The Fire in the Glass

by Jacquelyn Benson

  “I realize this is quite irregular, but I need Lord Strangford’s address.”

  The desperation in her own voice surprised her, urgency stripping it raw.

  “What do you need it for?” Sam demanded.

  “Please—there’s no time. I must speak to him.”

  “He’s right here.”

  The reply came from behind her. Lily turned to see Lord Strangford standing in the doorway to the library.

  He was still in his evening clothes, though his tie was gone. Behind him, Mr. Ash set down his teacup and rose from a chair by the fire.

  He looked tired and older than he had that morning.

  It was the painting, she realized. Lord Strangford must have left the gallery with his purchase that evening and brought it straight here. The two men had not yet gone to bed.

  It was understandable. Seeing the face of one’s dead wife for the first time in decades was bound to be unsettling. Lily couldn’t know if Lord Strangford’s purchase had been welcome or something that stirred up a great deal of old pain. Perhaps both.

  “I need you to tell me where I can find Mrs. Boyden.”

  “Annalise?” Lord Strangford said, surprised into using the more intimate name. “Why?”

  The question demanded an answer. She could not possibly expect him to give her what she wanted otherwise.

  But that answer . . .

  Other figures emerged from various parts of the house. Cairncross was on the landing, wrapped in a dressing gown and pajamas. Mrs. Wu stepped into the hall.

  They would all hear it. The notion terrified her but she had no choice. A woman’s life was a stake.

  Lily forced the words past the lump in her throat.

  “Because she’s going to die.”

  A perfect silence followed, clear and sharp as crystal.

  She watched a quick tumult of emotion flash through Lord Strangford’s dark eyes—surprise and concern chased by others she wasn’t entirely sure how to name. They moved too quickly, mingled too intimately to distinguish.

  “How did you get here, Miss Albright?” Mr. Ash asked.

  “I ran.”

  “With a row of stitches in your leg?” Lord Strangford cut in.

  “There’s no time,” she countered sharply.

  “Sam, what’s the state of the Rolls?” Mr. Ash demanded.

  “I have the carburetor out for cleaning. The engine is in pieces all over the garage floor. It would take me at least an hour to put it back together.”

  “Which is faster—readying the carriage, or running for a hackney?”

  “Hackney,” the younger man replied without hesitation.

  “Go.”

  Sam turned and bolted nimbly down the steps, out into the night.

  Lord Strangford moved around her, plucking his coat from the hook and shrugging it on. Lily realized what that signaled and felt a quick jolt of alarm.

  “I just need the address,” she protested.

  “No, you need me,” he countered, picking up his hat. “She won’t admit or listen to you otherwise.”

  She wanted to object, but he was right. Annalise Boyden would undoubtedly think Lily was insane if she showed up at her house in the small hours of the morning shrieking about murder and death.

  The hall was silent as they waited for Sam to return, the tension thick enough to suffocate her.

  Every person there must be filled with questions. Given the circumstances, they had every right to ask them. No one did.

  She remembered her conversation with Ash earlier that day in the still, quiet room at the end of the hall.

  Perhaps he wasn’t asking because she had simply confirmed what he had already known to be true.

  The thought left her raw, as though someone had peeled back her skin.

  Ash was the first one to speak.

  “Could this situation be unsafe for you and Lord Strangford?”

  Her thoughts turned to the shadow stalking Annalise Boyden’s room. She had to fight not to shudder.

  She adjusted her grip on her walking stick.

  “We’ll manage,” Lord Strangford replied quietly, meeting Ash’s gaze.

  Sam leapt back up the steps. Lily heard the rattle of carriage wheels behind him.

  “It’s an old brougham,” he said, barely short of breath. “That’s all I could find.”

  The closed carriage would have only two seats. That settled the matter.

  “Let’s go,” Lily ordered.

  She did not give Mr. Ash an opportunity to protest. There was no time. She turned and hurried down the steps.

  Lord Strangford followed, catching up to her in time to pull open the door to the carriage.

  He gave the driver an address in Belgravia, promising him double fare for speed.

  He climbed in beside her and the brougham leapt into motion.

  They bounced along the deserted streets. In the close confines of the cab, Lord Strangford was uncomfortably near. Unspoken things lingered in the narrow space between them, filling it with tension.

  She could let the ride pass in silence and force him to take her at her word. He would do it. His very presence there was evidence of that. It would be easier, and unfair.

  She swallowed thickly, pushing past the fluttering terror inside of her.

  “Sometimes I know things before they happen,” she said quietly, the words falling into the silence of the carriage.

  She waited for his answer—for the scoffing disbelief or the cool derision that would indicate he thought her a liar.

  “How does it work?”

  Her heart pounded, nerves fraying with the awareness of how much she had just revealed.

  “Different ways. Sometimes like a dream while I’m sleeping. Sometimes when I’m awake. It’s not something I can control like a carnival fortune teller. It just . . . comes.” Her mouth was dry. “I know how it must sound.”

  “I believe you.”

  The words were clear and weighted with intention.

  I believe you.

  They had impact. She felt the solid warmth of it shaking something deep inside of her.

  “Thank you.” There was a sharp prickling at the corners of her eyes. She blinked it back, straightening her spine.

  The houses with their dark windows spun past, the night air biting at her cheeks.

  This errand had a different meaning for the man beside her. There was history between him and Annalise Boyden. She didn’t know what that history was, or what Mrs. Boyden meant to him now, but if she meant anything at all—and Lily knew she must—then she owed him another very important piece of information.

  “They have never been wrong,” she announced quietly.

  “Never?”

  “Never.”

  He was silent for a moment.

  “I see,” he said at last, and she could hear in his voice that he did.

  The cold air poured over them, seeping into the carriage through the cracks between the window panes, turning her breath to fog as the brougham rattled on through the empty streets.

  The urgency still snapped at her. The carriage swung around another corner. True to his word, the driver was going faster than was prudent. The pounding in her veins told her it was still not fast enough. She had to fight the impulse to wrench open the door and leap into the street, sprinting to Belgravia instead. It would not be any quicker than they were going now, but at least she would feel like she was doing something instead of sitting there uselessly.

  The clocks struck four as they passed the Wellington Arch and entered the well-kept streets of one of London’s finest neighborhoods.

  It was quiet. They passed a milkman on his rounds and a gasworks man with his case, headed back from some midnight call.

  The carriage stopped at a pristine brick town house with freshly-painted black shutters and a wrought-iron gate. The windows were uniformly dark, giving no sign of a glimmer of life inside.

  What if she was wrong?

  One did not go
knocking on people’s doors at four in the morning.

  If it had been nothing more than a dream, some particularly vivid nightmare, then she was dragging Lord Strangford into a situation certain to cause him a great deal of embarrassment.

  Except it hadn’t been a dream. Lily was as sure of that as she was of her presence in the carriage and the paving stones under its wheels. The difference between dream and vision was visceral, clear as dropping her hand in boiling water or a bucket of ice.

  She was less certain of the timing. Her visions had never been generous with the details of when the events they foretold would come to pass. It was always a wretched game, guessing at the possible time frame. More often than not, she got it wrong.

  The sense that the threat here was immediate was overwhelming, but Lily had a moment of doubt as she looked at the clean-swept steps of Annalise Boyden’s home. Shouldn’t they turn around and come back at a more reasonable hour instead of rousing the entire household for what might very well be a false alarm?

  She found herself hoping that Lord Strangford would pause to ask her if she were quite sure about this.

  He didn’t.

  He climbed out of the carriage and stood waiting for her on the pavement.

  They shouldn’t have come. Whatever they did here wouldn’t matter. It never did, whether the events she foresaw were to play out in a matter of minutes or months. Trying to change things didn’t work.

  She lifted her skirts and stepped down beside him.

  They climbed the stairs to the dark, still house. Lord Strangford knocked firmly on the front door.

  After what seemed like an age, a housekeeper appeared. She looked as though she were trying to decide whether to be worried or cross.

  “I’m sorry to disturb the household, but there is an urgent matter I must discuss with your mistress,” Lord Strangford announced.

  “And you are?”

  “Lord Strangford.”

  The title seemed to mollify her a bit.

  “Please. It is a matter of life and death.”

  “I shall see if she will receive you,” she said and opened the door.

  She lit a lamp on the table in the entry. It gave off a feeble light, casting the fashionable appointments of the hallway in an unfriendly gloom.

  The housekeeper took her candle and mounted the stair, her footfalls practiced and light.

  Lily’s skin crawled. Every shadow cast by the flickering flame seemed to jump at her.

  She gripped her walking stick and cast a glance over at Lord Strangford, measuring whether he looked capable of handling the monster if it should appear. He was not a large man, but there was no fear in his expression, just concern, serious and attentive.

  Then the housekeeper screamed.

  Lily heard the thud of her candle hitting the floor overhead.

  Lord Strangford was on the steps, mounting them two at a time. Lily snatched up the lamp and followed, pushing past the burning pain in her leg.

  She reached the landing and saw the housekeeper framed in a doorway, wax splattered across the carpet at her feet. Lord Strangford plunged past her into the darkness. Lily hurried up behind him, the fickle light of her lamp spilling into the room.

  It revealed the shape of the grand four-poster bed, its pale white curtains splattered with dark stains—the blood of the woman who sprawled half-naked across the sheets with her throat sliced.

  The voice of a ghost in a vision echoed in her ears.

  You’re late.

  Lord Strangford dropped slowly to his knees. Lily pushed back the wave of horror, guilt and rage that threatened to overwhelm her. Her attention shot to the details of the room. A porcelain vase lay smashed on the floor by the window. The hand mirror on the vanity table was dusted with something like snow. A clean white tangle of sheets wrapped itself around the dead woman’s legs.

  On the floor by the bed lay a bloodstained knife.

  Doors snapped open behind her, footsteps pounding up stairs and down hallways. The household gathered at the door, the silence breaking in a wave of gasps, the sharp intake of a sob.

  “Is there a footman here?” she asked. She did it without turning, unable to take her eyes away from the bloodstains on the bed curtains.

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  “Run to Gerald Road station. Find the inspector. Tell him there’s been a murder.”

  Two hours later, Lily sat on the edge of the divan in Annalise Boyden’s elegantly appointed drawing room, watching the blue-uniformed bodies of B Division constables pass back and forth across the hall.

  Minutes. That’s as much time as could have passed between Lily’s vision and the moment the events it foretold came to be.

  It was uncommon and unsettling.

  The image of Annalise Boyden’s pale, bloodstained corpse refused to leave her. In addition to the familiar, impotent guilt, it clouded her with confusion.

  It had felt so clear in the vision, so obvious that the shadow that took Annalise Boyden was the same threat that stalked Estelle. But last night’s victim was a fast society widow, not a medium, and her throat had been cut from ear to ear.

  This murder looked nothing like the others.

  Was Lily wrong? Could she have misinterpreted the signs? The content of her premonitions wasn’t literal. It was all wrapped up in symbols, as though her brain had to patch together ways to anchor the quantities of the vision in things Lily already knew or had experienced.

  There was always a degree of interpretation—a bit of a guesswork. Perhaps this time she had guessed wrong.

  No—the connection to the other murders was real. Every cell of her screamed that it was so. She just couldn’t see how yet.

  Lord Strangford stood by the cold fireplace, staring down at the empty grate. He had barely spoken since they discovered Mrs. Boyden.

  She didn’t press him. It was not her place and this was certainly not the time.

  A crowd gathered in the street below, illuminated now by the rosy light of early dawn. Lily could hear the susurration of it through the windowpanes. It would be the usual assortment of the curious and the ghoulish, a handful of reporters and perhaps an itinerant preacher or two.

  Even in posh Belgravia the punters loved a bit of slaughter.

  The inspector was whip-thin and small with a neatly trimmed mustache, but he carried himself with the presence of a much more substantial man.

  “Inspector Gregg. Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said as he came in, followed by a tall constable of that awkward age where limbs seem made too long for one’s body. The inspector gestured and the boy flipped open a notepad, pulling a pencil from his pocket.

  “Miss Albright. Your lordship.” He nodded acknowledgment to Lord Strangford, who did not seem to hear him. “I have been told it was the pair of you who discovered the body.”

  “I believe the housekeeper preceded us,” Lily corrected.

  “You must understand that I find it rather curious that you were here in the first place. According to the housekeeper your call was made at an unusual hour. May I inquire as to the cause of your visit?”

  Lily had been waiting for this. Of course, it was impossible to give the true reason for their presence in Annalise Boyden’s home. But what plausible alternative could she offer?

  None, of course. Which left only one option—to brazen it out.

  Channeling both her mother and the woman they had tried to train her into becoming at finishing school, she straightened her back, lifted her chin, and flattened her accent.

  “I hope you do not mean to imply that we are under any sort of suspicion.”

  She felt rather than saw Lord Strangford glance over at her. Her own attention remained on the inspector. Being stationed in Westminster, he would likely be experienced in dealing with the nobility. He would know what the unspoken rules were when his class happened to collide with theirs. However disheveled Lily herself might appear, the weight of those four letters—Lord—attached to the man behind her co
uld not be ignored.

  His expression revealed nothing of the dissatisfaction he must have felt with her answer. The young constable was less smooth, his glance moving quickly from her face to that of his superior, his pencil hovering expectantly over the notebook.

  “No,” he replied shortly. “As you only arrived at the scene after the crime had already taken place, and were observed for the entirety of that visit, you are not.”

  “Then I imagine it will suffice for me to say our call here related to a private matter.”

  There was a pause, a silence just long enough to make clear that the inspector found it anything but sufficient.

  “If you would do me the courtesy of giving your addresses to the constable here, I should greatly appreciate it. In case further questions arise during the course of my inquiries.”

  “Of course,” Lily agreed. She let her gaze drift away, an unmistakable sign of dismissal.

  It was a gamble, but one did not rise to the rank of inspector in B Division without learning how to behave tactfully with the ton.

  He left.

  The constable cleared his throat, clearly out of his element.

  “Your address, miss?”

  “702 March Place.”

  “And my lord?”

  “Sussex Court, Bayswater,” Lord Strangford said quietly.

  “Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.” The words were rote and the young man seemed almost embarrassed by them. He turned to go. Lily called out to stop him.

  “Constable . . . can you tell me if there is any notion as to who was responsible for this?”

  She felt rather than saw the shift in Lord Strangford’s attention, hearing the rustle of his coat as he turned from the fireplace.

  “I’m afraid I really ought not say.” The policeman looked nervous.

  “Please. You must understand that we are both deeply concerned that the murderer be brought to justice. If I were to leave at least knowing there was some hope that the devil might be found . . . ”

  Lily let her voice trail off.

  The constable shifted uncomfortably, but was compelled to fill the space left at the end of her words.

  “The inspector’s fair certain he’s got the man. He’s the one brought her home last night. Had a right terrible row with her then stormed out. No one saw her alive after that. It’d be open and shut, except he’s a toff. Begging your pardon,” he added quickly, with a nervous glance over Lily’s shoulder at Lord Strangford. “It was his knife cut her throat.”