Pride and Premeditation

by Steffanie Holmes

  “How can you say that?” I said. “You saw David in the fencing demonstration the other day. He was brutal. Just because someone has good manners and boring hobbies doesn’t mean they’re not capable of cruelty, in the same way that people who might look a bit different or act gruff or indifferent can’t be kind and loving.” I said the last bit with a glance between Heathcliff and Morrie.

  “Where’s my sword?” Morrie hunted under the sheets.

  “And mine?” Heathcliff peered behind the curtains.

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t go into this expecting things to get stabby,” Quoth said tentatively. “We should speak to the police.”

  “There’s no time!” I cried. “They’re tied up with my stupid bomb threat and if we’re right, David’s still got one more murder to commit. There’s only one person left who has information that could hurt Christina.” I leaped to my feet. “He’s going to kill Professor Carmichael.”

  The police had gathered the majority of the guests and staff into the landing and entrance hall. On the bottom floor, Hayes addressed them in an authoritative tone, telling everyone to remain calm. Cynthia swayed, a second (or third) bottle of wine clutched in her hand. Quoth – who had returned to his raven form - propelled himself off my shoulder and rose up to perch on the chandelier. He glanced around the room, and returned a moment later.

  Carmichael’s not here, and nor is David or Christina. We should try her bedroom.

  Professor Carmichael’s suite was down the opposite hall. I pushed my way into the crowd, deliberately stomping on every toe and kicking every shin I came into contact with. “Excuse me,” I murmured. “Pardon me. Terribly sorry.” With tuts and dirty looks, the crowd parted like the red sea before me, closing up around Heathcliff and Morrie.

  “Mina, wait!” Heathcliff called.

  “Heathcliff, there you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” I glanced over my shoulder in time to see Hannah throw herself at him with such force, she sent him sailing backward into Morrie, knocking all three of them to the ground.

  No time to stop. Quoth dug his talons into my shoulder. I marched down the hall to Professor Carmichael’s suite. Her door was shut, and I couldn’t hear anything inside above the din in the hall. I turned the handle, and the door slid open.

  He’s already here.

  Taking a deep breath, I flattened myself against the door and pushed it open. Quoth leaned forward and craned his neck around the tiny gap in the door.

  Most of the lights are off, except the for one in the hallway and a lamp beside the bed. There are two figures in shadows, and they’re arguing. Mina, I don’t think you should—

  Too late, I thought back. We have to stop him.

  Quoth threw a wing into my face in an attempt to stop me, but I shoved him off my shoulder and darted forward, slipping into the room and pulling the door shut behind me. Unlike our suite, where the door opened directly into our room, the professor had a short hallway with doorways into her bathroom and a small sitting area. I pressed my back against the wall and crept toward the bedroom at the end.

  “Please, don’t kill me,” Professor Carmichael begged. “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

  No. I’m not going to let this happen.

  “David, you have to stop,” I yelled, lunging forward and reaching for the shadowed figure. “We know what you did—”

  The words died in my throat as the killer stepped into the pool of light. A sharpened sword hung in the air, the blade glittering. Behind it, I recognized the smug, perfect features of Christina Hathaway.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “Christina?” I gasped. “But what…”

  “You thought sweet David was behind this?” she sneered. “As if such a creature were capable of this chaos. It is I, twisted mad by Jane Austen, by a constant adherence to fictional manners while my father behaved abominably to every person in his life, most especially my mother.”

  “You… did all this? You killed your own father?” Her words made no sense.

  “She’s crazy!” Professor Carmichael yelled, leaping over the bed. “Get help! Get the police!”

  In a flash, Christina shot across the room, positioning herself between the bed and the door. The blade pointed directly at Professor Carmichael’s throat. The professor staggered backward, falling onto the bed.

  “It would be unwise for you to move,” Christina called in her singsong voice. “Mina, sweetie, I think I’d like you to stand over there, against the wall. If the two gentlemen who followed you into the room make any move to call for help, I will gut you like a fish, and not feel one whit of remorse for it. Gentlemen, if you please.”

  Heathcliff stepped out from the hallway, hands in the air. He was followed by Morrie. From the bed, Professor Carmichael moaned. I scanned the room for Quoth, but so much of it was in shadow, I had no hope of seeing him. I hoped he’d find Hayes and Wilson, but even then, what could he do as a raven? And if a naked guy ran at the detectives, they’d probably assume he was the bomber and shoot him dead.

  Quoth, if you can hear me, please don’t run at Hayes. Get Morrie’s clothes from our room. Or find Lydia. Get her to scream outside. That’ll send them all running. Please, there’s only one of her, but I think she could kill us all if she desired to.

  Even through the darkness, I could feel Heathcliff’s eyes boring into me. Morrie’s fresh, sweet grapefruit and vanilla scent wafted across my nostrils. Fear rippled through me. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the sharpened point of Christina’s sword pointing directly at Professor Carmichael’s heart.

  Christina said she took fencing classes. She knows exactly what she’s doing.

  “You, Heathcliff, drop your sword to the floor and kick it across to me,” Christina said. “Quickly, if you please.”

  Heathcliff unclipped his belt. A long object sailed across the room and clattered at Christina’s feet. Under the light, I caught her gleeful smile.

  She’s mad. Completely bonkers.

  “I couldn’t find my sword, so I’m without a weapon. You have our undivided attention, Christina.” Morrie said. “Now, what’s your plan? I know you came to this weekend intending to kill your father, but what’s your game here?”

  “Nice try, James,” she said, not taking her eyes off Carmichael. “I know you share the same name with Sherlock Holmes’ arch nemesis, but you and I are not enemies of equal intelligence playing at cat and mouse. I’m not going to sit down and outline my moves tête-à-tête like a chess game. This isn’t chess, it’s solitaire. You are merely specks of dust on the table.”

  “Aw, bugger, there goes my plan.” Morrie snapped his fingers. “Very well. I accede to your superior intellect.” Morrie’s voice caught on the last word, as if saying that sentence was a struggle.

  “As well you should.”

  “Before you dispatch with the rest of your plan, could you enlighten us on one point?” Morrie inched forward. “Why kill your father?”

  “All my life, I’ve been living in my father’s fantasy world. It didn’t matter that I wanted, I was his perfect Regency princess, the only woman who could heal his heart after Mother died. He took me out of school and taught me from home, so that he could ensure I never learned about things that weren’t bright and gay. He had me master a list of accomplishments – the piano, needlepoint, calligraphy… the sort of vapid pursuits that occupied the mind of a Regency lady. I wanted to learn the violin, but he forbade it, lest I become too ‘emotional’ from the power of the music. I was not allowed to talk to other men, save himself and David. All the tutors he procured for me were women. Is it any wonder that I grew to crave their touch, their caress?”

  Christina’s voice hardened. “When I was sixteen, I told Daddy I was gay. Do you know what he said? ‘No’. Not, ‘I support you, my daughter’ or even, ‘I don’t understand, but I’ll love you anyway’. Just ‘no’. I wasn’t allowed to be gay, because there are no homosexuals in darling Jane’s books. Can you even understand how that migh
t feel?”

  “No,” I whispered. “I can’t.”

  Morrie plastered an expression of empathy on his face, and he shuffled another couple of inches closer, his legs oddly stiff.

  “Daddy truly believes that he is Mr. Darcy, and that any young woman he encounters is his Elizabeth, and that all he has to do is wear them down until they agree to accept his love. That’s what he did to my mother. He wore her down and wed her in an unholy ceremony because he couldn’t bear to be without her. His selfish passion and his desire to return to the innocent love of his childhood poisoned her bones as surely as if he’d murdered her himself. I will never forgive him for that, nor for any of his more recent crimes. But it is of no consequence, for he is dead, and I am almost free.”

  “How long have you known that your parents were… were siblings?” I whispered.

  “I suspected something was wrong after Mummy died and Daddy had all these meetings at the hospital and then we didn’t have a lot of money for a few years. But I only knew the facts when I saw the records Professor Carmichael sent Alice a few weeks ago. Alice thought she was being so secretive, but when she suddenly started asking all these questions about Daddy, I hacked into her computer and found them. I knew she was going to write the article and ruin Daddy, and I had to kill him before that happened.”

  “So you could be free?” Morrie asked, shuffling forward again. Something metal glinted behind his back. He’s got his sword shoved down the leg of his breeches. No wonder he’s moving so stiffly.

  “Daddy hasn’t written a paper in years,” Christina said calmly. “I do the research. I write his keynotes. All day, every day, nothing but Jane, Jane, Jane, while he took the accolades and used my words to lure young women into his bed. The situation was intolerable. So I decided to improve my circumstances. Since he requires me to set out his pills every night, I stole away with some of his sleeping pills. One pill, once a week, so he would never notice. Then, I fed him the pills crushed in his tea before the ball, leaving him insensate in the chair. This done, I waited until almost all of the guests had entered the ballroom, and then David and I entered and took our seats.

  “This done, I enjoyed the first course and a glass of wine before asking David to accompany me to the bathroom. Of course, he is so completely besotted and clueless that he didn’t realize where I had him wait was not in front of a bathroom at all, but a door to a servants’ passage that led between the kitchens and the anteroom. I stole along the passage, entered the anteroom, stabbed my father, opened the window, placed the scrap of fabric on the nail, and took away my jewelry.” She tugged up the gloves on her hands. “It was nothing to dispose of my gloves and dress into a recycling bin behind the kitchens and replace them with a matching set I’d hidden there earlier, before I returned to David and we resumed our place in the set.”

  “A most ingenious plan,” Morrie mused. “I could not have done better.”

  “Why did you write the note on our door?” I asked. “Were you trying to stop Lydia from becoming your father’s next victim?”

  She laughed, the sound like broken glass tinkling. “Heavens, no. I was too far into my plan to be concerned with his next conquest. The note was not for Lydia, it was for you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Cynthia boasted of your intellect and your skill at solving mysteries the police could not solve. I realized that my crime scene wouldn’t just need to fool the police, it would have to fool you as well. I thought if you were frightened away, if might be to my advantage. It appears you’re either too stubborn or too stupid to take the hint.”

  “It’s the first one, the stubborn one,” Morrie said, shuffling closer. I tensed, knowing he was planning something, but no idea what. “But why kill Alice, your own girlfriend? Why create a video where she confesses to Hathaway’s murder?”

  “She was going to write the story about my father!” Christine screamed. “I begged her not to, but she said it had to be done. When she saw my father’s body, she guessed I might have done it, and then she found the jewels in my bag that night as she snuck into my room. So I told her I would kill her if she revealed the truth, and I made her film that video as assurance. But then I saw her lead Mina away from the orangery and I knew she was going to tell you the truth, so I killed her before she could do it. Don’t you understand, I had to kill her. She gave me no choice. The story would’ve been in all the papers, and they would come for me. I’d be hounded by the press and I would never, ever be free of my father’s evil and bloody Jane Austen. That’s all I want, and as soon as I deal with her—” she jabbed the tip of her sword at Professor Carmichael, who whimpered “—I will finally, truly be free.”

  “What about us?” I asked weakly, my heart clattering against my chest.

  “You? You three are something I didn’t count on.” Christina tapped her finger against her chin, in a gesture that reminded me a little of Morrie. “It’s your own fault, really. I did give you a warning, which you chose not to heed. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to allow you to live.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Christina, you don’t have to do this,” I pleaded. “If you tell your story, everyone will be on your side. You father was a horrible man, and what he did to you and your mother was wrong. You’re the victim here. Please, don’t become the villain.”

  “Silly girl,” Christina grinned. “There are no villains in Jane Austen.” She swung around toward me, lunging forward, the blade of her sword pointing at my heart—

  This is it. This is how I die.

  Time slowed. Neon fireworks flashed in front of my eyes, and memories flickered through my mind; Heathcliff slamming me against the wall in the bathroom, his eyes looking at me with such wild need; Quoth lying beside me on my bed, our hearts beating in unison; Morrie saying the words, “I love you.”

  The window shattered. Glass tinkled across the floor. A giant black bird flew at Christina, slamming into her chest and sending her reeling.

  Quoth!

  “About time, birdie!” Morrie cried. In one swift movement, he drew his sword from down his trousers and lunged at Christina.

  Quoth’s entrance bought Professor Carmichael precious moments to dodge around Christina and flee to the door. Unfortunately, her fear overcame her, and she sank to her knees, frozen in place on the bed.

  Christina grabbed Quoth by the neck, hauling him off her face and slamming him against the wall.

  “Crooooo—” he bounced against the floor, shuddering to a stop and lying still and silent. My heart pounded in my ears. No, no, please. Not my precious Quoth.

  Christina’s sword crashed against Morrie’s with practiced grace. They swung in a circle, both slashing and lunging at each other, matched in skill and malice. Morrie’s foot grazed Heathcliff’s sword and he kicked it across the room. Heathcliff grabbed the hilt, growling in triumph as he removed the blade and hurried to Morrie’s side.

  They backed Christina against a wall, pushing her toward the corner of the room. Sweat dripped down her face as she met them, parry for parry, each of her moves becoming more wild and desperate. She swung at Morrie’s face, and I cried out as she slicing a thin cut along his cheek. He kicked out one of his long legs, trying to sweep her feet out from under her.

  As I tried to crawl along the wall toward Quoth, Christina spun away from Morrie, leapt up on the bed, and thrust her sword at the professor. The blade sliced through Carmichael’s shoulder, sliding into her flesh with ease. Christina whipped out the blade and Professor Carmichael screamed, clutching at the wound. Blood leaked through her fingers, splattering across the front of her muslin dress. An acrid scent stained the air. Heathcliff rushed forward, sword raised to her throat. Christina parried his blow and lunged at Quoth.

  “If you love that bird so much, watch me gut him!” she yelled.

  “No. Quoth!” I flung myself to the floor, spreading my body over him.

  Christina raised her sword. “Fine. You’ll die, too.”

  M
orrie and Heathcliff slammed into Christina at the same time, sending her sailing across the room. She hit the heavy wooden bed with a CRACK and crumpled to the floor. Her head lolled to the side, blood trickling down the side of her face. I waited, hovering over Quoth, my heart in my throat.

  Christina didn’t move.

  “Are you hurt?” Heathcliff held me under the shoulder, his touch gentle. “Did she cut you?”

  “I… I’m fine, but Quoth…” I reached for his body, but he was no longer beneath me. Where did he go? Is he…?

  Morrie cradled Quoth to his chest. “Poor, poor birdie. I’m so sorry we doubted you.”

  “Croooooooo—” his faint cry tore at my heart.

  “Yooooo hoooooo, Mina? Morrie? The surly one?” Lydia cooed from the hallway. “That stupid bird led me up here, and I brought the nice detective with me, just in case there was an incendiary device, whatever that is—”

  Hayes started as he stepped into the suite. He flicked the rest of the lights on, revealing Carmichael on the bed, clutching her bloody shoulder, Christina slumped, unmoving, on the floor, swords scattered everywhere, and Morrie hugging a raven. “What happened here?”

  “What does it look like? Christina stabbed me, you idiot!” Carmichael yelled.

  “We’re fine,” I croaked out, clutching Heathcliff. “We’re just shaken up. Christina and Professor Carmichael need an ambulance.”

  “Christina needs an undertaker.” Morrie nuzzled his face into Quoth’s feathers.

  Hayes scratched his head. He tore a walkie talkie off his belt and sent a message to Wilson. “We’ve got paramedics here, but we can’t get you to a hospital right now. The whole building is still in lockdown—”

  “Just get someone up here with medical supplies and some drugs, stat. I fear I might be able to go into shock.” Professor Carmichael balled up a section of the duvet and pressed it against her wound. “Why are you hugging that raven?”