A Deadly Fortune

by Stacie Murphy

  Jonas nudged them inside. “Both of you, sit. Wait here. I’ll be right back.” He closed the door.

  Numbly grateful for the other man’s presence of mind, Andrew did as he instructed.

  Some silent, endless time later, Jonas returned. “I don’t think anyone heard anything. But you can’t go around doing that,” he said to Amelia. She looked up at him, her eyes hollow. He lifted the hem of his tunic to retrieve a silver flask from his waistband. “Here.”

  “Where did you get that?” Andrew asked.

  “From Russo,” Jonas replied as he unscrewed the cap. “The orderly with the scarred face. He keeps it in his locker and takes nips when he thinks no one’s watching. He thinks he’s sly, but everyone knows.”

  He passed the flask to Amelia, who tilted it up and swallowed, then coughed and sputtered. She passed it back, her eyes watering. She wiped them with the backs of her hands.

  Jonas took a swig, then eyed the flask with what looked like admiration. “Russo likes the good stuff,” he said, sounding impressed. “I’d have nicked it sooner if I’d had any idea.” He offered it to Andrew, who shook his head, still feeling as sluggish as if he were moving across the bottom of the ocean. Liquor was the last thing he needed.

  Jonas took another swallow and looked at Amelia appraisingly, then passed the flask back to her. “One more, I think. Just a little one.”

  She obeyed. Color began to return to her cheeks, and something in her shoulders relaxed.

  “Good.” Jonas capped the flask. His face was grim, but his tone was matter-of-fact. “We have to decide how to proceed. We know Julia is dead, was deliberately murdered. Seems likely Blounton was, too. Which points to another probability. Elizabeth Miner looks like an anomaly. If Julia was the norm, then perhaps there’s a reason we haven’t found anyone else.”

  “My god,” Andrew whispered, as cold understanding swept over him. “There’s no telling how many women could have been killed here.”

  There was an instant’s silence before Amelia lurched to her feet with a sound like a snarl. “The thing I saw that night outside Julia’s cell. It was him. It must have been. He stood in the doorway and looked at me. He killed Julia right in front of me, and I didn’t even know what I was seeing.”

  “Still no idea who it was, I suppose?” Jonas asked.

  She shook her head.

  Andrew spoke. “What about the next morning?”

  They looked at him as he went on, the threads of the thought coming together. “We made certain I was going to be the one to find you after your ‘death,’ ” he said. “Would our murderer allow someone else to find his victims? What if someone noticed something amiss? Who did you see outside Julia’s cell?”

  Amelia closed her eyes and fisted her hands at her temples as if she could tear the knowledge from her head by brute force. Then she dropped her hands to her sides and shook her head. “Nurses. Orderlies, but I don’t remember who. I didn’t know to pay attention, obviously, and I’d had the laudanum that night, too. I don’t remember a doctor, but that’s not to say one of them wasn’t there.”

  They went quiet again, each of them lost in thought.

  “The dead,” Jonas said abruptly.

  Andrew blinked at him, uncomprehending.

  “The records,” he explained. “If we’re right that the women we’re looking for are dead, then I’m wasting my time looking for court records on current patients. Get me a list of the women who’ve died in the last few years, along with the dates they arrived at the asylum. It should narrow the search enough to make it manageable.”

  “What if,” Amelia said, the words coming slowly, “we could get more than their names? Julia died here. What if she hasn’t left? What if she can tell us who killed her?”

  “Do you really think you can speak to her?” Andrew asked. “Have you seen any indication she’s still here?”

  “Not unless the wisp in ward six was her, and I didn’t get any sense of that when it touched me, but it’s worth a try.”

  “Not tonight,” Jonas said. “You’ve already had a shock and a couple of belts of whiskey. Those don’t seem like helpful circumstances. Besides that, I don’t want you trying this again without me here, and I have to be at the club in less than two hours. It can wait until tomorrow.”

  Amelia pressed her lips together. “Fine.”

  * * *

  Amelia lay awake late into the night, despite her utter exhaustion. When she did finally sleep, her dreams were heavy and incoherent. She woke to a sense of wrongness, confused for a long moment, before the events of the previous evening rushed back to her.

  The next day crawled past. A nurse came for her just after dinner. Amelia trailed behind her, her footsteps leaden. She almost failed to notice the odd trio standing outside the main office, speaking in hushed voices. It wasn’t until they had drawn almost abreast of the men and she heard a snippet of their conversation—“have to be at the docks when the next one arrives, or we won’t be able to make certain”—that she focused on their faces: Russo, the cratered skin of his cheeks flushing as he spoke; Connolly, looking harassed as usual; and Harcourt himself.

  Amelia and her escort passed out of hearing before the sentence was complete, but it didn’t matter. Amelia had heard enough.

  Connolly worked for Klafft, who had far more money than he ought to. Russo drank expensive liquor on an orderly’s salary. She hadn’t expected Harcourt himself to be at the center of the plot, but it seemed obvious now that he was. Russo and Connolly could pose as ambulance drivers and bring the women to the island. Klafft and Harcourt could falsify the paperwork to admit them and cover each other’s tracks. Even the well-known enmity between them would deflect suspicion.

  And any of the four could do the killing.

  By the time they reached Andrew’s office, Amelia was certain she was right. She told him at once.

  He nodded slowly as she finished, his elbows on his desk. “It makes sense.” Andrew rubbed his forehead with both hands. He looked as though he hadn’t slept at all. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his voice had an edge of despair. “But I have no idea how to prove it.”

  “There must be a way,” Amelia said. “Maybe Jonas will have an idea. In the meantime, we need to get that list for him—the patients who’ve died.”

  They worked side by side in silence for more than an hour, growing ever grimmer as they copied names and dates from the file drawer in the storage room. They filled three pages with the names of women—some had died only weeks after their admission, some years later.

  When they were finished, Amelia ran a finger over one name, feeling the depressions left by the nib of the pen. Sarah Talbot. That had been the name given to the woman who’d died in the cell beside her own, the woman who was actually Julia Weaver. Her record said her heart had given out. Amelia shuddered, imagining how it might have really happened. In a laudanum-induced sleep, Julia could have died without a struggle. Or she could have woken—perhaps not enough to fight her attacker, but enough to know what was happening, to feel terror at the approach of the relentless dark.

  When Jonas arrived, she handed him the list and recounted the conversation she’d overheard earlier.

  “You could be right,” he said, his tone guarded. “Maybe Julia will be able to tell us something.”

  Amelia did everything she could think of. She tried variations of Julia’s name. She wrote it on a sheet of paper and called her as she formed the letters. She cajoled and ordered and pleaded.

  Julia did not come.

  At last Amelia sat back, defeated. “I don’t think she’s here.”

  Andrew, who had been silent throughout the attempt, finally spoke. “Maybe if I can get something of hers from Ned—something like Blounton’s cuff link, that could help.”

  “No,” Jonas said. His voice was gentle, but there was no give in it.

  Amelia looked at him, and his eyes bored through her.

  “This has gone on long enough,” Jonas continu
ed. “I thought about it all night. You promised to stay one month or until you found Julia. You found her. It’s over. There’s no point to your being here any longer.”

  “No point?” Amelia cried. “Russo said, ‘When the next one arrives.’ They’re going to keep doing it. They’re going to keep killing women, and they’re going to get away with it.”

  “And I’m sorry for it,” Jonas said. “But I’m not willing to risk your life to stop them. Don’t you understand? This was dangerous enough when we thought these women were being imprisoned. But these men, they’re cold-blooded murderers. We’ve been lucky so far. But if you keep pushing this, you’ll be caught. They. Will. Kill. You.” He spat the last four words like bullets.

  Amelia shook her head, unable to speak, and glanced at Andrew. Jonas was right. She knew it, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t leave, not yet. Not like this.

  Jonas’s face tightened as he looked at her, and he wheeled toward Andrew, who took a step back. “You agreed to the terms. She’s more than fulfilled them. Help me get her out.”

  Andrew licked his lips, and his eyes darted toward Amelia before coming back to Jonas. “A week,” he said finally, his voice hoarse. “Please. Just give me this one last week, and then I’ll help.”

  “I knew it,” Jonas said, contempt curdling the words. “I knew your word was no good.”

  Amelia sucked in a breath. “That’s not fair.”

  Jonas’s eyes snapped back to hers. “I don’t give a damn about fair. I want you safe. I want you out of this. I want him to do what he said he would.”

  “Please,” Andrew said again. “We can find proof. We can end this.”

  “How far are you willing to go?” Jonas asked. “What will you do if Julia won’t come? If the names on this list don’t lead anywhere?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll think of something. I have to stop them. I have to. They killed Susannah. I can’t let them—” Andrew stopped, his face going white as he heard his own words.

  Amelia held her breath.

  The room was still and heavy as the air before a storm.

  Jonas’s jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed. His voice was icy when he finally spoke. “Your sister is dead. I’m sorry for that, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to let you kill mine.”

  He strode from the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Amelia sat frozen as Andrew staggered to the other chair and flung himself into it, burying his face in his shaking hands.

  The last of the light faded as the minutes ticked past. Amelia turned up the lamp until it sent shadows flickering over the walls.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “He shouldn’t have said that.”

  “But he’s right.” Andrew didn’t look at her. “You should leave. I’ll find him later and tell him I’ll help. Whatever he thinks we should do.” He went on before she could speak, before she could protest that she’d refused Jonas before Andrew had. “It’s not safe for you here. I don’t have any right to ask you to risk yourself that way. If I don’t help you leave and something happens to you, I’ll never forgive myself. I already—”

  Andrew raised his head then, and the devastation on his face made Amelia’s heart ache. She saw now just how deep his guilt over Susannah’s death ran and what their search for Julia Weaver had meant to him. Some part of him had truly believed, at his core, that if he found Julia, it would save his sister. It was irrational. It was impossible. He knew it. But something in him had clung to it all the same. And now that same something screamed that he had failed her. He had let her die. Again.

  He would never be free of it.

  Amelia wanted to cry. None of it was his fault, but there was nothing she could say or do to convince him of it.

  Except perhaps there was.

  Ice slid down Amelia’s spine. She could bring his sister to him, let him speak to her one last time. She could give him that much. If she could bear to do it.

  Her throat went dry. Before she could think the better of it, she stood and dragged her own chair around the desk to face his. She sat in front of him, so close their knees nearly touched.

  “Do you have something of Susannah’s I can use?”

  Raw yearning blazed from him as he realized what she was offering. In that moment, Amelia knew there was no turning back.

  Andrew nodded once, a jerky movement, then reached into his pocket with a shaking hand and withdrew something small and shining. A silver locket. He held it out to her. The delicate filigree on the locket’s face sparkled in the lamplight.

  Amelia tried to swallow and found she could not. Her heart thrummed in her ears.

  He caught her hesitation. “You don’t… you don’t have to do this.”

  “I want to,” she said, meeting his eyes.

  It wasn’t true. And yet it was. Anything to drive that stricken expression from his face.

  Amelia forced herself to relax and reached for the necklace. The tips of her fingers tingled as they brushed against Andrew’s. The moths fluttered in her chest again. She swatted them down, took a breath, and gathered the chain, looping it around her hand. She laced her fingers through Andrew’s, pressing the locket between their palms.

  “Are you ready?” Amelia asked.

  He swallowed and nodded, his eyes roving over her face.

  “Susannah Cavanaugh,” Amelia murmured. “Come to me.”

  The itch began in her chest almost immediately. She focused on it. The pressure grew. She leaned into it, took a long, slow breath, and opened her eyes. The woman was there, more vivid than she’d been that day in the cell. Susannah Cavanaugh stood behind her brother, her face eager. She was pretty, with a fresh, vital look and a hint of mischief around her mouth. There was something of Andrew in her features.

  Amelia didn’t see her move, but there was the sensation of something cold sliding beneath her skin like a hand into a glove. Amelia closed her eyes again and had time to think only that Susannah was so much stronger than Blounton.

  * * *

  Andrew saw when it happened. Amelia looked past him, her eyes widening. He fought the urge to turn, keeping his attention on Amelia. Her eyes closed, something rippled across her face, and the very planes of her face changed, became subtly different. And then Susannah was looking out at him from behind Amelia’s eyes.

  Andrew’s breath caught in his throat. It was the Susannah of his youth, clear-eyed and lucid. Not the Susannah of her final years, with her fragile moods and volcanic anger. Not even the Susannah of several weeks ago, in Amelia’s cell. She looked around the office, just as she had that day. But this time, something in her shoulders relaxed.

  Her eyes settled on his face. She beamed at him, and his hands tightened on hers until his knuckles whitened.

  Susannah’s smile, on Amelia’s face.

  “Jamie.”

  Susannah’s voice.

  Grief and joy overwhelmed him. He managed to bite back a sob but didn’t try to stop the tears. They streamed down his face as he smiled back at her, and she reached to wipe them away with her fingers.

  “Susannah, I’m so sorry,” he managed to choke out. “I should have listened to you. I should have done something, I—”

  She shook her head. “No. None of that. It doesn’t matter now. And there was nothing you could have done. I couldn’t bear it any longer. There was too much. The voices were there in my head, all the time, and I had to make them stop. And I couldn’t go back to that place.”

  He started to speak, but she went on before he could.

  “And that wasn’t your fault, either. You couldn’t have known what it was like.”

  “I should have. I would have if I’d been a better brother—”

  “Oh, Jamie, you were the best thing—the only thing I hated to leave. Never doubt that.”

  Andrew bowed his head, the lump in his throat too large to permit words to pass. He looked back up at her—at Susannah—and swallowed hard. “I miss you. I’ll miss you forever.”

&
nbsp; “I know. But part of me had already gone, even before I left.”

  He nodded, mute.

  She looked down at their entwined fingers. “I can feel her, you know, this body I’m in,” Susannah said. “I can feel some of what she feels. If I concentrate, I think I can almost…” Her expression went distant for a moment. She smiled slightly as she came back, her eyes shining with some new emotion. “Oh, Jamie.” She reached out and stroked the hair back from his face. “Be happy. There’s so much here for you, so many possibilities—things I never would have had.” She looked wistful. “I wish I could stay to see it. But I can’t, can I?”

  “No.” Andrew was barely able to get the words out. “You can’t.”

  “It’s all right. I think I can go on now. I think I was waiting.” Her voice grew fainter. “I had to stay so I could tell you. So proud of you. Love you. More than anything.”

  40

  They were careful with each other the following evening. A door had opened between Amelia and Andrew, and it felt as if neither of them was certain whether to close it or step through.

  “There’s a woman in four you should talk to,” Amelia said when she arrived in his office. “The nurses were talking about her. She’s been saying her father will come take her home if they send for him. She’s probably not one of ours, but it’s worth—”

  Amelia broke off and sank back into the chair as footsteps approached. Harcourt leaned around the doorway. He spared her a glance, then turned his attention to Andrew.

  “Dr. Cavanaugh, I’m glad you’re still here.” His tone was polite without being warm. “I wonder if I might beg a favor. I have plans in the city I would hate to cancel, but with Dr. Tyree away and Dr. Klafft still not entirely recovered, we’ll be understaffed while I’m gone. Would you be willing to stay a bit later this evening?” He pulled out a handkerchief and muffled a sneeze.

  “Are you certain?” Andrew asked. “You seem a bit under the weather yourself.”