MacLeod choked back a laugh. “Another thrilling BBC broadcast.”
“It will be when Aleida Martens makes a touching appeal on behalf of refugee children.”
Gil buttoned his overcoat, his chin down. “I thought you and Aleida weren’t...”
Hugh swallowed hard. “We aren’t, but her story needs to be told. Fletcher agreed.”
“You should return to the papers,” MacLeod said. “That’s where the excitement is. Today I covered a murder.”
“Oh?” Hugh had rather lost his taste for murders.
“A communist agitator.” MacLeod pointed to the side with his thumb. “Strangled with his own scarf in a trench in Hyde Park near Speakers’ Corner.”
Hugh could still see the impassioned face, the red scarf ... “Speakers’ Corner, you say? What was the man’s name?”
“Filip Zielinski.”
Hugh’s chest caved in. “Oh no. When was he murdered?”
“Last night. They found him this morning. Why? Do you know him?”
Hugh rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I saw him on Sunday. Albert Ridley attacked him.”
“Ridley?” Gil said with a gasp. “He attacked him?”
Hugh’s stomach and thoughts churned, and he clamped his hand to the back of his neck. “Ridley shook him, shoved him down, accused him of taking advantage of English liberty. He said Zielinski was guilty of high treason.”
“High treason?” MacLeod whipped out his notebook. “Gil, shine your torch this way.”
Gil complied. “The punishment for high treason—it’s death.”
“Do you think Ridley’s capable of murder?” MacLeod said.
“I don’t know.” Hugh’s fingers dug into the back of his neck.“I must admit, I suspected him in my uncle’s murder. He had rather public altercations with my uncle—with Jouveau too. But he was in London the day my uncle was murdered.”
“London?” The torchlight gave Gil’s frown a ghostly glow. “Hastings was killed that Friday morning, right?”
“Yes,” Hugh said. “Why?”
Gil shrugged. “Ridley might have been in London later that day, but in the morning he was in Hertfordshire, only a few miles from your uncle’s estate. Do you remember how Fletcher and I went to visit his family?”
“Of course.”
A smirk turned up one corner of Gil’s mouth. “We arrived on Thursday evening. When we got off the train at Braughing, we noticed Ridley disembarking from another carriage. A redhead greeted him with a passionate kiss. She’s not Ridley’s wife, according to Fletcher.”
“No.” A sick feeling twisted in Hugh’s stomach. Ridley’s wife was blond.
“They didn’t see us—they had eyes only for each other—but they went to an inn. And I saw them stroll past the cottage on Friday around noon. Ridley was most assuredly in Hertfordshire on Friday morning.”
Uncle Elliott had uncovered an affair. Was it Ridley’s affair? “Ridley doesn’t have an alibi after all. Gil, did you or Fletcher tell the police about this?”
“The police? No. I never saw him as a suspect.”
MacLeod scribbled fast. “If this is what Jouveau uncovered, I can see why he thought it a scoop—a man of Ridley’s prominence.”
JI-GB. Albert Ridley. It didn’t match, but everything else did. Ridley had ample reason to kill Jouveau. “Three murders?”
“Sensational,” MacLeod said. “Simply sensational.”
