An Unexpected Pleasure (The Mad Morelands #4)(23)

“I see. So Lord Cavendish financed your expedition?”

“Yes.” Barchester nodded. “The curator went along—well, frankly, he was the only employee of the museum at the time. His name was Julian Coffey. I knew him rather well. We had gone to school together and had been casual friends. My grandfather was also interested in artifacts, and he has corresponded and spoken with Lord Cavendish from time to time, and Grandfather had made one or two gifts to the museum, as well. Grandfather suggested to me that I might like to go. It sounded like an adventure, and as I knew Julian…”

“How was Theo Moreland involved?”

“Raine’s father, the Duke of Broughton, was a friend of old Cavendish’s, too. They were both collectors, you see—though the duke’s field was the ancient Greeks and Romans. But I guess he told Lord Raine about the expedition, and he wanted to join. He had caught the exploration fever a couple of years before that after he finished university. Wound up in the Levant, then Egypt, and finally trekked into the Sahara. He liked the adventure, I suppose. He’s been on a number of trips since, so I understand.”

“What was he like?” Megan asked.

Barchester shrugged. “Actually, quite a regular sort of chap. Julian and I were rather surprised when we met him. We had expected him to be a lightweight, full of himself and thinking everyone else ought to do for him. But he was always the first to pitch in, never asked for special treatment. We hadn’t been on the ship a day before we were calling him Theo. It was…well, we all thought it was going to be the trip of a lifetime.”

The man’s blandly handsome face saddened for a moment. “It was, I suppose…just not in the sense that we thought it would be.” He seemed to shake off his moment of reverie and went on more briskly. “The head of our expedition was a chap name Thurlew. Howard Thurlew. He’d done a good bit of exploring and had worked for Lord Cavendish before—dug up some Aztec ruins some place in Mexico, and it was he who had proposed this trip to the old fellow. He wanted to follow the Amazon deep into the interior and perhaps find some Inca ruins. That was what Lord Cavendish was interested in, of course. I think Thurlew was in it more for the exploration—and Theo, too. Julian was a naturalist, and he was eager to see the wildlife and draw it and so on.”

“How did you meet Dennis?” Frank asked.

“Well, Thurlew fell right after we reached Brazil. Poor chap broke his leg—quite badly. It was obvious that he could not travel for weeks, even months. Even once his leg was healed, he wouldn’t have been up to such rugged travel. So there we were, with our equipment, all set to go into the interior, and we had no guide. None of us could have dealt with the native guides and so on. We had no experience, didn’t know the language. But we hated to just give up and turn around and go home—nor could we wait for several months for Thurlew to be up to the journey, as it would have thrown us into the rainy season. Then, as luck would have it, we ran into your son, sir. He and his friend Eberhart, as it turned out, were all that was left of their party. The others had either gotten ill or simply become disenchanted with the idea. Captain Eberhart seemed a knowledgeable sort, and he had already hired some native guides. So we decided to throw our lot in with Dennis and Eberhart.”

“A doomed venture from the very start, wasn’t it?” Frank said, shaking his head.

“I suppose one could say that,” the other man conceded. “But it isn’t all that unusual for some members of any expedition to drop out along the way. Far too many people set out expecting some fantastic adventure, with no realization of the hardships involved, or the dangers. Diseases, accidents—and all miles from civilization, of course.”

“Where did you go?” Megan asked.

“We set out up the Amazon, as we had originally intended. It was a fantastic journey—utterly amazing.” Barchester’s eyes glowed as he remembered the trip. “The things we saw—the parrots, the vines, the trees, even the snakes were just…Well, it is impossible to adequately describe it. One has to see it, feel it, to really understand what it was like. Not pleasant a great deal of the time, of course. The heat was abysmal, and the humidity was almost unbearable. And, of course, there was danger. Anacondas. Jaguars. There was always the possibility that we might come upon unfriendly natives. Even a cut could become horribly infected, and we were miles from a doctor. But it was thrilling, nevertheless. We traveled upriver as far as we could go, and then we took out across land. Then Captain Eberhart died.”

Deirdre let out a soft sound of distress, and Barchester turned toward her. His face softened. “I apologize, Miss Mulcahey. This is not a proper subject to be discussing in front of you.”

“No, please, go on. I want to hear it—that is, I need to hear it. We must find out everything we can so that we can expose Dennis’s killer.”

She looked at him with her large, soft eyes, and Megan could practically see the man melting right in front of them.

“Miss Mulcahey,” he said, his voice full of emotion. “I assure you that I will do everything I can to help you.”

“It is very kind of you,” Deirdre murmured.

Megan cleared her throat and pulled the conversation back to the subject. “What happened to Captain Eberhart?”

“It was one of those tropical fevers that felled him. As we traveled on, he became more and more ill. We stopped and made a semipermanent camp, then stayed there for a few days, hoping he would recover. But he did not. When he died, we were in something of a quandary, not sure whether we should turn back or go on, but finally we decided to continue. It seemed such a waste to turn back, as far as we had gone, and by that time, we had gotten to where we could communicate to some extent with the native workers. So we pressed on. Some of the natives abandoned us. They were a superstitious lot, and they viewed Eberhart’s death as a sign that we should not go farther. We couldn’t understand everything they said, but there was a lot of talk about Inca treasure and the ancient gods’ displeasure and that sort of thing.”