Death Witnessed

by Beth Byers

  The door was opened by one of the women who worked for the doctor. “We’re not accepting visitors at this time.”

  “I’m not here to see you,” Georgette said firmly. “I’m here to see Mrs. Dogger.”

  “The doctor—” the maid began, but Georgette shook her head.

  “I fear I must intrude,” Georgette replied even more firmly. “I promised Mrs. Dogger I would stay with her and I mean to do so. I found her, you see. And she doesn’t have family here, does she?”

  Georgette quite boldly stepped past the girl, ignoring her objections, and went into the surgery portion of the house and made her way to Mrs. Dogger’s room.

  “I thought I said no visitors,” Dr. Wilkes said to the maid, but Georgette stepped past him as boldly and went in to Mrs. Dogger.

  “Hello, Ruth,” Georgette said when the woman cracked her eyes. “Are you feeling any better?”

  She nodded just slightly and Georgette went about taking care of the woman, fluffing her pillows and holding a glass of water to her lips.

  “I’m sorry I left you. The doctor wanted me to leave, but I have regretted since I did.”

  “They say Laurieann won’t survive,” Mrs. Dogger said. She had dark circles under her eyes and her mostly grey hair was pulled back into a messy knot. Georgette felt certain that this was a woman who took pride in doing what she could for her appearance. “She was a stingy thing, but she didn’t throw me out. What am I going to do now?”

  Georgette reached out a hand and took Mrs. Dogger’s. “Do either of you have family?”

  Mrs. Dogger shook her head, a tear leaking out of her eye. “We’re all that is left. When she dies, I’ll be the only one there to bury her.”

  “I’ll be there with you,” Georgette told Mrs. Dogger. “Things will work out all right. We’ll figure it out.”

  Mrs. Dogger sniffled again. “Why would you care?”

  “I know what it’s like to be nearly alone,” Georgette said simply. “None of this is your fault, but I’ll help if I can. I wonder…”

  Mrs. Dogger closed her eyes, but Georgette knew she was listening. No, she decided, she would help the woman first. She adjusted the question. “I wonder if you’d like me to wash your hair.”

  “Please.”

  Georgette left Mrs. Dogger and requested what was needed. In minutes Georgette and the maid were helping Mrs. Dogger to undress and wash. It didn’t take long with all of them working together, and Georgette was brushing Mrs. Dogger’s hair after putting her into one of Mrs. Wilkes’s nightgowns and robes.

  “Do you feel better now?”

  “Tired,” Mrs. Dogger said, “but alive.”

  Georgette braided the grey and brown hair for her and then fluffed the woman’s pillows again. As Mrs. Dogger leaned back, Georgette asked, “Is Miss Schmitz your niece?”

  “Cousin.”

  “She was poisoned.”

  Mrs. Dogger laughed bitterly.

  “Why?”

  “Ah,” Mrs. Dogger shook her head. “I won’t pretend that Laurieann wasn’t meddling, but you don’t kill people for meddling. You snub them.”

  Georgette looked down at her hands. “Perhaps she wasn’t just meddling. She was blackmailing?”

  “No,” Mrs. Dogger said immediately.

  “She told me that she knew my secrets. When I doubted her, she told me that now she knew I had them and she’d find them out.”

  “I’m sure she did,” Mrs. Dogger sighed. She coughed, and Georgette handed the woman her glass of water again, helping her to drink from it.

  “You think she was finding out my secrets for some purpose, but not that she was going to attempt to blackmail me?”

  Mrs. Dogger laughed. “Do you think they’ll let me have tea?”

  “I’ll ask,” Georgette said, stepping out again and finding the maid to request tea for them both. The maid said she’d need to check with the doctor. Georgette returned to the woman and met her gaze from the doorway to the room. “Tell me what’s happening, Ruth.”

  Ruth swallowed. “You have to understand that Laurieann is very silly.” Another tear escaped. “She read this book, The Further Adventures of Harper’s Bend. Have you heard of it?”

  “I have,” Georgette said, wincing. “I understand she identified with a character in the book?”

  “Supposedly the author based the book off of the village and real people here. Laurieann decided that the author had based that part off of her. She started acting like the character. I told her that the book had to have been written quite a while ago. It takes time for books to be published. We’ve only lived here for a few months.”

  Georgette nodded.

  “Laurieann didn’t want to believe me. She felt like being in the book would somehow make her feel more, I don’t know. It was like she felt seen. Do you know what I mean?”

  Did she! Georgette only nodded, but she knew exactly what that felt like—not being seen was the entirety of her life until she’d met Charles, Joseph, and Marian.

  “So she decided to make it even more valid. She knew, I think, in her heart of hearts, she knew that the author had based nothing on her. She just wanted to be seen. To be part of the village here. If it took her acting like that Caroline Hardport, then that was what she was going to do.”

  Georgette sat down again, taking Mrs. Dogger’s hand. “Caroline Hardport didn’t blackmail anyone.”

  “And neither did Laurieann. When she wasn’t lying to herself, Laurieann has always been scrupulously honest. She wouldn’t have taken food from someone’s mouth like that. She knows what it’s like to go hungry. We only have just enough to get by, and that after selling her much larger house and moving to this village. The tiny little cottage. Laurieann didn’t want to descend into poverty watched by the neighbors who had always known her and seen the whole fall from prosperity to poverty. At least here, in Bard’s Crook, she was always poor.”

  Ruth turned her head to the window, and Georgette simply sat with her until the tea came and then sat with her while they both waited for her cousin to die. Miss Schmitz hadn’t woken since she’d first slipped into sleep. If the rictus on her face was any indication, it was a mercy.

  Georgette stayed until Ruth fell asleep and then covered her carefully. The sun had long since set, and Georgette had reached the point of hunger where her head ached and her stomach was knotted. The maid had offered them both something to eat, but Georgette wouldn’t eat actual food while Ruth suffered with broth.

  Georgette stopped by to check on Laurieann and found one of the Wilkes’s staff sitting in the room. “How is she?”

  The maid shook her head. “It won’t be long now. It’s unfortunate she got enough poison to kill her but not enough to kill her quickly.”

  “A rest before she sleeps,” Georgette said, even though they both knew it wasn’t true. The mercy was that Miss Schmitz seemed unaware of her suffering. Her breathing was ragged, and Georgette was guessing that sooner or later those struggling lungs would give out. She crossed to Miss Schmitz, smoothed back her hair, and then dropped a kiss on her forehead.

  “The poor, foolish woman,” Georgette said without explaining herself. She hurried out of the surgery, bypassing the doctor who only nodded. She had no idea what had happened to Charles and was guessing that he was questioned and examined as a possible replacement for Mrs. Baker’s dead spouse. The woman was very clearly looking for a replacement, and her standards were also clear to those who were paying attention. No poor but righteous vicar or kind but—well, Georgette smiled to herself. Wealth seemed to be Mrs. Baker’s only requirement.

  Truthfully, Georgette had little doubt that the day would arrive that Mrs. Baker found what she desired. She rather thought, however, that Charles wouldn’t be the one who succumbed to Mrs. Baker. Regardless of the woman’s charms, Charles seemed to respect the literary portraits Georgette had created, and no man wanted a woman whose gaze was fixed on his pocket rather than his heart.

  15
r />   CHARLES AARON

  The dogs gave her away even before she’d cleared the gate to the garden. Charles had returned to his rented room, gathered his satchel, and gone to Georgette’s cottage to spend the day with her when the maid turned him away at the doctor’s door. The maid had, at least, admitted that Georgette had ‘barreled’ her way inside, but the woman refused to give way again.

  Joseph and Marian had arrived before Georgette, and Eunice had eventually fed them afternoon tea and then dinner out of sheer mercy.

  Charles rose, nodding to the others, and opened the door before Georgette could. “You look pale,” he told her, handing her inside as if she needed his help.

  “I am rather given over to hunger,” she admitted. She said hello to the dogs while Eunice came out of the kitchens, clucking at her.

  “Did they feed you?”

  Georgette’s pale face seemed to answer Eunice.

  “Turned it away, didn’t you?”

  “I couldn’t eat in front of Ruth. She can only have broth and tea.” Georgette sniffed, allowing herself the freedom of pressing her temple before she admitted, “I should very much like to wash up and have a little something.”

  Georgette glanced at the others. “Shall we just be on family terms, then? I find I’m too tired to stand on ceremony and manners.” She hurried up the stairs, probably knowing that no one would deny her that. If only she could see her way to recognizing that was why they were here. To turn these friendships into a family instead. Charles had realized as she walked away from him that afternoon that Georgette simply didn’t see him as a suitor.

  It had taken him the walk to her cottage and Eunice’s simple speech to realize it wasn’t him. It was how Georgette saw herself.

  “She gave up thinking of herself as someone to be loved the way you care for her long ago, and way too young,” Eunice told him when he complained that Georgette had left him to Mrs. Baker. “You might have realized that Parker doesn’t have a chance, but you don’t have one either, lad. Not until she realizes why you’re here. Don’t think once she does, she’ll just fall into your arms either. She’ll think on it.”

  “She sees herself as the side character of a book,” Charles muttered.

  “Charlotte Lucas but worse,” Eunice agreed. “Even Mr. Collins noticed Charlotte. No one sees Georgette, at least according to Georgette.” Eunice had been making bread at the time and Charles had invited himself into her kitchens for help. Why she’d softened, he didn’t know, but he was glad of it.

  He’d been considering avenues of convincing Georgette and had come to the rather startling revelation that he might have to out and out tell her. It wasn’t very romantic, but if her mind was entirely closed to being someone’s lover, he might not have another choice.

  Charles had returned to the parlor and his satchel full of manuscripts, letters from the accountant and other authors. He worked the afternoon away on the dullness of the office work and then paused, staring down at his papers. What had Georgette done? She’d made a list of the things she needed for her house and for herself and Eunice. Georgette had been pegging those things off of her list for a while now. He thought, perhaps, he might do the same.

  -Convince Georgette I love her.

  -Convince Georgette to marry me.

  -Convince Georgette to find a house for us.

  He smiled to himself for a moment. He really was behaving like an old hen, but that didn’t stop him from altering the list.

  -Find a house with

  -an office so I can work from home at least half the time

  -an office for Georgette so she can write dozens more books

  -room for children

  -room for too many books and more to come

  -a garden for smoking pipes in

  -a village that has an excellent pub

  -create a happily ever after?

  Charles snorted. If he could convince her to take him seriously, he might just be able to hand her this list and find that while she was crossing things off of her own list, she might cross things off his list as well. Having the idea of a helpmeet was suddenly far more appealing. Somehow he’d shifted from comfortable bachelor to an uncomfortable bachelor who had seen that perhaps, with the right woman, things would be better together than separate.

  He grinned to himself as he added:

  -convince Georgette to share her troubles

  -convince Georgette to find a village that will work for Joseph and Marian as well

  Charles wouldn’t even be surprised if Joseph were to leave Scotland Yard for the office of one of those smaller villages. The boy would, of course, be bored out of his mind. Perhaps he should consider writing detective novels on the side. After Bard’s Crook, fictional crimes in a small town might just be what they all needed to recover.

  Perhaps, Charles laughed to himself, if Joseph were a very bad writer, he’d be a good writing partner for Georgette. Charles could just see the charm of the Harper’s Bend books with a touch of a murder investigation. A quiet village with an entirely unexpected crime. It might be just the thing to sell well.

  Charles turned back to his work until Joseph and Marian arrived and then listened to what they had learned, which was to say, nothing. There was not a shred of evidence anywhere in the house or the papers that any blackmailing had been occurring.

  Georgette came down the stairs. She’d changed into a jumper and another skirt. Her face was shiny and red, having clearly been scrubbed. Her hair had been let out of the clip that held it back, and she was wearing a pair of flat shoes.

  “Is it chilly in here?”

  It wasn’t, but when she shivered, Charles rose and lit the fire for her. The spring day had turned into rain, and she’d walked that last bit home in the wet. She hadn’t looked too damp but perhaps she’d caught a chill.

  “You found there was no evidence of blackmailing?” Georgette asked as she curled onto the Chesterfield.

  “None of that, Miss Georgie,” Eunice said, hands on her hips. “The dining room with you, my dear. That’s a hunger headache you’re fighting.”

  “I fear my stomach is past the point of a meal, especially sitting with Ruth while Laurieann was dying.”

  Eunice eyed Georgette and then declared, “I’ll bring you some soup and toast.”

  Georgette pressed her cheeks. “I do feel sick, but I think it’s more heart sick than ill. You didn’t find proof of Laurieann Schmitz blackmailing anyone, did you?” she repeated.

  Joseph shook his head. “How did you know?”

  “I talked to Ruth for rather a long time. Laurieann wanted to be Caroline Hardport.” Georgette’s bitter laugh had Charles wincing. “The problem is, of course, that someone else is blackmailing people in Bard’s Crook. If you were being blackmailed and you were challenged by a Caroline Hardport-want-to-be, who would you think was blackmailing you? Some friend who knew your secrets or the stranger who’d come to town and was acting like a fool. Flitting around and pretending to be a prying woman from the Harper’s Bend book? I even thought of a plot for blackmail based off of how Laurieann Schmitz was behaving. Who can blame someone for thinking the same?”

  Charles let his gaze move over Georgette, noting when she immediately set aside the soup that Eunice brought. The way Georgette played with the toast rather than eating it. The way her gaze didn’t quite meet anyone else’s, and he bit back a groan. “You feel responsible.”

  “How can I not?”

  Marian leapt to her feet and crossed to Georgette, pushing aside the three dogs watching her every move to take her hands. “If I had written Harper’s Bend, you wouldn’t blame me if some foolish woman decided to act like a character in my book. What if, instead of pretending to be Caroline Hardport, Miss Schmitz had decided to be Iago or Professor Moriarty or Mr. Hyde? You wouldn’t blame Shakespeare for Miss Schmitz’s foolishness.”

  Georgette smiled down at Marian and kissed her friend on the forehead. “What did I do to deserve a friend like you?”
/>
  “Be the only woman who doesn’t bore me to death,” Marian shot back with a grin. She pushed to her feet. “Eat your toast, woman. We all feel wan just looking at you.”

  Obediently, Georgette took a bite of the toast and then repeated, “What did she have?”

  “The most horrible journal. I both felt sorry for her and wanted to shake her for some of the things she wrote. She never once talked about blackmail. She wrote if Mr. Thornton knew the truth about Jasper that he’d be disowned forever. She wrote that if Mrs. Yancey wanted to hide the truth of the teashop, she needed to be cleverer. Miss Schmitz is—was—is it is still?”

  Georgette nodded. “Her breathing is labored and she’s clearly in pain, but she’s also unaware of what is happening. A small mercy, I’ve decided. Ruth was convinced that Laurieann didn’t blackmail anyone. Her argument is compelling.”

  “Then what is happening?” Joseph demanded. He thrust his hands through his hair and groaned. “I don’t understand how small-town people think. It’s like I’m trying to put together a puzzle and half the pieces are missing.”

  Georgette sighed and rose to take the afghan from the back of the Chesterfield. She wrapped it around her shoulders. “I spent the day thinking about it. We don’t know when the blackmailing started, but it can’t have been that long ago if the murderer thought that Miss Schmitz was the blackmailer.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” Joseph glanced at Charles and then at Marian before turning back to Georgette.

  “So, what if Miss Schmitz began blundering about and someone used that as an opportunity to act on blackmailing?”

  “Even if they didn’t,” Charles said, stretching his neck, “Miss Schmitz was likely confused as the blackmailer by one of the victims, which means—”

  “That one of the people she was bothering was also being blackmailed.” Georgette took another bite of her toast and then set the plate aside for the mug.

  “Which means we can focus on Mrs. Yancey, Mrs. Hanover, Jasper Thornton, Virginia Baker, Miss Hallowton, and you, Georgette,” Joseph told her.

  Georgette chuckled. “I suppose if it was me, I have been very, very nefarious.”