39. CHAPTER 39
D alton arrived home to find a report waiting for him. Nathaniel's man had finally found the detective Dalton had hired seven years ago to search for Vivienne. He had retired to a cottage an hour south of London, and Dalton was on the first train the next morning.
Hargreaves met him at the door of a small white house set back from a country lane.
Older than Dalton remembered. Still sharp.
He invited Dalton in, sat him down, poured tea neither of them touched, and answered Dalton's questions with a recollection that was impressive, given the time that had passed.
"I visited Guernsey three weeks after the wreck," he said. "I called at every parish on the island. The harbormaster. The constable. Two innkeepers. The rector of St. Martin's." He paused, his finger tracking down a page of a little notebook. "And a young country doctor."
Dalton's eyes narrowed.
"The doctor's name."
"The name escapes me at the moment. Give me a moment."
Dalton did not need a moment. He already knew, but he wanted to hear it from the detective.
Hargreaves turned the page and turned it again. He found what he was looking for and read it aloud.
"Dr. Paul Harrison."
Dalton kept his face still. He had suspected for weeks. The confirmation was still a blow .
The rest of the people interviewed could genuinely not have seen her at that point.
He could not make the same excuse for the doctor.
She had been in Harrison's care, possibly sleeping in a room above the surgery with no memory of her own name, while the detective sat in the man's parlor and was told he had never seen such a woman.
Dalton took his leave of Hargreaves and rushed back to London on the next train.
Harrison had lied. He had looked another man in the face and lied. He had then carried that lie for seven years, becoming Vivienne's doctor and her friend. Almost becoming her husband. And now he was in London again, walking her in the park.
Dalton had spent the carriage ride home from Belgravia yesterday telling himself she had been smiling at a kind man. He had let himself believe Harrison was a country physician who had acted in good faith.
That was no longer the story.
He needed to go to his wife and remove her from Harrison's reach.
Nathaniel was waiting for him when he arrived home. He had also been looking into the wreck and wanted to deliver this report personally.
Dalton read it without sitting. The boiler had exploded.
The maritime inquest of November 1860 recorded that much as a settled fact.
What Nathaniel's man had found, seven years later, were three surviving sailors who had not testified.
Two had emigrated. The third had been located in a boarding house in Rotherhithe, drinking himself to death on a pension he could not account for.
"The Rotherhithe sailor said the boiler had been sound," Nathaniel said.
"He had checked it himself on the morning of departure.
He said the explosion had come from the wrong place — not the main chamber but the intake valve, which would have required someone to open a fitting that was never opened at sea. "
Dalton had wondered, since the night Alfred had sat across from him in the cell beneath this house and blackmailed him, whether Alfred had stumbled on the information by accident or had created the circumstances that led to Vivienne's disappearance.
But wondering and having the evidence in his hands were not the same.
"Someone tampered with the boiler," Dalton said.
Nathaniel nodded. "It would appear so, yes."
"I just found out that Dr. Harrison lied to Hargreaves. Seven years ago. The inspector questioned him, and he denied having seen her."
"That is the doctor who — "
"Treated Vivienne when she was brought to Guernsey, yes."
"It is not definitive proof," Nathaniel said.
"But all the evidence points to Alfred engineering the shipwreck and then putting Vivienne on Guernsey to use as a pawn," Dalton finished.
Now the question was whether Harrison had been part of the conspiracy all along, or whether his cousin had lied to him in order to gain his cooperation.
Either way, he was part of it, and he had returned. While Vivienne was at her parents' house in Belgravia with no protection worth a damn.
He had been so consumed by his fear of losing her that he had taken his eye off the threat.
"I need to go to my wife right now."
Nathaniel nodded and followed him out of the study.
He was buttoning his coat in the entrance hall, calling for his coach, when the pounding started at the front door.
He opened it before the footman could get to it.
Harrison stood on the steps. Hatless. White-faced. His cravat undone. He looked like a man who had run for miles without stopping.
Dalton's heart kicked into a gallop as the realization that he might be too late hit him in the chest.
He had Harrison by the throat before the man had finished crossing the threshold.
"Where is Vivienne?"
"She is gone," Harrison rasped, the color drained from his face. "They have taken her. "
One hand closed around the doctor's collar, the other fisted in the wool of his coat. Dalton drove him backward into the wall, hard enough to rattle the pictures hanging on it. Harrison's skull hit the plaster. His spectacles slid sideways. His hands came up in surrender.
"Where?" It was not a question. It was a demand ground through locked teeth.
"I don't — " It came out as a croak. Harrison stopped, cleared his throat. "Dalton, I swear to you, I don't know where they have taken her."
His hand loosened. Did not release.
"Tell me what happened."
"We were walking in the park. They attacked us from behind, held ether to our faces until we passed out. When I came to, she was gone. And they had left this letter in my pocket. It is addressed to you."
Harrison held out a folded piece of paper with shaking hands.
Dalton released him and took the note. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nathaniel move closer to Harrison. Ready to intervene should the doctor try anything.
The note was in Alfred's handwriting. He recognized it at once. The ransom demand was brief. The instructions were precise.
"He wants thirty thousand pounds. The docks. Tonight at midnight. Alone. The threat to her is explicit."
Nathaniel pressed his lips together, saying nothing. His sober expression said enough.
Dalton folded the note and put it in his breast pocket.
Vivienne in the hands of his enemy… He forced himself to breathe. In, out. He needed air. He needed to stay calm and think in order to help her.
"My study, now."
Nathaniel led the way, the doctor followed without being dragged, and Dalton brought up the rear.
He closed the door behind them but didn't sit. Harrison stood by the desk and waited .
"Tell me everything," he told Harrison. "Start with the reason you lied to the detective I sent to look for my wife, and tell me who paid you to hide her from me."
Harrison's face went gray. "How did you — "
"Sit down."
Harrison sat.
"I have never taken any payment to hide her.
I swear," Harrison said. "I only did it to protect her.
A man came three days after the two sailors who had pulled her from the water brought her to me.
He found me at the surgery and told me he was related to her.
She had regained consciousness by then but was confused.
She could not remember her name or anything else about her life, and I told the man so.
" Harrison's hands were fidgeting in his lap.
"He still requested to see her, so I let him. "
"Did you witness the meeting?"
"Yes. He asked her questions. About herself, about her life. About him. None of which she could answer. After five minutes, I cut the meeting short. That was all she could tolerate."
"The name of the man."
"Alfred St Aubyn. He asked me questions about her condition.
Then he told me she was fleeing a violent marriage.
That her amnesia was a mercy because it spared her the memory of the abuse she suffered.
That her husband was powerful and dangerous, and would reclaim her if anyone found her.
" Harrison's voice was very level in a way that suggested effort to keep it so. "He begged me to hide her."
"And you believed him."
"I had my doubts at first. I didn't know what to do, so I decided to keep her presence quiet. Then she started to have nightmares."
Dalton closed his eyes.
"She screamed in her sleep about dark corridors and dungeons. About being tied down. About a man's hands on her in the dark." Harrison's jaw tightened. "What was I supposed to think? "
The bonds were silk. The hands were his, and they had never touched her without her wanting them to. But memories stripped of their context sounded exactly like what Harrison had thought they were.
"When the detective came," Harrison said, "I was certain. Not a worried husband. A detective. Hunting her down. So I lied. I looked him in the eye and told him I knew of no Englishwoman matching that description. Because I believed I was saving her life."
The silence stretched.
"Did Alfred come back?"
"Once. With documents. Forged identification papers. A letter purportedly from a solicitor advising on grounds for separation. Court papers describing incidents of violence. Bruises. A broken wrist."
Dalton's fingers curled into the leather of the armchair.
He had never raised a hand to her. Never even raised his voice.
"Go on."
"She had no memory. She was terrified. And Mr. St. Aubyn was meticulous.
He had an answer for every question I raised.
When I asked why a husband would search for a wife he abused, he said it was about property.
Control. That the duke — " Harrison stopped.
Looked at his hands. "That the duke did not want a wife so much as a possession he had misplaced. "
"And after that?"
"He wrote once or twice a year to ask after her health and whether she had remembered anything. But he never came back."
So Alfred had been keeping watch. Of course he had. Whatever he had planned to do if she remembered, Dalton wouldn't let himself think about it now.
"You were going to marry her."
Harrison lifted his head. "I thought she was married to a monster. After seven years, the authorities would have declared her dead in absentia if they had not already done so. She had a new identity. I was not marrying Vivienne, Duchess of Dalton. I was marrying Grace Harper."
Dalton looked at the man who had hidden his wife. Who had tended her injuries and sat by her bedside when the nightmares came, because he believed he was protecting a battered woman from the man who had brutalized her.
He wanted, with a rage that had no useful object, to put his fist through the man's face. But the rage would not help Vivienne now, so he pushed it down.
It was unforgivable. It was also what he himself would have done with the same story and the same screaming woman and the same absence of the truth. That was the most galling part.
He drew a breath. Accepted that he should do no violence to the doctor. He was not the architect of the lie. Merely a useful cog in Alfred's machinery of deceit. Harrison might actually be useful.
"How can I help?"
The quiet inquiry came from Nathaniel, who until now had remained silent, watching the exchange.
"Go find Ardmore and come back here. I may need your help tonight."
Nathaniel gave a single terse nod and left.
His mind was already planning the next move. He needed to withdraw the money. Notify Vivienne's parents. Plan the rescue. Consider every possible variant.
He sat down at his desk, drew a sheet of paper toward him, and began to write.
His hands were not quite steady, but he wrangled them under control.
First, a note to Vivienne's parents telling them she was with him—a lie he would make true.
Otherwise they would worry and would descend upon him with their frantic concern.
He could not have that now. He needed to be focused.
"What can I do to help?" The doctor's voice. Quiet and contrite.
He had almost forgotten about him.
"You shall remain here until I bring her back. Do you have your medical bag?"
"It is in my room at the inn where I have taken lodgings."
"Give me the name and I will send someone to fetch it. When I bring her back, I need you to be ready to help her should she have sustained an injury. "
Harrison nodded, and Dalton went back to the task at hand.
Only for one breath did he allow himself to think about her face, to feel the terror.
Then he ruthlessly shut it down and began to write.
He focused only on the docks at midnight and what he needed to do.
If he let fear take hold, he would lose effectiveness.
Details became important when failure was not an option.