Page 46 of Death at Fournier Downs
“Answers, my lord,” Wilkes replied in his unruffled manner, which only seemed to ruffle the baron further.
Hugh cut in before he could make another outburst. “Fournier’s icehouse is preserving the remains well enough. Perhaps Lord Renfry would like to view the body and make his goodbyes to his stepmother?”
The young lord clapped his eyes upon Hugh’s with alarm and revulsion. “That is unnecessary.”
He was a few years shy of thirty, Hugh would estimate. He’d arrived the previous day with his betrothed and her family, as expected, though instead of celebrating their upcoming nuptials, they had the somber event of a funeral to attend.
“The two of you were not close, my lord?” Wilkes asked, perhaps hearing the same lack of affection that Hugh had.
“Close in age, perhaps,” he replied bitterly. Ah, so Bainbury’s heir was not keen on his father’s penchant for marrying younger women. Women younger than Renfry, even.
“Did you object to the age of the lady, or the lady herself?” Hugh asked.
Renfry adopted a competent version of his father’s sneer. “What I object to, is being asked these ridiculous questions. We are here to discuss this other woman’s death, are we not?”
“As we have not yet reached a conclusion in the countess’s death inquest, my lord, all questions are pertinent,” Wilkes said. “We can, of course, interview you separately after this inquest, if you prefer.”
Renfry clenched his jaw as he looked around the grouping of men, as if seeking support from them. Neither Fournier, Edgerton, Dr. Ryder, nor the others gave it, though the baron rolled his eyes in impatience.
“Very well,” Renfry ground out. “I did not object to Charlotte herself. I’ve made it clear to my father from the beginning that his decision to marry women half his age—first with my mother’s replacement and then with this newest—was undignified and unnecessary. It is the marriage I objected to. Does that answer your question, officer?”
Hugh suppressed the urge to grin; the young man’s statement had breathed new life into the investigation, and he did not even appear to comprehend it.
“Indeed, it does,” Hugh replied, crossing a look with Wilkes. The coroner cleared his throat.
“Let us begin,” he said, and leaving behind the topic of Renfry’s distaste for his stepmothers, launched into the particulars of Ida Smith’s demise.
Peeling back the sheet to her clavicle, Wilkes pointed out the evident injury to the woman’s skull and concluded a violent blow to the back of the head was the cause of death. The duke gave testimony, discussing how and where the duchess and Lady Cassandra Sinclair had found the body.
“One moment now,” Lord Edgerton said, agitated yet again. In fact, Hugh was beginning to think the man existed in a perpetual state of agitation.
“The duchess, once again, finds a dead body? Just…stumbles across it in the woodland of Fournier Downs?”
“That is correct,” Fournier replied, his impatience evident.
The baron guffawed. “I say, isn’t that a bit bizarre?”
Hugh found that he would like nothing more than to plant a facer into the baron’s nose, and the scowl Fournier was wearing suggested he was currently having that same desire.
“Extraordinarily rare,” Wilkes said before Hugh or the duke could speak. “However, the facts remain as they are, as we currently know them. Officer Marsden, can you provide us with more details from the discovery of the body?”
The coroner’s skipping onward, dismissing whatever the baron might have wished to say next, was not lost on Lord Edgerton, who glowered.
Hugh quickly divulged his arrival at the cottage, finding the duchess, and her assertion that someone else had been within the trees.
“And did the duchess see who this mysteriousother personwas?” Lord Edgerton asked, his sarcastic skepticism inspiring a few smothered grins from some of the other men. Dr. Ryder, however, maintained his somber expression, unimpressed by the baron.
“She saw a figure moving through the trees, that is all,” Hugh answered.
The baron snorted.
“I spoke with your staff, Lord Edgerton,” Wilkes said. “The servants within the kitchen imparted that Miss Smith received a message that morning, delivered to her by a man who, they claim, is employed here at Fournier House.”
Hugh joined the rest of the jury as every head swiveled toward the duke. Fournier’s aloof expression was only marred by the slight tensing of his brow. The previous evening, Hugh and Wilkes had taken supper together at the inn and had discussed the coroner’s findings, as well as what Lord and Lady Finborough had revealed. Wilkes had not liked the coincidence that the second and third Countesses of Bainsbury had both been with child at the time of their puzzling deaths.
“Employed here in what capacity?” Fournier inquired coolly.
“As a stable hand,” Wilkes answered.
