Bernadette waddled away into the nanny's room.
“It won't do you any good,” she called to Marjorie as she left. “Not that that's ever stopped you before …”
“What about you?” Marjorie shot at Amalia.
“Oh, I'm staying,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I want to see it.”
“Good – then stand back.”
Marjorie adjusted the gun on her shoulder. Amalia gave a wide smirk and moved to get behind her sister-in-law's back. I pressed my toes into the floor, readying myself.
“I warned you,” Marjorie said to Lennox. “I warned you – and now you're going to pay.”
“I can't pay for something I didn't do,” he replied.
“Go ahead and deny it up to the end, then. But don't think that I won't tell the police that you admitted everything before I was forced to shoot the both of –”
But she never finished the sentence, because I leaped up from the cot and plowed myself toward her, stabbing the letter opener as hard as I could into her arm. She let out a wail and swung toward me, her hands tightening on the gun, but –
Lennox seized the barrel and shoved it down just as she squeezed the trigger. Another shot rang out, disappearing into the floorboards next to my feet, and Amalia screamed and jumped back.
“Shoot, Marjorie! Shoot!” she demanded, but Marjorie was fighting for control of the weapon with Lennox, both of them grappling with their uninjured arms. I swiped the blade of the letter opener against her fingers so she'd release her grip, but then –
Amalia grabbed the gun from between Marjorie's slipping fingers and wrenched it back from Lennox. She barely had it in her hands a second before –
BANG!
My eardrum exploded from the sound and the smell of burnt hair filled my nostrils. The bullet had barely missed my flesh. I stumbled back, one hand on the side of my head to stop the ringing and the other searching for something that would help me regain my balance.
“Can't you aim?” Marjorie screamed. “Stick it in her stomach if you have to!”
But as Amalia started forward, Lennox launched at her and grabbed her around the middle, then threw her with all his might toward the wall. She hit the door frame and rolled onto her back, shrieking with pain. The gun rolled from her hands.
“No!” Marjorie yelled as I dove toward it, and no sooner had my fingers closed over it than her foot slammed into my head. I howled in pain as my ear ruptured further, my eyes watering before I could stop them. She seized the gun and swirled it around as Lennox charged toward her, then –
BANG!
I heard him give a brief cry before he fell to the floor, and I jumped up and plowed into Marjorie, knocking her backwards over Amalia's body. She fell with a thud and a curse into the nanny's room, the gun still clutched in her hands. I lunged forward to grab it away, but my foot caught on Amalia's tangled form, knocking me down and giving Marjorie enough time to turn the gun toward me. Amalia scrambled between Marjorie's leg to get out of her line of fire, but I jumped back into the nursery and shoved the door closed, then grabbed for the key in my pocket and locked it shut.
“Lennox –” I started. “How bad –?”
“I'm – fine.” He staggered to his feet, his hand now clutching his side. Blood was pooling through his shirt. “But we – they'll get in –”
“I know.” I rushed to the heavy metal crib, shoving it across the floor. “That's why – we – have to – get out.”
Once the crib was at the door, I hooked the metal frame beneath the doorknob to ensure it stayed closed, then went to get the cot.
The doorknob rattled and then a fist slammed against the wood.
“They locked the door!” Amalia shouted.
“Forget it!” Marjorie returned, and a moment later another bullet rang through the air. She was shooting off the lock.
I yanked the mattress from the cot and folded the frame in half as though preparing to put it back in storage, then lifted the whole thing up. My left hand throbbed from the burned, bitten skin and I dropped the frame momentarily.
BANG! Another bullet struck and the lock clattered, bursting free, but as they tried to open the door, it hit against the crib.
Lennox appeared at my side, grabbing up the end I had released.
“To – window,” I told him.
“What?”
He faltered and gave a grimace, dropping the cot and slapping his hands over the wound in his side. I tugged it toward the window.
“We've got to –” I said, heaving the frame up and bashing it against the boards, “– break through –”
“You are not jumping out of that window!”
“Yes, I am,” I told him through gritted teeth, giving the boards another bash. The large, sprawling branches of the yew tree that were covered in thick snow would break our fall. “And you are, too!”
His face was pale and streaked with blood from his fingers, but as the crib scraped against the floorboards and the door opened a few inches, he lifted the cot and helped me slam it against the boards. They cracked against the metal. We pulled it back and slammed it harder, forcing the boards back. The nails screeched as they were shoved outwards. We slammed the cot one final time and –
Cool air poured into the room through the glass-less window and struck our faces. I clambered up to the windowsill, my mind blank and scattered all at once. Another shot rang out behind me and I glanced back to see the barrel of the gun sticking through the partially open door. I nearly lost my footing and fell, but my fingers grasped the window frame held me in place. Then –
BANG!
Lennox was thrown to the side, crumpling as the bullet hit him in the back of the leg. As he slumped against the wall, I jumped down from the windowsill. There was blood seeping through his pants from a large wound in his thigh.
“Lennox –” I said, pulling at his arm to right him, thinking somewhere in my mind that if I just got him to stand, he might be all right. His skin was covered in a sheen of sweat and his eyes were wide and confused. I pulled him harder, forcing him to use his good leg and get up from the floor. “Lennox, come on – we've got to go –”
BANG!
I didn't know where the next bullet struck. My eyes were fixed on him, willing him not to be hurt, and as though it was possible that they had such power he grasped at the wall to pull himself to his feet.
“Come on –” I said again, steering him to the window, but his stare had filled with a sudden flash of sadness and he didn't move farther.
And before I could speak – before I could think – he gave me an apologetic look, the sorriest look I was sure I had ever seen, and then he raised his hands and shoved me backwards out the window.
Chapter 17
I didn't feel myself falling. For the briefest of moments, I didn't feel anything at all, then my back slammed against the snow covering the yew and I plunged downwards into a tangle of branches and needles, twisting one way and then the other and smacking every part of my body as I fell further and further until –
My arm latched over a branch. I grasped it with every bit of strength I had remaining, willing myself to remain upright. The bark scraped against my skin, digging lines into my flesh, and as I slowly began to slip down again, I braced myself to fall. My feet slammed into the ground and my knees buckled, and I fell forward onto my hands, sinking into the snow.
For a long moment I stayed still, certain that every part of me must have been broken. Pain crept up upon me from each direction, throbs and aches that shook my body, and my ragged breathing filled the air. The yew blocked my view of the nursery window above, but the sound of gunshots had ceased. Perhaps they had run out of bullets, or perhaps …
I forced myself to my feet. My legs wobbled as I took off blindly toward the guesthouse, hopeful and hopeless all at once. I stumbled onto the path, nearly losing my footing and falling back down.
I had barely made it to the guesthouse when I spotted Kneller. He was standing
on his front porch staring at the main house, dressed in flannel pajamas and boots. As he caught sight of me approaching, he gave a start.
“What's going on over there?”
I didn't respond. I wasn't sure that my voice was working, and I could only hear out of one ear. I limped closer to him.
“Alexandra – what's going on? Why's there gunfire?”
“Please – help,” I managed, my voice strange and distant sounding.
“What happened to you?”
“They're trying to – kill us.”
“Who?”
“Marjorie – Amalia –”
“Trying to kill who?”
“Me – Lennox. They shot – him –” I reached out and grabbed his arm to steady myself. “Please – help. They – they think we killed John. They think –”
My ear was ringing so loudly that I could barely hear my own voice. I tried to focus on him, but spots were clouding my vision.
“They think Lennox killed him, you mean?” he asked.
“No, the both of us. They think we're in on it together.”
He stared at me as though he thought I might be joking.
“Please,” I tried again. “Please, you've got to help. You've got to stop them – to see if he's okay –”
“Come here,” he said, taking me by the arm and leading me inside. He put me on the couch and tossed a blanket over me. “Now, get yourself warm. I'll go over there and talk to Rachel –”
I looked up, hardly believing that he didn't know. But of course he didn't know: no one had told him. I hadn't told him.
“– and see if we can make some sense out of all of this. Alright?”
He made to leave, but I couldn't let him go to the main house – not without telling him first.
“Mr. Kneller,” I said to his back, then spit the words out that I knew would never come otherwise. “Mrs. Langston's dead.”
Kneller froze. For a long while he stood there, then, slowly, he turned back to me to stare blankly into my eyes. His wrinkled face was expressionless, not dumbfounded, but possibly expectant, waiting for me to backtrack as though I had said it out of confusion rather than actuality. He waited several moments, his chest rising up and down beneath his plaid nightshirt, and then his face turned downwards and he shook his head.
“What?”
“She's dead,” I repeated, knowing that there was no way to go back now. “There was an argument, and she was upset –”
“No,” Kneller said. His voice was shaking and his eyes were dangerous. “What are you talking about? They shot her –?”
“No. We found her in the ocean.”
“No!”
He threw his hands up to his head, a look of utmost distress on his face, and then he aimed one firm, hard kick at the coffee table. The top of it split and it went scratching across the floor. As I watched him, I knew I ought to offer him some sort of condolences, but there was no time for it. I needed to help Lennox.
“Mr. Kneller – please. I need your help. I need to get to Lennox –”
He looked up at me, his face turning to a snarl.
“I'm not helping that man,” he said angrily. “The world's better off without him.”
“But –”
“If you want to get yourself shot, then so be it: serves you right for being so foolish.”
“He didn't do it!”
“And you know this how? Because he said so? Because you trust him?”
His anger was contagious. It came over me in a wave of heat, welling up inside me at his refusal to help. He was no better than the rest of the Marlowes: content to blame anyone and everyone else for their sorrows instead of realizing that if he had tried to figure out who had killed John rather than making jokes and snide remarks, the situation wouldn't have escalated the way that it had.
“No – because Mrs. Langston already admitted she did it,” I told him.
“That's ridiculous,” he snapped. “Rachel didn't kill John.”
“And you know this how?” I said, throwing his words back at him. “Because she said so? Because you trust her?”
His scowl deepened.
“Rachel never hurt anyone,” he said. “Lennox, on the other hand –”
“She had every reason to do it! John crippled her husband, he refused to give her money to help with his care – and she knew Lennox was out that night and didn't say anything!”
“It means nothing.”
“She drowned herself in the ocean – you don't think that's an admission of guilt?” I challenged, no longer worrying about sparing his feelings but instead giving him cause to see that it wasn't Lennox who was the murderer.
“Rachel wasn't capable of killing her twin – something everyone else seems to realize but you, or else they wouldn't be trying to shoot you!”
“If Lennox did it, then why was John killed with a letter opener?” I shot back. “Seems like an odd choice of weapon, doesn't it? Unless you count that Amalia said John revealed Rachel's affair to the family when he opened the love letters that you had sent –”
I stopped short as I made the connection that I had failed to notice before. Kneller was looking at me oddly, though I didn't dare guess what he was thinking.
“And so –” I went on ineffectually, “– so it was – was most likely her.”
“You really think so?”
I didn't answer. I was too busy trying to put together what my mind had already started.
Enjoying the outdoors, Isidore? Kneller's voice said in my memory as he goaded Lennox. Taking another walk over to the cemetery?
At the time I hadn't known the significance of it, but now that Lennox had admitted to me that he had left the house to visit his wife and child's graves, it made sense. What didn't make sense, though, was how Kneller knew – unless he had seen Lennox go there that night. The way to the cemetery didn't go past the guesthouse, though, which meant that Kneller would have had to have been outside, too. Which meant …
My heart hastened again, throbbing against my throat until it was painful to swallow. I ran my hands slid down my bare legs, carried by the sweat on my palms. No, I thought quickly. No, I wasn't thinking rationally. It hadn't been Kneller who had killed John: it was someone inside the house. Only …
Lennox had locked the door. The detail that Bill had brought up on the morning I had found the dead body was irrelevant. It all seemed so obvious now that I didn't understand how I had missed it. Just as I had given Lennox an alibi, he had given one to Kneller by locking the door and making everyone believe that the murderer was someone inside the main house.
My brain was working faster than ever to put the pieces together. Kneller had been in love with Rachel. They might have run off together had it not been for the accident that had caused James's brain injury – the accident that John had caused. Kneller had killed him out of sheer resentment for ruining the life he might have had with Rachel had she not been tied to her reliant husband. The letter opener was either chosen to make a statement about John opening the letters Kneller had sent Rachel or simply out of convenience to make it seem as though he had been killed in a different manner. It had just been luck that Lennox had locked the door that night and that the attention had been thrown off of Kneller, with the family certain that his death had to do with money. And Rachel …
She must have realized it was Kneller who had done it: that was why she had begged Bill not to tell the family that he had seen Lennox, because she knew they would wrongfully accuse him and couldn't say as much without telling them it had really been Kneller. So instead she had taken the blame, and she had drowned herself in the ocean to cement her claim.
I licked my lips, my eyes clinging to Kneller as I realized the magnitude of my problem. I was caught between a household that wanted me dead and a man who had killed before and shown no remorse for it. The way that he had laughed and recited poetry as he dug John's body from the snow came back to me and I swayed in place. Would he dig out a hole for me to
lie in, too? Kill me and then tell the Marlowes he had done it for them, just to save himself from being found out or ousted from the island?
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said suddenly. “I – I think I'm going to be sick.”
Kneller looked over at me.
“It's just down the hall,” he said.
I limped from the room, my mind racing as I tried to decide what to do. I could steal some blankets and extra clothes and then hide out in the woods. Bypassing the bathroom, I headed toward the coat closet and yanked it open, ready to sift through the items hanging inside, but –
My lungs flattened within me, halting my breath, and had I not still been grasping the doorknob, I might have fallen backwards to the ground. For a brief moment I thought that I had come face to face with a mirror, because there, nestled between a few sweaters and scarves, was a portrait of a calm, collected young woman with copper-colored hair and emerald eyes, smiling over at me as though she had been waiting for me to arrive.
My mouth dropped open, knowing that it must have been the portrait Lennox had been searching for. Mary's portrait. The one John had hidden.
“Ah. I thought you might find that.”
Kneller's voice didn't startle me. I didn't even turn around. My eyes were fixed on the woman who, had she not been smiling so sweetly and happily, might have been me. Kneller's hand found my arm and he wrapped his fingers around it, though I had no plans to run; I was too busy finishing putting everything together. That was why John had been outside that night: to give the portrait to Kneller to hide it from Lennox. I imagined him carrying it outside, struggling to walk with it through the unshoveled snow, and then to find the ferryman waiting patiently for him, completely unaware that the other man was readying to attack him while his hands were occupied and his mind was fixated on the brother-in-law who had just shown up at the door hours before …
The Marlowe Murders Page 30
