Davies reacted with the merest eye twitch. “Who those two people are I have no idea.”
George Maddox glanced back and forth anxiously between Davies and me. “Is there a problem?”
I didn’t remove my gaze from Oswyn Davies. “Not just yet. Mr. Davies, you have long been lying to me, have you not?”
The tip of his injured ear grew red. “Lying about what? You are a woman who has disturbed the peace of this brewery on several occasions, and even caused me to reveal myself too much. Now you invade this place with accusations of lying and murder.”
For the final time, I pulled Fenton’s dice from my pocket and could see that Davies was physically repelled by them.
“You cannot seem to stop talking about these insignificant dice, miss.”
I closed my fist around them. “But they are not insignificant. They are everything, aren’t they? You knew who they belonged to, didn’t you?”
Davies was sullen.
“What I’ve learned about you over the past few days, Mr. Davies, is that you are a brewer, a public house keeper, and a professional soldier. Quite an array of talents for someone living inconspicuously in Soho. But you are also a liar.”
Mary inhaled sharply next to me as Davies’s expression became fierce. “I recommend that you have proof of that, Miss Nightingale.”
I tucked the dice back into my pocket. “You finally admitted to me that they were cheating dice, but said you had no idea whose they were. That isn’t true. The owner of them was a frequent visitor of the Lion, is that not so?”
Davies’s only response was to glower at me.
“When I witnessed you tossing that player out on his ear, it occurred to me that you would likely know many secrets of the men who frequent the Lion. Their marital struggles. Their employment problems. But most important of all—their gambling debts. Yet I am sure you took pride in keeping all these secrets to yourself. After all, if men could trust you, they would be more likely to spend money in your establishment. The more they spend, the happier the owner is, and the happier Mr. Huggins is, the more secure your position is.”
Davies crossed his arms, his expression full of threatening storm clouds. “Of a crime being committed I have yet to hear.”
“This is true. But you will. I first came to you to inquire about an attack on the secretary at war’s carriage. You said you knew nothing about it. I showed you the dice I had, and you were very careful in your response to me. But that was because you realized the truth would be very injurious to you.”
“Injury caused to me by some cheating dice? I wasn’t gambling with them, and they meant noth—”
“I hate to interrupt,” Maddox said. “But Mr. Davies, the men will be back shortly, and I need to make my rounds.” He glanced nervously again at his boss.
Before Davies could open his mouth to respond to his employee, I said, “Please wait a moment more, Mr. Maddox.”
My overstepping was not improving Davies’s temper, but I plowed resolutely ahead. “Mr. Herbert’s coachman, Joss Pagg, who drove the carriage that day, was a regular here, wasn’t he? When you told me that many servants of society families hide out here, I realized that Pagg might well have been one of those servants. It would explain why he routed the carriage through Soho, being familiar with the place. And Fenton, Mr. Herbert’s manservant, at least knew about this place, even if he was not a regular. And he most likely obtained the dice from whoever plucked them off Pagg. And Pagg died nearly right in front of your door.”
“A crime I have committed I still haven’t heard about.”
I ignored this. “I confess I am grateful to you on many counts, sir. I learned the sordid history of the Disaster in Afghanistan, which was very helpful. You explained how cheating dice work. You even provided assistance to people in need. However, you knew that those dice had belonged to Pagg, didn’t you, Mr. Davies? But you refused to tell me so. When I first determined that you were lying to me, I was angry, but I soon realized that you were in the habit of protecting your customers as long as they weren’t cheaters. And you had never witnessed Pagg cheating inside your establishment.”
“You have already established that I am able to keep my patrons’ secrets,” Davies said. “Now if you don’t mind—”
“Yes,” I replied dismissively, cutting off whatever he was about to say. “You’ve been helpful to me, and your discretion was very helpful to the men who frequented the Lion. But it was you, Mr. Maddox, who was ultimately the most helpful.” I turned to the widower.
“Me? How so? Miss Nightingale, I’m running out of time before the men return.” Maddox was practically hopping back and forth on both feet.
“You are running out of time in more ways than you know, sir. You are the most callous sort of murderer: a killer who starts with one ostensibly noble goal in mind but ends up disposing of others who displease you or get in the way of your goal. In total, you have murdered three people: Joss Pagg, Alice Nichols, and your own wife. All of that blood just to serve your initial objective of avenging your brother’s death by killing General à Court. A feat which you were never able to accomplish and never will.” I shook my head in disgust.
Mary, Davies, and Maddox stared at me, mouths agape. “Miss Florence, are you sure?” Mary said, nervously tugging on one of her loose bonnet strings.
I nodded resolutely. “When Mr. Davies threw out the cheating player, I not only realized that he knew many men’s secrets, but I also realized he had done it before—when we found you outside the Lion. You apologized for being in your cups, but in reality, the worse problem was that you had been thrown out, hadn’t you? You had—”
Davies interrupted me. “Miss Nightingale, I have forgiven Maddox for cheating, as sympathetic I was to his plight of having lost a brother and then a wife.”
“Yes, except that his wife’s death was no accident, was it, Mr. Maddox?”
“She had cholera!” Maddox exclaimed in insistent defense. He was no longer antsy, but a wariness and subtle hostility had begun to overshadow his hitherto cheery countenance.
“She did, but she clearly understood something about you despite all her confusion. She talked about having the ability to see, and also referenced your brother Barton, who went off to war and perished. She told one of my nurses that she had accomplished what she needed to before dying. That accomplishment was to tell someone about her deranged husband. Isabel also told this nurse, in a very muddled way, that someone had disappointed her. That was you, Mr. Maddox, for being an evil man she couldn’t escape.
“Her dying words in my arms were that she ‘hated to do it.’ I had assumed this was all feverish ranting, but it wasn’t. She was trying to tell me that she had figured out that you were avenging Barton and had evil on your mind. I suspect what she hated to do was to accuse you of murder. She must have realized she was dying, and to accuse her husband of such a heinous crime would make her boy an orphan.”
Maddox’s eyes narrowed at me coldly. “Our lot wasn’t my fault. And she was getting far too babble-mouthed once she got sick. You showed up, and I couldn’t have her spewing out my private dealings to you. I cannot be blamed for her death.”
Was Maddox implying that it was my fault his wife had died?
I was getting ahead of myself in the story, though. “The piece I had been missing is how you knew Joss Pagg,” I said. “I imagine now you merely met him at the Lion.”
Maddox rolled his eyes in scorn. “Pagg was a simpleton. He fancied himself moving up in the world. He wanted to find some wealthy widow whose home he could charm his way into. I tried to tell him he’d never manage it, no matter how handsome a fellow he might be. He thought the only problem with his plan was his gambling debt.”
Next to Maddox, Davies’s expression was a blend of incredulity and bubbling fury.
I continued, “That’s when you offered to help him with the dice you had in your possession. ‘Five-D-G’ refers to Fifth Dragoon Guards. If I’m not mistaken, that would have b
een your brother’s regiment, correct? A regiment that saw action in Afghanistan? I am guessing your brother was lost in the withdrawal from Kabul.”
Maddox’s confirmation was a mere grunt.
“You had possession of them—probably the only items of his that came back from Afghanistan—and you offered to give Pagg your brother’s dice to use in winning enough games to recoup all his losses and pay off his debts. In return, though—oh, what you asked for in return.”
“Why are you surprised? Nothing in this world is free. In fact, nearly everything comes at a very dear price.” Maddox was waxing righteous now.
Davies raised a fist to him. “A dear price, you wish to see? I’ll—”
I held up a hand to stop the Lion’s manager. I needed a full confession before Davies began administering his own justice.
I continued, “You wished to bring harm to the General and perhaps his entire family as a means of retribution. Hence why Pagg routed the family carriage on such an unusual path to reach the museum. You would be waiting for the carriage to come through and strike at the right moment, killing either the General or Mrs. Herbert. Or both, if you were particularly lucky. But for some reason, Pagg had a change of heart.”
Maddox grunted again. “You cannot go back on a promise. Fool told me he intended to use the dice to earn additional money, so he could pay me extra rather than carry out the task I had given him. Next thing you know, he would have been jabbering about it all over London. Couldn’t have it. And anyway, even killing a Herbert servant would have been enough to get it all rolling. The family could come next.”
I was chilled by the callousness of the man.
I resumed unraveling what I knew—or what I believed I knew. “I remembered what Mrs. Herbert had told me, that the attacker had called her the Babylonian Whore. A clever Biblical phrasing, it was, one that I coincidentally heard again on another visit to Soho. But I finally realized that she had misunderstood what had been shouted at her. It was ‘Afghanistan war,’ wasn’t it?”
“And what would you know of war and loss, Miss Nightingale? My brother was smart, brave, and loyal. And he was sent in as nothing more than paltry fodder for the Afghans. Someone had to be made to pay for it, and obviously the Army wasn’t going to do it. And the secretary at war had to be prevented from sending more good men into the Crimea—another muck pit. Is anyone surprised that he’s the butcher’s son-in-law? Of course these animals live and work together. I shouldn’t be accused of committing a crime; I should be given a hero’s medal for trying to rid the world of their villainy. I told Pagg as much, just as I’m telling you. He didn’t understand how vital the task was.”
Maddox’s hardened responses were clearly affecting Davies, who was now reduced to growling next to the man.
“And so Pagg brought the carriage down Broad Street as planned, but in his change of heart, he fought you when you approached the carriage. You melted away, then shot him from a distance for his perfidy. In the aftermath, you managed to slip back into the crowd and retrieve the dice from Pagg while ostensibly helping the dying man, didn’t you?”
Maddox gave me a prideful shrug as his answer.
“Sidney Herbert’s manservant, Fenton, came down here to investigate on his own. His detecting work must have brought him to the Lion, where no doubt everyone was still talking about what had happened. You were unable to refrain from telling him something, right, Mr. Maddox?”
“Don’t be absurd. I know how to keep a secret as well as your dear friend, Mr. Davies, here. I merely gave him the dice and extended roughly the same offer I gave Pagg. ‘Use the dice to make yourself some easy money,’ I told him. ‘But you’ll need to help me a little with your employer.’ He looked a little queasy when I met him. Wasn’t completely sure he could do it, but he was the only other way in to the Herberts that I had. Then all of a sudden he quit showing up at the Lion.”
“Because he had died of cholera. But in fact, after Fenton disappeared with your dice, you saw all your plans being destroyed. You must have made some other attempt at teaching someone how to cheat at gambling in order to draw him into your web, but Mr. Davies caught you out and tossed you into the street. Where Mary and I found you.”
Another dispassionate shrug. “A minor setback. Even with Fenton gone, I had plenty of plans and ideas. After all, a writer can always come up with a way for his characters to achieve their goals or get out of prickly situations. Got Mr. Davies here to forgive me and give me a job, didn’t I, so I think we can say that I am far more clever than you credit me, Miss Nightingale.”
He was deceitful, for certain.
Maddox continued. “My plan was to discard the idea of a helper and just take care of the family myself, as painfully as possible. I started with Sidney Herbert, but he was always with someone. And there was some fancy lady following him in her carriage. Too risky. So I moved on to General à Court.”
“You began following him instead of Mr. Herbert.”
“Yes, I was trailing him in my off hours, waiting for my opportunity to strike. When I saw him at the museum with that woman, I figured she was his strumpet and that he would be upset at her loss. It was easy enough to make a personal cask delivery to Herbert House, and once I was inside, it was even simpler to convince the housekeeper that the woman was my own ladylove and that I wished to speak privately with her.”
Mary spoke up. “You are a fiend, sir,” she pronounced in her quiet way.
Davies nodded in agreement, the flush of anger reaching from his neck to his eyebrows.
Maddox flicked an irritated glance at Mary as if suddenly noticing her for the first time. “It’s not as though I shot her. I thought a gunshot would have been much more noticeable in Belgravia and it would have been difficult to get myself out. Strangling was much less messy for her, and just more polite. Just as helping Bella along a little bit with rat poison made it so she didn’t have to endure any messiness.”
The absolute shamelessness of the man who had so successfully pretended to be not only a grieving husband, but also a grateful recipient of assistance! “I wonder whether I would have ever found you had Mary and I not stumbled upon you crumpled upon the ground outside the Lion and helped you home.”
“Yes, that was a damnable bit of bad luck for me.”
“As for bad luck, I have no doubt that you will finish your life at the end of a rope, sir,” I predicted. “You will not—”
Maddox moved so swiftly that I hardly registered at first what he was doing. In what seemed a mere instant in time, he had grabbed Mary—who stood closest to him—and dragged her the few steps to the edge of the mash tun. Before either Davies or I could react—or even Mary, for that matter—Maddox had swept her up in his arms and dropped her over the low wall. Mary made a sickening splash into the mash tun.
At this point, Maddox was more fevered than his dying wife had ever been. He followed Mary into the pool of liquid. She was starting to flounder and attempted to stand up, but her quickly soddening skirts were making it difficult. “Miss Florence!” she gasped. Her voice trembled with utter panic and horror.
“Would you like to know what it feels like to lose someone you love, Miss Nightingale?” Maddox sneered. His rabid hatred was now fully revealed for all to see. “Let me show you.” He grabbed Mary by the hair and brutally yanked her upright with her head back. Mary stood restrained in his cruel grasp, but I could see her quaking uncontrollably. Only the whites of her eyes showed as she rolled them back in abject fear.
“Insane, he is,” Davies muttered to me. Then aloud he cried, “Good God, man, I hired you when you were down on your luck. How could you betray me like this?”
Maddox’s eyes were now bright with a deranged light that surely reflected the depravity within his soul. “It’s men like General à Court who betray, not me. I seem to be the only one interested in justice for the thousands of men and women who were killed needlessly in Afghanistan, especially my poor brother.” He shook Mary’s head like he was a
ravening wolf and she the helpless prey.
She yelped loudly in pain and fright, and I echoed her noise in my own anguish over what was happening to her.
“I was there myself, boy. Yes, it was grisly, but we don’t go around murdering innocent women over it.” Davies took a small step forward toward the edge of the mash tun.
“What’s innocent about a woman who is part of preventing justice? Nothing!” With a forceful jerk, Maddox yanked Mary backward down into the mash. Another splash of the thick liquid, and I could see only her poor arms flailing above the surface as Maddox heartlessly held her down.
How could I ever explain Mary’s untimely demise to my mother? Moreover, how could I live with myself if she died because of what now appeared to be my own reckless move in accusing Maddox here at the brewery?
Even as my heart sat lodged in my throat, Davies sprang into action, running and leaping into the mash tun with more grace that I would ever have given him credit for. He ferociously grabbed the collar of the man who was now attempting his fourth murder. I realized that he was trying to treat Maddox as an errant drunken gambler, as he had done before. But Maddox was far too strong and furious in his current state.
Davies continued to tug at Maddox’s collar, neck, and hair, trying to extricate the man from the pool of mash. I attempted to remain calm, but it was obvious to me that Mary was about to be murdered. I had to do something.
I glanced around wildly. Was there a loose brick in the wall I could use as a projectile? A tool? A lantern? It took everything within my soul not to succumb to panic at the sickening sounds of Mary thrashing about in the mash.
That’s when my gaze caught the stack of wood spades on the floor. Surely they would work.
I rushed to the pile and picked up the largest one I could find. I lifted it, surprised by how heavy it actually was. I shifted the spade so that I held it by the middle of the shaft with both hands. I actually took a few steps backward to gain momentum as I tore forward, slamming myself against the low wall and swinging the spade’s head so that it connected with George Maddox’s temple with the most satisfying crack I had ever heard in my life.
A Murderous Malady Page 26