Chapter Forty-One #2
“The letter I found in your apartment.” I tapped the folded paper in my sleeve. “I knew it was addressed to you, that the MRS had been added later. What were you planning on doing it with it after you’d added to it to make it look as though it were addressed to Mrs. Lynton?”
“Leaving it somewhere that the Runner might find,” Miss Abbott said. “I wanted to press the point home that Mrs. Lynton had been wronged by Sue.”
I cocked my head. “I’d thought Lady Richford was expressing her apologies that she wouldn’t continue the blackmail scheme any longer. But she was ending the relationship with you, wasn’t she?”
“She didn’t mean it. Sue was confused.” Miss Abbott waved the pistol about as she waved her hands. “It was that husband of hers. That son. They made her feel guilty for being her true self. But she was an exceptional woman, one who didn’t bend to fit society’s rules. She would have come around.”
I couldn’t stop the laugh that burst from my lips. “Come around? You’re the one who ensured that could never happen. You killed her.”
“I didn’t—She wouldn’t listen!” The gun bounced in the direction of my chest, and my lungs stalled. “I told her what they were doing, told her she couldn’t leave me. She wouldn’t listen.”
“The viscountess wanted to renew her relationship with her husband.” I couldn’t think of a reason to keep her talking beyond prolonging the inevitable, but it was all I had. “They were planning a trip to the Continent.”
“She got scared when Lord Anglia threatened to tell her husband about her activities,” Miss Abbott said. “She said she’d come too close to ruining her family’s reputation.”
I dug my thumb into my breastbone, my heart aching. “Because she loved them. Often, it’s only when we come close to losing something that we realize just how much.”
“She loved me.” Miss Abbott’s face mottled with anger.
“I’m sure she did,” Eleanor said, her eyes urging me to join in appeasing the killer.
It was the smart play, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Miss Abbott struck me as someone who’d lived most of her life without anyone telling her she was wrong, that her behavior wouldn’t be tolerated.
If these were to be my last words, I didn’t have the stomach to let her continue in that delusion.
“No, the viscountess loved the excitement of the forbidden relationship, of the blackmail, but she didn’t love Miss Abbott.
” The viscountess barely knew how to love.
I didn’t know if it made the situation more or less tragic that Lady Richford had decided to try to learn how to love her family right before her death.
“And Miss Abbott certainly didn’t love her.
It wasn’t her rejection of your relationship that cut so deep, was it?
It was the fact that the viscountess was rejecting the kind of person you are inside, your lifestyle of selfishness and deceit that made you angry enough to kill. ”
“You don’t know my mind.” Miss Abbott stood, her body moving jerkily.
“Perhaps not.” I pursed my lips. “But I’m not certain you know it, either.”
Miss Abbott went to the door and peered out. “If you didn’t know about my special relationship with Susan, why did you break into my home?”
“The other letter, the one written by Mrs. Lynton.” I slid my fingers underneath the lip of my top desk drawer and inched it open. “The one you told Mr. Rollins you saw in Lady Richford’s home. The one you took and placed in Bannister’s apartment to implicate Eleanor’s mother.”
“What about it?” She leaned against the doorframe, letting her arms drop to her sides.
A sliver of sharpened brass met my gaze in the drawer, the letter opener a tantalizing weapon.
“Lady Richford would have no reason to bring it to her son’s home before she was murdered, and if Bannister had found the hidden drawer in his mother’s writing desk, he would have taken the other letters, cash, and jewelry, as well.
You had access to the Richford’s home as a close family friend.
Did Bannister figure out what you and his mother had been up to? Is that why you killed him?”
“Stupid boy.” Miss Abbott snorted. “He found one of Susan’s stashes hidden in her closet.
He knew we must have been working together and thought to turn the tables and blackmail me.
” She twisted her lips. “He even guessed that I killed his mother. He didn’t care, except to the extent he could get more blunt with that information. You understand why I had to kill him.”
I suppose I did, at least to her mind.
“And implicate my mother.” Eleanor’s body vibrated with outrage.
“That almost didn’t come about. I’d intended to leave the entire letter your mother wrote, crumpled at the edge of the grate.
Edgar tore it from my hand, came at me. I had to shoot him.
And when he collapsed, the letter fell into the fire.
I only had the small portion. It was fortunate Bow Street had such competent agents to compare the handwriting as your mother’s signature at the bottom had been destroyed.
” Miss Abbott shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, your mother may end up free. After you kill Lady Mary, the suspicion for the other murders should shift to you, as well.”
Eleanor had no answer to that, only stared with her mouth gaping wide.
Miss Abbott raised the gun. “Close that desk drawer, if you please, Lady Mary. Whatever trinket you think will help you from there, I can assure you it won’t beat my gun.”
I ground my back teeth and did as she’d ordered.
“Stand up, both of you.” Miss Abbott smiled, sending a shiver down my spine. “I’m feeling nostalgic. Let’s adjourn to the Great Room, shall we?”
Eleanor and I locked gazes. We both knew what waited for us there, and, if I read her expression correctly, neither of us had any idea how to avoid following her orders without being shot.
I stepped around my desk, my chin raised. There was only one direction to go and that was forward. I could only pray an idea would come to us before it was too late.