Chapter 28
Waverly
Traeger Hall
Mr. Lichton had picked the worst time to die.
That and the fact Titus had been fetched to do his due diligence as the only undertaker in Newton Creek had them both, well, up a creek, she supposed.
Waverly had retreated to her bedroom as soon as Titus gave her instruction.
He’d eased into his black jacket and adjusted his tie, all while spearing her with his blue gaze that would welcome no argument.
“Old Man Lichton was supposed to live another week,” Titus explained. “Unfortunately, he didn’t cooperate. I will be gone most of the day. Until I return, you will stay in your room, do you hear me? I don’t trust Preston or Mr. Grossman at this point.”
“Then I’ll come with you!” Waverly had started forward, but Titus stopped her with a shake of his head.
“I’ve no good way to explain why Leopold Traeger’s niece is accompanying me to care for the deceased, and frankly, you wouldn’t be welcome.”
“Because I’m Uncle Leopold’s niece.”
“Precisely. It is best that you sequester yourself in your room. And for pity’s sake, push some heavy furniture against the door just to be safe.”
“I need to find Foo.” Waverly looked around in search of the cat.
“Your cat will be fine. You need to care for yourself,” Titus urged.
“I would leave, but I’ve not heard from Louisa yet,” Waverly countered. It was common sense. “I’m hoping to join her once she gets word to me that she is safe and still at the school. I can secure a position as a teacher, and I—”
Titus marched toward her and gripped her arm firmly. “Don’t you dare leave yet! I have a plan. But I need a little bit of time.”
“A plan?” Waverly pulled back. She had to admit to some annoyance that she was not privy to this plan. “And the plan is what? To spirit me off to a secret hiding place?”
Titus tipped his head back and forth as he considered it. “That’s not necessarily a bad idea—”
“It’s an awful, ridiculous idea.” Waverly gave him a little shove, and a tiny smile played at Titus’s lips. He seemed up to something and almost too confident he’d succeed at it. But for the moment, Mr. Lichton was dead, and his body had already begun to decay.
Not unlike Uncle Leopold and Aunt Cornelia.
Waverly stood over their bodies now, staring down at the two of them while she ignored Titus’s instruction to barricade herself in her room.
Preston had left the Hall; she had seen him drive away in his carriage.
Aside from Aveline, she was quite alone at Traeger Hall, and Waverly determined she would not leave her cat to the mercies of anyone unknown who might do them all harm.
“What have you done, Uncle?” she asked the body before her on its slab of wood. The bouquets of flowers were wilting, and there was a pungent, unfamiliar smell in the room that was unsettling. “Why didn’t you simply welcome Louisa into your home? She is a lovely young woman.”
Uncle Leopold didn’t respond. In fact, he lay quite still—as a corpse should—and she noted his skin was beginning to appear splotchy in places.
“Oh, why won’t you let me bury you!” Waverly muttered. She had two more days. Two more days before a funeral could be administered and Titus could remove Uncle Leopold and Aunt Cornelia from the house. “Foo! Foo!” She called for the cat even as she eyed Aunt Cornelia.
Waverly rounded her uncle’s remains to peer down at her aunt. Aunt Cornelia’s pinched nose seemed thinner now.
“We could have been happy, you and I, if you’d only not married Uncle Leopold. Did you know of Louisa? I am quite sure you did not.”
“And yet you found out by happenstance.” A deep voice from the doorway frightened Waverly, and she jumped, clutching at Aunt Cornelia’s hand and then thrusting it away as she felt the cold flesh beneath her fingers.
Waverly stared at the man.
She dropped her gaze to Uncle Leopold’s remains.
She lifted her eyes back to the man in the doorway.
“Your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you.” He stepped into the room and approached Leopold Traeger. Standing opposite of Waverly, he shook his head. “It shouldn’t have been this way.”
Her heart in her throat, Waverly could only stare. Stare at her Uncle Leopold—both Uncle Leopolds—and try to make sense of it.
Dead Uncle Leopold remained very dead.
But his ghost seemed too corporeal. He stood over himself, looking down at his features and studying them.
A sort of terror had frozen Waverly in place.
Ghosts came out at night, did they not? They didn’t speak clearly.
But this man was no visiting spirit, but flesh and blood.
He had to be, though she dared not reach across the two dead bodies to poke at him.
The realization did nothing to release her from the fear that rooted her feet to the floor and stole her voice when she tried to speak.
The mobile Uncle Leopold lifted his eyes, and a dry smile thinned his mouth. “Ah. I am no ghost, Waverly. In fact, we’ve met before. Many times actually.”
Fear was a dreadful foe, and right now it had taken from Waverly all ability to do anything but gape at the replica of Uncle Leopold.
“I am your uncle’s twin brother.” Another thin smile. “The silent one of the partnership.”
“A twin?” Waverly gasped.
“Yes. Although quite some years ago now, I died. That was when we lived in Connecticut. Fabricating my ‘death’ and coming here was a strategic move on both our parts. Making use of our similar appearances as necessary was also strategic. We had different sets of skills, you see, but we were not always well received as two separate men.”
And to think she’d had no idea.
Waverly decided she would fall over from fright and shock, and that would be the end of her. So this was how she would die? Literally and horribly scared to death.
“I am Theophilus, by the way.” He offered a smile that reminded her instantly of the days in the past year when Uncle Leopold had seemed more at ease, less of a bark, and, on rare occasions, even congenial.
“Oh, my goodness!” Waverly clapped her palm over mouth. “You . . . you two swapped places?”
“More times than I can count.” His eyes sparked, and while he seemed far less uptight than Uncle Leopold on his worst day, Theophilus also seemed far more dangerous.
“Theophilus?” The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into horrible, complete place. “But that’s—”
“Louisa’s surname. Yes. Leopold and I had to work quickly when her mother told me she was having a child, but it was handled. Handled very well, that is, until we discovered Leopold’s new wife’s niece resided in the same boarding school as my daughter.”
“Louisa is your daughter? Did Aunt Cornelia know there were two of you?”
“No.” Theophilus shook his head. “That was entirely Leopold. Neither of us were supposed to marry, and when Leopold stepped outside that plan for his own purposes—whatever they were—that’s when things began to unravel.”
“Was it Uncle Leopold I saw at the boarding school that day I met Louisa?” Waverly continued to stare at Theophilus, trying desperately to find a physical difference in him. Something that would identify him as Theophilus and not Leopold. There was none.
“It was me,” he answered.
“And when my Uncle Leopold told me not to ring the bell?”
“Also me. I came to realize in the last few months that my brother was up to his own devious plans to completely cut me out of our accrued wealth. If he were to be at risk of death, I preferred that you refrained from trying to stop it.”
There was not a little venom that shot from his expression, and she was aware in that moment that there was another suspect on the list of who might have killed Uncle Leopold and Aunt Cornelia.
“Was it you who was always staring at the paintings in the night?” she asked, breathless and sincerely wishing she’d listened to Titus and barricaded herself in her room.
“Ah, the paintings. Fidelia Vallée, Louisa’s mother.
My mistress and a beautiful artist. I brought her pieces back here with me when I visited and hung them in Traeger Hall—much to my brother’s disapproval.
The other pieces of art—the Monet, the Degas—those weren’t to be displayed.
Those are a means to financial gain. But Fidelia’s paintings?
They’re beauty personified. As is my daughter, Louisa.
Unfortunately, my brother Leopold had grown sick of my side becoming more advantageously positioned.
And your remarkable loyalty to Louisa is something that has gotten in the way of things.
” Theophilus began to approach her, circling the remains of her uncle and aunt.
“My poor daughter has no idea of the Shakespearean drama taking place behind the scenes. Louisa believes herself to be Leopold’s child. That was the safest way.”
Waverly backed away, hoping to make a half circle before rushing out the door.
Theophilus eyed her. “It’s not complicated.
Or it wasn’t until Leopold changed his will, that is.
Originally, in the event of his death, I was to ease into his position, and no one would be the wiser that he’d died.
Cornelia perhaps, but that was something I could work with.
However, it got complicated. He rewrote his will and then that infernal bell of his! ”
Waverly had made it around the bodies, and in that moment, she decided that escape was preferable to understanding what had happened the night of Uncle Leopold’s murder.
She sprinted for the door, her feet slipping on the wood flooring. Theophilus Traeger launched after her, and Waverly screamed as he grasped her chignon and hauled her backward. His arm came around her front just beneath her throat, and his breath was hot in her ear.
“That infernal bell and your irrepressible inability to stay quiet. Had you been home that night . . . but no, you had to meet up with that ridiculous Pinkerton agent.”