Portrait of Peril

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “Because if another spiritualist were murdered,” Barrett says, “it would seem that the culprit was the same one in Charles Firth’s case—either a ghost he’d conjured up or a human with a grudge against spiritualists. You found the right person in the right place, and you got your wish. Good for you.”

  The vicar flinches, nettled by Barrett’s sarcasm. “I didn’t mean to kill Mr. Trevelyan. I only meant to frighten him and cut him just enough that it would be taken seriously, then run away. I followed him around, and when he wandered into a tunnel that was vacant, I saw my chance.”

  I picture the tramp pursuing Mr. Trevelyan through the tunnels, away from the crowds, while Nat Quayle chased me.

  “I drew my knife, and I was a few feet behind him when I tripped on a stone. He turned around and saw me.”

  I envision the fear and horror on Richard Trevelyan’s face, his gaze riveted on the knife the vicar held, as he realized he was about to become the victim of an attack.

  “The next thing I knew, he’d grabbed my arm, and we were fighting. During the struggle, the knife went into him.” Beneath the vicar’s guilt, I perceive cunning. As I try to figure out what he’s up to, he appeals to Barrett. “His death was an accident.”

  Contempt twists Barrett’s mouth. “An accident you caused. You’re as guilty of his murder as if you’d intended it from the start.”

  Daniel knits his brow as he struggles to make sense of what he’s heard. “But it couldn’t have been you, Grandfather. The knife was in your study. I know. I checked every night.”

  “I used a different knife,” the vicar says. “It’s in the river now. Before I came home, I threw it off the Waterloo Bridge.”

  That explains why no weapon was found at the scene. I’m furious at the havoc that the vicar’s misbegotten scheme to protect his grandson has wrought. “You covered up for Daniel, and then you covered up for yourself and let Mick get arrested!”

  “I’m sorry about Mick. I never meant for him to come to harm.” Reverend Thornton’s manner is contrite but brisk, as if he wants to shunt this issue out of the way. Lucie and Daniel whisper frantically to each other. “I’ll explain to the magistrate that I’m guilty and Mick is innocent.”

  Mick exonerated and released was all I’d wanted, but right now it’s not enough. I want to throttle this man whom my mother-in-law used in her effort to reform my bad behavior.

  Barrett demands of the vicar, “Why are you telling me all this now? You were never a suspect in Richard Trevelyan’s murder. You could have kept quiet and gotten away with it.”

  “Because I want a favor from you in exchange for my confession.” The vicar turns brazen, reckless, the gambler showing his cards. “Let me take the blame for both murders. Let Daniel go free.”

  My anger is a hot pressure that threatens to explode me into pieces. “Of all the nerve!” That one killer should use his crime as a bargaining chip to save another is beyond untenable.

  The vicar ignores me; he looks to Barrett, whose opinion is the one that counts.

  Barrett meets his gaze with a cold stare. “That’s too big a favor.”

  “Why?” The vicar seems disconcerted that his self-sacrifice might be for naught. “You’ll solve both murders. You’ll deliver a criminal to justice.”

  “Is that what you think I want? To close the cases at the expense of the truth?” Barrett shakes his head.

  “I’ll be hanged for one murder. Why not two?” In a tone that hints at his desperation, the vicar says, “If Daniel is charged with murder, he’ll be tried as if he were an adult. If he’s convicted, he’ll be …” He stops himself before the boy can hear him say executed.

  “Daniel’s confessed to another murder in addition to Charles Firth’s,” Barrett says, his manner hard and unforgiving.

  “Daniel is too young to know what he’s doing! He’s made mistakes.”

  I can hardly believe the vicar is trivializing Daniel’s crimes, as if the boy had cheated on a test at school.

  “He didn’t learn from his first mistake,” Barrett points out. “You’re asking me to let him go free to make more mistakes that could cost more people their lives.”

  Reverend Thornton offers clasped hands to Barrett. “Please. Give Daniel a chance. He can be reformed.”

  But I think Daniel lacks a basic sense of right and wrong, and I doubt there’s a way to correct his deficiency.

  “You want me to bend the law for your grandson, yet you were willing to let Mick, who’s not much older than Daniel, be hanged for the murder you committed.” Barrett says contemptuously, “Well, I won’t.” He’s honor bound to serve justice, a vocation as sacred to him as religious vows ever were to the vicar. “Reverend Douglas Thornton, you’re under arrest for the murder of Richard Trevelyan.” He seizes the vicar’s wrist, locks one handcuff around it, and then beckons to Daniel. He’s come unequipped to arrest two people, and he’ll have to handcuff Daniel and the vicar together.

  “Daniel, stop him!” Lucie cries.

  The boy blinks, frowns, and raises the ax at Barrett. My heart thumps. Before anyone can speak, there’s a loud, retching, choking sound from Alice. Her eyes bulge; her mouth opens wide as she gasps for breath. Daniel drops the ax as he and Lucie rush to her side. Mucus oozes from her lips and rattles in her throat. The vicar, with the handcuffs dangling from his wrist, flings back the quilt that covers Alice. She wears a white flannel nightdress, and he opens its collar and bodice to give her air. She’s so emaciated that I can see the rapid flutter of her heart under her gray, translucent skin. A convulsion seizes her body, shakes the bed. The children grab her skeletal hands and cry out with fear. She inhales a wheeze that strains her wasted muscles; she stiffens, as if struck by lightning; then she goes limp. Her face relaxes, her eyelids droop, and her head lolls. She’s not breathing, and the flutter of her heartbeat has stopped. Everyone stands motionless in the sudden, awful silence.

  Reverend Thornton’s face is a mask of sorrow. “She’s gone.”

  CHAPTER 31

  The children burst into agonized sobs. I’ve seen death too many times before, but I would have to be made of stone for this one not to move me. Alice’s death is a poignant end to a troubled life and horrendous suffering. She died in the company of the people who love her, and the children’s grief is so heart-wrenching, so pure.

  “Holy Lord, almighty and eternal God, into your hands we commend your servant Alice,” the vicar intones. “Forgive her sins and embrace her in your mercy, so that death may be for her the portal to everlasting life in your glorious presence.”

  After my mother told me that my father was dead, she forbade me to cry or to speak about him. There was no funeral, nothing to mark his passing except the flight from the only home I’d ever known to lodgings in a strange part of town. The memory brings a lump to my throat. Barrett wipes his eyes.

  Reverend Thornton tenderly kisses Alice’s mottled brow. “May you rest in peace. May the eternal light of our Lord Jesus Christ shine upon you.”

  “Amen,” Barrett and I say quietly.

  Daniel and Lucie fall to their knees beside the bed, still clutching Alice’s hands. The sound of their sobs fills the tower. The vicar turns to Barrett and me, his expression a mixture of grief and surrender. He puts his hand on Daniel’s shoulder and says, “It’s over. We’re going with Detective Barrett.”

  He gently raises the weeping boy to his feet and pries his fingers off Alice’s lifeless ones. Daniel shuffles as his grandfather leads him to the door, meek and obedient now that his mother is beyond the need for his protection. His face is a red, swollen, tearful mess, his man’s body like a suit of clothes that’s too big. I feel so sorry for him that I wish Barrett could spare him.

  “I ask only one thing of you,” the vicar says to Barrett. “Please look after my granddaughter and my wife.”

  “I will,” Barrett says, serious because he understands how direly his decision will affect the remaining members of the Thornton family. But he do
esn’t back down; Alice’s death doesn’t change the fact that he knows his decision is the right one. “Sarah, could you take Lucie home and stay with her and Mrs. Thornton until I come back?”

  “Of course.” I dread telling Mrs. Thornton what’s happened.

  Lucie lets go of her mother’s hand, her huge, dark eyes streaming tears and ablaze with anger.

  “I won’t let you take him!” She darts forward and picks up the ax.

  “Look out!” I cry as Lucie swings at Barrett.

  Barrett dodges. The ax is almost as long as Lucie is tall, and so heavy that its momentum sends her reeling. She crashes into Daniel. He stumbles against the vicar, and they both fall down.

  “Lucie, stop!” the vicar says as he struggles to his feet.

  Young, confused, and grief-stricken as Lucie is, she knows she’s about to lose her brother, her protector—all that’s left of her immediate family. She swings the ax again, staggering under its weight. Barrett lunges and grabs the wooden handle. Lucie screams and tries to jerk the ax away from him. Reverend Thornton shouts, “Don’t hurt her!”

  He runs to them and wrestles with Barrett while I grab Lucie from behind. Lucie is a shrieking, writhing, kicking frenzy. In the midst of the melee, something clatters to the floor. It’s Barrett’s gun, fallen out of his pocket. It slides over to Daniel, who’s sitting on the floor as if he lacks the will to stand. Daniel picks up the gun. He seems puzzled, unsure of what it is.

  “Daniel, shoot them!” Lucie cries.

  Mindlessly obedient, blinking away tears, Daniel aims the gun at Barrett and me and pulls the trigger. A loud bang reverberates. Sulfurous smoke hazes the air. Barrett and the vicar yell. Lucie breaks free of us, and my heart thunders with panic as I look around to see where the bullet went.

  The vicar drops to his left knee beside Alice’s bed and clutches his right calf. Blood reddens his fingers. Barrett and I stare, horrified that he’s been wounded yet relieved that no one was killed. Daniel cringes as if he knows he’s done something bad and expects to be scolded. He tosses the gun away from him. Barrett picks it up, replaces it in his pocket so that it can’t shoot anyone else, and he and I rush to the vicar’s aid.

  Lucie, carrying the ax, rushes to Daniel and cries, “We have to go.”

  Daniel remains on the floor, his thick legs spread in front of him, his face scrunched up like that of a baby on the verge of bawling. Barrett pushes up the vicar’s trouser leg. The blood trickles from a raw, circular wound on the fleshy part of his calf. As Barrett touches the wound, the vicar grimaces in pain.

  “I can feel the bullet under the skin. I don’t think it hit an artery, but I’m not sure,” Barrett says.

  I’m as fearful about the prognosis as I would be if I’d been shot. In one important way, Reverend Thornton’s life is worth more than mine. He’s the only one who can exonerate Mick. From among the items on the table, Barrett snatches up a cotton pad and a length of gauze, and he applies a makeshift bandage and tourniquet to the vicar’s leg.

  “Daniel, don’t give up,” Lucie pleads, tugging his arm. “I need you!”

  The boy’s eyes glimmer, as if Lucie’s need has restored his wits. He lets her pull him to his feet, drag him out the door.

  I say to Barrett, “We mustn’t let them get away.” I doubt they’ll go home to the vicarage, and I don’t know what I’m more afraid of—that they’ll be hurt while at large in the city, or that they’ll hurt someone else.

  “Stay with the Reverend.” Barrett stares into my eyes for a moment, begging me to do as he says, for once in my life. Then he runs after Daniel and Lucie.

  If there’s any time to honor my vow to obey my husband, it’s now. The vicar limps toward the door, and I step in front of him, my arms outspread. “Oh, no, you don’t.” I can’t have him in the middle of whatever happens when Barrett catches the children. I need him alive.

  “Let me go to Daniel and Lucie,” Reverend Thornton says. “I can convince them to surrender.”

  “Really? A minute ago you didn’t have much influence over them.” It occurs to me that if he finds the children before Barrett does, they all might escape together, and without them, how can I prove who killed Charles Firth or Richard Trevelyan? The knife is circumstantial evidence, and their confessions will be mere hearsay—probably not enough to convince Inspector Reid and exonerate Mick.

  “Get out of my way.” The vicar raises his hand to strike me.

  Although he’s taller and heavier than me, he’s wounded, and I think I could win a fight with him. But I’m afraid that my temper would overpower me. Then I see the handcuff around the vicar’s wrist and, dangling from a short chain, the other cuff that Barrett didn’t have time to put on Daniel. I grab the open cuff, yank the vicar over to Alice’s bed, and lock the cuff around the wooden rail. Then I race down the stairs, with my pocketbook that contains the knife and my gun, as he shouts, “Come back!”

  Outside the church, the temperature has dropped, and moisture from the fog condenses into cold drizzle that dilutes the bonfire smoke. The world beyond ten feet distant from me is murky yellow where streetlamps glow, shades of black and gray everywhere else. As I pause at the door to listen for Barrett and the children, the bushes rustle. A dark shape oozes forth, and I shriek as I jump.

  “All this noise, a fellow can’t get a decent sleep,” says a slurred, familiar voice. It’s Andrew Coburn.

  “Did you see two children come out?” I ask him.

  “Yeah. They went that way.” He points down the street.

  As I head in the direction indicated, the dark figure of a man looms before me. I yelp, scared half to death a second time.

  “Sarah?” It’s Hugh. “I’ve brought the ambulance. Was that a gunshot I heard? What’s going on?”

  Now I notice the lit lamp on the ambulance wagon parked in the street, the hazy forms of the horse and driver. “Barrett. The children.” I blurt a garbled explanation.

  “Don’t worry; we’ll find them. Then we’ll go back for the Reverend,” Hugh says. “Mick will be out of jail before this night is over.”

  Amid the hoots and cackles from Halloween revelers comes the loud, brittle tinkle of glass shattering.

  “It came from over there.” I point toward St. Peter’s School, invisible in the fog. A hunch compels me to say, “I think Lucie and Daniel went in there.”

  We run through the schoolyard, past the shadowy forms of swings, slides, and teeter-totters. The three-story Gothic building materializes, dark except for a lamp burning above the arched main entrance. The door is open and the windowpane in it is broken. The blackness within the building exudes a silence thicker than the fog.

  “How clever are those children?” Hugh whispers.

  He’s asking if this could be a trap they’ve set. I think of Lucie and Daniel pretending to be ghosts in the church. “Clever enough.”

  Somehow I’m certain the children are in there—and so is Barrett. The ring on my finger feels warm, as if with some mystical energy flowing from him to me. I draw my gun from my pocketbook. Despite all the wisdom that warns me against venturing into dark places where danger lurks, I tiptoe through the door. After I’ve disobeyed Barrett, I’m determined to honor at least one of my wedding vows—to protect my husband. I’ll shoot anyone who’s a threat to him, even a child.

  Hugh is right with me, his gun in his hand. In the foyer, broken glass crunches under our feet. We steal into a long, wide passage. The smell of chalk dust, lye soap, and the sweet, musty, young-animal scent of children takes me back to my school days. Across the stone floor lie faint stripes of light from classroom doors. A whimper comes from the darkness at the far end, blood-chilling yet familiar.

  It’s Lucie. Is she playing ghost again, to lure us?

  The whimper breaks into sobs. We move cautiously forward. Halfway down the empty passage, Hugh points to the classroom on our left. As we peer across the threshold, the sobbing that emanates from within stops. Dim light shines through the wind
ows. Rows of small chairs at low tables face the teacher’s desk. As we step into the room, there’s no sound, no motion.

  “Lucie?” I call in a low voice that I hope doesn’t sound threatening. “Come out.”

  A large object hits me hard across my thighs. I exclaim. Suddenly the air is full of flying, crashing missiles. Hugh yells as they bombard him. Lucie is throwing chairs at us. Hugh falls, cursing. As I move to help him, my leg tangles in a chair and I fall flat on my face. Giggles accompany a pattering of footsteps as Lucie runs out the door.

  “I lost my gun,” Hugh says. “Go after her while I find it. I’ll catch up.”

  Fortunately, I’ve managed to hang on to my gun. I hurry out to the passage, hear giggling, and see Lucie standing at the end. As I run toward her, she turns and darts through a door. I follow her into a stairwell that’s so dark, only the first two steps are visible. Lucie’s quick footsteps ascend. I cling to the banister, grope my way up through the black, echoing shaft. A door above me slams. Reaching it, I try the knob. The door doesn’t budge; it’s locked.

  “Lucie!” I bang on the door, receive no answer.

  Instead of trying to pick the lock in the dark, I grope back down the stairs and hurry along the passage to find another way to the upper floors. I look into the classroom where I left Hugh, but he’s gone. Why didn’t he follow me? Apprehension seeps through my veins. Did he spot Daniel? Is he alone with the boy?

  Some twenty paces distant, in the darkness between two classroom doors, stands a figure clad in a long, shapeless robe. With its head blending into its shoulders, its face invisible, it embodies the word ghost. My heart gives a violent lurch; my eyes pop and my mouth opens. I instinctively raise my gun, taking aim even as I think ghosts must be impervious to bullets.

  The figure moves toward me, into brighter light, and now I discern its long braids and a haggard, familiar face. “Mrs. Thornton.” Relief washes over me, so powerful that I could faint. “You gave me a scare.”

  “My husband. My grandchildren. Where are they?” Her voice quavers as if she’s suddenly ancient and senile.