Chapter Forty
FORTY
Rose is dead. I have seen some horrible deaths in my life, but that one is going to haunt me. She’d been standing on the tracks when the train hit and …
It’d been quick. That’s all I can say. She died quickly.
Freddie survives. When she went after me, he’d managed to get off the tracks, though he’s a gibbering mess. Then he saw Rose—what remains of her—and the gibbering turned to vomiting.
While Gray goes to summon the police, I stay with Freddie, who’s clearly in no shape to make a run for it.
“I did not know,” he keeps repeating. “Nellie. I did not know.”
“But you suspected.”
He starts shaking violently. “Thought I was wrong. How could she? Murder?” He struggles for breath, and his watery eyes lift to mine. “It was not like that. How she said it. I never promised to marry her. Never promised anything.”
I don’t answer. He may not have actually promised but Rose didn’t pull those dreams out of thin air, and I can imagine what he did say.
I am of an age to settle down soon and find a wife.
My sister is in need of an assistant, and you have her gift, Rose.
My sister will likely retire soon, to have children, and I will help another talented medium launch her own career. That would be wonderful, would it not?
Not promises per se, and he would now protest that they were idle musings with a lover.
But he knew what he was doing. Seducing her.
He didn’t outright promise a wedding band, but he dangled the dream over the nose of a young woman with few prospects in life.
Like dangling meat over a starving dog to make it do tricks and then claiming you had no intention of feeding it.
It’s an ordinary sort of evil. The kind people do every day, and never think twice.
It’s just how you get ahead in life. If you’re a man, it might be how you get sex.
It’s not as if Freddie raped Rose. He’d never do such a thing.
He just spun lies and dreams and fancies until she gave him what he wanted.
And most times, there’d be no consequences.
Oh, sure, she might pay the price in unwed motherhood and social pariah-hood, but it wasn’t as if anyone died.
Someone did die because of Freddie’s machinations. Nellie, the girl who only wanted to be a good friend. Women helping women. Showing them the trap they’re falling into. And now Rose is dead, too.
She’d been prepared to take Freddie with her. And then in those final seconds, she’d been ready to trade the man who wronged her for me, the woman who—like Nellie—tried to help but said things Rose didn’t want to hear.
I can hate Rose for that, but most of all, I hate the world that made her so quick to turn on other women, to silence their inconvenient truths. I hate the world that made her value women’s lives so cheaply. That made her value her own so cheaply.
And I hate Freddie Home, too. I hate that he will get away with this. He’ll be just a near victim of a homicidal maid he spurned. Hell hath no fury …
At a movement to my left, I look to see Gray hurrying back, with constables behind him. And beside him, Edgar Parsons, his expression grim.
I look at Parsons, and I look at Freddie, and I smile inwardly.
No consequences?
Oh, there can be consequences.
Before I can do more than clean up, we have an obligatory visit to make. Not to the palace—we’re in no shape for that, so we send out apologies with a quick written update and a promise we will provide a complete one tomorrow, at whatever time suits our esteemed reader.
The visit is to the Adlers, which I’d love to skip, but this is also about preserving Gray’s professional relationship with them. We need to speak to Lady Adler, tell her the resolution and that Rose will not be returning.
As for Freddie, I’ve already handled that.
I talked to his brother-in-law, in the hopes that a man who loves his wife as much as Parsons does will not see Freddie’s seduction as “boys will be boys.” He did not.
To him, Freddie is responsible for launching the chain of events that led to Nellie’s death, and this is exactly the impetus Parsons needed to end the lie Stella lives under.
Parsons intends to use his previous plan for sending Freddie away. The young man will decide he wants to travel to America, and in his absence, Stella’s powers will “fade”—Parsons faking her dwindling abilities at the same time that he shifts her attention to another way of helping others.
Freddie is in a panic, determined to change Parsons’s mind, but it won’t happen. While Parsons was content to support Freddie for Stella’s sake, he’ll realize how much happier they’ll both be once that parasitic relationship ends.
Solving the case also meant that McCreadie could handle the question of Kate and her involvement in Mary’s death.
He’s decided there are no charges to pursue, which leaves it as an ethical quandary, one that Kate is determined to resolve herself by admitting to Mary’s parents that it was an accident, not suicide, which can see Mary reburied in the kirkyard.
When we arrive at the Adler home, I spot Art helping the gardener.
“Can you speak to Lady Adler?” I say to Gray. “I’d like to thank Art and update him.”
“Of course.”
Gray fishes around in his pocket and pulls out a pound note. As he passes me the bill, he takes the opportunity to brush my fingers with his, sending a spark through me.
“I believe I will require your assistance in the laboratory this evening,” he murmurs. “If you are not overly tired from the day. And if you are, then I promise nothing more strenuous than whisky and a warm embrace.”
“Nothing more strenuous?” I waggle my brows.
He wags a finger at me. “Not until we are wed.”
“Uh…”
“If I have learned one thing from this case, it is that a man should never seduce a young virgin before marriage.”
“One, that is not the lesson. At all. Two, I’m not a young woman. I just look like one. Also, sorry, but I’m definitely not a—”
He claps his hands over his ears. “I hear nothing. I will preserve your virtue until I have placed a ring on your finger.”
“I have no virtue.”
“You have many virtues. Apparently, however, patience is not one of them.”
I reach to swat him, but he backs away.
“I fear I am resolved,” he says. Then his eyes twinkle as he leans in. “How else will I tempt you into marrying me?”
“That’s—that’s not—”
He walks away, waving over his shoulder at me.
I shake my head as I laugh. Then I gather myself and walk over to where Art is working.
“Do you have a moment?” I say. “The case is resolved, and I would like to tell you how it concluded.”
The nearby gardener waves for the boy to take a break. We walk under the shade of an old oak, and I tell Art everything.
“She died trying to do a good thing,” he says. “Trying to do two good things. Help a friend who had drowned and another friend who was about to drown, in a mistake that would swallow her whole.”
“Nicely put,” I murmur. “And yes, she died helping. It will be of no consolation to Nellie, but I hope it honors her memory for others to know that she was a good person, right to the end.”
“Oh, she knows.” He looks around. “She knows you have solved the case and cleared any stain from her memory. That is why she called for Dr. Gray.”
“Yes, er, so—”
“You do not believe,” he says with the patient smile of a boy telling a younger child something they can’t yet comprehend. “I realize it was Miss Sullivan I saw behind the bush, but it was still Nellie who asked for Dr. Gray to find her killer. Who else could it have been?”
I open my mouth to argue but … That’s one mystery I didn’t solve, isn’t it?
He continues, “I remember how excited she was when Mrs. Ballantyne came to visit last month. Nellie knew her, of course, as the person who brought her to the Adlers, but then she read the chronicles and realized she was Dr. Gray’s sister, from the stories, and it was all she could do to keep from peppering her with questions. ”
“Nellie … read the chronicles?”
“Of course. That is how I read the two. Nellie was lent them by a friend, who had borrowed them from her landlady.” His smile is almost indulgent. “How else would Nellie’s ghost have known to ask for Dr. Gray?”
A chill slides through me, and I can only stare.
“It was Nellie. You do not need to believe that, though, Miss Mitchell. In fact, it is probably best if you do not.”
“No?”
“Then you can focus on the facts. One could hardly bring a ghost to court to testify. You and Dr. Gray work in science, and it is a wondrous thing. Hard facts and sharp minds to interpret them. I am reading your adventures, and I cannot wait to see more. And if you are ever in need of a junior detective…”
I smile. “I’ll keep that in mind. And you already have a place in the latest chronicle. We’ll be sure of that. The only question is how you’d like to be included. Under your full name? Just Art? Some other way?”
He leans against the tree, thinking. “I would love to have my full name in there, but I suspect my parents would not like it. Just Arthur, please. But, in case you need my surname for anything else, it is Doyle.”
“Arthur … Doyle,” I say, certain I’ve heard wrong. No, both are common enough names—
“It’s rather dull,” he says. “My middle names are Ignatius and Conan, but I am certainly never using Ignatius.” He wrinkles his nose. “I do like Conan, though. I might use that one someday.”
“Arthur Conan Doyle.”
He smiles. “It has a nice ring to it, does it not?”