A Most Novel Revenge

by Ashley Weaver

  “I had thought, all along, that there might be something to be gained from knowing the story put forth in The Dead of Winter, and so I read it. Two scenes in particular seemed important: the scene in which the character representing Bradford Glenn attempted to strangle the character meant to be Beatrice and the scene in which the characters representing Bradford Glenn and Edwin Green came to blows.

  “In the first, Mr. Glenn is so angry with Beatrice that he tries to kill her, after which he professes his love. This seemed to indicate that Beatrice had rejected him, giving him a sufficient motive to do Mr. Green harm.”

  I looked at Beatrice. She was watching me, her face hard and expressionless.

  “Isobel wrote that she and Mr. Lyons had rushed into the room and witnessed the scene, which seemed to lend it validity. Then you told me yourself, Mrs. Kline, that it had happened, and I had no cause to doubt it.”

  “He did try to strangle Beatrice,” Reggie said. “Isobel and I came in to find Beatrice had been forced to hit him with the candlestick, just as she wrote.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “But that was not quite all of the story, was it?”

  Reggie and Beatrice stared at me. There was a pleading expression in his eyes, and absolutely nothing in hers.

  “The other scene that caught my attention was near the end of the book. Bradford Glenn was paying court to Beatrice, fawning over her, at which point Edwin Green confronted him. Mr. Green’s words were something to the effect of ‘I know what you have been doing.’ These words cause Mr. Glenn to fly into a rage and attack Edwin Green. Does that seem accurate?”

  “That’s how I remember it,” Laurel said softly. “Edwin seemed jealous that Bradford was flirting with Beatrice, and so he provoked him into a fight.”

  I nodded. “Isobel stepped in and stopped the fight. She wanted, I think, to prove herself to Bradford by defending him, but it didn’t work.”

  I paused, preparing myself for what I was about to reveal. I looked again at Milo. He was smoking a cigarette by the fire, his eyes on mine. Somehow I derived assurance from the steadiness of his gaze.

  I continued. “But then I went to the summerhouse tonight and found several documents and photographs in the drawer of the desk, and suddenly everything seemed to make sense. I realized who had killed Isobel and why. There was a secret, and it was one that Isobel never guessed.”

  I drew in a breath and let the truth rush out with it.

  “You see, it wasn’t Beatrice that Bradford Glenn loved at all. It was Lucinda.”

  31

  REGGIE SWORE BENEATH his breath and Beatrice’s already expressionless face seemed to freeze in a mask of dismay, every drop of color leached from it.

  Everyone stared at me.

  “Mrs. Ames,” Lucinda said with a confused smile, looking up from her seat beside Mr. Roberts. “You … you must be joking, surely?”

  “I wish I was,” I said softly.

  “It isn’t true,” Reggie said, rousing himself. “I did it. I’ve said as much already. Arrest me, Inspector.”

  “Why don’t you let Mrs. Ames finish her story, Mr. Lyons,” Inspector Laszlo said calmly.

  “I didn’t think anything of it at the time, of course,” I continued, “but more than one person made mention to me of how kind Mr. Glenn was to Lucinda. That, in itself, was not especially noteworthy. Lucinda is a very pretty and amiable young woman. It’s only natural that men should be kind to her.”

  “What you’re saying is insulting, Mrs. Ames,” Reggie Lyons said, but his voice lacked conviction.

  “But then all the little pieces of the story started to come together, and I saw that it was more than that. Bradford hadn’t tried to strangle Beatrice because she was in love with Edwin Green. He had done it because Beatrice was trying to separate him from her sister.”

  I looked at Beatrice, and she looked back at me. I could read nothing in her gaze.

  “They quarreled about his relationship with Lucinda, and he had tried to strangle Beatrice in a blind rage,” I said. “He felt sorry for it afterward, of course, but his temper was quick where his secret was concerned. It was the same way with the fight in the summerhouse. Edwin must have suspected something was going on between Bradford and Lucinda. He said ‘I know what you’ve been doing,’ and it angered Bradford. He had been doing his best to make people believe he was in love with Beatrice, you see. After all, what better way for him to secure perpetual invitations to Lyonsgate, where he could be with Lucinda?”

  “This is absurd!” Reggie cried.

  I glanced at Lucinda. She was staring straight ahead, her jaw clenched, her face pale.

  “There was another thing that drew my attention to the secret romance,” I went on. “I spoke with a woman in the village earlier today, and she made mention of a significant age difference between a rumored pair of lovers, saying it had caused a good deal of scandal. I thought she meant that Isobel was much older than the men with whom she chose to associate. It didn’t cross my mind then that it was not the relationship between an older woman and a younger man that had caused speculation. It had been a man in his mid-twenties and a child of sixteen.”

  “I was not a child,” Lucinda said, rising to her feet, eyes blazing. “I was old enough to know what love was. I loved Bradford and he loved me. We were going to be married.”

  “Lindy, be quiet.” Reggie said hoarsely.

  “I don’t care,” she said, her voice rising shrilly. “I don’t care. I’m glad she’s dead. I’m glad! I’m glad!”

  “Sit down, Miss Lyons,” Inspector Laszlo said.

  She glared at him for a moment and then obeyed.

  “Lucinda had a good reason to believe that she and Bradford would be married,” I said. “Because she was going to have a baby.”

  Laurel gasped.

  “I found this in the summerhouse,” I said, pulling out a sketch that I had tried desperately to keep dry on the long walk back to Lyonsgate. I held it up for all to see. It was a sketch Lucinda had done, of a young woman holding a child. The face was clearly Lucinda’s, her self-portrait. Bradford Glenn was drawn behind her, looking down at both of them with an expression of love.

  Reggie Lyons ran a trembling hand across his face, and Beatrice stood as rigid as a statue, her eyes on her sister. I knew that everything was crashing in around them, but I also knew that the truth must be revealed. Everyone here had lived under the shadow of the past for far too long.

  “There were rumors of a pregnancy in the village, as well,” I went on, “though I thought at first it must have been one of the other women present. It wasn’t until I saw this sketch that I realized what must have happened. Reggie and Beatrice sent Lucinda away to have the child and, presumably, gave it away.”

  Lucinda’s jaw clenched, and I knew at that moment that I had never seen such hatred in someone’s eyes.

  “I think he would have married her gladly,” I said. “But Reggie and Beatrice did not mean for that to happen. They told Bradford that he was never to see Lucinda again and took her away from Lyonsgate at once.”

  “They didn’t even let me say good-bye,” Lucinda said. There was petulance in her tone, but there was heartbreak, too. Despite everything, I could not help but feel sorry for her.

  “And then they took my baby away,” she whispered. “My baby with Bradford.”

  “Yes,” I said gently. “And then Isobel wrote her book, accusing him of murder. Bradford, knowing that the two of you could not be together after that, decided to end his life.”

  “He might have waited,” Lucinda said forlornly. “If only he had waited for me. I didn’t care that she accused him.”

  I knew that Reggie and Beatrice would have done everything in their power to keep Lucinda and Bradford apart, and Bradford must have known it, too. Perhaps he knew that it could never be, not when the stigma of murder would be forever attached to his name. The prospect of living those long, lonely years without Lucinda, accused of a murder he had not committed, had
been too much for him to bear.

  “When Bradford died, I knew that I would kill Isobel one day,” Lucinda said suddenly. “She ruined our lives, and I promised myself that I would do whatever it took to make her pay, even if that meant going to Africa and killing her there. I never imagined that she would come back to Lyonsgate. It was too easy.”

  “How did you do it?” Inspector Laszlo asked.

  “Lindy…” Reggie started.

  She turned to him, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter now, Reggie.”

  His head dropped, and she looked at Inspector Laszlo. “I tried first with rat poison from the stables,” she said calmly. “I put it in the decanter in her room, but that only made her ill.”

  It must have been what had made Mr. Roberts ill as well.

  “And then I went to her room to talk to her. At first, we talked about her book. She thought I was concerned about the effect on the others. She was enjoying it because she thought she had power over me. There was a knock at the door, and she didn’t answer it. A little while later, Mrs. Ames and Mr. Roberts came to the door. Isobel sent them away.”

  Mr. Roberts had been correct, then. There had been something wrong when we had gone to Isobel’s door. Lucinda Lyons had been inside. Had Isobel known, somehow, what was going to happen? Perhaps, in the end, she had wanted Lucinda to do it.

  “After they left, I told her what she had done to me,” Lucinda said. “She couldn’t believe that Bradford had loved me. I told her then what I meant to do, but she didn’t seem afraid. It made me angry that she wasn’t afraid. She told me then that there was no book, that she had come back for revenge as well. Suddenly, she laughed, as though it was all some great joke. I stabbed her, stabbed her again and again.”

  “Lindy, please…” Reggie begged.

  She blinked. “I knew that people would think she had been killed to hide some secret, so I threw her address book into the fire, hoping people would believe that it was her manuscript. Then I hid the knife in the stables. But then I heard Laurel on the phone tonight, and knew that Mr. and Mrs. Ames must have discovered something. I decided to take the car and run them off the road.”

  She related this in a very calm way, not sparing a glance at either Milo or me.

  “I thought perhaps you would check the car, and so I put the knife there when I got back. Beatrice has been horrible to me, and I wanted her to pay, too.”

  “Oh, Lindy,” Reggie said brokenly.

  Beatrice said nothing, her lips pressed tightly together, her face white.

  Lucinda looked over at Mr. Roberts. His head was still in his hands, and he was shaking it back and forth. “I’m sorry you’re hurt, Mr. Roberts,” she said, “but you’re lucky to be free of her.”

  He didn’t answer, and Lucinda looked back up at us.

  “I’m not sorry I killed her,” she said, her eyes unnaturally bright. “She shouldn’t have done it. She shouldn’t have written those things about Bradford. She ruined his life, ruined all of our lives.”

  Inspector Laszlo took a step forward and Reggie moved into his path.

  “She didn’t know what she was doing,” he said, pleading.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Lyons,” he said. “I truly am.”

  Then he stepped around Reggie and moved to where Lindy sat. “Lucinda Lyons, I am charging you with the willful murder of Isobel Van Allen.”

  * * *

  WE ALL SAT in the drawing room after Inspector Laszlo took Lucinda away. Reggie and Beatrice had gone out of the room with them, and I thought it would be a while before they returned. They would, I was sure, need a few moments to make sense of what had happened. We all did.

  I wondered how much they had known. They had been shielding Lucinda from the start, but had they known that it was she who had killed Isobel? It seemed they must have at least suspected as much, for they had both been willing to take the blame for her. Despite what Lucinda thought about her sister and brother, they had cared for her much more than she had ever known.

  * * *

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE it’s true,” Freida Collins said at last. “I can’t believe it was Lucinda.” She was sitting behind her husband, and I couldn’t help but think how much younger she looked. It was as though she was lighter somehow, the weight of worry and suspicion gone. They were no longer young and carefree, but it would be easier for them now, with no secrets between them.

  “So Bradford was innocent all along,” Laurel said. “Perhaps now, at least, his name will be cleared of murder … but to think that he was wooing Lucinda all along. It’s so terribly shocking.”

  It had been shocking, all of it. There was a sense of unreality that I felt hovering over me, as though it was something from one of Isobel’s novels. Aside from Laurel and Freida, I barely knew the people here, and yet I felt deeply affected by all that had occurred. I could only imagine how difficult the coming months would be for those who had lost so much.

  “How did you know she would confess, Mrs. Ames?” This question came from Mr. Collins. He had never appeared more at ease than he did now. Even the lines of his face had lost some of their perpetual harshness.

  “I didn’t,” I admitted. “I hoped that she would, of course. I thought that if perhaps I provoked her she might let something slip.”

  “You called her a child,” Milo said. “Nothing else could have been so perfectly designed to elicit a response.”

  “I thought as much myself,” I admitted. Lucinda wanted so much to be treated as a woman. To call her a child had been too great an insult to overlook. She had, however, still been a child in many ways.

  The same could, perhaps, be said of Desmond Roberts. He was still very young, and this blow had been severe. I could only hope that he would be able to move past it. He had excused himself immediately after the arrest and had walked from the room like a man half dead. I was very sorry for him.

  “I do hope Mr. Roberts will be all right,” I said.

  “He will,” Milo assured me. “In time.”

  “She asked me to look after him,” I said, remembering that odd conversation at the door to her room right before she had been murdered. “I think she must have cared for him, in her own strange way.”

  “He’ll be all right,” Milo said again. “She would have ruined him completely.”

  “Just as she nearly ruined all of us,” Mr. Winters said, speaking for the first time since Lucinda had been taken away, his eerily pale eyes coming up to look at us. “Perhaps Lucinda was correct, in a way. Perhaps we’re all lucky to be free of Isobel.”

  * * *

  IT WAS NOT until much later, when I was in my room, dressed for bed, that I became suddenly overwhelmed by all that had happened, and my eyes filled with tears. It had been so dreadful, all of it, such a horrid, useless waste of so many lives.

  A moment later, I felt rather than heard Milo come up behind me.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” he said. “I know how difficult this has been.”

  I didn’t say anything. I felt that I was going to cry, and I didn’t want to give way to emotion. I felt that if I started, I might not be able to stop.

  I was not accustomed to seeking comfort from my husband, but at the moment all I wanted was to feel his arms around me. Giving in to the temptation, I turned to him and he pulled me against him. For a moment he didn’t say anything at all.

  “Will she hang?” I asked at last.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s just so sad that it had to end this way,” I said. “It might have been different if people hadn’t been so determined to hurt one another. Why must people be so cruel?”

  “You must admit,” Milo said, “that all of what happened they brought on themselves.”

  It was, perhaps, something of a harsh sentiment, but there was truth in it, too.

  Isobel had come to have revenge upon the woman who had won Bradford Glenn’s love, but she had not known that that woman intended to have revenge upon her as well.

  The
two women, both their hearts set on vengeance, had destroyed each other.

  32

  “I WON’T BE sorry to see the end of this place,” I told Laurel a few days later, as Milo and I prepared to leave. Milo’s car had been safely extracted from the ditch and was, to his relief, in working order, despite a few odd dents and scratches that would need to be mended. I was looking forward to returning to London, leaving the horrors of Lyonsgate behind me.

  “No,” my cousin replied. “I don’t suppose you will. This has been rather difficult for all of us. And yet, I can’t help but feel that things are different somehow.”

  I knew what she meant. It was as though, in some strange way, the tragedies of the past week had started the healing process. After Lucinda’s arrest, the fog of oppression seemed to have lifted from Lyonsgate. There was an air of sadness, certainly. There was no way, after all, for there to be a happy ending. Nevertheless, the light of truth had cast out the shadows, and there was the possibility of peace, in time.

  I had spoken briefly with Reggie Lyons, and he had been kind. He had done his best to protect Lucinda, but he understood that, in the end, she had to be held responsible for her own crimes. He had spoken with a barrister and was hopeful that her age and the circumstances would incline the courts toward mercy, life imprisonment rather than hanging. I hoped that he was right.

  Beatrice I had not seen. Despite her cold exterior, I knew that she had loved her sister and was very much distraught over what had happened. I hoped that, now that it was all over, she would be able to move on with her life. Mr. Kline was expected to arrive from abroad any day, and I was glad she would have him to comfort her. She and Reggie would both need all the comfort they could get in the days ahead.

  As though she had followed my train of thought, Laurel went on. “I plan to go back to London soon, but I feel that Reggie and Beatrice need a friend just now. Reggie has asked me to stay for another fortnight.”