Convicted Innocent(25)

“It was a half-mile back to your house,” he whispered.

“The road passed nearby. She fetched some passing cart driver and he came to help us.”

“Ah.” Lewis paused, his eyes half-open and thoughtful. “I remember being ill for a week afterward.”

“Might have something to do with swallowing half the river. Certainly didn’t help that everything upstream was pastureland: makes for very unpleasant runoff.”

Despite everything, Lewis smiled. “That entire week, you made jokes about me drinking my weight in cow piss.”

“—And for much of the rest of the summer.” David found himself smiling as well.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been more grateful for a child’s meddling, then.”

The priest rubbed his eyes. “I’d give a kingdom to have one meddle in this mess.”

* * * * *

Horace Tipple couldn’t sleep.

He’d gotten out of bed – putting on his dressing gown and house slippers quietly so he wouldn’t wake his wife – and wandered into the sitting room. He’d paced, poured himself a dram of scotch, paced some more as he drank it, poured another, smoked a few cigarettes while he drank and paced, and thought furiously all the while.

Horace could count on the fingers of one hand the number of cases that had kept him awake at night during the course of his career. Fretting never solved anything, and he thought better with sleep. However, that logic fell flat in the face of his current investigation.

The reason why Nicholas Harker had let himself be seen so soon after his escape was beyond baffling. And there was no question in Horace’s mind that the fellow had let the police catch sight of him. Though Mr. Harker was none too bright, and most probably not the one who’d orchestrated the flight from Holloway Prison, even a complete idiot would know not to show himself in public during his own blasted manhunt without a bloody good reason.

So why had he done it? Add that to—

“—Rory.”

“Ah. Sorry, love. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

Mathilda slid her arms around him as she joined him in front of the hearth. Horace returned the embrace with one arm, still holding his tumbler with the other hand.

“You’ll find him.” She nodded toward the family portrait, which hung above inspector’s old cavalry sword over the mantle. “And the murderer too.”

The inspector brushed his fingertips over the signature in the corner of the painting, and then drew his wife over to the sofa. They sat down together, and Hildy snugged herself into his side.

“What is it, darling?” she asked.

Horace pursed his lips. “I have an awful, terrible feeling I’m missing something. Or perhaps several things. Lewis disappeared nearly two days ago. I still haven’t any idea who started the rumor that he was home in bed with a fever, and the delay that caused in the search for him is troubling. Also, he vanished more or less the same time our murderer did, and ostensibly at the hands of the same crew. I have my boys tracking both.

“This afternoon, one of those Roman Catholic sisters with the tremendously large wimples—”

“—cornettes,” Hildy supplied.

“—Thank you. One of those. She reported the disappearance of a popish clergyman who began to be missed after he failed to turn up for some celebration or other Friday afternoon. After some additional legwork by my men, he seems to have vanished the same morning as both Lewis Todd and Nicholas Harker. This clergyman, David Powell, is Lewis’s best mate. We’ve met him before, if you recall.