Chapter Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWO
By the time I’m done with Polly, Gray is finishing up his interviews. He didn’t have that many. All the guests were in the parlor with us. That leaves the staff, and except for Polly and Rose, they were all in the kitchen.
“They heard nothing,” Gray says, as we discuss the interviews, with Isla having joined us.
“Which they wouldn’t, being on the opposite side of the house,” I say. “So that leaves Polly.”
I tell them what she said.
“Poor child,” Isla murmurs. “I can see why she did not want to speak up. I cannot imagine Lady Adler would be angry that the girls eavesdropped on the séance, but they would have gotten a stern talking-to from Mrs. Loomis.”
It’s the housekeeper’s job to keep the staff in line, even if the lady of the house wouldn’t object. “Polly didn’t want to get Rose in trouble—or get herself in trouble. She also didn’t want to admit she heard Rose seem to confront someone out there.”
“Because she misunderstood,” Isla says. “She thought Rose was confronting a ghost. Which is apparently what Rose also thought.” She sighs. “Ghosts are causing a great deal of trouble with this case.”
Gray grunts and says nothing.
“So,” I say, “Rose and Polly heard either a whisper or a rustle. Or, maybe most likely, a rustle that Rose interpreted as a whisper, because that’s what she wanted to hear.”
“The rustle being someone in the yard,” Isla says. “Someone near the séance window.”
“Yes,” I say. “Rose goes out, confronts the intruder with ‘What are you doing here?,’ and then…”
“She is grabbed?” Isla says.
“I hope not, but we need to get some strong lanterns and do a more thorough sweep of the area.”
Gray, Isla, and I spend the next hour searching the area behind the Adler home.
Once we’re certain there’s no evidence left on the property, we solicit help from others to conduct a wider sweep of the street.
Freddie, Parsons, Simon, and the groom all pitch in.
We can’t expect Lord Adler or the butler—Loomis—to help, and no one suggests the women do.
But seven people is more than enough as we head up and down this street and the adjoining ones.
It’s past midnight now. No one is around to ask whether they saw anything.
I can hear voices over in the apartment buildings, but this area is residential and quiet.
When we head toward those multifamily dwellings, we encounter a group of students heading to a boardinghouse, but they’re too drunk to communicate properly.
Finally, we need to accept that Rose has disappeared literally without a trace. According to Polly, Rose went out the side door and around the back. It’s grass there, with nothing to show footprints or any sign of a struggle. All we know is that we heard her voice, a shriek, and then silence.
Did she flee? If so, I’d have expected her to come back by now.
Was she grabbed? The yard was pitch black. It’s only a few steps to the stable. Could someone drag her away without being seen?
“We need to play this out,” I say to Gray, as we stand in the yard, Isla and the others having gone inside. “We heard Rose shriek and then we opened the curtains but saw nothing. Had she already been grabbed? Or was she out of our line of sight, being silenced?”
“I hope you are not going to ask me to go inside while you stand here, where a young woman may have been kidnapped.”
I sigh. “No one is grabbing two of us in one night, Gray.”
His jaw sets.
I throw up my hands. “Fine. I will go inside, and you can play Rose, even though you are nowhere near her size or wearing a dress, which makes it a very poor experiment.”
“I will escort you inside.”
I glower at him. He only waves for me to head for the door.
We conduct the experiment, with me in the parlor and him in the yard.
I use the same lighting and look out the same window, and we quickly discover that it’s very easy for him to disappear from sight.
All he needs to do is move a few steps to either side of my narrow range of view.
I then check from the library. Polly reported seeing nothing but the reflection, and then turning out the light and still seeing nothing, immediately after the shriek.
When Gray is to the left of the parlor window, I can see him through it. That suggests Rose was to the left, which would put her closer to the door she exited.
I tell Gray I’ll be right out and then I pop into the kitchen and confirm what I remember of Rose from earlier—that she was wearing a dark dress and white cap.
I head outside to speak to Gray and find him down on a knee, which has me rushing over, as if he’s been struck from behind.
He rises and holds something out in one hand, the lantern in the other.
Between his fingers is a hairpin. It’s a pretty one, with a little butterfly on the end, but it’s bent, as if ripped out, and several strands of long, dark hair hang from it.
I curse under my breath. Then I take the lantern and carefully crouch to see the grass.
I find a few more strands of hair and another bent pin, this one just the ordinary sort.
I keep searching, my fingers running over the ground until I find what I’m looking for.
A divot, one that we wouldn’t have seen just scanning the ground.
Gray bends and checks it.
“A boot,” he says. “Either a narrow heel or a toe. Twisting sharply.”
We both straighten. He looks at the pins in my hand.
“Someone grabs her,” he says. “She turns sharply or they yank her. The pins fly out. The bent one suggests force. Coming up behind and grabbing her by the hair?”
I step back and look at the house. Gray found these items in what would have been a blind spot from any of the parlor or library windows.
“I’m going to play Rose,” I say.
I head to the side door. Then I hurry toward the yard. I don’t run, but I move fast. I also note the parlor windows. While the curtains were closed, Rose wouldn’t want to pass them, just in case her employer spotted her. I stop where the pins were.
“She saw someone,” I say. “That means it’s unlikely her attacker came up from behind.
She stops here to ask what they’re doing and …
I’m going to guess they were near the windows.
” I turn that way. “That would make sense. She sees them trying to look in or listen in. They’re right there, only a few feet away, so she only has time to ask them… ”
I frown as I picture it. I can imagine someone there, in the darkness. There’s a bush, which could have hidden them until the last second. Rose stops short, seeing them, asks the question, and …
“Duncan? Can you attack me?”
He arches a brow.
“You know what I mean,” I say, waving him to the spot. “Rose saw whoever was there. How did she lose a hairpin that seems to have been wrenched out, hair and all?”
He moves into place. I head back to the door. When I round the corner of the house, I can’t see him. He’s on the other side of the bush, and while he’s taller than it is, all I see in the darkness is the large shape of the bush. I hit the spot where he found the pin and stop. That’s when I see him.
“I’ve spotted you,” I say. “I’ve called you out. You need to silence me before someone hears.”
He takes one long stride, bearing down on me with such a dark look that I instinctively back up. I’m about to laugh at that, when I realize it’s what Rose likely did as well. She sees someone at the window. She challenges them. They turn and come at her. She’d back up.
Except she wouldn’t stop there. I know Gray isn’t a threat. Whoever she saw wasn’t someone she knew—or knew well enough not to be frightened of. She’d keep backing up. Or …
I turn to run. Behind me, Gray must lunge, because his fingers brush my hair. That’s when we both spot Rose’s white cap on the ground, partially hidden by a bush.
“There,” he says. “That is the answer.”
“She confronted the person, who came at her. She turns to run. They grab her by the cap, pulling it out along with the pin. That could be the shriek we heard. Surprise and pain.”
“And then he subdues her.” Gray waves a hand. “Yes, I know we should not presume it was a man, but Rose is a sturdy young housemaid. If she was so easily overcome that we never heard a second noise, it was likely a male attacker.”
“Fine. I’ll give you that.” I look around. “She’s attacked and dragged around the stable. Taking her anywhere else would be too risky.”
I eye the stable and its positioning. “Around the far end. The near end would mean dragging her in front of the parlor window, which now has people looking out.”
I head to that corner of the stable. “How long do you figure it took you to get outside?”
“Too long,” he says. “And I came along the lane.”
“Which means you ran down the other side of the house.”
“Yes, and if I had come out the side door, I would have seen someone dragging a captive along the stable. I could have saved her.”
I walk over to him and lower my voice, though no one else is out here. “Don’t, okay? You were the first outside. There were others who knew about the closer door. They didn’t get off their asses.”
“If you are referring to Lord and Lady Adler, I would not expect them to give chase.”
“No, but they could have called after us about the door. Or followed you into the hall and pointed it out.”
“I know.” He takes a deep breath. “This is not about me. Stop feeling sorry for myself.”
“I never said that.” I toss him a small smile.
“Though I might have if it had gone on much longer. Now, the trespasser drags Rose along the side of the stable. Or leads her there. If she’d fought, they’d have been slower and you’d have seen them.
” I pause. “Which is not blaming the victim. She didn’t know help was coming.
Fighting back might have gotten her killed. ”
We walk to the side of the stable. There’s gravel here, and it’s hard to tell whether it’s been disturbed, but there’s really no other place for Rose’s attacker to have taken her.
“Along the stable to the back, which…” I stand there and look. “Abuts the yard of the houses on the next street.”
I can see the stable in the yard behind, with the house in front. The stable is pitch black, as is the house.
“He has a choice of places to take her,” I say. “Into a nearby stable or … No, there’s a light on down to the right. He won’t go that way.”
To the left of this cluster of single-family homes, the Sciennes district becomes apartment buildings.
The Adlers’ city home exists in a little oasis of the upper class, rubbing shoulders with the poor.
It’d be easy enough to get Rose out of this neighborhood.
Her captor would only need to strong-arm her into the apartment complexes, where—if anyone was still awake—they wouldn’t blink at a man pushing a woman along the street.
She’s drunk or flirted with the wrong fellow, and either way it’s none of their business.
There’s a narrow path here behind the stable, leading right, toward the apartments, with no obvious fences in the way. It’d be easy to bring Rose along this narrow passage, blocked even more by bushes.
“I want to see where this leads,” I murmur to Gray. “But that’s trespassing.”
“We will take a quick look,” he says. “If we are caught, the Adlers will explain.”
I start down the path. Gray stays right at my heels. It’s too narrow for us to walk side by side, and he’s not letting me get more than a step ahead of him, not when we’re walking through an increasingly dark passage.
It’s almost too narrow for me, with my skirts, and they scrape a neighboring stable wall on one side and the bushes on the other. When my hip bumps something, I automatically brush my hand down to push the bush away … and my hand touches flesh.
I spin, fists raised, and before I can say a word, Gray is shouldering me aside and yanking someone from the bushes. Someone who shrieks a very familiar shriek. Hearing that, he lets go fast.
“Rose?” I say.
The figure tries to melt back into the bushes. It’s too dark to see more than a shadow shape, and I realize that’s all she can see, too.
“Rose?” I say. “It’s Mallory Mitchell. And Dr. Gray.”
A face appears, pale, with wide eyes. “M-Miss Mitchell?”
“Yes, and Dr. Gray.”
I barely get the last word out before she falls into my arms, sobbing.