English Trifle

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Her hand was on the doorknob to Liam’s room when she heard the gunshot.

  Chapter 47

  ~

  Sadie’s entire world came to a halt with the sound of gunfire, only starting again when Breanna screamed Liam’s name and Grant said “Don’t touch him!”

  Sadie’s instincts told her to break down the door, but she forced herself to think before she reacted. With her heart thundering in her ears, she looked around the hallway for some kind of weapon. She saw a large, flat bronze bowl on the table next to the earl’s suite. She ran for it while digging her phone out of her pocket and then dialing 999—much easier to do than 911—and then ran back to the door to Liam’s room. Just before opening the door, she put the phone to her mouth and said as quietly as she could but as loud as she dared, “Gunshots at Southgate estate—tell Inspector Kent.” Then she put the phone on the floor near the doorway, dug the whistle out of her pocket, gripped the doorknob, and pushed the door open, blowing into the whistle as hard as she could.

  In the instant her foot entered the room at a run, she took in the scene: Liam in a pile in one corner near his luggage and Breanna’s backpack; Breanna cowering at the foot of the bed; and Grant, with a gun in his hand, turning in reaction to the shrieking banshee that had just exploded through the door. It took only a fling of Sadie’s wrist to send the flat bronze bowl spinning across the room like the Frisbee she believed it was meant to be in the first place.

  Grant pulled the trigger of the small black gun he was holding, but just as Sadie hoped, the shot went too high in his panic, hitting the top of the doorframe behind her. A split second later, the bowl caught him in the throat, knocking him backwards as he fired another shot into the ceiling. Sadie dove for Breanna, pulling her away from the bed and back toward the door.

  “Liam!” Breanna cried as they reached the threshold. She pulled against Sadie, but Sadie tightened her grip so much that she feared she might break Breanna’s arm if she held on any tighter.

  “No,” Sadie said, dragging her daughter out of the room. “We’ll come back.” Every action film she’d ever seen showed people crying and comforting each other while their supposedly unconscious pursuer remained in the room with them. Usually it led to one more attempt at the good guy’s life. Sadie wouldn’t let that happen to the good guys this time. She prayed that Liam was okay, but she would not risk her life or the life of her daughter long enough to see. The bowl was still clattering on the floor as they passed through the doorway and slammed it shut. Sadie bent down to grab the phone she’d left on the floor while Breanna stumbled behind her.

  The first door she saw was to the earl’s suite across the hall. Afraid that heading toward the stairs made them too vulnerable, Sadie grabbed the doorknob of the earl’s sitting room, practically dragged Breanna inside, and then pushed the door closed. She locked the door before talking into the phone. “Hello,” she said in a harsh whisper, heading for the door to the countess’s bedroom, fumbling in her pocket for her keys.

  “They’re back on the line,” she heard a frantic voice say on the phone. “Hello, hello? Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” Sadie said breathlessly as she put the key in the lock and turned it before looking back, wondering why Breanna wasn’t following her. Breanna was crying and staring at the door they’d come in as she walked backwards toward her mother. Sadie followed Breanna’s eyes to see what had captured her daughter’s attention and saw the deadbolt turn. How could she have forgotten that Grant was the other person with a key to everything? Moving even faster, she opened the door to the countess’s bedroom and both she and Breanna ran inside, closing the door and locking it, but not before she’d seen the earl’s sitting room door begin to open.

  “The balcony,” Sadie whispered, shooing Breanna toward it. “Get down somehow and circle back inside.” She placed her phone, still open, on top of the armoire next to the window. If the emergency service was still on the line she hoped they could hear what was happening.

  Breanna’s face was wet with tears and she looked completely frantic. “But—”

  “Go,” Sadie hissed. “Liam needs you to get help.”

  And Sadie needed to know that Breanna was safe. There was little protection Sadie could offer if they were both trying to scamper down the trellis. Breanna would be faster alone anyway, and time was of the essence.

  Breanna turned immediately and headed for the French doors. Sadie followed her, releasing the tieback that held the heavy draperies back. The thick fabric fell forward, covering the windows and shrouding the room in muted light she hoped would hide her better. Sadie scanned the room, looking for another Frisbee bowl but finding nothing she could use to defend herself. Everything in the room was obnoxiously soft and the bed was solid wood all the way to the floor. The mountain of pillows on the bed caught her attention and she dove for them, burrowing in through the side, as close to the headboard as possible. She pressed herself against the headboard while wiggling her whole self in, trying to keep from upsetting the pillows too much and hoping like crazy that there were enough of them to cover her. She wished for squeaky hinges that would signal that Grant was coming in, but had to settle for soft footfalls, further muted by the pillows piled above her. She held her breath as she heard him move around the room. She wished she could see what was happening.

  “Can you believe this room, Essie?” he said softly, his voice tender and soft, at odds with the man she’d seen pointing a gun at her daughter just minutes earlier. “I’d have given it to you if I could.”

  Is he talking to me? Sadie wondered.

  She felt the bed shift and her breath caught in her throat. After a few seconds, she parted the pillows and her heart jumped to see Grant sitting at the end of the bed—just a few feet from where the pillows ended. He looked at the closed drapes as if they were open windows. He held the gun in his right hand, pressed sideways against the bed while his left hand massaged his neck, presumably where the bowl had hit him. He didn’t seem tense or worried that he might need to defend himself. Maybe his coming into this room was a coincidence rather than a pursuit. She hoped so.

  “They suffered, Essie. They suffered as much as you did.”

  Sadie didn’t dare move for fear it would give her away but wondered how long he planned to sit here. She hoped the police would hurry. She hoped that Breanna, and maybe Kevin, were helping Liam. Sadie just needed to wait Grant out until help arrived. Waiting had never been her strong suit, but in this case she didn’t foresee a problem since the price of impatience was unacceptable. Suddenly Grant’s head turned to the side, putting his face in profile against the curtains that seemed to glow in the morning light on the other side of the windows. “I know you’re there, Mrs. Hoffmiller,” he said. “You should know there’s only one bullet left and this one won’t go awry.”

  Sadie went absolutely still.

  Grant let out a breath, smiled slightly, and continued talking over his shoulder as though she’d answered him. “Who’d have guessed you’d look behind a curtain panel in the sitting room?” He paused, shaking his head. “Had you left as expected, John Henry would have washed up on a riverbank somewhere; the victim of some anonymous act of foul play. Instead, things got complicated, didn’t they?” He sighed and shifted on the bed. Sadie tensed, but listened intently. I can only assume that John Henry went to Lacy with the note because she was the only person with nothing to hide in this whole charade. She actually put that note on the tea tray.” He paused and shook his head before continuing. Sadie was still only interested in listening at this point, wondering if he’d tell her anything she didn’t already know.

  “I take pride in my ability to think on my feet, you see. So it wasn’t difficult to put you on the path that led to Lord Melcalfe’s deception without implicating myself. It helped that you wanted to believe the things I told you—you wanted Lord Melcalfe to be guilty, and in fact he earned that, I think. But I appreciated that you believed me so easily, Mrs. Hoffmiller. Though
I spend my life noticing things for others, not many people pay much attention to me. But you did, which is why I’m not going after your daughter even though I know she’s gone for help—hasn’t she? See, I noticed that the door to the earl’s sitting room was locked when it shouldn’t be. And then the light changed under this door when you shut the curtains I’d left open after we spoke yesterday. And then I noticed that the pillows weren’t just quite right.” He looked forward again. “I notice things, that’s my job.”

  He went silent and Sadie swallowed the thick lump in her throat. She didn’t know what to do or what to say and hated feeling like a sitting duck doing nothing. Up until a few minutes ago, she’d still believed Austin was the person responsible for all the horrible things that had been happening here—but he wasn’t. Or at least he wasn’t alone. Perhaps she could figure out why things happened the way they did and how she’d missed it all. She could only hope that asking questions wouldn’t be the last thing she did.

  “I’m sorry,” she managed to whisper though her mouth felt like it was full of sand. She pushed out of the pillows a little bit, watching him carefully in case she would need to make a run for it. “About Essie, I mean. I’m sorry about what happened to her.”

  She braced herself for his reaction but he didn’t move at all, other than let out a breath. “The earl did it,” he said after a few seconds, not seeming surprised that Sadie knew. “He said she had to get help or he’d be forced to let her go.” He turned his head to the side again, not looking at her but putting his face in profile once more. “He said he didn’t want to do it, but he did it anyway. Now what kind of a gentleman does that? I’ve spent my life watching them, attending to the details of their lives that they can’t be bothered with, and I can tell you that not a one of them does what he doesn’t want to do. He was angry with my Essie, he was tired of dealing with her imperfections. But not me. I loved her, I took care of her. Did the earl do that?” His voice grew louder and Sadie tried to calm her increasingly panicked heart rate. “Did the earl ever clean her up when she vomited all over herself? Did the earl ever once hide the liquor so she couldn’t find it? No, he didn’t—not even one time. And yet he said he wanted to help her—by sending her to Bethelridge where she’d be surrounded by aristocrats who couldn’t hold their liquor. That would put her in her place, all right. That would show her humility—put her in a room of people whining about their paltry allowance of fifty thousand a year. He sent her there to fail, that’s what he did. He wanted her gone and—like any gentleman—he got exactly what he wanted, didn’t he?”

  “And Lady Hane?” Sadie asked. “Did she always get what she wanted?”

  “Lady Hane approached me when I was in London making arrangements for Essie’s burial. I was prepared to stay in London, stay near my Essie and find work in another household, but Lady Hane convinced me to stay on at Southgate. She understood what it was like to live in the shadows. She was the firstborn of an earl, but what did it matter? She couldn’t inherit, and then when William was born, she was on the sidelines until she was bartered off as a wife to the highest bidder. When she found me in London, she told me that she’d discovered a way to take that title away from William; to pass something down to her own grandson. After what the earl did to my future, I was more than happy to lay in wait, learn whatever I could, and pass it on to her. When I discovered that the earl was seeing his ex-wife again, I knew Lady Hane would be done waiting, and I was right.”

  “I thought the earl was ready to tell everyone about his relationship,” Sadie said.

  “Perhaps,” Grant said, with a slight shrug of one shoulder. “Things had begun to move quickly about that time. But the important thing was that Lady Hane was ready when the time was right.”

  “That’s why you went along with everything?” Sadie dared ask. “For revenge?”

  “For justice,” Grant clarified. He stood up from the bed and Sadie tensed again. But he didn’t turn toward her, instead he walked to the windows and drew back the curtains, carefully securing the tieback and smoothing the folds of the fabric. Sadie inched out from the pillows a little further.

  “I loved her broken,” Grant said quietly, running his hand down the fabric as if caressing it. “The earl sent her out to be fixed and it destroyed her. Lady Hane had her own revenge to exact, but mine was no less important.”

  “And Austin?” Sadie asked. “He didn’t kill John Henry, did he?”

  “No,” Grant said boldly, almost proud. “He couldn’t be bothered with such tasks—they are beneath him. As usual, he waits for other people to take care of things—just like his grandmother.”

  Sadie didn’t respond, but moved closer to the edge of the bed nearest the door.

  “Lord Melcalfe deserves what he gets,” Grant said emphatically. “They all do. All they wanted was money and power—there wasn’t a noble desire within the whole lot of them. But me—” He put a hand to his chest. “I was fighting for justice, for love.”

  “You believe that love is worth fighting for?” Sadie asked, thinking of Austin’s insistence that he went along with this for love—for Lacy. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to debate that fact with Grant right now.

  “Of course it is,” Grant said with an indulgent smile. “Love is the only thing that matters in the world, which is why taking love away from someone is worthy of the greatest punishment.”

  “Why did you come back?” Sadie asked, frightened by her own bravery even as she found it impossible to hold back. Yes, he was a deranged lunatic, but if he could see his hypocrisy then perhaps he could be reasoned with.

  “It wasn’t finished,” Grant said. “The earl was not dead, which meant I had to finish my work—an eye for an eye, a life for a life, a love for a love. He took my wife and I thought that playing my role in Lady Hane’s revenge would be enough, but then I realized the earl might get better. That meant no one loses but me. That isn’t fair; that isn’t justice.”

  “So you shot Liam,” Sadie said, glancing toward the open door as she put her legs over the side of the bed. Grant didn’t seem to be paying attention to her movements. “You shot the earl’s only son.” The words nearly stuck in her throat as she thought of Liam crumpled in the corner, possibly dying just as Grant had hoped. She hoped someone other than Breanna would be the one to initially check on him. She pushed the thoughts away and focused. “You’ve finished your mission then.”

  That seemed to confuse Grant and he furrowed his eyebrows as he considered that. Sadie placed her feet on the floor as Grant turned back to the windows, the hand holding the gun falling to his side. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “I suppose there isn’t much left for me to do, is there, Essie?”

  Sadie scooted her body to the edge of the bed, took a breath, and then ran for the door, expecting at any minute for a bullet to hit her between the shoulder blades. She reached the earl’s sitting room. The hallway. The stairs.

  On the fourth stair down, she finally heard the shot, and covered her ears as she heard herself scream and fall to the marble steps beneath her. She waited for the burn, to feel the searing pain the bullet would bring, but she felt nothing. Pounding feet came up to meet her from the main level and she realized Grant had never intended that bullet for her at all.

  Chapter 48

  ~

  An intense wave of fear and gratitude and sorrow and relief pummeled Sadie as she came to terms with the events of the last several minutes, but as soon as her head broke the surface of reality she began calling for Breanna, who hurried to her side. They sat at the bottom of the stairs. Sadie touched her daughter’s face, her shoulders, her hair.

  “You’re okay,” Sadie said, needing someone to say it. “You’re okay.”

  “I’m okay,” Breanna repeated, grabbing Sadie’s hand and holding it in both of hers. Her eyes were swollen and her cheeks were wet.

  “Liam?” Sadie asked.

  Breanna managed a smile though she still looked scared. “The police are che
cking him out right now but he said it was just in his shoulder. He thinks he’ll be okay. An ambulance will be here any minute.”

  “Austin didn’t kill John Henry,” Sadie said.

  “I know,” Breanna replied. “You left your phone on, remember? The police heard everything.”

  Sadie relaxed. “Oh, right,” she said, then she looked at her daughter. “I love you, Breanna,” she said. “But I never want to take another vacation like this again.”

  Breanna managed a smile before Sadie pulled her into her arms. “Me neither,” she said into Sadie’s shoulder. “I’ve had all the drama I can handle.”

  Yet as Sadie held her tight she felt Breanna shudder in her arms. “It’s going to be okay,” Sadie said, her own voice trembling. She said it so as to help herself believe that even when confronted with impossible obstacles, there were always choices. You could allow the bad to drag you under, as Grant had done, or you could fight your way to the top and live to see another day, becoming in the process a stronger, wiser, more humble, and more grateful person than you were the day before.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered again, committing it to memory. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Chapter 49

  ~

  Sadie looked out the plane window Friday morning, watching London disappear beneath them. She kept watching until the river Thames was lost behind a veil of clouds. Then she took a breath; she was a little sad to be leaving, but a lot relieved to be returning to her regular, normal, uneventful life. She turned to Breanna, who had her head rested against the seat. She looked more relaxed than she had for several days. The experience wouldn’t be wasted if she learned something about herself, or Liam, or life in general—or perhaps all three. It had been an intense week.