“When he did so,” Wren went on, “did he make any mention of where he intended to go after departing your company?”
Tolhurst said nothing.
“It speaks well of your loyalty to your kin for you to go so far to hide your nephew from his creditors,” said Wren. “Yet I hope you’d see fit to take Mr Grigsby, if not myself, into your confidence, so we might render what assistance we may. I assure you, while Mr Grigsby is disappointed in Mr Knoll, he wishes to see him well nonetheless.”
Still, Tolhurst said nothing.
Wren waited a moment further before coming to his point. “Where is your nephew, Mr Tolhurst?”
Tolhurst gave him a long and solemn look. “Where no one will find him and from whence he shall never return.”
Wren pressed on. “But how can you be certain—”
“Where is Flora?” Tolhurst demanded.
Wren drew up short. He’d never heard that tone from Tolhurst before. Nor had he thought Tolhurst bold enough—despite his evident passion—to refer to an individual he believed to be a young lady by her Christian name alone in conversation with a near-stranger.
And yet, though his words flared with impatience, the stare Tolhurst levelled at Wren felt as cold as frost creeping over a grave.
Wren endeavoured to match it with an expression of perfect indifference as he echoed back, “Where no one will find her and from whence she shall never return.”
Tolhurst’s face drained of blood. He fell back a full stride and choked out, “What—dead!?”
Wren waited in silence, watching the façade ripple and shift—the change from white to ashen grey as the cheeks regained their colour, the eyes that had flown wide in shock narrowing to suspicious slits before returning to half-lidded sangfroid, the parted lips pressing together in a thin line—as Tolhurst realised all he’d revealed in those two fateful words.
“It seems,” Tolhurst said when his equilibrium had returned, “we are evenly matched, Mr Lofthouse. I have in my possession matter enough to send you to the prison hulks, if not the gallows. And now that you know my nephew’s fate, you may say the same of me.”
“I know nothing I didn’t already suspect,” Wren admitted, not bothering to disguise his dry tone. “Though I’d like to learn the full truth of the matter, if you’re willing to tell it. We need have no secrets between us now.”
Tolhurst didn’t reply in words. Instead, with a heavy sigh, he dropped into his desk chair.
Wren tried again, his voice low and soft. “Where is the body, Mr Tolhurst?”
Tolhurst ran a hand down his face, not meeting Wren’s eye. His gaze fell upon some unfixed point between the fireplace and the window.
“When did it happen?” Wren pressed. “Can you tell me that, at least?”
A long minute passed before Tolhurst spoke. “On the second of May.”
The very day Felix had left Staple Inn in disgrace. How often, upon Felix’s habitual departures from Mr Grigsby’s office, Wren had wished he’d seen the last of him. Little did he realize upon that day that his wish had been granted. Rather than relief, a gnawing void bloomed within his chest, a hollow sickness that threatened to consume him.
“He came to me in the evening,” Tolhurst continued without Wren’s prompting. “Mr Grigsby had advised him to do so—or so he claimed. I suppose you might verify?”
Wren forced himself to nod.
“It seems Mr Grigsby likewise advised him to sell off all he could bear to part with,” Tolhurst went on. “To that end, he drew out this miniature—this portrait of his betrothed, which I had commissioned for him to mark the occasion of his eighteenth birthday—and endeavoured to induce me to purchase it from him, as if it were so much dross.”
Wren suppressed a flinch. Tolhurst had spat those final words with a violence Wren had never expected to hear from him. Much as Felix, Wren supposed, had never expected violence of any sort from his uncle.
Venom infused Tolhurst’s voice as he continued. “He told me he’d known for some time how I watched after Flora. Admiring her from afar. Never doing anything more, out of respect for my nephew’s claim. Respect I’ve since realised was in no way his due. Regardless, he said I ought to buy it off him, to have something to remember her by when he took her to wife. And when I hesitated… he said he might be persuaded to break it off with her entirely, if I agreed to take on his debts alongside his bounty.” Tolhurst met Wren’s eye at last with the same cold gaze as before. “He offered me her honour as if it were shillings and pence.”
Wren winced. For Daniel’s sake and not Tolhurst’s, though Tolhurst needn’t know it.
“I ask you, Mr Lofthouse,” Tolhurst continued. “What gentleman could hear such an insult and not feel moved to answer it?”
Wren waited for further details. When none came, he made another attempt. “The body, Mr Tolhurst. Where did you hide the body?”
Tolhurst did not turn his head, but his eyes slid sideways to the indigo night beyond the window. “I agreed to his terms with my tongue. My heart spoke differently. Felix suspected nothing. We shook hands upon it. With the matter settled in his mind, it was easy to persuade him to take an evening stroll to cool our heads. It was only natural such a stroll would take us down to the river-bank, so convenient to Cemetery Gate. Even more natural that, as we stood side-by-side admiring the clear night, I should lay an uncle’s comforting hand upon my nephew’s shoulder. It felt still more natural for my other hand to come to rest upon his throat.”
