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“I didn’t know,” she keened.

“I don’t believe you,” Gideon said, “and I doubt a magistrate will either.”

Piper had taken the note and scurried from the room, and a moment later a maid entered, looking frightened and confused. “Piper sent me up to tell you where to find Fourcross, sir.” She offered Gideon a piece of paper that had the address scrawled on it.

“Thank you.” Gideon placed the paper in his pocket and gestured to Electra that it was time to depart.

“I don’t think he would hurt her,” Mrs. Crawley said quietly. “He seemed fond of her.”

Gideon regarded the woman and struggled to find an ounce of sympathy. “Was he fond of Miss Collier too?”

“He was.”

“And yet she is dead, Mrs. Crawley.”

“He didn’t do that. He’s not like that. He’s just odd.”

Gideon couldn’t imagine defending a man when she herself had participated in his cruelty. Maybe she believed he would not go so far as murder. Maybe she did not know the extent of Kerrigan’s devilry, or perhaps she simply turned a blind eye.

“It’s more than oddity, Mrs. Crawley. Much more.”

Chapter Nineteen

“Why do you think he’s taken her to Kent?” Electra asked once they’d disembarked from the train that deposited them at Canterbury station and secured a hired coach that would carry them into the Kentish countryside.

“If he’s the one who sent the letter, then it was a sort of distraction, wasn’t it? All of us focused on who in the city would have sent that letter. I thought there might be a watermark, something that we could trace with the paper, but there was nothing.”

Electra watched fields roll by. “So send the letter, then leave the city. Perhaps he was feeling that we were close, but we weren’t. I thought for sure it was Tristan Wakefield,” she admitted.

“He certainly seems to have had motive and opportunity.”

Electra glanced at him. “Mrs. Crawley doesn’t think he’ll harm her.”

“Can we trust Mrs. Crawley’s judgment about anything?”

Electra shook her head but said nothing.

“I think we should speak to the local constabulary first.” Gideon had told the coachman as much, and he’d given him instructions on where to find the constabulary in the village nearest Fourcross, where the coach would deposit them within the hour.

“Do you fear Kerrigan has weapons?” Electra asked. “He had suits of armor in his town house and weapons on the walls. If he killed those young women, he had a blade of some sort.”

“He doesn’t know we’re coming. We have that advantage.”

Once they had reached the village nearest Fourcross, they followed the coachman’s directions to the offices of the local constabulary. Inside its offices, they encountered a Constable Wickford and quickly explained their purpose and the details of the cases potentially linked to Archibald Kerrigan.

“Do you think this man has caused her bodily harm or would do the same to us if trying to apprehend him?”

Gideon could not underestimate Kerrigan now. “If he is the man who killed three young women, then we must assume he will be willing to harm Miss Delacourt and others.”

“Then I shall arm myself,” Wickford said, turning to unlock a cabinet and lift a pistol. “Shall we approach directly with the carriage? We could leave it in a nearby field and approach on foot.”

Kerrigan did not know they were coming, and that was crucial. “I like the idea of stealth.”

“Then let me just get the police carriage.”

Wickford was quick and efficient, and within a quarter hour, they were all seated in the simple black pony cart.

“I know only a bit about Fourcross,” Wickford admitted. “It’s not the grandest of country houses. Converted clergy property, I believe. To my understanding, it’s vacant much of the year. Word was that it was owned by a gentleman in London and that he came here in the fall and winter. So no one will take notice that he’s returned now.”