My umbrella was still right where I had tossed it, for which I was grateful, as the rain had begun to pick up again while I was inside. I strode out of the alley’s mouth with my eyes down, holding the umbrella low over my head even though there was scant risk that I could get any wetter than I already was. I kept debating whether to omit the charge to our pocketbook in the retelling of my dubious journey to Colin.
I charged across White Horse Lane, trying to pick my way carefully through the detritus adrift along the edges of the street, intending to head back to the Underground. It was difficult enough to get a cab to come down here on the best of days but perfectly impossible on a day such as this. So it came as a great surprise when a short young man with a cap on his head publicizing his profession as a cab driver began to wave wildly at me from just up the street. At first I thought he must surely be calling to someone else, somebody behind me, but he kept his gaze rigidly set on me even as he started to jog toward me.
“Sir . . .” he called as I came into earshot. “It’s the lady. She needs you right away, sir.”
He beckoned me and started back the way he had come, and for some reason my heart immediately began to ratchet with unease. There was only one reason Mrs. Behmoth would ever be forced out on such a day as this to fetch me—something had happened to Colin and his father. I took off after the diminutive man, letting the umbrella slip down to my shoulder as I rushed to the black coach he was now standing beside. Rain was dripping off the poor man’s cap, nose, and chin, and I knew the same was true of me, but none of it mattered in the least as he yanked the coach’s door open with welcomed precision, allowing me to scramble inside at the same instant that I pulled my useless umbrella closed.
But it was not Mrs. Behmoth’s round face that stared back at me through the muted gray light of this oppressive day, but the startlingly delicate features of Charlotte Hutton.
I fell into the seat across from her at the same moment the driver heaved the door shut, trying to collect my breath and thoughts. “What . . . ?” I started to say before deciding to let her speak first.
“You must forgive me,” she spoke softly. She was wrapped in a black cloak from neck to toe and had a plain black hat pulled low over her face so that not so much as a strand of her hair could be seen. Her alabaster skin looked like a single point of light in the midst of an otherwise starless night.
“Forgive you . . . ?” I asked. For of all the things I could have imagined her saying, those words would not have been amongst them.
“I had you followed when you left your flat this morning,” she explained without artifice. “I am convinced that your Mr. Pendragon has already made up his mind about me, so I am hoping that you are a man of reason who will listen to what I have told you and hear the truth in my words. There is nothing more that I seek than a chance to start anew, away from here, with my daughter. A simple life, Mr. Pruitt. I do not ask for more than a small house and the funds to keep us safe and cared for. We are only two women; we shall not require much.”
I stared back at her, enfolded in her firmament of blackness, her blue eyes the only color showing against the paleness of her face. But those eyes were wary and watchful, and I knew she was measuring me, searching to see if I was, in fact, the man she hoped me to be. “For a woman who asserts the simplicity of her needs, you managed to end up with an extraordinary amount of money at your disposal. I wonder what would have become of that wealth had the Swiss not cut your access to those funds.”
The thinnest of glimmers flashed behind her eyes as one corner of her mouth nudged the tiniest bit. “We both know I would be lying if I tried to answer that question, Mr. Pruitt. When I arrived in Geneva and realized what Wynn Tessler had done . . .” She let her voice trail off and glanced out the window a moment. “I thought for the first time in my life I was free of any man.” She slid her eyes back to mine and gave a wearied exhalation. “You cannot understand. It is impossible for you to know. So I would indeed be lying if I told you I did not look at that money as recompense for everything I had endured—by Arthur, by Wynn Tessler. The loses I suffered, the cruelty . . .” A hand moved up and touched the throat of her cloak, and I was reminded of the scars she had shown me, and I wondered if that was her intent. “I would like to say that I would only have taken what I needed and left the rest behind, but I dare not admit any such thing.” Her eyes bore into mine. “Could you assure anything further than what I have said, Mr. Pruitt, were you to have trod on the same path that I have done?”
I found that I could not answer. Had she continued to stare out the window I might well have been able to cobble some nonsense together to insist otherwise, but her gaze did not waver, and I was certain she would see that I was a man who would have fled with the money in an instant were I still the person who lived on these very streets. “It is not for me to give any of that money away. . . .” I started to say, but got no further when I noticed her stiffen in her seat, her eyes instantly clouding over.
“Would you have me take you to my rooms to disrobe so that you can see the full extent of what was wrought against me?” she demanded. “Or perhaps you would prefer that I do it here and now?!” And in that same instant she began to fumble with the tie at the collar of her cloak.
“No, madam!” I yelped. “I have already seen your wounds. I do not doubt my eyes any more than I require further proof of what befell you. Nevertheless, seven people were murdered, including an inspector of Scotland Yard. . . .”
“And I murdered none of them!” she hurled back, her voice low and hard. “Do you forget that my own son was one of those victims?”
“Of course not.” A heavy exhalation escaped me as I rubbed at my eyes, trying to think how I could rescue this conversation. “If there is some arrangement to be devised for you and your daughter with regards to this money, it can only be earned if you come with me to the Yard.”
“I have already told you that Wynn Tessler would have me murdered before I could even finish my statement. You are foolish if you think he is to be dismissed simply because you have him behind bars.”
“And I gave you my word that Colin and I would protect you. . . .”
“Your word . . .” She gave a harsh, dry chuckle. “I cannot see what difference you word will make when my throat has been sliced from ear to ear.”
“Then come with me to my flat to speak with Mr. Pendragon,” I offered, my eyes as beseeching as my voice. “He will know what other options we might pursue. After all, it was his father who procured the sequestration of your Swiss funds in the first place.” And the instant the words left my mouth I cursed their very formation on my tongue.
Charlotte Hutton leaned back, surprise and satisfaction appearing to fight for control of her gaze. “Of course,” she said, and I knew how seriously I had blundered. “Then I have been right all along about Mr. Pendragon. But I have been mistaken about you.” Her eyes held such accusation that I had to look away. “So I am just another hysterical woman who likely earned what she received . . . ?”
“You have misunderstood my intention,” I answered, and yet I sounded weak and unconvincing even to my own ears.
“Have I?” She continued to grip the neck of her cloak with one hand as though it was the only thing between myself and her honor. “I think not, though I can see now that I have wasted your time. You must forgive me.”
She stared at me with a look as much filled with regret as it seemed to be rife with betrayal. I knew that I needed to say something, something that might bind her here while I tried to discern a way to bridge the chasm that I had stupidly flung us into. There had to be something I could say that might give her pause, if not to meet with Colin then at least to talk with me again, but as I sat there, slack-jawed and empty, nothing would present itself. And before the span of another moment could pass she leaned forward and burst out of the cab, slamming the door behind herself with such force that it momentarily froze me to my seat.
That was all the time it took before
some baser instinct screeched across my brain so that in the next moment I too leapt for the door, fumbling to twist the handle and yet finding it inexplicably unyielding. I threw my shoulder against it and still it did not give. Had she slammed it so hard that the mechanism had broken?
I slid across the seat and shoved the opposite door wide, jumping out into a fresh downpour even as I skittered around the coach and up onto the sidewalk. The cab driver was standing there, looking every bit the drowned rat, staring at me with astonishment, but I had no interest in him. I scanned the street one direction and then the other, trying to spot Mrs. Hutton, but there were too many people moving about, all hunched beneath umbrellas as they scurried to get out of the downpour.
“Where is she?” I hollered at the driver. “Which way did she go?”
He stared at me with shock and fear in his eyes, and it was only then that I noticed his arm closest to the coach was gradually sliding back down to his side. The bastard had been blocking the door.
Rage exploded in my brain, for my failure at Freddie Nettle’s, for my failure with Charlotte Hutton, and for the way in which this wretched man had stymied me. And without a single thought, as the rain and wind pounded against me as if to finally seep directly into my bones, I reared back and punched him in the jaw.
CHAPTER 16
“I wouldn’t believe it if I ’adn’t seen it for meself,” Mrs. Behmoth said with a frown as she set a bowl of warm, salted water onto the table in front of me. “Fightin’ like a street cur. You’ve been livin’ with that one too long,” she added with a nod of her chin toward Colin.
I was sitting at the kitchen table in fresh undergarments with my robe flung loosely over my shoulders, trying my best to ignore her as I delicately coaxed my right hand into the water. It felt soothing on my fingers up to the point when it began lapping at my knuckles, and then it was as though the water had abruptly burst into flame, licking at the raw wounds and severed flesh there. Without even meaning to I yanked my hand out, intending to have another go at it once I better girded myself, but before I could release even a single yelp I heard Mrs. Behmoth release a tsk and then her meaty hand came down over mine, shoving my fist fully into the water.
“Some kind a ruffian you are,” she scolded.
“Leave him be,” Colin said as he came over to me, tossing a set of barbells around as though they carried no weight at all. “I’m proud of Ethan.”
“You would be,” she grumbled, folding her arms across her chest in an unmitigated display of her obvious disapproval.
“No one is going to get the best of us,” he went right on as though she hadn’t said a word. “That sod has learned his lesson, and when we pay him a visit later today, I’m sure he’ll sing like Jenny Lind used to.”
“You sound like a bloody rooster.” Mrs. Behmoth scowled.
Colin ignored her again, turning to me with an eagerness I had never expected, given how truly unsuccessful my morning had been. “Next time you need to punch someone do it from below so you won’t do as much damage to your hand.”
“Next time . . . ?” I started to say before opting to hold my tongue. If some newer, more compelling perspective of who I was had suddenly blossomed in Colin’s mind, then who was I to fiddle with that?
“If you have the misfortune of speaking to that Hutton woman again you should be sure to make her your next target. That woman is an infuriating passel of lies.” He hoisted the barbells with renewed vigor as he stalked repeatedly around the table. “She means to seduce you with her lies. She has an answer for everything and yet refuses to meet with me. Hers is a dark bloody heart.”
“She claims you have already condemned her and would sooner see her in prison than investigate the possibility of some truth on her part. I tried to convince her otherwise, but you must remember that she has had a sorrowful time of it with the men in her life. Don’t forget that I have seen some of the wounds and scars left behind on her body attesting to that very thing.”
“And I will remind you that there are many ways to become scarred,” Colin fired back.
“Wot married person ain’t got a scar or two from their ’usband or wife?” Mrs. Behmoth added. “It’s jest the way of it. Means ya love ’em.”
I looked at her with a mixture of disbelief and horror. “I really don’t think that’s true.”
“Wadda you know. Ya ain’t even married.” She shoved herself up from the table and began puttering at the sink.
“Your husband was just cowed,” Colin said to her back, his mouth ticking up at the corners. “You didn’t scar him, you drove him to an early death.”
She gave a peevish shrug and glanced back, tossing Colin a wearied look. “That man could be tryin’. But we ’ad our fun when ’e did as ’e was told.”
“There it is.” Colin snickered as he finally plopped down in the seat she had vacated, though he continued to pump the barbells as though to stop might cause his body to cease functioning. “And now I believe it is high time for us to pay a visit to that Mrs. Denmark we keep hearing about.” Colin’s cerulean eyes were hugely round and full of verve. “If there really was dissension in the Hutton household, then there is staff who will know about it. I can only presume that the Denmark woman will have placed at least some of them there. Or she will be likely to know where any former staff may have ended up.”
“Denmark?” I repeated. “Do you mean Mrs. Deholm? The woman who places household staff that Mr. Galloway and Miss Whit mentioned?”
“Yes.” He waved me off as though I were addled. “We shall check in with her and then we will find your cab driver. I am most eager to see if he won’t be much more cooperative now. Go get yourself dressed and Mrs. Behmoth will bandage your knuckles.” She gave another tsk, but Colin only chuckled.
His amusement did nothing for my state of mind. Why I had decided it acceptable to strike a man who most certainly had no idea of the magnitude of his actions I could not say, but it left me feeling neither proud nor satisfied. The shredding of my knuckles and the ache it left behind was something I knew I deserved. Nevertheless, I dutifully went upstairs and dressed as quickly as I could before allowing Mrs. Behmoth to fuss over my hand with some gooey salve and a bandage I was certain she took great pleasure in binding too tight.
Colin hailed a cab while I shrugged into a dry coat, my first still hanging like a drowned carcass in front of the fireplace on the far side of the kitchen. I would be lucky if I could wear it again in a week’s time. A moment later we were on our way to Mayfair to meet with Mrs. Denholm.
“How did it go with Lord Endicott?” I asked as we clattered around Hyde Park.
“Well, I didn’t punch him in the jaw, if that’s what you mean,” he answered with a snort.
“You aren’t funny.”
“Do I need to watch myself to make sure I don’t make you cross in the future?”
“You’d best,” I shot back. “Now tell me about Lord Endicott.”
“I know this will come as something of a surprise to you,” Colin said with a thick dose of mockery in his voice, “but Lord Endicott is a pompous blowhard who loves nothing more than to hear the sound of his own voice.”
“Shocking,” I replied flatly.
He chuckled. “My father did his share of the talking, of course. He really is a master at spinning gold out of straw. I said as little as possible and treated His Lordship with the deference he feels he deserves, and after we had finished tea and my father had exhausted his inquiries into all of their common chums, we were allowed to make our escape.”
“And what did you tell him about the investigation into his sister’s death?”
“That while I did not believe she had killed herself, I was not yet willing to state that Mr. Nettle was necessarily involved, either.”
“And . . .”
He shrugged his shoulders lightly as we pulled up to a four-story brick building in a row of similar structures. “It seemed to suit him for now.”
“How long is
now . . . ?” I pressed, even as Colin reached for the carriage door.
“Until the next time his sister calls him up to complain about us,” he answered as he popped out and strode purposefully away.
I gave the driver half of his fare, which proved something of a challenge as I could barely slide the fingers of my injured hand into my pocket, and bid him wait for us. Far better to have him at our call than to try to find another cab on such a dismal day as this. The rain had let up but the wind still howled, forcing me to hold my hat in place with my good hand as I made my way up the front porch to where Colin was already disappearing inside the flat.
“Mr. Pruitt . . .” An elegant woman in her late middle years ushered me inside a few steps behind Colin, her figure immaculate beneath a form-fitting ivory dress with bold navy stripes and a high collar of lace that wrapped around the back of her neck. Her brown hair was a pile of finger-sized curls situated just so, but it was the warmth in her eyes that most caught my attention. “I cannot tell you what an honor it is to invite two such notable men into my house,” she said as she led us into her front parlor just off the small entranceway.
The room clearly served a dual purpose, as along with a large sofa and two delicate, matching French chairs there were two desks situated along the wall astride the fireplace. One was tall and open with an array of cubbies along its inside face, and the other was a large flat table with swooping swan’s-neck legs. It held a collection of small baskets stuffed with papers while at its side stood a large wooden cabinet whose contents, I was sure, were yet more papers and files.
“Please make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen.” She gestured us toward the sofa as she went over to a side table beneath the front window and picked up a tea tray. “You are just in time to share a small repast,” she said with a smile as she set it down on the table across from us and seated herself in one of the fragile-looking French chairs. She looked to be the only one of us slight enough to use it. “I have egg sandwiches and some spinach-and-cucumber sandwiches, and I bought this shortbread from the bakery down the street if you are willing to splurge a bit.”
The Endicott Evil Page 16
