by Sandra Byrd
I shook my head. “No. Not yet, anyway.” We locked eyes. She did not look haughty, but she did not look remorseful, either. She looked righteous. Self-righteous.
“Winton Park,” she said simply. “You know.”
“Yes. I . . . I am at an utter loss as to why you forged a letter in my mother’s hand, or how it even came to pass.”
She took a deep breath. “Can we walk in the garden?”
I nodded. She did not want the staff to overhear and I could not blame her. Once we’d arrived at the gardens, which were fading with the year, going brown with advancing age as a woman would go gray, Mrs. W began to speak.
“One of my responsibilities was responding to your mother’s correspondence, as you know. She was often gone, and would not ever take the ring off her finger, having come from her own mother. Very much like you do not remove it now.”
I twisted the ring on my finger. It would never leave my hand.
“We had a duplicate made so I could respond to her mail in a timely manner. When she died, I kept it.”
“That all makes very good sense,” I said. “I do not, however, understand why you forged a letter from her, indicating that she wanted to give Winton away. Did she ever tell you that, and you were simply carrying out her wishes?” I hoped. I truly hoped.
“Not directly,” she said. The smell of mulch was pungent and earthy and stank of decay as we passed dormant flower beds.
“There is only a yes or a no,” I insisted.
“Then no,” she replied as firmly as I. “She was a bit frivolous, an actress, preoccupied. She was a lovely woman and my dearest friend. But right up till the end she needed me to ground her, to help her do what was best. She’d often told me that. Which is why she’d left your schooling to me.”
“But that is a far cry from the letter and its implications, and how you misled me. I am crushed, honestly.”
“I knew your father had paid off Cheyne Gardens; I’d heard him speak of it one day whilst you were at Drury Lane. So it was not as though I thought I’d leave you without a home. You had one home and I meant what I said in that letter. No one needs such a grand house.”
“How dare you? You are living in a grand house now!”
A wave of realization crossed her face. “The cost that this house came with was not worth the gain,” she insisted. “My sister would no doubt agree.”
I shook my head. “If there was nothing wrong with you arranging to give my house away, why keep it a secret?”
“You are too young to be trusted with a decision of this magnitude.” She stopped walking and turned indignantly toward me. “Perhaps somewhat frivolous, like your mother. It has always been my intention to do right by her, and by you. To guide you when guidance was required—and I believe it still is.”
I faced her. “How dare you insult my mother—your friend and, I may point out, benefactress. What to do with Winton was not your decision, and I cannot understand why you think it should be. You didn’t even pretend to guide me. You stole my property, because you knew that while I am now old enough that I would not necessarily ‘obey’ you, I would certainly honor my mother’s wishes. Only they were not her wishes! I could have you charged with fraud! The property would have come to my mother if she’d lived longer than Grandmamma. But when Mamma perished first, my grandmother thought I would be a sound judge of what should happen with Winton Park. She’d left it to me, in trust. It was mine to decide what to do with.”
Bowing under my unexpected fury she looked slightly shamed, fearful, and perhaps had realized a little the enormity of how she’d overstepped. Her voice was slightly softer, but not contrite. “In any case, you like the Cause, believe in it. I’ve seen it myself, with their Theatrical Mission outreach. The resources are being put to good use, right now, for those who need them, rather than being diverted to provide new pipes in an old house used only occasionally by the well-to-do.”
I shook with anger. “When they came to look through the house the first time, for Papa’s hidden items, you told them to return. You knew they, and I, would look through the cubbyhole in the bed and you placed the letter then, before their second visit.” I had puzzled it out on the train.
“Yes,” she said. “I placed the letter with the other letters. There was a picture there, of a young woman, among your father’s things. I shouldn’t have wanted to have thought he was involved in, well . . . But perhaps he was.”
“He was not,” I said firmly, though I did not know yet who the young woman was.
She sighed. “I’m so pleased. Your father was always such a good man, of good stock, hardworking and honest, and when I saw that picture, well, I worried. He was lovely to your mother. A direct contrast to”—she lowered her voice—“the titled,” she whispered, and she oddly took on the tone of a young girl, though she was far from one. It frightened me a little.
“They do not account for their wrongs. Their women are mute—they cannot speak or act without the permission of their husbands. Look at Lady Tolfee, Lady Lockwood. This was not like your mother’s situation—she married middle class and did what she wanted. Your grandfather made every visit to Winton Park a horror for her. She came to loathe it.”
“Perhaps she had no love left for him. But the house . . .”
Her eyes looked toward the house. “This house belonged to my sister’s husband,” she said. “A viscount.”
“The man who has just died?” I asked.
She nodded and lowered her voice. “He took me, when I was but a girl. Gave me fripperies and ribbons and told me how much prettier I was than my older sister. And then . . . And then he had me for the price of a penny cake, his final gift to lure me into his dark chamber.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “It hurt for years, in my body. In my heart, forever. I would not wish that on anyone.”
In spite of my anger, I recalled our many years together and softened for a moment. “Did you tell your sister?”
She nodded. “She said she was sorry. There was nothing she could do, and that he was unkind to her as well. That is not the kind of man your mother wanted for you. Now you’d come into your trust, Winton Park might have provided a dowry for just such a man. I knew I had to move quickly, and I did. I have helped you avoid marital misfortune and put the money to godly use.”
Ah, yes. Godly use. I recalled the phrase she used in the letter: “The house is too big for one person, in truth. It is not necessary or even godly for anyone to have a home this size . . .”
I waited a moment, to calm myself, before continuing, and a familiar Bible passage came to me.
And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
I finally spoke. “Many titled men, like Lord Lockwood and Lord Shaftesbury, are kindly and work on the behalf of justice. There are good and bad men—and women—everywhere, in every class. I am a woman grown and can make my own decisions. I’m no longer a schoolgirl who must be directed.”
“Will you not need me to return to London to further assist you, then?”
I answered firmly. “Perhaps your sister needs you here now.”
She nodded. She knew that all was forgiven but all had irrevocably changed between us, too. “That is perhaps best. Will you . . . Will you tell the Cause?”
“Have you used my ring for any other purpose? Forged any other documents?” I asked.
Mrs. W shook her head.
“I shan’t tell the Cause,” I said. “But not to protect you. Because I do not want the gift, or those it helps, or my mo
ther’s memory, or my own work at their Theatrical Mission, tainted.”
We stood and began walking back. As we did, she plucked a fading flower near the pathway. I thought of the flower book she’d shared with Mamma, which, in the end, had indicted Mrs. W. She brought the flower to her nose, but its petals, loose with age, fluttered to the ground as she did.
She loves me not. She loves me not.
When we reached the front, she coolly embraced me and I her before I turned to the carriage, which waited for me.
Nothing more needed to be said.
On the way back to the train station, I opened Little Women to the passage that Mother Martha had marked. I’d been too anxious on the journey out to read at all.
Don’t laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragical romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in God’s sight. Even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life.
I closed the book and thought of my man, at Darington. He had told me not to come, but in this I would take my own counsel. It was but a stop or two ahead. I must go. I would arrive unannounced and uninvited, which would be most unusual, but I cared not. After the hired carriage delivered us to Darington, I asked the butler if I might see Lord Lockwood.
His mother came to greet me in the parlor. “Has he progressed?” I asked.
She shrugged. “It is difficult to know. The doctor has just today said to prepare ourselves for the worst.”
My heart sank. “May I see him?”
She looked resolute, but as I held a soft and steady gaze, her face softened some. “It cannot do any more harm.”
I didn’t know if she meant that as a rebuke—if she blamed me as I, indeed, blamed myself for his injuries, but she led me upstairs to his bedchamber. After consulting with Thomas’s valet, Lady Lockwood let me into the room. I went to his bed and sat on the nearby chair. His skin was pale and his breathing slow, perhaps too slow.
“Thomas?” I said softly. He did not stir. “Thomas?” I tried once more, but nothing changed.
I leaned over and kissed him, but he did not awaken.
I waited a few more minutes and Lady Lockwood reappeared. I understood; it was time for me to leave.
As the train moved forward back to London, I held my emotions in check, outwardly. Inside, I implored the Lord over and over again not to allow either Thomas or I to miss the sweetest part of life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Soon after I returned to London, Louisa handed the delivered post to me. There was a note from Francis, asking if I could come and see him the following day at the Chelsea Metropolitan Police division.
Mr. Colmore Dunn was telegraphed and escorted me. The inspector’s door was shut; the office dark behind it. I did not like to think how it was for him in jail but my own father was dead in Hampshire and I did not spare many moments of remorse for Collingsworth. He would have seen me dead, too.
We arrived at Francis’s office and a constable opened it, announced us, and then locked eyes with Francis. He nodded at the constable and then the door was shut behind us.
“Sergeant Collingsworth, my solicitor, Mr. Colemore Dunn. Mr. Colemore Dunn, Sergeant Collingsworth.”
“How do you do?” Colmore Dunn asked. Francis nodded and indicated that we should both sit down.
“I’d like to start by apologizing for my father,” Francis said. “Turns out he was a wicked man.”
I nodded. “I’d thought he and my father were like brothers.”
He grimaced. “Perhaps Cain and Abel.”
There wasn’t much to contradict, but I appreciated his acknowledgment of it. “I’m sorry for you and for your mother,” I offered, and he nodded.
“I’m here, primarily, about the investment certificates,” I said. “When you handed them to me in the park there were only completely filled-out certificates with my father’s name on them. By the time I handed them over to Mr. Colmore Dunn, there had been added to them some certificates to a fraudulent company with your father’s name on them, and some signed but not filled out with an owner’s name.”
Francis nodded and sat back in his chair. “I’d believed all along that my father was correct in asserting that your father had been involved in prostitution and fraud. I was so disappointed; your father been a hero of mine, of sorts. I believed my own father, though, in spite of growing misgivings. Who wouldn’t?”
I nodded.
“Father said I should watch you, and he put people out to watch you, too, and report back to him. I thought it was for your protection, but in truth, he wanted to see if you had found anything that would incriminate him.”
“He had my house searched during the funeral?” I said.
Francis agreed. “Yes. That is probably when your father’s certificates were taken.”
“And then he had my house searched once more after I returned from Winton the first time.”
He nodded once more. “To see if you had located anything there and brought it back with you. He told me. He said he was looking for evidence against your father and unethical officers. The items you found in your father’s bedroom—the address and the photograph—they were things your father would not leave at the division because they might shed light on the fact that he was secretly investigating, if they’d been found, but could not in and of themselves bring about solid answers, as you yourself found out. No need to bury them in the country. The notebook, however, listed everything needed to bring about criminal convictions. It had to be guarded.
“Your father was on the trail of the true criminals, and had intended to turn them in, and at the end, I suspect he’d been tipped off that they’d come looking for that evidence. I don’t suspect he knew he would be killed and then, after his death, framed for their crimes.”
“So,” Colmore Dunn asked, leaning forward toward Francis. “When did you know you were mistaken about your own father?”
“When Gillian dropped the picture of that young girl, I began to understand.” Francis looked at me.
“You knew her. I knew you recognized her,” I said.
“Yes. Because photos are rare, they are commissioned for affection or transaction—the latter, I’m afraid, in this case. She came to the division one day looking for ‘Collingsworth,’ and because she was young and I am unmarried, they thought she meant me. When I went to meet her, she said, ‘No, not you, the older man.’ I asked my father about it then, and he said he didn’t know her.”
“You believed him?” I breathed more heavily. Where was she? What had happened to her?
“I did at the time,” he said. “But when you dropped the photograph, and I picked it up, I saw she was wearing one of my mother’s brooches, a very distinctive piece of heirloom jewelry that had gone missing. I knew then—he was lying.
“As time went on and occasion allowed, I searched the house, including my parents’ bedroom. I found more pictures of girls in a drawer—girls who would most likely be used or sold. I found evidence he had been seeing those young girls at the brothel on King Street. Then I found the share certificates, signed, but not filled out with an owner’s name, which is illegal. Why was a Metropolitan Police inspector hiding illegal certificates? And money. Lots of it. More than an inspector might ever come by rightfully.”
“And you knew for sure,” I said softly.
“I knew. When you sent a letter to me asking me to come and help you, and Mother took it and handed it to Father, he grew nervous. He looked for the illegal certificates, which I had then taken. I had them on me when you recalled me to your house to turn me down the last time . . . You were being watched, remember, so we knew you were growing close with the viscount. When you went downstairs to get the tea, I slipped into your father’s study and put them in with the others. You had told me where he’d stored them,” he said pointedly.
“I knew Lockwood would be able to help you find out who they belonged to. Your father”—he looked back at me—“had taught me that evidence was everything and hearsay nothing. I did not know there would be a notebook, which you found. The only evidence at hand were the certificates. I hoped they would clear things up. They did. My father is a criminal.”
“I’m sorry, Francis. That must have been very difficult—but honest—for you to do.”
His face went red and I thought, for a moment, he might cry. “Mother has still not forgiven me.”
“You?” I said. “Your father was the wrongdoer!”
Francis grimaced. “And what would it be to her if she had stayed with such a man all these years? She will never admit it, though she’s been fraught with nerves nigh on a year.”
Yes, I recalled her rashes, her nerves, her needing to lie down in the midst of our visit.
“Father looked everywhere, and then took what Roberts had and thought that was the end of it. But when he discovered the illegal certificates missing from our house he knew he must act quickly, and he did. He seized your home to look for them. He knew you’d go to Winton or elsewhere to look once more—the letter from your father, which he’d then come upon, was oddly worded and he has a policeman’s ear for oddly worded statements.”
“Then he sent Jones to follow me.”
“Yes.” He turned to me and blushed. “I enjoy your company, and thought it would be nice to court you. But then that took on a pressing urgency once I knew Father had it in for you. I thought that if we, well, married, you would be protected.”
I smiled once more. “I appreciate your concerns, Francis. Your heart was in the right place.”
“I also sent you some Bible pages with words blocked out to warn you.” He blushed more deeply. “Clumsy, I know, but well intentioned. I hoped to warn you away from those who would harm you. When I saw you wouldn’t be frightened off, I knew you’d follow the certificates through to the end, too. You did. I was quite proud of you.”