There were doors on either side. With no windows to let in even what little sunlight was left, the hall was almost pitch black. I stopped midway, trying to remember which door opened into the red room. Thd first two I tried were securely locked, but the next one swung open almost as soon as I touched the handle. Taking another deep breath, I stepped into the room, leaving the door open behind me. It was so dark I could barely make out the shapes of the furniture, but I remembered seeing a tall jar on the mantle that had contained matches. Groping in the darkness, I found it and struck a match. The stem exploded with fizzling yellow-orange fire, and I lit the candles in all the brass wall sconces. I wanted plenty of light. I intended to search until I found what I was looking for.
Tossing the burned match into the black marble fireplace, I turned to examine the room, illuminated now with warm golden light. The small, erotic bronze pieces on the mantle and low ebony tables gleamed darkly. Candlelight reflected on the rich old mahogany wainscoting. The reds seemed even richer, embossed scarlet silk on the walls, scarlet hangings on the large mahogany bed, rich crimson carpet on the floor. I felt the same disturbing atmosphere I had felt the other time I had been here, but now I recognized it for what it was: an aura of opulent sensuality. It was as heady as perfume, as real, clinging to the walls, filling the air. I knew what the room had been used for, and I knew who had used it. There could be no doubt now.
Ghosts? Hardly. The pair who had met here after everyone else had gone to sleep had been all too human. Here, far away from the others, they had felt free to indulge their passion, and if the servants heard noises it was convenient to let them think the wing was haunted. I had heard a noise myself that night when I had come to fetch a book in the long gallery, and I knew now that it had been laughter, husky, sensual laughter. I had been blind, from the first I had been blind. This explained so much. I understood it all now, and I was strangely unmoved. I should have been shocked, appalled, horrified, yet I felt nothing but a grim determination to carry through with my plan, find definite proof.
That wasn’t at all difficult. Moving over to the huge mahogany wardrobe, I pulled open the heavy doors. There were only two garments inside: a nightgown and a man’s dressing robe. The nightgown was a diaphanous white silk with long, full-gathered sleeves and a billowing skirt. The robe was a sumptuous garment of heavy navy blue satin. Edward had worn the robe the night he had come into my bedroom, the night he had kissed me with such lazy expertise. I stared at the garments, again expecting great waves of emotion to overwhelm me, yet there was nothing but this curious calm and something strangely like relief.
I closed the wardrobe doors. I felt his presence there in the door behind me, and I turned, so calm, insanely calm. I wasn’t even surprised. He would have to kill me, too, now, I thought idly. He stood in the doorway, leaning forward a little, one hand on either side of the frame. His blue eyes were cool and detached, his features impassive. His thick blond hair was windblown, heavy locks tumbling over his brow. We stared at each other, silent. I realized I should be trembling with fear. I should feel faint. There were no feelings whatsoever. My nerves seemed paralyzed. He arched one brow, sighing.
“So you know?” he said.
“I know.”
“I had just come back. I was still in the stables when I saw you coming from the avenue of limes. I waited, watching, and then I followed you. I had a feeling you’d come here. You—uh—saw the cord, didn’t you?”
“I saw the cord.”
“I barely had time to tear it loose and hurl it into the woods. I knew one end was still fastened to the tree, but there wasn’t time to unloosen it before the others arrived. I intended to do that tonight.”
“You killed her,” I said.
“I had to, luv. There was no other way. She came charging down the avenue just as I told you. She didn’t see the cord. It was stretched tightly across the avenue, practically invisible against the gray-green grass. She never knew what happend. She died instantly.”
“You and she—”
“Vanessa and I have been lovers for well over a year and a half. The other men were merely a smoke screen to divert suspicion. We needed a place to meet, and what better place than this room? It was the only room still in good condition, and with a little work—done secretly, of course—it made a perfect love nest.”
“The servants heard noises—”
“That was inevitable, I’m afraid. They’re a superstitious lot, and we played on that. One night we heard someone coming up the back stairs. Vanessa started down the hall in her white nightgown, moaning softly, and the girl was frightened out of her wits.”
“Betty’s ghost,” I said.
“No ghost at all, but at least it kept any of the servants from nosing about in the east wing. No one else knows about this room.”
He was wrong about that. Lyman knew, but I didn’t intend to tell Edward that.
“We had everything carefully planned,” he continued. “My uncle was on the verge of death, and it was imperative that I inherit the estate. I had to have a wife—not a real wife, of course, because I intended to marry Vanessa as soon as the old man died and I inherited.”
“What about Lyman?” I asked.
“Oh, we planned to pay him off. If he would agree to a divorce, we would give him so many farms as payment. He would have accepted. Lyman had no love for Vanessa, but he has an insane fixation about the land.”
“So—so you brought a make-believe wife to Mallyncourt, but the situation altered. Lord Mallyn started recovering—”
“That changed things,” Edward agreed. “It needn’t have, not really. Vanessa was firm about that. As soon as he drew up the will, he could have a sudden relapse—she even described the drug we could use to bring it on. Everything was still the same, she insisted, but, unfortunately, it wasn’t. Something unforeseen came up.”
“Oh?”
“After a year and a half I began to see Vanessa for what she was—a tiresome bitch. Beautiful, fascinating, incredibly passionate, true, but in the long run—tiresome. And, my dear, there was you. I wasn’t simulating my attraction to you, Jenny.”
“You—you’re trying to say you fell in love with me?”
“Let’s just say that I found marriage to you a more attractive alternative.”
“I—I see.”
“She didn’t like it, of course. She didn’t like it at all. When I told her she was quite livid.”
“You told her that afternoon after the ball. I saw the two of you out on the back lawn. She was berating you—”
“Yes, I had just informed her. She took it quite hard.”
“And I thought she was upset about Gerry.”
Edward smiled, his mouth curling slowly at one corner. His eyes were amused now.
“Poor chap,” he said. “He never had a chance.”
“What do you—mean?”
“Gerald Prince was out of his league. Vanessa kept her eye on him all the time he was here—she had as much to lose as anyone if he made a slip. She bedazzled him, and Prince was quite smitten. On the night of the ball they went upstairs together. Vanessa was—uh—extremely thorough. While they were together he told her why he was here and said I was going to give him ten thousand pounds, said that was just the first installment. I’d be a constant source of revenue in the future, he claimed, and the two of them could go away together, live off the blackmail money. Vanessa told me about it after they came back downstairs.”
I remembered seeing them together in the ballroom, standing in front of the tall French window, Edward in his elegant formal attire, Vanessa in her spectacular silver gown and emeralds. I remembered his tight, humorless smile as she spoke to him. He had been distracted the rest of the evening, until the ball was over, until Gerry had come strolling into the hall. His manner had changed abruptly. He had been almost friendly, suggesting that the two of them have a nightcap. I looked at the man standing in the doorway, his hands still resting on either side of the frame, his
expression utterly calm, blue eyes rather thoughtful now.
“Gerry never left Mallyncourt,” I said.
“No, my dear, he never left. After our nightcap in the study I said I needed a bit of fresh air, suggested we take a stroll in the gardens and discuss the—uh—financial details. He was cocky, quite sure of himself, never suspecting a thing. We walked through the water gardens. Prince kept saying how sensible I was, how much he admired my attitude, said we were both civilized chaps, no reason why we couldn’t continue to do business together. As we neared the end of the gardens I moved back to let him step in front of me—”
Edward paused, his lips twisting in a wry smile, his eyes alight with cynical amusement. “I slung my arm around his throat and jerked back hard. He thrashed and struggled, making frantic gurgling noises. A minute later he was a limp heap of flesh. I dragged him to the old abandoned well and pried the wooden cover off and dropped him inside. Vanessa arrived a few minutes later with his bags. I dumped them in, too, and nailed the cover back on with a heavy rock. The next morning Prince was gone, and no one ever doubted he took the six-thirty train.”
He gazed down at the deep crimson carpet, smiling, and then he looked up at me. I was still standing by the wardrobe, completely composed, but that was merely on the surface. Horror, sheer, stark horror gripped me. I was in the middle of a nightmare, and there was a hazy, dreamlike quality about everything: the wavering golden light, the dark gleaming woods, the vivid reds, the man standing in the doorway. He was totally amoral. He had committed two brutal murders, and he had thought no more about it than he would have thought about swatting a gnat or stepping on an ant. A third murder would mean nothing whatsoever to him.
“The next afternoon I told Vanessa it was over between us,” he continued. “I reminded her that she was an accomplice to murder and suggested she keep her mouth shut. However, a woman scorned—I had to kill her, too. Surely you see that?”
I looked at him, and I seemed to see him through a fine, shimmering mist, the mist that half veils a dream landscape. None of this was real. It couldn’t be. This man intended to kill me—why else would he have revealed so much—and I couldn’t grasp it. This bizarre red room with golden light gleaming on bronze and mahogany was a nightmare room and the man with tumbled blond hair and thoughtful blue eyes was a nightmare figure. I would wake up, and none of it would ever have happened. Everything was beginning to blur. The man in the doorway stood up straight and folded his arms over his chest, looking at me.
“So it’s settled,” he said.
“Set-settled?”
“We’ll go to London. We’ll be married.”
“You—you think I could—”
“You have no choice, luv. Oh, I can see how you might have a few reservations—you’re such a moral little thing—but you stand to gain a fortune. Soon, too. I’ve decided the old man is going to have a relapse after all. I don’t fancy waiting until he dies of natural causes.”
“You’re insane,” I whispered.
“I’m a highly sensible man. I think you should be sensible, too, Jenny luv. I really don’t want to kill you—another death would be rather inconvenient at this point, but I’ve no doubt I could explain it satisfactorily enough.”
“Lord Mallyn—he hasn’t made his will yet. If I die—”
“If you die, I’ll be a bereaved widower, bowed with grief, a highly sympathetic figure. My uncle will be bowed with grief, too, and he and I will sit together and talk about you. We’ll be closer than ever, your death a bond between us.”
“Edward—”
“What shall it be, luv?”
I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t speak. Edward waited, growing more and more impatient. Still I didn’t speak, but the answer was there in my eyes. He saw the horror there, and he knew that I could never marry him, never willingly be a part of his heinous plan. He frowned deeply, and then he shook his head, exasperated, resigned to doing what he knew he must do. He stepped fully into the room, and that calm, resigned expression on his face was far more horrifying than a menacing leer would have been. He would kill again, casually, without a qualm. I backed against the wardrobe, the dream mist shimmering, my head whirling.
“Sorry about this, luv,” he said lazily.
He stopped a few feet away, looking at me thoughtfully.
“You were depressed by Vanessa’s death,” he told me, “distracted and not in your right mind. Restless, you wandered into the east wing, and when you reached the back stairs you stumbled against the railing. The railing is rotten. It gave way against your weight. You fell hurtling down to the landing forty feet below—a distressing accident, doubly distressing after what happened to Vanessa this afternoon.”
It was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare. The horror was too great to be real, too overwhelming. I prayed I would wake up. I prayed the humming inside my head would stop and the mist would clear and reality would return, quickly, quickly.
Edward glanced down at his hands. “I think it would be much easier to break your neck here,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, much easier than dragging you to the stairs and shoving you over—” He flexed his fingers, and then he looked into my eyes. “Relax, luv. There’ll be one moment of exquisite pain, then darkness, then oblivion—”
He smiled. There was a gleam of anticipation in his eyes. He was going to enjoy killing me, just as he had enjoyed killing the others. I saw the perverted madness, and I realized that it had been there all along beneath the remote façade. He was mad, quite mad. I shook my head. I tried to scream, but no sound would come, and that was part of the nightmare.
“As I said, I’m sorry about this, luv—”
Edward moved toward me, the smile twisting on his lips, his blue eyes glittering with anticipation, and there was a thundering noise and the mist shimmered and the room whirled, a blur of revolving red streaks, and I saw his hands lifting, fingers curled, and dark wings fluttered in my mind and I closed my eyes. I heard him cry out in agony and heard a heavy thud and when I opened my eyes again the two of them were grappling and pommeling at each other, and I realized the thundering noise hadn’t been my heart pounding, no, it had been thundering footsteps, and Lyman had come, somehow or other he had come, and Edward was trying to kill him now.
The room was still revolving, and the mist was brighter than ever now, and through it I saw them fighting, and I felt nothing, no relief, no horror, because it still wasn’t real. They were locked together, reeling, and they fell against the wall with a deafening thud and, still locked together, tumbled to the floor. Edward had his hands around Lyman’s throat, and he was crazed, blond hair spilling over his eyes, mouth stretched back over his teeth. Lyman threw him off and Edward leaped to his feet, standing in front of the fireplace. He drew his leg back. He delivered a savage kick to Lyman’s ribs, but Lyman rolled out of the way and Edward’s foot met nothing but air and he lost his balance and threw his arms out, one of them hitting against the erotic bronze statue of centaur and woman sitting on top of the mantle. He fell to the hearth, and then I screamed. I screamed as I saw the heavy bronze piece tipping, tottering, tumbling off the edge of the mantle and falling. Edward screamed too, just once, and I heard the crushing impact of bronze and bone and knew that his skull had been cracked open even before I saw the grotesque mass of blood and gore.
“It’s over, Jenny. Jenny—it’s over—”
He was holding me and looking down into my eyes, his own eyes full of anguish, and I was trying to speak, but I couldn’t. He put his hand behind my head and shoved my cheek against his chest, and he held me, tightly, so tightly that my bones seemed about to crack, and, finally, I began to sob. Lyman held me, stroking my hair as he had done once before, and I realized that it was truly over at last, and I realized something else, too, and it was sad, so sad, because it was too late now. Now that it was too late I realized something I should have known a long time ago.
Chapter Sixteen
THE SALARY was one pound a week less
than I had been making with the Gerald Prince Touring Company, and I would be a supporting player, not the leading lady. The company itself was even shabbier than Gerry’s had been, but I had to work and this was the only work I knew. I told Ian Bartholomew I would accept and he told me he would have a contract ready the next day and said the company would be leaving for Bristol at the end of the week. Grimly resigned, I left his small, cluttered office and walked down the dark, narrow stairs and stepped out onto the pavement. Carriages rattled noisily up and down the street. Hawkers shouted their wares from behind pushcarts. A group of tattered, dirty-faced boys chased a yowling dog. A girl wearing a light summery dress strolled by on the arm of a sternly handsome youth in a brand new army uniform, and across the street a plump woman argued vociferously with the butcher in front of his shop. Midmorning London was full of noise and bustle and color, life abounding in riotous profusion.
I was discouraged at the thought of two more years of touring, but if I was careful I would be able to add enough to my savings to finally open a dress shop at the end of that time. I had left Mallyncourt without a penny. I had left four days ago, early, early in the morning, having arranged with George the night before to take me to the station. There had been no good-byes, for no one had really believed I would go. I had done so surreptitiously, knowing I wouldn’t be able to face Lettice and Lord Mallyn, knowing I had to go. I couldn’t stay, no matter how much Lord Mallyn blustered and pleaded. He knew everything, of course, knew I had been an impostor all along, but that didn’t matter one jot, he claimed. He and Lettice needed me, my place was at Mallyncourt and I’d bloody well stay and that was that. Quietly, calmly, I had talked to Lettice, explaining everything as best I could. I had expected her to draw away from me, but she hadn’t. She had been stubborn and defiant, saying it didn’t matter, saying I could stay on as her companion, begging me not to go.
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