Chapter 9
Violet was late down to breakfast the next morning. She walked through the door still sliding the last of her pins into her bun. “I couldn’t sleep, then I overslept.”
Cook, seated at the table and crunching a slice of toast liberally spread with her marmalade preserve, nodded dourly. “Know just what you mean. Took me ages to drop off, and I feel right lethargic this morning.”
Violet poured herself a cup of tea from the pot left on the warmer. Setting the cup and saucer beside her plate, she slipped into her chair. “Where’s Tilly?”
“Not down yet, either.”
Violet and Cook sipped and munched, needing no words to share the moment.
Violet welcomed the normalcy of the simple meal; last night, alone in her room, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the fate that had overtaken Runcorn—a hale and healthy man several years younger than she.
If the villain could so easily snuff out the life of such a robust man, what of her? How safe was she?
Such thoughts had gnawed at her until nothing would do but for her to get up and push and shove and shift her small dresser across her bedroom door.
She’d felt silly. She’d told herself it was an overreaction, yet once the barricade had been in place, she’d been able to fall asleep.
Of course, pushing the dresser away from the door had delayed her even further that morning.
And then she’d discovered that her door had been fractionally ajar; she’d assumed Tilly had stopped by on her way downstairs from her attic room and had expected to have to make an embarrassing explanation .
. . she frowned and glanced at the clock.
“Tilly . . . perhaps we’d better go and wake her. She might be unwell.”
Cook’s blue eyes met Violet’s; from their expression, Violet realized Cook was thinking much the same as she was—that it was strange that Tilly had not come down, no matter her state.
Nothing short of complete incapacitation would have kept her from making her way to the kitchen, especially given the warmth there compared to the chill—real as well as imagined—that pervaded the rest of the house.
A whisper of unease slid through Violet’s mind, leaving behind the first stirrings of trepidation.
Cook compressed her lips, then stated, “I’ll come with you.”
Violet nodded and rose. She led the way out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Reaching the first floor, she paused at the head of the stairs; along with Cook, she strained her ears but heard nothing—no footsteps, no rustling.
No hint of life.
Trepidation welled; foreboding settled like a leaden cloak about her shoulders.
Exchanging a worried, increasingly fearful look with Cook, Violet walked slowly to the narrow door at the end of the corridor.
As with her bedroom door that morning, it, too, stood slightly ajar.
Dragging in a breath, Violet reached out with one hand and pushed the door fully open.
Beyond, the stairs to the attic lay shrouded in perpetual gloom.
Again they listened, and heard nothing.
“Tilly?” Cook called.
No sound.
They climbed the stairs, Violet first, Cook on her heels. Stepping into the narrow corridor that led to the three small bedrooms tucked under the eaves, they halted at the first door.
The door was closed but not shut. Violet tapped. “Tilly?”
The door swung further open; when no sound came from within, Violet pushed it wide.
They didn’t need to go in to see what had happened.
Tilly lay on her back on the bed, her limbs twisted and tangled, her sightless eyes staring straight up at the ceiling.
Her mouth was open in a ghastly rictus, as if she’d been screaming to the last.
Violet stared at her friend—at the body that was all that was left of her. An icy chill bloomed at Violet’s nape, then swiftly spread over her shoulders and sank into her. Her eyes still looked, but her brain refused to see.
“Oh-my-God. Oh-my-God.”
The horrified whisper dragged Violet back, into the moment. She looked at Cook. The normally ruddy woman was parchment pale; eyes wide, she had her hands pressed to her face and was whispering through her fingers.
Without looking back at the bed, Violet swallowed, dragged in a short breath—all she could manage—then put an arm around Cook’s shoulders and turned them both from the room, away from the doorway and the sight beyond.
“There’s nothing we can do.” Her voice sounded far calmer, far more composed and controlled than she felt.
“Come—let’s go downstairs and send for the authorities. ”
There was nothing they could do for Tilly other than seek justice.
The journey back down the stairs and into the kitchen passed in a blur; when next her mind reengaged, Violet found herself in the kitchen, pouring cups of strong tea for herself and Cook, who had collapsed into her chair in a storm of noisy weeping.
Grabbing the rough pad of paper and the pencil Cook kept for making shopping lists, Violet sat at the table, took a gulp of her tea, then started to write.
Cook lifted her blotchy face from her folded arms. “Don’t you dare send for that idiot doctor—he’ll just say Tilly died of old age!”
“I’m not.” Violet hadn’t even considered sending for Milborne. She continued writing. “I’m sending for Inspector Stokes. And Mr. Montague—her ladyship trusted him, and I do, too.”
She had no idea if Montague could do anything to help, but .
. . she wanted him there. She just needed to see him, to sense his rock-solid certainty again, to let it settle her and anchor her.
Without that . . . the instant she stopped doing something specific, she felt like her mind would splinter apart.
Cook sniffed, then in a watery voice asked, “You need two boys?”
Eyes on her writing, Violet nodded. “One for Scotland Yard, and the other for Chapel Court in the City.”
Heaving a heavy sigh, Cook dabbed at her eyes with her apron, then pushed back from the table and got to her feet. “I’ll get Tommy and Alfie from next door. They’ll do it and be quick.”
“Thank you.” Violet kept writing. Kept her mind ruthlessly fixed on what she could do, rather than on what she couldn’t.
She couldn’t go back to the night before and confess to Tilly that she was afraid—afraid enough to put a dresser across her door.
Her fear had been the only thing that had saved her—but she hadn’t been brave enough to let it save Tilly.
Stokes could barely believe it. He stood in the open doorway of the tiny attic bedroom and stared—glared—at the body on the bed.
He’d brought the Yard’s surgeon, Pemberton, with him.
At the side of the narrow bed, straightening from his first cursory examination, Pemberton shot Stokes a glance.
“Same as the other one. Smothered with a pillow.” Pemberton waved at the pillow that had been tossed onto the wooden chair in the corner behind the door. “That one at a guess.”
Stokes humphed. “What’s your best guess as to when?”
Pemberton grimaced. “Sometime in the wee small hours, but that is just a guess.”
Stokes continued to stare at the bed. After a moment, he said, “The old lady was weak—this one wasn’t.”
“No.” Pemberton nodded. “The maid fought back as hard as she could, but whoever stood above her holding down the pillow was stronger than she was.”
“So in your opinion, the murderer’s unlikely to be a lady.”
“A female of any sort.” Pemberton glanced down the body, visually assessing the limbs partially revealed by the disarranged sheets. “This victim appears to have been a hale and hearty woman. She wouldn’t have been easily overcome.”
Stokes grunted. “Anything else you can tell me?”
Pemberton shook his head. “Nothing else you don’t already know.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” Stokes had already searched the small room, but the murderer hadn’t helpfully left a calling card or anything else resembling a clue.
The room was spare and held little in the way of possessions; he doubted the murderer had bothered rifling through them, and there were no overt signs that anything had been disturbed.
Descending the narrow stairs to the first floor, then heavily going down the long flight to the ground floor, Stokes shook his head and muttered to himself, “He came to murder her, that and nothing else. But why murder the maid?”
Reaching the hall, he crossed to the constable he’d left guarding the front door. “Anything or anyone?”
“Just Mr. Adair, sir, and his missus and yours, like you expected. They went back to the kitchen—said they’d wait for you there.”
Stokes nodded, rather surprised that Barnaby hadn’t come straight upstairs .
. . but then, he’d had Penelope and Griselda with him, and if Barnaby had come up to view the body .
. . so no, he shouldn’t be surprised that his friend had chosen the less disturbing path.
“Pemberton’s crew will be along shortly, but at this point I’m not expecting anyone else.
Let me know immediately if anyone arrives. ”
“Aye, sir.”
Stokes headed back through the house to the kitchen.
Montague had been on the doorstep when he’d arrived, and he’d been glad to leave the other man to calm Miss Matcham and the volatile cook while he took care of business upstairs.
Before he’d left the Yard, he’d sent a message to Barnaby, conveying the news and suggesting he join him at Lowndes Street—and having escorted Griselda to the Albemarle Street house on his way into work that morning, he’d extended the invitation to Penelope and Griselda, too.
Given how much the pair had learned yesterday, and accepting that they approached most situations from a different perspective, and therefore saw things neither he nor Barnaby did, he’d swallowed his natural resistance and included them . . . because he knew he’d have been a fool not to.
And not just in a professional sense.
He walked into the kitchen, and six pairs of eyes swung to fix on him. They’d all gathered in chairs about the kitchen table.