A Deadly Fortune

by Stacie Murphy

  Winslow extracted a black-bordered form and stood. “Don’t worry about the coffee. I’ll get an orderly to clean it up. If you’re headed back up soon, it would be a help to me if you could drop this off with Dr. Harcourt?” He proffered the sheet.

  “Certainly,” Andrew said through gritted teeth. He glanced down. Across the top in heavy black letters were the words “Certification of Death.”

  He stiffened. “There was a death?”

  “Yes. A woman in four, last night. They found her this morning.”

  Four. The sound of the word brought the world to a halt. The coffee, the form, all of it vanished from Andrew’s mind.

  He stepped into the hallway as his mind replayed the conversation he’d had with Amelia. A woman in ward four, she’d said. Asking someone to send for her father, protesting that she didn’t belong at the asylum. The paper shook in his hand. He’d forgotten. In all the chaos, the search of Harcourt’s rooms, the news about Jonas, his own frantic combing of the files. He’d just… forgotten about her until this very moment. Horror washed over him in a hot, sickening flood. He should have gone to examine her that evening. He could have gone at any point in the last two days. Another woman was dead, because Andrew hadn’t bothered—had forgotten—to save her.

  51

  I’m sorry.” The operator’s voice was polite. “The connection failed again. I would recommend trying the call a bit later.”

  Amelia muttered something profane, ignoring the woman’s shocked intake of breath. She disconnected from her third attempt to reach the asylum and rubbed her eyes as she turned to go back to Jonas.

  The curtains were drawn in the bedroom. The only light came from a single lamp in the corner. The room stank of despair and illness. Jonas lay gray and wasted on the bed, the sheets damp and wilted beneath him from the ice that melted as they’d tried to cool his fevered skin. Sidney lay beside him, his face buried in the hollow of Jonas’s neck. He raised his head as she entered.

  Amelia met his gaze. The anguish in his eyes was unmistakable, and the numbness that had surrounded her like a fog since the doctor’s pronouncement began to dissipate. She sank into the chair beside the bed.

  “I don’t think it will be much longer.” Sidney’s voice was barely audible. He pushed himself up and swung his feet over the side of the bed.

  Grief was a sudden, stabbing presence in Amelia’s chest. When she finally spoke, her voice was hesitant and thin. “Would you… I’m not… I’m not trying to keep you from him, I swear, but would you leave us for a bit? Please?” She looked up at him. “I need to—” She swallowed hard, unable to continue.

  Sidney hesitated. “I want to be here. When he…”

  Amelia closed her eyes and nodded, her lips pressed together. She’d tried to keep Jonas’s life all for herself. She couldn’t do the same with his death.

  Sidney left them, and Amelia was alone with Jonas for the last time.

  Her heart thudded, the beats painful, as she leaned forward and took his hot, limp hand in both of her own. She found herself clinging to it as though she could stop him from being swept away, could hold back the tide carrying the life from his body with the force of her will. It should be possible. He’d given her so much of himself. Surely she should be able to give it back, pour some of that strength and that love back into him.

  A tight band squeezed Amelia’s chest, and when she tried to breathe, all she could manage was a series of gasps. A great wave of dizziness swept over her.

  This could not be. It was wrong. Obscene. How could someone as vital, as alive, as Jonas possibly die? How was it possible that he would no longer exist? How was it possible that the world would go on without him in it? There were people outside, at this moment, who didn’t know, who would never understand, how profoundly everything was about to change. How much worse it would be. Amelia wanted to fling the windows open and scream it until they understood. Until they all hurt as badly as she did.

  Instead, she slid to her knees beside the bed and pressed her forehead against Jonas’s arm. She made a noise, a strangled howl, only partly muffled by the mattress, as agony overwhelmed her. Great choking sobs racked her body. There were words, or parts of them, mixed in, as Amelia tried to tell Jonas how much she loved him. How much she would miss him. How she didn’t know what she would do without him. That she had never understood, had never appreciated, everything he was to her. That she understood it now, at the end, when it was too late. That the thought of living without him terrified her. That she wasn’t even certain she wanted to.

  She wept until her throat burned and her stomach muscles ached, until the sheet beneath her face was soaked with tears, until every breath was nothing but a gasping whistle, an endless series of shudders and heaves. When the tears finally began to taper off, she knelt, drained and wan, her face still pressed to Jonas’s arm, his hand still clenched between her own. She tried to think if there were things she still needed to say to him, then gave up. There were thousands of things. And he would never hear them.

  Amelia pushed herself to her feet and stumbled into the sitting room. Sidney waited on the sofa, but she avoided his eyes as she went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She washed her face and bathed her swollen eyes. She felt battered by the wave of grief and by the grim knowledge that it was only the first of many. She would have years, decades, in which to mourn.

  She stepped back into the sitting room as the clock chimed the half hour, and she glanced at it, suddenly aware of time in a way she hadn’t been over the past two days, when the only measure of its passage had been the spaces between Jonas’s rasping breaths.

  It was Monday. The asylum would be stirring. The reconciliation would happen soon. The patients would line up and be counted. Carolina Casey wouldn’t be there. They might think it was a mistake at first, but they’d look again, and they would know she was gone. They would know she’d had help. Suspicion was bound to fall on Andrew. He would be ruined.

  But that wasn’t the worst risk he faced. A chill settled over Amelia as the thought struck her. Andrew being forced from the island might be for the best. He wouldn’t stop searching for the killer, even without Amelia there to help him. Blounton had gone looking alone, and Blounton had died. Amelia imagined Andrew floating in the river, his sightless eyes turned to the sky.

  She would have said she had no further capacity for strong emotion, but fury roiled through her at that thought. It swelled until it shoved her fear and her grief into a far corner of her mind and trapped them there, faint and distant things she could set aside until later.

  She would lose Jonas and Andrew both, along with any chance of punishing the one who took them away from her.

  Amelia’s fists clenched around handfuls of her skirt, and the paper in her pocket crackled. The list. Those names were the key. They had to be. She had to get them to Andrew, and she had to do it now.

  Amelia glanced at the telephone. She could try calling again. Or she could ring for a bellman. He could send someone with a message. But no. There were too many ways that could go wrong. This wasn’t something she could entrust to a stranger. She would have to do it herself.

  She fought down a surge of nausea at the prospect.

  If she were caught… She shuddered. She must not be caught.

  Amelia went back into the bedroom and confided her plan to Sidney in a low voice.

  He frowned. “You think it will work?”

  “It has to.”

  “And you’re certain you have to go now,” he said, his eyes searching her face. He glanced back down at Jonas. “I don’t think he’ll—”

  She followed his gaze. “I know what it means.” Her voice roughened as she went on. “But it’s the only way. I have to do it.” Sidney said nothing as Amelia leaned down to press a final kiss on Jonas’s scorching brow. “Goodbye,” she whispered as she pulled away.

  52

  Andrew had no memory of leaving the second floor, but at a sound he looked up and foun
d himself standing in the third-floor hallway near Harcourt’s apartment. The door opened, and Russo stepped out. The man’s hand moved toward his pocket, and Andrew saw a thick fold of bills before he tucked it away. Andrew’s own hand tightened into a fist, crushing the paper he’d been asked to deliver.

  Red washed over his vision.

  Russo flashed him a careless smile and turned toward the stairs. Andrew managed to stop himself from grabbing him as he passed and flinging him to the ground. It was a near thing. He imagined smashing the man’s head against the floor until he confessed, beating him bloody until he admitted the exact number of women he’d helped kill, exactly how much money he’d taken to do it.

  Instead, at a flicker of movement inside the apartment, Andrew turned and caught the closing door on the flat of his palm. He slammed it open and strode through.

  Harcourt stumbled back as Andrew flung the crumpled paper in his face. “What is the meaning of this? Dr. Cavanaugh, I—”

  Andrew was beyond caring, beyond reason.

  “How many?”

  “I beg your pardon? I—”

  “How many women have you killed here? I know of two, but how many more were there?”

  Harcourt gaped at him.

  “What was her name? The woman from four? Was she already slated to die, or was it only because you feared we were about to expose you?”

  Harcourt found his voice. “Cavanaugh, you are—”

  “Don’t bother denying it.” Andrew advanced on the older man. “I saw. I saw just now, Russo with his cut of the money. Murder must be a lucrative business, if you can pay your associates and still have those thousands in that box beneath your bed.”

  Harcourt’s eyes widened. He glanced toward the bedroom and then back at Andrew, his face flushing a dull red. “How do you know about—”

  “It doesn’t matter how,” Andrew said through gritted teeth. “I know. And I know what you did to earn it. Murderer,” he spat. “You’re finished. I—”

  “Dr. Cavanaugh!”

  Andrew went silent, seething.

  “How dare you barge into my rooms and accuse me of—” Harcourt stopped. “Well, I don’t know precisely what it is you are accusing me of. Murdering my patients?”

  Andrew opened his mouth to speak, furious, but Harcourt held up one hand, palm out.

  “No.” His voice was stone. “I have allowed you far too much leeway, but it ends now. I have countenanced your unorthodox methods. I have tolerated your interference with other members of the staff. Clearly, I made a mistake in inviting you here. You will leave the island at once, or I will have you removed.”

  “You won’t get rid of me that easily.” Andrew shook with anger. “I know what’s happening. I’ll go to the press. To the board of governors. I’ll make them listen. You’ve gotten away with it until now, but no longer. No more women will die so you can make yourself rich. The woman last night was the last.”

  Harcourt stood, cold fury in every line of his body. One of his hands shot out and closed on Andrew’s biceps like a vise.

  “Come with me.” His voice brooked no opposition.

  He strode out of the room and down the hallway, hauling Andrew along by the arm. Andrew made a halfhearted effort to pull away, then subsided as Harcourt’s grip tightened. He seemed to have recovered his strength in the face of Andrew’s accusation.

  Andrew assumed the older man meant to drag him bodily to the ferry and throw him off the island. It didn’t matter; it wouldn’t change his next steps.

  To his surprise, Harcourt jerked him to a stop outside ward four, where two orderlies were bringing out a stretcher bearing a shrouded form.

  “One moment, please,” Harcourt told them in a voice coated with ice. He gave Andrew a rough shove. “Go on. Please. Have a look at my supposed victim.”

  Steeling himself, Andrew lifted a flap of rough gray blanket away from the still face. He blinked and tried to reconcile his expectations with the wizened reality before him.

  She was ancient.

  Her face was seamed and spotted with age, her mouth sunken and wrinkled. The papery skin of her neck was as wrinkled as crepe. Thin wisps of white hair clung to her scalp. Her father, whoever he was, had obviously been dead for decades.

  He didn’t realize he’d said some part of the last aloud until Harcourt spoke from behind him.

  “Yes, the nurses did report she’d been asking for him these past few days. It’s common in such situations. This is Mrs. Ina Tierney, aged eighty-seven. She’s been with us since her mind began to fail several years ago. A widow with no living family. This is the woman—one of the women, I should say—you accuse me of murdering for gain?”

  Andrew was unable to speak. Harcourt reached past him and covered the woman’s face, then nodded to the orderlies. “You may proceed.”

  Harcourt turned to Andrew as the orderlies departed and lowered his voice until it was barely more than a growl. “Are you satisfied? There have been no murders. I cannot think how you even imagined such a thing. There is not one shred of evidence for these insane allegations, and if you persist in making them, you will be met with a slander charge.

  “As for the money in my quarters, it is none of your business. I could have you arrested for trespassing, since there is only one way you could know of it. But I have no wish to be further involved with you. You are finished here. You will turn your work over to one of the other doctors and remove yourself from these premises. I do not expect to set eyes on you again. And if even a whiff of these ridiculous allegations surfaces”—Harcourt stepped closer and lowered his voice—“I will make it my business to ruin you. You will not work in New York—or anywhere else—ever again.”

  53

  Lot’s wife looked back. Amelia would not. Her whole being was focused on what lay before her.

  The air was unpleasantly sticky for May, with a still, oppressive quality that hinted at coming storms. The list, with the six names she’d been able to decipher, sat folded in her handbag as she stood outside the hotel. The doorman flagged a cab for her, and she climbed aboard almost before it had come to a stop.

  “I’m headed to the Twenty-Sixth Street dock, but I have to make a stop first.”

  “Whatever you say, miss.” The driver looked less sanguine, though, when she directed him to a seamy section of Willett Street on the Lower East Side.

  “Don’t worry,” Amelia said as she alighted from the cab outside a row of saloons. “They know me here.”

  She took the alley staircase to the second floor, then pounded on the door, hoping Charley was in. If he’d done a show the night before and gone out carousing afterward, there was no telling where he might have ended up. She waited for a count of five, then resumed hammering at the door with the side of her fist. She sighed with relief when an irritated voice came from the other side.

  “Do you know what fucking time it is? You’d better have one hell of a good—” The door swung open, and Charley stood scowling at her. “Mellie.” The frown turned into a bemused look of welcome. “Long time.”

  “Hi, Charley. It’s good to see you, too.”

  He stepped back as she pushed past him into the apartment. It was surprisingly clean, although the tang of smoke and sour beer from the saloon below seeped up through the cracks in the floor.

  “I need to look like an entirely different person. I can give you twenty minutes. And don’t call me Mellie,” she added as the door swung closed behind her. “You know I hate it.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Amelia stepped back onto the sidewalk. She was now a well-rounded, thin-lipped woman with a head full of dark curls peeping from beneath a modestly stylish hat. Its brim tilted to cast a shadow over the last of the yellowing bruises on her face, to which Charley had also expertly applied a layer of stage makeup. The dress she wore was precisely the sort a well-bred, serious-minded woman would wear to visit a charitable institution. It hid the heeled boots that added three inches to her height.

  The drive
r watched idly as she approached, his face devoid of recognition.

  “We can go now,” she said.

  He blinked and peered down at her from his perch. A slow smile spread over his face, and he shook his head. “I’d have never known you, miss.”

  “That’s the idea,” she said. “To the docks now, please, as quickly as you can.”

  By the time they arrived, there was a line of low, black clouds on the far horizon. The river had a smooth, sullen look. It hunkered between its banks as if held down by the heavy air.

  Amelia’s scalp prickled with sweat beneath the wig, and the padded corset made her torso feel as though it were wrapped in several heavy quilts. She tried to ignore it, but she was flushed and perspiring by the time they reached the island.

  “Looks like a storm,” the ferryman said as she disembarked. “Maybe we’ll get some rain, break this heat.”

  “That would be welcome.” Amelia dabbed at her forehead with a handkerchief, trying not to ruin the carefully applied makeup.

  She picked her way along the graveled path to the asylum—the heeled shoes were a disadvantage in such terrain—and walked into the Octagon with her nerves strung tight, prepared to smile and beg assistance from the first person she saw. Miss Matthew wouldn’t know her way around, would expect to be shown to Dr. Cavanaugh’s office. The edges of her smile melted when the first person she saw was Mrs. Brennan.

  The nursing matron fixed her with a baleful look, and Amelia’s voice came out thin and breathless. “Ah. Hello. I’m here for an interview with Dr. Cavanaugh.”

  Mrs. Brennan’s habitual scowl deepened at Andrew’s name, and she jerked her head toward the stairs. “Tell them at the main office. Second floor.” The nurse clumped away without giving Amelia another look.

  Amelia released a breath. At least her disguise seemed to be working.

  She turned for the stairs, her anxiety mounting as she neared her destination.