The Adventuress

by Tasha Alexander

  The trouble came from not being able to scale walls while carrying my would-be weapon, so I abandoned it, confident that I would be able to replace it as I came nearer to my target. As I shifted my weight over the first wall, I heard, from the general direction of Jeremy’s column, a strangled cry followed by the shuffling of feet and a single shot. Half over the top, I stopped, unable to breathe. Had she killed him?

  “It was a cat, Amity, nothing but a cat,” Jeremy said. “Please, you must let me go.”

  I opened my mouth in a silent scream of relief at the sound of his voice and lowered myself back to the ground on the other side of the wall, wondering if she had shot the cat. Almost as if the creature anticipated my thought, it meowed, and I would swear it sounded almost bored.

  “Do you hear something else?” Amity asked. “I hear her. She is nearby.”

  “Who? Emily?” Jeremy asked. “Why would she be nearby? If she is not where you left her, you can be sure she is long gone. She is probably back at the hotel having a hot bath right now.” He was trying to distract her. “Let’s go find her together, Amity. If you would just—”

  “Silence! I hear something.”

  I had made good use of their conversation, covering the remaining ground—and walls—that stood between me and the column, and was now just on the other side from where my friend was being held. The wall separating us was solid and high, too high for me to feel confident about using it effectively. I would not be able to carry a heavy projectile to the top, and, once there, would be exposed to my enemy. If I tried either to throw something down or to lower myself, she would spot me at once and I would be an easy target. Assuming most Americans (Margaret being an obvious exception) to be partly civilized cowboys, I had no reason to doubt Amity’s skills with a firearm.

  As a result, I decided to stay as far away as possible from her and her gun for as long as I could. I climbed over a shorter wall parallel to the other. Beyond it was a grassy area littered with stones. I selected what seemed, in the rush of the moment, the best choice to arm myself, and made my way around the outside of the structure, keeping as close to the walls as possible. I paused at the final corner, knowing that another step would render me vulnerable to attack. I could now see Jeremy again. Blood had stained his collar but he was conscious and alert. Amity was not in my field of vision.

  What one needed in such a moment was a berserker rage, so fierce and so violent that one might overcome one’s opponent in a blinding flash. Unfortunately, despite my father’s insistence that the Bromley family were descended from Viking stock, I was unable to rise to the occasion. I watched, hoping to catch a glimpse of Amity so that I might at least ascertain what direction I should head. I took the slightest step away from the wall, hoping for a clearer view. I still could not see Amity, but my movement caught Jeremy’s attention, and his eyes widened.

  “What are you looking at?” Amity’s voice was sharp. “Do you see her?”

  “I heard something,” Jeremy said, gesturing with his head in the direction away from me. “It was probably the cat.”

  “You looked the other way.”

  “I was startled.”

  “I am afraid, my darling boy, that I am going to have to end this without further delay.”

  “You have already fired one shot,” he said. “Another is likely to raise alarm, and there is a villa in plain sight beyond those trees. You will have to give up on finding Emily, but perhaps it was I who was your target all along.”

  “Of course you were.” She stood still, several yards from him, searching for any sign of me while she spoke. “How was I ever going to convince my parents to let me marry Jack with you alive? I must have a duke, you know. They decreed it.”

  “Jack?” His voice sounded strangled. “You want to marry my brother?”

  “Almost from the moment I met him,” she said, her tone turning soft. “When he told me about you, the plan came to me with so little effort it was all but miraculous.” She was moving closer now. “If you had only gone back to your room and had a nightcap, your darling Emily wouldn’t be in the slightest danger now. You have quite let her down. Not very gentlemanly of you.”

  I could see her shadow now. She was very near to Jeremy. If I attacked now, she would have a clear shot at close range, but if I waited, she would probably still have that. I stepped back, well out of sight, protected by the wall, and grabbed a second stone, this one smaller. Then, in a fluid motion, I flung it with all my strength over the wall behind me and ran toward her shadow.

  The noise startled her, and she turned around, but only for a moment. It was enough, however, for I was already upon her and smashed a second rock against the side of her head. The force of the blow knocked her to the ground, but she did not drop the pistol and was now swinging it wildly, trying to point it at me as she struggled to get back on her feet. Fortunately, as archaeological sites have no shortage of convenient blocks of stone, I reached for another one and threw it at her. It cast only a glancing blow, but to her face, and this gave me the time I needed to stomp on her arm until she released her grip on the gun.

  I scooped up the weapon, surprised to find that my hands were not shaking, and leveled it at her. A strange calm came over me. “Untie him,” I said.

  “I will not.” She spat the words at me, her eyes wild.

  “I will shoot you.”

  “You won’t. And even if you tried, it would amount to nothing. Jeremy told me what a terrible shot you are.”

  “You believed him?” I laughed. “Amity, my dear, I am an excellent shot. If your fiancé—or perhaps I should say former fiancé, as I think it very likely he shall call off the engagement after this—told you otherwise, it must only have been to hide his admiration for me.”

  “You are wrong if you think I am jealous of you,” Amity said. “I never wanted him.”

  “Yes, I heard it all. It wasn’t a very interesting story, I’m afraid.” I was circling closer to her. “At least the way you told it. In more skilled hands it might make for a rather diverting, if somewhat sensational, novel. Just the sort of thing my husband despises.” Footsteps, hurried, warned me that her henchman was drawing near. I had to incapacitate her so that I could deal with him. I bit my lip, steadied my breath, and pulled the trigger. She cried out and I looked away, searching for her accomplice. He was not yet in sight, so I turned my attention to Jeremy, but the knot restraining him appeared all but impossible to untie. I would need something to cut it.

  “No, I do not have a knife with me,” he said in answer to the question I posed him. “I thought I was going to have a rather different sort of evening and did not arm myself. You shot her, Em.” We both looked at her crumpled body.

  “Yes, I am well aware of that. We need to get away from here before—” But it was already too late. The hulking form appeared once again from the shadows. “Time to screw your courage to the sticking place,” I said, my voice choked. “Never thought I would have the occasion to feel such sympathy for Lady Macbeth.”

  “Don’t joke, Em.”

  They were the last words I heard before I pulled the trigger again. This time, I did not hit my target and I braced myself for return fire, but none came. Instead, the man turned and ran. Amity must not have thought he would need to be armed with anything other than the cudgel he had used on both Jeremy and myself. Or perhaps his loyalty to Amity’s cause proved insufficient. I applied myself again to freeing my friend, and found that without the threat of imminent disruption, and possible destruction, I was able at last to loosen it. Jeremy stood, took me by the shoulders, and looked deep into my eyes.

  “I do think this will get me entirely over loving you, Em. I should have been the one rescuing you. How ever will I live down this embarrassment?” I appreciated his attempt at humor, but the pain in his voice was evident. He crossed to Amity’s motionless body. I could not bear to look. “She is still breathing.”

  “I aimed for her shoulder,” I said. “I have read countless nove
ls in which the hero lives relatively unscathed after a bullet goes clean through the fleshy part. It seemed a decent enough strategy.” The preternatural calm that had come over me so unexpectedly now vanished, and I stood, shaking rather violently. Shouts came from the direction of the gate, and soon half a dozen gendarmes had descended upon us. They told us, later, that the owners of the nearby villa had summoned them the moment they heard the first shot. Never have I been more grateful for my fluency in French, as the situation looked rather awkward: me, standing, holding a pistol, and Amity bleeding on the ground. I explained what had happened, Jeremy corroborating my story, and, perhaps more importantly, Amity’s henchman, whom they had caught fleeing from the scene, had confessed to everything. She had hired him to lure me to the site, and had given him explicit instructions to introduce himself both to my husband and me, so that there would be no question that I would meet him at the ruins. That task finished, he was to come to a predetermined spot on the Promenade des Anglais and deliver a note to the Duke of Bainbridge. He did not avoid looking at either Jeremy or me as he spoke. The affability I had noted upon first meeting him now seemed to mask something more sinister. All the while, the cat, who had reappeared after I fired my last shot, sat approximately six feet from Amity, staring at her accusingly.

  We followed as they carried Amity away, putting her in a wagon that would take her to the hospital. Much as I wanted to find Colin, I decided we should accompany her, and asked if we could give our official statements there, rather than at the police station. Ironic though it may sound, I wanted to be sure I had caused her no irreparable harm. The gendarmes did not object. Just before he helped me into the second police vehicle, Jeremy put his arm around my waist and pulled me close to him.

  “All things being equal, Em, I much prefer Cannes to Nice.”

  “Is that so?” I asked, doing my best to restore both of our spirits. “It seems to me you ought to rethink your position. I am beginning to believe that your life was threatened multiple times in Cannes, yet only once in Nice.”

  “Multiple times?” he asked, sitting next to me on the hard bench against the wall of the wagon. “I am not certain about that. Regardless, the attempt here was far more dramatic. You know I have no stomach for drama. And my head may never recover from that fellow’s blow. Yes, I blame Nice entirely. Much prefer Cannes.”

  I took his hand and smiled before letting my head drop onto his shoulder. “The ruins are lovely,” I said, “yet I find myself forced to agree with you. Cannes was much better.”

  23

  It did not take long for the doctors at the hospital to treat Amity. Despite my lack of skills when it came to firearms, the bullet, as I had intended, passed cleanly through her shoulder, and she required nothing more than stitches to close the wound. I insisted that the police allow Jeremy and me to be in the room when they questioned her, pointing out that we had more information about the full extent of her crimes than they. She did not look at Jeremy even once while she spoke, but her eyes were full of hate when she met mine. She had already confessed to having poisoned the whisky in Jeremy’s room, and, hence, to Mr. Neville’s murder, but I was still confused about something.

  “Why did you kill Hélène?” I asked.

  “She was insurance,” Amity said. “Although I believed my plan to be sound, I worried there was a slim possibility that something would go awry. I knew any one of the dancers would serve my purpose, so I went to the casino a few days before the party, after my father had arranged for the girls to dance, and paid Hélène a little extra to make sure she would shower special attention on his grace. She did try to insist she wasn’t that sort of a girl, but she did not hesitate to take my money. I asked Augustus to let me know when he returned from the casino that night, and to tell me whether his grace”—apparently she would no longer say Jeremy’s name—“had spoken to her.” Her voice was shockingly cold.

  “Was Augustus aware of what you were doing when you waited up for him that evening?” I asked.

  “No. Why would I have wanted anyone to know what I was doing? Taking someone into my confidence would have served only to make me vulnerable to that person. I am not foolish enough to have done that, and I needed very little help to complete my tasks. It only took a matter of minutes to prepare everything in his grace’s room. While I was still in Cairo, I bought a set of tools and taught myself to pick locks—it is not so difficult as you might expect—and also procured the poison. I had prepared the whisky earlier in the day, so had only to place it on the bedside table and remove every other beverage from the room to ensure his grace wouldn’t be able to choose something else to drink. That done, I went and sat in the lobby until I saw my brother, who confirmed his grace was no longer with the girl.”

  “When did you kill her?” I asked.

  “Early the next morning. When I paid her for the extra services at the party, I insisted that she tell me where she lived. If she thought it was an odd request, she didn’t show it, and certainly didn’t object. The early morning strolls I made a point of telling you all I took were in fact drives to her neighborhood. I watched her to learn her habits. She always went back upstairs after she breakfasted with her landlady. That morning, when she was downstairs eating, I slipped to her room, picked the lock, and hid, waiting for her to return. I took her completely by surprise. She didn’t even see me. I came upon her from behind and bashed in—”

  “I do not need further details,” I said, swallowing bile.

  “It was simple to slip out of her rooms unnoticed. The butcher was busy with customers and his wife saddled with washing the dishes.” Amity scowled. “I had hoped the girl’s death would have been noticed sooner. Perhaps I should have left her valise at the bottom of the stairs instead of taking it with me and disposing of it so that someone would have gone upstairs to look for her. That was my one mistake. I should have figured out a better way to draw attention to her demise.”

  “That was your one mistake?” Jeremy’s eyes bulged and the thick veins in his neck pulsed. Amity only turned her head farther away from him.

  “What about the cuff links?” I asked.

  “I took them when I left the whisky and then hid them in the girl’s room after I took care of her. If his grace’s death were ruled a suicide, that would be that, but if it weren’t, the cuff links could connect the two crimes.”

  “How so?” I asked. “Did you want the gendarmes to believe that Jeremy had murdered Hélène after she stole his cuff links?”

  “Yes,” Amity said. “And then gone back and, consumed with guilt over his rash act, taken his own life. I was a bit concerned about not being able to deal with the girl until the following morning, but I did not think it would be possible for the coroner to determine the time of death with enough precision that a few hours would prove problematic.”

  “If Jeremy had gone to her room surely he would have recovered the cuff links?” I asked.

  “Not if he couldn’t find them. Everyone would believe that he had known that they had been stolen and that she was the only one who had the opportunity to take them. The police would have found them eventually, though, and then if people—like you—started asking questions about why his grace had killed himself, their investigations would lead to the dancer with whom his grace had left the casino.”

  “But of course none of this went according to plan, and poor Neville—” Jeremy’s voice cracked and he turned to the wall. “I can listen to no more.” He left the room. I followed soon thereafter, once Amity had answered my few remaining questions.

  Mr. and Mrs. Wells made no comment as we passed them in the hospital corridor. They were standing, speaking to the physician who had treated their daughter, and I could hear him telling them he was confident she would make a full recovery. The look on Mrs. Wells’s face left me to wonder whether she considered that a favorable outcome. Augustus was nowhere to be seen; he might not yet know what had transpired.

  A gendarme took Jeremy and me back to the
hotel, where outside the entrance to the lobby, the cat from the ruins was standing. She followed us inside, keeping very close to my skirts. How she knew to wait for us there is inexplicable, but I do not think it possible to interpret her actions as anything but deliberate. The desk clerk told us our friends had not yet returned, so I instructed him to send them up the moment they arrived and to also have a bottle of whisky delivered to the room. Jeremy clasped my hand in his and led me to the elevator. “I know you prefer the stairs,” he said.

  “I do not think either of us is in any condition to do much walking,” I replied.

  “I told the clerk, when your back was turned, to send up port as well as whisky. I am not the only one in dire need of fortification.”

  When we reached my room, we sat in silence, Jeremy with his whisky, me with my port, the cat purring contentedly in my lap. After what felt like an eternity, he spoke. “You are a terrible shot, Em. You have always been a terrible shot.”

  “I know.”

  “But your aim was true tonight.”

  “I am so sorry, Jeremy. I never meant—”

  “To shoot my fiancée?” He gave me a wry smile. “No, I would imagine not, although I had the distinct impression all along you were not fond of her.”

  “No, that is not true. I—” He waved his hand to stop me.

  “This will make for quite a scandal, won’t it?” he asked. “And only think—the queen is occupying rooms two floors above us. What will your mother say?”

  “Something far worse than whatever Her Majesty says. I wonder if she will still expect me to breakfast with her in the morning?”

  Keys rattled in the lock and Jeremy looked up at me, pain over his face. “I thought Amity loved me, Em. What a fool I am.”