Death Will Find Me (A Tessa Kilpatrick Mystery, Book 1)

by Vanessa Robertson

  ‘Good afternoon. I’ve come to see William Forrester, if that’s possible please?’ Tessa smiled, disarming and guileless. It struck her that, given her telephone call an hour or so earlier to request that visitors be kept away from him, she really shouldn’t be allowed to see Forrester.

  ‘Of course madam. He doesn’t get many visitors so he’ll be pleased to see you.’ The man was clearly oblivious to her earlier message. He came out from behind his desk and pointed along the corridor. ‘I saw him going into the library a little while ago. I don’t think there’s anyone else in there so you can talk in peace. Can I take a note of your name for my records?’

  ‘It’s Lady Kilpatrick. My late husband served with him.’ Tessa took a step in the direction indicated, and then paused. ‘So, he’s had no other visitors today?’

  ‘Not today. Not this week, I don’t think. His mother a fortnight or so ago but she lives in Lanarkshire so doesn’t get up here as often as she’d like.’

  Tessa smiled politely and continued on towards the library, sensing that she might already be too late. The easiest and most invisible way for Georgina to reach Forrester would be to continue hiding in plain sight. It had worked before after all. Housemaid, charwoman, rambler – all anonymous – just another nurse among so many others would not be noticed. It was such an obvious way to avoid detection that Tessa kicked herself for not realising it sooner. Indeed, it was a tactic that had stood Tessa in good stead in the past, and she was furious that she hadn’t thought of it before. She was reminded that Georgina was not an opponent to be underestimated.

  The hospital library was wood panelled and spacious. A fire burned in the grate and the shelves were well-stocked: donations from the well-meaning and literary-minded of the city were clearly generous. The room seemed deserted at first and then she spotted a man in tweeds and a jersey sitting in a wing-backed armchair near the window. A book lay open on his lap, unseen as he gazed out across the lawns at the falling snow. This must be Major Forrester. Laying her coat down on a chair, Tessa took a few steps towards him and called his name softly but he didn’t look round. Reaching his chair, she looked around and stopped abruptly as she saw the nurse standing in a recess of the library shelving, about ten yards behind Forrester’s chair.

  For an instant, Tessa felt relieved and then she saw the flicker of recognition in the woman’s eye and caught her breath. This was no nurse, here to care for Forrester in his shell-shocked state but Georgina Bartlett, with a far more brutal purpose. The neat nurse’s uniform was worn correctly; no-one would spot that she didn’t belong here. Even the expression on Georgina’s face was suitably bland and professional, with a hint of a caring smile. Tessa tried to place her, to remember her from that last house party but she couldn’t. But Georgina’s face showed that she knew exactly who Tessa was. A blue blanket, as though she had come to check that Forrester was warm enough, hung over Georgina’s forearm and her right hand was tucked beneath it.

  Tessa realised what was beneath the blanket, knew that Georgina’s plan had probably been to shoot Forrester quickly while he was alone. Then she would tuck the gun out of sight once again and walk away. Assuming that no-one heard the gunshot, no-one would notice anything out of the ordinary until Forrester’s body was discovered. That could be hours depending on the reading habits of the patients, by which time Georgina would be long gone.

  Tessa felt some admiration. Georgina was clever and brave, in her way. During the war, she would have been a respected and valued comrade. Now though, bent on some desperate plan to protect her brother at all costs, her mind disturbed enough to have murdered three men, she was dangerous. Tessa’s right hand slid beneath her jersey, round to her back where the grip of the Luger fitted her hand with a deadly familiarity. Slowly she withdrew the gun and brought her hand back round to her side. She was partly hidden from Georgina’s view by the armchair where Forrester still gazed out of the window, oblivious.

  ‘Georgina, drop it.’ Tessa wanted to avoid saying the word ‘gun’ in case it alarmed the man next to her. She wanted to keep everything as calm as possible but also knew that Georgina was too far down this path to stop now without a struggle. Tessa’s pulse was racing; every sense alert to the instinct to fight or take flight even though she knew that to fight was her only option.

  ‘No.’ Georgina’s eyes left her quarry and met Tessa’s. ‘You should be thanking me, not interfering. I did you a favour by disposing of that worthless husband of yours.’

  ‘I didn’t need you to do that.’

  ‘No, you were going to leave him. I know all about it. No-one notices the maid in a dark corner listening. But I saved you the bother of that. Much easier for you, and being a widow is better than being a divorcée, don’t you think?’

  ‘I would rather have divorced him. It wasn’t necessary for you to kill James.’

  ‘Of course it was necessary.’ A flash of anger, a twitch of the gun beneath the blanket. ‘I couldn’t risk him telling anyone that the court martial was a cover up, could I? What would have happened to John? He could have ended up in prison.’

  ‘What exactly did John do?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Georgina was surprised and Tessa shook her head. ‘It was John who was the coward. He was the one who froze, who didn’t obey orders, but he blamed it on Norrie Douglas.’

  ‘Are you quite sure?’ Tessa was playing for time. If she could keep Georgina talking then maybe she’d be able to dissuade her from her plan or edge close enough to disarm her.

  ‘He told me all about it when he was a patient here. John says that the three on the panel knew fine what had happened but John was an officer like them, and so they protected him.’

  ‘Those men you killed saved his life. So why kill them now?’

  ‘Because they might talk. What if one of them had a fit of conscience and tried to clear Norrie’s name? Then John might be taken away. I can’t risk that.’

  ‘I’m sure John wouldn’t—’

  ‘He’s all I have left.’ Georgina interrupted her, spitting out the words. ‘If one of them had come clean then it all would have come out. John might have been taken away, put in prison, worse even. I have done what I needed to do to protect my brother.’

  ‘But this isn’t the right way to put things right.’

  ‘John did what he did because he was shell-shocked. They should have looked after him when he came home injured, not sent him back to the trenches.’

  ‘And what about Norrie Douglas? Wouldn’t it be good to clear his name?’

  ‘There’s no point now. He’s dead and gone. I just want to keep John safe.’

  Tessa could say nothing. She understood perfectly. Georgina had lost her husband and one of her brothers. The other was so damaged that he would never be more than a vestige of the man he used to be. He wasn’t much these days, but he was all she had.

  ‘I can’t let you do this, Georgina. Those men at the court martial were wrong to cover this up. Maybe they didn’t even realise that Norrie was innocent and it was John who was lying to them? War is different. We do things at the time that will haunt us forever.’ Tessa had her own ghosts, safely packed away for the most part.

  She spoke quietly, still trying to avoid disturbing the man beside her, although it seemed that nothing would break his concentration, that thousand-yard stare that saw everything and nothing. Moving out from behind the chair, she took a step towards Georgina, the gun in her right hand visible at her side, a warning more than a threat. A few years ago, her reactions would have been faster than the other woman’s and she hoped that was still the case.

  There was silence for a few moments as Georgina sized up her opponent. Tessa took another slow step towards her and Georgina panicked, turning and fleeing through the open door. She slammed it behind her, and the extra couple of seconds it took Tessa to heave it open gave Georgina a head start; by the time Tessa reached the corridor, Georgina was almost out of sight as she fled, her shoes clattering on the linoleum.
Tessa raised her gun but the other woman was too far away and so she sprinted after her, heart pounding.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Tessa gave chase down the long corridors, skidding on the polished linoleum. The other woman had the advantage of a head start, but Tessa had longer legs and grim determination on her side and she was gaining on her. She had no real plan as to what she was going to do when she caught up with Georgina. Avoid getting shot at, she rather hoped, but beyond that all she could hope for was that Georgina would give herself up or that she could manage to overpower her somehow. Before she was injured, she’d have thought nothing of this, caught up with her by now probably, but it had been a long time since she’d had to pursue an enemy.

  Georgina ran down a flight of stairs and Tessa followed, half-jumping down them in a bid to catch her. At the bottom she barrelled through a swing door and found herself in a long corridor in the basement. Tessa paused, cocking an ear for the sound of running feet or the draught from an open door, but she could hear nothing beyond the roar of the furnaces and the clanking of the hot-water pipes. The air was warm and damp with a faint smell of scorched cotton from the laundry rooms. This was the engine house of the institution and it was a warren of storerooms and coal cellars.

  Tessa looked around. A main hallway stretched before her, with doors off to one side. The electric overhead lights were flickering slightly. Flattening her back against the wall, gun held ready, Tessa made her way along the corridor, looking into each room as she passed, tense and watchful. The place was huge and labyrinthine, Georgina could be anywhere. She listened for signs of life but there was just the noise of machinery.

  Then she froze. A noise close by, scratching. Back to the wall, gun raised, Tessa scanned the hallway. Nothing. She heard the noise again, higher this time, and looked up. On a pipe that ran at ceiling height, a small brown mouse looked back at her. Tessa took a deep breath, and returned to edging along the corridor, clearing each room before moving further down. She wasn’t sure what she’d do if she got to the end and ’didn’t find Georgina. Take the outside door perhaps and go round to the front to alert the staff and telephone the police perhaps? But catching Georgina herself would be more satisfying.

  In one room, she thought she saw something move and stretched out an arm to flick the light on, half-expecting it to be just another mouse. As soon as she turned her back on the corridor she sensed someone behind her, someone who grabbed a handful of hair and jabbed what felt like the muzzle of a pistol against her spine.

  ‘Why don’t you give up?’ Georgina was angry at being thwarted. Her breath was hot on the back of Tessa’s neck as she yanked her head back.

  ‘Georgina, stop. There’s no need for this. People will understand why you felt you had to kill them.’ Tessa thought that no-one would understand but she hoped that she could talk the other woman into giving herself up.

  ‘No they won’t.’ A jab with the gun. ‘You’ve brought this on yourself you know.’

  ‘How come?’ Tessa kept very still, hoping that Georgina wouldn’t notice she was still armed.

  ‘Interfering. I told you in those notes to stop sticking your nose in or more people would be killed. You were warned.’

  ‘People know I’m here, Georgina. People know that you’re the murderer and that I came here to look for you. Even if you shoot me, you won’t be able to get away from the police.’ Tessa tried to edge away but Georgina still had a vice-like grip on her hair.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘What’s that noise?’

  It was hardly original, but it was enough of a ruse that Georgina’s attention was distracted just long enough that Tessa was able to twist away. In the struggle, Georgina’s gun went off and Tessa felt a searing streak of pain in her arm. She gasped, shocked at the pain. Looking down she saw the ragged edges of her cashmere sweater. But the wound wasn’t bleeding much and she avoided looking more closely, not wanting to see the damage. It didn’t feel serious, thankfully. She breathed deeply, willing away the nausea. Georgina took her chance and ran.

  Tessa was tired, her arm hurt and the back of her scalp was tender. She thought about letting Georgina go; it wouldn’t be tricky for the police to find her. But the woman who’d earned those medals didn’t back down and so she gave chase once again. This time, Georgina didn’t lie in wait but heaved open a door at the end of the corridor and vanished from sight.

  Following her, Tessa burst out into the whirling snow, now falling faster. Georgina was setting off up the slope, moving slower as the snow pulled at her skirts. Tessa took off at a steeper angle, wanting to get to higher ground before she challenged her enemy. She was breathless, glad to reach a vantage point and be able to turn, screaming to Georgina to stop, sighting her gun on the woman’s stumbling form.

  ‘Stop!’ she yelled again, and this time Georgina obeyed, turning to face Tessa.

  ‘Let me go. You can’t bring James back by stopping me now.’

  ‘I know that. I know. But I can’t let you get away either. Put the gun down.’

  ‘You could let me go. No-one need know. You could tell the police that I was too fast for you.’

  ‘No, Georgina. That’s not the sort of person I am.’ Tessa still held her gun steady, not letting her guard down.

  ‘All I did was protect my brother, can’t you see that?’

  ‘But you killed other people to cover up what he did. That doesn’t make it better.’ Tessa wondered if poor, disturbed Georgina really did see there was a difference or whether she had convinced herself she was justified in her actions.

  ‘And John? What will happen to him?’ Georgina sank to her knees, oblivious to the snow. It was as though reaching this point, where she knew there was no escape, had drained every last scrap of energy from her. The hand that held her gun was shaking.

  ‘I don’t know, Georgina. But if you turn yourself in now, you might be treated more leniently. You’ve suffered such dreadful losses.’ Tessa knew in her heart there was no way Georgina would be treated kindly after murdering three men, but the only thing she could think about was persuading the other woman to put down the gun that she still clutched in her right hand.

  ‘They’ll hang me for this, won’t they?’ Georgina’s voice was quiet, the enormity of her situation overwhelming her.

  ‘I don’t know. But it can only help if you turn yourself in. It can’t make things worse, can it? Please put the gun down.’

  The two women were some twenty-five feet apart. Tessa thought about making a dive for the gun but it was too far and too slippery. The snow was falling ever more heavily and her hands were almost numb, but she still kept the Luger steady, trained on Georgina.

  If the other woman made a move, could she shoot her? Tessa hoped she wouldn’t have to find out. Georgina cut a piteous figure, kneeling in the snow, wiping away a few tears. But this was the woman who had shot James in the temple, as cool as anything, before setting the scene to look like a suicide. She’d shot Callum McKenzie and Robbie McNiven in cold blood, and Tessa would never forget the keening grief of Mrs McNiven. Georgina had suffered terrible losses but she didn’t have the right to dispose of those whom she felt posed a threat to her brother. Tessa felt some sympathy, but not forgiveness.

  ‘Please put the gun down. Please.’ Tessa’s teeth started to chatter and the pain of snowflakes like needles landing on her gunshot wound was making her feel a little faint. All she wanted was for Georgina to relinquish her weapon. She heard voices behind her and turned to see figures making their way through the snow towards her. She recognised Bill and Rasmussen and saw the dark uniforms of a couple of constables. Waving her good arm, she yelled at them to stop.

  ‘Keep back. She’s got a gun.’

  On reflection, it wasn’t surprising Georgina decided to take that way out. She knew there was no going back from here, and what awaited her was either the hangman’s noose or life in an institution for the criminally insane. While Tessa’s attention was distracted by the approac
hing men, Georgina held the barrel to her own temple and pulled the trigger, ending her own life with the same brutal wound as she’d inflicted on James.

  Tessa’s head whipped round at the shot and she automatically took a few steps towards the fallen woman before she realised there was nothing she could do. Instead, she stood transfixed as blood spread outwards from Georgina’s head, staining the snow, around her, a dark crimson.

  She felt so many emotions at once. Anger that Georgina would not now stand trial for what she’d done, horror at what the other woman had inflicted on herself, even guilt that she might have acted differently and maybe prevented this.

  Exhausted by the pursuit of the last hour and the tension of the last few weeks, Tessa felt faint and sank to her knees in the snow, her gun still in her hand. It was over, it was all over. She wouldn’t have to be looking over her shoulder all the time, or wondering which of James’s mistresses had been angry enough to kill him, nor to pay heed to the whispers of people who wondered whether she had got away with murder.

  As she looked at Georgina’s crumpled body, Tessa didn’t feel the cold any more, just a deep sadness that a soldier whose mind had been damaged by the war had been so desperate to cover up his own terror, he let another man go to his death. And that tragedy had rippled on and on, together with the death of Georgina’s fiancé and their other brother, culminating in this terrible bloodshed; Georgina had thought this was the only way to hang on to the vestiges of the only family she had left. Actions that she might have expected to make her feel better but which never would have.