Silence in the Library

by Katharine Schellman

  Whatever he had expected to find when he opened the door, it wasn’t the cloaked and veiled woman who waited on his doorstep. And he certainly hadn’t expected the face that greeted him when she lifted her veil.

  “Mrs. Adler!” Simon stared at her, anything polite he might have said or done forgotten in his surprise. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  “Good evening, Mr. Page. Might I come in?”

  There was a tremor in her voice, and he frowned as he opened the door wide enough to admit her, then closed it behind her.

  “How did you come here? Are you all right?”

  “I am perfectly well, thank you. I simply …” She lifted her chin. “It was a little difficult to find your home. The driver who brought me left me on St. John’s Place. By the way, as a policeman, I think you should know that there was a man lurking in that passage across the way.”

  “Lurking?” Simon said sharply. “What did he do? Are you—”

  “I am perfectly well,” she snapped, before taking a deep breath and closing her eyes. “I am a little shaken, but I am well.”

  “You oughtn’t to wander through London at night by yourself,” he said sternly, hoping she wouldn’t open her eyes and see the worried way he was looking her over.

  “Concerned I will make more work for the night watchmen?” she said with an attempt at lightness as she opened her eyes.

  “More like you’ll get your pockets picked or worse,” he said. “I thought you had more sense than that.”

  “I do, generally.” She sighed, seeming to deflate a little, and shivered. “But I needed to speak with you. And this time, it could not wait.”

  Even in the dim light, he could see that the expression in her eyes was too serious to doubt. He stepped aside without another word, trying to decide what made him more uncomfortable: the fact that she was wandering through London at night—through Clerkenwell, no less!—without anyone accompanying her, or the fact that she was going to see his home. The door opened into the front parlor, and though the girl-of-all-work who came each afternoon had left it spotlessly clean, there was no fire laid there and no candles to illuminate the room. Mrs. Adler passed on through without a word and made for the open door to the cozy, well-lit kitchen where he had just left Fanny.

  Simon closed his eyes in momentary embarrassment, thinking of Mrs. Adler’s splendid home on Half Moon Street, which, he didn’t doubt, had any number of parlors upstairs and down, all of them with fires laid by her polite and well-trained servants. But there was no help for it—and he liked his home. There was no shame in not being rich.

  He squared his shoulders and followed her through.

  Mrs. Adler was staring in a little bemusement at his niece, who was still bent over her book.

  Simon shook his head again, the smile creeping back over his face. “Fanny, what have we talked about? When a visitor arrives, you have to greet them.”

  Fanny nodded to show that she’d heard him, and he could see one finger tracing down the lines of her book to show him how close she was to the end of her page. Mrs. Adler watched the girl, a puzzled frown on her face, before he saw her lips draw into a small oh of understanding.

  When Fanny lifted her head and stood at last, there was nothing but polite friendliness on Mrs. Adler’s face, and Simon felt a rush of gratitude as he made the introduction.

  “Mrs. Adler, may I present my niece, Miss Fanny Andrews. Fanny, this is Mrs. Adler, who is a most distinguished guest.”

  Fanny looked her up and down with more assessment than curiosity and nodded. “Distinguished in this case meaning wealthy. Summer cloak, eight shillings a yard at least. Veil, Spanish lace, ten—”

  “Fanny,” said Simon sharply. “What have we said about discussing the cost of people’s clothing?”

  Fanny thought for a moment, then nodded. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Adler.”

  “That is quite all right, Miss Andrews,” Mrs. Adler said gently, and Simon was relieved to see that she was smiling. She gave him a quick look that had a hint of laughter in it, enough to tell him that she was not offended, before turning back to Fanny. “Your book seemed very engrossing. What is it about?”

  “Botany,” Fanny said, her eyes lighting up. “Do you like botany?”

  “I confess I do not know much about it. But I like flowers. My Christian name is after a flower, you know. Lily.”

  “Lily. The genus Lilium.” Fanny nodded, her expression serious. “Though there are many flowers called lilies that are not true lilies. Did you know the family Liliaceae was first described in the last century by the botanist Adanson? Or was it du Jussieu? No, he was the one who formally named it. But since then a number of flowers have been added to the—”

  “Fanny.” They all three turned to find Judith standing in the doorway, an apron over her dress and a harried look on her face.

  Simon was struck, every time he saw her, by how much Judith and the children looked alike, with their delicate features, creamy skin, and hair halfway between blond and red. The sister between him and Judith—the mother of Fanny and her brother George—had looked like them too, when she still lived. He was the odd one out in the family, an average-looking man with dark hair and an unremarkable face.

  Judith gave him a significant look, and he cleared his throat. “Mrs. Adler, my sister, Miss Page. Judith, this is Mrs. Adler.”

  Judith’s smile was both distracted and embarrassed. There was soap on the collar of her dress. Apparently George had been a handful that night. “A pleasure, Mrs. Adler. Fanny, what have we said about lecturing?”

  “It was not a lecture,” Fanny protested calmly. “Mrs. Adler asked about my book. And her Christian name is Lily, so I was telling her where—”

  “Fanny,” Simon said, his voice holding a little bit of warning and a lot of patience.

  Fanny sighed. “You came to talk to my uncle, not to me. And I am supposed to be going to bed.” She thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. Good night, Mrs. Adler. Good night, Uncle.”

  “Good night, Miss Andrews. I hope we will have a chance to talk about botany at another time.”

  Fanny paused in the doorway, ignoring Judith’s impatient grip on her arm. “Do you really hope that, or are you just being polite?” she asked with wide-eyed bluntness.

  Mrs. Adler laughed. “I really mean that. I wish I had been half so well educated when I was your age.” She glanced up from Fanny’s face. “My apologies for intruding on your evening, Miss Page.”

  Judith nodded. “We’ll leave you to your discussion. Come along, Fanny.”

  Simon cleared his throat. “Tea?” he asked, not sure what the correct course of action was when a lady of quality called on a policeman at his home after sunset.

  “Please.”

  He was glad she had agreed. It gave him something to do, setting the kettle on to boil and preparing the cups. He made sure not to grab either of the ones with chips in them, then grimaced over the lack of sugar in the house before he remembered that she didn’t take sugar in her tea anyway. He was used to noticing such things in his line of work.

  “She is a little like Arthur Wyatt.”

  The quiet observation caught Simon off guard; her comment had been said so neutrally, it was impossible to tell how she felt about it. “Yes,” he said at last, a little wary. “Not exactly alike. She took her time speaking, and she doesn’t like to be touched much either. But I think she lives a little more in this world than he does.”

  “She seems very bright.”

  He smiled. “She is. Right now, she’s fascinated with plants and botany. She’ll talk about them for hours if you don’t stop her, and she doesn’t always remember to check whether the person she’s talking to is interested in what she wants to say.” He hesitated, loyalty to his niece making him want to defend her. But Mrs. Adler wasn’t attacking. “Sometimes I think she’s always running the rules we’ve told her through her head, trying to remember the correct one. She doesn’t always get it quite right
.”

  “Well, that is true for all of us,” Mrs. Adler said lightly.

  She was trying to be kind. But Simon still shook his head, not wanting anyone—even in kindness—to undervalue the hard work his niece did each day. “It’s not the same.”

  To his surprise, Mrs. Adler blushed and looked away. “No, of course not.” She accepted the cup of tea he handed her, fiddling with the handle before she looked up again. “Is that why you were so good with Arthur? And so angry at your magistrate?”

  Simon let out a long breath, sitting down with his own tea at last. “Yes.” He gave her a stern look. “And as someone with a young girl in my charge, I hope she is never foolish enough to go wandering through London by herself, alone and defenseless.”

  “I am hardly defenseless, as you well know,” Mrs. Adler said, pulling something from beneath her cloak. The candlelight glinted on the barrel of a pistol as she laid it on the table between their teacups.

  For a moment they stared at each other, Mrs. Adler with her chin raised defiantly, Simon with his jaw clenched in disapproval. But he knew her well enough by this point to realize that she did not take frivolous risks. If she had come to see him, there was a good reason.

  “Why are you here?”

  Mrs. Adler turned the handle of her teacup slowly, as though thinking through how she wanted to respond. When she finally looked up, the expression in her eyes was hard to read. It might have been the triumph of a puzzle piece finally fitting into place. It might have been sorrow that she knew something and wished she didn’t.

  “Because I was walking with Lady Carroway today when we encountered Mr. Frank Wyatt,” she said softly. “And she noticed something that I had not. Frank Wyatt, in unguarded moments, calls his father’s wife Winnie.”

  “He calls you by your Christian name sometimes,” Simon pointed out.

  “Because he has known me since I was young enough to accidentally set one of my pigtails on fire. He would never presume otherwise.”

  “You did what?” he asked, distracted by trying to picture the elegant Mrs. Adler as an awkward child even younger than his niece.

  She made a face at him and ignored the question. “Lady Wyatt is insistent about who does and does not have permission to call her Winnie. I have heard her making a fuss about it.”

  Simon frowned. “Well, then, that’s damned rude of him.”

  “And Frank Wyatt is never rude,” she said, nodding. “I have known him as both a child and an adult. Infuriating, snobbish, charming, friendly—he runs the gamut. But he is never rude, and he is never uncouth. He would never call Lady Wyatt Winnie, not even in his thoughts, unless she had invited him to do so.”

  “But they don’t like each other,” Simon said slowly. He didn’t mean it as a protest but as a statement of fact, to be turned over in his mind as he decided whether it was indeed a fact or merely an assumption he hadn’t questioned.

  “And then I recalled that, according to my father, Sir Charles and Lady Wyatt married before she had a chance to meet either of his sons.”

  “Ahh.” Simon let out a long sigh and sat back in his chair, pressing his steepled fingers against his lips as he stared at the wall, thinking. “You think that they—”

  “Yes.”

  “And then …” He trailed off, but she knew what he was asking.

  “Yes.”

  “But why that night? It wasn’t a convenient moment to act. Lady Wyatt was, after all, expecting guests the next morning—you and Captain Hartley.”

  He glanced at her then, wondering if she had realized what the only answer could be. Of course she had. She wasn’t a lady who shied away from the dark parts of human nature.

  “And they were planning to leave any day for the country. And their own home in Devon is a secluded place, where they would be much more likely to escape detection.” She met his eyes. “The only reason possible is they had run out of time. The housekeeper heard Sir Charles upset that night. He was disgusted, she said. That something was unnatural. An abomination.”

  “So Percy Wyatt was telling the truth; his uncle did intend to make him his heir. But the question is still how Frank Wyatt could have managed it.” Simon stood up abruptly, beginning to pace around the room.

  “Did he?”

  Simon frowned at the question. “I thought that was what you were implying. Physically, he is the only one who could have. He might have killed his father before he even left for his club … But no, the butler came close enough to tell that Sir Charles was indeed asleep. He would have noticed then if he was dead, or even injured.”

  “No.” Mrs. Adler shook her head. “Not Frank. Arthur told us, though he did not realize it. She likes painting, he said.” She raised her fingers and wiggled them in the same gesture the boy had used. “And he mentioned painting at night.”

  Simon stared at her. “But that would mean …” He shuddered. “Dear God. But how could she have managed it?”

  “If you recall, the butler saw that Sir Charles had fallen asleep by the fire. And when I thought about the fact that Ellen Cook was poisoned, it made me wonder if Sir Charles might have been too. While he wasn’t given arsenic, he could have been given something else.”

  Simon suddenly understood. “Not a poison.”

  “Not quite a poison, no.” Mrs. Adler shook her head. “Just enough to leave him unconscious. And if you recall, Sir Charles’s gout was acting up that day, which likely meant he was in his wheeled chair.”

  “And Lady Wyatt was far from Wimpole Street when Ellen was killed.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ahh.” Simon let out a long breath and sat down abruptly. “So you think the two of them—”

  “Yes.” There was a wealth of horror and sorrow in the single word.

  He sighed again, then frowned. “It’s a damned disaster to prove, though.”

  Mrs. Adler was back to studying her teacup, and she nodded. “Fortunately, I have an idea for how we might convince them to confess all on their own.” When she glanced up, the horror was gone from her expression, replaced by something more uncertain, more resigned. “Unfortunately, I think that idea depends on my father’s cooperation.”

  * * *

  Mr. Pierce paced around the drawing room, his cane thumping against the carpeting. It was full dark, and he clearly had planned to go to bed after he returned from his club. But Lily hadn’t wanted to wait for morning. The thought of trying to convince him that she knew who had killed his friend while they faced each other over the breakfast table, helping themselves to tea and toast, seemed too jarring.

  So Lily had told him as soon as he got home. And now she watched his agitated progress, which stopped every few steps so he could turn to stare at her where she sat carefully perched on the edge of her chair.

  She wanted to keep her face neutral and calm, to live up to her father’s ideal of womanhood, as if by doing so she could at last persuade him to have confidence in her. But though she clasped her hands in her lap to keep them from trembling, she couldn’t keep the nervousness from her face or her voice. “Well, Father?”

  He stopped next to the fireplace, staring at it for several long moments as he leaned heavily on his cane. “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I am right,” Lily said, her voice quiet but firm. All her life, she had wanted her father to choose her over everyone else in his life. He never had. And just when she had persuaded herself that she didn’t care anymore, she found that she needed him to anyway, for very different reasons. “Because Charles Wyatt was your friend, and he deserved to live.” Ellen Cook had also deserved to live, but she knew that argument wouldn’t persuade her father.

  “And what happens if you are wrong?”

  Lily bit the inside of her cheek. “Then I am thoroughly embarrassed.”

  “As am I.”

  She took a deep breath. “But I am not wrong.”

  “You are a brazen hussy to even be thinking about such things.”

  “I am. An
d if I had been your son, you would have admired me for it deeply.”

  “But you are not a son,” he snapped.

  “No.”

  Lily wished she had someone standing by her side to help her persuade him. But she knew he wouldn’t bow to pressure from anyone else. And—God forgive her if it didn’t work—she wanted him to believe her on her own merit, not because anyone else told him to.

  The ticking of the clock was thunderous in the silence that hung between them. Lily didn’t look away or blink, as if somehow she could convince him just by holding his gaze long enough.

  “Frank Wyatt is like a son to me.” There was no knowing what thoughts were behind the words.

  She lifted her chin, refusing to look away. “But he is not your son. And I am your daughter. You said it yourself, Father. I got my brains from you. So how much are those brains worth?”

  CHAPTER 26

  It had to be done in Lily’s home, Mr. Page had decided, to get the staging just right. To put the players in their game where they needed to be.

  Lily’s part of it was an invitation that Lady Wyatt join her for the morning, delivered by Jack. When she pressed, he had—with a degree of embarrassment that surprised her—admitted that the elegant widow seemed to have a preference for his company. He was happy to put that preference to use, departing soon after Mr. Page arrived with Percy Wyatt. The constable was grim faced, the young man anxious and confused, insisting that they explain what was happening and pouting when they told him he would have to wait.

  A half hour later they were in the small garden behind the house, a space barely big enough for two benches facing each other on a square of grass, surrounded by a border of summer-green shrubs. Lily held her breath as she heard Jack’s chuckle coming toward them, Lady Wyatt’s gentler laugh, just the right amount of amusement allowed for a new widow—calm, a little sad, perfectly proper.

  Beside her on the bench, Percy Wyatt fidgeted. Standing behind them, Mr. Page shifted a bare amount, then was still again.

  They had taken some time to debate where he should be. Inside, where he could be recognized later, without scaring their suspects away? But he had pointed out that it was important for him to hear whatever Lady Wyatt might say. So they waited in the tiny garden together, until Jack emerged from the house with Lady Wyatt on his arm.