Chapter Six. A Mourning Caller #2
The winter winds raged at the windowpanes, rattling the glass in the sill. I leaned over to the table and took a sandwich from the untouched plate beside her. I gestured at the others, with my little finger. “Eat. Please. Mrs. Penrose will take it as a mortal offense if you don’t.”
That earned a half-hearted smile from Leona as she tentatively picked up a sandwich, pressing the soft bread between her fingers.
“How well did you know Julius Harker? You’d never mentioned him before…” Truthfully, she had omitted a great deal, but Julius Harker was the safest place to start unraveling the truth.
She eyed the darkened doorway behind me leading back into the main house with a sigh.
“Everyone knows him.” She wet her lips, weighing her words.
“Most serious scholars do not associate with him openly. Frederick thought my continued dealings with him would reflect poorly upon the museum and discouraged me from continuing our friendship.”
I took a cautious bite of the cheddar and chutney sandwich. I had to go slowly with her for fear she’d stop talking altogether. “What did Harker do to be the subject of such scorn?”
Leona finished off her sandwich before taking a second.
“I’m not entirely sure. I know Frederick and he taught together for a time.
When the scandal occurred and Julius lost his position at the University, Frederick had already been in Egypt for a year or two.
He’d left to work in the field. To make his name. ”
Leona’s casualness with using Professor Reaver’s first name struck me as odd.
Yes, the two worked together closely, but there was an intimacy in her tone that I wasn’t sure I liked.
“Do you think there’s a connection between the two?
” Each new question risked her shutting the door on the conversation entirely.
“I don’t know. I don’t believe so. Whatever it was that Julius had gotten involved in was bad enough that no one spoke publicly about what happened. Rumors spread like wildfire that he’d been involved in unnatural things—but by that time Frederick had been gone for years.”
My mind flitted to the unnatural world exhibit at his museum and a shiver went up my spine. “What sorts of things…”
“It’s all likely nonsense—but you know the type. Whispers of secret societies. Magic. No one truly believes it. The magic part at least … I mean honestly, Ruby. It’s absurd to even speak of it as everyone knows there’s no such thing.”
Not six months ago, I shared her sentiment, but now I had seen, no …
experienced … things with no rational explanation and was far less sure of my own convictions now than I was then.
The sharp scent of electricity filled the room around me, like the air before a summer storm.
I did not even need to turn to know Ruan was here.
The peculiar connection between us had its uses.
In the same way he could overhear my thoughts, I could somehow sense when he drew upon his abilities.
Upon his power. It always smelled old and strong, like a powerful storm ripping across the land.
I doubted he even realized I could smell it on him.
An odd thing to tell a person, and I kept the thought guarded.
We must have woken him with our discussion.
I hadn’t thought to keep my voice down as up until this moment I’d blissfully forgotten he was even here.
Ruan wore the stern expression of the strange witch I’d first met in Cornwall, his eyes still bore the faintest echoes of silver.
It wasn’t our voices that woke him then, he’d heard her distress.
Either her thoughts or her emotions. It was the only explanation.
“Is everything all right?” His broad West Country accent was thick with sleep.
“It’s fine, Ruan. Just a friend of mine. She came to tell me that Mr. Mueller had been arrested for the murder of Julius Harker.”
Ruan’s expression grew dark. Evidently, he hadn’t heard that part yet. “The bookkeeper?”
Leona frowned, glancing between the two of us warily. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mr.…”
“Ruan. Ruan Kivell. And do not worry yourself—I often wake early.” He shrugged, keeping to the shadows of the kitchen.
My chest tightened at the meaning behind his words. Of the hundreds of villagers constantly calling upon him to heal their injuries or broken hearts or to help their constable catch a thief. They might call him Pellar, their witch, but Ruan healed more than their bodies. He eased their hearts.
And I’d broken his.
For a third time the dratted hound bayed in the distance.
“I overheard you talking about this Mr. Mueller fellow as I came downstairs. Why do you think the police would have arrested him?” Ruan asked softly from the shadows.
You heard a bit more than that, I’d wager.
Ruan held my gaze for several seconds, an unreadable expression on his face.
“Last night…” Leona hesitated, staring at the reddish tiles of the floor.
“On the way home after leaving the Ashmolean, I saw the commotion outside Harker’s museum.
At first I thought Julius had shown himself and done something truly outlandish.
” Her voice trembled. “But then the police told me that Mr. Mueller had killed Julius … that they were going to arrest him.”
I paused at her words. Leona lived on the far side of town closer to the castle.
The Ashmolean lay between her home and Harker’s museum.
There was no path she could have reasonably taken that would bring her back to the scene of the crime on her way home—unless she was returning there for some reason.
I kept my worries to myself and crossed the space between, clasping her wounded hands in my own.
“You have to tell us everything that you know about Harker. Mueller. All of it.”
Leona tensed.
“Ruby…” Ruan’s voice carried a warning edge.
“I have told you everything I know!” Her lovely brown eyes grew wet.
“I begged the police not to arrest him. I told them he was harmless—that he’d have no reason to harm Julius.
But they refused to listen to me. Why would Mr. Mueller be foolish enough to expose his own crime publicly?
It makes no sense and yet they threatened to arrest me if I didn’t get out of their way and mind my own business. ”
“You’ve had a shock, Leona. You should go home. Get cleaned up and get some sl—”
“Do not speak to me like I am a child, Ruby Vaughn,” she snapped, wiping hastily at her tears. Even Ruan was startled by her sudden flash of temper. “I am not some delicate creature to be coddled. A man was brutally murdered and his killer is still out there—”
I opened my mouth then snapped it shut.
“I thought you of all people would help me.”
I pointed to my chest before gesturing wildly. “Me? What exactly do you want me to do? I don’t know this town. I don’t know these people.”
“Has that stopped you before?” She jabbed at me with her forefinger. “You’ve solved at least two separate crimes. All I’m asking is for you to help me prove Mr. Mueller is innocent. Surely that cannot be difficult.”
I gave her an incredulous stare. “Leona … I had no choice in either matter. In Scotland I was accused of the blasted crime and in Lothlel Green…” My gaze drifted absently to Ruan, whose own breath was caught in his chest observing the interplay between us.
“In Lothlel Green you helped because it was Tamsyn?” Leona whispered softly, finishing the sentence with words I refused to utter.
Her words dug their way between my ribs.
But she was right. Tamsyn had been my dearest girlhood friend, and somewhere along the way we became a great deal more than that.
She’d been my confidante, my best friend, my lover.
Then she walked away. I’d fancied myself in love with her, but now I wondered if that was so.
If instead it was infatuation, grasping for stability, for purpose, for meaning.
I took a step toward Leona and swallowed hard. She was right. “What would you have me do?”
“You could start by being a little less dismissive and by trusting me. I came here to ask my friend to help me.”
Guilt gnawed at me. “It’s only that I’ve been in your shoes more times than I care to admit and often the best course of action is to not get involved—I have been poisoned, I’ve been shot. Nearly drowned. Please trust me. You do not want to go digging into things if you don’t have to.”
“But I must. Mr. Mueller is innocent, and I cannot let him suffer for my—”
My ears pricked. “Your what…?”
She shook her head angrily, slamming the teacup down on the table with a crash, and stormed to the door, flinging it open, before looking back over her shoulder.
The cold wind rushed in, pressing her filthy skirt to her legs.
“You’ve changed, Ruby Vaughn.… Suspicious and skeptical, and I’m not sure I like who you’ve become.
” She turned and hurried out into the night, leaving the door wide open in her wake.
What in the world had happened?
I crept across the kitchen and stepped into the alley after her but Leona had disappeared into the inky night.
The icy cobbles stung my bare feet as I glanced down the lane, to where a great beast of a dog stood sentinel.
From this distance I could not tell what sort of a dog it was, beyond the fact it had to weigh well over eighty pounds with dark fur.
It was illuminated by a gas streetlamp. Was this the dog I’d heard?
There was something altogether menacing about the creature when it turned its head to stare at me. I stepped backward into the lane, then darted into the house, stumbling over the threshold, and closed the door tight behind me, heart hammering in my chest.
“Are you all right?” Ruan asked.
I wasn’t sure. I wet my lips, staring at the doorway. “In the folk stories. In your otherworld … what does a great dark dog mean?”