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by Steffanie Holmes

  “These are the four crimes we need to focus on,” I pointed at them. “They’re all connected in some way. We’re assuming the same person did all four, but we know from Mrs. Scarlett’s murder that we can’t always assume that. What connects them?”

  “Hathaway,” Morrie answered immediately. “He’s at the center of all of this. And the Jane Austen Experience, because we know that the killer was someone in the Hall.”

  “We do?”

  “I’ve run several mathematical models, and given the placement of staff and guests at the time, it’s impossible that it was someone from outside the house.”

  “Right.” I stuck up another note. “And assuming we’re correct and Alice didn’t do it herself, and assuming Gerald wasn’t the killer either, we’ve got one main suspect. Professor Carmichael.”

  “What’s our evidence?” Morrie asked, rubbing his chin.

  I ticked off on my fingers. “She hated Hathaway. She publicly vowed to ruin him. She gave Alice the information about Hathaway’s late wife, so we know they were in contact. She had medical training, so she would have known how to dose him with the pills, and how to push the blade in correctly. And she had motive for murdering Alice, in order to cover her tracks. If Alice revealed how she’d come by the information, the police would immediately suspect Carmichael.”

  “And the message on your door?” Heathcliff pointed at the board. “Do you still think she considers you a threat?”

  “That’s still a possibility, but perhaps we’ve misinterpreted what the message was about,” I said. “We thought it meant, ‘you’re next’ as in ‘you’re next to be stabbed’. What if it meant, ‘you’re next to be a victim of Hathaway’s wandering hands?’ While we were waiting for the ballroom to open, Professor Carmichael noticed Lydia on Hathaway’s lap. She made a disgusted face and strode away. Perhaps she went upstairs, wrote the message on our door to warn Lydia off, and then came back down and killed Hathaway—”

  “Mina’s right. Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong,” Quoth said. “What if this murder isn’t an act of revenge, but one of love?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “On the video, Alice begs that her files are to be destroyed. If the killer added that, perhaps it’s not to cover their tracks but to prevent that information from going public and hurting someone they cared about. It’s like you said, Alice’s death is about is stopping her article. That’s why the killer wrote LIAR on her chest.”

  I leaned over and kissed Quoth on the lips. “You’re a genius.”

  “Hey, where’s my kiss?” Morrie protested.

  “And mine,” growled Heathcliff.

  “No kisses for me, thank you.” Lydia waved her hand. “I’m not so awfully keen on this feminism you speak of.”

  “I’m still in the dark here,” Morrie said. “Why is Quoth a genius? I’m the genius.”

  “Quoth figured out who the murderer is. You can’t see it because you’re still learning what it means to love,” I said. “Heathcliff understands.”

  “Damn right,” Heathcliff growled.

  Morrie’s crestfallen face made my chest flutter, especially when I remembered the words he’d blurted out to me only a few hours ago. He’s trying. “Think about it. Who is so besotted with Christina that he plays along perfectly with this farce of Regency manners? Who is in the professor’s confidence and likely knew what pills he took? Who’s an expert swordsperson who would have no trouble landing a killer blow?”

  “Who declares his love through terrible poetry?” Quoth added.

  “I think you’re onto something, little birdie,” Morrie breathed. “Remember Hathaway’s documentary?”

  Morrie slid across his laptop and brought up the documentary video about Hathaway’s life that had been shown at the memorial, freezing it on a scene where David helped Christina out of a car. Her hand gripped his as he helped her to adjust her parasol. She thanked him with her usual breathless air, and his entire face lit up with the rapture of love. He adored her. Too bad she’s gay…

  Oh no…

  With Alice out of the way, not only would Christina be saved from humiliation if the article were published, but she’d be a single woman again.

  Morrie skipped ahead to a scene where David was talking to the camera about his role as Hathaway’s assistant. “I do everything for him. I arrange his schedule, collate his files, conduct research, answer his phone, look after him at appearances, make his tea. I even manage his medicines.”

  Lydia gasped, raising her hand to her face, as if she was about to faint. “I can’t believe it. The killer is David Winter.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Of course,” Morrie breathed. “It makes perfect sense. David is in love with Christina and intimately acquainted with her father. He would do anything to save Christina from humiliation. That waif of a girl could barely deal with a chipped nail, let alone finding out her parents were in an incestuous marriage. David probably hopes that by getting rid of Alice, Christina will be free to marry him and they’ll be the perfect Regency couple. That’s why he couldn’t just kill Alice, he had to make sure her credibility was shot so the story of Hathaway and his sister could never come out.”

  “Is he’s still in the building?” Heathcliff rose to his feet, reaching for his sword.

  “We saw him speaking with Professor Carmichael during our walk,” Lydia said, her eyes wide. “What is going on? You’re not going to hurt David, are you? He collects coins, for pity’s sake. He’s no danger to anybody.”

  “How can you say that?” I said. “You saw David in the fencing demonstration the other day. He was brutal. Just because someone has good manners and boring hobbies doesn’t mean they’re not capable of cruelty, in the same way that people who might look a bit different or act gruff or uncaring can be kind and loving.” I said the last bit with a glance between Heathcliff and Morrie.

  “Where’s my sword?” Morrie hunted under the sheets.

  “And mine?” Heathcliff peered behind the curtains.

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t go into this expecting things to get stabby,” Quoth said tentatively. “We should speak to the police.”

  “There’s no time!” I cried. “They’re tied up with my stupid bomb threat and if we’re right, David’s still got one more murder to commit. There’s only one person left who has information that could hurt Christina.” I leaped to my feet. “He’s going to kill Professor Carmichael.”

  * * *

  The police had gathered the majority of the guests and staff into the landing and entrance hall. On the bottom floor, Hayes addressed them in an authoritative tone, telling everyone to remain calm. Cynthia swayed, a second (or third) bottle of wine clutched in her hand. Quoth – who had returned to his raven form - propelled himself off my shoulder and rose up to perch on the chandelier. He glanced around the room, and returned a moment later.

  Carmichael’s not here, and nor is David or Christina. We should try her bedroom.

  Professor Carmichael’s suite was down the opposite hall. I pushed my way into the crowd, deliberately stomping on every toe and kicking every shin I came into contact with. “Excuse me,” I murmured. “Pardon me. Terribly sorry.” With tuts and dirty looks, the crowd parted like the red sea before me, closing up around Heathcliff and Morrie.

  “Mina, wait!” Heathcliff called.

  “Heathcliff, there you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” I glanced over my shoulder in time to see Hannah throw herself at him with such force, she sent him sailing backward into Morrie, knocking all three of them to the ground.

  No time to stop. Quoth dug his talons into my shoulder. I marched down the hall to Professor Carmichael’s suite. Her door was shut, and I couldn’t hear anything inside above the din in the hall. I turned the handle, and the door slid open.

  He’s already here.

  Taking a deep breath, I flattened myself against the door and pushed it open. Quoth leaned forward and craned his neck around the ti
ny gap in the door.

  Most of the lights are off, except the for one in the hallway and a lamp beside the bed. There are two figures in shadows, and they’re arguing. Mina, I don’t think you should—

  Too late, I thought back. We have to stop him.

  Quoth threw a wing into my face in an attempt to stop me, but I shoved him off my shoulder and darted forward, slipping into the room and pulling the door shut behind me. Unlike our suite, where the door opened directly into our room, the professor had a short hallway with doorways into her bathroom and a small sitting area. I pressed my back against the wall and crept toward the bedroom at the end.

  “Please, don’t kill me,” Professor Carmichael begged. “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

  No. I’m not going to let this happen.

  “David, you have to stop,” I yelled, lunging forward and reaching for the shadowed figure. “We know what you did—”

  The words died in my throat as the killer stepped into the pool of light. A sharpened sword hung in the air, the blade glittering. Behind it, I recognized the smug, perfect features of Christina Hathaway.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “Christina?” I gasped. “But what…”

  “You thought sweet David was behind this?” she sneered. “As if such a creature were capable of this chaos. It is I, twisted mad by Jane Austen, by a constant adherence to fictional manners while my father behaved abominably to every person in his life, most especially my mother.”

  “You… did all this? You killed your own father?” Her words made no sense.

  “She’s crazy!” Professor Carmichael yelled, leaping over the bed. “Get help! Get the police!”

  In a flash, Christina shot across the room, positioning herself between the bed and the door. The blade pointed directly at Professor Carmichael’s throat. The professor staggered backward, falling onto the bed.

  “It would be unwise for you to move,” Christina called in her singsong voice. “Mina, sweetie, I think I’d like you to stand over there, against the wall. If you make any move or call for help, I will gut you like a fish, and not feel one whit of remorse for it. Quickly, if you please.”

  Heart in my throat, I did as she asked, pressing my back into the wall. Heathcliff, Morrie, I could use a daring rescue right about now.

  From the bed, Professor Carmichael moaned. I scanned the room for Quoth, but so much of it was in shadow, I had no hope of seeing him. I hoped he’d find Hayes and Wilson, but even then, what could he do as a raven? And if a naked guy ran at the detectives, they’d probably assume he was the bomber and shoot him dead.

  Quoth, if you can hear me, please don’t run at Hayes. Get Morrie’s clothes from our room. Or find Lydia. Get her to scream outside. That’ll send them all running. Please, there’s only one of her, but I think she could kill us all if she desired to.

  Fear rippled through me. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the sharpened point of Christina’s sword pointing directly at Professor Carmichael’s heart.

  Christina said she took fencing classes. She knows exactly what she’s doing. Under the light, I caught her gleeful smile. She’s mad. Completely bonkers.

  “You’ve got my undivided attention,” I said, trying to stall for time. “Can you tell me what’s going on, because I’m really confused.”

  “Nice try,” she said, not taking her eyes off Carmichael. “You and I are not enemies of equal intelligence playing at cat and mouse. I’m not going to sit down and outline my moves tête-à-tête like a chess game. This isn’t chess, it’s solitaire. You are merely a speck of dust on the table.”

  “Very well. I accede to your superior intellect.”

  “As well you should.”

  “Before you dispatch with the rest of your plan, could you enlighten me on one point?” Please, Quoth, Heathcliff, Morrie, anyone... “Why kill your father?”

  “All my life, I’ve been living in my father’s fantasy world. It didn’t matter what I wanted, I was his perfect Regency princess, the only woman who could heal his heart after Mother died. He took me out of school and taught me from home, so that he could ensure I never learned about things that weren’t bright and gay. He had me master a list of accomplishments – the piano, needlepoint, calligraphy… the sort of vapid pursuits that occupied the mind of a Regency lady. I wanted to learn the violin, but he forbade it, lest I become too ‘emotional’ from the power of the music. I was not allowed to talk to other men, save himself and David. All the tutors he procured for me were women. Is it any wonder that I grew to crave their touch, their caress?”

  Christina’s voice hardened. “When I was sixteen, I told Daddy I was gay. Do you know what he said? ‘No’. Not, ‘I support you, my daughter’ or even, ‘I don’t understand, but I’ll love you anyway’. Just ‘no’. I wasn’t allowed to be gay, because there are no homosexuals in darling Jane’s books. Can you even understand how that might feel?”

  “No,” I whispered. “I can’t.”

  “Daddy truly believes that he is Mr. Darcy, and that any young woman he encounters is his Elizabeth, and that all he has to do is wear them down until they agree to accept his love. That’s what he did to my mother. He wore her down and wed her in an unholy ceremony because he couldn’t bear to be without her. His selfish passion and his desire to return to the innocent love of his childhood poisoned her bones as surely as if he’d murdered her himself. I will never forgive him for that, nor for any of his more recent crimes. But it is of no consequence, for he is dead, and I am almost free.”

  “How long have you known that your parents were… were siblings?” I whispered.

  “I suspected something was wrong after Mummy died and Daddy had all these meetings at the hospital and then we didn’t have a lot of money for a few years. But I only knew the facts when I saw the records Professor Carmichael sent Alice a few weeks ago. Alice thought she was being so secretive, but when she suddenly started asking all these questions about Daddy, I hacked into her computer and found them. I knew she was going to write the article and ruin Daddy, and I had to kill him before that happened.”

  “So you could be free?” I asked, starting to understand. By Isis, this is awful. What a sad, horrible story.

  “Daddy hasn’t written a paper in years,” Christina said calmly. “I do the research. I write his keynotes. All day, every day, nothing but Jane, Jane, Jane, while he took the accolades and used my words to lure young women into his bed. The situation was intolerable. So I decided to improve my circumstances. Since he requires me to set out his pills every night, I stole away with some of his sleeping pills. One pill, once a week, so he would never notice. Then, I fed him the pills crushed in his tea before the ball, leaving him insensate in the chair. This done, I waited until almost all of the guests had entered the ballroom, and then David and I entered and took our seats.

  “This done, I enjoyed the first course and a glass of wine before asking David to accompany me to the bathroom. Of course, he is so completely besotted and clueless that he didn’t realize where I had him wait was not in front of a bathroom at all, but a door to a servants’ passage that led between the kitchens and the anteroom. I stole along the passage, entered the anteroom, stabbed my father, opened the window, placed the scrap of fabric on the nail, and took away my jewelry.” She tugged up the gloves on her hands. “It was nothing to dispose of my gloves and dress into a recycling bin behind the kitchens and replace them with a matching set I’d hidden there earlier, before I returned to David and we resumed our place in the set.”

  “A most ingenious plan,” I said. “But why did you write the note on our door? Were you trying to stop Lydia from becoming your father’s next victim?”

  She laughed, the sound like broken glass tinkling. “Heavens, no. I was too far into my plan to be concerned with his next conquest. The note was not for Lydia, it was for you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Cynthia boasted of your intellect and your skill at solving mysteries the police could not s
olve. I realized that my crime scene wouldn’t just need to fool the police, it would have to fool you as well. I thought if you were frightened away, it might be to my advantage. It appears you’re either too stubborn or too stupid to take the hint.”

  “It’s the first one, the stubborn one,” I said, my voice quivering. “But why kill Alice, your own girlfriend? Why create a video where she confesses to Hathaway’s murder?”

  “She was going to write the story about my father!” Christine screamed. “I begged her not to, but she said it had to be done. When she saw my father’s body, she guessed I might have done it, and then she found the jewels in my bag that night as she snuck into my room. So I told her I would kill her if she revealed the truth, and I made her film that video as assurance. But then I saw her lead Mina away from the orangery and I knew she was going to tell you the truth, so I killed her before she could do it. Don’t you understand, I had to kill her. She gave me no choice. The story would’ve been in all the papers, and they would come for me. I’d be hounded by the press and I would never, ever be free of my father’s evil and bloody Jane Austen. That’s all I want, and as soon as I deal with her—” she jabbed the tip of her sword at Professor Carmichael, who whimpered “—I will finally, truly be free.”

  “What about me?” I asked weakly, my heart clattering against my chest.

  “You? You are something I didn’t count on.” Christina tapped her finger against her chin, in a gesture that reminded me a little of Morrie. “It’s your own fault, really. I did give you a warning, which you chose not to heed. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to allow you to live.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Christina, you don’t have to do this,” I pleaded. “If you tell your story, everyone will be on your side. You father was a horrible man, and what he did to you and your mother was wrong. You’re the victim here. Please, don’t become the villain.”