Chapter Fifteen
Elizabeth held perfectly still, every muscle in her body too tense for any movement to be possible. But her breath heaved and trembled as her eyes darted between Sir Edward and Mr. Darcy.
“Lower your weapons, gentlemen,” Sir Walter said with malicious triumph.
Sir Edward lowered his pistol slowly onto the table in front of him, his eyes wide and locked on Elizabeth.
Mr. Darcy looked positively wild, his jaw clenched and his eyes black in the dim light.
He swung his arm out wide, angling his pistol away from Sir Walter, and just as he began lowering his weapon, he tipped the barrel upward and pulled the trigger.
The large crystal chandelier that hung over the center of the table came crashing down; everyone screamed and scattered from their seats.
It was just enough to distract Sir Walter.
He took a few steps back, and tried to drag Elizabeth along within him, but her dress was still tangled on the chair.
She went careening backward. Sir Walter turned to shoot, but his shot went afoul, and across the room a porcelain vase on the mantle shattered, sending flowers tumbling to the floor before the hearth.
“That vase belonged to Henry Tudor,” Mr. Tilney tutted as Mr. Willoughby and Mr. Crawford lunged at Sir Walter and wrestled him to the ground.
Elizabeth landed on her back with a loud rip as her dress tore free from the carved swirls on the chair.
Her head thudded against the thick carpet, and she was sure her legs were exposed from the knees, but Mr. Darcy reached her before she could begin to right herself.
He swiftly kicked the gun from Sir Walter’s hand, and it skittered across the floor; Cathy stopped it with her foot, and awkwardly picked it up, clutching it with two fingers as if it were a live toad.
The gentlemen subdued the villain, and Mr. Darcy crouched beside Elizabeth and lifted her into his arms.
In a smooth motion, he covered her exposed legs with her gown and lifted her up as he rose; he did not set her down again. Instead he pulled her closer in his arms and kissed her. “Elizabeth….”
She raised a hand to his face and smiled, her forehead resting against his. “That was very clever, sir.”
“I almost lost you,” he said, his voice rough and shaky.
“You saved me.” She kissed him again before he set her down on her feet, and they both took a few steps back as the gentlemen began binding the thrashing, cursing Sir Walter with the rope that Sir Edward retrieved from a credenza near the fireplace.
When Sir Walter’s hands had been bound behind his back, and his ankles bound as well, Mr. Willoughby and Mr. Tilney hauled him to his feet.
He swore and spat at them, red-faced and snarling with malice.
“Let me go! I have done nothing wrong in ridding the world of five of the vilest slithering criminals!”
“Five?” Mr. Tilney frowned at him, his voice frigid. “You have lost count, sir – you must mean six.”
Sir Walter gave a cruel, hollow laugh. “Five. Wickham belonged in the gutter; nobody will mourn him. The general, whom you all ought to thank me for ending. Fred Tilney, the blackguard who locked us in this place, would certainly have made more of our secrets than his father. Mrs. Younge – ha! I had no quarrel with her, though she was the general’s spy and a filthy trollop.
But I got Mrs. Clay on the second attempt.
She eluded me, and thought to surround herself with other servants, as if that would save her.
She was so surprised when I cornered her. ”
Cathy gasped. “What about Mr. Rushworth?”
Sir Walter offered them all an evil grin as he glared about the room. “It appears there is an opportunist amongst you. Somebody wanted Rushworth gone, though I cannot say I blame them, and so they took advantage of my benevolence in ridding the world of scum, and added his body to the pile.”
Chaos erupted in the room; it was just what Elizabeth and her friends hoped to avoid.
Mr. Crawford and Mrs. Rushworth began squabbling with Mr. Bertram, who swung for Mr. Crawford, missed, and received a blow from his foe that sent him careening backward into the credenza.
Mr. Parker and Miss Denham shouted at them, Lady Susan howled with laughter, and Harriet inexplicably began weeping.
Lady Allen and Emma fussed over her, while Cathy crossed the room and retrieved their bundle of evidence.
Mr. Tilney, looking supremely annoyed by the discord Sir Walter had sown, punched the man swiftly in the gut as Sir Edward and Mr. Willoughby continued to hold him roughly.
Mr. Tilney then conducted a swift search of the man’s person, and tossed the stolen keys down heavily on the dining room table.
Mrs. Rushworth gasped. “You?” She stared down at the keys and then back up at him. “When you tried to embrace me, after Rushworth collapsed….”
“Your vanity gave me every chance to pretend to take liberties,” the villain sneered. Mr. Crawford crossed the room and cuffed Sir Walter for his insult.
Cathy came forward and gently nudged Mr. Crawford away before extending her hand to Sir Walter. In her palm was the vinaigrette de toilette. “Is this not yours?”
Sir Walter narrowed his eyes at her. “It is. I misplaced it, or so I had thought. I supposed it might have fallen from my pocket in my scuffle with the captain, and I went back to look for it in the parlor. When it was gone, I began to suspect there was a thief in our midst.”
“What is it?” Mr. Bertram went closer to have a look at the little silver object.
“Mrs. Rushworth and I found it in one of the secret passages,” Elizabeth said. Mr. Darcy still had his arm wrapped protectively around her, and she had no intention of withdrawing from his embrace.
“Miss Bennet and I confided some personal information,” Mrs. Rushworth added. “We presumed that whoever was skulking in the passage, whoever dropped their trinket, overheard me say such things as would implicate Mr. Crawford and myself, when my husband was killed hours later.”
“Vicious liar,” Mr. Crawford said, cuffing Sir Walter again. “You killed Rushworth with the rest of them, to shift the blame away from yourself.”
“A red herring?” Lady Susan laughed. “How convenient.”
Sir Walter spat the blood from his lip at Mr. Crawford. “You have my confession for the five I killed, which makes me a better man than you. She is a fine bit of muslin, but not worth killing for, you pathetic tyke.”
Mr. Crawford stood up a little straighter, but Sir Walter towered over him by several inches. Mrs. Rushworth started to go to him, but her brother yanked her back. “No, Maria. He is obviously guilty; it is far too convenient for him.”
“He cannot be! He has scarcely left my sight! What evidence have you?”
“Yes, I should like to know the same,” Mr. Bertram said. “You all seemed to have some scheme in mind when you confronted Sir Walter. You could not have known that he would expose himself in such desperation.”
Cathy, Emma, and Mr. Willoughby launched into an explanation of how they had deduced their answers, citing the explanation for every murder, though they had only conjectures for the poisoning of Mr. Rushworth.
Miss Denham blanched. “So you had the dossiers all along?”
“We did,” Mr. Tilney said. “I lied for the sake of our safety, since everybody who was known to be aware of the secrets they contain was killed. Can you blame me?”
Mr. Parker also began to look very nervous. “And you read them, I take it?”
“I looked over the dossiers of my preferred companions first,” Mr. Tilney said smoothly, unflinching in his falsehood. “Once I knew they could be trusted, I read Sir Walter’s dossier, and the handwriting was quite different. Mr. Willoughby confirmed it to be written in his uncle’s own hand.”
Elizabeth could see what Mr. Tilney was about, hedging his way around admitting he knew the contents of Miss Denham and Mr. Parker’s dossiers. If the pair of schemers knew they were found out, they could hardly trust that Mr. Tilney would not turn them over when the royals arrived.
Mr. Parker scowled at Sir Walter. “But why did you not destroy them, if you wished to protect your secret? Why switch it out with a false history?”
“I knew Tilney would look for them, and I thought it likely that those with more interesting secrets would appear the guiltiest. That would serve me far better than destroying them, thus rendering us all of equal suspicion, of course. You prove my point by your outrage, given your own crimes,” Sir Walter said haughtily.
Cathy eyed the dossier warily, and swiftly turned the subject.
“We compared this to our other evidence. Sir Walter’s valet confirmed that his master was not bathing, as he said that he was at the time of the first two murders.
And we found the vinaigrette and the remnant of the handkerchief in the fire. ”
Mr. Bertram picked up the little scrap of fabric. “VF? Ah, it is singed on either side. You supposed it must be WE, for Walter Elliot. But why should he deny this, and admit to the other killings? No, it must be WF, the middle letters of Crawford, and the rest burned away.”
Miss Denham moved closer to examine it. “Could it be VE, like Vernon?”
“That makes no sense,” Mr. Parker said. “Crawford has motive enough. Why would Lady Susan kill Rushworth?”
“An excellent point. Though I welcome Mrs. Rushworth to the ranks of the merry widows, I should hardly risk my own neck doing her that very large favor. A lady of competency ought to solve her own problems.”
“How dare you,” Mrs. Rushworth hissed. “I had no need to kill my husband!”