by Joan Wolf
People were straying all over the gardens, some were playing lawn tennis, and some were drifting on boats on the river. Catherine and I spent at least half an hour on the terrace, and during that time I saw Mr. Howard, the young man who was in debt to the moneylenders; Sir Henry Farringdon, the young man who was afraid I’d snitch to his rich wife about his mistress; and chubby Mr. George Asherton, who had poured the most money of all into Papa’s bottomless coffers. The last of Papa’s victims to arrive on the terrace was the Earl of Marsh, who stood by himself next to the champagne table, drinking glass after glass of the sparkling wine.
Splendid, I thought, resolutely ignoring the sickly, nervous flutter that had started in my stomach.
Catherine and I went into the house to the ladies’ withdrawing room and I told her about the last-minute change in my plan.
“I think it would be best if I wandered alone out to one of the little garden buildings,” I said, as we sat huddled on two chairs in the corner of the large room that had been put aside for the ladies’ use. “If you will go before me, and conceal yourself somewhere in the surrounding shrubbery, then you will be ready to leap to my rescue when I need you.”
Catherine was evidently having second thoughts about the whole scheme, because she said, “Do you know, Georgie, I wonder if this is a good idea after all. There are so many things that could go wrong.”
I had been thinking the same thing myself, but now that someone else had questioned my judgment, I felt called upon to defend myself.
“What could possibly go wrong?” I demanded. “No one is going to kill me in the garden building, for heaven’s sake! There is too great a possibility that someone might have seen him follow me in.”
Catherine chewed on her lip in a way I had not seem her do in weeks. “But suppose he is willing to take that chance? Suppose he shoots you or something before I am able to rescue you? I think we ought to wait, Georgie. Philip will uncover the identity of this evil man. Philip is very competent.”
I didn’t doubt Philip’s competence. It was other things that worried me about Philip.
I said stubbornly, “No one is going to shoot me. I want to go ahead with the scheme, Catherine. If you don’t want to help me, then I shall just have to do it on my own.”
There was a deeply troubled look in the blue eyes that were so close to mine, but at last she said reluctantly, “All right, Georgie. I said that I would help you, and I will.”
I gave her a relieved smile. “Thank you, Catherine. I knew I could count on you.”
She continued to chew her lip worriedly, and merely nodded.
I pulled my chair a fraction closer to hers. “This is what we will do,” I said in a low voice. “The little temple with the green copper roof is the most isolated of all the garden buildings, so that is the one we will use. I will give you a fifteen-minute start to get out there and get into position, and then I will follow you. Keep a sharp eye out, and as soon as you see one of our targets enter the building after me, come to the door after him, and listen. I will try to make him confess that he is the one who has been trying to kill me, and once he has done that you can show yourself.”
“Georgie,” Catherine said doubtfully, “suppose he has a gun?”
“No one can walk around a garden party for hours with a gun concealed on his person,” I said positively.
She rubbed her forehead as if she had a headache. “I suppose you are right.”
I said jokingly, trying to instill some bravado into the both of us, “You do realize that the most difficult part of this whole enterprise will be for the two of us to disappear by ourselves for more than ten minutes without your mother instituting a major search?”
She managed to smile back, but I could see that her heart wasn’t in it.
In the end, however, she went.
I hadn’t been completely joking about Lady Winterdale, and sure enough, five minutes after Catherine had disappeared she came up to me wanting to know her daughter’s whereabouts.
“She went back into the house, Aunt Agatha,” I said guilelessly. “I think something she ate disagreed with her.”
Aunt Agatha glared direfully. “Really, Georgiana, I should think you would have had the courtesy to accompany her.”
“She didn’t want me, Aunt Agatha. She said she might lie down for a while.”
“If Catherine is not feeling well, then we should leave,” Lady Agatha pronounced.
“Perhaps you ought to go and talk to her yourself,” I suggested.
“I will do that,” she said, peering down her pointy nose at me. “I am seriously displeased by your lack of attention, Georgiana.”
“I am sorry, Aunt Agatha,” I said.
Catherine’s mother sailed off to check on her daughter. As soon as her back was turned, I made my exit from the terrace. I had no idea which of my suspects was present, but I had to assume that the guilty party would be keeping me under watch if he did indeed intend to make an attempt on my life that day.
I set off through the beech woods in the direction of the temple. As I walked briskly along, I told myself that everything would go according to plan, that the would-be murderer would be caught, and that I would get Philip back again. The woods were almost in full leaf this time of year without having that fullness of foliage that blocks one’s view, and from the path I caught tantalizing glimpses of the river with the sun sparkling off its deep green water. On the floor of the woods on either side of me, I saw violets, wood anemones, wood sorrel, and the brilliant blue speedwell that always reminded me of Philip’s eyes.
A particularly striking purple violet caught my attention, and I stopped to look at it more closely when an arm circled me from behind and pulled me up and back against a hard thin masculine body.
I hadn’t heard a single footstep coming behind me.
“Don’t make a sound, Lady Winterdale,” a familiar voice said in my ear. “I have a pistol in my other hand.”
The voice belonged to Charles Howard, the young man who was in the clutches of the moneylenders.
My heart began to race wildly.
“That is impossible,” I managed to say. “You cannot have been walking around this garden party all afternoon with a pistol concealed on your person!”
His laugh was very ugly and I felt the pressure of something small and round thrust against my ribs with bruising pressure. “It is a very small pistol, but at this range, I can assure you that it will be quite effective.”
I looked desperately ahead through the woods. We were too far from the temple for Catherine to see us.
“You are the one who has been trying to kill me,” I said bravely.
Waves of rage flowed from him so that I could literally feel the heat of them. “That is right. You deserve to die, Lady Winterdale. People like you are scum. You have ruined me. I have had to mortgage my estate, and I am in debt to those bloodsucking moneylenders. And it’s all because of you!”
“But I have done nothing to you!” I said despairingly. “In fact, I tried to help you. I destroyed all my father’s evidence against you.”
The gun pressed even harder against my ribs. “I don’t believe you, Lady Winterdale. You blackmailed Winterdale into marrying you. What is to say that you won’t start on me next?”
“I did not blackmail Winterdale into marrying me!”
“No?” he said. His voice was shaking with fury. “That is not the story going round the ton.”
I tried to think how I might get through to him.
“If you shoot me, you will be putting yourself into danger as a suspect,” I said. “A great number of people saw me leave the terrace, and I must believe that you were seen leaving as well.”
The whole time we were speaking he had kept his arm around me, trapping me against him and keeping me from seeing his face. He said now, “I’ve thought of that. All right, bitch, let’s go.” And he began to push me forward.
“Where are we going?” I asked, hoping desperately that we wou
ld be going to the garden temple.
“We’re going out on the river, where we are going to have a little accident,” he replied.
My blood ran cold. It had never occurred to me that my attacker might make use of the river.
I couldn’t swim.
“No!” I said, but even before I could think of struggling, the gun slammed hard into my ribs.
“I wouldn’t, Lady Winterdale,” Charles Howard said viciously. “If you force me to shoot you, I will. I am a ruined man anyway, thanks to you.”
Somewhere in his twisted mind he had confused me with my father, and I couldn’t seem to make him see the difference.
He began to shove me down the path toward the river.
“There must be some way I can make you see that I have no intention of bleeding you for any money,” I said despairingly as I stumbled along in front of him.
“There isn’t,” he said grimly, and I realized that he had reached the state where he was beyond the reach of common sense. The fear and the state of anxiety in which he had been living for so long had had an effect upon his brain and he was incapable of being reasoned with. All he knew was that I was his enemy and as such he must eliminate me.
Not a very hopeful situation for me.
We reached the river’s edge, where a boat was tied up to a tree, and I realized that Howard must have planned this execution very carefully.
He shoved me forward and when I turned to look at him, the sun flashed off the small silver-mounted pistol he was holding in his hand. “Get into the boat,” he said.
It was get into the boat or get shot.
I didn’t have any chance at all with the gun.
I got into the boat.
He followed me in carefully, all the time keeping the pistol trained upon me. Then he pushed off with one oar and we were out on the opaque waters of the Thames.
We were the only boat out on the river now, as all the boatmen employed by the Amberlys had gone into the house to have their tea.
I looked toward the shore, and there was no one there whom I could wave to for help.
Charles Howard put away his pistol. He didn’t need it now. I wasn’t likely to do anything that would upset the balance of the boat.
“What are you going to do?” I asked fearfully.
“We are going to have a boating accident,” he said. “It will horrify all the people at Thames House, I am certain, but you are going to lose something in the water, and as you lean over to try to grab it, the boat will overbalance, sending the two of us into the water. I am able to swim, and I will try my best to rescue you, Lady Winterdale, but alas, I will be unsuccessful. The current underneath is very strong here, and it will pull your body down and thence along the river bottom all the way to the sea.”
I was terrified, but I would not let this insane man see that I was afraid of him.
Howard picked up the two oars and began to pull the boat farther out toward the middle of the river. I sat there helpless. My only hope, I thought, was to grab onto the boat when it was turned over and try to keep afloat until I was rescued.
I didn’t have much faith in this plan, but it was the only one I could think of.
At least Anna is taken care of, I thought. At least I won’t be leaving her alone and unprotected in the world.
Then: I should have listened to Philip. I should never have tried to solve this problem on my own.
I shut my eyes for a moment and called his beloved face up before my mind’s eye.
The worst thing about dying, I thought, was that I would never see him again.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that another boat had rounded the turn in the river and was coming toward us.
It was as if my dreams had conjured him up, for there in the prow, directly facing us, was Philip. I opened my mouth to call out to him, but Philip’s voice cut me off coming clearly across the stretch of water that separated us. “Hi there, Howard. Have you really managed to get her out here alone? Good going, man!”
I sat frozen. Then, after the beat of a second, I managed to choke, “Oh God, here is Winterdale. Now what am I to do?”
I saw Howard smile grimly. In his disordered mind, he clearly thought that Philip was going to help him kill me.
Philip’s boat, rowed by a professional boatman, came on, and Howard didn’t do anything. I waited, scarcely breathing, and when finally Philip’s boat was within a few feet of us, Howard called out to him. “I am glad to see you, my lord. I have put us into a position to be rid of our nemesis.”
Philip did not look at me. The wind from the water was blowing his black hair over his forehead and his eyes were bluer than the intensely blue sky as they looked unwaveringly into the slightly mad eyes of Charles Howard.
“Look at the bank, Howard,” he said mildly. “There are a number of people watching us. Do you really think it is wise to attempt anything here?”
Both Charles Howard and I looked involuntarily toward the shore. During the time that it had taken for Philip to reach us, a group of people had indeed gathered there. I could see the sun reflecting off of Catherine’s spectacles. When I had not arrived at the temple, she must have run to summon help.
While we were staring at the newly gathered spectators, Philip’s boat had pulled even closer to ours. He still had not looked at me. All of his formidable attention was focused on Howard.
“Do you think it possible to make it look like an accident?” he asked Howard.
Howard smiled. “That was precisely my thought.”
“What about my boatman?”
“You can buy him off, my lord. You have the money. And you will owe me, too, I think, for helping you to get rid of an unwanted wife.”
“I certainly will, Howard,” Philip said quietly. He took an oar from the hands of his clearly horrified boatman. “Let us do it this way. Pretend to have dropped something overboard and then lean a little out of the boat, as if you are trying to retrieve it. I will pretend to reach with my oar to scoop the object toward you, and in the process of maneuvering with the oar, I will clumsily hit my wife over the head and knock her out of the boat.”
Charles Howard looked radiant. Such a plan, of course, would remove all the onus of my death from him and place it on Philip. He was not insane enough to be incapable of realizing the advantage of that.
“An excellent idea, my lord,” he said.
Wasting no time, he mimed the loss of an object overboard and then he leaned over the side of our boat as if to retrieve it.
Philip raised the oar he was holding and hit him over the head, hard. He went into the river like a stone.
Philip sat down and pulled off his Hessian boots.
“Get into the boat with her ladyship and get her to shore,” he instructed his boatman tersely, and then he dived into the water after Charles Howard.
“Take the boat after him!” I instructed the boatman hysterically.
I was afraid that when Philip surfaced there would be no boat available to rescue him.
“No need to do that, your ladyship,” the boatman said. “Look.”
I followed his pointing finger and saw one of the boats from the dock at Thames House being pulled by two of the boatmen whom the Amberlys had employed for the day. Someone must have run to fetch them from their tea.
They swept past us at a far greater rate of speed than we, with but a single man at the oars, could ever achieve.
As my own boat began to return to the shore, I kept my eyes trained on the river. No sleek black head emerged from beneath the water.
Philip. My lips moved and shaped his name, but no sound came out.
Still the river was empty. The rescue boat flew downstream, but there was no one to rescue.
I said to my boatman, “How long can a man stay underwater?”
“A few minutes, my lady,” came the gruff reply.
I counted: One, two, three, four, five. . . .
I couldn’t stand this.
“Is the current bad he
re?” I asked next.
“It’s nae so bad on the top, but it runs strong deep under.”
I remembered Charles Howard’s words: The current will take you along the bottom all the way to the sea.
Philip had dived from the boat into the water. He had gone in deep.
I could not bear it. We had reached the shore, and hands reached out to help me out of the boat, but I refused to move. As long as I kept watching that river, I thought, then Philip wasn’t gone.
“Let me alone,” I said sharply, and shook off a hand.
From far down the river, much farther than I had thought it possible, a black dot appeared in the water.
I squinted into the sun. The rescue boat changed the course of its direction and began to row in the direction of the dot.
It was Philip.
I began to cry.
“It’s all right, Georgie,” Catherine said. “You can get out of the boat now. He’s all right.”
I stumbled into the arms of my friend.
* * *
The person who had sent for the rescue boat was, of all people, Lord Marsh. It seems that he had seen Charles Howard leave the terrace and follow me. Marsh had known, of course, that I was the target of previous attacks, and he had decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep me within his sight. He had arrived on the bank too late to prevent my getting into the boat with Howard, but he had run all the way back to the house to get the boatmen to launch a boat to rescue me.
Of course, in the end the boat had ended up rescuing Philip.
The incident on the river had taken place while most of the Amberlys’ guests were eating or playing lawn tennis, so only a relatively few people had seen the “accident” that had sent Charles Howard into the water. Those people, about twenty of them, were gathered on the Thames House dock, but Philip’s boat came into shore at the place where Catherine, Lord Marsh, the boatman and I were standing. Philip jumped out of the boat in his stocking feet, and I ran to him.
He grabbed me by the shoulders and held me at arm’s length away.