The Scotsman, however, did not seem to need as much of a nudge as he bowed to Isolde, “Lady Isolde, would you do me the honor of being my first dance of the night?”
Isolde’s mouth parted in shock, and for a moment Ariadne feared she would lose the chance, to her delighted surprise, Isolde said, yes.
As they went off the floor, Cedric caught Ariadne around the middle and murmured in her ear, “Your matchmaking was not exactly covert.”
She tilted her face to him. “It worked, did it not?”
As they made their way off to the floor, Silas was heading toward them, and the tight expression on his face was not comforting. Straightening, Cedric asked, “Is something wrong?”
“I’d say so,” Silas replied, while waving a card in his hand. “One of my runners just delivered this to me. They found him, Holloway, they found your erstwhile steward.”
“They…. found him?” Ariadne echoed, not like the implications of that word at all. “As in….”
“Dead,” Silas said. “They found him dead.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Cedric could not recall the last time he had set foot in Spitalfields Slum. It was the middle of the night, yet life was scattered around the squalid tenement.
Painted women vanished down alleys, jug-bitten men played cards on an overturned crate, and lanky youth lingered under sagging eaves. Following Silas, he inched his way up the rotting steps, bracing himself for a fall if the frail wood crumbled under his heavy boots.
Down the slender hallway, through a door with rusty hinges, constables were already waiting. Ducking under the low ceiling, the walls were cracked and blotched with dark smears that he had no intention of identifying.
The smell was that of a pit left to go rancid, and Cedric bit back a surge of nausea at the upsetting smell of dead flesh; lying on a pallet was his old steward, Draven, dead.
This death was old, the body bloated, blue skin, and crusted in ashy black from where someone had tried to set him ablaze. The once familiar face was now shreds of rotted skin and gutted eye sockets. Cedric fanned an annoying fly away.
“Why cut his throat, stab him, and try to burn him?” he asked the constable who had identified himself as Allan.
“It’s usually a tactic to keep the body unidentified, but lately, we’ve been seeing this used as a scare tactic from moneylenders,” Allan crouched and used a pencil to prod at Draven’s tightly closed fist.
“Cross me, and you will end up like this.” Cedric inferred.
“Exactly, Your Grace,” Allan nodded, then looked at the two, “Are you certain you wish to be present, my lord? Perhaps you would care to wait in the carriage.”
“No,” Silas said.
“How long has he been this way?” Cedric asked.
“I would say over five days,” Rowe said. “I see no blood spill in the room, so my guess is that he was killed somewhere else and dragged here.
“I suppose I do not have to ask about the motive?” Cedric asked quietly.
“Money,” Allan replied. “From what I have found, Draven was swimming to his eyeballs in gambling debt. He would have found himself in debtor's prison if you had not been paying his salary.”
“And skimming the funds from my charities,” Cedric added. “How much debt was he in?”
“As far as I know at this moment, a thousand pounds,” Allan replied. “He had a passion for whist and was using Peter to pay Paul in a round of the seven creditors he had, landing him blunt.”
Standing, the constable gestured to the door, “I think this is enough for now, please.”
Cedric headed out first, remembering to duck his head under the low beam as he exited. It was only when he hit the cold night air that he was able to rid his nose of the horrid stench of death and vomit.
Allan turned right and stopped in front of a door to seal it with a padlock and chains. “Our men will take it from here.”
“Is there anything you need from me, constable?” Cedric asked the lawman before stepping into the waiting carriage. “Records of his payments, his taxes? Anything?”
“I do not think so,” Allan’s brows creased, “But I will hold onto the offer, thank you.”
