On the return to London, Lily made notes.
We had learned a great deal, yet as with past inquiry cases, it raised an entirely new set of questions.
Was the Reverend Chastain still in London? Had he retired from the church and perhaps moved elsewhere? What had happened to Mary Chastain?
We arrived late afternoon back in London and found a driver to make the trip to the office on The Strand.
Mr. Cavendish informed us that Brodie had left earlier for the meeting with the Prince of Wales at Marlborough House. He then handed an envelope to me.
“This arrived this morning by courier.”
The envelope was the usual envelope used by the courier services around the city. Inside was another envelope, of the sort used as personal stationery. A note was written across the front of the envelope.
“I found this in my husband’s desk.” And the initials,A.W.
I opened the inside envelope. It was from Lady Walsingham.
A note was enclosed. It was smudged with dirt but still legible.
“The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons”
And below that, another cryptic message:
“And then there were three”
With that cryptic message resembling the other notes that had been left on the bodies of two young men, it had obviously been found on Lady Walsingham’s son the day of the accident.
From the note she had written on the outside of the envelope, it appeared that she had searched for it after we met. And it seemed that the son of Sir Walsingham, one of those four young men years before, had been the first victim, followed then by the deaths of two more—the son of Lord Salisbery, and the death only days earlier of the son of Sir Huntingdon.
Three.
I thought of what had started our search, something my great aunt mentioned in passing that had disappeared from any mention in the dailies at the time, or any time afterward.
They had called themselves the Four Horsemen, those four sons of privilege, and the sort of foolish things those young men did. Foolishness, we had learned, that had led to the compromise of a young woman and the threat of scandal. That young woman, Mary Chastain, had left Grantchester and the scandal along with her father.
Now, after more than thirty years, the sons of three of those foolish young men were dead. With perhaps a fourth son to meet the same fate?
A father’s vengeance after all this time?
“What is to be done now?” Lily asked as I sat at the desk while we waited for Brodie to return from his meeting with Prince Edward.
Nineteen
MARLBOROUGH HOUSE
Brodie lookedup as the motion of the coach changed, and the driver slowed the team at the gate.
He provided his name and informed the uniformed guard that he had an appointment with His Highness. It seemed that a message had been provided to the guards, a list checked, and then the driver was waved through.
He had gone back through the information the Prince of Wales had provided since taking the inquiry case, along with information they had learned that had not yet been made known.
Brodie understood the need for discretion. He had encountered that before in his time as an inspector with the MET and after taking on certain cases when he left the Metropolitan.
Most particularly with a first case for Lady Antonia and then a second one to retrieve her niece who had gone astray on some island.
There had been the need for discretion as well, in a previous inquiry case regarding a threat against the royal family.
And now, as Mikaela often said? An accident the night of the birthday celebration that was no accident, a note left on the young man’s body with that unusual message, and an attack days earlier on another young man outside his club during a robbery with another note:
