Chapter 31 #2
Poor foolish Asphodel, I thought. Putting her trust into baneful men who had planned to cast her off like so much rubbish.
And then I realised that if the pair of them had escaped as planned, it would have been an easy thing for Johnson to send an anonymous message to the police, telling them of Asphodel’s whereabouts and of the death of Von Hilsing.
A dead millionaire and a woman skilled in poisons in possession of his stolen property?
She would have been hanged before the year was out, victim and scapegoat in one fell swoop.
Hegarty went on. “And then Quincey found us together, Seward and I. And it all just happened so fast. Seward was so calm, so controlled about it all. He seemed two steps ahead, making all of the decisions for me.”
“Perhaps because he knew it was coming,” Stoker suggested.
Hegarty’s head snapped up. “What do you mean?”
“Just that if Johnson had been poisoning Von Hilsing and dreaming of a future with you, what better way to ensure it than to make certain Quincey found you together and exposed your relationship?” Stoker said.
“Asphodel finding out about your love affair would have forced your hand, brought everything to a head. Being discovered would have meant the end of the endless, torturous waiting for you to choose him.”
“Perhaps,” I told him, as gently as I could, “Johnson was not a character in your little drama. Perhaps he was the puppet master all along.”
At those frank words, Miles Hegarty put his head down upon Johnson’s breast and began to sob, deep, soul-rending cries that sounded as if the world itself were ending. And for Miles Hegarty, it had.
* * *
We were there only another quarter of an hour before I heard the “hallos” of approaching voices.
“Down here!” I called.
A bobbing light came near, then the face of Mornaday appeared at the grate.
“Good lord, however did you find us?” I asked.
Another face appeared, bobbing into view. “Hallo, miss!”
“George, it is past your bedtime,” I said firmly.
“I know, miss, but Mr. Stoker sent me with Miss Butterfield as soon as them villains came for him,” he explained.
“ ‘Those’ villains, George,” I corrected.
J. J. peered through the grate. “How the devil do we get you out?”
“There is a door down here, but it is bolted from the outside, and no doubt Asphodel has taken the key,” Stoker replied.
There was a bit of scrabbling and thumping, and several minutes passed before their faces appeared again at the grating above. “You were right,” J. J. said. “No key to be found, and this seems by far the easier way in. Several of the bars are rotted through.”
“Move aside,” Mornaday said, lifting up a handy bit of gravestone.
He struck at the bars several times before they began to break, showering the stone room with flakes of rust and bits of decaying iron.
At last the grate itself gave way, crashing to the floor with a clatter loud enough to have roused the dead.
“Bit disrespectful,” J. J. admonished as Mornaday lifted the grate away.
She held his legs as he leant down and reached for my hands.
I climbed up, toes slipping on the chilly, waterlogged stones.
I emerged, drawing in great breaths of sweet night air.
I turned to give a hand to Stoker, but he was standing over Hegarty and Johnson.
“It is time to go,” he told Hegarty, putting a hand to the fellow’s shoulder. Hegarty had been silent after his fit of melancholia had subsided, lying flat atop Johnson’s body. At Stoker’s touch, he rolled onto his back, his eyes open and unblinking.
“Mother of god!” Stoker exclaimed. He looked up at the three of us, moonlight silvering his face like a pagan god in his prime. “He is dead.”
In the golden lamplight, we could now see the black pool of blood beneath him, a slender rivulet still flowing from his thigh. Stoker shook his head. “He has slit his femoral artery. A quick and silent death.”
“And his last trick,” I said. “I suspect he collected the dagger you threw aside and kept it on his person.”
Stoker hauled himself up the wall and out onto the grass of the cemetery. “It is better this way,” I went on. “He would not have wanted to go on without Johnson. It is rather romantic, really. If one overlooks the fact that they were homicidal criminals.”
Stoker put an arm about me, and I ducked my head to his chest, marvelling again at the fate which had brought this man, so perfectly matched to me in every way, into my life. In moving, my face brushed against the slit the dagger had left in his shirt.
“How was it that Asphodel’s dagger did not kill you?” I asked. “She struck directly at your heart.”
He grinned and pulled the neck of his shirt aside. There, luminous and fairly glowing, lay the hagstone he had been given by Magda for his protection. “The tip of the dagger caught in the hole,” he said. “If it hadn’t—”
I put a silencing hand to his lips. “Do not even whisper it. I cannot bear the thought that she might have taken you from me, that murderous witch.”
Mornaday pushed his bowler to the back of his head. “What was that you said?”
I dropped the grate back into place and dusted my hands. “Come along, Mornaday. It is a long story and we have all the time to tell it.”