Page 73 of Secrets of the Heart

“I don’t know! That is what is so ghastly about it! Oh, God! It is all ghastly!” Anthony pulled at his hair, leaving it sticking out in clumps. His face was stamped with confusion and desperation, and Rachel thought that he might burst into tears at any moment.

“All right, Anthony, calm down,” she said firmly but quietly, taking his arm and leading him over to a chair, then pushing him gently down into it. She sat down directly in front of him and looked straight into his eyes. “Now, just tell me exactly what happened. Michael has to know everything if he is to help you.”

Birkshaw nodded, seeming somewhat less distraught. “All right. What I did not tell you before was that after I got the second note, I received a third. It said—it said that I was to become reacquainted with you.”

“What?” Michael and Rachel said at the same time. Michael strode over to where Birkshaw sat.

“What do you mean, ‘reacquainted?”’ he asked, looking thunderous.

Birkshaw gazed up at him blankly. “I don’t know. That is all it said. I think it read, ‘Pick up your friendship with Lady Westhampton again.’ Or something like that. I assumed that he meant I should call on her. I have no idea why. It made no sense to me.”

“No doubt because it is senseless,” Michael commented tartly.

“Was it the footman?” Anthony asked. “Hargreaves? Is he the one behind this?”

“No,” Michael responded tersely. “If he had sent you those notes, he would have asked you for money to keep from implicating you. Most people would have.”

“It seems absurd,” Anthony went on. “I can see that anyone would disbelieve me if I told them. But it is the truth.”

“Where is the note about Rachel?” Michael asked. “I want to see it.”

Birkshaw looked sheepish. “I—it made me angry, and I wadded it up and tossed it in the fire. I don’t have it. I see now that I should have kept it. It would be proof of some sort, but…well, I didn’t think.”

“Is that why you came to me and asked for Michael’s help?” Rachel probed. “Did the note tell you to do that?”

“Oh, no. You see, at first, I thought, ‘I won’t do it.’ I wasn’t going to let him scare me, whoever he was. But then it seemed like such a little thing to do, especially compared to people suspecting me of killing Doreen. And it made me wonder, you know, if someone really had killed her and why. Just so I would pay you a call or two? That’s insane.”

“It would certainly seem so,” Michael agreed.

“Then I remembered what Lord Arbuthnot said about you, Westhampton—about your having solved things when the Bow Street Runners could not. And it seemed to me that that was the way out of my predicament!” His face brightened a little as he remembered his cleverness. “I decided that I would call on you, Rachel, and whoever it was would know, I suppose, that I had done so. And he would not do anything to me. But while I was there, I would ask you to get your husband’s help on the matter. And perhaps that would get me out of this thing altogether.”

He paused, looking from one to the other in a hangdog way. “I’m sorry. I should have told you all about it right from the beginning. I realize that now. You are suspicious of me because I did not. It was just—I felt like such a coward for giving in to the fellow and calling on you. And it all seemed so ridiculous—I was sure you would think me a fool. I am sorry,” he finished lamely.

“Is there anything else you have not told us?” Michael asked, looking stern. “Any more instructions from this man?”

Anthony shook his head. “No. He has sent me nothing. I cannot understand why anyone would do this to me. I did what he asked. Do you think he knows that I asked you for help?”

“It’s possible.”

“I don’t understand. Why would anyone do this to me? Who hates me that much?”

“I’m not sure that it is you at whom all this is aimed,” Michael replied, looking grim.

18

Michael turned to Rachel. “I think it is time we took our leave. If I were you, Mr. Birkshaw, I would be very careful over the course of the next few days. I will try to find out what is going on as quickly as I can. But I cannot rule out the possibility that you are in danger.”

Anthony stared back at him, his eyes so wide that they looked as if they might pop out of his head at any moment.

Michael and Rachel left him there contemplating his future and started walking toward home. For a moment they strode along in silence, then Michael burst out, “What poppycock! That is the biggest bag of nonsense I have ever heard.”

“You don’t believe him?” Rachel asked, looking at her husband.

“No, but it is so idiotic that I cannot believe anyone would make up a story so feeble!” Michael exclaimed. “If he had really killed his wife, surely he could have come up with a more intelligent story than that.”

Rachel nodded. “Yes. Well, I think we know one thing for certain. Anthony could not be the mastermind behind this…this web of crime. He is far too stupid.”

Michael let out a short bark of laughter and turned to look at her. Rachel’s blunt statement let him know, more than any honeyed words of love and desire could have, that he had no need to feel jealousy where Anthony Birkshaw was concerned.