Consequences of Sin

by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

  “Well, if it isn’t him, he’s the spitting image of Mr. Cumberland, then, ain’t he?” said Julia defiantly.

  Ursula could barely speak. “It cannot be.”

  Ursula ran down to her father’s study, and rang urgently for Harrison, who was nowhere to be found at this late hour. Lord Wrotham was en route to Ireland and couldn’t be reached. And so she sat alone in her father’s study, trying to find a sample of Tom’s handwriting that she might compare to the tin of letters she’d given to the authorities. She tore through the office files and began laboriously going through the reports and ledgers.

  The heat from the fire was starting to dissipate, and a cold draft snuck across the room from the window. Ursula reached over and rang the bell. She waited, but there was no response.

  “Biggs has one day off and the whole household falls apart,” she muttered as she rose to her feet. She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts, and then made her way out of the study and along the hallway toward the stairs that led to the kitchen.

  “Moira!” Ursula called out. “Moira?” But again there was no response.

  “Blast!” she said under her breath.

  She opened the door to the servants’ staircase and called down once more. “Mrs. Stewart!” But still no response. No doubt Mrs. Stewart was asleep in her rocking chair by the stove, a copy of the Daily Telegraph in her lap. Cook would probably be sitting up in her bed studying her Methodist Book of Discipline.

  The stairwell was gloomy with only the kitchen light to illuminate it. Ursula’s stomach rumbled. She had hardly touched her lunch or dinner, and now she was desperate for a nice cup of tea and a slice of Cook’s currant cake.

  “Mrs. Stewart?” she called out as she came down the stairs. “Mrs. Stewart?”

  The kitchen was deserted. The standard lamp in the corner by the fire cast only a dim light, in which Ursula could see the long table set for tea with Mrs. Stewart’s brown teapot, three teacups, and plates, and cake crumbs still scattered on the white lace tablecloth. “Mrs. Stewart?” she called out again.

  Ursula could just make out the profile of Mrs. Stewart sitting in her rocking chair beside the fire, her back to her. There was no sign that she had even heard her calling out.

  Ursula smiled. Mrs. Stewart really was getting quite deaf these days. She took a couple of steps toward the figure apparently slumbering in her chair before halting. Something was clearly wrong. Ursula suddenly smelled the distinctive pungent scent of his tobacco. It was a scent that was oddly familiar. It took her but a moment to place where she had smelled it before. In Chester Square that night with Winifred. Ursula’s skin prickled at the recollection, and she stopped in midstride. She spun around and saw Tom standing in the corner, silent and watchful. Curls of blue-white smoke filtered through the semidarkness.

  “I assume you’re responsible for this?” Ursula asked, trying to keep her voice calm.

  “Don’t worry, they are safe. I merely drugged them. It will be a few hours, but Mrs. Stewart here will wake with no recollection of what happened.”

  “What about everyone else?”

  “Julia, Moira, and Bridget are safely asleep in their beds. Your cook unfortunately would not oblige me, so I had to bind and gag her in her room. She was most put out.”

  Ursula took a slow step backward. Samuels would hear her if she cried out. He normally spent his evenings assembling his stamp collection in his room above the garage behind the main house.

  As if reading her mind, Tom said, “I’m afraid the bottle of gin I brought Samuels this evening was a little different—a bit stronger than he is used to. He will have quite a headache in the morning.”

  Ursula bit her lip.

  “I was going to wait until after we were married.” He flicked a cake crumb off the table and smiled.

  The fire in the grate hissed.

  “But then yesterday afternoon, when you informed me we were no longer betrothed, I had to alter my arrangements.”

  “That is why you killed my father instead of me. You didn’t miss when you shot at me—you wanted me alive, you wanted his fortune for yourself. Your father—”

  “My father is DEAD!” His dark eyes met hers. “But you knew that already.”

  Ursula’s mind was racing. How could she make it up the stairs and out of the house? How could she raise the alarm?

  He was getting close to her now. Ursula stepped back slowly toward the stairwell. She tried to maintain an appearance of calm, all the while trying to plan her escape.

  “You’ll never get away with it.”

  “Won’t I? They think I’m dead anyway. Found me washed up on the banks of the Thames. Who’s to say any different? You? You’ll be dead.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “Easy. It’s always easy to bribe men who are desperate and don’t know any better. The man they found had syphillis and was dying anyway. I merely offered him money and passage to India on the proviso that he pretended to be me. Wasn’t too difficult to then stage an accidental drowning.”

  Ursula’s mouth went dry. “But why did you kill them all? Why did you want revenge for your father?”

  “You stupid girl. Radcliffe and your father made fortunes off my father’s discoveries and then left him for dead. The substance used to drug Laura was only a fraction of what my father found. And yet they left me and my brother and mother to rot from disease. They destroyed my father’s life, and they destroyed mine. The others knew it, too. Abbott. Anderson. Even Dobbs. A conspiracy of silence that has lasted all these years. They should all of them hang for their greed.”

  Ursula’s throat tightened, but she shook her head. “My father would never….” She couldn’t finish. She choked and tried to speak again. “Your father was mad. And then he poisoned your mind to think that killing these innocent girls would change everything. He never told you that you’d still be angry—you’ll still be alone.”

  Tom came closer, leaned in, and whispered in her ear. “Your father wanted mine dead, and he gave Radcliffe the order to leave him there.”

  “No, you’re wrong. Your father ruined his own life. He was going to leave you and your mother and your brother. He was in love with my mother. He would have abandoned you no matter what they did.”

  Tom recoiled, then shook his head as if to rid his brain of all logic.

  “It’s just as it says in the Bible. As punishment for his sin, his child must die—”

  At that moment the telephone rang upstairs. Tom startled as if out of a trance. He stepped away, and Ursula caught sight of the silver edge of a knife blade.

  “It will be suspicious if nobody answers that,” she said. “You know that.”

  Tom pointed the knife at her and gestured for her to answer it.

  Ursula turned and walked up the stairs. The shrill peal of the telephone continued. She reached the hallway table and picked up the black ceramic receiver. She could feel the point of the knife between her shoulder blades.

  “Miss Ursula Marlow’s residence,” she answered primly.

  “Miss Marlow, is that you?” It was Harrison’s voice. Ursula was torn between relief and crestfallen that as a policeman he was hardly likely to appreciate the breach in etiquette and realize that something was wrong.

  The knife edge nudged sharply in her back.

  “Yes,” Ursula replied calmly.

  “I received a message that you were urgently trying to reach me…. What can I help you with?”

  Ursula swallowed hard. “Really, it was nothing…” She tried to sound unconcerned.

  There was a pause before Harrison asked, “Miss Marlow, is everything all right?”

  Tom, sensing that Ursula had signaled something was amiss, grabbed the receiver from her grasp and slammed it against the table. It broke into pieces. Ursula held her breath. Tom drew her close to him, his arm curled around her waist, the knife now poised against her throat. “Who was that?” he asked, moving the knife blade closer. A small bead of blood tri
ckled down her neck and onto the collar of her shirt.

  “Inspector Harrison,” Ursula answered hoarsely.

  Tom turned her around to face him. He stroked her cheek with the tip of the knife. “I would have liked to have taken my time.”

  He drew the knife away, and Ursula seized the opportunity. She gave him a swift knee kick to his groin. Tom doubled over in pain and dropped the knife to the ground. Ursula took her chance and started to run down the hallway toward the front door. Tom flung himself against her from behind, and she stumbled to the floor. The Moorcroft vase on the side table came crashing down. Tom’s broad hands were around her throat, his body pinning hers to the floorboards. The weight of his body on Ursula’s chest momentarily winded her.

  “Shall I strangle you like I did Cecilia?” he whispered in her ear. “She gave no struggle. Like a little bird, she was—one snap to the neck and she was dead.”

  Ursula struggled against his weight, trying to get free. His grip tightened, and she started to gasp for breath.

  “Laura was easy, too. I got great satisfaction from seeing her whore get blamed for it.”

  “Yes, well, you’ll get no satisfaction from me,” Ursula spluttered before reaching for a shard of pottery on the floor. She swung it across his face with as much force as she could muster.

  Tom screamed out and swore loudly, and his fingers released their grip slightly. Ursula grabbed his hands and tried to pull them away from her throat. As she did so, Tom shifted to regain his grip, and she quickly rolled over, catching him off balance. She scrambled to her feet and hurled herself across the hallway and into her father’s study. She tried to close the door quickly, but Tom was close behind her. He leaned in, using his body weight to inch the door open. First he placed his foot in the gap, then his torso. Ursula hadn’t the strength to hold him back—the door burst open, and she dashed toward the window. As she did, she caught sight of her father’s ivory-handled letter opener still lying on his desk and grabbed it.

  They were face-to-face, with only the desk between them. Ursula held the letter opener in her hand. Tom had the knife in his. He smiled before advancing a couple of steps.

  “You fight hard,” he said. “It is most amusing.”

  The shrill siren of a Metropolitan Police van could be heard coming closer. Tom’s eyes darted to the window. Ursula shoved the desk as hard as she could. It toppled and caught him in the shins. Undeterred, he merely struggled to his feet once more. Just as he was doing so, Ursula seized a leather-bound volume of the King James Bible off the bookshelf and swung it across his face. Tom cried out in surprise before he crumpled to the floor.

  Just then the front door burst open, and Harrison and two police constables came running inside.

  “Miss Marlow!” Harrison was out of breath and bent over slightly as he stared at her in amazement.

  “It seems my previous clashes with the police taught me a thing or two about defending myself,” Ursula commented dryly before her knees gave way and she collapsed to the floor.

  Twenty-Four

  Ursula awoke to the sound of a delivery van outside her window. She opened her eyes slowly, adjusting to the light. Through the gap between the “golden lily” curtains she could see sunshine streaming in, dappling the parquetry floor in warm pools. A new set of clothes was draped over the Japanese silk screen in the corner of the room and her camel suede shoes laid out under the green upholstered chair. Everything indicated that Julia had been waiting for Ursula to awake.

  Ursula sat up slightly in bed before sinking back into the pillows. She felt woozy; her balance was unsteady. She rolled her head to the right and caught sight of a tall brown glass bottle on her bedside table. She reached over gingerly and picked it up. Boots Pure Drug Company Sleeping Draught, read the label. Ursula struggled to sit up. She shook her head to try to clear it. Her recollections since Inspector Harrison arrived were hazy and insubstantial, no more than ebbs and flows in a diaphanous landscape, washed and pale like a watercolor.

  Ursula swung her legs out of bed, sat for a moment to regain her balance, then slowly stood up and pulled on the silk dressing gown that was lying at the foot of the bed. She padded across to the window and, opening the curtains a further inch or so, peered out into Chester Square below. Two men were unloading a wicker hamper from the back of a Fortnum & Mason van. A police constable was standing on the footpath watching. He extinguished his cigarette and called out across the road to a man (who looked suspiciously like Neville Hackett) standing with a notebook in his hand next to a boy in a flat cap setting up a camera and tripod. “Hey! Clear off, the both of you!” the constable yelled, but his words had little discernible impact on either of them.

  Clearly the press had got wind of the events of the previous night. Ursula parted the curtains and leaned her head against the windowpane. It felt cool against her forehead. Her silk dressing gown gaped open, revealing the white batiste nightgown beneath. Her dark auburn hair fell across the side of her face. She stood there for a moment not caring if anyone should look up and see her.

  “Oh, miss!” Julia’s voice rang out from the doorway.

  Ursula turned at the reproof in Julia’s voice. That was when she saw him. His tall frame filled the doorway. In one hand he carried a green cloth-bound book, in the other a Liberty “Tudric” pewter bowl filled with chestnuts. He stood there stunned, startled as if she had suddenly fallen to earth from the sky. Ursula felt the warm soft light against her shoulders. The chill of the floor beneath her bare feet went unnoticed until she realized, as if awakening, that she was standing before him in nothing but her nightgown, made translucent by the shaft of light from the window. She pulled the silk dressing gown around her self-consciously, a pink flush rising on her cheeks.

  “Lord Wrotham.” She heard her voice as if from a great distance. “You came back.”

  The spell was broken.

  Julia ushered her quickly back into bed. Lord Wrotham laid the book down on the mantel. “Flowers didn’t seem all that appropriate under the circumstances,” he said. “So I brought you my copy of Byron’s Don Juan and some chestnuts….” He placed the bowl down next to the book. “I’m not sure why, really.” He seemed disconcerted.

  “Well, what do you give a girl who has just confronted her murderous ex-fiancé?” Ursula replied weakly as Julia fussed around her fluffing the pillows and rearranging the bedcovers.

  “Quite.”

  Lord Wrotham leaned his elbow on the mantel and avoided meeting her eyes. A single lock of dark hair fell across his temple as he bent forward. He frowned and straightened up. In that brief moment, his composure had completely returned.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  Ursula didn’t answer but picked up the glass bottle. “Dr. Bentham, I presume.”

  “He felt it best to let you sleep.”

  “How long have I—”

  “Two days.”

  “Two days?!”

  “You were not…well…Dr. Bentham was almost afraid…” Lord Wrotham didn’t finish. Ursula tried to sit upright.

  “What about Tom?”

  Julia took the bottle from Ursula and proceeded to mix a small amount in a glass with some water. “Now, miss, Dr. Bentham said you weren’t to get agitated. Have another sip. You need to rest. That’s what he said.”

  “Oh, Julia, don’t fuss so….” Ursula started to scold, but seeing Julia’s look of genuine concern silenced her. She took the proferred glass and gulped the draft down quickly with a shudder.

  “I spoke to Harrison this morning,” Lord Wrotham answered. “Tom is safely in custody. Now, no more questions! I’m sure Harrison will be around in the next day or so to take your statement.”

  Ursula sat back and closed her eyes.

  Lord Wrotham turned to Julia and asked her to arrange for tea to be sent up. Julia tucked the blankets around Ursula before bustling out of the room (with a dubious glance at Lord Wrotham as she went by).

  “How is everyone el
se—Mrs. Stewart, Moira?” she asked him.

  “They have all recovered. I took the liberty of allowing Mrs. Stewart a day off to recuperate with her sister in Hampstead Heath. I’m afraid Moira has left to seek another position, but I managed to convince Bridget to stay, and Julia…well, she would not countenance leaving you for a moment.”

  Ursula smiled weakly. “And Biggs?”

  “Returned from his visit to Bournemouth, and needless to say is mortified. I doubt Biggs will ask for another day off in his life.”

  Ursula started to laugh, which brought on a coughing fit.

  Lord Wrotham started to approach but Ursula waved him off. “Don’t worry, I’m not an invalid—I’ll be fine. Why don’t you bring over that book of yours. Byron, did you say? You’re just full of surprises.”

  Lord Wrotham strode over to the mantel and picked up the book. He hesitated for a moment before turning around and Ursula sensed his mood had altered. He seemed troubled and appealed to her with steady, grave eyes.

  “I fear I have let you down,” he said in an earnest yet tender manner. “You should not have been left to face Tom alone.”

  “Well, as you can see I am quite capable of taking care of myself.” Ursula realized as soon as she had spoken that her words sounded dismissive, which was not her intention.

  Lord Wrotham took a step forward, then recovered himself. His gaze had become guarded and wary.

  “I left England,” Wrotham continued, his eyes never leaving hers, “not because of any trial in Ireland. I had no business in Dublin at all.” He paused. “I left,” he resumed slowly, “because I couldn’t stand the thought of being in London, of being around you and not…”

  Ursula’s breath quickened. The room seemed to shimmer in the morning light. She felt the color rise in her cheeks.

  “Not…?” she prompted him softly.

  “Not being anything more to you than the trustee of your father’s estate.”

  He came close to her and knelt by her side, bringing his face level with hers. Like the panther in her dreams, sleek and black, he waited and watched for her response. Ursula raised her chin and met his eyes with the challenge of her own gaze. He reached out and tucked a curl of her hair back off her forehead.