He was about to answer when Elysande beat him to it.
“Oh yes,” she said excitedly. “Hudson and I were able to guess the print was likely left by the true killer. It is smaller than Hudson’s hand but significantly larger than Mrs. Ainsley’s would have been.”
“This print could prove crucial in determining who committed the crime,” Leydon said. “Several years ago, I read a letter published inNatureconcerning this precise matter. At the time, I was so intrigued that I created a collection of fingerprints of everyone at Talleyrand Park. Each one was unique. Do you recall, Lady Leydon?”
The countess nodded. “I do indeed. It was in ’eighty, if I am not mistaken. Everyone from the butler to the lowest scullery maid spent days going about with ink-stained fingertips. It looked as if they had been working in a coal mine.”
The glance she favored her husband with was adoring, but her tone also had a hint of the long-suffering underlying her words. So much he had come to know about Elysande and her family was beginning to make sense. She had clearly inherited her brilliance from her father. In his experience, the most intelligent individuals of his acquaintance also tended to be the most eccentric. Lord Leydon certainly seemed to fit the mold.
He found himself intrigued by the possibility of finding a criminal using prints in such a fashion. The practice was entirely foreign to him. If true, however, the impact it would have upon the ability to solve crimes could be monumental.
He leaned forward in his seat. “Tell me more about this practice, if you please, Leydon. What were you able to discover?”
“As far as I could discern, every individual possessed a purely unique print. No one’s prints at Talleyrand Park had the same features in exactly the same patterns. The letter I read suggested that each person’s fingerprints are unique to them. The gentleman who wrote it described having used this system himself to detect a thief who had absconded with a bottle of alcohol from his hospital.”
It seemed impossible that Leydon had been aware of the use of examining fingerprints to solve crimes for six years and yet, Hudson himself had never heard a word. His mind was somersaulting over itself now, making sense of everything Elysande’s father had just told him.
“Judging from the article you read and your own experience, prints such as the one we discovered at the scene of Mrs. Ainsley’s murder could only belong to one person, then, the murderer himself.”
“But the fingerprints were not completely visible,” Elysande pointed out, frowning. “They were partially obscured. The best detail is found in the palm print. Father, did the article you read suggest palm prints can be examined in the same fashion?”
Leydon nodded eagerly. “There was another example cited in the journal, in which a palm print had been discovered at the scene of a theft. The print had been made with soot, and a potential thief was able to be ruled out by a thorough examination of the two prints.”
And there it was again, that foolish beast of hope, rising. What the earl was suggesting was unorthodox, untested, and new. But if accurate, it could change the field of crime solving forever. If not for Maude’s murder, then for others.
“Do you think you would be able to compare my palm print to the print in the picture?” he asked Leydon.
“If not from the picture, then certainly from the print itself, should it remain intact,” the earl assured him.
“That would certainly go a long way toward proving you are not the one responsible for Mrs. Ainsley’s death,” Elysande said.
“And you say you have witnesses who can attest to your presence at a private club,” Elysande’s brother, Lord Royston, offered. “That ought to bolster any evidence Father is able to produce by studying the prints. These witnesses of yours, what manner of character do they have?”
“And what manner of club were you patronizing?” Lady Isolde asked, her eyes narrowed.
Unlike the rest of her family, who appeared enthused with the notion of helping to solve a murder, Elysande’s sister had made it obvious that she had yet to give him her trust. She considered him suspect, and she made certain he knew it.
“The Black Souls club is a gentleman’s club,” he explained. “It is owned by Mr. Elijah Decker and the patrons are all respectable members of society.”
Well, with the possible exception of Barlowe, but no need to add that bit. Not because he was not respectable, but because he was Barlowe, and that rather explained it all.
The Black Souls was a private club, and its patrons were exclusive. Members had to be vouched for by existing members, and Mr. Decker retained the right to withdraw a membership based on poor behavior. The man ran his club the way he did his many businesses, with expert precision and an absolute intolerance for scoundrels.
“Ah yes,” Royston said to Lady Isolde. “I am a member as well, Izzy, and I can attest to its quality.”
Being newly introduced to the club since his arrival back in London, Hudson had been unaware of that.
Lady Isolde skewered her brother with a pointed look. “If you are a member, it only makes me question the club even more.”
Royston grinned and pressed a hand to his heart as if he had been wounded. “You have cut me to the quick.”
Lady Isolde huffed an enduring sigh. Hudson was beginning to note a pattern.
“Oh hush, the two of you,” Elysande interrupted her siblings. “Do cease squabbling. Will the two of you never stop prodding each other?”
“Never,” Lady Isolde proclaimed.
“What would be the fun in that?” Royston asked with mock severity.
