Pride and Premeditation (Jane Austen Murder Mystery #1)(69)
Lizzie rarely had the opportunity to observe her father employ the tactics of argument and persuasion he had taught her, so she was taken aback by this forceful, assured version of her father, and she admired how he framed the situation.
The thin-bearded Runner seemed skeptical, and he looked between Wickham’s body and Lizzie. “Why’d this man kidnap you?”
She stuck as closely to the truth as possible: “He wanted me to run away with him, and I didn’t want to go.”
“And you?” Thin Beard asked Darcy. “How do you figure into this?”
“I’m a business associate of the Bennets’,” Darcy answered, which was another artful stretch of the truth that Lizzie couldn’t help but admire. “I just happened to be at their residence when the abduction occurred.”
“Please, I know that there must be an investigation,” Mr. Bennet said. “But allow my daughter and Mr. Darcy to return home and rest. They’ve been through such an ordeal.”
“Soon enough,” Thin Beard pronounced, and then he and an associate examined Wickham’s body, confiscated his pistol and Darcy’s, which had been dropped and forgotten on the ground. At one point, one of the Runners pulled Thin Beard aside and whispered something to him while nodding at Darcy. They conferred some more while Mr. Bennet hovered, hawkeyed, with just a hint of menace in his usually mild eyes.
“What do you think will happen to Wickham?” Lizzie asked Darcy. Someone brought him a horse blanket and he wrapped it tightly around himself to ward off the evening air.
“I’ll make sure he gets a proper burial,” he replied.
“Really?”
“Yes. I have the means, and even though Wickham was rotten, I respected his father. He was my father’s valet, you know. Despite what he claimed, my family did try to do right by him.”
“The things money can buy,” Lizzie mused.
“Money doesn’t buy loyalty,” Darcy countered. “If it did, Wickham wouldn’t be dead.”
Lizzie looked up at him. “You’re right. That was unfair of me.”
Darcy seemed mollified and so Lizzie asked, “Do you believe he was telling the truth?”
“About what?”
“About not being the one to kill Hurst.”
“He was a liar and a cheat. Why would he change his tune at the very end?”
“Agreed, but . . . he all but admitted to killing Abigail.”
“Abigail worked as a maid and had little money,” Darcy said, but not unkindly. “Hurst was a gentleman with connections. Surely you can understand how admitting to their murders is not the same thing.”
Lizzie’s eyes burned, and she rubbed at them with the one clean stretch of sleeve she had left. “It’s wrong. A murder is a murder, and they were both human beings. One’s death should not matter more than the other.”
Darcy was silent for a long moment, and then a soft cloth was pressed gently against her cheek, mopping up her tears. Lizzie gasped in surprise and opened her eyes to find Darcy holding the handkerchief, looking at her with tender concern. That look alone made Lizzie forget to breathe, and as a result she hiccuped rather loudly. She took the handkerchief—it was soft and smelled of cedarwood and mint, and she realized that this was Darcy’s true scent, under the books and ink and pipe tobacco she’d recognized at Pemberley. Her powers of observation were hopelessly scrambled when Darcy was around.
“I know it’s unfair,” Darcy said after Lizzie had wiped away her tears and gotten her emotions under control. “I didn’t mean to dismiss his actions. I’m simply trying to explain the Wickham I knew. He was only ever concerned with appearances.”
“And I was completely taken in,” Lizzie said. “I never once stopped to question why he always showed up on the streets just when I seemed to need him. At the Hursts, when the butler caught me, and then just yesterday when I went to visit Abigail. She admitted, right in front of him, that Hurst hadn’t been overly concerned with Bingley cutting him off, and she all but said she suspected him of some sort of scheme.”
Darcy listened to Lizzie puzzle through the case, his expression grave. “And then Wickham said she recognized him at the end—she made a sound, and I thought he was charming her. She must have thought then that I was working for the killer. Maybe she had made plans to leave, but Wickham got to her first. He knew she could corroborate my suspicions, but that I wouldn’t drag her into the case because she stole Hurst’s pocket watch and was terrified of getting in trouble.”
Darcy didn’t say anything, for which she was grateful. She wasn’t sure what would be worse: Darcy ridiculing her for putting her trust in the wrong man or attempting to reassure her that it wasn’t her fault.
“And there’s so much more!” Lizzie realized. She shook her head, as if she could dislodge all of the details. “I didn’t question how we were able to get into that public assembly so easily, despite not holding a subscription. And yet, he disappeared and then returned, and we were able to just slide inside, and that was when I first met Lady Catherine. . . .”
“How well do you know that woman?” Darcy asked, now sounding somewhat alarmed.
“I met her for the first time at the public assembly Caroline attended—what if Caroline’s suitor is in on this whole scheme? Someone must look into that, although you could not pay me enough to be the one to break the news to her. I thought at the time perhaps that Caroline had arranged to have Hurst killed and Bingley framed in order to take over the business.”