“No strong ones.” Briley frowned. “Sedgeworth wrote that Miss Moore had been seen arguing with Lady Stockton earlier that evening, but a woman wouldn’t have the strength to throttle someone.” He flipped the page over. “He questioned two men who the lady seemed to have particular attachments to. At least, it was thought they might ask for her hand. A Mr. Clarence Shelton and a Mr. Theodore Beaumont.”
Cassie jerked her head up. “Mr. Shelton?”
“Yes, you know him?”
She swallowed. “No, I know the name.” And she knew how attentively he’d held his wife after her mother’s heirloom had been stolen. She hadn’t realized he had been one of Lydia’s beaus.
She cleared her throat. “Do the notes indicate whether Miss Moore was grabbed from behind or from the front?” Had her sister seen her killer’s face as she died?
He flipped to another page. “Hmm, from the sketching of the bruises, it looks like from the front.” He put the notes down on the desk next to him and raised his hands to her throat. “Like so.”
His long fingers wrapped around her neck, his thumbs overlapping, pressing gently against her windpipe.
She swallowed, almost asking him to squeeze harder. A part of her wanted to know what Lydia had felt in her last moments. Every bit of pain. Of fear. Of rage.
She stepped back, putting space between herself and Mr. Briley.
And a part of her wished she’d never learned that her sister had been murdered.
“Was there anything else?” She blinked rapidly. “Anything out of the ordinary?”
He picked up the sheaf of papers again. “There was a mark on her neck. An unusual bruise.” He turned the notes to her and pointed at another sketch. “It was shaped like so.”
Cassie cocked her head. It was crescent shaped, small. It looked like… well, nothing that she could recognize. But she copied the sketch to her own notes, indicating where on Lydia’s neck the mark had been found. “Anything else?”
“Other than the fact that we were requested to abandon the investigation by the girl’s family, no.” He sniffed. “Decided to hush up the circumstances to avoid scandal. I wonder why he’s asking about her killer now,” he muttered.
Heat flushed through her body. Avoiding scandal. That had been the most important thing to her father.
He glanced through the file once more. “There are a couple of pieces of correspondence here, between our office and the father.” He scanned the pages. “But it looks like we had nothing of import to tell him. And then his final letter dismissing our services.”
Her stomach churned. She knew those letters. Her father kept them in a chest in his wardrobe. She’d found them three months ago searching for her father’s pocket squares. They were how she’d learned Lydia’s death hadn’t been an accident as she’d been told. “Thank you, Mr. Briley. I appreciate your time.” She put her notes and lead back in her reticule.
“I hope the Bond Agency will return the favor if we need one in the future.” He sat back on the desk, crossing one long, slender leg over the other.
“You can be sure of it.” The lie came easily. She was getting better at it. “Oh, one last thing. Why did Mr. Sedgeworth assume she went to meet with a lover? Based on the time and location she was found?” An assignation in a darkened garden was the sort of thing Lydia would have found romantic, but there were other possibilities.
“Yes.” Mr. Briley rolled his head on his neck, stifling a yawn. “That. And because of the babe in her belly, of course.”
Chapter Nine
Afternoon was dwindling into twilight by the time Miss Moore returned to the office. Charles dropped his feet from his desk and stood to face her. “Where did you go? I didn’t authorize any excursions.”
She slowly unhooked the front of her coat, her face pale in the lamp light. “I went to the Burlington Arcade. They sell high-class jewelry there. I thought the ladies and gentlemen of the ton might be talking about the thefts while they shopped.”
“And did I give you permission to leave the office?” He ground his back teeth. He’d given her the benefit of the doubt, thinking she might be of some use to him, and then she goes and runs off.
“I don’t think I need your permission.” A tiny crease appeared between her eyebrows. “As Lord Summerset said, I’m not your clerk.”
And that was the true problem. When the chit had been hired, she hadn’t been given definitive rules, a framework in which to operate. It was time to remedy that error. “No, but you are an investigator’s assistant. My assistant. As such, I expect you to be here when I wish and follow my direction. I wanted to dictate my notes from my meeting with the gaming hell owners today.”
Her usual mild smile was looking a bit faded, like wheat that had been left in the field too long. “I’ll get some ink and paper.”
“I’ve already transcribed my recollections.”
She blinked at him, her expression remaining constant. As the silence drew on, the back of Charles’s neck warmed. Without words, without a disapproving press of her lips, Miss Moore made him feel just a tiny bit foolish.
It wasn’t a feeling he enjoyed.
