The Peculiar Case of Lord Finsbury's Diamonds: A Casebook of Barnaby Adair Short Novel (The Casebook of Barnaby Adair) by Stephanie Laurens

dismissive—face.
     Griselda firmly shook her head. “Such a construction rests on Mitchell’s character being the sort to make chivalrous gestures, and given he had pressed his attentions on Gwen…” Griselda grimaced and met Penelope’s eyes. “I really can’t see it.”
     “I can’t either.” Penelope paused, then shifted, resettling the weight of the baby. “But we need to start focusing on the important facts and ignore the rest, or we’ll never get anywhere. Let’s concentrate solely on the murder itself—let’s see if we can sort out the order of events so we can see what holes we have in our knowledge, and then work on filling them in.”
     Stokes nodded. “All right. Where should we start—with Lord Finsbury meeting Mitchell?”
     Penelope opened her eyes wide, then waggled her head. “I hadn’t thought to go back that far, but perhaps you’re right. They met at White’s?”
     “Yes.” Barnaby set down his empty glass. “And I can check at the club tomorrow, see if anyone there remembers Mitchell—the doorman almost certainly will—and find out what they can tell me, about Mitchell, and Finsbury, too.”
     “So Finsbury and Mitchell meet at White’s.” Penelope took up the tale. “We don’t know how often or exactly when, but at least once recently, and Finsbury, impressed by Mitchell’s financial successes, takes it into his head to put Gwen in Mitchell’s path by inviting Mitchell to a house party—and then Finsbury gets his sister Agnes to organize a house party to suit.”
     “Which brings us to the day on which Mitchell, along with all the other guests, arrived at Finsbury Court.” Stokes consulted his notebook. “That was three days before the day Mitchell left.”
     “And apparently those three days passed in the usual pleasantry of a typical house party,” Barnaby said. “No one sensed or witnessed anything out of the ordinary until Mitchell pressed his attentions on Gwen—”
     “Wait, wait!” Penelope waved. “On that point.” She looked at Stokes. “The way your interviewees related it, Mitchell deliberately sought Gwen out and inveigled her to walk with him alone in the conservatory. So it doesn’t seem as if he was suddenly swept away by passion, but rather that it was a calculated act.” Penelope frowned. “Which only raises yet another question: Why would he do such a thing? Did he want to be thrown out, because surely he would have noticed that Culver was hovering over Gwen…or was Mitchell such a conceited ass he assumed Gwen would favor him?” Penelope paused, then made a disgusted sound. “As I said, romance complicates things.”
     Barnaby tipped his head her way. “Yet that’s a valid observation, and a question we should bear in mind. Did Mitchell engineer his eviction from the house, and, if so, why?”
     “And did any of the above have anything to do with the Finsbury diamonds?” Stokes shook his head. “We’re going around and around again.”
     “Then let’s get back to the murder itself,” Griselda said. “Regardless of his motives, Mitchell was evicted late one afternoon. He left the house and was driven to the village in the pony-trap, I think you said?”
     Stokes nodded. “He got on the coach to London and, as far as we know, traveled all the way back to town. Then, at about midday the next day, Mitchell dispatched a letter to Finsbury Court, to Gwen. The letter was delivered to her at the dinner table and, surprised by the contents, she said aloud that Mitchell planned to return to the house the next day—she didn’t specify the time—and that he’d said he had something he wanted to show her.”
    Stokes glanced at the others. When no one spoke, he went on, “The following afternoon, Mitchell arrived on the afternoon coach from London with, we assume, the diamonds in his pocket. The pony-trap hadn’t been sent for him—he hadn’t asked for it to be sent—so he walked up the path, stepped into the