The Peculiar Case of Lord Finsbury's Diamonds: A Casebook of Barnaby Adair Short Novel (The Casebook of Barnaby Adair) by Stephanie Laurens Page B

adhered to their original plan and left. But then how would she have felt when she learned via the servants’ hall that Fletcher was expected back the following afternoon, and that he’d arranged to speak with Miss Finsbury?”
     “Kitty would have felt very, very uncertain,” Griselda said. “She would have tried to meet Fletcher before he reached the house, to find out what was going on and where she stood.”
     “Indeed.” Penelope’s eyes gleamed. “So let’s say she truly fears the worst, that she suspects Fletcher intends to throw her over for Miss Finsbury and—and we shouldn’t forget this point—returning to the social circle into which he’d been born. Kitty is furious. She’s a woman betrayed. So she sets the foot-trap, leaves the hoop-hammer in the bushes nearby, and waits for Fletcher further down the path, closer to the village.”
     “Fletcher arrives.” Stokes took up the tale. “They meet and Kitty taxes him with her fears. Fletcher confirms those fears, then, literally as well as figuratively, he puts Kitty aside and walks on—and she watches him walk into the trap, then she follows and uses the hoop-hammer to wipe out his charming—but deceiving—face.”
     “Oh!” Penelope wriggled. “That fits the facts so much better than anything else. I always said this was a crime of passion.”
     Barnaby didn’t look quite so convinced. “I suppose Kitty’s reaction—her subsequent distress—might have been the result of a combination of emotions.”
     “Including,” Stokes somewhat grimly said, “fear for her own skin. Murder, after all, is a hanging offense.”
     “Before we get to the hanging,” Barnaby dryly observed, “we need to line up the evidence. We already know Kitty has no alibi for the critical time, and given she’s been at the house for months, she might have stumbled across the hoop-hammer and the foot-trap at any time over the past weeks.”
     “Hmm,” Penelope said. “As it’s a crime of passion, there won’t be any other evidence, not that I can see.”
     Stokes slapped his hands on his thighs and stood. “We’ll need to rattle her.” Expectant satisfaction lighting his expression, he met Barnaby’s eyes as he, too, got to his feet. “Kitty’s had another day to dwell on her actions—let’s go back tomorrow morning and see what we can shake out of her.”
     Barnaby’s brows rose as he turned to give Penelope his hands. “It seems we’re nearing the end of the case and it’s proved to be reasonably straightforward after all.”
     Grinning, Penelope grasped his fingers and let him haul her upright. “The Chief Commissioner—not to mention the Finsburys—will be relieved.”
     Griselda stood with her arm wound in Stokes’s. “Indeed. And it’s only taken the pair of you two days—with our help.”
     The emphasis she placed on the last words left them all grinning.
     With Penelope and Griselda making plans for later in the week and Barnaby telling Stokes that he would pick him up in his curricle to drive out to Finsbury Court in the morning, the four ambled out into the front hall.
     
    * * *
    A lthough it was still early, Penelope elected to be wise and retire. She wasn’t surprised that Barnaby chose to join her; he would be leaving early to return to Finsbury Court and tie up the case—so he could return to hovering over her.
     She didn’t need to ask to know that, regardless of the lure of the case, that was his underlying motive.
     After he had helped her to disrobe, don her now voluminous nightgown, and then awkwardly climb onto their big bed, she lay back against her small mountain of pillows and, having left her glasses on for the purpose, watched him undress.
     When the show was finally over and he doused the lamp and joined her under the covers, setting her glasses aside, she turned his way and focused as well as she could on his face. “Did you ever get a look at the diamonds?”
     “No.” Turning onto his