Chapter 35
Pevensey had nearly heard the whole story of Miss Cecil’s recent travels, including her brother Edward’s unplanned plunge into one of the Derbyshire lakes, when a figure walking towards the pawn shop caught his eye.
He pulled his hat lower on his brow and peered out the window of the carriage.
“That’s her,” he said. “Do you want to go in first? She won’t recognize you. ”
“Certainly, if you think it best,” said Miss Cecil.
She was neither overweeningly brash nor annoyingly missish, and it delighted Pevensey every time she heeded one of his suggestions.
Auld Donald had taken advantage of the nearby pub, so she descended from the carriage without assistance and entered the shop.
Pevensey waited, muscles tensed, ready to run for the door of the shop if Dolly bolted. If she stayed put, he would let Miss Cecil find out whatever she could through friendly questioning, and then he would take Dolly into custody to answer a sterner interrogation at Bow Street.
He waited one minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. Then, from the alleyway behind the shop, he saw Dolly, skirts gathered high in one hand, the other holding on to her bonnet, running as if a tiger were after her. That tiger happened to be Jedediah Tibbs.
Miss Cecil, exiting the front door of the pawn shop, had also abandoned a ladylike pace. Pevensey hurtled out the door of the carriage and caught her by the arm. “I have the necklace,” she said breathlessly.
“Stow it! Hurry—this way!” With his arm firmly under her elbow, he managed to keep her from tripping over her heeled half boots as they jogged across the flagstones.
A small market of vegetable and flower sellers had set up in the area of the square across from St. Martin’s, and Dolly, with Tibbs behind her, was weaving between the stalls.
It was a dangerous game. Wagons continued along the roads intersecting at Charing Cross, too heavily loaded for drivers to stop suddenly.
Dolly dodged in front of a wagon bearing apples and onions, the last of the past year’s crop.
Startled, the carter tried to turn to avoid hitting her, but one of his horses saw the danger and stopped while the other followed the reins and pulled to the right.
Within seconds, the entire cart had toppled on its side, the driver jumping clear, but the horses tangled up in the traces.
“Steady there,” said Pevensey, seizing Miss Cecil about the waist to lift her over a deluge of apples and onions rolling their way.
“Got you!” said Tibbs, catching hold of Dolly at the same moment and pulling her into a ferocious bearhug. “Now, see here, missy, don’t you bite me.” He put a brawny forearm under her chin and closed her mouth forcibly.
Pevensey set Miss Cecil down, picked up the best-looking apple from the ground, wiped it on his sleeve and handed it to her. “A souvenir, my lady.”
“Thank you,” she said, eyes shining. “And I shall expect a picture of this in your next letter. Apparently, produce carts do capsize quite frequently in London, despite what some might think.”
Tibbs, none too gently, dragged Dolly back to the empty carriage and bundled her inside while Pevensey rousted Auld Donald out of the nearby pub.
“Where d’ye want to go now?” grumbled the carriage driver. “Ah wouldna have taken this job if ah’d kenned Mrs. Aldine intended to lend me out to the law.”
“Back to Bow Street as quick as you can,” said Miss Cecil decisively. “There’ll be an extra shilling or two for you in it, you can depend upon it. And it may interest you to know that this officer’s parents named him Jacob.”
“After the king over the water?” asked Auld Donald with awe in his voice.
“Er, undoubtedly,” said Pevensey, who was completely certain that his parents did not have a Jacobite bone in their body.
That ensured Auld Donald’s compliance, however, and they moved swiftly through the streets to Bow Street.
Dolly was quiet and sullen throughout the carriage ride.
Pevensey had never seen her before without her face painted, and even though she was likely on the right side of thirty, the skin about her eyes was still pinched and haggard.
She came inside the building without a struggle, and Pevensey motioned for the whole party to enter one of the empty assembly rooms since no trial or meeting of magistrates was in progress.
“Well, Dolly, what do you have to say for yourself?” he asked, once they were all seated around a table. His voice echoed around the tall ceiling of the room.
“Nothing,” she replied angrily, crossing her arms over her tawdry, low-cut bodice.
“Why did you run from the King’s Theatre? And where did you get these jewels you were hawking?” Pevensey held out a hand and Miss Cecil dropped the pink topaz necklace into it, retrieved from whatever hidden place she had stowed it when they had given chase to Dolly.
“Answer him!” said Tibbs, thudding a fist on the table.
Dolly’s lip began to quiver.
“Merciful heavens,” said Miss Cecil, “can’t you see she’s frightened?” She took a handkerchief out of her reticule, embroidered with a Scottish thistle, and offered it to Dolly.
Pevensey looked from Miss Cecil to Tibbs to the woman they were interrogating.
As much as he wanted to question Dolly himself, he knew that he could never wring the truth out of her with Tibbs present.
“Tibbs, I think we might be, as the French say it, entirely de trop. Please, carry on, Miss Cecil and we’ll go see about that nurse you mentioned. ”
Then, leaning in toward Miss Cecil’s beautifully coiffed black hair, he whispered a few words into her ear before he rose from his chair and led Tibbs out of the room.
“Dolly,” said Edwina gently. “What’s your surname?”
“I don’t use it,” said Dolly with a sniff. She dabbed the handkerchief against her nose.
“Why is that?”
“Because they’re ashamed of me, and I don’t want anyone to find out where I am.”
“I’m sorry,” said Edwina gently. “But if I can’t know your surname, then why don’t you just call me Edwina, and we’ll be even.”
Dolly snorted, as if to say she had no intention of calling Edwina anything.
“Where did you get this necklace, Dolly?”
“He already knows where I got it,” said Dolly, jerking her chin to the door by which Pevensey had departed. “I don’t know why he’s even asking.”
“I suppose he needs to hear you say it,” said Edwina.
“Why? So he can have me transported for theft?”
“Did you steal it?”
“No. She would have wanted me to have it. Better me than anyone else.”
“Did the necklace belong to Libby then?”
“Course it did. It was a present from one of her admirers.”
“Which one?”
Dolly shook her head and crossed her arms again. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Was it Lord Fremont?”
The actress’ mouth fell open in shock. “How’d you know that?”
“Just like Mr. Pevensey, I know a great many things. For example, I know that Libby was blackmailing Lord Fremont and the Aldine family at the same time.”
Dolly’s mouth clamped shut again, and her eyes grew fearful.
“There were two different versions of the letter acknowledging Libby’s baby. One was written by Lord Fremont. The other was written by someone else—someone pretending to be Will Aldine.”
Dolly’s head began to shake violently. “I don’t know anything about it. I told Mr. Pevensey—I can’t even read.”
“Can’t you?” said Edwina cheerfully. “I could have sworn I saw you reading the contents of the bill of sale the pawnbroker drew up for you.”
At that, Dolly burst into a torrent of tears.
She had not noticed Edwina watching her while pretending to examine the contents of the pawn shop window.
She had not noticed Edwina sidling closer to her while she signed the bill of sale.
She had not noticed Edwina at all until Edwina had seized the pink topaz necklace that lay on the counter, crying, “Why, that’s my necklace!
She’s stolen it!” That outburst had sent Dolly out the back door into the alley in a panic, and once outside, she’d had to run like mad to escape the sturdy fellow guarding the back door.
“You wrote the second letter, didn’t you?” said Edwina, pushing the point home while Dolly was still vulnerable.
“Yes,” she gulped. “It was Libby who couldn’t read.
She was always being taken advantage of by the gents who came backstage.
When she fell with child, I thought it was only right that they pay for it.
All of them. If she got enough money, then maybe she could have set herself up in a little cottage somewhere and kept the baby.
I would have helped her. I would have worked my knuckles to the bone washing and cooking and scrubbing.
And I would have taken care of the little tyke too. ”
“But no one wanted to pay,” ventured Edwina.
“No! Dirty misers, the lot of them! And Fremont was the worst. Not only did he refuse to pay, he threatened to report her for stealing the necklaces. ‘If you play games with me, my girl, I’ll play games with you,’ he said.
‘You won’t like it if you see my mean side.
’ We even sent a letter to his wife with no response, so she must not have cared a whit what bastards he made on the side. ”
“But you thought Ralph Aldine would be an easier mark?”
“He was close to paying. He came that afternoon and wanted to see the letter, but it wasn’t ready yet.”
“Because you hadn’t made the copy yet that had Will Aldine’s name at the bottom?”
Dolly gulped. “Why do you want me to admit that? So I can get transported for forgery?”
Edwina reached out a hand across the table. “No, Dolly, so that you can tell the truth. You’ll feel better if you do.”
Dolly shuddered. “I thought he was less dangerous than Lord Fremont, but after the show that night, I went to help her change, and I heard someone talking inside the room. The corridor creaks outside her door, so she must have heard me coming, because she peeked her head out the door, eyes wide as saucers, and said, ‘Dolly, I need the letter. Now.’ Well, I still didn’t have it.
I’d been busy singing in the chorus—or pretending to sing, because I don’t have much of a voice anymore, not since Danvers got angry at me a few years back and tried to throttle me.
So, I hurried to a little closet where I kept things at the theater, since I don’t have a dressing room of my own, and I tried to copy that letter as fast as I could.
Every word the same as the one from Lord Fremont, and then I signed it ‘Will Aldine.’ I hurried back to her room and knocked on the door.
There was no answer.” Dolly paused. “I knocked again. There was no answer.” Her eyes, too old for one of her years, crinkled as a few more tears fell down her face.
“What did you do then?” asked Edwina gently.
“I opened the door. There was no one inside but her, and she was sitting at the chair of her dressing table, her head slumped over to the side like she was a little child fallen asleep at the dinner table. If I hadn’t have known her, I might have thought she was sleeping, but Libby would never have fallen asleep after a show.
She was always so excited after being on stage—she wanted to have sugar and champagne and stay up talking half the night.
I knew right away that she was dead. Her and the baby inside of her. ”
Edwina reached out a hand and placed it on Dolly’s shoulder. The woman’s breast began to heave.
“I had both letters with me, plus the one from Mr. Aldine, so I hid them behind the mirror—right where your Mr. Pevensey found them. I never thought anyone would look there. I knew where she kept her jewelry, so I took that and hid it in my stays. Might as well take it before Danvers did. Then I went to hide it in a safer spot before I told Danvers she was dead. He called for Bow Street then, and I never saw it happen, but they took the body away.”
“So, you never saw Ralph Aldine in the room or in the theater after the show,” clarified Edwina, “although you think it was him demanding to see the letter?”
“Who else could it have been?” said Dolly.
“He’d been there earlier that day for the same thing.
And I couldn’t tell Bow Street the whole story about the letters without everything else coming out, so I had to say I saw him enter.
I don’t think it was lying to say it like that since I know it was him. ”
“Perhaps,” said Edwina without assurance in her voice. “When you went into the room, was the glass of poison on the dressing table in front of Libby?”
Dolly put her face in her hands. “I don’t know!” she wailed. “I can’t remember. But there is another thing I can’t get out of my head.”
“What’s that?”
“At the inquest, they said that she’d been stabbed. Just beneath the breast the coroner said. But when I saw her slumped over like that at her dressing table, there was no knife and no blood at all.”
“Are you sure?” asked Edwina doubtfully. “But if that were the case, then that must mean that—”
“—that someone came in and stabbed her corpse while I was hiding her jewelry!”