A Deadly Fortune

by Stacie Murphy

  Andrew hesitated. Perhaps he should force Tyree to fire. He might miss. Even if he didn’t, someone might hear the shot and arrive in time to save him and catch Tyree with the gun in his hand. He was better off taking the chance.

  As if he’d heard these thoughts, Tyree stepped forward and pressed the gun upward under Andrew’s chin. His hand did not tremble. His voice was quiet and firm.

  “Once I’ve blown your head off, how long do you think it will take for someone to come? Do you think I’ll have time enough to wrap your hand around the grip? I think I will.” He bared his teeth again in that terrible, toneless smile.

  “In fact, I think once I’ve injected you, I’ll go ahead and use this anyway. It will tell a better story than your sudden, unexplained death. I heard about your confrontation with Harcourt earlier. You’re estranged from your family. Your fiancée left you. You took a low-status, low-paying job and couldn’t even keep that. Would anyone be shocked that you’d taken your own life? That I arrived in time to see you do it but was tragically unable to prevent you?”

  He pressed the gun harder into the soft flesh behind Andrew’s chin, the barrel against the bottom of his tongue. Andrew thought he could taste the metal.

  “I’m offering you the kindness of the needle first. But if you decline, if you force me to do it this way, then I will. And once I’ve taken care of you, I’ll send my associates to tend to Miss Casey.” Tyree nodded at Andrew’s expression. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice what you were about, her always here in your office—she and that Vincent fellow. He’s been taken care of, but the girl is a loose end. I myself would dispatch her directly, but young men do have certain… appetites. They might enjoy some time with her before they finish things.”

  Tyree pulled the gun back a fraction and lifted the syringe. “Or you can sit down at your desk and drift away.”

  Andrew raised his hands in a slow gesture of surrender and stepped back.

  57

  Amelia stood as rigid as stone. The angle of the door cast a deep shadow, and she forced herself to remain still and silent inside it. As Tyree spoke, it took every ounce of her will not to spring from her hiding place and attack him with her bare hands. He killed Jonas. She clenched her fists around handfuls of her skirt at his casual admission and bit down on her anger.

  Terror nearly overwhelmed her when Tyree pressed the gun to Andrew’s head. She wanted to close her eyes, wanted to block out what she was about to witness, but she forced herself to keep watching. If they were to have any chance, she had to be prepared.

  His threat against her sent a shudder of disgust through her, but she focused on the mention of his associates. There were at least two of them, as they’d thought. And they were young. That detail set her mind racing.

  It seemed clear Harcourt wasn’t involved. If she could get up the storage room ladder and onto the roof, she could find him, convince him to help.

  But there was no time. Tyree pressed the gun upward. He’d hear her as she went for the ladder, and she didn’t dare do anything to startle him with the gun where it was.

  Then, as if he’d heard her thought, Andrew raised his hands and stepped away from Tyree. And away from the gun.

  Acting on pure instinct, Amelia stepped forward, pushing the door open a few inches. A hinge creaked. Time stretched. She spent an endless instant watching Tyree’s head turn. His eyes met hers and widened in surprise, then narrowed. The barrel of the gun began to swing toward her.

  She darted back into the storage room, raised two hands to the door, and slammed it with a crash. She whirled and dashed for the ladder. As she went, she flung her arms wide, yanking files from the shelves and sending an avalanche of boxes and papers cascading to the floor behind her.

  Amelia’s steps stuttered at the gunshot’s crack, but she recovered her stride and flung herself at the ladder. She began to climb, her skirts swirling around her ankles and catching beneath her shoes. One foot—clumsy in the high shoes—slipped off a rung. Her knee slammed into the metal bar, hard enough to make her leg go numb. She caught her fall by the crook of an arm and kept going. She reached the top as she heard the door burst open behind her.

  Amelia risked a glance over her shoulder and saw Tyree’s stocky form silhouetted in the doorframe, the gun still in his hand. She turned back and reached up toward the trapdoor with shaking hands, panting with fear, expecting to feel the punch of a bullet between her shoulder blades at any moment. Instead, she heard Tyree kicking his way through the debris on the floor, then a muffled curse. She shoved the door open and lunged upward, pulling herself up until she hung by the waist on the edge of the hole, desperately trying to swing her injured leg over the lip.

  A hand brushed against her ankle, and she kicked back with her pointed heel. It connected with something, and Tyree let out a pained grunt as Amelia pulled herself up onto the roof.

  The dome rose high and dark to her left, and to her right, out over the river, she could see the edge of the approaching front. The low, boiling clouds flickered with lightning and drew nearer with every heartbeat. Amelia ordered herself to run. Her bruised knee buckled at the first step, but she ignored the pain. If she could get to the other door and get it open, she might be able to get into Harcourt’s apartment. Perhaps she could—

  The pistol cocked behind her, the click flat and loud in the humid air.

  The breath rushed from her lungs. Too late. She turned, fighting the urge to cower. Tyree came toward her, his gun leveled. Blood dripped from his nose and coated his teeth, which were set in a snarl.

  Jonas was already gone. She wondered if Andrew was dead as well, if his shade was even now waiting for her, standing mute and pale beside his corpse. She didn’t think she could bear to see it. But, she thought dully, if she died up here on the roof, she wouldn’t have to. Perhaps she would see them both on the other side. Perhaps she could tell them she was sorry.

  Tyree drew nearer, and she forced herself not to shrink away.

  “I won’t let you ruin everything,” he said. “Another year, maybe two, and I’ll have enough saved to leave this place behind me.” He raised the pistol and stretched out his arm.

  The air around them hummed, and Amelia closed her eyes.

  There was a blinding flash through her eyelids, and a roar of sound engulfed her. She flinched, disoriented, expecting the searing pain of the shot.

  But no.

  She opened her eyes to see Tyree looking up at the dome. Amelia followed his gaze. The metal spire at the top glowed orange, dying sparks falling from it as it cooled. The air crackled, thick with the smell of ozone and warm stone and hot metal. Another jagged bolt of lightning sizzled across the sky as a massive gust of wind staggered them both. The storm had arrived.

  Swirls of pale mist twisted through the air around them, moving independently of the wind.

  As Tyree began to turn back toward her, the wisps grew, tightened, began to coalesce. Faint outlines formed, and Amelia watched, mesmerized, as first bodies and then faces came into focus. An instant later, she realized with wonder that they were whispering to her.

  Ignoring Tyree, she closed her eyes again, listening.

  The wind faded. The gun, the storm—it was all distant, irrelevant. The voices were all that mattered. Young and old. Tentative and resolute. Fury and sadness and desperation, eagerness and indignation. The spirits pressed in on her—far, far more than the ones they’d found in the records. No, this had been growing, waiting—waiting for her—for years. They danced over her skin, a feathery caress. A yearning.

  She opened her eyes to the yawning barrel of the gun, pointed at her head. Tyree, though, must have seen something in her face, because even as his finger began to tighten on the trigger, he looked unsure.

  Yes, she thought, take me. The world shifted as the presences around her went still, then flared into sharp relief, silvery against the dark.

  Amelia flung her head back and breathed them in.

  Her whole body seized
with an ecstatic rush. She sobbed with the force of it, staggering. Her chest thrummed. Tiny sparks jumped from her fingertips. She could feel the women, dozens of them, moving beneath her skin.

  And all of them wanted only one thing.

  She looked at Tyree, and his eyes narrowed.

  “What are you—” He got no further.

  She thrust out her hands, and with a hollow, moaning roar, the horde flung itself from her body and roiled toward him like an avalanche. Amelia fell to her knees as they left her.

  Perhaps he saw their faces. Certainly he saw something, for as they came for him, his own expression was one of terror. They hit him with devastating force, hurling him backward, his arms thrown wide. The gun cracked, the bullet sizzling into the sky. Tyree tumbled over the low parapet and fell, screaming, three stories to the stone courtyard. By the time Amelia regained her feet and stumbled to the edge, fat drops of rain were splashing into the rivulets of blood leaking across the flagstones below.

  EPILOGUE

  The little cemetery was sun-dappled and lovely. A mild breeze sent dogwood petals raining down on the small cluster of people ringing the open grave. A robed minister stood at the foot, just behind Ned Glenn. His parents—Julia’s parents—stood beside him, leaning against each other and dabbing at their eyes. Half a dozen friends were gathered around them. A pair of workmen waited at a respectful distance, leaning on their shovels. They all watched as the coffin—polished oak, instead of the splintered pine that had been recovered—was lowered into the earth. It had taken several weeks of searching and an envelope full of cash to the superintendent of Hart Island, but Julia Glenn was back with her family.

  Not wanting to intrude on a private grief, Amelia stood with Andrew near the front gate. Jonas, not wholly recovered from his ordeal, sat on a bench beside them.

  Amelia glanced at him, still not entirely able to believe he was there. She would never have the words to describe the feeling of discovering he lived. That single instant had ripped away a boundless pall of grief and replaced it with… joy was too pale a name for it. Overwhelmed, she’d wept quite nearly as hard at learning he lived as she had when she’d believed he would die. Sidney was horrified when she recovered herself enough to explain her misunderstanding.

  Jonas, when he heard the whole story, was furious.

  “I cannot believe you took such a risk.” He’d been too weak to shout, but he managed to inject a heavy dose of censure into the words.

  “It was the only way,” Amelia replied, not bothering to conceal her delight that he was there to scold her. “And it worked out in the end.”

  After her confrontation with Tyree, Amelia fumbled her way back down the ladder on shaking legs, fearing she would find Andrew dead in his office. Instead, he was surrounded by people, dazed from a blow to the head and cut by flying glass from the window shattered by Tyree’s bullet, but otherwise unharmed. Harcourt thundered into the room, demanding explanations. Andrew’s first attempt, incoherent though it was, was more than enough to set off an explosion of chatter before the superintendent grimly cleared the room, ordering them all to silence.

  It didn’t work. By the time an ashen-faced Harcourt left the office twenty minutes later, the whole asylum was in an uproar, with as many versions of the story spreading as there were mouths to tell it. They all had the same sensational ending: after being discovered to be a murderer, Dr. Tyree had chased Dr. Cavanaugh’s new assistant onto the roof of the asylum during a storm, where a bolt of lightning had flung him to his death. Amelia told only Andrew and Jonas what really happened. And if Jonas told Sidney, Amelia found she didn’t mind as much as she would have thought.

  There had been an additional—if minor—drama later that day, when the completed reconciliation seemed to indicate one of the patients was missing. Andrew, despite his earlier ordeal, had insisted on helping with the recount. He searched the main office himself and managed to locate Carolina Casey’s discharge form.

  “It was under one of the desks,” he told a relieved Winslow. “It must have slipped off the stack earlier.”

  Winslow thanked him profusely and processed it at once. Carolina was officially free.

  In all the chaos, it took more than a day for anyone to notice Connolly was nowhere to be found. His abrupt disappearance—to say nothing of the ambulance driver’s uniform found in his abandoned lodging house—confirmed his involvement in the scheme.

  “That’s what Blounton was trying to say,” Jonas said, obviously disgusted with himself for only now realizing it. “ ‘He finds them at the club,’ ” he quoted. “ ‘He’s using Connolly.’ Tyree was using Connolly to find them, not Klafft.”

  “Wretched boy,” Klafft fumed, waving off Andrew’s proffered apology for suspecting him. “Think no more of it. I am only sorry to have ever employed that dreadful young man at all.”

  Horrified by the revelations, Harcourt initiated an investigation of all asylum staff and a thorough reevaluation of every patient. His fury at Andrew over the violation of his quarters—they elided Amelia’s role in the incident—was only slightly tempered by his understanding of the quandary Andrew had faced.

  The money, as it turned out, was his own, and legitimately earned. “I had planned some years ago to retire,” he explained. “Then my bank failed, and I lost nearly everything I had saved. Now I keep my money in my own hands. What you discovered, through means I don’t like to consider, represented several years of my salary.”

  Russo was similarly innocent—at least of the murders.

  “He has an uncle who is a distributor of high-quality spirits. He arranged to sell some of these to me—and others here—at good prices,” Harcourt said.

  “He steals them,” Andrew said. “He steals from his uncle and sells to you and pockets the money.”

  Harcourt drew himself up in offense. “I have no knowledge of any such criminal activity. And it seems to me you would do well to avoid making further unwarranted accusations.”

  Then, after visibly wrestling with himself, Harcourt asked Andrew to stay on at the asylum to oversee the staff and patient review.

  “An entirely temporary reprieve,” Andrew explained to the group outside the cemetery. “Harcourt needs an outsider to prove to the board of governors that he wasn’t involved in Tyree’s scheme, but he’s made it quite clear that I have no future at the asylum. Once the review is complete, I expect to be in want of employment.”

  The review was well underway and had already borne fruit; Andrew collected enough stories of Mrs. Brennan’s cruelties that Harcourt was forced to terminate her employment. One or two others had already given their notice rather than have their own records scrutinized.

  Andrew hadn’t found anyone else on the island who seemed to be involved in the plot. Perhaps Tyree himself was the second man who had helped haul Julia Weaver from her home, but Amelia had her doubts. Something about that conclusion rankled.

  It was Sidney who found the answer.

  “A friend of mine mentioned recommending his wife’s nephew for a position in the clerk’s office,” he told them. “It seems one of the clerks recently quit without notice. I made some inquiries. He disappeared the day after Tyree died.”

  Jonas scowled. “That bastard. He was standing right behind me while I was making the list. He must have seen it and made up his mind to follow me when I left. That’s why the ‘pickpocket’ had such clean hands and why he was wearing that stupid handkerchief over his face. I can’t believe I let an amateur like that get the drop on me.” He looked disgusted.

  Although Jonas wasn’t yet able to return to work, Amelia had no trouble reclaiming her position at the club.

  “Sabine agreed at once,” Amelia said. “It seems the customers didn’t like my replacement. Too much doom and misfortune in her readings. Clients were going home early instead of staying to drink and gamble.”

  Jonas spoke up. “She’s also fifty if she’s a day, and shaped like a barrel besides. I’m sure that didn
’t help.”

  In an effort to clear their debts and sweeten Sabine’s temper, Amelia dove back into work with impressive zeal. She was still trying to get a handle on her new abilities, but she was already beginning to develop something of a reputation. Even so, they would need Jonas’s income while they decided what to do next. Though they hadn’t yet made any long-term plans, one thing was clear.

  “I don’t ever want to hold you back,” Amelia told Jonas. “If you want something more than the club, we’ll find a way for you to have it.”

  Jonas squeezed her hand. “And what about you?” he asked gently. “What more might you want?”

  Amelia found herself unable to answer. She and Andrew had not spoken of what passed between them in his office the evening Jonas was shot. Her cheeks colored when she thought of it, though in the wake of everything that had followed, it felt as though it had happened years before. Andrew made no further overtures, though the warmth in his eyes left her in little doubt of his regard. The possibility that their friendship might become more was undeniably appealing—more so than Amelia was ready to admit, even to Jonas. It was a question for another day.

  Now, as the minister made a final gesture over the grave and the mourners began to turn away, Amelia watched with regret as the workmen stepped forward with their shovels. They’d stopped Tyree, but Julia was still dead—had been dead before they’d ever even known to start looking for her. And she wasn’t alone. So far, they’d uncovered a full score of women who’d died in the asylum without any record of having ever been admitted. But with only the false names to go on, there was little they could do about it. Tyree was dead, and his minions had fled. There was no one who could tell them who those women had been and who the husbands were who had availed themselves of the doctor’s ghoulish services.

  Amelia had folded away the list of names. She and Jonas were resolved to act if they were ever able, but for the time being it seemed most of the men involved would face no real justice.