The Custom House Murders (Captain Lacey Mysteries #15) - Ashley Gardner Page 0,9

not giving his batman in the regiment much to do. I’d both envied his carefree ways and felt a bit superior, as I’d had a wife and daughter to return to every night, not an empty tent. That was before my wife had decided a steady life with another man was preferable to following the drum, and had deserted me, taking our daughter with her.

“And what do you plan to do now that you’ve returned to England?” Sir Nathaniel went on.

Eden shrugged. “Find a house to live in. Look up my uncle. See what I can do with myself.”

“Marry?” Conant suggested.

Eden laughed heartily, though the laugh was strained. “Not I. Well, unless I stumble over a woman who steals my heart. But I’m a confirmed bachelor, me.”

True, while Eden had had affairs when I’d known him—discreet ones—he’d never shown a penchant for chasing a wife.

Conant finished writing, laid his pen in its tray, and folded his hands on the desk.

“Major Eden, you have been arrested for a serious crime. Please tell me what happened two days before this, once you arrived in England on your ship.” He sent Eden a stare from eyes that had not lost their sharpness. “Everything, please.”

Eden’s pulse beat in his throat, and he strained to keep his voice steady. “Well, let me see. The ship was delayed at the end of our voyage. We had to wait a bit far up the Thames for a fog to clear, then up the river we came. Quite a lot of ships waited with us, all of us bottled up. We put in at the London Docks, which I thought astonishing. Huge place, all enclosed by warehouses, with ships jammed in, unloading all sorts. Our ship contained quite a lot of cocoa and rum, well-guarded, so I am surprised it was burgled. The customs and excise men were waiting for us, searching thoroughly. They seized my baggage, what there was of it, and took it away. I was fetching it today when Mr. Pomeroy, ah, intervened.”

Pomeroy chuckled.

“Why did they take your bags?” Conant asked.

“Oh … er, as I told Captain Lacey, the customs agents searched most of our belongings. I was traveling alone, not carrying much. Excise men are inclined to be suspicious.”

And he’d been visiting the hold often. Someone must have reported that.

“Where did you go once you disembarked?” Sir Nathaniel prompted.

“Hired a coach and toddled off to St. James’s to find a place to lie my head. I tried at my old club, Brooks’s. Hadn’t been there in, oh, fifteen years? Never went much during the war. They didn’t have any rooms available, but the doorman sent me to lodgings around the corner in St. James’s Place. I thought the house quite tolerable, and I moved in.”

“But you left these quite tolerable rooms and returned to Wapping, where Mr. Warrilow had found an abode. How did you know where he was?”

“Asked, didn’t I?” Eden’s flush returned. “Look here, I’ll confess. Not to his murder,” he added hastily. “Warrilow was a small planter in Antigua. He came to London for an errand he trusted no one else to do, so he said, but he did not tell me what errand. He grew sugar, so I imagine it had something to do with that trade. We did not see eye to eye on the business of plantations. He believed slavery was the most economically sound of practices, no matter how many reasoned counterpoints I gave him, and was quite boastful of how much work he ground out of the poor sods unlucky enough to belong to him. I went to see him because I’d lent him a book on the subject and I wanted it returned.”

Eden’s color was so deep I feared he’d drop of apoplexy. Conant studied him, while Eden squirmed. He’d just changed his story from saying he’d gone to talk to Warrilow about business in Antigua—this story was likely also a lie.

He didn’t lie about arguing with Warrilow on the ship or about his belongings being seized and released, I didn’t think, but about why he’d hunted up the man after the voyage. Eden must have known where to find Warrilow—the docklands was a warren of wharves, taverns, and lodging houses, difficult to navigate if you did not know them. Which meant they must have made arrangements beforehand to meet.

“I see. What time did you arrive at his rooms?”

“Nine-thirty in the evening. I heard the church clock strike the half hour as I arrived. I