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“Right you are.” Liz gave nod. “I’ll keep an eye. See you at headquarters at end of shift.”

They parted ways, and Gabriella realized she felt like she was carrying several weights on her shoulders as she walked away.

Jerry being missing. Liz and Melvin. The meeting with Havelock about her father. The fact that she couldn’t leave her house this morning through the front door because it was still stuck. And the strange young man she was worried was watching James.

She could look for Jerry, she couldn’t do much about Liz and Melvin, but she could speak to Mr. Rodney and Solomon about the door, and she could ask Mr. Vincent what had happened last night with the strange man.

That left the meeting with Havelock.

Nothing she could do about that, but she had the feeling that was going to turn into the biggest storm of them all.

She was about to upend her father’s new family’s life—his wife was going to realize she wasn’t actually married to him, and that her son wasn’t his first born, nor were any of her children legitimate in the eyes of the law.

It was going to get nasty.

Gabriella sighed. Then thought of her mother, waiting and searching for her father for years, and then stuck in limbo, unable to marry the man she’d fallen in love with five years ago, because she didn’t know if her husband was dead or alive, and hardened her heart.

If it got nasty, that was on her father.

chapter

five

“Looks like Dr. Jandicott’s already here.” Hartridge carefully parked the Wolesely in the closest space to the crime scene.

The pathologist’s van was parked outside what had to be the house where the body had been discovered.

A very nice house, at that. Double story, large garden.

Two uniforms were standing at the gate, and they gave a nod to James as he and Hartridge approached.

They signed the log and walked down the path to the door. Jandicott was standing just within the spacious hallway, and he shuffled over to give them room to come in.

“Upstairs,” he said. “It’s a shooting.”

“Who got shot?” James asked as he followed Jandicott up the wide, curved staircase. He’d been told it was a man, but that’s all he knew.

“A young fellow.” Jandicott’s voice carried sympathy. “No more than early twenties, I’d say. No identification on him.”

He motioned them to a room, and his porters were already waiting beside the door, stretcher ready to take him away.

James stepped in and saw the dead man lying beside a partially opened wardrobe. “This looks like the spare room. Like he was a visitor.”

Jandicott was right, he was young, about mid twenties at most. He was wiry and fit looking, and he wore a good tweed coat and wool trousers.

“Is there any evidence he lived here?” Hartridge asked.

“No idea,” Jandicott said. “There’re a few photos up on the walls, but they’re mostly of a young woman and her mother. There doesn’t seem to be any personal effects in this room except a few clothes hanging in the cupboard.”

Jandicott crouched beside the body. “He was likely standing when he was shot, judging from the way he fell. The shooter was most likely standing by the door.”

“Time of death?” James asked.

Jandicott shot him a sour look. “More than twenty-four hours is all I can give you.”

“How did we come to be called to the property?” James hadn’t got that part of the story yet, either.

“Local bobby walking past noticed the front door was ajar.” Jandicott said. “Otherwise, who knows when he’d have been found.” He stepped back and let James study the body.