“Come on, boy.” He pulled Drew up and gave his cheek a smart slap, and at last Drew stirred. “Wake up, Detective Farthering! No lying down on the job.”
Drew muttered something unintelligible and then sank back against Madeline’s shoulder.
“Here now, there will be none of that,” Birdsong ordered.
He lifted Drew to his feet, shaking him, and then lowered him into the sagging old armchair in the corner. Madeline knelt on the floor beside it, glad to see the chief inspector pull a sheet over the gruesome remains on the bed.
“Drew,” she coaxed. “Drew, darling.”
At that, Drew’s eyes opened halfway. “Oh, hullo.”
His smile was unfocused and one-sided, but she thought it was the most wonderful thing she’d ever seen. “Hello.”
“Where, uh . . .” He moved his hand, rustling the note that was still pinned to his shirtfront. “What’s this?”
The chief inspector removed the hatpin and stuffed the paper into the pocket of his overcoat. “Time enough for that after we’ve got you properly awake.”
Between the two of them, he and Madeline got Drew on his feet and walked him into the parlor. Then, after shutting the bedroom door, Birdsong urged them over to the sofa and sat them down on it.
“How are you feeling?” Madeline asked once Drew was comfortably settled against her shoulder.
“A bit groggy,” he admitted. “Not quite sure I’m right in the head yet.” There was a tenderness in his eyes now. “I didn’t know if I’d see you again, and I didn’t care much for that thought.”
“Me either,” she admitted, feeling the heat rise in her face, this time not caring.
“Ahem.” Birdsong pulled Mrs. Harkness’s note from his pocket. “I suppose we may as well give this a look, if you feel you’re up to it, Detective. And then you can tell me what’s been going on here.”
The note was different from the others. Instead of the Elizabethan script on antique parchment, it had been scrawled hastily on what looked to be a corner torn from a paper bag.
The chief inspector read it aloud. “‘From Helena at the end of her epistle and the beginning of her pilgrimage.’”
“What . . . ?” Drew wrinkled his brow, then shook his head, covering his eyes with one hand. “Poor woman. I don’t suppose it all ended well for her.”
“What do you mean?” Birdsong asked, and then he raised the note. “What does she mean?”
Drew shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. Just a final clue. It doesn’t matter.”
Understanding nothing but that he hadn’t been taken from her, Madeline wrapped him more tightly in her arms and covered his forehead with grateful, unashamed kisses.
Birdsong cleared his throat. “I’ll just go see what’s keeping that rascal with the doctor.”
“You’ve shocked the old boy,” Drew said when Birdsong disappeared down the stairs, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care in the least.
She pressed her lips again to his forehead. “When are you going to marry me, darling?”
“I don’t know. Never?” He grinned slightly. “Or now.”
Relief coursed through her veins. “Please mean it, Drew. You do, don’t you?”
“The doctor could marry us. No, I suppose that’s only parsons and registrars and sea captains.” He nestled closer to her and squeezed her hand. “Soon, darling. Not so quickly that we shock the village or give dear Auntie the vapors, but soon. Besides, you’ll want some ostentatious affair that they’ll splash all over the society pages here and in the States, won’t you?”
She caressed his cheek and traced her fingers over his handsome lips, glad to see a tinge of color in them now. “I’d marry you right here, this minute, and in my bathrobe if I had to.”
“Why, Miss Parker! What would Aunt Ruth say?”
Tears sprung to her eyes. “She’d say not everyone gets a second chance and I’d be a fool not to realize it.”
She brought her lips to his, unaware of the passage of time until she heard a discreet cough. She looked up to see Nick at the parlor door.
“Dr. Wallace is on his way.” He was smiling even if his face was pale, and his tawny hair looked as if he’d spent the past little while raking his hands through it. “Though it seems, old man, you’re doing quite nicely without him.”
Drew nodded. “Better than you know, Nick. Our Miss Parker has agreed to stay on at Farthering Place in an official capacity.”
“Oh, well done.” Nick took the opportunity to shake Drew’s hand and clasp his shoulder and, Madeline suspected, assure himself Drew was still solidly with them. “You might have found a less dramatic way of getting the girl to accept you, though.”
“I’ll have you know it was she who asked me.”
Madeline flashed her eyes at him. “Drew!”
“Were you or were you not even now begging me to marry you?”
“Begging? After months of you positively throwing yourself at me, now you say I was begging?”
He gave her that mischievous grin she thought she might never see again, and she threw herself into his arms once more.
She was vaguely aware of Nick’s laugh, the brush of his lips against her hair, and a quiet charge to take care of his friend.
Then there was the sound of the door closing behind him, and she quickly forgot everything but the steady beating of Drew’s heart against her cheek.
After Dr. Wallace had pronounced Drew “disgustingly fit” and prescribed only that he refrain from any future foolishness, Birdsong sent him home.
“We have plenty to discuss, Detective Farthering, but it’ll keep until tomorrow. Looks as if we needn’t fret over our hatpin killer any longer. My men will see to everything here. You’d do best to have a bit of sleep and perhaps a prayer of thanks that you didn’t end up with anything worse than a scare.”
Drew assured him he would do just that. He and Madeline climbed into the Rolls and, with Nick at the wheel, drove back to Farthering Place. Once there, they found Denny and Aunt Ruth equally adamant that they all make an early night of it. Mrs. Devon, of course, insisted on a soothing cup of tea for everyone first. Drew even managed to drink his, though for once he declined to add any honey.
Drew woke up rather late the next morning and then only at the knock on his bedroom door.
Denny came in with his breakfast tray, not his usual job, and a message. “Chief Inspector Birdsong would like to know when he might conveniently call upon you, sir.”
Drew stretched and smoothed the hair back from his forehead. “Is my bath ready?”
“Yes, certainly, sir.”
“Very well, tell him anytime is fine, provided he gives me a half hour to eat and dress.”
“I’ll let him know, sir,” Denny said with a bow.
Precisely thirty minutes later, the chief inspector presented himself at Farthering Place. Drew was waiting in the library to receive him. Having Nick at his side and Madeline’s hand in his made it easier to bear as, at Birdsong’s request, he recounted his final conversation with Mrs. Harkness. He was shaken more than he liked to show by how nearly he’d brushed death the night before.
Birdsong was rather grim-faced as he took notes, asking for clarification here and there, but mostly letting Drew tell the tale. Afterward, the chief inspector held out a familiar-looking piece of parchment with delicately penned letters on it. “One of my men found this in her wastepaper basket. I don’t know what it means, but she clearly changed her mind at the last moment.”
Madeline took it from him. “‘With as much resolve as was in the bandit from Cairo before he died.’ What does it mean? Who’s the bandit from Cairo?”
Drew frowned in thought. “She liked plays on words. And it’s no doubt something from Shakespeare. ‘Bandit.’ Hmmm. Could be outlaw, thief or robber.”
“‘Cairo,’” Nick mused. “Egypt perhaps? Africa?”
“Egyptian maybe. Egyptian thief? Good heavens . . .” Drew paled a little. “You know the one, N
ick. From Twelfth Night.”
Nick nodded grimly.
Birdsong looked from one to the other of them. “What’s it say?”
“What is it exactly, Drew?” Nick thought for a moment. “‘Why should I not, had I the heart to do it, like to the Egyptian thief at point of death, kill what I love?’”
“Oh, Drew.” Madeline pressed herself to his side, tightening her grip on his arm. “She was going to kill you along with herself. How could she? If she loved you, even in such a twisted way, how could she?”
“I suppose she couldn’t after all.”
“But she meant to,” Madeline insisted. “She planned to. What changed her mind?”
“I will forgive you, too.”
He drew a shallow breath. “Just one of those little decisions we make.” He smiled and kissed her hand, and Birdsong scowled at him.
“So what did the other one mean then, Detective Farthering? The one she wrote last. Who is Helena and what was at the end of her epistle?”
“As best I remember, the only one of Shakespeare’s many Helenas to write about her plan to go on a pilgrimage was in All’s Well That Ends Well.” Drew indicated the volume of Shakespeare’s plays that lay on the library table next to Madeline. “You’ll find her letter in Act Three, darling.”
Madeline picked up the book and hunted down the place he had indicated, the letter at the beginning of Scene Four. She scanned the brief lines until she reached the final two. Then she looked up at him, tears in her eyes now. “Drew . . .”
The chief inspector frowned, and she passed the book to him, pointing out the place.
He is too good and fair for death and me,
Whom I myself embrace, to set him free.
By lunchtime Birdsong was, at least for the time being, satisfied that he could close his investigation. That left only one bit of unfinished business.
Drew swallowed hard. Despite what Madeline had said the night before, he couldn’t quite believe she had actually agreed to marry him. Sometimes he thought maybe he was still a bit muddled from the Mickey he’d taken with his tea. It hadn’t occurred to him until just now exactly what her acceptance would mean. Others, formidable others, would have to be told about their plans.
Still, there was nothing to do but to face the situation head-on. Madeline gave him a gentle push forward toward the parlor door, and he knew, right or wrong, now was the time to speak. Aunt Ruth was in the parlor as usual, Mr. Chambers curled up in her lap, asleep as she did her lace making.
“Miss Jansen?”
Her lips moving as she silently counted her stitches, Aunt Ruth didn’t respond.
“If I might interrupt you for a moment . . .”
She scowled, keeping her attention focused on her task. “Hold on.”
Drew glanced back at Madeline, his eyes begging her to let this happen some other day, but she only beamed at him and mouthed the words go on.
After what seemed an eternity, Aunt Ruth set down her thread and crochet hook and fixed Drew with a steely glare. “Well?”
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, ma’am, but I have something frightfully important to talk to you about and I really cannot wait another moment.”
“What’s the matter? You have ants?”
That surprised a bit of a laugh out of him, but he also felt his face heat to burning. Why couldn’t he keep his composure around this woman? It must run in the family.
He swallowed again, but he saw just a hint, just the tiniest glimmer of humor in her eyes, and he dared smile. “No, but I’d like to have. One aunt, anyway.”
She arched one eyebrow at him. “Oh, yes?”
He glanced one last time at Madeline, and then he sat down on the sofa beside Aunt Ruth. “Look here, ma’am. I know we’ve been at loggerheads ever since we met, but I’d like that to change. I do love Madeline more than all the world, and I believe she loves me. I’d like your permission, and more than that, your blessing.” He let himself be vulnerable and earnest before her and made bold to take her hand. “I want Madeline to be my wife, and I’d like to have your consent.”
Aunt Ruth pursed her lips. “Humph. She’s of age. She can do as she pleases.”
“But will it please you, ma’am? As you know, I haven’t any aunts myself, but I’d like to have.”
Her face softened a bit. Bless her if she wasn’t fighting a smile of her own. “You do have the devil’s own silver tongue. I hate to think of the trouble that’s going to get the both of you into.”
“And out of, I hope,” Drew added.
Madeline came and sat on the other side of her aunt, taking her free hand. “Please, Aunt Ruth, say yes. I know we can do whatever we want, but we want you to be happy about it, too. Happy for us.”
“I suppose you’ll pester me until I give in.”
Madeline nodded, her eyes sparkling.
Aunt Ruth turned to Drew. “And I suppose you’ll carry on with the sweet talk until you get your way. No, don’t say anything else, young man. I guess I can see why a child like Madeline couldn’t stand up to you for very long. And maybe, just maybe, mind you, you’re actually half the wonder she thinks you are and won’t make her miserable for the next fifty years. And maybe you won’t get yourself killed in the next week or two. If that’s the case . . .” She took their hands and clasped them together between both of hers, waking Mr. Chambers in the process. “If that’s the case, you have my blessing.”
“Oh, Aunt Ruth.” Madeline threw both arms around her aunt’s neck and hugged her tightly. “Thank you.”
Drew stood up again in the extremely awkward and, for him, unusual predicament of not knowing what to say next, but both women were looking up at him expectantly.
“I’ll do my very best to take good care of her, ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” The older woman again fixed him with that debilitating glare, and he felt his pulse increase.
“Miss Jansen?” he offered.
“I think it’s high time you called me Aunt Ruth.”
He smiled. “And perhaps, with the time being particularly high just now, you ought to call me Drew.”
Miss Ruth Ann Jansen
requests the honor of your presence
at the marriage of her niece
Madeline Felicity Parker
to
Ellison Andrew Farthering
on Saturday, the tenth of December
nineteen hundred thirty-two
at three o’clock in the afternoon
at The Church of the Holy Trinity and All Angels
Farthering St. John, Hampshire
Reception to follow at Farthering Place
Acknowledgments
To my family, especially the feline contingent, for putting up with me.
To David Long, Luke Hinrichs, Noelle Buss, and all the fabulous people at Bethany House, just for being fabulous.
I have no words that can truly express how much I appreciate each of you.
Julianna Deering, author of Rules of Murder, is the pen name of the multi-published novelist DeAnna Julie Dodson. DeAnna has always been an avid reader and a lover of storytelling, whether on the page, the screen, or the stage. This, together with her keen interest in history and her Christian faith, shows in her tales of love, forgiveness, and triumph over adversity. A fifth-generation Texan, she makes her home north of Dallas, along with three spoiled cats. When not writing, DeAnna spends her free time quilting, cross-stitching, and watching NHL hockey. Learn more at JuliannaDeering.com.
Books by Julianna Deering
* * *
From Bethany House Publishers
THE DREW FARTHERING MYSTERIES
Rules of Murder
Death by the Book
Resources: bethanyhouse.com/AnOpenBook
Website: www.bethanyhouse.com
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Death by the Book Page 27