CHAPTER 17 #3
“Then . . . you’re saying Louisa Allingham killed them all?”
“Yes, Paddy.”
“I understand she’d be wanting her husband and his mistress dead, but why kill the doctor?”
“It’s all there in the entry,” Julia said, tapping the casebook.
“Headaches and rashes and the reference to mercury. Louisa had syphilis. And I think she only recognized the truth lately and realized Doctor Scott had kept the knowledge from her for years. The doctor had been treating Charles Allingham for his late-stage disease.”
“Then her husband was . . . sweet Jesus,” O’Malley said.
Julia nodded. “The most likely source of her infection.”
“She killed all three of them,” Tennant said. Julia heard the bitterness in his voice. “Her husband, his mistress, and their doctor.”
Julia touched his arm. “Richard . . . Louisa Allingham. You couldn’t have known. Not without the doctor’s case notes.”
“No?” he said, stony-eyed. “It seems all too obvious now.”
Julia said, “I missed so many signs.... Louisa’s miscarriages and how she always wears gloves. Mary mentioned her brother’s headaches and recent need for spectacles. And after the skating disaster, he was reluctant to take off his nightshirt when I examined him.”
Tennant asked, “What would you have found?”
“Syphilis lesions, most likely. I thought nothing about his reticence at the time. It was typical. Men hate to take off their clothes for me.” When O’Malley looked at her, she waved impatiently. “You know what I mean.”
“Go on,” Tennant said.
“Some doctors give their patients the false hope that mercury can stave off the disease indefinitely. But a diagnosis of late-stage syphilis is a death sentence.”
“You’re saying the so-called ‘lifetime with mercury” is a short one, and treatment is bollocks,” O’Malley said.
“Yes. Hope for Charles was gone, and concealment was difficult. The case notes show there was a conspiracy to keep the truth from Louisa.”
“Mother of God,” O’Malley muttered. “But to send Doctor Scott a poisoned bottle? He might share a glass of the stuff with someone else. Would she take such a risk?”
“Oh, I think Louisa knew her man,” Julia said. “The miserly Scott would have kept that expensive whiskey all for himself.”
“She was past caring,” Tennant said.
“Poisoned alcohol . . . Charles joked that Louisa might add Paris Green to his absinthe,” Julia said.
“Yes,” Tennant said. “He handed her the method for murdering both men.”
Julia asked, “What made you suspect her?”
“Last night, I started thinking, poison, twice in one case? I woke up convinced that both poisonings were murders. The imminent raid on the Topkapi distracted me from the obvious. A feeble excuse, I’m afraid.”
“The signs were in front of us all,” Julia said.
“It was the second poisoning that cast doubt on Allingham’s death as a suicide. But how to prove it? I thought the envelopes and letters might be a start.”
O’Malley said, “I saw them scattered on your desk.”
“Two hands were at work: Margot, the blackmailer; and the murderer. You had to look closely to see it.”
“You’ve a good pair of eyes in your head,” O’Malley said.
“That left three questions.” Tennant ticked them off his fingers. “Who wanted to use suicide to cover up a murder, who had access to Allingham’s whiskey bottle to add the Paris Green, and who wanted Charles Allingham and Margot Miller dead?”
“The betrayed wife,” Julia said.
“A wife who bought arsenic and lied about her whereabouts. And you, Doctor Lewis, discovered why Doctor Scott had to die, too.”
* * *
Mary stood at the door, waiting for the footman to open it. She held a box that contained Louisa’s sable muff, the one with the bloodstains sponged away. “That was quite a cut on her hand,” Mr. Petrie had said before he tipped his hat and walked away.
“My dear?”
Mary jumped at Louisa’s voice. She was standing in the doorway with Alfred.
Louisa looked over Mary’s shoulder. “Is that Mister Petrie getting into the carriage?”
“Yes.” Mary felt a catch and cleared her throat. “He returned your muff.”
“I see.” Louisa took her arm. “Come inside. You look all in.”
Mary looked over her shoulder at the departing carriage and followed her sister-in-law into the house.
In the hall, Louisa said, “Give Alfred the box and your painting things. There’s tea in the drawing room. Come and join me.”
Mary obeyed her in a trance.
Louisa had taken the seat at the head of the table with her back to the door.
She was seated with her hands in her lap, and a second cup was on the table across from her.
Mary sat and eyed the tea her sister-in-law had already poured.
Close to Louisa’s right hand, a gleaming knife balanced on the edge of a cake plate.
Mary stared into the amber liquid in her cup. It cannot be. I must be mad. Then she thought, Is Louisa?
“I added the sugar.” When Mary didn’t answer, Louisa said, “You’re not drinking, my dear.”
Mary lifted her eyes and found her sister-in-law staring at her.
Louisa sighed. “It’s a pity you and Mister Petrie arrived together.” Louisa smiled tightly. “I told him I would collect the muff, but tradesmen will always curry favor when they can.” She shook her head. “We might have rubbed along together at least for a while, you and I. But now . . .”
Mary measured the distance from her chair to the door. She stiffened when Louisa picked up the knife. If what Mary was thinking were true, then her sister-in-law had used one before. Louisa held it suspended for a moment. Then she sliced the seedcake.
Still gripping the handle, she said, “Now, I’m afraid it’s impossible.”
When Mary opened her mouth, Louisa said, “Don’t. I must think a little.”
She turned the knife to look at the sharpened blade. Sounding meditative, she said, “It was surprisingly easy . . . although I made a mess of my muff when I hid the scalpel inside.”
Mary felt as if she’d swallowed sand. She rasped, “Why, Louisa?”
“Why?” Louisa frowned, considering. “Do you mean why Margot Miller? Or why Doctor Scott?” She looked into Mary’s eyes. “Or why Charles?”
Mary gasped. “You don’t mean . . .”
“Death for death, Mary. Three dead babies, and I’ve had my death sentence, too.”
Still holding the knife, Louisa opened her clenched left fist. For once, she wasn’t wearing her knit gloves. Red sores dotted her palm.
“I don’t understand. . . .”
“Syphilis. Charles knew he was diseased, and he infected us with his foulness. He murdered my children with the connivance of Doctor Scott. They made me think the miscarriages were my fault. My failure. My lost babies are little angels now. In heaven.”
“How did you realize—”
“I found out the night I nursed Charles after his skating accident. Lesions covered his back and chest. Blistered and hideous like marks of Cain. Then I understood why he hadn’t shared my bed in months.”
Louisa held up her palm again. She turned her hand to look at it.
“This ‘rash,’ as Doctor Scott called it, is only the beginning. I know what comes next. Miss Nightingale took us through the hospital wards in training for the Crimea. So many soldiers were infected, you see. She had to prepare us. Still, I was blind to my early symptoms. In the dark, like other wives before me. And Charles . . . well. He could hide it no longer.”
“But Louisa, how could you—”
“How could I? How could they? And that blackmailing harlot, that creature . . . that she should carry a child and not I.”
“How long had you known about them?”
“A week after Charles’s death, she wrote to me of their affair, demanding money, threatening to reveal the liaison. I’d lived for years, blind to his secrets.” She struck her chest with the knife flat in her hand. “I would not live my last years with her and her threats. No. It was intolerable.”
Mary willed herself to speak slowly and calmly. “Louisa, you suffered terribly. I see that now. But my dear, you cannot mean to kill me.”
Louisa dropped her gaze and frowned, drumming the end of the knife on the table. The staccato taps cut through the silent room.
“It wasn’t part of my plan.” She stopped and looked up. “Not you.”
Suddenly, pounding and shouting at the front door shattered the quiet.
“Mary, Mary—for God’s sake, someone open this door!”
It was Will.
In a flash, Louisa was up and out. Mary followed her through the door, staring as her sister-in-law fled across the entrance hall and up the staircase, passing an astonished Alfred.
Something crashed through the front door’s stained-glass side panel.
An arm thrust through the gap, feeling around for the handle.
When the servant yanked the door open, Will staggered in.
He shouted, “Mary,” and seized Alfred by the upper arms. “Where is Miss Allingham?”
“Will.” Mary ran across the hall and flung herself at him.
“Thank God,” he said, his voice ragged, repeating the words into her hair.
She pulled away, still clutching his coat. “Louisa ran upstairs. To her room, I think. She has a knife.”
Will and Alfred took the stairs two at a time, with Mary trailing them. When they tried Louisa’s door, they found it locked.
Mary knocked and called, “Louisa. Lou, my dear, open the door.”
She stood aside while Will and Alfred took turns ramming their shoulders into the door and kicking it.
But three inches of solid oak refused to budge.
The scullery maid and the bootboy came running upstairs from the kitchen.
Louisa’s lady’s maid and the housekeeper followed from the servants’ quarters.
“Billy, go to the stables,” Mary shouted. “Find an ax.” The bootboy turned on his heels and ran.
Louisa’s maid said, “Try the door in Mister Allingham’s dressing room.”
Mary moaned, “Oh God, I didn’t think . . . through here, Will.” Mary led them through her brother’s study and into his dressing room.
Louisa had locked the communicating door, but it looked more vulnerable to attack.