The Heartreader's Secret
Page 42
(Breaking all her vows, violating all her ideals, using a proficiency that was the fruit of categorization. That was love. That was true, real love. Between two women. Who didn’t give even a shred of attention to what anyone thought of them.)
“You attacked her, Artie,” Olivia said, very reasonably. She sat at the edge of the table. “What did you think would happen?”
“That—it would be a distraction!” Norwood swallowed hard. “That I could get away. That’s all I wanted, a–a moment to run. Just to run, to be done with this. I never asked for it. He never said it would be like this.”
“Like what?”
“Bodies, death. My uncle was almost beaten to death! Dayton Spencer here, m-making people think that I—and—and the girl, the dead girl. And the stable master! Garrett said it wouldn’t be anything like this.”
“Garrett Albany.”
Norwood squeezed his eyes tightly shut.
“Right.” Olivia sighed and pinched her nose. He couldn’t imagine how she was so calm, not with blood all over her, all over him, all over Norwood. Not while her friend languished, still not out of the woods, above them. Not when the notes were long gone, and poor Mabelle was dead, and….
“How did you hear about the dead girl?” Olivia asked a moment before Chris could realize anything was odd about it. “That was last night, wasn’t it, Arthur? While you were here, at the house? How would you know that she’s been killed?”
Norwood shook his head furiously. “P-please, I don’t know anything. I d-don’t…” He shuddered. “Let me see Uncle Francis. He—he’ll make sense of all this, he’ll fix it. He knows me. I’m not a killer. Not a bad person.”
“The deceased policewoman we all saw you attack would say otherwise, Mister Norwood.”
Norwood’s shoulders heaved just once, and he wiped furiously at his nose with a blood-soaked handkerchief. “Please,” he repeated.
“Where is the courier taking the package, Arthur?” Olivia’s voice changed. It took on a gentle, wheedling sort of tone, and she put her elbows on the table and leaned over so that her face was no more than an inch from Norwood’s. “Miss Margaret. You know her. You met her at the post office. Where is she taking those notes? I don’t need to tell you what a sign of cooperation that would be, do I? Something to show that you aren’t the sort of fellow who slashes the throats of police and shoots poor, curious stable girls?”
“Ah!” Norwood cried, and buried his face in his hands.
“Garrett Albany put you in over your head, Arthur…” Olivia reached out. Gently pulled the young man’s hands from his face. Tilted his chin up. Smiled patiently and warmly. “I believe you, you know. I do. You never meant any of this.”
“Never,” Norwood agreed, a sob escaping his mouth. “Never. It’s all j-j-j-just… it all… it wasn’t meant to be like this.”
“I know.” Olivia patted his cheek. “I know, Arthur.”
He looked up at her with an expression that was almost hopeful.
And then she straightened and shook her head. She walked a few steps away. She met Chris’s eyes and gave him a half-smile that showed off one gleaming canine.
He couldn’t smile back. He just felt ill, crown to toes.
Olivia rolled her eyes at him—he hated her for it, he did, people they knew were bleeding, Maris could die—and turned back to her quarry. “But police, well, you know. Police are insular. They’re protective. They take care of their own, and they’re violent sods. They won’t understand any of it. They won’t look at you and see a poor little mouse in so far over his head he can’t even see the sun through the waves. All they’re going to see is a vicious murderer.”
“I j-j-just wanted to run. I’d never come back. I didn’t want this.”
Olivia snapped her fingers before his face. He jumped. “No, none of that. Pay attention. We’ve beyond that, already, Arthur, keep up. Whatever your intentions, it’s done, and that’s all there is to it. Officer Dawson is dead, and they’ll blame you, and then there’s Roger Greene and poor Mabelle and, of course, the theft, and that’s all on you unless you give me something. Then, perhaps, I can convince them otherwise. Then maybe they’ll see that you’re not so bad as all that. That you never meant for it to get so bad.”
Norwood looked up at Olivia with haunted eyes.
“Where is Margaret taking the package?” Olivia asked again, and Norwood’s face crumpled.
Chris knew that they had him.
“Th…” Norwood closed his eyes tight, and then, balling his fists on the table, he continued. “There’s a house,” he said. “Garrett’s collected p-p-p-property all over the city. Old, h-homes abandoned after the Floating Castle. It… he l-likes that. He thinks it’s ironic. We… he uses them for places to hide, places to collect… ss-supplies, places to send mail… the girl, the courier, Margaret, she said—it could be this one p-place.”
“I’ll need an address,” Olivia said.
Norwood lowered his head. “1178 Greensborough Row,” he said.
Chris’s heart dropped to the floor.
“Thank you, Arthur,” Olivia said gently, smiling and gently touching Norwood’s shoulder. “That wasn’t so bad as all that, is it?”
“Olivia,” Chris said. His voice came out strangled.
“Of course,” she continued, “you’re an idiot. The police officer in question is a friend of mine. She’s not dead, not yet, and honestly, that’s the only reason you’re not dead. If Em didn’t come after you, I would have. I’m not particularly good at shedding tears or writing eulogies or letting myself be broken by such things—you can ask my mother about that, she’d be happy to give you all the details you could ever wish for—but I am very good at making sure that people pay.”
“Olivia,” Chris repeated.
“Christopher,” she snapped, whirling. “Can’t you see that I’m attempting to destroy dear Arthur’s entire soul, right now? Need I remind you that he nearly killed Maris Dawson?”
“I know that house!” Chris cried. “That’s William’s father’s house. And Will just bought it back from owners who were very determined to hold onto it, a-and his mother hasn’t seen him since—I—Olivia! I think….”
The room fell into silence. Norwood sobbed wretchedly. Chris tried not to vomit. Olivia stared at him, eyes wide and shocked.
“Well,” she said, after a long moment. “Well. That’s not very good, now is it?”
Chris stepped out into the hallway in a daze. His stomach roiled. Will… Will wasn’t any part of this. It was a mistake. How could this be happening? He hasn’t been here since last night, Missus Cartwright had said on the mirror.
That had been at least twelve hours ago.
Footsteps on the floor. He raised his head, swallowing his gorge.
“Chris—” Rosemary stopped short, staring up at him with large blue eyes. There was a spot of thick black grease under her right eye, high on her cheek, and he focused on it. Automatically, he took a step forward, raising a hand, and tried to wipe it away. It smeared long and dark against her skin.
She stepped back.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Everything’s a mess,” he breathed. “Gods. Gods, is there anyone I care about who isn’t getting pulled into this disaster?”
Olivia said something to Norwood and then closed the door firmly behind them. “We need a guard on the door. Some staff member. I think we have most of this little conspiracy pinned down, now, and we can start trusting our people again.” She stepped up to Chris’s side. “How is… how is Maris?” One of her hands fluttered helplessly, reminding Chris of a moth battering against an alp-light. “Gods, please tell me that Maris is still alive.”
“She…” Rosie’s gaze flickering from Chris’s face to Olivia’s and then back to Chris. “Em says she’s still breathing. She hasn’t moved her. They’re just… lying there, in the hallway, all covered in blood. People are starting to come out of their rooms. They’re all terrified.”
“Chris.” Rosie’s wide eyes pried him apart, and he shuddered. “Chris, what’s the matter?”
“I think…” How could he explain? His sister didn’t know about Will, about what he meant to him, or even that he existed. How could she possibly understand anything that he could tell her? He raised a hand to straighten his specs. He shook all over.
“There may be some sort of… hostage situation,” Olivia murmured. “Involving a friend of your brother’s.”
Rosemary looked back and forth between them. “Friend?” she asked.
Something about it scraped along Chris’s nerves as if with a file. “Yes, a friend!” he exclaimed. “I have friends! Is it so hard to believe that he’s, I, Rosemary, I have—I have people I love, people who love me, and—” He turned bodily to Olivia, all at once. His heart humped against his rib cage like a xylophone. He might actually be quite sick. “Will they hurt him?”
She folded her lips. “I don’t know.”
“Why would they have taken him? They didn’t. There’s no way. He’s fine. He’s not involved in any of this, they’d never….”
Olivia cleared her throat carefully. “Except,” she spoke delicately, “that he testified in the trial of Francis Livingstone, revealed himself as a legendary timeseer, and is armed with the sort of gift that Garrett Albany might love to get his hands on.”
Chris groaned. He buried his face in his hands. “His mother told me she hadn’t seen him. That he hadn’t come home. Do you think….?”
She looked at him with a tired, hopeless sort of expression. “I honestly can’t say, Christopher. Will is valuable, as I just said. He’s also something of a police officer. They might not want to risk—”
“But Garrett Albany is a madman. They might not, but… they might.”
Olivia shrugged helplessly.
Chris gave a wordless cry and stalked away. “We have to—” He clenched his hands into fists. “We have to get back to Darrington. We have to arrive before the train. If we can stop Sister Margaret before Mister Albany has Emilia’s notes… we could even force her to confess she’s working for him! And then, it’s just, we’ll just have to send police to that address, and—”
“It won’t be so easy as that.”
They all turned as one.
Rachel stood in the kitchen doorway, propping herself up against its frame. Chris couldn’t help looking at her usually pretty pink lips. They looked grey.
“Garrett has a temper,” she said. “And by now, he knows how close he is to getting those notes. If you just beat him to the punch, taking victory out of his hands, he’ll be furious. Which was fine, except… if he does have a hostage, he could hurt them just out of spite. When he’s angry… he can be like that.”
Chris swallowed down something that might have been a roar of frustration and might have been a scream and might have just been a sob. Garrett Albany, with his fanged grin and his smug, twinkling eyes, with the barrel of a pistol pressed up against Will’s temple.
He was going to be sick.
“What do you suggest then?” Olivia asked. She sounded as if she was talking from the end of a long tunnel. “And, more to the point, how can we trust you?”
Rachel gasped in affront. “I—”
“You could have revealed everything you knew the moment we arrived here. Norwood could have been arrested within the hour. None of this would have happened. And yet, you concealed it. Because of some bizarre, misplaced family loyalty. Well. Mister Albany is still your family, only now we aren’t dealing with Albany-by-proxy. This is him. Directly. Mother Deorwynn, would you even believe anything you have to say?”
Chris let his hands fall to his sides. His eyes sought Rachel’s pale, damp face. He wanted to hear what she had to say.
“I don’t want him to hurt anyone,” she said quietly.
“And yet people are hurt because of him.”
“I—”
“Didn’t you know he was capable?”
“Yes! Of course! Garrett is—Gods, he could kick a dog just to watch it limp, but I didn’t think Arthur… he’s a soft boy, he always has been! He couldn’t hurt a fly!”
“Oh? He just nearly killed a police officer! Tell me, Miss Albany—aren’t you supposed to be a heartreader? How could you be taken in?”
“A heartreader is not a mindreader, Miss Faraday! Don’t you think that, if we were capable of discerning intent in such a way, that there wouldn’t be crimes committed in this nation? And yet, you have a job! I sensed that Arthur was conflicted, that he was nervous—not that he was dangerous! How could you even suggest that I wanted any of this to—” Rachel stopped quite suddenly. Her whole body heaved, and Chris dashed forward, sure that she had become so overcome that she was about to pitch to the floor. But when he reached her side and held her shoulders, he realized that she was swallowing sobs.
Olivia sighed. “Is everyone is going to cry this morning?”
“I never wanted anyone to get hurt,” Rachel said, shaking beneath Chris’s hands. “All I’ve done, my whole life, I’ve done to prevent that.” She shuddered. “Ah, Mother, forgive me….”
Chris didn’t know if she was apologizing to the spirit of her deceased mother, or to Deorwynn herself.
Olivia hmmed. “What even are you suggesting, Miss Albany?”
Rachel looked up. She met Chris’s eyes. She gently took and squeezed his hand, and then, shaking, walked around him so that she could face Olivia. “Let me talk to him.”
Olivia snorted.
“I’m quite serious,” Rachel repeated. “Garrett… Garrett has always been fond of me.”
“Really.”
“Family is family,” Rachel said. It sounded as if she were reciting it. “That’s not just why I let it all get this far, it’s—it’s something he told me. Every day. He’d hold my hand as the nights grew cold. He’d wrap himself around me and keep me safe and say that to me, over and over. Family is family. He’ll listen to me. If we can reach him, I can stop this.”
“That’s a very big if,” Olivia murmured.
“Not exactly.” Rosemary stepped forward. “Em told you to ask me about Mabelle’s wings?” She looked at each of them in turn, and then lifted her skirts. “Follow me.”
She led them through the kitchens, out along the path, and into the foul-smelling stables. They seemed strange, eerie and empty, and Chris kept imagining Mabelle Greene appearing and offering to saddle Hobby for him. There was no stable master, now. Roger Greene was gone, and his daughter with him.
Rosemary hiccupped. She stood silently, looking down over the long row, and her shoulders shook as she choked down sobs. Then, all at once, she straightened, shook out her hair, and strode forward. “Later,” she murmured, and Chris could tell she was talking to herself. “Stop all of this, and then cry.”
They passed underneath the raw bit of wood where Miss Greene’s father had hanged himself and died. Olivia stopped to look up at it. “It still doesn’t all make sense,” she sighed. “The damn horses saw Roger tie the noose. There’s no doubt it was a suicide. And someone stood and watched. How did it happen? What did Norwood do or say to make him kick his chair out? Em was only gone for five minutes.”
Chris realized a moment after the silence grew long that it was a question. “I don’t know,” he said honestly.
Olivia snorted a mirthless chuckle. “I have to admit,” she murmured. “It strikes me funny that we made up a fake murder to investigate a real kidnapping, only to have it turn out that the murder was real and the kidnapping wasn’t.” She shook her head and started forward once more.
They stopped in front of the alcove. Chris was drawn to the carriage
body draped with canvas, only—and he gaped and started—it wasn’t covered any longer. Rather than a great ghost, the corner was now haunted by something else entirely—a sleek black carriage with an emblem of apples and a jug of cider embossed on the door… with two large, white swan’s wings curled up against its side.
A winged carriage.
Rosemary walked forward and laid a hand on the wings. Was it his imagination, or did the feathers all seem to shiver slightly at her touch?
Olivia deflated. “That’s it?” She sighed. “Sorry to inform you, but that damn thing broke a week after Mother bought it. She hasn’t been able to shut up about it ever since, either. After she spent her hard-earned Miller royals on such a city-minded status symbol, it goes and falls to pieces!”
“You’re right,” Rosie nodded. “These things are finicky. It was a cheap mechanism, and none of the bindings were done right.”
Olivia folded her arms. “So it does us no good?”
Rosemary stroked the feathers of the great wings as if she were showing attention to a favoured pet. “I didn’t say that. It’ll do us a world of good, Miss Faraday. See… after Mabelle saw me binding in the orchard this summer, I thought I was in so much trouble.”
Chris remembered. A group of staff’s children had seen his sister singing up undines to help relieve the stress the hot drought had put on the apple trees. At the time, they’d been terrified.
And because of that moment, Rosemary had had a real friend.
Did it really matter who they were born to? Gods only knew the Buckleys themselves weren’t exactly high society anymore, themselves. He’d been so judgemental, and now….
“Mabelle didn’t get me in trouble at all. See, she wanted my help. She’d been working on trying to repair the winged for almost a year. It was her little project. But without a spiritbinder, there was only so far she could get.” Rosie looked at Chris, her eyes dark like bruisers. “That was what I was telling you about. How we met Em. She helped us. She worked on improving the mechanisms and strengthening the wings.”