“Are we disturbing someone?” I asked as I surveyed the family photos scattered about the room. Several were of Henry Tempest and his sister Emily. A couple of the Marquess’s dog. But no immediate family member. It appeared the Marquess did not have any.
At least, none he wished to place on display here.
Anna made a sound, making me turn to face her. She was reaching down to pick up a piece of fabric. No, not fabric. A ribbon. In sunshine yellow.
“Oh, forgive me,” Mr Samson exclaimed. “That must belong to Miss Emily.”
He reached for the ribbon and Anna snatched her hand back, making the butler take a necessary step forward, or lose his balance. In an instant, Blackie was there, stepping between Anna and the man, staring him down as I had seen him stare down opponents in the pugilist’s ring.
“Not so fast, guv,” he said. The butler straightened his coat tails.
“Pardon me, sir, but you are overstepping.” He peered around Blackie to Anna, who was studying the ribbon carefully.
I crossed the room to her side, using every method available to me to hide the pain in my thigh. I wasn't certain, but I believed my limp was negligible. I cursed my lost cane and Anna's parasol again. She may have been divested of the item upon admission to the house, but she could have at least had a weapon nearby should she have required it.
I felt on edge and on guard in this mansion. The staff were hiding something. Henry Tempest was already here. We were too many steps behind.
And where exactly was my wife?
“What is it?” I asked quietly.
“I know this ribbon,” she whispered.
“It belongs to Miss Emily!” the butler exclaimed. “Please hand it over, or I shall be forced to have you escorted from the house.”
“This does not belong to Emily,” Anna replied, turning to face the weasel of a man.
“And how, pray tell, do you know that?”
“I am a friend to Miss Tempest, and I am well aware of her fashion tastes. And they do not extend to bright yellow ribbons.”
“Nonsense!” Then the butler stilled. “You are a friend of Miss Emily’s?”
“A dear friend. She and I graduated medical school together.”
“Oh, that,” the butler said dismissively, making Anna pull herself to her greatest height. Which was still woefully lacking in regards to the butler’s taller frame, but from the formidable look on Anna’s face, you would not know it.
“Yes, that,” Anna said curtly. “I am Dr Anna Cassidy and this, sir, belongs to my cousin.”
She took several steps to reach the butler, startling Blackie and moving too fast for my compromised form to arrest. With one hand wrapped securely around the ribbon, Anna proceeded to grip the butler’s cravat.
“Where is she?” she demanded, shaking the man as if he were a child’s plaything. “Where is my cousin?”
It was really all rather impressive.
“I…I…I don't know what you are talking about. Please, unhand me at once!”
Several footmen entered the room as one. As if called by an unheard bell toll; all armed, all lethal. I held my breath.
“A tad overkill for a country manor, wouldn’t you say?” Reid enquired mildly, from his nonchalant lean against the pianoforte in the corner.
He proceeded to flick lint off his coat sleeve, but his eyes never once strayed from the threat.
I stepped forward to greet the footmen, who as yet hadn’t thankfully reached for a weapon.
“Stand at ease, gentlemen,” I advised. “This is Metropolitan Police business.”
“Metropolitan Police!” the butler sputtered. “You have no jurisdiction here!”
“Please,” Anna said plaintively. “If you know where my cousin is, do tell. She is fragile and needs great care. She will be lost without me. Please, sir, have pity. Where is she?”
The butler settled somewhat, in light of Anna’s distress. I moved closer, keeping the footmen in my line of sight, but placing myself nearer to Anna. I wished to reach out and touch her, hold her, but a small shake of her head had me realising how much of an act the doctor was performing.
My eyes met Reid’s, then Blackie’s. Both nodded their heads imperceptibly. They’d seen Anna’s signal as well.
I crossed my arms over my chest, resting my weight on my good leg, and waited. This was Anna’s game for now. How she would play it was anyone’s guess. How the pieces would fall was yet unpredictable. I would watch and wait and be ready to act when needed.
The butler clearly did not want us here, but I could not ascertain if his hiding something was that of Wilhelmina Cassidy’s presence. Or simply a corrupt employer using slave labour in one of his mines. Time would tell. But did Anna’s cousin have the time to spare?
“I am sure I do not know of whom you speak, madam,” the butler said evenly. “The ribbon belongs to Miss Emily.”
“What belongs to Miss Emily?” a young female voice asked, just as Emily Tempest herself and an unknown gentleman, who looked surprisingly like her brother but was not, walked into the room.
“Emily?” Anna murmured.
“Anna! Oh, what fun!” Emily glanced around the room looking stunned for a moment. Her wide eyes landed back on Anna. “But, dearest,” she said, “why are you here?”
Anna, for her part, looked confused. And then swiftly contrite.
She looked down at her hands for inspiration and spotted the yellow ribbon firmly clasped in her fingers.
Contrition turned to determination, and she raised her head and looked her friend in the eye.
“Emily,” she said, taking a step closer. “You may wish to sit down.”
“Sit down? Whatever for?”
“This,” Anna said, holding the ribbon up. “It is not yours, but my cousin’s. My missing cousin’s.”
“I…I don't understand,” Emily Tempest said, falling into a seat with little effort. I was guessing the young lady had an inkling. Perhaps she had suspected her brother of foul play before now.
Anna sat beside her friend and reached for her hand.
“Sweeting,” she said. “Where is your brother?”
Emily lifted confused eyes to look Anna in the face, and then she blanched.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I won't believe it.” Her frantic eyes darted toward the butler. “Samson? Say it isn't so!”
The man who had entered with Miss Tempest moved toward the rear of the settee and rested his hand on her shoulder. Emily reached up and gripped it, her fingers shaking.
“Samson?” she pressed when the butler refused to speak. “Has my brother done something untoward?”
The butler licked his lips, glanced first at the gentleman standing behind Miss Tempest, and then at Emily herself. He looked just as frantic and confused as Miss Tempest.
I glanced toward Reid. He shrugged his shoulders, still leaning against the pianoforte as if a crisis wasn’t unravelling before him. None of this was playing out how I would have expected.
“Yes, Miss Emily,” the butler finally said, but I wasn’t sure he believed what he was saying. “It was Mr Tempest.”
“It was Mr Tempest what?” Emily Tempest demanded.
The butler swallowed, looking even more nervous if it was at all possible.
“It was Mr Tempest, miss, who brought the chit here.”
For a suspended moment no one said anything.
And then everyone was yelling at once.
Inside I Was Screaming
Anna
She was here. Mina was here. In this house. Brought here by Henry.
I wanted to vomit. I could hardly breathe. My breasts felt too constricted, my lungs too crushed, my ribs fracturing.
“Anna,” Andrew murmured, wrapping a hand about my nape and making me tip my head forward. “Easy,” he said into my ear.
Shouts and curses, and too many voices, and somewhere someone was crying; I thought perhaps Emily.
Poor Emily. Her brother had fooled
us all.
“Mina,” I rasped.
“Where is she!” Andrew thundered. Perhaps not as loud as all that, but it was impressive. “Take us to Miss Cassidy at once!”
“Of course,” the butler squeaked, all defiance having evaporated in the face of such authority.
“I cannot,” Emily was saying, shaking her head, tears streaming down her face. “Anna, please do not make me. I simply cannot.”
I reached out and gripped her hand; it felt cold. I was hot all over as if a fire burned inside me and at any moment I’d erupt like a volcano.
“I understand, dearest,” I said. I could not blame her fragility. I felt shaken myself. Henry was my friend. But to Emily, he was her much-loved brother.
“Do you? Really? Please say you do,” she cried. “I just…I can’t think…Oh, my,” she cried. “I don't understand.”
“It is all right, Emily,” the man who had accompanied her said. “The doctor understands.”
His eyes met mine. They seemed familiar. I could not say how save to say they left me unsettled with their familiarity.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, acknowledging his statement. “I believe we have not met.”
“Dr Thomas Cream, madam.” He bowed over my hand perfunctorily. “But acquaintances can wait until you see to your…cousin, is it?”
“Yes. Yes,” I said, rushing out the door behind Inspector Reid.
“Dr Cream?” Andrew was saying to Sergeant Blackmore as we careened down the hallway. “I am sure I have heard that name before.”
“I have,” I said, running to keep up with the spritely butler. “Emily has spoken of him previously. He is her new beau.”
“Beau?” Andrew enquired, holding a door open the butler had left to swing into my face.
“Yes, Kelly,” Inspector Reid offered, not sounding out of breath at all. “You may not be aware, seeing as how you’ve been married for years and whatnot, but most people nowadays who court call their prospective paramour a ‘beau.’”
“Very funny, Edmund.”
“Ever your servant, sir.”
Andrew grunted.
We raced down hallways and pounded up stairs, the decor becoming increasingly less ornate the further into the house itself we progressed. I was certain we weren't heading toward the servant’s quarters, which in a home of this size would be at the back on the uppermost floors. But instead to a wing of the structure not readily used. Dust covers floated like ghostly mirages in silent rooms. Shutters fastened closed over blank staring windows. A faint scent of mould wafted on the air. The sound of tiny feet in dark corners scurried.
“Not much one for keeping the place clean, is he?” Sergeant Blackmore said from the rear of our party.
“This is a large home,” the butler declared archly. “We rotate the use of the rooms so as not to waste funds better spent keeping the building itself in good repair.”
“It must cost a fortune to run heat in a place this size,” Blackmore added.
“Indeed it does,” the butler said, just as a wash of warmth greeted us through a final locked door.
It did not fail to register that the butler had the key.
This hallway, however, was swept clean, the carpets not throwing up dust where we walked. The side tables polished to a high sheen, a fresh vase of flowers sitting atop one. We passed a sitting room without its ghostly accompaniments. A writing desk in the corner, covered in sheets of note paper.
I paused in the hallway, making all those behind me stumble to a stop and Inspector Reid to mutter, “Oh, here we go again.”
I walked into the room as if in a daze.
“I say!” the butler exclaimed, but I ignored him, drawn to that desk. Unable to look away.
The room was empty of persons, but full to the brim with furniture. Books lined two walls. Jacquard covered settees sat facing each other. Tables covered in knickknacks dotted the landscape. A ribbon lay discarded on the floor. I almost bent down to uplift it, but my eyes were trained on the note paper.
I lifted a shaking hand and shifted detritus around, peering down at a familiar hand-drawn image in the corner of a blank sheet of paper. A bottle sat beside an inkwell. I diverted my attention to it, lifting it up and unstoppering it.
Jasmine wafted out to greet me. I hacked a startled cough.
“Dear God,” Andrew murmured from beside me, picking up a blank piece of paper and looking more closely at the nightingale stencilled upon it. “She has been here.”
“Of course she has,” I said, lowering the perfume to the desk’s top. “We already knew this.”
“But to see it for ourselves.”
I glanced toward him and was rewarded with a sight I never thought I’d see. Andrew Kelly pale as the sheets that covered the dusty pieces of furniture. Stricken completely.
I wanted to reassure him, but how does one reassure a person of this? Facing the ghosts of his past. Facing up to his reality.
Would this make him more inclined to seek a dissolution of their marriage?
Or would this bring his guilt to bear?
I rested my hand on his arm, offering a soft squeeze, and then walked toward the settee and picked up the ribbon from the floor. Blue. Cornflower blue. Had Eliza May Kelly touched it?
She’d certainly touched the letters and the bottle of jasmine scent. The inkwell and the quill pen.
My eyes searched out the butler.
“Is she here?” I asked, my voice sounding too far away.
“Who?” he enquired, genuinely looking bewildered. “Your cousin?”
“Mary Moriarty,” I said.
“I know not of this woman.” I wanted to believe him, for that would mean I did not have to face Andrew’s wife today. That I did not have to watch him face her, either.
But the note paper and jasmine scent said it all. Eliza May Kelly had been here, whether the butler was in on the ruse, I couldn’t say. But he did have a key to that locked door.
I shouldered past the man and walked down the hall, opening doors randomly, peering into beautifully adorned bedrooms, and finally coming to a locked door.
I knew. I knew this was the one that hid Mina. I knew and yet I stood there, staring at the door handle, my mind blanking. As if it couldn’t countenance what would be found within there. What we would have to face.
I stepped aside. The world narrowing down to just this.
“Open it,” I demanded; my voice was not my own.
I was unaware of who was around me. Who murmured encouragement, or simply stood stoically at my back. I could see nothing but the butler’s gnarled hands, liver spots adorning the back of them, the skin wrinkled and paper thin, the fine hairs stark against white flesh.
The door creaked open; a cloying scent drifted out. Stale. Mixed with sweat. Thick with vomitus.
I breathed through my lips, my eyes adjusting to the dimness, then took the first step across the threshold. The butler scurried out of the way; I was vaguely aware of Reid apprehending him. Andrew and Blackmore stood silently at the door, peering into the dark depths within.
I took another tentative step forward and called, “Mina?” in a too shaking voice. I cleared my throat, opened my mouth to call again, and then gasped. My hand coming up too late to cover my nose. The breath inhaled telling me everything.
I rushed to the bedside and pulled back the covers, desperately flinging the pipe away.
It clattered against the side table, disturbing more heinous evidence. A bottle shattered on the floor, its contents spilling. Sugar cubes chased one another across the wooden planks. The sweet scent of absinthe drifted on the air, accompanied by that of opium and laudanum.
“Anna,” a weak, delirious voice whispered. “She said you would come.”
I fell to my knees beside my cousin, my hands shaking as I took in the weakened state of her body. The sallow skin, the sunken eyes, the exposed bones at her elbows and shoulders and shins.
And the dozens of tiny needle marks all over her arms.<
br />
Inside I was screaming.
To Mina, I simply said, “I am here. Everything will be all right, sweeting.”
I lied. Everything would never be all right again.
It All Went Downhill From There
Inspector Kelly
We stood outside the closed door to Wilhelmina Cassidy’s bed chamber staring at nothing, seeing nothing, unable to comprehend what we had witnessed. Anna had ushered us out as soon as she’d recovered enough to move; although she had moved on shaking legs with trembling fingers and such a wealth of horror to her eyes.
Reid had the butler by the fist, the man’s shirt scrunched up in his hand, his face pressed against the wall of the hallway. He, too, looked appalled at what we had seen, but as he was not familiar with Miss Cassidy, his anger was muted.
Blackie looked fit to kill someone, and that someone was looking incredibly like Mr Samson. With one swift move, the sergeant buried his fist in the wall beside the butler’s face, not even flinching when his knuckles came away raw and bloody.
No one said anything, although Samson did whimper and a sound of distress echoed inside the bedroom. I blinked at Blackie, who wouldn’t meet my eyes, and felt such wretched impotence engulf me.
How in the dickens would Anna survive this? She had already nursed one relative through a medicinal dependance. Now she had to take care of a drug-addled cousin too, who had already been closer than warranted to the edge of sanity. I could not see a hopeful outcome to this. Mrs Cassidy had been a robust woman at one stage before the opium consumed her. But Wilhelmina Cassidy was not at all like her deceased aunt. Fragile. Delicate. Whimsical.
Had it been laudanum alone, perhaps she could have recovered. But I’d noted absinthe, opium, cocaine and other detritus in that room. Such a cocktail of debilitating potions.
I looked to the closed door, knowing Anna worked behind it to improve her cousin’s wellbeing. I wanted desperately to offer assistance. To give support when she flagged, for surely she would flag in due course having to face this.
Instead, I stood outside the door, banished to the hallway, society’s expectations drawing a line on the floorboards that matched the threshold to Miss Cassidy’s chamber. There was nothing I could do to help Anna, but learn of where my wife had disappeared to.
Breathless (Scarlet Suffragette, Book 2): A Victorian Historical Romantic Suspense Series Page 24