Page 147 of A Story of Love

“I did. And…this will sound astounding, but I knew the man.” He then told her, as simply as possible, about finding Joe Jensen and then discovering he was the brother of the man who’d killed Percy.

“That is an incredible coincidence. My God, Fast! I am astonished that you didn’t kill him on the spot when you found out.”

Fast looked away from her. “I… wasn’t kind to him.”

“I don’t think anyone could blame you for that. If somebody admitted to me that a member of their family had killed Jeremy… well, I would want my pound of flesh, even if the messenger was innocent.”

“I was insane with rage, but Gregg had the sense to restrain me until I could come back to my senses. You see, Jensen’s brother—Albert—had acted at the direction of another man and did so under duress.”

“What do you mean? Did somebody give him money to do it? Who?

“Jensen said his brother wasn’t paid to kill Percy, but that he did it because somebody threatened to destroy his family—specifically Jensen’s two sisters and his mother—if he didn’t comply.”

“Good Lord!”

“Jensen said he would only tell me the real killer’s identity after I’d done something for him. He said he had a signed confession that his brother had written years ago—an insurance policy against the man who made him do the murder, in case he tried to hurt either Albert or his family. As things transpired, the real murderer didn’t wait for Albert Jensen to talk.”

“He had him murdered, too?” Lorelei guessed.

“Close enough. He had both Albert and Joseph press-ganged. The last thing the killer said to them was that if they ever uttered his name to anyone their two sisters and mother would pay for their indiscretion.”

“What a nasty, nasty character.”

“Yes. Especially since he punished the three women, regardless.”

She swallowed. “I’m almost afraid to ask. What did he do?”

“It’s awful, Lorelei. Too awful for your ears.”

She gave him an exasperated look. “I work, er, worked for a newspaper, Fast.”

He held up his hands. “Fine, fine. He sold the girls to a bawd who runs several of the worst establishments in London. The mother he sold to a workhouse.”

She bit her lip, her eyes becoming glassy.

“To make a long, horrible story shorter, Albert sickened and died less than a year later. Joe knew he couldn’t go home—not with the murderer’s threat still clear in his mind—and he resigned himself to never seeing his family again. And then Pigot took over as captain. And you know how that turned out.”

“The poor man,” Lorelei murmured.

“That is not even the worst of it. Jensen had consumption and was dying by the time I picked him up. He had tried to send word to his mother using a mate’s name—so as not to alert the killer, if he were still watching Jensen’s family—but the letter was undeliverable. And then of course the crew mutinied, and he had no chance of getting back to England and looking for them.”

“So you told him you would find them?”

“Yes, in exchange for the confession and his own testimony, although I doubted he’d survive that long. I thought it would be consumption that killed him, but I was wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

Fast sighed. “Everything might have gone along as planned if not for three men on the crew who overheard the conversation with Jensen and decided to stick their hands in. They must have killed him while trying to get the confession from him—although I believe Joe took one of the men with him as only two came to England.” He shrugged. “I will never know what truly happened to poor Joe. But I do know that the men found the confession because they used it to extort money from the killer.”

She shook her head. “This is just so… incredible that I don’t even know what to say. How did you ever unravel it all?”

He gave her a wry smile. “I think you might have been the key to that.”

“Me? But…how?”

“You were poking into matters that led you in the direction of the killer.”

She blinked. “So…then you were not exaggerating when you said I was in danger?”