Convicted Innocent(54)

The movement caused him to inhale sharply, though, and his expression became pained for a brief moment.

“Are you alright?”

“Well enough.” He rolled his shoulders, grimacing ruefully. “I keep forgetting why I’m in hospital.”

“You forget that you were stabbed?” she asked drily.

“Surprisingly, yes! I can attribute that to the wonders of modern medicine, I think. In fact, the doctor spoke of perhaps letting me leave tomorrow or the next day.”

“That’s marvelous! Forgive my boldness, please, but…that seems very soon. You nearly died.”

“I’m grateful for your concern,” Powell returned, his smile softer. “I think I should be fine, especially under the care of my very doting, very motherly housekeeper. Also, though I’m not an expert about these things, it seems the knife missed nearly everything important on its way in and out – even my heart, if only by a hair. So really a few stitches are all that ail me.”

“Providential.”

Powell beamed.

“And Lewis?” she asked.

The little clergyman chuckled. “Ah. Well, that nutter stole a pair of crutches a day or so ago, and after tearing open his wounds not once, but twice, the nurses took the crutches away and threatened to tie him down. I hazard he may be here a few days longer than I, what with broken ribs and three times as many stitches and all.”

Mathilda glanced over fondly to where her husband and the dark-haired young fellow were lost in some case file or another that Rory had brought. Horace was explaining something to Lewis as the latter held the paperwork at arm’s length and squinted (he’d not yet been fitted for a new pair of reading spectacles). It sounded very business-like.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Tipple,” the clergyman said apologetically then, and then more loudly to the other two: “If I may, what was that about Nicholas Harker?”

Mathilda hadn’t been listening to the other conversation, but apparently mention of that name had caught Powell’s attention.

“Oh, seems there’s good news on his account,” Lewis replied. “A retrial seems likely.”

Horace nodded, continuing when the younger policeman left off.

“The whole matter is a mess, of course. Evidence for the murder trial is being scrutinized again, and in light of the testimony you’ve promised to help Mr. Harker craft—” he nodded to Powell, “—it seems we’ll get the right man this time.”

“And that’s made it so tricky?”

Rory pursed his lips and shook his head humorlessly. “No, lawyers are to blame for that. Citing gross negligence, they want the whole matter – including everything we discovered in the tunnels while pursuing the real murderer – dismissed from court.”

From what her husband had explained to her, Mathilda knew the murder trial previously directed at Nicholas Harker had been refocused around Conway Duke and his underlings. The Harker empire had escaped that mess.

However, they’d not escaped entirely. The illegal prizefighting pit had been but a single part of the police’s discoveries last Sunday. One of Horace’s men (she thought it might be the pleasant one, Simon Bartholomew) had traced the broadest of the tunnels underneath the fine goods factory to a nearby gentlemen’s club also owned by the Harkers.

The police raid had extended into this establishment as well. There the police found ledgers, documents, and even photographs recording all manner of illegal activities, from prizefighting and the gambling associated with it, to prostitution and money laundering.