Out Comes the Evil

by Stella Cameron

‘Might as well kill two birds with one stone.’ It was Vivian who laughed this time.

  FORTY-THREE

  Too late, damn it. He’d called Alex too late to stop her leaving and she wasn’t answering her mobile.

  ‘… gone to the stables at Derwinters’. Vivian …’

  That was as much as he registered of what Harriet said when he reached Leaves of Comfort and before he raced back to his vehicle, dragging out his mobile as he went.

  O’Reilly picked up on the first ring and Tony didn’t wait for greetings. ‘I’m on my way to the Derwinter place. Where are you?’

  ‘Leaving Bourton-on-the-Water. On my way to Folly.’

  ‘Do you know where Harry Stroud is?’

  ‘In custody. We picked him up a couple of hours ago. He still swears he didn’t have anything to do—’

  ‘He didn’t. Not directly. I don’t know it all but I will. Alex went to meet Vivian Seabrook about an hour ago. I think we’ll find out – Vivian only wants one thing. That’s to see Harry spend the rest of his life in jail for murders he didn’t commit. Including Alex’s.’

  O’Reilly was silent for moments. Then he said, ‘I’m coming. Bill’s with me. I’ll call for backup.’

  ‘Don’t come in like the bloody cavalry, Dan. I don’t know what I’m going to find—’

  ‘I want you to stay put just where you are and let our people go in.’

  Tony pulled his lips back from his teeth. ‘You’ve got to be kidding. Follow me and come quietly. Alex didn’t know what she was walking into. Does the name Lenore Seabrook ring a bell? The pianist.’

  ‘A bit. Famous, isn’t she?’

  ‘Wasn’t she? Yes. She had a long affair with Walter Lovelace of Lovelace Meats. Lovelace was Harry Stroud’s last client for Lark Major. Lovelace had advancing Alzheimer’s and Stroud frittered away the man’s fortune on useless investments. Vivian is Lovelace’s daughter by Lenore Seabrook. The kid was never spoken of because her mother wanted it that way. But mum was ill a long time in the end and went through all the money Vivian should have inherited. But Vivian didn’t think all was lost since she intended to squeeze her daddy, only that had already been done.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Later Dan. This is simple revenge – if it’s ever simple. I’ve got a picture of Vivian on horseback with her mother and another of Lovelace with Lenore, same date. There were whispers about who the girl’s father might be, but they kept it mostly quiet. Vivian’s lost it. I’ve got to get there.’ He threw his mobile on the seat beside him, on top of the photographs.

  He had a fleeting vision of O’Reilly and Lamb fuming over interference, but driving like escaping convicts just the same.

  The drive to the Derwinters felt longer than it ever had. Tony set his jaw and almost yelled aloud when he drove onto the estate. He knew the way to the stables – he ought to.

  His first off-kilter impression was that there were too many horses in the fields. But rain pelted in a continuous sheet and Vivian valued the expensive stable too much to risk its health.

  The Land Rover was too loud and too obvious to get very close. Tony parked the vehicle by a lower paddock and ran, doubled over, using anything he could to cover his progress.

  Before the final rise to the stables, he fell on his belly and crawled until he had a clear view of the building.

  Nothing moved.

  No horses appeared at the doors to their stalls. Not surprising when they must all be in the fields. Tony wiped his sopping hair from his eyes. Mud beneath him didn’t feel good but it helped him slide without raising his head often.

  To the left, Lily’s Fiesta had been parked.

  Tony put his forehead on his muddy hands. His last hope had been that Alex had decided against coming here but he should know better.

  There was no way to guess where the two women were or what was transpiring. With a lot of luck he’d walk in on nothing more than a heated conversation.

  He gave up on crawling and walked rapidly to the open doors into the stable. Once inside, he edged forward to the passage between empty stalls and took a look toward the far end. Nothing.

  A faint rustling came and went. Tony thought it must be an animal moving around.

  He walked the length of the building, searching left and right but seeing no movement.

  ‘Hello, Tony.’ Vivian’s voice jolted him.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘Or should I say good afternoon. I’m looking for Alex.’

  ‘She’s right here.’

  ‘Right here’ was trussed in a heap in front of more open doors at the back entrance. He made to go to Alex but Vivian held up a hand. ‘Stay where you are until I say otherwise.’

  ‘Alex,’ he said urgently, ignoring Vivian.

  Only desperation in Alex’s eyes showed she was alive. She didn’t move a muscle. ‘Why isn’t she moving?’ he snapped at the other woman.

  ‘She’s just tired. I need your help with something.’

  ‘I’m getting Alex out of here and you’d better pray I don’t find you’ve done something to her.’ Not far from Alex’s head stood a red petrol can. There was no nozzle but the cap was off. ‘That petrol’s open – get it away from Alex.’

  Vivian swayed from her back to her front foot, to her back and forward again. She kept up the rhythmic movement. ‘It’s where I want it. If you don’t want me to spread the contents all over your girlfriend, do as you’re told.’

  An arrival by the cavalry couldn’t do any harm.

  Pamela Gibbon’s mare moved restlessly outside. The animal was saddled. ‘Planning to ride off into the sunset?’ Tony said and hoped he sounded more flippant than he felt.

  ‘How did you guess? Take this.’ She raised her right hand to show him a full syringe. ‘Just hold it. For now. Drop or throw it and the petrol gets kicked over.’ In her left hand she held a lighter.

  Tony made himself smile at Vivian even though her eyes haunted him.

  He took the syringe. ‘Let me guess. Now I inject myself with this and we wait for me to react. What is it? Ace and special K?’

  ‘You taught me how, Dr Harrison. Acepromazine and ketamine. And you’re right. That dose is for you. Take it like a man and when I know you’re both down, I’ll get on my horse and ride.’ She gave a nervous, spiraling laugh. ‘Out of Dodge, right?’

  Tony didn’t laugh, and he didn’t point out that giving himself the shot would only prove he was a fool. Why should he think she wouldn’t go ahead with her pyromaniac plan?

  ‘I can see what you’re thinking,’ Vivian said. The tears that welled in her eyes seemed bizarre until she choked out, ‘I’ve lost everything I cared about but Harry Stroud will take the fall for it. Do it, Tony. Do it now.’

  He did.

  He jabbed the needle through his heavy Barbour coat and released the entire contents of the syringe.

  And he stared straight at Vivian when he dropped the syringe and clasped a hand over his side.

  Vivian all but danced now. ‘They found out Jay didn’t kill himself. But, didn’t they think he was the murderer suffering from guilt? Just for a while? They weren’t supposed to find out someone killed him for much longer than it took them to figure it out. They’re too damn clever now, but it doesn’t matter. It was a good diversion and Pamela hated that piece of slime. Anyway, Harry will be blamed for that, too.

  ‘Radhika was unfortunate. She lived. She was supposed to die. But she swallowed the story that her creepy brother had found her. She’ll keep quiet – definitely after I work on her some more. She was the only one who knew Pamela meant the world to me, and that I hated Harry Stroud’s guts. She’s too much of an innocent to understand the kind of love I had for Pamela, or what drove it away. I wanted us to be together – the baby too if it had to be that way – but Pamela didn’t understand. Oh, my God, I … it was him, he blinded her to what we could have had.’ Vivian’s eyes had lost focus. ‘For now I’ll help Radhika run away. Far, far away.’

&n
bsp; Tony kept looking at her.

  ‘I told Harry to suggest Jay should stay at Cedric Chase and he fell for it. Everyone knew he wouldn’t really want Jay in that house.

  ‘Pamela and Harry had a signal, silly bit of music, but I knew all about that and I used it to make sure she came to me up at the manor that night. I thought everything was going wrong when the torch fell back into the shaft but it was on a piece of line and I managed to pull it up. She … Pamela was screaming.’ Vivian’s mouth hung open in a dead white face.

  She stooped sideways to pick up the green bag he and Alex had seen in the tower at Ebring Manor. ‘It was just luck I remembered this and went for it the night I heard all the fuss was going on at the manor. Scratched myself to pieces getting up the tower with no light.’ She slid the handles up her right arm and over her shoulder.

  Tony fell heavily to his knees, taking himself closer to Alex, and blinked several times.

  ‘Now you know how the poor horses feel,’ Vivian said. ‘I should go now. Poor Harry. I don’t think he’ll like it in prison.’

  When, Tony wondered, had love turned to hate. When had the burden of it all become too heavy for her. Didn’t she expect him to think all the animals being removed from the barn was a sign she was taking them away from the fire she intended to start? He toppled forward and his head settled almost on one of Vivian’s boots.

  In a single move, snaking an arm around Alex’s waist, he lunged at Vivian’s legs.

  And he almost made it.

  The toe of her left boot connected with the petrol can a second too soon, at the same time as Tony saw an arc of lighter flame spin into the hay. But he had Alex. Carrying her trussed body, first under his arm, then over his shoulder, he heaved them both through the stable doors as he felt an explosion of heat hit his back.

  Vivian was ahead of them and leaping into the mare’s saddle.

  He kept running … until he heard the scream. It went on and on and he swung around.

  Gracie, Pamela’s beloved mare, instead of running away with Vivian, had bolted toward a wall of fire engulfing the side of the stables. ‘Get back! Get back,’ she cried at the horse, then, ‘I’ll still get you two. You’re finished.’ After that all he heard was the roar of fire.

  ‘You’re fine,’ he yelled at Alex. ‘I hear sirens.’ And he slid her to the ground and ran, raced and scrambled toward the rearing animal.

  The long scream came again. Gracie balked, drove her hoofs into the wet earth, and Vivian hurtled from the saddle, over the horse’s head and into the inferno.

  Tony caught the animal’s reins and hung on with all his weight.

  On the ground lay the green canvas bag.

  At least the hospital had individual ER rooms.

  Stretching first one hand, then the other, Alex watched her muscles react.

  She had never been so captivated by, or so grateful for, the simple movements of her body.

  This was how ‘lost, alone and dependent’ felt. She had been left to wait for the drugs Vivian had injected to wear off. No amount of trying to signal with her eyes that she didn’t want to come here had made any difference.

  While she’d been in the ambulance at the Derwinters’ place, she’d heard how Vivian had been dragged, alive but badly burned, from the stable. Alex didn’t want to think of what that meant. But she also couldn’t concentrate on the level of hatred – and avarice – that had led a woman to go mad, first over a lost inheritance, then because Pamela had spurned her. Alex could understand what the depth of despair must have been, but not the way Vivian had turned once more to her desperate grab for revenge against Harry, so desperate she could kill, violently, the one person she might have cared for deeply.

  What now? What did it take to have the strength to come back from near death as she and Tony had? She knew Tony had managed to empty his own syringe into the thick layers of his coat, but the slightest mistake and they would both have burned to death, aware of everything around them but unable to move.

  The police didn’t want anyone near her yet. She groaned at the thought of the streams of questions to come. An officer stood guard outside the door and she saw only nurses and an occasional doctor who all smiled at her as if she were either an interesting lab specimen, or a not very bright child.

  What did she want? How did she make up her mind what to do with her tomorrows? There was a hole inside her where understanding belonged.

  The door opened and Tony walked in, smiling at her with his mouth but with dark concern in his eyes. ‘Hey,’ he said, almost inaudibly.

  Alex pushed higher in the narrow bed. She wasn’t sure what to say.

  Then reality came flooding in, complete clarity. The only one she wanted to see was Tony, and he was here. She didn’t need to think about tomorrow or next week, only now. The wounds caused by Vivian Seabrook wouldn’t heal immediately, not for anyone in Folly.

  But this was right.

  Disheveled and with mud smeared down the front of his coat and jeans, he carried a duffel bag. There were bandages on his left hand and scrapes on his face, but he came to the bed and set the bag on a chair beside it.

  She gave him a half-hearted grin.

  Tony rested a hand on top of her head and stared at her. His hand moved carefully to the side of her face. Then he pulled fresh clothes, her clothes, out of the bag and spread them on the bed.

  He would take her home.