Chapter 17 #2
Hugh gave a mirthless laugh. “No. A story about a devious London bookseller. But like the woman herself, it’s missing half its pages.”
She closed the ledger and stood. “If you’ve come for the other half, you’re wasting your time.”
“Perhaps you could meet Miss Carson’s parents and tell them the same.” Emma would never forget Anne frantically wiping her hands on her apron. Nor the spark of hope in her eyes fading. “They’re waiting for someone to tell them their daughter is dead.”
Mrs Fenwick’s hand froze on the ledger, her knuckles white. “I don’t know a Miss Carson.”
“And yet she came here with Miss Bellingham.” Emma reached the obvious conclusion. “Miss Bellingham paid for her to have a new identity. Then she waited a reasonable time before joining her friend.”
Hugh fixed the bookseller with his flinty stare. “I think that’s the line I’ll use when I publish the story tomorrow. Say now if you’d like to add a quote.”
The woman rounded the counter, fists balled at her sides. “I don’t take kindly to threats.”
“No,” Emma said. “You take coin from frightened women and leave their families to grieve.”
“What do you think would have happened had they stayed here? They’d be buried by now. Maybe you’d like to tell the Carsons your meddling might be the death of their daughter.”
The accusation hit like a slap, silencing her for a moment. What if every question she asked, every door she knocked on, only made the danger worse for the women she was trying to help?
“Please, Mrs Fenwick, can’t you at least tell us why?”
“I’ve told you why.”
“It concerns Hartham Colliery.” Hugh sounded certain. “John Carson was the foreman there. Did he witness the accident? Or cause it?”
Mrs Fenwick slammed her hand on the counter. “Enough. Typical of you newsmen. You’re always prying after the event. Never there to help the victims.”
Hugh’s eyes turned cold. “I have abandoned my paper, my office and every story on my desk to stand here chasing the truth. Justice is impossible without it.”
Emma looked at him. He’d abandoned those things for her, too. Not just to solve Bellingham’s murder, but so she might decide her future with open eyes. And now she knew one truth beyond question: there was only one man she’d ever marry.
“Sometimes the only thing to do is run,” Mrs Fenwick said as though she’d helped enough women to prove it. “We’re all afraid of the past catching up with us.”
Hugh bowed his head.
The past was indeed a devil. She thought of Stonefold. The cold. The neglect. The scratches on the cupboard door, the ones he still had not sanded away.
“Thank you for your time, Mrs Fenwick.” Emma took Hugh’s arm, the muscles tense beneath her fingers. “We’ve a long journey to Hartham. Rest assured, we will keep your secret and only trouble you again if we must.”
They made to leave, but Mrs Fenwick gasped and stared at them in horror. “You plan to visit the colliery?”
Emma nodded. “Yes, we need to find Mr Bellingham’s killer. All our lives depend on it. None of us are safe until we do.”
The woman clasped the locket at her throat, holding it tight in her palm. “There’s no escaping it, is there? There’ll be no peace until you get what you need.”
Hugh sighed. “I don’t know how many women you’ve helped. I don’t want to know. But you have a duty to protect them. Bellingham was tortured for information. I pray the same doesn’t happen to you.”
Mrs Fenwick spent silent seconds looking at her shoes before lifting her chin. “Speak to Dr Shadgrove. He has a practice near the town hall in the market square.”
Hugh frowned. “But Dr Phillips dealt with the miners injured in the accident. I had my man interview him before I wrote the article.”
“Dr Shadgrove didn’t treat the miners. He treated Sarah Carson.”
The steps leading to Lady Bellingham’s townhouse were dry. The butler wasn’t waiting with a bucket. They didn’t trip over a newspaperman emptying water from his boots.
Emma glanced behind, half-expecting to see a wild-eyed woman with a permanent scowl, but the street was practically deserted. Perhaps Melinda had accepted defeat.
“Everything looks rather respectable,” she said.
Hugh snorted. “Respectable on the outside. Rotting with secrets on the inside. No one in this house tells the whole truth.”
“The butler did. We’d never have learnt about Mrs Fenwick had he not shown me the charred paper.”
“Hardly. You want me to believe the maid found the only scrap untouched by the fire, and it happened to be the best lead we’ve had?”
Irritatingly, he had a point.
“So my first theory was correct. Parker wrote it because he knew Miss Bellingham hadn’t taken the stage to Taunton.”
He grasped the brass knocker and hammered twice. “The question is, does Lady Bellingham know? And if so, what is she hiding?”
Parker answered. The colour drained from his face, leaving him as pale as foolscap.
They didn’t need to strap him to a chair and prise the truth from his thin lips. He stepped outside and whispered, “Did you find her? Miss Bellingham? Did you visit that bookshop?”
Hugh leant forward, and she thought he might grab the butler by his starched cravat. “You’d better stop playing games with me and tell me everything you know. Lives are at stake.”
Parker could barely get his words out. “If her ladyship learns I told you about Mrs Fenwick, she’ll dismiss me without a reference. There’s no call for disloyal butlers.”
Hugh’s patience snapped. “I watched your master take his last breath in a graveyard. I don’t care if you’re scrubbing steps by supper.”
She laid a hand on Hugh’s arm. “Let us put the questions to Lady Bellingham. If she answers them herself, Parker keeps his position.”
Hugh exhaled and stepped back. “Inform Lady Bellingham we’re here. If we’re forced to return, it will be with a constable.”
Parker nodded and hurried away.
“Had you not intervened, I might have throttled him.” Hugh lifted her hand from his sleeve and pressed a tender kiss to her palm. His thumb traced slow circles over her knuckles, and neither of them moved to break the hold.
This gentleness in him felt like a gift no one else got to see. “We work well together.”
“There are a lot of things we do well together. Some we might do on the road to Staffordshire.”
Heat pooled low, and she hated how quickly he could put it there. “Write articles and examine the evidence?”
“If you want evidence, you’ll get it on the road. The examination comes later, at the inn.”
They would make love tonight. More than once.
Before he made his confession.
And after, when he needed to forget Stonefold.
She trembled with anticipation. “How long is the journey?”
“Long enough.”
“I doubt that.” This hunger for him lived in her blood.
The door opened, and she cursed Parker’s timing.
“Lady Bellingham has agreed to see you.” The wobble in his voice said his mistress was far from pleased. “Only because I told her you know about people disappearing through Mrs Fenwick’s bookshop.”
Knowing how the staff tiptoed around Melinda and her moods, Emma was quick to reassure him. “We won’t mention you gave us the lead.”
Parker squared his shoulders and escorted them into the drawing room. Black crepe still draped the mirror over the mantel. Lady Bellingham sat rigidly on the chaise.
“Well, get on with it,” she said, gesturing with her lace handkerchief. “Say what you’ve come to say. I don’t have all day.”
Emma stepped forward and curtsied. “Thank you for seeing us, Lady Bellingham. I know this is a difficult time, but I must assure you, we have your daughter’s interests at heart.”
“I doubt that,” the matron scoffed.
Emma suppressed a sigh and persevered. “I know what it’s like to feel trapped, and the only way out is to run.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me you know what it’s like to lose a husband and a son in the space of a year.”