The White City

by Grace Hitchcock

  “Sorry. I’m exhausted from today.”

  “From searching? Did you find anything of Miss Lance?”

  Her amusement faded at once. “No, but it wasn’t from lack of searching. I’m praying that Holmes is telling the truth and that she simply left by her own volition. Holmes had Owens and me doing the oddest things. He had me carrying down the basins from all the third-floor rooms while he and Owens moved all the furnishings to the second floor and then set to work removing most of the doorknobs from the third floor. He’s up to something devious, but for the life of me, I know not what.” She ran her handkerchief over her face. “He will be out of town this evening and has given everyone the rest of the afternoon off as well as tomorrow. I’ve made up my mind that I need to seize this opportunity, break into that locked room, and search the place one last time. If I am ever going to find my evidence, tonight is the night, so I will go home for a bite to eat, make my plans, and then return.”

  Jude loathed the idea of her returning to the Englewood building, especially at night. He rubbed his hand over his jaw and shook his head, desperate to protect her. “Inspector Wylde told me at the very beginning of all this that he doesn’t want you to be in any danger, and with Miss Lance’s disappearance, it sounds like this is getting far, far too dangerous for you to do alone. I’m sure he will be confident enough in your findings now.”

  “I need this evening.” She said as they hopped off the car.

  “You can’t—”

  “I must. Detective Thorpe—Jude. If I have the chance to save Miss Lance, I must take it. I will go tonight, with or without you.”

  With a relenting sigh, Jude showed her to the door before taking another grip car to Saunders’s law office. Going around to the back door, he knocked lightly and waited. If he does not show up, I will hunt him down to whatever lunch party that peacock is prancing around and grab him by the scruff—

  Jude’s train of thought was interrupted as Saunders jerked open the door and fairly pulled him into a dark back room, file in hand. “You have something for me?” Jude asked, straightening to his full height as he looked down on the man.

  “Yes. As I said, they only placed initials on the loan papers, but for the life insurance policy, which I didn’t recall until after your departure, they were required to use their names.”

  “And?” Jude nearly growled.

  “The man’s name is Horace A. Williams.”

  Jude jotted the name down unnecessarily. He would never forget it. He would search the city until he found his Horace Williams. “And the sister’s name?”

  “Minnie Williams.”

  Jude gripped the edge of the desk, feeling as though Saunders had punched him in the chest. Minnie Williams. The same name of the woman on the deed of Holmes’s Wilmette property. He swallowed, processing what it meant. “Do you know where Minnie Williams is living now?”

  “Living? Can’t say. Since you caught me outside the club, I’ve been doing some checking on Miss Williams’s policy, and apparently there was a claim on her life insurance not too long ago. I made a note of it here.” He slid a notepad across his desktop and pointed to the claim date.

  Two weeks before Victor’s death. Jude raked his hands through his hair and groaned. If Holmes had used an alias and paraded Minnie, his so-called lover, as his sister, and she had disappeared right before an insurance policy had been claimed … Winnifred was in grave danger.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “You have been the last dream of my soul.”

  ~Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

  To get out of going to a neighbor’s ball with her aunt and father, Winnifred did the only thing she could in the situation. Come down with an abrupt stomachache. After reassuring her family that she would be fine without their care, she slowly climbed the stairs, the train of her favorite ivory evening gown trailing behind her as she bid them farewell with a hand to her stomach and a groan. At the click of the front door, she rushed to her bedroom’s window seat.

  The russet sky dripped down onto each windowpane as she gazed out to the street below and watched her father and aunt leave in the carriage, thankful they would be busy dancing until long after midnight. Wringing her hands, Winnifred paced to the mantel clock and back to the window. Where is Jude? She didn’t have time to change as she had to be at the Englewood building and back before her father returned. She would give Jude three minutes to appear. Then she would leave without him.

  Two minutes ticked by and a hired carriage rolled to a stop under the streetlamp on Lakeshore Drive. Knowing it was Jude, she raced down the stairs in her dinner slippers. If she were to sneak upstairs to the third floor unnoticed by the boarders, she would need to have stealth on her side. Lord, help me. Wrapping her shawl about her shoulders, she stepped outside, the warm, damp air enfolding her in its dark embrace.

  Jude hopped out of the carriage, his brows rising as his gaze fell to her attire. “You might be new to this whole detective business, but wearing an ivory dinner gown isn’t exactly the most surreptitious choice.”

  She laughed and clutched the fetching powder-blue silk shawl closer. “I was trying to be convincing in my efforts to attend a dinner with my father and aunt. If I dressed in a navy gown meant for working hours, they would know something was amiss, and I didn’t have time to change. So, you could say it is a very surreptitious choice.” Her lips quirked, mocking him, when her stomach rumbled so loudly she would have laughed if she weren’t so stressed over the evening before her. She pressed a hand to her waist before looking up to him, heat spreading across her cheeks.

  He held out a hand to her, but instead of opening the carriage door, he stood in front of it. “Before we go one more step, there is something you need to know. While Holmes is out of town, I still want you to be on guard. I believe Holmes is responsible for the disappearance … and, most likely, the death of Minnie Williams, who is the so-called relation of the very Mr. Williams I have been seeking all these months.”

  She pressed her hand to her mouth, tears filling her eyes as she grasped his hand. “Your Mr. Williams was Holmes all this time? He—he really is a killer?”

  “I can’t prove it yet with the paper trail that I have, so I’ll have to get a warrant to search his house, but I believe Victor must have found out about Holmes filing a claim on Minnie William’s life insurance policy and was ready to make an arrest when Holmes murdered him to keep the secret.”

  Her stomach roiled. “And now I am positive that Miss Lance is still in the Englewood building. You may need a warrant to search, but I fortunately do not.”

  “Miss Wylde!” A voice called before Jude could even respond to Winnifred.

  Jude released her hand. He didn’t need to turn to know Percy was running up to them. He glanced at Winnifred and noticed her cheeks pale at the sight of him, sending a spasm of hope jolting through his chest. Surely that was not a sign of an eager bride.

  Percival trotted up to them dressed in black coattails and swiped off his top hat, his full attention on her. “Miss Wylde, please, don’t think I have come to press for an answer.”

  An answer. Jude’s hungry gaze met hers, and in that instant, he was certain that she knew his secret, that he would have proposed to her if her father had not intervened. Her eyes widened and her lips parted, but Percival continued on, not realizing the quake that had rumbled to life between the pair. Jude dropped his gaze to give them the semblance of privacy.

  “Percy, I’m afraid I can’t talk right now.” Winnifred interrupted him and motioned to the carriage. “I have to go.”

  His eyes sparked. “I figured when you didn’t arrive with your family to the ball that tonight’s the night?”

  She nodded, a hint of impatience in her tense shoulders. “I need to find a woman, a Miss Lance. Jude will begin his search of the building in the morning, but by then, it may be too late.”

  “I knew it.” He grinned, stuffing his hands into his pockets and fishing out a small notebo
ok and pencil. “If you don’t mind, I will come along then and see you through your last mission.”

  Jude scowled. He didn’t need to have the author hanging about, distracting him from the task at hand. He needed every moment devoted to watching and listening for Winnifred, should she have need of him, and the thought that she might need him put a fear in his soul that had never been there before. He wished she would turn back even now, but in his heart, he knew that if Miss Lance was in danger, Winnifred was her only hope of being rescued before it was too late. He tried to take comfort in the fact that Holmes was out of town. She would not be in danger on that count at least.

  Winnifred gave Percival what seemed to be a tentative smile. “Of course, but we need to leave now, and I can’t discuss—”

  “I understand completely. There will be no more talking of Paris,” he whispered, taking her hand to assist her inside.

  Jude stepped in before Percival, ensuring that he would be on the seat next to Winnifred, keeping her safely nestled beside him. If he could not act as her escort tonight, he would at least be near her during these last moments when she was not promised to another and he could still imagine a future with her, futile though it may be.

  Winnifred remained uncharacteristically silent on the ride to the Englewood building, her hands knit together on her lap, turning her knuckles white.

  He bumped her with his shoulder, startling her out of her reverie as Percival stepped out first, leaving them alone at long last. “This is it. We need to walk the last few blocks. Though I know it is pointless to say this yet again, I wish you would allow me to go in your stead.”

  “And what if you run in to Auntie Ann or any of the boarders? Dinner may be over for them, but it’s only nine o’clock, and nearly all will be awake. I can more easily explain myself than you can.” She pressed her hand over his. “Jude. I want to thank you for all you’ve done for me. No one else has ever believed in me the way you have. No one else—” Her voice caught, and she paused to swallow and smile up at him, tears filling her enchanting eyes. “Has ever treated me as an intellectual equal.” She shook her head. “My father loves me, but he thinks of me as a little girl whom he must protect, not a responsible woman. You could have turned me over to my father tonight, but instead, you respected me and trusted my judgment.”

  He grinned at her, hoping to break the tension. “The night is only getting started. I may turn you in yet, Miss Wylde.”

  She squeezed his forearm before taking Percival’s hand to descend from the carriage. One block before they reached the Holmes building, she paused and gave them a shaky smile. “Thank you both for coming along with me on this adventure.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. This was just what I needed to finish my novel, Miss Wylde.” Percy bent and kissed her hand.

  Pulling back, she stepped toward the building, but Jude grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her into a fierce hug, whispering into her ear. “Do not take any unnecessary risks. Your cover is not worth imperiling your life. If you feel in danger, run and scream for me, and I will come.”

  Winnifred let herself in through the side door and took a moment for her sight to adjust to the darkness before taking the staircase to the third floor, her slippers silent on the wood. Reaching the third-floor landing, she let out a sigh of relief that she had made it so far without encountering an obstacle. Usually, by this time, the heroine in Percy’s novels would have been met by someone with a butcher knife, but she had made it. She heard a creak and glanced over her shoulder and listened, but besides that one noise, the house was abnormally still. It was so quiet that it seemed as if all had miraculously gone to bed early. She shook her head. Calm down and focus.

  Winnifred made straight for the room Holmes had lingered at earlier, the one locked room that the staff had not been allowed admittance to and one of the few rooms with the doorknob still in place. With a quick check, she found that it was, of course, still locked. She slipped a hairpin from the intricate coiffure that her aunt’s maid had fashioned and, kneeling down, worked it into the mechanism until she heard that faint click. She grinned and tucked the pin back into place and slowly stepped into the room, mindful of the floorboards groaning over Auntie Ann’s or some boarder’s head.

  Devoid of curtains, the window let in a hazy stream of moonlight that, in the darkness, looked like an opera house spotlight. It gave her just enough light so she could make out the shape of a trunk, the same one Holmes had been lugging up and down from the basement. Moving across the room toward the trunk, something glistening in the moonlight caught her eye. There, in the corner of the room, was the polished brass key from Holmes’s pocket lying, forgotten, on the floor next to the trunk. Winnifred had played this moment so often in her mind that she could hardly believe it was truly happening. In Holmes’s haste to leave the house, he must have dropped it. Dear Lord, thank You.

  Scooping up the key, she flipped it over in her hand in disbelief as she knelt beside the trunk, a stench burning her nose. She resisted the urge to press a handkerchief over her nose and reached to insert the key but paused, puzzled by the strange mixture coating the trunk and keyhole, leaving a pool at the base of it. What in the world? She looked for the source and found that the black substance was dripping down the corners of the windowsill as well. She touched it lightly and rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger. Pitch. Why on earth is there pitch everywhere? If a candle gets anywhere near … Her heart hammered in her chest and she twisted about, trying to see if there was any immediate danger. She spied nothing but a couple of pails of pitch in the corner of the room. Undeterred, she took a deep breath and inserted the key into the padlock and turned it. The lock burst open, making her jump at the sound.

  Straightening her shoulders, Winnifred jerked on the lid of the trunk, but it didn’t budge. The pitch must have glued it shut. She bit her lip, trying to figure out how to pry it open when she discovered something was caught in the lid of the trunk—an emerald-green tattered ribbon. Gasping, she fell onto her backside and scrambled away from the makeshift coffin. “Dear Lord, no,” she cried, recognizing the vivid hue from that day at the fair so long ago as the creak of a door came from behind her.

  Turning to the noise, Winnifred’s body tensed at the looming figure in the doorway. She clutched the key in her fist and hid it behind her skirts in a desperate attempt to save herself one last time. Spying the paintbrush dripping with tar in his grip, she realized Holmes was in the midst of setting the stage for a fire. He would never let her leave the building alive.

  “It’s a pity.” Holmes sighed, set aside his pail, and brushed off his hands, approaching her. “You were quite a pretty little thing, and I was growing fond of you even though you are involved with a detective.”

  “Wh–what are you talking about, Mr. Holmes? I was only up here looking for a stray cat that I saw—”

  “No sense in pretending and weaving more lies, Miss Swan. I know who your detective really is and why he is here. I just wasn’t entirely sure you were aware of his scheming until now. A stray, Miss Swan? Surely you could come up with something better than that.” He reached in his pocket, but she did not wait to see what he was retrieving.

  “Jude!” Winnifred screamed, praying her voice would carry through the window. “Jude! Help me!”

  Holmes shook his head and smiled as he twisted his hands around the neckcloth he had taken from his pocket. “No need to call for your beau. This room has one of the thickest walls in the place, and he won’t hear you.”

  “Stay back, or else.” Winnifred’s hand went for her pistol, but to her horror, she found that in her haste to leave the house this evening, and in her confidence that Holmes would be out of town, she’d left her reticule, her precious reticule, with her pistol inside. She scrambled to her feet and ran to the window, slamming her fists against the glass, screaming, but the glass did not break. Why aren’t the boarders hearing me? She smashed her fists on the glass again and again.


  He gave her a smile as if amused at her antics. “That is one of my show pieces from my glass company that I started a couple of years back. It’s unusually thick, so it will not break under a weak feminine hand.”

  “Help! Someone help me!” Winnifred screamed, ramming the window with her shoulder.

  He strode toward her, a demonic flame in his gaze. “And don’t bother screaming, because the others won’t hear you either. I put some of my special sleeping serum into their soup. They won’t wake unless physically stirred, which I intend to do when I finish up here, but they will be so drowsy, they won’t recall it was I who woke them.”

  Winnifred charged past him, ready for a fight, but he let her by and laughed.

  “Run my little bird, run!” He called, trotting after her.

  She turned the corner and found herself at a dead end with one last room beside her, doorknob in place. Not bothering to check to see if it was still locked, she slammed her shoulder into the door, the weak lock breaking at once to reveal a room with what she hoped to find, a second exit. “Jude! Help me, Jude!” she screamed over and over as she clutched her skirts and ran through the maze of rooms, desperate for an escape. But everywhere she turned, he was there with that infernal grin and harrowing, cross-eyed gaze, haunting her as he laughed at her attempts to escape.

  Thinking of the trap door leading to the downstairs bathroom, she bolted for the room, praying that she might have a chance, when he appeared again, blocking her exodus. Her knees weakened, and seeing that outrunning him was impossible at this point, she lifted her hands to him as if keeping a bull at bay. “Mr. Holmes, Henry, please don’t do this. You won’t get away with killing—”