Page 45 of Nature of the Crime
“You saw him?” she asked.
“I didn’t see him take it,” she quickly explained. “But he was there that morning, and I don’t trust him. Not one bit.”
She looked and sounded absolute on this.
“Why not?” Audrey asked.
Becky hesitated, looking discomfited. But she forced herself to answer. “He’s a smuggler, Your Grace.”
Audrey raised a brow, trying to slow her suddenly racing heart and mind.
“Tell me about him.”
Wasthisthe man she’d seen with Vaillancourt in her vision? The man Grayson had met with?
“He comes and goes, but he’s right handsome, and he and Mrs. Plimpton have been going on together for nearly a year now.” Becky squirmed a bit and winced. “The baron was usually with them too. At first, I didn’t understand, but…the three of them were together, you see.” She blushed and couldn’t quite look Audrey in the eye.
“I understand,” she replied, startled by the revelation and wondering if it had any bearing on the situation.
Greer coughed and pressed forward. “How do you know he’s a smuggler?”
Becky shrugged. “My brother. He’s spotted him once or twice when walking me to the inn. Says he makes runs coast to coast, across the Channel. But he wouldn’t tell me what he’s running. Said it wasn’t for my ears to hear.”
“What about a name?” Audrey asked.
“Sin.”
At that, a shiver raced up her spine. “Sin? My, what a name.”
Becky shrugged. “They don’t use their real names, the smugglers.”
That wasn’t helpful, but this was certainly more than they’d known before. “Thank you, Becky.”
She didn’t appear happy with herself. If anything, she appeared disappointed. “I just wish I’d known what to say earlier. But I wasn’t sure who to trust.”
The young woman’s apprehension was understandable. She hadn’t overheard enough from the baron or Mrs. Plimpton to defend stepping forward, and who could she have gone to anyhow, what with the baron having been in charge of the investigation and inquest?
Audrey turned to Greer. “It sounds like we need to speak to Mrs. Plimpton.”
Becky grabbed Audrey’s arm. “No!” With a sharp look from Greer, she drew back her hand. “Please, Your Grace, she’ll dismiss me if she finds out what I’ve told you, and there’s no work elsewhere in town. My father’s got no work either, what with the shipbuilding down to nothing these days, and I’m trying to keep my brother from joining the smugglers.”
She felt sympathy for Becky. The last thing she wanted to do was get her dismissed from the inn. But if Mrs. Plimpton had been involved with the baron and some potential blackmail scheme, she may also know more about the two deaths. And the mention of blackmail connected decidedly to the note left in Audrey’s Paris hotel.
“Lord Neatham and Lieutenant Edmunds need to know. Two people have been killed.”
“And here’s me, knowing too much,” Becky said, tears welling.
She wasn’t being irrationally hysterical; therewasreason to be cautious. Audrey nodded. “Very well. I’ll speak to just Lord Neatham for now and we’ll try to?—”
The barest motion from ahead, on the path to the barracks, stopped her. She looked hard in that direction, certain she’d seen something. And then, a man in a hat, greatcoat, and scarf jumped out from behind a patch of scrub brush. He ran in the opposite direction fast and disappeared from view, descending into the ditch that ran the perimeter of the fortification’s austere walls. That had been no soldier in red wool, but a civilian.
“Stay here,” Audrey said to Greer and Becky as she moved out of the scrub brush, thorns snagging her skirt as she went.
“Where are you going?” Greer disregarded the request to stay put and followed. “Your Grace?”
Audrey picked up her pace toward the barracks, even though a censorious voice in her head—one that sounded an awful lot like Hugh—admonished her to stop and think rationally. Butwith this information from Becky still so glitteringly new, she didn’t want to stop. Didn’t want to allow fear to curb her. Besides, there were plenty of soldiers nearby if she required aid. She picked up her speed, aware that her maid was not far behind.
She went down a small embankment and into the ditch. There were any number of boot prints that had recently trampled the thin, crusty snow, and though she looked left and right, there was no sign of the man now. Audrey kicked at a clump of snow.
