His Wicked Sins

by Eve Silver

  The result had been a lost friendship—one of the few Beth had managed to form as a child—and the burgeoning of dark and ugly rumors that circulated through the borough like a plague. Beth recalled how the neighbors began to view her askance and whisper to each other as she passed. One loud and belligerent woman whose cat had died a sudden death had accosted Beth’s mother from across the street, calling out that Beth was a danger, a mad child who might murder them all in their beds and who most certainly had murdered the cat.

  With a sigh, Beth folded away that dusty memory and hurried up the drive, then took the steps with unladylike haste. Pulling open the front door, she barreled through only to find Mr. Fairfax exiting at the exact moment she entered.

  She gasped and pressed her palm to her breastbone, her pulse racing far too fast, her blood rushing loud in her ears.

  “Miss Canham,” he said, sounding not at all surprised to greet her here.

  “Mr. Fairfax,” she replied in a breathy rush. “What are you doing here?”

  His hair gleamed, coffee dark in the morning light, and his eyes, brown and green and gold, watched her as she made to step away.

  He was not dressed in black. She almost laughed at her expectation that he would be. No, he was handsome in fawn trousers and a white shirt and waistcoat, with a blue coat overtop. He looked every bit the gentleman, and nothing like a man who had prowled darkened hallways in the night.

  “I am here to see Miss Percy,” he replied, and then queried, his tone faintly amused, “Is there aught amiss?”

  Her gaze shot to his. She should ask him if he had been here last night. If he had stood in the hallway outside her door. But how? How to phrase such a bizarre and outlandish inquiry?

  With his head tipped slightly to one side, he studied her, and his brows arched just a little.

  Just that. Just a look, and her pulse fluttered like a trapped bird.

  Speechless, she shifted to her right as he did the same. She went to her left, and he did as well.

  Again, a quick shuffle of bodies, to the right, to the left, and with a soft laugh he put his hands on her arms and held her still while he stepped aside to let her pass.

  His fingers were warm, even through the cloth of her sleeve, and his touch sent a fleeting jolt through her veins, a shock of pleasure.

  “A fine morning,” he said, smiling, feral, a wolf’s smile. Dropping his hands away in a slow, languid manner, he let his palms run down along her arms. “The weather is unseasonably warm.”

  Beth stared at him. His touch evoking a wild cascade of wanton thoughts and emotion. She murmured a reply though she knew not exactly what she said—some pleasantry about the weather and the unseasonable heat of the early October days. And all the while, she was aware of the unreasonable heat in her blood, brought on by just the sight of him and a mere touch, by the sound of his voice and the dangerous curve of his smile.

  She wet her lips, a quick roll of them inward and a swipe of her tongue, and she wondered if she was losing her mind that Griffin Fairfax fascinated her so. That she dreamed of him in the night, even conjuring him in waking dreams.

  His gaze lingered on her lips a moment, then dropped to her collar, and a faint frown creased his brow.

  Reaching out, he lightly ran his index finger over her brooch.

  “An interesting design,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

  There was something odd in his tone, a tense undercurrent.

  “It belonged to my grandmother,” Beth replied. “It passed to me when she died.”

  The bell began to toll just then, reminding her of the need for haste, and she realized that she had dallied here, inane and mindless, while the minutes ticked past. She must hurry if she was to be in place to supervise the girls, and to catch Miss Percy in the hallway.

  She took her leave, a rushed tumult of words that made Griffin’s eyes light with secret amusement. Not mockery, but pleasure, as though they shared a joke. The thought of that warmed her.

  The last toll sounded, reminding her that time was short. With a last glance, she was away, her boots tapping a rapid beat on the tiles as she rushed off.

  A thought nagged her, a realization, and she paused, froze. The watch on Mr. Fairfax’s chain... she had noted it only absently, but something about it bothered her...

  Frowning, she turned, but he was gone. The foyer was empty. He had melted from sight without a sound.

  She wondered what he had been doing at Burndale Academy in the new hours of the breaking day, and if he had been there last night after all, in the hall... in the garden...

  Watching.

  o0o

  “Show me,” Miss Percy said, her normally smooth brow furrowed in an uncharacteristic frown.

  Beside them, the procession of girls walked two by two along the hallway, sedate and orderly under the watchful eye of the headmistress.

  Turning, Beth and Miss Percy walked against the tide toward Beth’s chamber. She had bottled her apprehension and corked it tight, and she was composed now, ready to tell the whole of her story once she showed the handkerchief.

  At the far end of the hallway Mr. Waters worked to repair a jammed window. The rain had soaked into the wood over innumerable years, making it swell and split and hold the panes tight so only one side could be pushed free. He pried the warped piece of wood and it broke away with a sharp crack, splintering in the process.

  Pausing in his task, he turned his head as Gwen, one of the maids passed him, and then he turned back to Bath and Miss Percy and watched them for a moment. Beth felt a flicker of unease. There was something unseeing in his gaze, something blank and cold, as though he looked at them but saw nothing. Then he turned back to his work and Beth thought that her mood had set her to painting all manner of distressing things where none existed in truth.

  As if there was not enough to distress her without adding more noxious ingredients to the bubbling cauldron.

  They were at her door now, and she reached for the handle only to draw up short.

  “What is it?” Miss Percy asked.

  Beth shot her a glance. “The door is open,” she replied. “Though I am certain that I closed it and locked it earlier.”

  “Perhaps Gwen did not draw it all the way shut after she tidied the chamber,” Miss Percy suggested in a tone benign and bland.

  Pushing the door fully open, Beth stepped inside and looked about. The bed was unmade. The basin where she had poured water to perform her morning ablutions was unemptied.

  “Gwen has not been in here yet.” Beth looked about the room once more, putting her palms together and pressing them tight, counting to three with each breath, in and out, determined to let none of her dismay show. Something was wrong. Something was—

  Her gaze cut to the small table where she had left the handkerchief, the only true evidence to support her tale.

  Her heart sank.

  The table was empty, the bloodstained cloth gone.

  And with it the sole proof that might have made her bizarre tale even remotely believable.

  Turning to stare at the headmistress, Beth was tempted to raise the issue of Miss Doyle’s horrid stories of dead women with their scalps torn away, her assertions of Griffin’s involvement when the bodies were discovered. She ached to unburden all her suspicions and fears.

  But even as she thought of it, her tongue twisted on itself. Because she dared not forfeit her position here. And because in the absence of proof, with her assertions listed so simply, so linearly in her thoughts, the facts seemed ludicrous, even to her.

  She was prone to displays of her anxious temperament. Perhaps the whole of it was a story woven with threads of pure malice by Miss Doyle, and by Beth’s own overactive imagination.

  Even if she had the handkerchief to show, in the bright light of day she was hard pressed to say what threat lay in a crumpled bit of linen. In the darkest hours of the night, it had seemed terrifying, but then, she was terrified of everything, which made her a rather poo
r judge of the matter.

  Miss Percy watched her with a quizzical look, the silence spinning out like thread from a wheel.

  “Well?” Miss Percy asked.

  “I—” Beth wasn’t sure exactly what to say.

  Miss Percy strode across the room and twitched aside the curtain, standing for a moment to look out. In the very spot Beth herself had stood when she had watched Miss Percy moving through the back garden without candle or lamp in the darkest hours of the night. Beth’s gaze dropped to take in the headmistress’s dark gown.

  “I am sorry to have troubled you. It was a mistake. I had a dream. An unpleasant dream. My apologies for wasting your time,” she said, painfully aware that both Burndale Academy and Miss Percy appeared to hide as many secrets as Beth herself.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Stepney, London, March 14, 1813

  Time healed all wounds, even a broken heart. So the well-meaning told Henry Pugh again and again. He’d heard it enough times in the past months that he’d long ago stopped answering, or even nodding in reply. He just stared straight ahead, stone-faced, and wished that if their assurances were true then time would march faster, for the wound still ached and bled and screamed.

  Today, a coroner’s inquest was called at the King’s Arms Tavern, across the street from the Black Swan. Henry had paused outside as the first rays of dawn painted the street a pale gray. He had stood at the door of the King’s Arms, just looking at the Black Swan. Looking, and wishing. But wishes were no better than bad coins; a man could spend neither.

  Now Henry sat on a hard bench at the back of the room, letting the sounds swirl around him. Someone coughed, a dry, hacking sound that seemed to go on and on for an eternity. The place smelled of ale and smoke and too many people in too tight a space.

  There was a witness speaking now, one Jeremiah Skirven. He claimed that in the wee hours of January 15th, he had heard the sound of running steps on the cobbled road. He remembered the sound of the nails on the soles of the shoes ringing out in the cold night air, distinctive and clear.

  Henry pressed his lips together. The boot print in the dirt outside the Black Swan’s parlor window had made an imprint that clearly showed no nails.

  Two men, Hartwood and Jackson, regulars at the Black Swan, spoke next, one after the other. They each described a black-coated stranger who had drawn their notice because he lurked by the back window of the parlor, not entering the establishment, just watching it. Waiting. Both witnesses described him as a young man, broad of shoulder, tall of form. They thought he had been dark-haired, but mayhap it had been a dark cap he wore. There had been a dark-haired Yorkshire lad taken in and questioned, but a witness had seen him elsewhere at the time of the murders and he’d been set free.

  Whoever he was, Hartwood and Jackson both thought they had seen him speaking with Ginnie George outside the front door of the tavern the day before the murders.

  Henry’s heart plummeted to hear Ginnie’s name bandied so casually. He shifted on the hard bench, staring straight ahead at the broad back of the man in front of him. He could not bear to think of her, saucy and smiling, speaking to that stranger outside the front door of the tavern.

  Speaking to her murderer.

  That thought haunted him. That, and so many others.

  Had she known him, the man who had killed her?

  There was nothing to prove it one way or the other, but Henry thought she had. He thought the man had sat at the bar of the Black Swan, had quaffed ale, had exchanged a quip with the landlord. That piece of the puzzle was missing, but Henry felt it in his gut.

  The killer had wanted Ginnie. He had watched her. Hunted her. And the Trotters had merely been in his way.

  Henry had said as much to Sam and to others, but none had believed him. They patted him on the shoulder and murmured platitudes, believing him unhinged by grief. He only wished there was some way he could prove his suspicions. Especially now that another woman was dead, found just two mornings past.

  The most recent murder was not exactly the same. Not in a tavern, and no bashing of skulls. Only one victim, and she was young and pretty. And blond. The woman’s body had been found in Covent Garden, her throat slit so deep that her head was nearly hacked right off. She been found lying in a great pool of blood, with her hair cut away.

  Nay, not just her hair. For Henry that was the proof. Her scalp was shorn clean off. Gone. And the fingers of her right hand.

  ‘Twas the same killer. He would swear it. The vile slaughterer was one and the same. But he had no way to prove it, and he knew neither the name nor the face of the man to accuse.

  No one agreed with him.

  Sam Loder thought the Trotters’ death was burglary gone awry, with Ginnie only caught there by happenstance. After all, she was to have gone to her mother’s that night with a mince pie. Who could have known that she would be delayed?

  Who indeed, Henry mused. For him, that question only set the conviction stronger that she had known her killer, that he had sat in the tavern and listened as Mrs. Trotter bade Ginnie stay back an extra hour.

  But Hartwood and Jackson both swore they were the last to depart that night, that the bar was empty once they took their leave.

  Henry had considered Sam’s theories of burglary, but if Sam had the right of it, then why had they found Mrs. Trotter’s pearl brooch on the floor of the hallway, kicked to one side against the wall, and found, too, a bag of coins in the bar? And why had the thief left behind the little gold watch pinned to Ginnie’s bodice?

  Funny, Henry could not recall her ever having worn a watch before.

  No, the killer had not cared for money or jewels. His goal had been the thieving of human life.

  Doctor Cornelius Patch came up to testify now. He had examined the bodies, and he set about giving his report. Henry swallowed and battled the urge to leap up and flee. He knew how Ginnie had died. Every night, he dreamed it, saw the blade bite deep, slashing her throat with such force that her head nearly rolled free.

  He was shuddering now, his limbs quaking and his teeth clacking together so he was forced to set his jaw tight to stop the men on either side from glancing at him with narrowed eyes.

  He could do this.

  He must do this.

  He must sit here to the bitter end. Because he himself had a question for this inquest. A matter of life rather than death.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Burndale, Yorkshire, October 6, 1828

  As it often did by late afternoon, the girls’ interest in their studies was flagging. Deliberately choosing an activity that would engage them, Beth placed a large round globe on the table and waited as the monitors collected the clay inkwells and set them on a tray. They had completed their dictation, and there was no sense inviting a spill.

  Watching the monitors with listless attention, Beth found her thoughts wandering a tortuous path, revisiting again and again the events of the previous days. She could almost convince herself that she had imagined the whole of it: the unseen eyes that watched her on the road and in the garden, the man who had lurked outside her chamber in the quiet hours of the night. Even the bloodstained handkerchief.

  Except... when she counted the squares of linen in her embroidery bag, one was missing.

  She pondered the situation from all possible perspectives. Was there true threat to her, or only some malicious intent to frighten?

  Perhaps Miss Doyle... But even as that possibility flitted through her thoughts, Beth disbelieved it. Eugenia Doyle was a woman who enjoyed witnessing the fruits of her spiteful actions at close association. She was not the sort to carry out a convoluted plot that would take her any distance from her prey. No, Miss Doyle had not left the handkerchief that night for Beth to find, and she had not crept into Beth’s chamber to steal it back.

  But someone had.

  With the inkwells safely collected, Beth gave permission for the pupils to leave their small desks and move closer. Murmuring and whispering and bumping shoulders
, they organized themselves around the table and the globe.

  As she waited, she traced the ocean and then the outline of a country.

  “Italy,” the girls chorused as one.

  Startled, Beth let her hand drop away.

  “Why did you all say that?” she asked, astounded.

  “Well, you pointed to Italy, did you not, Miss Canham? You pointed and we recited,” Lucy supplied, her expression wary, her tone faintly belligerent. “That is the way we learn our geography. We recite the countries on the globe, again and again and again.”

  This being the first time since her arrival at Burndale that Beth had incorporated the globe into their lessons, she had no firsthand knowledge of how it was routinely used. Recalling her own wonderful and fascinating studies of the world, Beth thought that the method of education Lucy described sounded both bland and sad.

  She had intended to use her mother’s fashion of teaching geography by employing riddles and puzzles that would catch the girls’ interest. She had not thought to merely have them speak a litany of names, but now that it had been pointed out to her, she realized that that was the exact methodology she had seen Miss Doyle employ with her pupils only the previous afternoon.

  “We will try something new today,” Beth said, and spun the globe a half turn, so the continent she wanted faced toward the group of girls. “I will offer a clue, then another and another, as necessary. The first girl to solve my riddle must raise her hand and name the place of which I speak. Then I shall ask her to show us all where it is located on the globe.”

  Blank stares greeted her announcement, and then a spark of interest. One girl at the front raised her hand.

  “Yes, Jane?”

  “Miss Canham, that sounds like a game,” the girl whispered. She tugged on her left earlobe, then brought her dark brown plait to her lips and chewed on the end of her hair.