It took another half hour while the valet took them away to doctor the worst of the scrapes and bruises and find a coat that Lucian could get into without popping the seams, but eventually we were back at Albany.
Garrick had heated enough water for two shallow baths and Lucian and I went off to our rooms to finally get rid of the evidence of the morning’s collision with the carriage.
At last we were all gathered in front of the incident boards, Garrick with us, and a plate of cakes to go with our tea.
Garrick reported in the safe departure of Martha in a roll of carpet, an unlikely Cleopatra. I added a new section for ‘X’, our unknown perpetrator, and pinned up the tiny scraps we knew about him, then we stared at the boards in silence broken only by the rattle of cups on saucers and my faint moan of pleasure at the juicy tang of the fruit cake.
‘Means, motive, opportunity,’ I said out loud as I thought. ‘This is not something random, some pervert snatching a woman off the street to rape or kill. This was premeditated and planned by someone who knew Arabella. They wanted her, not just any woman. The motive has to do with her. It had to be someone who could organise a smooth operation. They either knew, or found out, who her maid was and that she was loyal to her mistress. They wrote a note that was plausible as coming from Sir Clement so they must have access to some of your handwriting. Although that must be easy enough within your own circle, I suppose. When you wrote to her before, were they long letters?’ I asked him.
‘Just a few short notes,’ he admitted. ‘Her brother forbade it, but I slipped them into flowers, that sort of thing.’
‘X knew that, and could forge your handwriting,’ Lucian said. ‘So what is the motive – money, passion, revenge?’
‘Any of those,’ I agreed. ‘Just because this man is operating efficiently does not mean that he is not mentally disturbed, though. So we might not accept that he has a rational reason for whatever his motive is, even if he does.’
‘Opportunity.’ Sir Clement sighed. ‘How can we possibly establish that? We are in the middle of the Season and everyone is in Town.’ He frowned. ‘I am being defeatist and I must not be. Arabella is relying on me.’
If she is still alive.
‘We are going to have to make some assumptions,’ Lucian said. ‘Otherwise we will never get anywhere. We can assume this is someone of her own class, someone she will have met socially. The obvious candidate is a man who has fallen for her and has been refused, either by her brother or turned down by Arabella herself.’
‘If this was an attempt at extortion, surely Cottingham would have heard by now, so this is motivated by passion,’ Sir Clement added.
‘We assume he has not been contacted,’ I interposed.
‘I saw him this morning and he snarled at me like an angry dog and said he still believed me responsible,’ Sir Clement said. ‘He went out of his way to accost me. Would he have done that if he was dealing with demands for money and threats to Arabella?’
‘He might have been told to keep up the pretence of blaming you, I suppose.’ Lucian shook his head. ‘No, it seems improbable, especially if he had to go out of his way to approach you.’
I was still thinking out loud. ‘She went willingly, thinking it was Sir Clement. Unless she knew it was someone else and this was an elaborate double bluff to deceive Martha…’
‘She loves m
e,’ Sir Clement said with a dignity that I found heart-breakingly convincing. ‘And she is not a deceitful, cunning person. She is very straightforward – too much so, sometimes. She says what she thinks. If you believe she may have been feigning her feelings for me, in order to deceive everyone, why not simply pretend to fall in with her brother’s wishes and show no interest in anyone?’
‘That is what I would do,’ I agreed. ‘Why make her brother suspicious and over-protective and life more difficult for herself if she intended escaping with another man?’
We all stared at the boards as though they would speak and give us an answer.
‘I need to talk to her friends,’ I said at last. ‘Do they support her in her affections for you, Sir Clement?’
He nodded. ‘All the ones I spoke to were young women she had told me she had confided in and who believed she should be allowed to marry where her heart was.’
‘Then you must introduce me to them. They might well talk to another woman more easily, and I want to know if she told them about any unwelcome suitors, men she had snubbed or discouraged or anyone who had made her feel uncomfortable.’
‘I will ask Henrietta to hold a tea party and invite you and all Arabella’s friends as soon as possible,’ Sir Clement said and got to his feet. ‘They will come unencumbered with their mamas if it is a party for young ladies only.’ He looked grim. ‘She is anxious enough about your knowledge of her escapades for her to do as I ask without argument.’
‘Tell her she will be a heroine if this helps us find Arabella,’ I suggested. That should appeal to the rather self-centred creature.
‘I will,’ he agreed and went out, followed by Garrick.
Chapter Nineteen
I leaned back against the sofa cushions and shivered, suddenly cold and depressed and fearful. My new bruises and scrapes had begun to throb and the image of that battered young woman in the morgue, used, abused and thrown away like so much rubbish, seemed to float up out of my subconscious to haunt me.
‘Cassie?’ Lucian was right beside me and, without opening my eyes, I turned towards him and was in his arms. ‘What is it?’ The way he held me was tender and comforting and I wriggled closer. He made a muffled sound like a sigh, but did not speak.
‘I am fearful all of a sudden. Fearful for Arabella, fearful for myself,’ I admitted, my nose buried in his beautifully-tied neckcloth. ‘What if we cannot find her? What if I cannot get home?’