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“Mister Fitzroy,” Mr. Melby greeted him as he took the rear-facing seat near the door. “Clara mentioned that you were instrumental in her arrival. Something about a stuck carriage.”
He nodded. “It was nothing.”
“For you, perhaps,” Melby said. “With muscles like that, I’d imagine you could lift a few carriages.”
The other men laughed at that and he appreciated the compliment. To think, he’d ever considered Clara to be an elitist. Both siblings had the same air of kindness. “I did a stint as a fighter. Still carry the muscles.”
“Well, your efforts are appreciated,” Kinross added. “Miss Melby’s arrival was most appreciated. She is an angel that should be treasured.”
Ralph gave a quick nod even as his skin bristled at the man’s sentiment. “Angel. You called her that yesterday.”
Mr. Melby snorted. “You’re too familiar with my sister, Kinross.”
Kinross waved his hand. “I don’t mean any offense. Miss Melby has always been a great comfort to me, and with the loss of my father…” He let out a long breath. “I need a whisky.”
The other men fell silent as Ralph leaned forward. “I’m very sorry about your father. Losing a parent is always difficult.”
“Indeed.” Kinross waved his hand, settling back in his seat as he swiped a hand across his face.
“Was it an extended illness?” Ralph grimaced at his own words, hoping they weren’t too obvious. Why the queen chose him for such a subtle job, he’d never know. What was more, he hated himself a little for even asking. Why had he allowed himself to be pulled into this tawdry web?
But Kinross only shook his head. “Not at all. He seemed healthy to the very end, going on his daily walks to the village, spending time out in the barn. Part of me is glad that he didn’t suffer. He never had to waste away from illness.”
Ralph gave a stiff shake of his head. Kinross didn’t sound like a man who hated his father, but then again, he hadn’t said anything that might exonerate himself, either.
They arrived in the pub and settled at a table, all the men getting a drink. They talked of little as they drank. Meanwhile, Ralph racked his brain, attempting to bring the conversation back to the earl’s father, though he couldn’t think of a way to tactfully do so.
Excusing himself from the table, he started for the back. He needed to move, figure out how to steer the conversation back to Kinross’s father once again without being too obvious. His body craved activity under normal circumstances and these were hardly normal. Days in the carriage, followed by a funeral. And then there was the fact he was poking into a man’s personal affairs. Granted, he didn’t like the man and he half suspected his guilt, but if Kinross were innocent, then that would make Ralph the guilty party.
But he stopped toward the end of the bar as a conversation caught his ears.
“Look at him sitting over there, would you? Day before the new earl came home, the senior Kinross walked through my door looking right as rain,” one man claimed, his finger up in the air. “What does that tell you?”
Another grimaced. “Father and son never did get on too well.”
The barmaid walked by, several drinks balanced in her hands. “Don’t you two go stirring trouble now. The new earl is the one you’ll have to live with.”
But the first gentleman snorted. “I’m too old to worry about such things. And I’m not even saying the former earl was a good man. Always berating his son. Heavy-handed with the whip too. I remember that. But his death. It ain’t right. Something stinks.”
The barmaid didn’t answer, other than to shake her head and roll her eyes as if to say Save me from gossiping men, before she kept going.
But the two men didn’t heed her as they continued talking. “It was Lizzie Rathborn that found him. Collapsed on the trail and looking unnatural,” the second one added with a nod as though that explained everything.
Ralph leaned against the wall, attempting to look as though he were just waiting for someone while he trained one ear on the men’s conversation.
“Has anyone spoken to Doctor Hardinger? Could it be…” and then he dropped his voice low, “poison?”
So even the village suspected foul play. Ralph’s stomach clenched as he scrubbed a hand down his face. It made him feel a bit better and less like a power-grabbing monger. He began mentally filing away the names and clues he overheard. This could be vital information.
“I don’t know about that,” the other said, pulling his coat straighter. “No one around here disliked him that much, did they?”
“No one but his son,” the other filled in and then took a swig of his ale.
“The new lord is a bit of a dandy and he’s never met a looking glass he didn’t wish to admire, but…”
The two men fell silent. They’d contemplated without accusing the new earl of any real misdeed. But Ralph had a few bits of information. He now knew who’d found the former earl and the doctor who had examined him.
It gave him a few leads to follow up on and a chance at solving this mystery. He could contemplate the merit of his own actions later.
