Glancing back, Penelope saw Griselda enter the corridor behind Violet. “Tell Stokes and Barnaby we need them here now.”
Having glimpsed the activity further down the corridor, Griselda turned and ran back to the stairs.
Penelope and Violet hurried on.
The elderly butler was working himself into a state; when Penelope and Violet reached him, he was wringing his hands, and the tears in his rheumy eyes were threatening to overflow.
The footman bounced back from his third try at shouldering open the door.
Penelope addressed the pair equally. “Has anyone replied from inside?”
The footman glanced at the butler, then said, “No, ma’am. I came up and knocked, and I thought I heard something. But when no one answered, I knocked again and called, then I tried the door and”—he waved at the panel—“it’s locked. It never normally is.”
A stir along the corridor heralded Stokes, followed by Barnaby and Griselda.
“Monica’s door is locked,” Penelope said. “And she might be in there.”
Grim-faced, Stokes nodded and waved them all aside. He positioned himself before the door, then raised one large boot and kicked hard at the panel just below the lock.
The frame splintered on the inside and the door swung free.
Penelope whisked inside. Violet and Griselda followed.
The room wasn’t that large. It contained a tester bed with a frilly pale blue bedspread. Although the bedspread was rumpled, the bed was empty.
A lamp turned very low had been left alight on a small desk beside the fireplace. As Griselda went to turn up the wick, Penelope heard a muffled thump-thump from the corner beyond the wardrobe. Crossing the room, she called, “Bring the lamp.”
As Griselda complied and the light strengthened, Penelope walked past the end of the wardrobe and found herself looking down into the tear-stained face of a young maid, trussed and gagged and left propped in the corner.
“Mmm-mmm!” The maid thrashed helplessly, squinting in the sudden glare.
Penelope crouched and reached for the gag. “It’s all right.”
The maid was still weeping.
Violet crouched on the maid’s other side and started working on the rope binding the girl’s hands.
A strip of cotton flounce, the gag had been tied tightly; it took a minute and more for Penelope to ease the knot apart and pull the material from the girl’s face. As it fell away, the maid gasped, then choked.
“Here.” Griselda held out a glass of water.
Penelope took it and helped the maid to sip. “We need to know where your mistress is.”
Still sipping, the maid nodded, then she raised her head, swallowed, and hoarsely said, “You have to go after her—quickly. She’s gone down to the river—she said she was going to throw herself in.”
“Why?” Penelope asked.
The maid hesitated, obviously unsure.
Violet glanced at the others, then took one of the maid’s freed hands in hers and simply said, “It’s important that you tell us so we can save your mistress—we can’t help her if we don’t know.”
The maid stared at Violet for a second more, then she turned to Penelope. “Miss Monica thinks she killed her mother, but that can’t be right—she loved the old lady, even if her ladyship didn’t pay much attention to her. Like a puppy, Miss Monica was, just wanting and waiting for a smile—there’s never been even the smallest bit of nastiness in Miss Monica, and I’ll swear that all the way to my grave.” The maid drew breath and went on, “Then she found those shoes, and she made her big plan to show them off to her ladyship, all to make her mother happy—so excited she was when she went off to that big ball…” The maid’s expression grew grim. “But then she came back, and her ladyship was dead, and Miss Monica fell apart. She was a wreck. I thought she’d come around, but she only got worse. This evening…I didn’t see it coming. She knocked me out. When I woke up, she’d already gagged me and tied my hands and was tying my feet.”
Struggling to sit up from her slump, the maid gripped Penelope’s sleeve. “She spoke like someone who believed there was no hope. She said she had to do what was right because she’d killed her mother…but she didn’t! She couldn’t have—not her. Not in a million years.”
Penelope patted the maid’s hand as she detached it from her sleeve. “I don’t believe she murdered her mother, either.”
“Unfortunately,” Barnaby said, “it appears that Monica believes she murdered her mother.”
Barnaby was standing by the fireplace with Stokes; when Penelope looked his way, he held up the note he’d found on the mantelpiece. “Her explanation for what she intends to do, but no hint of how or why she did the deed.” He glanced again at the neat schoolgirl script. “All she says is that she didn’t mean to do it, and she’s sorry.”
Penelope’s face set. “We can ask her all our questions when we find her.” Turning back to the maid, she caught the girl’s eyes. “How long ago did Miss Monica leave?”
The maid glanced at the mantelpiece; Stokes stepped out of the way so she could see the clock. The maid paled. “Oh, God—it’s been a good twenty minutes. She’ll be more than halfway there.”
“I need you to think as if you were Miss Monica.” Penelope’s commanding tones overrode—quashed—the maid’s rising hysteria. “If she’s going to the river to throw herself in, how would she go? In a hackney? To where?”
The maid opened her mouth, paused, then nodded to herself. “Walking—she has to be walking.” She met Penelope’s eyes. “That’s why I said halfway there—she can’t have taken a hackney because just this afternoon, she gave me all her pin money and told me to give it to that young shoemaker, the one who made her the shoes. She said it was only fair. But I know it was all of it—and she was dressed to walk. She had her half-boots on, and she put on her bonnet, too.”
“Good,” Penelope said. “So where along the river would she go? Is there any particular place she would make for?”
The maid blinked. “The Privy Gardens. The family used to go there when the girls were little. She used to love going there.”
Stokes stirred. “What route would she take?”
“Down Saville Street and through Albany.” The maid spoke with certainty. “She won’t go down Piccadilly—we never went that way. She’ll go past St. James’s Square and down onto the Parade Grounds, then around and across Whitehall to the gardens.” The maid looked at Stokes. “They border the river.”
Stokes nodded. “I know them.” He turned to the door. “Now let’s see if we can get there in time.” He led the way from the room.
Barnaby waved the three ladies ahead of him; leaving the footman and the butler to tend to the maid, they all went quickly downstairs to where Monica’s family was waiting with Montague in the front hall.
As they stepped onto the tiles, Stokes flicked a glance at Penelope.
She caught it. Before anyone could voice the questions burning their tongues, she crisply stated, “Monica has left the house. She believes she killed her mother, which seems highly unlikely, but we don’t have time to go into that now.” Sternly, she eyed the family. “And we don’t have time for any vapors or hysterics, either—we need to go after Monica and get her back. We can sort everything out later, but you all need to help. We don’t have much time.”
She’d succeeded in capturing everyone’s attention. No one spoke, much less argued. Appeased, she rolled on, giving a brief outline of where they thought Monica had gone and what route they believed she would take.
Recovering from the shock most rapidly, Hartley and Cynthia confirmed that the Privy Gardens via St. James’s Square was, indeed, the most likely destination and route Monica would have chosen.
“Good.” Penelope met Hartley’s eyes. “You and Cynthia are in charge of the family search party. Take carriages or hackneys to St. James’s Square and start from there—on foot, because in a carriage you might easily miss her. You need to hurry, because we kn
ow she’s well ahead of you, but she might have paused or stopped to think anywhere along the way. She might be sitting on a bench somewhere. We need her found and brought back here—do you understand?”
Hartley wanted to go straight to the river; it was there in his face, but he was the only one who could keep the family members focused. Clearly swallowing his reluctance, he nodded. “Yes. All right.”
“Stay in small groups,” Stokes advised. “At least two together at all times, and stay within sight of each other.”
“How far should we go?” Cynthia asked.
“Keep searching thoroughly all the way to the Privy Gardens,” Stokes said.
“We,” Penelope stated, “will go straight there. We’ll be the last line between Monica and the river.” She paused, then waved at everyone. “We don’t have time to discuss anything more. We have to act immediately if we’re to save Monica.”
CHAPTER 12
We have to act immediately if we’re to save Monica.
Deep inside, Penelope had known that was true—not just a prediction but a certainty. She didn’t breathe freely until she and the others had taken up positions in the Privy Gardens alongside the river. If Monica had already thrown herself into the murky waters, there was nothing they could do; they had to pray that they’d managed to get ahead of her and plan and act accordingly.
Along that stretch, the river ran south to north; the rectangular gardens, one longer side fronting the river, lay on the western bank. The southern half of the gardens stretched unbroken from Whitehall Road to the low stone wall above the embankment against which the Thames moodily lapped, but the northern half of the gardens, abutting the old Banquet Hall of Whitehall Palace, contained a row of narrow buildings between the gardens and the river. Because there were passageways between the buildings that could be used to reach the riverbank, Penelope, Barnaby, and the others had had to spread out to ensure Monica couldn’t slip past them.
If she succeeded in throwing herself into the Thames, she would be lost. The tide was high, the river darkly murmurous, and the currents along that stretch were strong.
“We have to stop her before she gets close enough,” Penelope muttered to herself. With her back to the river, she stood still as a statue beneath a tree and scanned the sector of the gardens that had fallen to her to patrol. It was the section farthest south. Barnaby stood some way to her right, with Griselda beyond, followed by Stokes, Violet, and Montague.
Desperate to ensure they reached the river before Monica, they’d tumbled out of their carriages in Whitehall. Stokes had spotted a constable and had been about to hail him when Penelope had caught his arm and fiercely whispered, “Don’t!” When Stokes had blinked at her, she’d said, “We can’t treat Monica as if she’s a criminal, not until we’ve proven that she is. And I’m absolutely not sure she is.”
The latter statement had sounded ludicrous coming out of her mouth, of all mouths, yet it had been the unvarnished truth. Her incapacity to make sense of the murder, combined with the strong premonition that something dire was about to befall, left her deeply uneasy. Unexpectedly, unprecedentedly disturbed.
Logical incapacity and premonitions was the province of others, not her.
Folding her arms, she frowned into the night. It wasn’t the blackest night she’d ever been out in, but the leaden clouds had thickened and seemed to press ever lower over the spires of the nearby cathedral, a denser shape among the shadows identifiable more by its bulk than by any discernible features. If there was a moon, they couldn’t see it; what little light there was came from the distant streetlamps, pools of soft, diffused light that didn’t reach as far as the trees.
At least the trees were still largely bare; if they’d been in full leaf, spotting anyone before they got too close to the river to intercept would have been all but impossible.
Although she had donned her pelisse to call on the Galbraiths, the rising wind slid chill fingers past the folds. Dragging in a breath, she steeled herself against the cold and raised her head—
A slight figure wrapped in a cloak came trudging into the park.
Monica—Penelope was sure it was she—walked slowly but steadily nearer. Her gaze on the ground, she seemed completely immersed in her inner world and unaware of anything around her.
She’s already let go. Penelope didn’t know where the thought came from, but she heard the words clearly in her mind.
Monica was following the southernmost path leading through the gardens to the river. Penelope was standing just off that path, ten yards before the embankment wall.
Glancing to her right, Penelope saw that Barnaby had spotted Monica and was silently drawing nearer; she held up her hand palm out, and when he halted, head tilting quizzically, she waved him around and behind her. With a nod, he changed directions, circling to take up station behind her, closer to the river, the better to ensure Monica didn’t slip past.
Looking back at Monica, still half the garden away, Penelope glimpsed Stokes moving swiftly toward the street, keeping to the lawns so Monica wouldn’t hear him. He must have seen Penelope’s direction to Barnaby and had elected to circle around Monica and come up on Penelope’s other side to block access to the next stretch of bank.
Refocusing on Monica, Penelope suddenly realized that, given she had no idea what was going on in Monica’s mind, she had no idea what she herself was going to say. What she should say—what would best serve?
She’d never dealt with a suicidal young lady before.
She couldn’t even think of any of her acquaintance who had.
She waited until the last possible moment to step smartly out from under the tree directly into Monica’s path.
Head still down, Monica didn’t at first see her—then she did. Jerking her head up, Monica recoiled and halted.
And stared.
Penelope looked calmly back at her. She had thought Monica was the same height as she, but, in fact, Monica was at least two inches taller.
Monica finally placed her, blinked, then frowned. “What are you doing here?” Understandably, her tone held a great deal of confusion.
Yet even then, Monica didn’t glance around, didn’t register the oddity of Penelope being there alone, almost as if she thought Penelope an apparition that had popped into existence on the path before her.
“Actually,” Penelope said, taking her time and keeping her voice level, “that was the question I wanted to ask you.” She tilted her head, let curiosity show, and asked as if she didn’t know the answer, “Where are you going?”
She’d decided that the best way to handle Monica was to keep her talking and on the path until her family arrived; they couldn’t be that far away.
Several seconds ticked by.
Penelope started to wonder if Monica would answer, but then the blankness that had laid siege to the girl’s features fractured into an expression of such painful intensity—such shattering remorse—that Penelope suddenly couldn’t breathe.
Monica looked past Penelope to the river and, in a fragile voice all the more terrible for still holding echoes of the child she had been, replied, “I’m going where I’m supposed to go.” She gestured to the river, then looked at Penelope. “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? Go, and save my family any more horror? It’s the least I can do. They’ve all suffered enough because of what I did.”
Caught—all but paralyzed—by the sheer depth of pain radiating from Monica, Penelope managed to shake her head. “No. They don’t want you to do that—they love you.”
Some emotion akin to frustration crossed Monica’s face. Impatiently, she shook her head. “You don’t understand—I killed Mama. No one can love me after that.”
Penelope forced herself to keep her eyes on Monica’s face and not yield to the impulse to look away and allow the girl her pain. “Actually, I think it’s you who don’t understand. Killing someone by accident isn’t murder.” An accident was the only option that fitted all the facts, the intangible as well as th
e tangible. Holding Monica’s tortured gaze, Penelope demanded, “Did you mean to kill her?”
“No!” Monica recoiled. “Of course I didn’t mean to—I loved her!”
The pain thrumming through the statement underscored its veracity.
Penelope nodded. “That’s what I thought. And if you didn’t mean to kill her, you can’t have murdered her.”
Monica stared at her.
As Monica searched her face, Penelope started to hope—
“No.” Slowly, Monica started to shake her head. “You’re just trying to confuse me. If I stay, they’ll put me in prison and there’ll be a trial…”
Penelope tried to think of what to say—
Monica lunged for the river.
She broke past Penelope and raced for the wall.
Whirling, Penelope raced after her.
Grabbing up her skirts and cloak, Monica leapt for the top of the wall.
Penelope leapt up, too.
Landing on the wall beside Monica, she fisted her hands in Monica’s cloak and the layers beneath and desperately held on as the pair of them teetered.
After seconds of crazed see-sawing, panting, Monica stopped trying to break free. Turning on Penelope, she glared. “Let me go!”
“No!” Penelope glared back. “If you go over, I’ll go, too. I have a small son—is that fair?” She threw every last card she had on the table and belligerently held Monica’s gaze.
She didn’t want the girl to look down and see Barnaby. While she’d seized Monica, Barnaby had grabbed her. He had a strong grip about her knees; she wasn’t going anywhere. But he’d moved silently and was below Monica’s line of sight as long as Monica kept her gaze on Penelope’s face.
Then Monica looked past Penelope and tensed anew.
Realizing what Monica was seeing, Penelope rapped out, “Stop! Stay back!”
Distantly, she heard Stokes swear.
But he must have obeyed because, after a tense second, Monica swung her gaze back to Penelope’s face. In the faint moonlight bathing the scene, she looked at Penelope as if Penelope was demented. “Why are you doing this?”
The Curious Case of Lady Latimer's Shoes: A Casebook of Barnaby Adair Novel (The Casebook of Barnaby Adair) Page 21