I smiled in commiseration. “Did they mention where they’d come from or where they were headed? Do you know where they intended to stay?”
Her brow furrowed. “I . . . I thought they said they’d come from somewhere in England, and that they were headed to a relative of Lord Shellingham’s near Edinburgh. But beyond that I’m afraid I don’t know. Maybe to Lord Shellingham’s estate—Pickwick House, near Berwick.”
The timing was simply too perfect. Not only had these two young men been at Clintmains Hall on the night that Lord Buchan’s bones were stolen, but they’d also been “somewhere in England” around the time the ransom was paid and sent through the Cheviot Hills into England. Then they were here, in time to mark Lord Fleming’s gravestone before reaching Musselburgh a few days later, where we’d seen Lord Shellingham.
I wondered if Lord Shellingham’s Pickwick House was their headquarters. After all, it was located within easy distance of Edinburgh, as well as the Borders. Was that where they stored the bones between the time they were stolen and the ransom was paid? Were the Edinburgh body snatchers staying there as well or somewhere nearby? It seemed worth looking into.
Lady Fleming had been watching my face as I puzzled through this, and she asked in some anxiety, “You said you’d help him. What are you going to do?”
“First we need to find him and talk to him. If he’ll confide in us and let us help him out of the mess he’s landed himself in, I’m sure the magistrate will be more lenient with him.”
“Perhaps if they paid back all the money . . .” Her words stammered to a stop upon seeing my doubtful expression.
“I’m afraid that would be quite impossible. Two of his friends have already spent tidy sums of it.”
She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, and I hastened to reassure her.
“Don’t despair. I promise we’ll do what we can.”
She looked up at me, inhaled deeply, and nodded.
“The best thing you can do is carry on as before. And should your nephew or any of his friends return here, send word to me at Blakelaw House.”
She inhaled again. “I will.”
I turned to go, but her next words brought me up short.
“You know. You’re not what I expected.”
I glanced over my shoulder and offered her a tight smile. “I rarely am.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The next few days were spent in careful planning. Trevor recruited a cattle farmer and his son who swore they knew the Cheviot Hills as intimately as anyone, and arranged for them to be ready on short notice should we need them to guide us into the hills on another ransom drop. We had no way of knowing whether the culprits would use the same method as the last time, but we’d decided it was best to be prepared in the event that they did. Our hope was still to catch the men before the ransom note was even delivered, but if we didn’t, we would be as ready as we could be to catch them when the ransom was paid.
With the information we’d uncovered in Beckford, Mr. Young, Lord Shellingham, Mr. Erskine, and Mr. Fergusson had jumped to the top of our list of suspects, but Gage wanted to be certain of a few last details before we confronted them.
“Do your best to already know the answer to your question before you ever ask it,” he told me with a sharp-eyed gaze. “Then it’s harder for a suspect to mislead you, and easier to intimidate them into giving you the truth. If they think you already know, they’ll recognize the futility in lying.”
So in that effort, we took Anderley with us to Clintmains Hall the next day when we visited my aunt and uncle. Gage believed, and I had to agree, that a fellow servant might be able to extract more information from the staff than their employers could, especially if the servant knew they’d done something wrong. And true to his theory, Anderley did return with one juicy tidbit of information we hadn’t known before. Something that when combined with the information Sim’s Christie had told us about the two men leaving the Hogmanay Ball pointed the finger even more squarely at the quartet of young men. So we made plans to visit Pickwick House the next day.