“But the battle was fully underway and that day, that terrible day, dragged on. At last it was over and I left the field. I never found Johnny’s body, but I did look for it. I saw things…” He passed a shaking hand across his face.
“Don’t, Finn,” urged Hecate. “Let that be for now. Such memories will always be there, but their pain will lessen with time. Tell us now what happened when you came back to England.”
He nodded. “I remember coming back to chaos in London. Many of the lads were being discharged but the paperwork was muddled and there were weeks when none of us knew if we should be in barracks or not. It turned out that I was not to be discharged; in fact, they sent me back across the Channel. The Treaty of Paris allowed for various areas of France to be occupied by troops from several countries, as you may have read. I found myself in command of a garrison in Calais.”
“You were promoted then, Mr. Finn,” observed Dal.
“I was lucky, Dal,” shrugged Finn. “Lucky to survive Waterloo and then to be in the right place at the right time.”
“So where doeshecome into it?” Hecate stared at the image.
“Not too long ago,” answered Finn. “When my assignment finished in Calais, I returned to London and was discharged. This must have been…oh…just about the end of the summer? I was never one to keep close track of dates and times, unless it was in battle. Off duty, I was a bit careless about such things.”
“It’s the Irish in him,” said Augusta wryly. “Great lovers but always late.”
That surprised a crack of laughter from Finn, and eased his state of mind considerably. “Be that as it may, Lady Augusta, and I’ll have to take your word for it, once I got back to London, I did what any ex-soldier does. I ordered new clothes, made the rounds of a few of the parties, and since I had some well-heeled friends, it was a delightful and fun few weeks. Until…”
He paused, not for dramatic effect, but to clear his mind and focus on the memory.
“Until I was accosted, knocked unconscious and woke up in the bowels of a prison ship bound for Australia. The memory of one face stuck in my head. One man looking straight at me right before I was knocked out. And that man…” he looked once more at the paper, “that man is the one you see there. Lord Aubrey Faversill now, but back then? Lieutenant Colonel Aubrey DeWitt.”
Dal put words to the question he knew they were all ready to ask.
“Why, Mr. Finn?Why?”
*~~*~~*
Hecate’s insides were shivering at Finn’s story. His recollections of Waterloo alone were enough to chill one’s soul, but then to have been attacked like that, with no warning? It was heinous.
Bub yowled softly from the mantel, adding his outrage. Then he jumped down and strode to Finn, sitting down next to his foot, a shiny black guardian with bright eyes staring at Finn’s face.
That made everyone smile and Finn took a breath. “Thank you, Bub.”
“I have to assume all this has something to do with the Johnny Marchville incident,” observed Lady Augusta. “I didn’t know them—they were in a different social circle. But I did know the previous Lord Faversill. And he looked nothing at all like this man.” She tapped on the newspaper in her turn. “As a matter of fact, we’ve never looked to find out why he’sinthe paper, have we?”
“Good point,” agreed Hecate. “Finn, what does it say about him?”
Finn picked up the sheet and frowned at it. “Well, it says here that Lord Faversill’s horse is the favourite to win the Triple Rose at Newmarket on Saturday.” He replaced the paper on the table. “It mentions the horse’s lineage but not Faversill’s.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.” Finn sighed.
“Of little or no use,” commented Dal. “One wonders why a newspaper bothers.”
“Finn,” said Hecate, “Your friend Johnny. Do you have any idea why Faversill, or DeWitt as he was then, would kill him?”
Finn shook his head. “No, and I have thought about it many times since.” He turned to her. “I was so close to finding someone to tell in Whitehall, Hecate. Several times I was in the right place to see the right person, but something held me back. What if I was proved wrong? What if I’d made a terrible mistake? Suppose the bullet Ithoughtcame from DeWitt was actually fired from a Prussian rifle? And how could I prove that anything I said was true? There was no body and no motive as far as I could tell. What was there for me to say? It would have been my word against his. A simple Irish Casey against an established DeWitt with influence.”
“Urgh.” She groaned with frustration. “I see your point.”
“Money.” Lady Augusta steepled her fingers together and touched the point to her lips. “In my experience, money is at the bottom of cases like this. And others too, come to think of it.”
“Was your friend wealthy, Mr. Finn?” Dal tilted his head to one side, the gem in his turban glittering in the firelight.
“Not to my knowledge, Dal. But we were just that. Friends. Neither of us spent much time on our backgrounds or our pasts. We were too busy kicking up larks in the present.” Finn sighed. “But I see where your train of thought is going. Yes, there most likely has to be something to do with money involved in this business.”
“Finn, a question if I may.” Augusta looked at him, a puzzled expression on her face.
