The Deception of the Emerald Ring pc-3

by Лорен Уиллиг

As far as Jasper was concerned, there wasn't going to be a second act; Letty would see to that.

  Without conscious thought, she took a sharp right turn, toward the stage door. Goodness only knew what Jasper might do now that his plans were discovered. He must, Letty thought disgustedly, have been awfully sure of himself to have taken the risk of telling her. Either that, or awfully stupid. Or both. Letty supposed she could see his reasoning—the unwanted marriage, the flaunted courtship of a much prettier woman—but it still rankled.

  Following the route she had seen Lord Vaughn take before, Letty pushed through the stage door, looking for Geoff. Someone had to warn him before Jasper decided the safest route was to bump him off at once.

  Finding her husband wasn't quite so easy as Letty had anticipated. She wasn't sure what she had expected the backstage area to be like, but it hadn't been anything so dark, or so crowded. She darted out of the way as a group of stagehands came through carrying scenery, picking a side corridor at random to duck into. Farther away from the stage, the passageways grew even darker. Letty tripped over a footstool—who left a footstool in the middle of a corridor?—and went limping on her way. At least, she thought, rubbing her aching shin, if she couldn't find Geoff, presumably Jasper couldn't either.

  Weren't there laws against planning your cousin's murder? Geoff was the head of Jasper's family; there had to be some suitably draconian edict against threatening one's liege lord. Not to mention attempting to seduce the liege lord's wife. Wasn't that still accounted treason in some contexts? That sort of thing must have come up all the time in the Middle Ages, Letty was quite sure, with punishments to match. Whatever the punishment was, she hoped it was suitably gruesome, involving lots of rusty thumbscrews and maybe a few barrels filled with tacks.

  A gasping cry jarred Letty out of her gruesome reverie.

  "Hello?" Letty called.

  The sound was followed by a thudding noise, like a sack of flour hitting the kitchen floor.

  "Blast." Letty picked up her skirts and set off down the corridor at a run, hoping whomever it was hadn't hurt herself too badly. Certainly, it was dark enough in the corridor for someone to have tripped and lost their footing, and there were more than enough obstacles to trip over.

  "Are you all right?" Letty's question ended in a gasp of her own as someone charged past her from the opposite direction, banging into her with so much force that they both staggered. Letty caught at the wall to steady herself, just as something tumbled onto Letty's left foot, landing with unerring accuracy on her little toe.

  "Ouch," muttered Letty. Clearly, whoever it was couldn't have been hurt that badly if they had the strength to bang into her like that, and then go racing off again without so much as an apology.

  Moving very carefully—who knew how many other sprinting lunatics there might be lurking backstage?—Letty bent over to pick up the fallen object. Her toes were quite convinced that it was a brick, but as Letty groped along the ground, her fingers closed around the familiar, rounded shape of a reticule.

  "Hello!" Letty called, beginning to straighten. "You've dropped your—"

  The beading on the bag bit into Letty's palm as something else caught her eye, pale against the dark wood of the floor. Still half hunched over, Letty froze, her fingers convulsively tightening around the little round bag.

  There, on the floor, only a pace away from Letty's slipper, was a small, white hand. It lay pointing toward Letty's shoe, the palm facing up as though in supplication.

  Chapter Twenty

  The hand was attached to an arm, flung out to the side, like a young child sleeping. And the arm…

  It was the dress that Letty recognized, pink gauze over white muslin. It had been embroidered around the edges with silver thread, like the brightly beaded pink-and-silver reticule she had been carrying earlier that evening. Her skirts were rumpled where she had fallen, the pale fabric streaked with grime. Veiled by her tumbled mass of black curls, her head was twisted to the side, away from Letty.

  "Miss Gilchrist?" Letty exclaimed. "Emily? What are you doing back here?"

  Emily Gilchrist didn't respond.

  She must have been knocked over by the same rude person who had shoved past Letty. With the corridors so narrow and so crowded, it was no wonder she had banged her head on something as she fell. That, realized Letty, must have been the noise she had heard, that sickening crunch. Not that any of that particularly mattered at the moment. The important thing was to determine how badly Emily was hurt and get her back to her guardian.

  Letty sank to her knees beside Emily, murmuring soothing and pointless platitudes. "It's going to be all right. You've just hit your head. Don't worry."

  She started to smooth back Emily's tangled hair, grimacing as sticky moisture seeped through the netting of her gloves. A metallic tang underlay the heavy floral scent of Emily's perfume, as sickly sweet as dead flowers.

  "Drat," muttered Letty, rubbing her fingers together.

  Emily must have hit her head harder than she had realized. Bandages, thought Letty briskly. She had left her shawl in the box, so her petticoat would have to do. It wasn't a particularly sturdy fabric, but it would serve to stop the bleeding until she could find something better. Letty had dealt with head wounds before; her little brother was constantly falling off horses, tumbling out of trees, and jumping off walls to see if he could fly. He hadn't been able to yet, but that never seemed to discourage him.

  "Nothing to worry about," she said soothingly, as much for herself as the unconscious Emily, placing one hand on Emily's temple and the other behind her head. If she could turn her head, she might have some idea of how bad a cut it was. A very small cut on the head, Letty had learned from her brother, could yield quite a bit of blood, more disgusting than it was dangerous. "You'll be right as rain as soon as we get you home and bandaged up."

  Moving very slowly, trying not to jar Emily more than she had to, Letty eased her head sideways. Her long locks of hair, matted and sticky with blood, fell to the side, leaving long, dark streaks on Letty's skirt and the backs of her hands.

  Stains were the least of Letty's concerns.

  Scuttling backward, Letty let Emily's head fall from her lap. It hit the ground with an unpleasant thud, but Letty didn't think Emily would notice. Emily wasn't going to notice anything, ever again.

  Shaking, Letty staggered to her feet, bracing herself with one hand against the wall. She wasn't going to be ill, she told herself. She would not be ill. Her stomach begged to differ. Letty pressed both hands against her abdomen, fighting for control, and wishing she hadn't eaten quite so much for supper. She was still clutching the reticule. As she pressed her clenched hands against her stomach, Letty could feel each individual bead biting into her palm. She welcomed the sting. Anything to take her mind away from the revolution in her stomach, and the horror that had been Emily's face.

  Or what was left of it.

  Letty didn't hear the footsteps until they were almost upon her. Whoever it was moved with the subtlety of someone accustomed to silence, his slow steps scarcely audible in the dusty corridor. Acting on instinct alone, Letty whirled, striking out with the reticule. A large hand grabbed hers by the wrist, forcing it down.

  Mindlessly, she struggled, hearing only the hoarse rasp of her own breath. She didn't want to die. Not now. Not like Emily.

  "Letty! For heaven's sake!"

  The harsh whisper didn't sound at all like his normal voice, but Letty would have known that tone of annoyance anywhere.

  Going limp with relief, Letty ceased her resistance so abruptly that they both staggered. Her husband grabbed her shoulders to steady her—or restrain her. Letty didn't care. She was just glad he was there.

  "Geoff?"

  There was a series of reddening scratches on his cheek, courtesy of the reticule that she'd swung with more force than she realized. She lifted a hand to them, drawing it away again just before her fingers would have brushed his skin.

  "Sorry," she said, inade
quately.

  "You might have confined yourself to a simple hello." Geoff had regained his usual urbane tone, but his breathing was still slightly ragged. "What was that all about?"

  "I thought…Oh, Geoff." Letty lifted a balled fist to her mouth.

  Geoff froze, his expression changing in an instant from irritation to concern. Catching Letty's hand, he raised it to examine the dark smears of blood that stained the fabric. "What happened? Did Jasper—"

  Letty shook her head, drawing in breath on a choked laugh. Somehow, the notion of Jasper struck her as comical. Jasper had ceased to matter, cast into the abyss of the insignificant. "Not Jasper. I wish—no. Over there."

  Letty lifted one hand and jabbed unsteadily to the left. She hoped she was pointing in the right direction, because she didn't want to look to make sure. Once had been enough.

  "Good God." Geoff pressed Letty's head into his chest. "Don't look."

  From the region of his waistcoat, he heard a shaky voice say, "I already did."

  Geoff amended his advice. "Pretend you didn't."

  Letty vented her feelings in an incredulous puff of hot air, but she stayed where she was.

  Ignoble though it was, Geoff's first reaction was relief that it wasn't Letty lying there. Her hair smelled faintly of chamomile, clean and wholesome as summer. Geoff would have liked to bury his nose in it, and drown out the stench of death.

  His second was a great deal more professional. Keeping Letty's head firmly lodged in his waistcoat, Geoff sidled closer, examining what he could see of the corpse. The skirts were rucked up, revealing a webbing on the calf that might have been a particularly outrй form of garter, but was more likely a sheath of some sort. It would have to have been a very small knife, one small enough not to make a bump under the fine muslin currently in fashion for evening wear. Something thin and deadly, like a stiletto.

  The face was nearly unrecognizable, so covered with blood that Geoff, even with eyes well used to the gloom of the backstage area, could scarcely make out the nature of the wound. One staring eye regarded him through a screen of dark hair. The other…There wasn't much left of it. Something sharp, broader than the Black Tulip's preferred stiletto, had entered the woman's left eye, cutting deep. The knife's trajectory had continued downward, on an angle, slicing through the soft tissue of the woman's cheek, and ending somewhere in the region of her upper lip. At a guess, she had been kneeling when the blow struck. There were no signs of a struggle; at least, none that he could make out. None of the scenery leaning against the walls had been overturned, and the dust had only been disarranged by the impact of the woman's body, not by a scuffle.

  Geoff frowned, trying to reconstruct the scene. Two confederates, walking in apparent amity. A disagreement occurred—a disagreement, or a prearranged double-cross. Geoff tended to lean toward the latter. The abandoned corridor made an excellent venue for an unofficial execution, if one were so inclined. The woman would have bent down to sweep her knife out of its sheath. As she did so, her intended victim grabbed his own knife, stabbing down. She must have looked up just as he struck, hence the injury to the eye. The force of such a blow would have impelled her body backward, leaving her sprawled on the floor where Letty had found her.

  Geoff had a fairly good idea of just who the two actors in that little drama had been. The woman's features might be too marred for a positive identification, but the long black hair and the painfully white skin, made even paler in death, were unmistakable.

  Whatever alias the Marquise de Montval had been hiding under, she wouldn't be using it any longer.

  Against his waistcoat, Letty began to squirm. "You can let me go now," she said, her voice only slightly muffled. "I'm all right."

  "Are you sure?" One's first dead body—at least, he assumed it was Letty's first dead body—was never a pleasant sight, and the marquise's demise had been messier than most. Geoff loosened his hold, but didn't release her.

  There was a crease in Letty's cheek where she had pressed against a seam of his coat, and her hair was rumpled, but there was a determined cast to her expression that struck Geoff as surprisingly gallant, like a very small knight steeling herself to enter the ogre's den.

  Letty's eyes drifted sideways in the direction of the slumped shape on the floor.

  "She was so pretty…so young."

  "Not as young as you think," Geoff said quietly.

  "When I saw her lying there…I thought she was alive. I thought she had just fallen and hurt herself. I thought—" Letty broke off, looking up at him with dazed blue eyes. "Geoff, why would anyone do this? To Emily?"

  "Emily?" Geoff asked sharply.

  "Yes. Emily Gilchrist."

  "You knew her." Geoff's expression turned intent, his eyes fixed on Letty's face.

  Wrapped in her own recollections, Letty scarcely noticed. "We were on the boat from London together. And now…" Letty shivered. "What a hideous way to die."

  "There are worse."

  Looking back on the Black Tulip's history, Geoff found it difficult to muster much sympathy for her. One of his friends had been a victim of the Tulip, back in the early days of the war, when revolutionary fervor still ran high across the Channel, and the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel still specialized in ushering distressed noblemen to safety in England. Tony had been sent on just such a rescue mission.

  The Black Tulip hadn't allowed him nearly so speedy an end as she had been granted.

  For Letty's sake, Geoff added, "She died quickly. She wouldn't have felt much."

  Letty rubbed her hands along her upper arms as though cold. "I heard it happen. She just…gasped, and then fell. I thought someone had tripped. If I had been here a few moments earlier—"

  "Let's not go down that byway, shall we?" Geoff tilted Letty's head back with a finger under her chin. "Did either of them see you?"

  "I don't know. I heard a crash, and ran forward to help. Someone pushed past me—it didn't seem important then. I just thought he was being rude."

  "Damn," muttered Geoff. Vaughn might have been in too much of a hurry to take note of Letty, but he doubted it. Vaughn knew Letty and, more important, Letty knew Vaughn. Vaughn hadn't evaded detection thus far by leaving simple precautions to chance. He would be back. "Let's get you out of here."

  "You don't think—?"

  Geoff began steering her down the corridor, moving with the sureness of a cat in the dark. "I'm not thinking anything until we're a good ten yards away."

  Letty's legs moved numbly, by rote, as he hustled her out a back exit and into a hackney. Somewhere, far, far away, she could hear her husband's voice giving directions, but she couldn't have said with any certainty where he had instructed the driver to go. Instead, she kept replaying the scene in the corridor, hearing that sickening thud—Letty swallowed hard—feeling the jolt as the murderer pushed past her, sending her stumbling into the wall.

  And then, something else. Something heavy falling on her toe.

  Lifting her wrist, Letty gazed dumbly at the reticule dangling from its silver strap. Used to the weight of a reticule on her wrist, Letty had forgotten she was holding it. It wasn't hers. Hers was black and sensible—and, Letty remembered, with a twinge of annoyance, back in their abandoned box in the theater. There hadn't been much in it, anyway, only a handkerchief and a few coins, in case she was separated from her party. This reticule glittered with silver beading over a pink silk base, a stiffened spray of beads forming an upside-down fan at the bottom. Letty recognized it instantly. She had last seen it dangling from Emily Gilchrist's wrist.

  She had been warned that pickpockets operated in the theater, but not that they might turn violent. Still, in a dark corner, if Emily had protested…What a horrible, senseless waste. And all for—what? A handful of coins? An embroidered handkerchief? There wasn't awfully much one could fit in a reticule.

  Wrenching the strap off her wrist, Letty held it up by two fingers. The reticule dangled in the air between them, its sparkle dimmed with dark smears.


  "Geoff, I've figured it out. He killed her for this." Letty regarded the small, pink bag with undisguised loathing. "The murderer dropped it when he bumped into me. It's Emily's. I would recognize it anywhere."

  Geoff reached out for the little bag, with its silver clasp and loop of beads fanning out from the bottom. "May I?"

  As Letty nodded, Geoff forced open the clasp. It was stiff enough to take considerable pressure. A handkerchief sat on the top, embroidered and scented. Beneath it, Geoff found a small comb and a twist of coins tied into another handkerchief, stuffed into the bottom. There was nothing incriminating about it at all.

  Geoff had heard of one case where an agent had used embroidery as a means of communication, so many French knots to the words, but to his inexperienced fingers, the satin-stitched flowers embroidered around the corners felt just as they were supposed to. Well, they would, wouldn't they? He would have to show the handkerchief to Jane later; embroidery was more in her line than his.

  "All for a purse," said Letty disgustedly.

  Upending the innocuous contents into his lap, Geoff rolled the empty bag between his fingers, searching for irregularities. His groping fingers located something at the very bottom, in between the lining and the beaded exterior.

  "Not just any purse," Geoff said, with great satisfaction. He ripped the lining free with one neat wrench.

  "What are you doing?" exclaimed Letty, reaching for the bag.

  "This."

  Geoff's fingers closed triumphantly around a pawn-shaped object, nestled at the bottom of the bag between lining and beading. The sparkle of the beads would have distracted the eye from any telltale bulge; as for the bag being bottom-heavy, that was cleverly concealed by the spray of beading on the bottom.

  He knew what it was even before the pads of his fingers brushed against the lines incised on the bottom.

  He dropped the tiny silver trinket into Letty's hand. "Your friend Emily wasn't quite what she seemed."

  Letty regarded the silver pawn in her hand uncomprehendingly. "She liked chess? I don't see—"