“The Lady Charlotte Litherholm,” Annie said. “She is aunt to the Duke of Falconbury of Valmont.”
“Well! What grand neighbours you have! Do you go there for your dinner sometimes?”
“Oh, no, indeed not. Lady Charlotte does not entertain.” Then, because she was curious, she went on, “Are you staying somewhere nearby? For I cannot imagine you have travelled from your home today, if it is so far away.”
“I am staying nearby, yes.” She laughed again, and Annie had the uncomfortable feeling that she was laughing at her, although she could not have said why she felt that.
“In Wickstead?” Annie persisted, but the stranger only laughed again. “You see, I am trying to understand how you can know so much about Willow Place if you live so far away.”
“Why, Rupert told me.”
“Rupert?” she cried in astonishment. “You were a friend of his?” And perhaps this woman, as unexpected as she was, could tell them something of Rupert’s former life, and maybe even knew why someone would kill him. Annie felt a surge of interest in this odd little creature.
“Why, certainly. I have known him for years. He told me all about this place, and about you, Annie. Miss Annie Dresden that was, and Mrs Rupert Huntly now. Oh yes, he told me all about you. Somehow, I thought you’d be different. He called you an angel, and naturally I thought you must be perfect in every way.”
“Certainly not that!” Annie said. “I am quite an ordinary person.”
“Yes, you are,” the woman said. “Taller than I’d expected, but otherwise perfectly ordinary.” She gave a bark of laughter at her own supposed wit, and the thought flashed into Annie’s mind that perhaps she was not right in the head. There was something very peculiar about her manner, and indeed her very presence there, even though she claimed to be a friend of Rupert’s.
That was something that made Annie uneasy. An old friend, someone Rupert had known years ago, and here she was and perhaps completely unaware of all that had happened in the last month.
“I wonder if…” she began, then stopped. It was so difficult! She knew nothing about this woman, not even her name. “Forgive me for not knowing you, but my husband never mentioned a female acquaintance.”
This time she did not laugh. “I daresay he didn’t. A man don’t mention other women to his wife.”
Other women. She was not sure what to make of that. “You may not be aware…” she began tentatively.
The other woman tilted her head. “Yes?”
“Perhaps you do not know…” Annie ploughed on, steeling herself for the reaction to her words. “You may not have heard that… I am very sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but Rupert is dead. “
To Annie’s astonishment, she laughed again. “Oh yes, I know. Naturally I know.”
“You know?”
“Of course. How could I not know?”
Annie frowned, unable to make sense of this.
“I know he is dead because I killed him. I shot him twice through the heart and left him to die, the treacherous, lying Devil.”
26: A Boat On The River
The world spun around Annie. For an instant she thought she might be about to faint, but then she told herself sternly that only foolish women swooned or screamed hysterically and she was not foolish. Besides, as the practical side of her reasserted itself, there was no point in fainting dead away with no one by to help her except this peculiar woman who claimed to have killed Rupert.
“Oh, don’t worry, I mean you no harm,” the woman said, as calmly as if she were discussing the weather. “My quarrel was only with Rupert, be sure of that. I don’t hold it against you, not at all, but if I couldn’t have him, no one else was going to, that’s for sure.”
“You wanted to marry him?” Annie said tentatively, beginning to recover her composure.
“Aye, and who had a better right?”
“So… you had expectations, and then he married me? So you—” Annie could not finish that thought. ‘So you murdered my husband,’ were not easy words to say.
“So I killed him? Yes. For six years he had what he wanted from me, and I waited patiently. He couldn’t afford to marry, he said, and it’s true, he never had money to spare. He never spent a penny on himself, for his clothes were always threadbare. But then he came into his brother’s inheritance. At last, I thought! I’ll be a wife and a lady and live comfortable, as I should, and Heaven help anyone who looks down his superior nose at me. But then he came to see me, all excited. He was getting married, he said, and wasn’t it wonderful, he would finally have his angel, and so he wouldn’t be coming to see me again.”
Annie was still pondering the meaning of ‘He had what he wanted from me’, so she said nothing, but the woman seemed to require no answer, only an audience for her story.
“I wanted you to know,” she went on, as Annie stared at her pretty face and tried to make sense of it. “I wanted you to understand that it’s finished now, so you needn’t worry that anyone’s going to take a pop at you. And you needn’t worry about me, neither. I’m set up, thanks to Rupert. Not that he ever gave me a penny piece himself,” she said, with a spurt of bitterness. “Not him! He saved it all for you, didn’t he? Four thousand pounds he had put by, he told me, and it all went to you. But that was no blame to you, so I don’t bear you no grudge. You’re pretty, too, and you look to be a gentle girl, and a proper lady, not like me, so I can see the attraction, believe me. But he should have married me, by rights.”
“But that is shocking!” Annie said. “To be betrothed for six years, and then—”
“Well now, it wasn’t quite as formal as that. There was no betrothal, at least, nothing official. But I always assumed… Well, that just goes to show, doesn’t it? Maybe you gentry folks have the right of it after all. Never give them anything until you’ve stood up before the parson. You see, I thought we had an understanding and he’d marry me whenever he could afford it, but he thought I was just his mistress.”
Annie gave a squeak of shock at this point. His mistress! And she had never suspected it. Not that a man would tell his wife such a thing, but such arrangements were generally known, and he should have said as much to Uncle Tom, at least. Besides, there might be complications.
“Do you have children?” Annie said. And then, struck by a sudden thought, she added, “He might have left you something in his will. We have not yet found it.”
She laughed again. “Well, aren’t you a kindly soul, to be thinking of such a thing? No, I don’t expect it and I don’t need it, neither. Like I said, I’m set up. My own house, and a tidy income, enough to live on comfortably and see my two boys established when their time comes. That was Rupert’s doing, the house. I was a nurse, you see, looking after rich old folks near their end. I always hoped one of them would change his will to leave me something, and so it happened. That was how I met Rupert, when he was called in to change the will. Lovely old biddy she was, and left me the lot. But the relatives came crawling out of the woodwork after she died and challenged the will in court so I lost it all. But then Rupert found me another one — a kindly old gent away out in the countryside, and no living kin. And six months later, he obligingly died and left me everything and this time no one challenged it, so it’s mine. Lovely house it is, too. So that was very convenient for Rupert. He could come and see me whenever he wanted, and it was all very discreet. No one suspected a thing, which was just how he wanted it. Terribly private man he was, always the same. You must have found that, too.”
Annie found herself quite unable to speak. This woman was like no one she had ever encountered before, and the stream of revelations overwhelmed her. She felt as if she had fallen into some strange underworld where everything looked the same but was bizarrely different. Her life had been so orderly until Rupert had returned! At that instant she would have given everything to go back to that moment in the cellar of Uncle Tom’s house, counting bottles, and have her future unroll from that point in a different direction.
The woman stood up abruptly, and Annie sprang up, too, recalling with a spear of alarm that this was a self-confessed murderer beside her. This woman, so expensively dressed, so composed, had come here with pistols in her pockets and murder in her heart. Perhaps even now she had those pistols with her, tucked away in the capacious pockets of her coat.
“It’s time I was gone,” the woman said. “You won’t see me again, don’t you worry about that. Enjoy your view, Annie.”
“Wait!” Annie cried. “Rupert’s cousin is held in gaol even now for Rupert’s murder, but you have the power to free him.”
“What, you want me to confess my guilt to the judge? I don’t think so.”
“But he could hang!”
She smirked then. “Ah, you care about this cousin, don’t you? More than you cared about Rupert.”
“I never loved Rupert,” Annie said. “You could have had him with my good will, if I had known about you. What he did was wrong, and what you did was wrong too, but none of that can be undone. But Adam is a good man who has never harmed a soul, and it is wicked to let him hang for a crime he did not commit. At least sign a statement confessing, and then disappear if you must but—”
“No,” she said coldly. “What a fool I am to be worrying about you! Just goes to show, don’t it? You don’t deserve no sympathy. You took Rupert from me when you cared nothing for him. I’d loved him for years and waited patiently for him, but you… you just wanted all this. A big house, plenty of money… what a fine lady you are! Just another money-grabbing nobody! But you love this cousin, so now you’ll know how I felt when someone I loved was taken away from me. I hope he hangs, this cousin. And I hope you burn in Hell, Annie Dresden.”
She turned away in a flurry of burgundy velvet, and she had vanished down the path and out of sight before Annie had caught her breath.
“Wait!” she cried, in sudden fear. She had had the murderer standing before her, and now she was escaping. Annie raced after her, catching her sleeve momentarily on a bramble. Angrily she ripped it free and ran on. Emerging from the concealing bushes onto a clear stretch of path, she saw the woman ahead of her.
“Wait! Wait!” she shouted, but the woman took no notice. Even as Annie rushed up to the spot where she stood, she stepped into a boat tied up there, lifted the restraining rope looped over a low pole and pushed hard. The boat drifted away from the pole and then the current caught it and hurried it away downstream. The woman waved one triumphant hand before the boat was swept out of sight.
Annie could have wept with frustration. What a dreadful mess she had made of it! To have the real murderer in front of her, and yet gain nothing by it. She had no idea who she was — not so much as a name, still less a direction — and Adam was still locked away with no hope of release.
“Madam?”
Annie spun round, disoriented. “Oh… oh, Davy! Do you know who that woman was?”
“What woman, madam?”
“The one who was here just now, in a red coat. She sat on the seat with me, and then she got in a boat and went off down the river. Surely you must have seen that!”
“I didn’t see no one, madam, and no boat, but I was head down in the reeds. I wouldn’t have seen nothin’”
Annie stamped her foot in frustration. But at least there was one undeniable truth — she now knew who had murdered Rupert. She would be able to tell Sir Leonard, and Adam would be released.
“Back to the house!” she said, setting off at speed almost before the words were out of her mouth. She tore back across the park, Davy striding along in her wake.
A note was hastily written and Billy dispatched to Sir Leonard, with instructions to find him wherever he might be. Then Annie paced back and forth in the hunting room, waiting.
He came promptly, which was a relief. “You have fresh information, Mrs Huntly?” he said. “Your man said you know something to exonerate Mr Adam, and if so I should very much like to hear it.”
“I know who the murderer is,” she said.
“Ah. And who is the fellow?”
“It is a woman.” Sir Leonard’s eyebrows rose. “I… I do not know her name, for she did not give it, but she told me all about her connection to my husband. It is a sad story, and she was badly treated, although that does not excuse her behaviour in the least. Please, sit, Sir Leonard. May I offer you a glass of Madeira? Or tea?”
“Madeira, I thank you. So tell me how you come to know all this, Mrs Huntly.”
She poured Madeira for him, and then sat down and calmly told him the tale. She had had sufficient time to compose herself and get the details straight in her mind, so she started with her walk to the river with Davy, then the appearance of the stranger as she sat on her seat. She related all the history that she had been told, not evading the sordid details, although she blushed a little as she talked about a mistress and the two bastard children. Nor did she forget the deviously acquired inheritance.
Sir Leonard listened gravely, his face impassive. He was not an ill-natured man, but it could not be denied that a little more flexibility in attitude would not go amiss. Annie did not entirely blame him for arresting Adam, but it did not seem to her that he had properly considered any alternatives. Now at last he must give up all thought of Adam as the murderer.
When she had finished, he sat in silence, frowning in thought. He reached for the Madeira glass, found it empty, set it down again. Annie refilled it and he took another sip, regarding her over the rim of the glass. Why did he not speak?
“So now you may release Adam, Sir Leonard,” she said. “Now that the real murderer is known, you have no reason to hold on to him.”
“Do you recall my advice to you, Mrs Huntly?” he said.
“Advice?”
“When I came here to arrest Mr Adam, I warned you not to interfere. To say nothing at all. You should have heeded that advice, madam.”
“But… I am not sure what you are saying, Sir Leonard. Do you expect me to learn facts of this magnitude and not relate them to you?”
“You were alone, of course, when you met this woman.”
“I… yes, but Davy was nearby. What has that to say to anything?”
“And did he hear or see this woman? No, he did not. No one saw or heard a thing. Except for you, Mrs Huntly. There you were, sitting on this seat beside the river, and this mysterious woman appears from nowhere and confesses to murder and then vanishes just as mysteriously as she arrived. And how convenient that she gives no name or any information that might identify her.”
Annie stood up, obliging him to haul himself to his feet too. “Are you calling me a liar, Sir Leonard?” she said coldly. “I am not accustomed to such insult from a gentleman.”
“You are fond of young Adam, are you not?” he said, and his face bore some trace of sympathy. “No, you need not answer such a question. He is a personable young man, very charming, very amusing, with manners calculated to delight any young lady, even one married to another man. Now, now, do not bridle up at me, for I impute no evil to your behaviour, none at all. I have asked many people about the nature of your dealings with Adam and there is not one who has a word to say against you. It is agreed that you enjoy his company, but there is no hint of anything more… more vicious. So whatever drove an otherwise blameless young man to murder, it was not a scheme cooked up between the two of you.”
“That is—!” Annie was so indignant that she could not find words strong enough to express it.
“Say nothing, I implore you!” he said hastily. “As I have said all along, your best course is to not interfere, in any way, because if you are dragged into the business, it will be beyond my powers to get you out again. No jury will believe that you knew nothing of it, and then you will be hanged or transported and we none of us want that. Believe me when I say that it is the last thing I want. But young Adam? I cannot save him.”
“But he is innocent!” she cried. “You must know him to be incapable of murder.”
“Which of us is truly incapable of black deeds, when it comes to it?” he said sombrely. “I would have agreed with you… I did agree with you, but the facts are against him. He quarrelled with your husband at the Vestry meeting, then went straight home, up to his room where he keeps a pair of duelling pistols. Then out again, and no one can say for certain where he went after that. Even he cannot — or will not. So he could easily have waylaid your husband and killed him, Mrs Huntly. And, quite apart from the Vestry quarrel, he had several reasons to wish Huntly dead. You are one reason, and then there is the estate… a fine estate, and a very tempting inducement. By killing Huntly, Adam secures both you and the inheritance at one stroke.”
“That is not true! If I have a son—”
“Adam will marry you and be his guardian, and have full control of the estate for one and twenty years.”
“There is also James Huntly.”
“Who is dead. You cannot save Adam, Mrs Huntly, and I must beg you to try no further ploys of this nature. I shall not count this against you, for as a female you cannot be expected to fully appreciate the consequences of your misguided efforts, nor will I relate this to my fellow magistrates, but you must promise me not to repeat it.”
Annie burned with the injustice of it, but her mind was clear. “Sir Leonard, you must do as you see fit, if you can reconcile that with your conscience. For myself, I know — I have always known — beyond all doubt that Adam is innocent of this dreadful crime, and therefore the only promise I shall make to you is this — that I shall not rest until I have proved it. I shall find this woman, whoever she is, and I shall see her brought to justice. I know that she is real, and not a figment of my imagination, because I saw her with my own eyes. She sat, no further from me than you are now, and told me openly that she had killed my husband. Whoever she is, wherever she lives, she is real and there must be a way to find her. And I will, I promise you that. I will not let Adam hang for a murder he did not commit.”
“Fine words,” Sir Leonard muttered. He shook his head sadly as he took his leave, and Annie was left steaming with rage at his obstinacy.
The Apothecary (Silver Linings Mysteries Book 3) Page 26