Hushed in Death

  It was then that she’d glanced out her window—which looked down upon the pond, where all of her trouble had begun so many years before—and seen the beam of a torch bouncing along the path and realized that Janet Lockhart was heading home. One of the detectives had interrogated her after they’d taken James away and she realized now that the police must also have spoken to Lockhart. She was certain the meddling bitch had blamed her for what had happened to James and would continue to do so if she allowed things to continue as they were. And so she had decided on a plan of action, hoping—believing—that she could once again escape fate and reinvent herself.

  Now, she reached the place in the tunnel that was just below the decrepit ice house, her .38 caliber revolver pointed at Janet Lockhart’s head. A wooden ladder led from the floor of the tunnel to the hatch. She saw that she would have to unbind Lockhart’s hands to get her up the ladder and through the hole.

  “Turn round,” she demanded.

  She placed the torch on a step of the ladder so that its beam illuminated Mrs. Lockhart’s back, and gently placed the pistol in the pocket of her smock. She then loosened the green cotton scarf she had used to bind Mrs. Lockhart’s hands. This done, she retrieved the pistol and ordered Lockhart to turn back round.

  “Get up the ladder and push the boards away,” she said. “There are two of them. When that’s done come back. If you try to run I’ll kill you.”

  Terrified, Janet Lockhart did as Stevens commanded; the floorboards came loose easily and she descended the ladder.

  Stevens ascended the ladder and lifted herself through the hole and into the old ice house. She pointed her torch and pistol down the hole at Mrs. Lockhart and ordered her to climb. A minute later, Stevens stepped out of the shed into the darkness, behind Janet Lockhart, at whose back she pointed her pistol.

  The pond lay directly ahead of them, just beyond the trees, its surface glistening in the moonlight. Stevens intended to head down the path into Marbury. She hoped to find a car there, but if not, she would make her escape on foot. The situation was far from what she had planned, but she had found herself betrayed and left alone three times before in her life and survived each time. She intended to do so again now.

  She pushed Lockhart forward and commanded her to move. As they emerged from the wood and onto the path, Wallace, Larkin, and the uniformed constables, including Vera, arrived at the pond. Wallace saw them first and yelled for them to halt.

  Stevens pointed the gun at Mrs. Lockhart’s head. “No closer!” she called out. “I’ll shoot her and any one of you who moves.”

  Stevens aimed the pistol at the sky and fired a single warning shot that echoed over the pond and up and down the path.

  Wallace raised his hand; his group halted about thirty yards from where Stevens held Mrs. Lockhart. They froze there in a standoff.

  Lamb was just struggling out of the hole in the garden shed when he heard the shot. He saw, illuminated by the moonlight, the figures on the pathway—one woman clutching another, who he knew must be Matilda Stevens and Janet Lockhart. Neither seemed to be wounded and Lamb guessed that Stevens had fired a warning shot—or so he hoped. From where he stood, he could not see Wallace and the others but knew that they must be close.

  Rivers, his shoulder now wrapped in a makeshift bandage Cashen had applied, also heard the shot. He stood with the sergeant in the kitchen of Elton House.

  “Holy Jesus,” he said and ran out the door and toward the pond with Cashen at his heels. As they reached the path, they saw Wallace and the others stopped cold about fifty yards distant, and beyond them the dark figures of Stevens and Lockhart.

  “Stay here and make sure no one from the house comes down here,” Rivers ordered Cashen. Then he moved off the path to the left and began to make his way slowly toward the pond under the cover of the bushes and young trees that grew along the pathway and along the pond’s edge. Some of the patients and nurses had become aware that something was happening at the pond and begun peering out the windows toward it.

  Lamb had to think quickly. He did not intend to let Stevens pass unmolested as long as she held Janet Lockhart hostage. His conversation with Travers had left him convinced that the nurse probably was desperate and might kill Lockhart and even, perhaps, attempt to kill herself if she concluded she had no other way out. The plan she seemed to have set in motion a long time ago—perhaps as far back as the incident on the Algiers—was coming unraveled before her eyes, and just at the moment that she must have believed that all of her efforts and scheming finally had come to fruition.

  Stevens began to back down the path, her arm still wrapped tightly round Mrs. Lockhart, who was visibly quaking, and the gun pointed at her head. Lamb saw that her only route of escape lay down the hill and so began to move through the wood in that direction. He made it to the path and stepped onto it just below the place where Stevens and Lockhart were, cutting off Stevens’s route to Marbury.

  “That’s far enough, Nurse Stevens,” he said.

  Stevens turned quickly round and saw Lamb. She moved toward the left side of the path, jerking Lockhart with her. She looked back up the path at Wallace and the others, then down at Lamb, frankly surprised that he stood unprotected in the middle of the path with his hands raised. By now, Rivers had reached Wallace and stood with him and the others.

  “You haven’t any place to go,” Lamb said. “Let Mrs. Lockhart go and we will talk.”

  “Back away,” Stevens said to Lamb. She pressed the pistol against Mrs. Lockhart’s temple. “I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

  “I believe you,” Lamb said. “That’s why I’m willing to offer you a deal. I spoke with Travers this morning and I know everything. I have a car parked just up the hill. Exchange me for Mrs. Lockhart and I give you my word that I will make sure you get what was promised to you, along with a ten-hour head start. It’s not much of a deal, I agree, but it’s better than what you’re facing now. Look round you; you’re surrounded and have no place to go. Killing Mrs. Lockhart will only ensure that you hang. But I’m offering you a chance, at least.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m willing to use myself as collateral. Let Mrs. Lockhart go and you can take me as your hostage. It’s your only chance.”

  “What about your men?”

  “They’ll do as I command them. I promise you that they will stand down for ten hours.”

  Nurse Stevens looked nervously up and down the path a second time. Rivers, Wallace, Vera, and the others stood their ground.

  “I’m armed,” Lamb said. “I’m going to open my coat now and remove my pistol from its holster and throw it into the wood. I want to prove to you that I mean what I say. Here I go now. Don’t be alarmed.”

  “What is he doing?” Wallace whispered to Rivers.

  “I don’t know.”

  As Vera watched her father, a feeling of dread flooded her, and she had to stop herself from running to him.

  Lamb slowly unbuttoned his coat, withdrew the pistol from its holster, and tossed it into the wood’s edge.

  “You see?” he said. “I’m willing to take the risk. Are you?”

  Stevens already had decided to say yes to Lamb’s offer, though she had no intention of going with him to his car. Instead, she had her own plan about what she wanted to do next and she needed Lamb to ensure that she could carry it out to its rightful end, unlike the old plan that he and Lockhart and the rest of them had ruined. She could see it clearly now; even Hornby had betrayed her, as had Lee, who had stumbled back into her midst at exactly the wrong time and place, forcing her to remove him for good and all.

  “All right,” she said to Lamb. “Come here and stand between myself and your men.”

  Lamb did as she asked. Once he was in position, Nurse Stevens let Janet Lockhart go—she’d grown exhausted of clinging to Lockhart and was glad to be rid of her—and stuck the barrel of her gun into the small of Lamb’s back, as Janet Lockhart ran into the wood near the spot where Lamb had ex
ited it a minute earlier.

  “Go find her,” Rivers said to Wallace as the pair of them watched Lockhart disappear into the wood. “And keep quiet. Stevens mustn’t know.”

  Wallace slowly moved to the rear of the clutch of policemen standing on the path so that Stevens could not see him enter the wood. Vera was there, at the back. She touched Wallace’s arm and said, “Be careful, David, please.”

  “I will,” Wallace promised, then moved into the wood.

  Stevens shoved the gun firmly into the small of Lamb’s back. “Tell them to leave,” she said. “I want the lot of them gone. If I see even a hair of any one of them I will shoot you dead.”

  Lamb looked again at the group gathered up the path and was surprised—but heartened—to see Rivers’s familiar figure among them. He reckoned that Rivers must have sent someone through the wood to fetch Mrs. Lockhart.

  “Stand down and go back to the house,” he said to the group. “No one is to follow or Nurse Stevens will shoot me.”

  “I understand,” Rivers said, more for Stevens’s sake than Lamb’s.

  Rivers herded Larkin, Vera, and the others up the path toward the house.

  Stevens, who had no intention of following Lamb to his car—or of going to the gallows—now put her alternative plan into action. A part of her had always known that she would end her life in this way and indeed she had longed to do so since the day her sister had stolen from her the only man she had ever loved.

  She had tried to grab for herself what she wanted and deserved in life—to boldly take it, as her sister had done time and again. Now she would have the one prize in the next life that had so cruelly eluded her in this, the man whose spirit she was certain dwelled in its true final resting place, the pond of Elton House.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  AS STEVENS BEGAN TO MARCH LAMB ALONG THE PATH BACK TOWARD Elton House, Rivers sent Cashen to lock down the building, then moved the rest of the team into the rear courtyard, where he sequestered them behind the carriage house. He wondered what the nurse was on about and if she actually believed Lamb’s promise that he would give her his car and ten hours’ lead. He worried that she had something else entirely different in mind.

  Rivers moved alone to the stone wall built into the slope opposite the house and stole a peek over the rampart in an effort to follow what was unfolding by the pond.

  Lamb also wondered what Matilda Stevens actually had in mind. He did not believe that she had really bought into his offer and had agreed to it only to buy herself time to think and a chance at escape.

  He kept himself poised to jump at any opportunity to disarm her or, failing that, to act in accordance with whatever Rivers was planning.

  Even so, he was surprised when Stevens told him to leave the path and begin to move along the edge of the pond toward the rickety pier and dinghy that lay in the grass near it. He began to get an idea of what she might be planning.

  “I know what you want,” he said. “It was you, wasn’t it, who put the candles and flowers on his grave, you who tossed the lily onto the pond. You knew him once; he was your sister’s husband. And this is where he died.”

  Stevens said nothing.

  The sight of Stevens marching Lamb toward the pier alarmed Rivers, who had also gotten an inkling of what the nurse might be intending. Holding his aching shoulder, he hurried back to the carriage house, where he addressed the uniformed men, Larkin, and Vera.

  “I need the strongest swimmer among the lot of you.”

  Vera spoke up first. “I was swimming champion of my secondary school.”

  “Can anyone else swim?” Rivers asked.

  “I can give it a try,” Larkin said.

  Rivers looked at the forensics man and his thick glasses; he was well aware that Larkin could barely see without his glasses. “Thank you, Mr. Larkin, but there can be no shortcuts. Anyone else?”

  No one raised a hand.

  Rivers looked hard at Vera. He would have preferred someone who was better trained. But neither did he want to be left with a man floundering about in the pond when every move they made from here out would be crucial.

  “There can be no room for error—and no holding back,” he said to Vera, fixing her with his eyes. “No hesitation or second thoughts when the moment comes. Do you understand?”

  The words terrified Vera. Even so, she knew she should not—could not—back away from doing whatever Rivers thought was necessary to save her father.

  “I understand,” she said.

  Rivers nodded. “Come with me, then,” he said.

  By this time, Wallace had located Janet Lockhart as she had been moving through the wood toward the house. He had expected her to be hysterical but instead found that she had remained remarkably steady. He guided her up the hill through the wood, where they passed the old ice house. From there, they saw what was unfolding at the pond.

  Nurse Stevens stood by the dinghy, pointing her pistol at Lamb.

  “My God,” Mrs. Lockhart said. “She’s going to kill herself; I know it. And she probably intends to shoot the chief inspector too.”

  “Can you make it up the hill the rest of the way on your own?” Wallace asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “All right, then. Go quickly. Someone up there will find you.”

  As Mrs. Lockhart moved away, Wallace sat on the ground and quickly removed his shoes and socks and jacket. He pulled the pistol from its holster and moved toward the pond. The last time he had found himself in a similar situation he had nearly bollixed everything by moving too hastily. He resolved not to allow that to happen this time.

  At the same moment, Rivers and Vera were moving down the hill—Vera barefoot—through the cover of the young trees to the edge of the pond that was opposite the one on which Lamb and Nurse Stevens stood. They stopped about five feet from the pond and sheltered in the high grasses on their stomachs.

  Rivers’s plan was to first attempt to get off a clean shot to fell Matilda Stevens—a feat he knew would be close to impossible to achieve as long as the nurse kept Lamb close to her. Failing that, he would wait for the right moment to fire a shot into the air, hoping to startle the nurse and knock her off balance for at least an instant, during which Lamb could act to disarm Stevens and Vera could rush to assist him. Rivers reckoned that the nurse intended to use the dinghy in some way and he had instructed Vera to go into the water and do whatever she could capsize the little boat as he covered her.

  Sure enough, they saw Lamb step into the dinghy and sit in its bow, as Stevens, who still held the gun on him, seated herself in the stern.

  Vera’s heart throbbed and she realized that she had begun to perspire heavily.

  Rivers laid his hand upon her shoulder and said, “I know that you are frightened and so am I. But it will all go very quickly.”

  Stevens ordered Lamb to take up the oars and begin rowing toward the center of the pond.

  “I know about the Algiers,” Lamb said as the little boat began to nose away from the pier. “I know that Lady Elton was your sister and that James is her son, and that Alan Fox pushed her into the sea and got away with it.”

  “Alan Fox was a coward,” Stevens said. “She, on the other hand, had true courage, real strength. But she stole Henry from me and, no matter how much I loved and admired her, I could never forgive her for that. She always acted in her interests firsts, but I was too weak to follow her lead in that and she knew it. I’m changing that now. She took his body, but his spirit remains here, in this pond where she discarded him. She threw him away. But I never let him go; I always kept him close. Now I shall join him.”

  They reached the center of the pond.

  Wallace watched from just inside the wood, also hoping to get off a shot at Stevens. But she was too close to Lamb and the boat was moving too steadily to risk it. Even so, he raised his pistol and readied to squeeze off a shot the instant he believed that Stevens intended to shoot Lamb.

  Stevens commanded Lamb to stop rowing
and the little boat began to drift. For perhaps twenty seconds no one spoke or made even a sound. Dead silence pervaded the pond. In the next instant, Stevens stood and raised the pistol and whispered to herself, “I’m coming, Henry.”

  “Go,” Rivers said to Vera, who ran toward the pond and dove into it headfirst.

  Rivers stood and fired his pistol into the air, startling everyone, including Wallace, who at first thought that the shot had come from Stevens’s gun and that he had been too late. And yet he saw Lamb standing. In the same instant he saw someone dive into the pond just beyond the boat and so he limped to the pond as fast as his bad leg would carry him, leapt in, and began to swim furiously toward the boat.

  When Rivers fired the gun, Stevens froze and instinctively turned in the direction from where the shot had come, giving Lamb the opening he had sought. He stood and flung himself at Stevens, rocking the little boat. They both lost their balance and tumbled into the pond, Stevens falling backward and losing her grip on the pistol, which fell into the water.

  Lamb hit the water face-first, his body atop Stevens’s. A second later the pair were struggling beneath the opaque green surface of the pond, their feet becoming tangled in the long aquatic grasses that sprouted from the muddy bottom. Lamb pushed himself free of Stevens and surfaced, gasping. In the next instant, Stevens also raised her head above the water. Their eyes met; Stevens moved her arms beneath the water in an attempt to escape Lamb. But he dove toward her and caught her by the collar.