Page 6 of What Cannot Be Said

“What the blazes are you doing here?”

It was Lovejoy who answered. “I have asked Lord Devlin for his assistance.”

McInnis stared at Sebastian, his nostrils flaring. “I’ve heard you do this sort of thing. Queer start, for a peer’s son.”

“True,” said Sebastian, and left it at that.

McInnis’s frown deepened. And it struck Sebastian that the man appeared far more annoyed than grief-stricken.

Sebastian said, “How many people knew that Lady McInnis was planning an expedition to Richmond Park today?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“You never had any intention of joining the picnic yourself?”

“Me? Hardly. Why do you ask?”

“Simply trying to understand what happened here and why. Did Lady McInnis have any enemies?”

“Not to my knowledge. But then, I’m not particularly familiar with my wife’s circle.” He glanced again at Lovejoy. “When will the bodies be released from this blasted surgeon you’ve sent them to?”

“Hopefully by tomorrow evening, sir. The inquest will in all likelihood be scheduled for Tuesday morning.”

“Bloody impudence,” McInnis muttered only half to himself as he started to turn away.

“Will you be taking your niece and nephew back to London with you, Sir Ivo?” said Lovejoy, raising his voice.

McInnis paused. It was obvious he hadn’t given the children a second thought. “I suppose I could.” He glanced at his wife’s landau. “Where was Lady McInnis’s coachman while all this was happening?”

“At the Blue Boar in Richmond,” said Lovejoy. “Resting and feeding the horses. Lady McInnis had asked him to return at four.”

“Huh,” McInnis grunted, and walked away toward the children.

“How well do you know Sir Ivo?” Lovejoy asked Sebastian quietly as they watched the Baronet confer with his wife’s coachman, then shepherd his niece and nephew toward his own waiting barouche.

“Not all that well.”

“Does he strike you as... grieving?”

“No,” said Sebastian. “But then, I’m told some men find it difficult to express any emotion other than anger.”

“Perhaps that’s it.”

But Sebastian didn’t need to see the pained, puzzled expression in the magistrate’s eyes to know that Lovejoy was remembering his own reaction to the deaths of his wife and daughter fourteen years before. It would have been a hideous, soul-destroying time in Lovejoy’s life, and for him to be forced to revisit it now, in this way, was beyond brutal. Sebastian watched the magistrate take off his glasses and clean them with his handkerchief, his movements painfully slow and deliberate.

And he found himself aching for the somber, rigidly controlled, and profoundly shaken man beside him.

“Why would anybody want t’ shoot a gentlewoman and ’er daughter when they was just ’avin’ themselves a picnic?”

The question came from Sebastian’s young tiger as they bowled through the park toward London, the boy perched on his seat at the curricle’s rear. Tom had been with Sebastian ever since the dark days when Sebastian had been on the run from the law and Tom a scruffy pickpocket with a strange affinity for horses and the courage to risk his own life to save a man he barely knew. The boy was still small and sharp faced, his hair a nondescript brown, his features usefully forgettable. He’d always taken an interest in Sebastian’s investigations, and it had recently become his ambition to someday serve as a Bow Street Runner.

Sebastian said, “It certainly wasn’t done in the heat of passion. Whoever shot that woman and her daughter deliberately came here to the park today carrying a double-barreled pistol.”

“I ’adn’t thought about that.” The boy was silent for a moment, then added, “I talked to Lady McInnis’s coachman and footman, like ye asked.”

Sebastian glanced back at his tiger. “And?”

“The coachman didn’t ’ave much t’ say, but it still weren’t hard to tell that both ’e and the footman liked their mistress a whole heap better’n they like the Baronet.”

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