Spyfall

by Carter, Elizabeth Ellen

  “Here,” he said. “Allow me.”

  He twisted her hair and piled it high in a mass of curls and picked up one of a set of ruby and pearl-topped hair pins and set it in, then another and another. Agnes giggled until she hiccoughed and took another swig of gin to stop that.

  Next, he picked up a pair of earrings, pear-shaped emeralds, and held them up to the lamplight, estimating their value.

  He kissed Agnes on top of her head and watched her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were heavy-lidded from the sleeping draught already. She did not react when he caressed her earlobe and put the earring up to it.

  “I don’t have holes in my ears like the mistress,” she slurred.

  “Then let’s find something else for you to wear,” he said, slipping the earrings unnoticed into his pocket.

  “How about this,” he said, pulling out a lavish collar of amethysts and diamonds. He settled the jewel around her neck as Agnes’ head lolled.

  “I… I need to lie down,” she whispered.

  “Here, drink this,” he offered her the glass with the remains of the gin. “You’re feeling a little dizzy with excitement, that’s all. Finish this and you’ll be feeling a lot better.”

  “I need to lie down…”

  “Of course, you do,” he soothed. “Let me help you.”

  He levered her weight up from the dressing table chair but they never made it as far as the bed. Her weight started to slip, so he hauled her into a chair beside the bed.

  “I’m not well, Robert.”

  “Sit there, sweeting, and close your eyes a minute.”

  The woman did as bid.

  He returned to the dressing table and covetously examined the jewelry box. It was tempting to take the lot, but he was far too experienced to allow that.

  He selected one or two silver chains to go with the haul in his pocket and a plain gold signet ring. Another piece fell to his hand – a large brooch with an emerald-cut center stone in a grassy green. Perhaps it was an emerald, but likely not; a peridot or tourmaline perhaps.

  It was mounted in gold. The gold spread out like vines to terminate in diamonds mounted in the shapes of flowers from which dangled pear-shaped cuts of the same green stone.

  Not an exact match for the emerald drop earrings in his pocket, but near enough.

  He started at a noise behind him, but it was just the sow snoring, her head lolling back in a most unattractive fashion.

  He removed the amethyst collar from her neck and added it to his haul before tidying the jewelry case and locking it, but leaving the ruby and pearl pins in her hair. He surveyed the table to ensure nothing was amiss.

  Behind him, Agnes’ snoring worsened. He wrinkled his nose in contempt for the woman. He poured another glass of gin and swallowed half of it himself before he touched the glass to the woman’s lips. A little insurance to make sure she stayed out until late. He poured the alcohol slowly down her throat and only stopped when she gagged slightly.

  Finally, he closed her hand around the gold jewelry box key.

  The way he saw things, when Agnes awoke, she would immediately check the box. Seeing some of the bigger pieces there, she would remove the pieces she wore and return them with nothing more than a pounding hangover and an illusion of an evening of romance to recall. And even when the missing jewels were noticed, she would not give him away – not without admitting her own complicity in an act that would see her immediately dismissed, if not charged.

  Robert Lawnton smiled to himself and surveyed the room one more time before he went down the servants’ stairs and left by the back door Agnes had left unlocked for him to come in.

  He would sleep in the boathouse tonight and, early tomorrow, he would make Susannah give him Jack Moorcroft’s ledger and be off.

  And then he’d be well and truly back in business.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Through the window in the early morning outside, Lawnton caught the figure of a woman hurrying down the path from the main house. Cursing the fact he’d slept later than planned, he fastened the buckle on his satchel and glanced about the boatshed. There was no sign he had ever been here. He looked out of the window once more. The rushing figure was Lillian Doyle.

  Steady your nerves, he reminded himself. No one saw you at the house.

  The woman crashed into boathouse without preliminaries. Her face was puce with rage.

  “Give me back what you’ve stolen from me and get out of here before I scream the place down and have you arrested for murder!”

  Murder?

  “What the hell are you talking about, you stupid woman?”

  “Agnes is dead! In my bedroom! Wearing my jewels!” She glared at him. “I know you had something to do with it.”

  He allowed himself in a slow intake of breath. Dead? Fuck… The stupid sow. It must have been too much opium for her. Oh, shit. He decided to brazen it out.

  “If you truly believed that, you wouldn’t have come here alone,” he sneered.

  Lillian grew more furious still, but didn’t come any closer.

  “You fool!” she hissed. “I can’t give you up without implicating myself. Now give me back the emerald earrings. I haven’t told anyone yet. I’m giving you an hour’s head start before I do.”

  The contempt he now had for the woman before him was visceral.

  “Get back to your house, Mrs. Doyle.”

  Still she would not be deterred.

  “Perhaps I should and just show the authorities this?” From her pocket she produced the empty opium vial. “You didn’t have this when you arrived. I know because while you were out one morning, I made a search of your possessions. That means you could only have gotten it from a chemist within fifteen miles of St. Sennen. It won’t be too hard to find who sold it to you.”

  Lawnton found himself with the tremors as though he were an opium addict.

  “Give that to me!” he demanded, grasping for the vial.

  “No!” she responded, snatching it out of reach.

  The beast within Robert Lawnton roared.

  He surged forward and found his hands around Lillian Doyle’s neck. Her half-scream was choked off. His vision turned vermillion red. When it cleared he saw the color again… no, deeper, a puce.

  Then he became conscious of his hands and arms supporting the woman’s dead weight, her mouth open in a silent scream, her tongue protruding grotesquely.

  He shoved her away. The body slumped to the floor and remained there, unmoving. With shaking hands, he picked up his satchel and stumbled out of the boatshed.

  Lawnton looked up the cliff toward the house which was out of sight and ran for his life along the cliff path that would take him away from here. But where could he go?

  Susannah Moorcroft.

  Her name came to him clearly. A guardian angel must have whispered it in his ear.

  And yet, the horror of what he had done dogged him, snarled at his heels. He dare not look back. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on the path before him for dear life until he could see the slate-roofed inn in the distance at the bottom of the hill.

  No one would believe it was an accident. He hadn’t meant to kill the two women. The first death wasn’t even his fault. How was he to know that Agnes Sloan would react badly to the opium?

  And, as for Lillian Doyle… well, she brought it on herself, didn’t she? If she hadn’t antagonized him, he wouldn’t have lost his temper. But there was no way he’d be believed, not with his form, not with a lifetime of thievery. They’d just say murder was a natural progression. Oh, God! If he was caught, he’d swing for sure. What to do? What to do?

  Jack’s widow had a new fancy man with a boat. That was it. Make her give him the ledger and have her lover take him to Holland – or else.

  Formulating the plan worked like a balm on his shattered nerves. The rushing of blood in his ears ebbed and he could hear sounds clearly once again.

  He needed a weapon. A knife.

  There were plenty of
knives in the kitchen of The Queen’s Head.

  Damn looking casual like a rambler.

  He began to run.

  *

  “Fetch the jar of flour, Tressa, and I’ll show you how to make some of those fancy French pastries,” said Peggy. “Them Frenchies make them look like a big deal but there are a few tricks you can learn to make it easy.”

  Susannah smiled and looked up as the younger girl turned to Peggy with a dubious expression.

  Normally she would have done the accounting ledgers in her parlor, but the fire had already been set here and since the doors weren’t open until one o’clock, there was no one to look out for in the bar.

  Woof, woof, woof!

  Susannah shared a concerned glance with Peggy whose fingers were covered in rubbed-together flour. The woman frowned back.

  “That’s not like Prince to—” said Peggy.

  Crash!

  The sound of a smashing window was unmistakable.

  “I’ll see to that,” said Susannah.

  “I’ll come with you, Mrs. Linwood,” Tressa volunteered.

  “Take the Billy club by the door,” Peggy added.

  Susannah’s hand was already around the smooth wooden club. She took it and passed through into the bar. In the dining room, three diamond-shaped panes were smashed. A fist-sized rock sat surrounded by the glistening shards of glass.

  She unlatched the front door and raced out. There was no one about, but Prince bounded up to her, continuing to bark most insistently.

  “What is it, boy? Who broke my window?”

  The pointer bounced about her feet and continued to bark but, over the noise, she heard something else, a scrabble of footsteps.

  She held the club more firmly in her grip, wishing not for the first time that Nate had not gone out to St. Sennen early this morning with Adam Hardacre.

  Susannah moved around the west side of the building where the windows to her bedroom lay.

  The chickens seemed agitated, they congregated in the farthest corner of the hen house. Had their vandal been around here? Or had Prince’s barking set them off? She glanced across the field to see if she could spot anyone running away. There was nothing.

  She came to the door to the mud room and the double trap doors that led down to the cellar. The side door was locked and the cellar’s doors were closed. She moved around to the kitchen side of the inn. Still, here, was nothing unusual.

  “I saw no one, no one at all,” she called, opening the kitchen door inward.

  There was silence, nothing but the crackling of the kitchen fire in the grate.

  “Peggy?”

  The kitchen was empty, she heard only silence.

  Susannah set the club back by the door and bolted it shut for good measure.

  “Peggy? Tressa?”

  She pushed open the swinging door to the bar only to come face to face with Peggy, her eyes wide, face pale. Catching the gleam of the knife was second, recognizing the man holding it was third.

  “Hello, Susannah, my darling. Did you miss me?”

  “Lawnton,” she said, her voice much more calm than it ought to be under the circumstances. “Please let Peggy go.”

  “You’ve got something I want, Susannah.”

  She swallowed. Dear God, he really had returned for the ledger – the one she had happily burned a few weeks ago.

  “Where’s Tressa?”

  “The girl?” said Lawnton. “She seems to have bumped her head.”

  Susannah eased herself past the kitchen door and into the bar. Tressa lay prone on the floor and moaned faintly.

  “Let Peggy go,” she said “We need to help Tressa.”

  “You have the ledger?”

  “You have my word you won’t see it unless you let Peggy go.”

  Lawnton barked out a laugh. “I’m a desperate man, Susannah. You don’t know just how desperate I am. They’ll be after me soon. But I won’t let them take me. I’ll not go back to Causton Prison. I won’t swing, I promise you that.”

  Lawnton nudged Tressa with his foot, brushing her skirts out of the way. He revealed the ring set flush in the floor.

  “Where does this go?”

  “The taproom,” Susannah answered. “The cellar.”

  “Not out to your boatshed?”

  Susannah shook her head.

  “About your ledger, I…”

  She swallowed tight as Lawnton’s grip tightened on the kitchen knife. Peggy let out a small whimper and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “If you tell me you don’t have it, Susannah, then I have nothing to lose. You see, I’ve killed a woman… no, I’ve killed two. If I kill another three, am I any less damned?”

  Leverage. The words of Lady Abigail came back to her. Anything someone wants badly enough to spend years looking for could be useful…

  Susannah summoned up every ounce of self-possession she had while, inwardly, she prayed frantically.

  “I have it,” she lied. “But I don’t have it here. I was too afraid to keep it at the inn, so I kept it safe. No one but me knows where it is.”

  Susannah kept her eyes on Peggy’s terror-filled face, pleading silently that she would not contradict her.

  “Where?” Lawnton demanded.

  “The smugglers’ cave.”

  “The one on the beach on the other headland?”

  She nodded. Lawnton watched her like a hawk and pressed the knife even closer to Peggy’s throat.

  “You’re not lying to me are you?” The man was becoming more and more agitated. “Like the way you lied about Jack’s death? Because you did lie to the coroner, didn’t you, slut?”

  Peggy hissed with pain and a thin line of blood bloomed at her neck from where he pressed the sharp blade.

  “Tell me the truth!”

  “Lawnton, stop!”

  “Answer me, bitch!”

  Peggy cried out in pain.

  “I did! I lied! I lied! I was there! Now let her go!” Susannah screamed, unable to stop the sobs rising from her throat. “You want the truth? You want to know what happened the night Jack died? You want the ledger? Then let her go. Let her go now.”

  She fought her sobs as she stared at Lawnton. Both panted with emotion and terror.

  Beware lest thy sins find thee out.

  If Lawnton did not believe her, then they were all dead.

  Suddenly, the hand holding the knife was thrust in her direction.

  “Open the hatch!”

  Susannah did so, terrified. Did he mean to put them all down there? If he did, what then? A horrible image flashed across her mind of Lawnton setting the inn alight with them in it.

  The man shoved Peggy forward toward the open hatch.

  “Get down there.”

  Susannah and Peggy shared a frightened glance, but Peggy did as she was bid, starting toward the opening.

  Lawnton directed his attention to Tressa. The girl had regained consciousness and struggled to a sitting position. She was deathly pale and holding a hand to the back of her head.

  “You, too, girlie.”

  Tressa crawled to Peggy who took the young maid into her arms and helped her down the ladder into the cellar.

  No sooner had Peggy’s head disappeared below floor level did Lawnton kick the heavy hatch shut. The slam was so loud Susannah literally jumped. The knife pointing in her direction was shaking.

  “What have you done, Robert?” she asked softly.

  “Shut up! You’d better not be lying to me, Susannah. I’d rather damn my soul and take you with me.”

  She gulped.

  “I’m not lying to you, Robert.”

  She nodded her head toward his shaking hand.

  “You’re in shock. You need a drink… brandy.”

  It was strange – the more agitated Lawnton became, the calmer Susannah felt, especially now Peggy and Tressa were out of immediate danger. Lawnton glared at her as if he could intimidate her with the force of his expression. Once upon a time, he could. S
he refused to be cowed now. She was not the same woman she was three years ago.

  All she needed to do was to get Lawnton away from here. When the inn didn’t open as usual, someone would come looking for her.

  “Put the bottle on the counter,” he ordered.

  Susannah took the decanter from the shelf behind her and placed it on the bar. She could smell the fruity fermentation as he opened it and took a swig directly from it, tossing the glass stopper aside. His hands still shook. They seemed red somehow but she was sure they were not covered in blood.

  Breathe in and out. The longer he lingered here, the better for both she and Peggy.

  “Where’s your lover then? The one with the boat?”

  “At the harbor in St. Sennen, preparing to head out this afternoon,” she said making sure she kept her voice as calm as possible.

  She watched him consider her answer, clearly making plans.

  “If he wants you alive, he’s going to have to do what I say then, isn’t he?”

  It was only now Susannah felt the pinpricks of fear rising up her arms.

  “The smugglers’ cave will do well enough, won’t it?” He snatched her arm and squeezed tight. She let out a cry of pain.

  Thumping started from the floor below where she heard Peggy’s muffled protests.

  Lawnton stomped on the floor twice.

  “Shut up, woman!” he yelled. “Shut up before I deal with you!”

  Lawnton kept a relentless pace up Arthyn Hill. He gripped her wrist tight, dragging her over the headland and down the path that led to the beach.

  She had no coat. She shuddered and gulped in the salt air, the cold tang of it hurting her lungs almost as much as her feet ached from the forced march. At last, they stood just a few yards from the cave.

  “Where is it in there?”

  Where’s what?

  She stared at him for a moment, not comprehending his words. Then she remembered a split second before his open hand smacked hard across the side of her face, causing her to stagger back.

  “Come on, you stupid woman. The ledger. You promised me the bloody ledger.”