perished, and once when you came to me to help you prove you didn’t kill Lord Westover.”
“Scotland Yard should have searched harder for his murderer.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my tone. I’d been eighteen, newly orphaned, and frightened of the police detective who’d questioned me.
“If they had, I never would have met Adam Fogarty and Lady Westover and we never would have formed the Archivist Society.”
I had to smile at the recollection. “I nagged you night and day, brought you every scrap of information I learned, until you finally gave up. You brought Lady Westover, police sergeant Fogarty, and me together in this room. That was the day you began to build the Archivist Society. Now,” I said, giving him an obviously false stern look, “when did you learn the details of Lupton’s murder?”
“Much after the fact, a witness to the discovery of Lupton’s body came to see me about an antiquarian volume. Given such an opportunity, I learned all he could tell me about the murder. He knew nothing about any bookseller possessing a Gutenberg Bible.”
This was a new lead, at least to me. “I think we need to investigate Lupton’s murder using the assumption he was killed by the same man who killed my parents.”
“Georgia, we have to consider the possibility that the murderer learned about Lupton from your father.”
My father would have only revealed that type of information to his abductor if he or my mother were tortured. I must have sounded grim when I replied, “We’ll find out when I catch him.”
But where was he now?
Chapter Six