An Unexpected Pleasure

Megan nodded. She had started out on the Society Desk, where she had learned enough to be aware that old money did not regard the nouveau riche with respect. She could well imagine that in England the lines were much more distinctly drawn, and that money, new or old, could not cast one into the rarified class of the aristocracy.

“I was in my early twenties at the time. I had gone to university, as my grandfather had insisted. He wanted very much for me to be a ‘gentleman.’ So I did not go into the family business, as my father had. I was, quite frankly, a trifle bored with my life, so when my grandfather suggested that I go on the Cavendish expedition, I was more than happy to oblige the old chap. It sounded like quite an adventure.” He shook his head. “Unfortunately, it turned out to be far more of one than I would have liked.”

“The Cavendish expedition?” Megan inquired, jotting the name down in her notebook.

“Yes. Old Lord Cavendish was quite interested in the cultures of other times and places. He turned his ancestral home in London into a museum. It was a huge old place, built shortly after the Great Fire, and it was no longer in a fashionable area. The family had built a new home in Mayfair. So he decided to house his collection of artifacts there, as well as whatever other ones he could get his hands on. He was particularly avid about the ancient cultures of South and Central America—Incas, Aztecs and all that—so that was the specialty of the museum. It wasn’t much, really, just a wealthy old man’s hobby, but he wanted to make it into something known all over the country, if not the world. So he hired a curator, and he started sending out expeditions to the Americas to find and bring back information and artifacts for the museum.”

“I see. So Lord Cavendish financed your expedition?”

“Yes.” Barchester nodded. “The curator went along—well, frankly, he was the only employee of the museum at the time. His name was Julian Coffey. I knew him rather well. We had gone to school together and had been casual friends. My grandfather was also interested in artifacts, and he has corresponded and spoken with Lord Cavendish from time to time, and Grandfather had made one or two gifts to the museum, as well. Grandfather suggested to me that I might like to go. It sounded like an adventure, and as I knew Julian…”

“How was Theo Moreland involved?”

“Raine’s father, the Duke of Broughton, was a friend of old Cavendish’s, too. They were both collectors, you see—though the duke’s field was the ancient Greeks and Romans. But I guess he told Lord Raine about the expedition, and he wanted to join. He had caught the exploration fever a couple of years before that after he finished university. Wound up in the Levant, then Egypt, and finally trekked into the Sahara. He liked the adventure, I suppose. He’s been on a number of trips since, so I understand.”

“What was he like?” Megan asked.

Barchester shrugged. “Actually, quite a regular sort of chap. Julian and I were rather surprised when we met him. We had expected him to be a lightweight, full of himself and thinking everyone else ought to do for him. But he was always the first to pitch in, never asked for special treatment. We hadn’t been on the ship a day before we were calling him Theo. It was…well, we all thought it was going to be the trip of a lifetime.”

The man’s blandly handsome face saddened for a moment. “It was, I suppose…just not in the sense that we thought it would be.” He seemed to shake off his moment of reverie and went on more briskly. “The head of our expedition was a chap name Thurlew. Howard Thurlew. He’d done a good bit of exploring and had worked for Lord Cavendish before—dug up some Aztec ruins some place in Mexico, and it was he who had proposed this trip to the old fellow. He wanted to follow the Amazon deep into the interior and perhaps find some Inca ruins. That was what Lord Cavendish was interested in, of course. I think Thurlew was in it more for the exploration—and Theo, too. Julian was a naturalist, and he was eager to see the wildlife and draw it and so on.”

“How did you meet Dennis?” Frank asked.

“Well, Thurlew fell right after we reached Brazil. Poor chap broke his leg—quite badly. It was obvious that he could not travel for weeks, even months. Even once his leg was healed, he wouldn’t have been up to such rugged travel. So there we were, with our equipment, all set to go into the interior, and we had no guide. None of us could have dealt with the native guides and so on. We had no experience, didn’t know the language. But we hated to just give up and turn around and go home—nor could we wait for several months for Thurlew to be up to the journey, as it would have thrown us into the rainy season. Then, as luck would have it, we ran into your son, sir. He and his friend Eberhart, as it turned out, were all that was left of their party. The others had either gotten ill or simply become disenchanted with the idea. Captain Eberhart seemed a knowledgeable sort, and he had already hired some native guides. So we decided to throw our lot in with Dennis and Eberhart.”

“A doomed venture from the very start, wasn’t it?” Frank said, shaking his head.

“I suppose one could say that,” the other man conceded. “But it isn’t all that unusual for some members of any expedition to drop out along the way. Far too many people set out expecting some fantastic adventure, with no realization of the hardships involved, or the dangers. Diseases, accidents—and all miles from civilization, of course.”

“Where did you go?” Megan asked.

“We set out up the Amazon, as we had originally intended. It was a fantastic journey—utterly amazing.” Barchester’s eyes glowed as he remembered the trip. “The things we saw—the parrots, the vines, the trees, even the snakes were just…Well, it is impossible to adequately describe it. One has to see it, feel it, to really understand what it was like. Not pleasant a great deal of the time, of course. The heat was abysmal, and the humidity was almost unbearable. And, of course, there was danger. Anacondas. Jaguars. There was always the possibility that we might come upon unfriendly natives. Even a cut could become horribly infected, and we were miles from a doctor. But it was thrilling, nevertheless. We traveled upriver as far as we could go, and then we took out across land. Then Captain Eberhart died.”

Deirdre let out a soft sound of distress, and Barchester turned toward her. His face softened. “I apologize, Miss Mulcahey. This is not a proper subject to be discussing in front of you.”

“No, please, go on. I want to hear it—that is, I need to hear it. We must find out everything we can so that we can expose Dennis’s killer.”

She looked at him with her large, soft eyes, and Megan could practically see the man melting right in front of them.

“Miss Mulcahey,” he said, his voice full of emotion. “I assure you that I will do everything I can to help you.”

“It is very kind of you,” Deirdre murmured.

Megan cleared her throat and pulled the conversation back to the subject. “What happened to Captain Eberhart?”

“It was one of those tropical fevers that felled him. As we traveled on, he became more and more ill. We stopped and made a semipermanent camp, then stayed there for a few days, hoping he would recover. But he did not. When he died, we were in something of a quandary, not sure whether we should turn back or go on, but finally we decided to continue. It seemed such a waste to turn back, as far as we had gone, and by that time, we had gotten to where we could communicate to some extent with the native workers. So we pressed on. Some of the natives abandoned us. They were a superstitious lot, and they viewed Eberhart’s death as a sign that we should not go farther. We couldn’t understand everything they said, but there was a lot of talk about Inca treasure and the ancient gods’ displeasure and that sort of thing.”

“Inca treasure?” Frank Mulcahey cast a significant look at his daughters.

“Yes. Oh, yes. We had heard tales of Inca treasure from Thurlew even before we left England.” He shrugged. “Just legends, you know.”

“What sort of legends?” Megan asked.

Barchester shrugged. “Oh, the usual sort of thing. I don’t know how much you know about the Incas, but they had an enormous empire, centered in Peru but stretching throughout much of the Andes and up to Central America.”

“They were very sophisticated, weren’t they?” Megan asked, trying to remember some of the things her brother had told her. Dennis had been fascinated by the history of South and Central America. “Had a system of roads…”

“Administratively, they were quite advanced. But not able to withstand European weaponry. Pizarro and his lot came in and took the Inca emperor captive. Demanded a huge ransom from all his subjects. Of course, they killed him anyway, but gold and gems and all sorts of tribute poured in from all the outlying areas. Naturally, there are legends about the treasures—that there were Incas who hid the gold or part of the gold on their way to free their king. The natives said that the ancient gods were angry about what amounted to looting their temples. Much of their gold work, you see, was in the temples—statues of the gods and vessels for the priests and so on. So, of course, there are legends that the treasure is protected by the ancient gods, and that whoever finds it will be subjected to punishment by the gods. That sort of thing.”

“Did you find any treasure?” Frank asked.

Barchester let out a short laugh. “No. Of course not. Julian found a few things—an ancient cup, a small statue, but no treasure trove, believe me. But the natives were scared—always talking about the land being protected by the old gods and all that. Just fear, really, I think, of going any deeper into unknown territory. But some of the natives stayed—we offered them more money. And we still had provisions. We wanted to see as much as we could. It was such an opportunity—an untouched land. But then…” He looked at them uncomfortably. “Then Lord Raine and Dennis…”

“What happened, Mr. Barchester?” Megan asked. “Exactly.”

“They quarreled. And Raine…” His eyes flickered uneasily over to Deirdre again. “Well, Raine killed him.”

“How?”

The man looked startled by Megan’s blunt question. “What do you mean?”

“How did Lord Raine kill Dennis? Did he shoot him or—”

“He stabbed him.”

A hush fell on the room. Megan had heard many sad and wrenching stories in her line of work, but she was unprepared for the stab of pain that went through her at Barchester’s words.

“I’m sorry,” Barchester said, looking wretched. “I should not have said that so bluntly.”

Megan shook her head, shoving down her sorrow. “’Tis not your fault, I assure you.” She paused, struggling to put herself back into her reporter’s role. “You said they quarreled. About what?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t—” He paused, again with an anxious glance at Deirdre. “I didn’t hear it.”

“Could it have been over something Dennis had found?” Megan asked.

Barchester frowned. “Found? I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Well, you said that Mr. Coffey came upon some artifacts. Had Dennis found anything? I don’t know—some sort of object? An artifact? Even a jewel or something like that.”

“Oh, well, yes, I suppose he could have. But if he did, I never knew of it.” He paused, frowning. “But you know…now that I think of it, there was something in Raine’s possession that he was rather secretive about.”

The Mulcaheys glanced at each other, then back at Barchester, their interest clearly aroused. “Something?” Frank repeated.

“Yes. A pendant of some sort, I believe. I didn’t really get a good look at it. As I said, Lord Raine was secretive about it. But as we were traveling back, I noticed that he was wearing something around his neck. It lay beneath his shirt, and I saw him pull it out once or twice to look at it. I never saw it up close. He didn’t offer to show it to me, and I did not ask. I—we—well, obviously things were quite strained between us at that point. We did not speak much beyond what was necessary.”

“Didn’t you talk to him about the murder?” Megan asked in disbelief. “Didn’t you ask him why? Didn’t you put him in restraints or anything?”

“Of course we talked to him!” Mr. Barchester looked shocked. “Theo claimed it was an accident. And I, well, at first I believed him. I mean, I had never seen anything to indicate that he would do something like that. I thought surely it must have been an accident. It was only later that I began to realize the story didn’t quite add up. Raine was evasive in his answers, and I could see that he was not telling me the truth. He was clearly uneasy, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. His story didn’t really make sense.”

Again sorrow tinged Barchester’s features. “It was very hard for me, for both Julian and me, to accept that Lord Raine had murdered Dennis. We had grown to like him so, to think that he wasn’t like other aristocrats we had met. But, finally, I could not deny any longer that he was lying. Julian and I talked about it. We didn’t know what to do. As I said, we were miles from civilization, not even sure where we were. It was a matter of our word against his, and the Morelands are quite powerful. I—there was nothing to do but return.”

His gaze went from Frank to Megan, then lingered on Deirdre’s face. “I pray you will not think too badly of me. If I had had any idea what would happen, if I could have done something to stop it…”

“It wasn’t your fault, Mr. Barchester,” Deirdre assured him in her usual kind manner.

Megan was not quite as forgiving as her sister, however.. It seemed to her that Barchester had given up all too easily in the face of Moreland’s denial. However, she could scarcely afford to take him to task over it. His account of the events was the only proof they had against Theo Moreland at the moment, and she did not want to antagonize him. Besides, she reminded herself, it would have doubtless been unwise for Barchester to confront Moreland with his knowledge, given that he had already killed a man. Moreland could have done in the other two men also, and returned to civilization with no one the wiser.

“This other man who was with you—Julian Coffey? I’d like to talk to him. See if there is anything he can add.”

“Oh, yes, I am sure that he could give you more details,” Mr. Barchester agreed. “Capital fellow, Coffey.”

“Is he still the curator at the Cavendish Museum?”

Barchester nodded. “Yes. Julian makes regular trips to South and Central America to acquire new pieces for the museum. He has built up quite a collection over the years. Lord Cavendish died a few years back, but he endowed the place amply in his will, and his widow still supports it, as well. In fact, Lady Cavendish is holding a ball to benefit the museum in just a couple of weeks, I believe. I could talk to him, if you’d like,” he added helpfully. “Set up something for you.”

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” Megan assured him quickly. She preferred to talk to the man without his being influenced beforehand by Barchester. “I should set up an appointment myself. I’m not sure exactly when I will be able to see him. In the meantime, I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention any of this to Mr. Coffey.”

He looked surprised. “Naturally, if that is what you wish.”

“I find I get better results if I have the first thoughts out of one’s head,” Megan said by way of explanation. “You know, without their thinking it over a great deal. It’s no longer fresh then.”

“Of course,” Barchester agreed politely, though he still looked faintly confused.

And well he might, Megan thought, since her glib response was not precisely the truth. She had found that the more witnesses to an event discussed it, the more alike their accounts of the event tended to become, but she had also found that telling people that fact often insulted them. In the same way, she also suspected that Mr. Barchester’s story had probably been somewhat different than it would have been if Deirdre had not been present. The man had been clearly smitten by her sister. Megan wasn’t sure how his story might have differed, of course; no doubt it was subtle. But she had also found that men were not inclined to be entirely honest when they were speaking in front of a woman they admired. She intended to arrange her visit with Coffey so that her father and sister were not present.

They stayed for a little longer after that, making polite chitchat with Mr. Barchester. He offered them tea and inquired about their trip across the Atlantic and their lodgings here, offering to help them in any way possible. He seemed a nice enough man, Megan thought, though a trifle bland. Her sister, however, seemed not to notice this defect, for she smiled and even, Megan realized, flirted with him a little.

For her part, Megan was barely able to sit still and be polite. She wanted only to go back to the house they had rented and talk over the tantalizing possibility of “treasure” that Mr. Barchester had raised. She could see, glancing at her father, that he was fairly twitching to discuss it, too.

Indeed, they had barely bade Mr. Barchester goodbye and walked a few feet from his front door before Frank burst out, “I knew it! Did I not I tell you? That murderin’ English bastard stole that pendant from Dennis. That’s what Den wants back, I’ll warrant.”

“Now, Da, we don’t know that,” Megan pointed out fairly.

“It’s as plain as the nose on your face, girl,” he retorted. “After Dennis was dead, that titled scoundrel was wearing this thing around his neck and being terribly secretive about it. How else did it suddenly appear? And why else would he have been hiding it?”

“It makes sense,” Megan agreed. “But we don’t know that Moreland took it from Dennis, or that he killed him over it. The truth is, we don’t even know what ‘it’ is!”

“A pendant,” Deirdre offered. “That’s what Mr. Barchester said.”

“Yes, but what sort of thing was hanging from it? A jewel or a golden medallion or what? And what was it hanging from? A golden chain or a simple string? It could even have been a little pouch hung on a bit of twine. His description was very vague.”

“Aye, that’s true. It might not have been a necklace,” Frank mused. “It could have been something small that he just carried close to him like that for safekeeping.”

“But clearly it was something ‘precious,’” Megan went on, emphasizing the word Deirdre had used in describing her brother’s loss.

“And clearly Moreland did not want anyone to know about it.”

“Well, at least it narrows down my search,” Megan said. “I know that it’s something small I’m looking for, probably a necklace of some sort.”

Excitement rose in her, as it always did when she was chasing down a story. But this time, there would be a far greater reward if she tracked down the truth. All the little doubts that had been teasing at the back of her mind—the liking she had felt for the duchess and the twins, and her reluctance at deceiving them, the strange feeling that had gripped her when she first saw Theo Moreland—all vanished now. Such minor things scarcely mattered.

Tomorrow she would start stalking her brother’s killer.

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