by Lynn Kerstan
For example, across the street, just where the fence curved around the park, was a spot where no light reached. She could likely remain there for a time without it being too obvious she was scrutinizing Tallant House. Most of the traffic that entered the square did as the hackney had done and left it at Bruton Street. Most of the pedestrians as well, she had noticed. It must be a shortcut to somewhere else.
Only one carriage went by as she hovered in the shadows, intently watching the door, waiting for it to open, cursing herself for being so foolish. And then, to her astonishment, the door did open, and a small figure flitted out, bounded down the stairs, fumbled for a moment with the gate before it opened, and sped across the street. It turned in Mira’s direction, paused after a few steps, and in a blink, vanished.
From her earlier ventures to Berkeley Square, Mira knew there were two gates opening to the fenced park, one where the cloaked person had entered and another directly across from it. Mira hurried around the opposite corner from where she had been, expecting to see the figure emerging or already running down the street. But save for a plump man walking in the other direction and a woman holding a child’s hand coming toward her, she saw no one. Whoever had come out of Tallant House in such a hurry was still inside the park.
Mira went quickly back to where she’d been. That side of the square was deserted. Nobody had emerged from Tallant House in pursuit. Deciding to approach from the other side, careful not to draw attention to herself, she walked to the gate, gingerly raised the latch, and quietly entered.
Almost no light made its way inside the tall ivy-coated fence. The lone pathway, which reached from gate to gate, was graveled, so she moved onto the grass and poised there, scarcely breathing as she listened for a telltale sound. It came sooner than she’d expected, from a dark place to her left. Squinting, she made out the trunk of a large tree and the clumps of several evergreen shrubs.
She had trained herself to move silently. Lifting her cloak so that the hem would not brush against the brittle grass, she picked her way in the direction of what sounded like a spent animal panting for air. As she came nearer, she detected a dark shape huddled against the base of the tree. And beneath the panting, like an undertone, a low, despairing whimper.
Halting a short distance away, she waited for some reaction to her presence. There was none. But she already knew, or thought she did, whom she had found. “Lady Corinna?” she said.
A gasp. The figure uncurled, scuttled a little way, sank to the ground again.
“Don’t be afraid,” Mira said, holding very still. “I’m a friend of your mother. She asked me to help her find you. I promise you are safe with me.”
No response.
Mira, prepared to give chase if the girl bolted, moved slowly forward. The ambient light of stars and distant lamps revealed a slim body curled on its side, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. This close, Mira could smell the odor of sweat and clothing too long worn. And there was another scent, coppery and sweet. Blood.
Oh dear God. Mira knelt beside the girl and sat back on her heels. “Are you hurt, Lady Corinna?”
After a beat, a faint “No.”
“Are you able to walk, then?”
“To where?”
Good question. Mira thought rapidly. If she recalled correctly, Sothingdon House was nearby. And closer still, the house where David Fairfax rented the upper two stories. She had been there once and thought she could remember which house it was.
“A friend lives not far from here. We’ll try there first, and if he is not at home, I’ve another friend a little distance away.” Mira unhooked the clasps at her throat. “You are exceedingly cold, Lady Corinna. I believe you should wear my cloak. Will you give me your pelisse in exchange?”
“It’s . . . dirty.”
“I don’t mind. If someone comes looking for you, they’ll not be watching for a blue cloak and bonnet. And when people observe me, they see only my hair. Let me undo the buttons. We should hurry, I think.”
When the pelisse had been removed, Lady Corinna tottered to her feet and allowed Mira to fasten the cloak. “Do you always speak so quietly?” she asked as Mira was securing the bonnet.
“I’m afraid so. But it makes me a useful conspirator, don’t you think?” Mira picked up the pelisse. It would not fit her, she could tell, so she swung it over her shoulders and felt something heavy strike her on the hip. “We have only a short distance to walk. When possible, we should avoid passing directly beneath the streetlamps.”
Turning a little sideways, Mira slipped her hand into the pocket and felt the cold metal and distinctive shape of a small pistol. “Take my arm, if you wish. And although we needn’t say anything, we should now and again pretend to be conversing. Are you ready to set out?”
The girl visibly straightened her shoulders. “I’ll do well enough. But why can’t we go to my mother? Where is she?”
“In London, but rather far from here.” They began walking toward the gate. “We arranged for her to stay in a place where she would not be discovered. There was concern that she might be in danger.”
“I expect she was. From my father.”
“Yes. But she is safe, I promise you.”
Pausing, Lady Corinna looked up at Mira. The lights from across the street illuminated her eyes. Keynes eyes, colorless and transparent, like pools of deep water. “I know,” she said without expression. “He’s dead.”
Chapter 17
“Say nothing more.” Mira drew a steadying breath. The Duke of Tallant dead, and this child had killed him. “Let us go quickly.”
David Fairfax’s residence on Mount Street was closer than she had expected, but even the short walk left Lady Corinna clinging for support to her arm as they waited for someone to answer their knock. After a considerable time, just before she had resigned herself to continuing on to Sothingdon House, the door cracked open and a face with a blindingly white chin appeared.
“Mira?” The door swung wide. “What’s wrong?”
It was David, wearing his small clothes, a towel slung over his shoulders and soap lather on his face. Catching sight of Lady Corinna, he flushed to the roots of his hair. “Oh, my. I beg your pardon. Please come in.”
He led them upstairs and fled into his bedchamber, leaving Mira to settle Lady Corinna on a chair near the fire. When the cloak and bonnet had been removed, she saw in full light the girl’s torn, bloodstained dress and her hair, black like her father’s and unevenly cropped, probably by her own hand. Her face was thin and sharp-angled, mottled with scratches and bruises. She looked as if she’d not slept or eaten properly for a considerable time.
“Are you injured, Lady Corinna?”
“No. Do not, please, address me as Lady Corinna. At school I was Cory. I wish to be Cory.” Her voice faded at the end and she appeared to close up around herself, like a sea anemone.
David returned then, wearing a dressing gown, the lather scrubbed from his chin. When he opened his mouth to speak, Mira put a finger to her lips, drew him into the next room—the music room—and closed the door.
“I’ll tell you everything later,” she said, “when I have questioned her. She requires something bland to eat—gruel or plain biscuits or soft bread—and a hot bath.”
“There’s a bath on the way. I ordered it earlier, for myself. That’s Corinna, right?”
“Yes. She says her father is dead. But let us first care for her, and then we’ll figure out what to do next. She needs something to wear and a place to sleep.”
He had caught her urgency. “I’ll order the bath to be set up in the spare bedchamber at the top of the stairs, and a fire built, and I’ll bring linens and a robe. Food as well. But by all that’s holy, how did you find her?”
“Later, David. Oh, and send a message to Helena Pryce. We shall require her help.”
&n
bsp; The servants arrived shortly after with a hip bath and kettles of steaming water, and when they were gone, Mira led Cory upstairs. She appeared listless and withdrawn, as if she had come to the end of her resources. After fumbling with the ties on her gown, she dropped her hands and permitted Mira to disrobe her, disclosing more bruises and scrapes on her pale skin. At the last, Mira loosed the waist ribbon of her kneelength linen drawers, which slid down her narrow hips and no farther. The fabric had become caught on something attached to the outside of her left thigh.
Puzzled, Mira tugged the drawers loose and saw bands of torn material wrapped around the blade of a knife, and then around her thigh to hold it in place. She swallowed a gasp. The hilt, silver inlaid with onyx, was like one she had seen before, in the large hand of Michael Keynes as he carved on a piece of wood.
Mira unwrapped the knife, set it on a table, and helped Cory into the bath.
Half an hour later, bundled in one of David’s dressing gowns, Cory sat by the fire drying her hair while Mira gathered paper, a pencil, and her wits. A cup of chocolate and some plain biscuits had put a little color on Cory’s cheeks, and like Mira, she seemed to be preparing herself for an ordeal.
For that’s what it would be, Mira was sure. She drew up a chair near to the small sofa where Cory was sitting with her legs curled under her, her eyes shadowed with dark thoughts. “You are very tired,” Mira said carefully. “We needn’t talk of everything now, only what is necessary. Perhaps it will go more easily if I ask questions.”
“As you wish,” Cory said. “I’ve nothing to hide. Not any longer.”
Mira had already decided to begin slowly, leading her step-by-step to the killing. “Your mother has explained that you left her in Scotland, and I have seen the message you wrote. You needn’t tell me of the journey. When did you come to Tallant House?”
“What day is this?”
“Tuesday evening.”
“Then, Saturday. At first I watched the house to see who came in and out, and at what time. Saturday night I scaled the back wall and hid in a small shed used by the gardener. Sunday, when most of the servants left for church or to visit their families, I looked for a way to get inside. The doors and French windows on the ground floor were locked, so I climbed a tree that stands between two balconies and tried the windows there. One was unlatched. It opened to a room with the furniture in Holland covers, and that room connected on both sides to other unused rooms. I had plenty of hiding places.”
“And you’ve been there all this time?”
“Waiting for my father to return. I’d thought he would be there when I arrived, but only a few servants were in residence. They rarely came upstairs. Father used to . . . to bring me to London during school holidays, so I know where the servants’ doors and stairs are. There is piped water to the dressing rooms, but I was afraid to go looking for food in the pantry or the kitchen. At night, I’d climb down the tree to the kitchen garden and dig for carrots and turnips. The climbing is how I got most of my scratches.”
Admiration held Mira speechless for a moment. This intrepid girl had come alone all the way from Scotland, found a place to lie in wait, stalked her father with knife and gun. A Keynes hunter, like her father and his brother. Like Mira herself, except that Corinna Keynes had been more relentless and far more brave. “You meant to kill him?” she asked at length, amazed at how normal the question sounded to her ears. “With the pistol?”
“I’m an excellent shot,” Cory said. “I’ve been practicing for years.”
Her cool demeanor cast its own chill across the room. Mira went to the dwindling fire and fed it with a log. “When did the duke return?”
“Late this morning.” Cory gave a short laugh. “It seems a year ago. I don’t think the servants expected him. It was chaotic at first, him shouting and them running about trying to please him. Well, most times were like that, I suppose, with my father. I was concealed under a draped sofa in the chamber next to his, waiting for him to be left alone in there. Then I planned to use the servants’ door to enter his room and put a bullet in his head.”
“It appeared, though, that he meant to go out. He was berating his valet and seemed concerned about his appearance, and I began to worry that I’d not have a chance at him alone. Then he was brought a message, I think. I cannot be sure. Something happened, and he said he was going to his study and wished not to be disturbed under any circumstances.”
“And you went after him?”
“Not for a considerable time. As I said, the servants were swarming like bees, so I could not use their stairs or the main passageways. There is a private staircase leading from the duke’s bedchamber to his study that I could take, except I couldn’t get to it because his valet stayed and stayed and stayed. Finally a servant summoned him to dinner, and I was able to go through the bedchamber to the secret door.”
Mira wondered briefly how the girl had come to know of a hidden passage between two rooms used almost exclusively by the duke. But Cory was leaning forward, absorbed by her memories.
“I took care to move silently,” she said. “The pistol was in my hand. It is pitch dark on the staircase and in the narrow corridor that leads to the study. I could hear my heart pumping and the sound of my footsteps, though I was treading softly. Then I saw the barest slice of light, where the door did not quite meet the floor, so I went ahead on tiptoe and pressed my ear against the door. There wasn’t the least bit of noise from the other side.”
“Despair seized me. What if he had gone out after all? My every thought was on killing him, on how to do it, on getting it done quickly. If you are wondering, I assure you I had no moral compunctions, nor any concern about what would become of me afterward. He required to be dead, and I had come to see that he was.”
Mira had not been wondering. She felt precisely the same as Cory had felt, except that Cory had not hesitated, Hamlet-like—Mira-like—to take decisive action.
“Then I worried that he’d locked the door from the other side. There’s a concealed mechanism to do so, just as there is a lever inside the corridor that raises the latch. But it was no good drooping about or fidgeting. I pressed the metal rod, the door came loose, and I pushed it a little open. That put me just to the left of the desk, where I’d rather expected to find him. I had positioned myself to aim and fire before he noticed anything amiss. But the chair was empty and tilted against the wall, as if someone had lurched from it and knocked it halfway over.”
Mira found herself dreading what was to come. “Cory, it’s important now that you describe everything you observed, no matter how insignificant it may seem. Later, the details will not be so clear in your mind.”
“I expect I shall try to forget them. But you shall hear all of it. I pushed open the door and came inside, pistol raised, looking around for him. It’s a fairly large room, rather long and narrow, mostly lined with bookshelves and cabinets. I smelled a sour odor and saw that something had been spilled on the desk. Then I saw a wineglass on the carpet.”
“Broken?”
“No. The carpet is thick. There were dark red stains near where the glass lay.”
“Was there a bottle or a decanter?”
“Not on the desk. Perhaps elsewhere. I didn’t notice.” Cory frowned. “There was practically nothing on the desk, now that I think on it. Pens, an ink bottle—it was open—a blotter. But no paper, no sealing wax. In any case, I came around the corner of the desk, and then I saw . . .” She took a deep breath. “I saw him, but just as I did, my foot caught on something. A box, I think, and I tripped. I tried to catch myself, but I toppled forward, nearly onto him. I fell on hands and knees, and dropped the gun, and got his . . . his blood on me.”
His blood on the pelisse, Mira realized. Some of it now on her own dress, and on her hands before she had washed them. After a moment, she returned to her chair. “Do you wish to stop for a ti
me?”
“There’s no need.” Cory stared into the fire. “He was lying head and shoulders on the hearth. There was blood on the corner of the mantelpiece and on the flagstones. His hair was matted with blood. And his eyes were open. I hadn’t expected that. He was on his back, and I landed just short of falling atop him.” She shuddered. “It’s all I saw, his face, and his eyes staring up at the ceiling. And I thought, ‘What if he’s alive?’ So I found the gun, and stood, and pointed it at him. Then I saw the knife. Here.” She put a hand to her chest. “Someone had stabbed him with a knife.”
Surely she did not draw the blade from his chest! Mira glanced over at the table where she’d placed the pistol and the knife Cory had been carrying. “You took it?”
Cory gave her a startled look. “Not the one in his heart. I took the one in the curtain.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“When first I came into the house through the unlatched window, I had to push the curtain aside. The hem was weighted, like most curtain hems, but this one made a clunk when it hit the wall. So I examined it and discovered the knife. The killing knife was different. More slender. I could see only the hilt, of course. It was ebony, set with a single jewel. A ruby.”
From “slender,” Mira had expected the rest. Her own knife, the one Tallant had taken from her. Ironic, unbearable, that her blade had killed him, but not her hand. With all her being, she wished it were otherwise.
A blessing, though, that Cory was free of the crime. But not of the punishment, if anyone had seen her. She couldn’t account for why she’d been hiding in the house when the murder occurred, nor prove she had been elsewhere.
Never mind. Never mind. All that was for later. Mira rose again and went to a side table, where she half-filled a glass with brandy. “What did you do next?”
“I fled. I’m not sure why. I’d no idea where I was going, and I didn’t mind if I was caught. Indeed, I opened the door and went into the passageway and ran to the entrance hall without ever looking to see if anyone was there. No one stopped me, at any rate. And you know where I ran to, because you found me there.” Cory looked over at her, eyes filled with puzzlement. “How did you come to be in the park? Were you watching the house, searching for me?”