Chapter Fifty-Five
A PRIL 18, 1931
L ONDON, E NGLAND
A scream rips through the meeting room. Although I feel like raging with all my might, the shriek isn’t mine.
“You bastard, Alfred! Rape? Murder? How could you?” It is Miss Bennett.
“Please, Millicent. You are getting tangled up in these women’s web of lies. You aren’t seeing clearly.” Sir Alfred attempts to placate her. Once the nature of her expression dawns on him, however, he begins to back away from her.
She is a woman possessed. An onlooker might say by the devil. But I would say by the truth.
“I think I’m seeing clearly for the first time since I met you!” She rails against him, advancing on him with every word. “Since you picked me out of that chorus line years ago and told me you couldn’t live without me. A lie I continued to believe even when you exiled me here for months for your own terrible purposes and I barely saw you.”
“I still care about you, Millicent. Let me prove it to you,” he says with a smile he thinks is charming, but she’s no longer responsive. Not in the way he’d like, that is.
Oblivious to her reaction, he snaps his fingers. “I’ve just remembered that there might be an opening in Cavalcade . You’d be out of this dreary office in no time and back onstage, where you belong. You’d love the play, Millicent. A No?l Coward number covering three decades in the life of the Marryot family, with popular songs, loads of dance numbers, and even a speaking part and singing solo for you.”
“You’ve known about this opening for how long?” she asks, a single eyebrow raised.
“Just found out.”
“Awfully convenient timing,” Miss Bennett says. Sir Alfred seems not to have heard her.
“We could be together morning, noon, and night. At the theater and out on the town,” he says. “Just like old times. Remember?”
“Oh, I remember all right. You carried on a dalliance with me while you courted countless other dancers. I’d find you sneaking out of dressing rooms and whispering backstage, periodically scampering to the front of house to appease your wife. That would be like old times,” she seethes. “And I want no part of those times anymore.”
She rotates away from him, but he reaches for her arm, holding her fast. “Please, Millicent, don’t go off the rails. Please don’t let these shrews poison you against me with all their crazy accusations and falsehoods. It’s madness. We can get past it together.”
Miss Bennett shakes Sir Alfred’s hand off her arms, but then she veers back toward him. For a moment, I think she might soften, become receptive to his plea. I say a silent prayer that she retains her clarity and strength. Much might be lost if she caves. The room is speechless and practically breathless awaiting her next words.
A half smile appears on her lips, and the incongruity between her expression and the gravity of these events strikes me as strange. But then I realize: she hasn’t softened at all. Miss Bennett is hardening before our eyes.
“I know you need me to get past this, Alfred. If I don’t support your version of events, I do believe you’ll find yourself in a heap of trouble. But here’s the problem,” she says, simmering.
“What’s that, Millicent?” he asks, eyes wide, as if he actually cares and isn’t just acting out of desperation.
“These women haven’t poisoned me against you. You poisoned yourself.” She walks toward him again. “By making me doubt myself. By making me feel as though I’m interchangeable with any number of young unmarried girls, as ‘surplus’ and discardable as that poor girl you raped and killed. And above all, by making me party to your evil!” She is screaming again.
I cannot look away from Miss Bennett. Her eyes spark wildly, and her previously tidy, upswept hair is undone around her shoulders like an unholy halo. She is beautiful and terrifying all at once, and the room is spellbound.
“No, no. You’ve got it all wrong. These women are like witches spinning curses, and you’ve fallen under their spell. That’s all.” He reaches for her hand, which she doesn’t resist. “Remember as recently as last evening we were planning out this meeting so we could walk away together?”
As if indeed awakening from a spell, Miss Bennett looks at the five of us—really looks at us—and gives us a smile. “Perhaps these women do have magic wands and have a cast a spell upon me. A spell to lift the veil that’s clouded my vision. Because I see you now, and the truth is clear. All the evil you’ve done—to me, to countless young women, to May especially. All the evil you’ll do in the future. And I cannot unsee it.”
His hand still on hers, she intertwines the fingers of both her hands into his. Then she pushes him with all her strength. He flies backward in the direction of the windowed doors, smashing through them and crashing out onto the landing, sending glass shards throughout the meeting room.
Crunching on glass as they go, Louis and Jimmy rush toward Sir Alfred. Through the opening in the shattered doors, I see him stumble back and attempt to grasp the banister at the side of the staircase. Jimmy lunges toward him, but Sir Alfred’s hand slips, and he falls down the stairs.
At top speed, Jimmy descends the steps behind him, hand outstretched as if to grab him. Then I hear a loud thud. Louis follows down the stairs, yet his pace is strangely slow and hesitant. I exchange glances with Agatha, Emma, Ngaio, and Margery, and we creep toward the doors and beyond.
There, at the base of the staircase, lies Sir Alfred. His leg splays at an unnatural angle that sends shivers down my spine. Jimmy kneels next to his head, while Louis stands to the side. He blocks my view of the body, though I can see the Pinkerton man approaching.
But then Louis moves, affording us an unimpaired sight line. Margery gasps, and Emma’s hand flies to her mouth. Ngaio, Agatha, and I take a step closer to the landing and observe the blood pooling around Sir Alfred’s head. The circumference of the crimson liquid expands as we watch. Sir Alfred is dead.
This hadn’t been part of our plan. I’m no fan of Millicent Bennett, but I will not let her hang for this. No matter what sort of person she’d been before, she had been manipulated and warped by a fiend, the same monster who had organized May’s murder and possibly that of Leonora. In Sir Alfred’s final moments, Miss Bennett had comprehended the scope and depth of his depravity and the role she’d played, perhaps unwittingly. Then, as if May Daniels herself had inhabited her, Millicent Bennett exacted vengeance for them both. And for every “surplus” woman.