Page 300 of From Rakes to Riches

“Ohhh.” She relaxed back with a relieved little laugh that ended on a sigh. “Well, yes, there was that time.”

“To think you were locked up with him, right after he’d done Trout such violence...” His electric eyes bored into hers. “After he mercilessly executed Mathilde Archambeau. I promise you, Mercy, heads will roll for this. You should not have been subject to his company. You’re lucky he didn’t do you harm in his escape.”

“You don’t need to worry about that.” Mercy waved away his concern. “Mr. Sauvageau didn’t kill Mathilde.”

With an aggrieved sigh, Morley sunk to her mother’s hideous pink velvet chair, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his hands hang between them. “And just how did the blighter manage to convince you of that?”

“He didn’t,” she informed him archly. “I deduced it.”

“Deduced?”

“Yes. Deduced. A verb. It means to arrive at a logical conclusion by?—”

“I know what it bloody means, Mercy, I’m simply trying to imagine how you could possibly have inferred evidence that my investigators had not.”

Doing her best to keep her animation to a minimum, Mercy informed him about the open window, the boot print, the angle of poor Mathilde’s neck and Raphael’s right-handedness. She even drew diagrams, which—to Morley’s credit—he studied very carefully before he looked up to regard her with new appreciation.

“I’m going to have to consult the coroner’s report, but if all is as you say, I think Raphael Sauvageau owes you a debt of gratitude.”

Nothing could have dimmed the brilliance of Mercy’s smile. Not only because her investigative skills had assisted in exonerating an innocent man—well, perhapsinnocentwas not an apropos word to use in reference to Raphael Sauvageau—butalso because she’d have the pleasure of informing said gangster later that night.

Probably.

If he showed up.

“I’m given to understand that Mathilde had an enemy in the Duchesse de la Cour over a theft back in France,” she continued, holding up a finger as if to tap an idea out of the sky. “Perhaps the Duchesse and Mathilde’s dastardly husband, Gregoire, were in cahoots.”

“Cahoots,” Morley chuckled.

“What?”

“No one uses that word.”

“I use that word.” Detective Eddard Sharpe used that word.

“You’d have made an excellent detective,” he said with gentle fondness.

“Thank you.” She primly smoothed her skirts over her thighs and rested her gloved hands on her knees. It was high time someone recognized that.

Someone other than Raphael, that is. He’d been the first to compliment her on her sleuthing skills.

Sucking in a deep breath, Morley heaved himself to his feet with the vital exhaustion of a new father and the responsibility of the entire city’s safety on his shoulders. “We’ll look into it.”

“When?” she inquired.

“When we’re able.” He ran a palm down his face and glanced at the door through which his wife had disappeared a quarter hour past. “I should go find Pru.”

“When will you tell me what you find?” Mercy stood as well, thinking she needed to bathe before tonight. “The coroner will have his autopsy done tomorrow maybe, the day after next?”

“I report to you now, do I?” Morley regarded her with a sardonic glare.

“I promised Mathilde I’d find her murderer.”

His arch look softened. “And that is lovely of you, Mercy, but women like Mathilde—who keep the company she kept, and indulge in the vices she enjoyed—they often find themselves in dangerous situations. And they just as often meet such an ignoble end at the hands of men who leave no evidence for us to follow.”

“There is evidence, Morley, there’s the boot print.”

“Which is compelling, but not absolute. Any number of men could have left that print, and it’ll be difficult to use something like that to convict in court.”

---