As he kneels beside the body, I scoop the silver pistol off the ground and make my way to Michael, who’s still being held fast by Cunningham. Looking at the two of them, I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Michael’s short and stocky, a bull ensnared by Cunningham’s rope-like arms. Even so, Michael’s writhing is only tightening Cunningham’s grip. A pry bar and a chisel couldn’t free him at this point.
‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr Hardcastle,’ I say, placing a sympathetic hand on the struggling man’s arm. ‘Your sister took her own life.’
The fight goes out of him immediately, tears building in his eyes as his anguished gaze goes out towards the pool.
‘You can’t know that,’ he says, straining to see past me. ‘She might still be—’
‘The doctor has confirmed it, I’m so sorry,’ I say, taking the silver pistol from my pocket and pressing it into his palm. ‘She used this gun, do you recognise it?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you should keep hold of it for the moment,’ I suggest. ‘I’ve asked a couple of footmen to carry her body into the Sun Room, away from’ – I gesture towards the gathered crowds – ‘well, everybody. If you’d like a few minutes alone with your sister, I can arrange it.’
He’s staring at the pistol dumbly, as though he’s been delivered some object from the far future.
‘Mr Hardcastle?’
Shaking his head, his empty eyes find me.
‘What... yes, of course,’ he says, his fingers closing around the gun. ‘Thank you, Inspector.’
‘Just a constable, sir,’ I say, waving Cunningham over. ‘Charles, would you mind escorting Mr Hardcastle to the Sun Room? Keep him away from the crowds, would you?’
Cunningham meets my request with a curt nod, placing a hand on Michael’s lower back and gently guiding him towards the house. Not for the first time I’m glad the valet is on my side. Watching him depart, I feel a pang of sadness that this will probably be the last time we meet. For all the mistrust and lies, I’ve grown fond of him this last week.
Dickie’s finished his examination, the old man getting slowly to his feet. Under his watchful eye, the footmen drag Evelyn’s body onto a stretcher. He wears his sadness like a second-hand suit. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before. This is murder as pantomime and everywhere I look the curtain is rustling.
As Evelyn is lifted off the ground, I race through the rain towards the Sun Room, on the far side of the house, slipping inside through the French doors I unlocked earlier, and concealing myself behind an Oriental screen. Evelyn’s grandmother watches me from the painting above the fireplace. In the flickering candlelight, I could swear she’s smiling. Perhaps she knows what I know. Maybe she’s always known and has been forced to watch day after day as the rest of us blundered through here oblivious to the truth.
No wonder she was scowling before.
Rain raps the windows as the footmen arrive with their stretcher. They move slowly, trying not to jostle the body, which is now draped in Dickie’s jacket. In no time at all they’re inside, transferring the body onto the sideboard, pressing their flat caps to their chests in respect before departing, closing the French doors behind them.
I watch them go, catching sight of myself in the glass, my hands stuffed into my pockets, Rashton’s quietly competent face suggesting nothing but certainty.
Even my reflection is lying to me.
Certainty was the first thing Blackheath took from me.
The door swings open, the draught from the corridor swiping at the candle flames. In the gaps between the screen’s panels, I can see Michael, pale and shaking, gripping the doorframe for support, tears in his eyes. Cunningham’s behind him, and after flashing a covert glance towards the screen where I’m hiding, he closes the door on us.
The instant he’s alone, Michael springs out of his grief, his shoulders straightening and eyes hardening, his sorrow transformed into something altogether more feral. Hurrying over to Evelyn’s body, he searches her bloodied stomach for a bullet hole, murmuring to himself when he doesn’t find one.
Frowning, he removes the magazine from the gun I gave him outside, finding it loaded. Evelyn was supposed to take a black revolver to the pool, not this silver pistol. He must be wondering what caused her to change the plan, and whether she’s actually carried through on the plot.
Satisfied she’s still alive, he backs away, fingers drumming his lips as he weighs the pistol. He appears to be in communion with it, frowning and biting his lip as though navigating a series of tricky questions. I lose sight of him momentarily when he strides off into the corner of the room, forcing me to lean out a little from my hiding place to get a better look. He’s picked up an embroidered pillow from one of the chairs and he brings it to Evelyn, pressing it against her stomach, presumably to muffle the sound of the pistol jammed up against it.
There isn’t even a pause, any sort of goodbye. Turning his face away, he pulls the trigger.
The pistol clicks impotently. He tries again and again, until I step out from behind the screen, putting an end to this charade.
‘It won’t work,’ I say. ‘I filed down the firing pin.’
He doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t even let go of the pistol.
‘I’ll make you a rich man if you let me kill her, Inspector,’ he says, a quiver in his voice.
‘I can’t do that, and as I told you outside, I’m a constable.’
‘Oh, not for very much longer with a mind like yours, I’m sure.’
He’s trembling, the pistol still held firm against Evelyn’s body. Sweat is trickling down my spine, the tension in the room thick enough to scoop up in handfuls.
‘Drop the weapon and turn around, Mr Hardcastle. Slowly, if you please.’
‘You don’t need to fear me, Inspector,’ he says, dropping the pistol into a plant pot and turning around with his hands in the air. ‘I have no desire to hurt anybody.’
‘No desire?’ I say, surprised by the sorrow on his face. ‘You tried to put five bullets into your own sister.’
‘And every one of them would have been a kindness, I assure you.’
Hands still raised, he angles a long finger towards an armchair near the chessboard where I first met Evelyn.
‘Mind if I sit down?’ he asks. ‘I’m feeling a little light-headed.’
‘Be my guest,’ I say, watching him closely as he drops into the chair. Part of me worries he’s going to make a dash for the door, but truth be told he looks like a man who’s had all the fight wrung out of him. He’s pale and twitchy, arms hanging limp by his sides, legs splayed out before him. If I had to guess, I’d say it took all his strength to decide to pull the trigger.
Murder didn’t come easy to this man.
I let him settle, then drag a wingback chair over from the window to sit opposite him.
‘How did you know what I was planning to do?’ he asks.
‘It was the revolvers,’ I say, sinking a little deeper into the cushion.
‘The revolvers?’
‘Two matching black revolvers were taken from your mother’s room, early this morning. Evelyn had one, and you the other. I couldn’t understand why.’
‘I’m not following.’
‘The only obvious reasons Evelyn had to steal a gun were because she thought herself in danger – a rather redundant explanation for somebody about to commit suicide – or because she planned to use it in the suicide. The latter being more likely, what reason could she possibly have for taking both of the revolvers? Surely one was up to the task.’
‘And where did these thoughts lead you?’
‘Nowhere, until Dance noticed you carrying the second revolver on the hunt. What had been odd, was now damn peculiar. A woman contemplating suicide, at her lowest ebb, has enough forethought to remember her brother’s aversion to hunting and steal the second weapon for him?’
‘My sister loves me a great deal, Inspector.’
‘Perhaps, but you told Dance that you did
n’t know you were going hunting until midday, and the revolvers disappeared from your mother’s room early in the morning, well before that decision was made. Evelyn couldn’t possibly have taken the second gun for the reason you suggested. Once I heard about your sister’s fake suicide scheme I realised you were lying, and from there everything became clear. Evelyn didn’t take the revolvers from your mother’s room. You did. You kept one, and gave Evelyn the other to use as a prop.’
‘Evelyn told you about the fake suicide?’ he asks, his tone dubious.
‘Partially,’ I say. ‘She explained how you’d agreed to help her by running up to the reflecting pool and dragging her onto the grass, as a grieving brother naturally would. That’s when I saw how you could commit the perfect crime, and why you needed two matching revolvers. Before pulling her out of the pool, all you had to do was shoot her in the stomach using the fireworks as cover for the second shot. The murder weapon would disappear into the murky water, and the bullet would match the identical gun she’d just dropped on the grass. Murder by suicide. It was quite brilliant, really.’
‘Which is why you made her use the silver pistol instead,’ he says, understanding coming into his voice. ‘You needed me to change my plan.’
‘I had to bait the trap.’
‘Very clever,’ he says, miming applause.
‘Not clever enough,’ I say, surprised by his calmness. ‘I still don’t understand how you could go through with it. Time and again today I’ve been told how close you and Evelyn are. How much you care for her. Was that all a lie?’
Anger brings him upright in his chair.
‘I love my sister more than anything in this world,’ he says, glaring at me. ‘I would do anything for her. Why else do you think she came to me for help? Why else would I have said yes?’
His passion has thrown me. I set this plan in motion believing I knew the story Michael would be telling, but this isn’t it. I expected to hear how his mother had put him on this path while she orchestrated events elsewhere. Not for the first time, I have the unmistakable feeling of having misread the map.
‘If you love your sister, why betray her?’ I ask, confused.
‘Because her plan wasn’t going to work!’ he says, slapping his palm down on the arm of the chair. ‘We couldn’t pay the amount Dickie wanted for the fake death certificate. He agreed to assist us anyway, but yesterday Coleridge found out that Dickie was planning to sell our secret to Father later this evening. Do you see? After all this, Evelyn would have woken up in Blackheath trapped in the same life she was so desperate to escape.’
‘Did you tell her this?’
‘How could I?’ he asks miserably. ‘This plan was her one chance to be free, to be happy. How could I take that away from her?’
‘You could have killed Dickie.’
‘Coleridge said the same thing, but when? I needed him to confirm Evelyn’s death, and he intended on meeting my father directly afterwards.’ He shakes his head. ‘I made the only decision I could.’
There are two glasses of Scotch beside his chair, one halfway full and smeared with lipstick, the other unmarked, a little alcohol left at the bottom. He reaches towards the lipstick-smeared one slowly, keeping his eyes on me.
‘Mind if I have a drink?’ he asks. ‘It’s Evelyn’s. We had a toast in here before the ball began. Best of luck and all that.’
There’s a catch in his throat. Any other host might think him repentant, but Rashton can spot fear a mile away.
‘Of course.’
He picks it up gratefully, and takes a stiff slug. If nothing else, it serves to steady his trembling hands.
‘I know my sister, Inspector,’ he says, his voice hoarse. ‘She’s always hated being forced into things, even when we were children. She couldn’t bear the humiliation of a life with Ravencourt, knowing people were laughing behind her back. Look at what she was willing to do to avoid it. Slowly but surely that marriage would have destroyed her. I wanted to spare her that suffering.’
His cheeks are flushed, his green eyes glazed. They’re filled with such a sweet, sincere sorrow that I almost believe him.
‘And I suppose the money had nothing to do with it?’ I say flatly.
A scowl mars his sadness.
‘Evelyn told me that your parents threatened to cut you from the will if she didn’t do as they asked,’ I say. ‘You were leverage, and it worked. That threat was the reason she obeyed their summons in the first place, but who knows if she’d have done the same thing again knowing her escape plan was gone? With Evelyn dead, that uncertainty is laid to rest.’
‘Look around you, Inspector,’ he says, gesturing around the room with his glass. ‘Do you really think any of this is worth killing for?’
‘Now your father can’t squander the family fortune, I imagine your prospects have improved immeasurably.’
‘Squandering the fortune is all my father’s good for,’ he snorts, finishing his drink.
‘Is that why you killed him?’
His scowl deepens. He’s tight-lipped, pale.
‘I found his body, Michael. I know you poisoned him, probably when you went to fetch him for the hunt. You left a note blaming Evelyn. The boot print outside the window was particularly devious.’ His expression flickers uncertainly. ‘Or was that somebody else?’ I say slowly. ‘Felicity, perhaps? I’ll admit, I still haven’t untangled that knot. Or was it your mother’s? Where is she, Michael? Or did you kill her, as well?’
His eyes widen as his face crumples in shock, his glass slipping from his hand onto the floor.
‘You deny it?’ I ask, suddenly uncertain.
‘No... I... I...’
‘Where’s your mother, Michael? Did she put you up to this?’
‘She... I...’
At first I mistake his floundering for remorse, his gasping for the shallow breaths of a man searching for the right words. It’s only when his fingers grip the arm of the chair, white foam running down his lips, that I realise he’s been poisoned.
I spring to my feet in alarm, but I have no idea what to do.
‘Somebody help us,’ I yell.
His back arches, his muscles tense, his eyes turning red as the blood vessels pop. Gurgling, he falls forward onto the floor. From behind me I hear rattling. Swinging around, I find Evelyn convulsing on the sideboard, the same white foam bubbling up between her lips.
The door bursts open, Cunningham taking in the scene with an open mouth.
‘What’s happening?’ he asks.
‘They’ve been poisoned,’ I say, looking from one to the other. ‘Fetch Dickie.’
He’s gone before the words have fallen from my lips. Hand to my forehead, I stare helplessly at them. Evelyn is writhing on the sideboard as if possessed, while Michael’s clenched teeth crack in his mouth.
The drugs, you fool.
My hand dives into my pocket, retrieving the three vials I was instructed to steal from Bell’s trunk when Cunningham and I ransacked it this afternoon. Unwrapping the note, I search for instructions I know aren’t on it. Presumably, I mix everything together, but I don’t know how much to give them. I don’t even know if I have enough for two doses.
‘I don’t know who to save,’ I cry, looking from Michael to Evelyn.
Michael knows more than he’s told us.
‘But I gave Evelyn my word I’d protect her,’ I say.
Evelyn spasms on the table so violently she falls to the floor, as Michael continues to thrash, his eyes now rolled so far back in his head only the whites can be seen.
‘Damn it,’ I say, running over to the bar.
Emptying the three vials into a Scotch glass, I add water from a jug and stir it all together until it foams. Evelyn’s back is arched, her fingers biting into the thick weave of a rug. Tilting her head back, I pour the entire filthy creation down her throat, even as Michael chokes behind me.
Evelyn’s seizures end as abruptly as they started. Blood weeping from her eyes, she sucks in
deep, hoarse breaths. Letting out a sigh of relief, I touch my fingers to her neck, checking for a pulse. It’s frantic, but it’s strong. She’s going to live. Unlike Michael.
I cast a guilty glance at the body of the young man. He looks exactly as his father did in the sitting room. They’ve clearly been poisoned by the same hand, using the strychnine Sebastian Bell smuggled into the house. It must have been in the Scotch he drank. Evelyn’s Scotch. Her glass was half full. Judging by how long it took to affect her, she can only have taken a sip or two. Michael, by contrast, finished the lot in under a minute. Did he know it was poisoned? The alarm I saw on his face suggests not.
This was somebody else’s work.
There’s another killer in Blackheath.
‘But who?’ I demand, angry with myself for allowing this to happen. ‘Felicity? Helena Hardcastle? Who was Michael working with? Or was it somebody he knew nothing about?’
Evelyn’s stirring, the colour already returning to her cheeks. Whatever was in that concoction, it’s working fast, though she’s still weak. Her fingers paw at my sleeve, her lips forming empty sounds.
I lower my ear to her mouth.
‘I’m not...’ – she swallows – ‘Millicent was... murder.’
Very weakly she tugs at her throat, pulling out the chain which was concealed by her dress. There’s a signet ring on the end of it, bearing the Hardcastle family seal if I’m not very much mistaken.
I blink at her, not understanding.
‘I hope you got everything you needed,’ says a voice from the French doors. ‘It’s not going to do you much good though.’
Looking over my shoulder, I see the footman emerging out of the darkness, his knife glinting in the candlelight as he taps the point against his thigh. He’s wearing his red and white livery, the jacket dotted with grease spots and dirt, as though the essence of him is somehow leaking through. A clean, empty hunting sack is tied to his waist, and with mounting horror I remember how he tossed a full sack at Derby’s feet, the material so blood soaked it hit the ground with a wet slap.
I check the clock. Derby will be out there now, sitting in the warmth of a brazier, watching the party dissolve around him. Whatever the footman’s going to put in the bag, he plans to carve off Rashton.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Page 35