CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #2
O’Brien tipped the brim of his cap up to see Gil better and crossed his arms over his massive chest. “Hoping you can tell us that, sir?” He turned to the man behind him. “You can bring the prisoner out now, Nielson.”
Gil pressed closer to her. Anxiety gripped her. Who was it?
The clang of iron chains reached her first. Low laughter between prisoner and guard. O’Brien swung around and hauled the prisoner forward, heedless of his chained feet.
“He says his name is Darius Varney.” O’Brien gave the man a hard poke in the upper arm. “Here he is, the man you wanted to kill. What have you got to say for yourself now?”
Beside her, Gil hissed out a breath.
The prisoner struggled to speak through the loathing that appeared to choke him.
His blue eyes were daggers. His hands flexed.
He did not acknowledge Leona with even a glance.
Hatred and violence radiated from him in waves.
“Remember me, Lawrence? You killed the woman I was to marry. Convinced her to run off with you and the next thing we heard she was dead.”
“Preposterous. I don’t know this man,” Gil exclaimed. “You mean my damned brother. You have me confused with Lawrence. I am Gilbert!”
The lounging policemen drifted over to them, their eyes hard, mouths set when they glanced at Gil.
“And Lawrence is dead,” Leona said.
“They look that alike?” Sergeant O’Brien asked.
Varney shook his head, muttering.
Leona said, “I never met Lawrence Gladney. He died before we married.” Gil kept no photographs of the two of them together, so deep was his loathing.
“Leona,” Gil chided. “Leave it to me.” He turned again to Sergeant O’Brien. “My brother and I look alike to my great sorrow. He was the family black sheep and scandal followed him wherever he went.” Bitter laughter erupted from him, a terrible winded sound. “God damned Lawrence.”
“You still think this is your man?” Sergeant O’Brien asked Varney.
“Lawrence Gladney married and murdered my former fiancé for the money she inherited,” he repeated.
“If this man is the brother Gilbert Gladney, as he says he is, then I owe him an apology, and more. But if he ain’t—” He fisted his ham-sized hands and held them up with a clattering slide of metal and chain.
Beside her, Gil stiffened and let out a low growl of anguish.
“I am not Lawrence Gladney, who is a foul fiend of a man. I am not surprised that his sins are so rapacious, they are visited upon me long after his death. A scoundrel, a liar, a thief.” He spat out the words like hard little seeds of pain.
“Lawrence killed my wife!” Gil covered his eyes.
Turning away, he stumbled into Leona, who put her arms around him and held him hard against her. “I will never be free of him.”
“It’s all right. We’ll be safe now.” Her heart cracking in two, Leona glanced around the room. By their expressions, they pitied Gil.
“Mr. Gladney, if it ain’t you, I am heartily sorry.” Varney didn’t sound convinced of Gil’s innocence. “But I turned myself in to get the newspapers to talk to me. By God, they’ll find out the truth.”
Dear God.
Leona turned to the sergeant. “May we go now?”
He nodded to the policemen who had driven them to the station. “They’ll take you back. Go on, boys.”
Subdued, Gil rasped, “It’s fine. Had to be done. Come, Leona, let’s go home.”
Shivering together, Gil clung to her arm for the carriage ride home, a quicker ride now they were returning with some answers and even more questions. Worry for Gil filled her. She dreaded reading about this new disaster in their lives in the newspapers. When would the shadow pass from their lives?
The carriage left them in front of their house.
He climbed the stairs, his movements stiff with pain.
She followed him through the door, hoping they wouldn’t run into Millie.
Likely she’d stayed in her room when the police first entered the house.
Her appearance would be sure to ignite Gil’s temper.
In the foyer, as they removed their coats and hats, Leona sniffed at the pungent air.
“Do you smell something burning?” she asked Gil.
He glanced around at the pall of gray smoke drifting into the foyer. “Something is burning in the kitchen.” He headed down the hall, the smoke getting thicker.
“Abigail,” Leona cried out, fright taking hold of her.
A pan lay unattended on the stove, the potatoes within it blackened and smoking.
Gil grabbed a towel and dropped the pan into the sink, then poured water from the kettle over it so it hissed and steamed.
On the table lay the beginnings of luncheon—unsliced bread and cheese, a whole cooked chicken, an empty teapot. A teacup lay shattered on the floor.
Leona couldn’t breathe. “The killer’s come for Millie!”
Gil pointed downward. “Look here.”
Flour and sugar had spilled on the floor. Two sets of imprints in a struggle. Leona picked up Abigail’s rolling pin, her heart pounding. The vision of Mrs. Drew aproned in her own blood floated before her eyes. She struggled to catch her breath as her fear for Abigail shattered her composure.
“Steady on,” Gil murmured, picking up a carving knife from the table.
He bent closer to the footprints, followed them through to the dining room, Leona close behind.
He slid open the pocket doors and gasped. “Mrs. McCarthy!”
Abigail, tied to a chair. A gag stuffed into her mouth and her blue eyes furious.
Leona dropped the rolling pin and kneeled beside her to remove the gag.
Gil used the carving knife to cut through the ropes binding her wrists and feet.
While Leona chafed her poor hands, red and swollen from the tight bonds, Gil brought her a glass of brandy.
“Who did this? Where’s Millie?” Leona asked her once Abigail caught her breath.
“Millie! Millie did this! She ransacked the house for valuables and now she’s run off.” A livid bruise marked Abigail’s cheek.
“Drink this,” Gil advised and put the glass in her hand. “Was she alone?”
“Aye.” She drank down two large gulps and sputtered through the burn.
“I thought we might find her angel side, but she is pure devil. One moment talking as sweet as pie to me, the next she has a knife in her hand, waving it right under my nose. Didn’t think she’d use it, so I put up a fight.
Almost had her too, because she coughed so but it didn’t last long.
” She touched a finger to the growing lump on her forehead.
Gil turned to Leona. “You should never have let her in. What were you thinking? You knew she is a thief.”
“I’m so sorry, Abigail,” Leona said, darkness crowding her thoughts. She’d feared to find Abigail like Mrs. Drew. The relief at finding her whole and relatively unhurt almost crushed her, but Gil was right.
Abigail set down her brandy to rub at her wrists. “Your wife is a good woman, Mr. Gladney. She warned me about the Frost woman.”
Only her extreme emotions at this point would have caused her to speak so to Gil. Leona patted her shoulder and helped her to her feet, touched the woman would defend her. The front door opened and closed. As one, they turned toward the sound. A familiar figure stood in the doorway.
“Sorry I’m la—good heavens. What’s happened?” Grandfather cried.
“Mrs. Frost has tied up Mrs. McCarthy in order to rob us while we were out,” Gil explained, glaring at Leona. “Would you go for the police, please, William? There was a fellow at the end of the street not a half hour ago.”
“I’ll go at once—you’re all right, Abigail?”
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him.
“There’s a brave girl.” Her grandfather left the room, the door closing with a slam as he hurried through it.
He returned with a policeman who smelled of beer and was a member of Mrs. McCarthy’s extended family by marriage. He accompanied her home himself after one more brandy to calm her before seeing Mr. McCarthy.
Leona swept the kitchen floor under Gil’s piercing eye, wanting to disappear. How could things have gone so wrong again, just when a sliver of light had appeared?
“What were you thinking, allowing that woman into the house?” Gil repeated.
She picked up the largest pieces of the teacup and tossed them into the trash. “Since when did we become people who turn a blind eye to another in need?”
“You will make an inventory of everything she’s stolen for the police.”
“Of course. I will. They’ll find her, Gil.”
“The police will have grown quite tired of us before much longer.” Exhaustion and pain lined his face.
“It’s the middle of winter, where will she go?”
“To the pawn shops and train station,” he answered. “You are just lucky she didn’t murder Mrs. McCarthy like she did the people at the Frost house. If we hadn’t come home when we did, she’d likely have slit her throat.”
“Stop!” Leona shouted, dropping the broom with a clatter.
As if he hadn’t heard, as if she had not shared his pain at the jail just hours ago, he went relentlessly on. “We don’t have enough trouble, you had to bring this to our door.” He began to walk out but turned back once more. “We will talk very soon about your—your proclivity for unsavory people.”
Something snapped inside her at the way he sneered proclivity . “Certainly.” She sharpened her tone like a knife on the whetstone of her temper. “Shall we talk about Helen first or last?”
He opened his mouth but shut it without a word. She could almost hear the grinding of his teeth. He shook a finger at her. “You are only lucky nothing worse has happened.” His voice husky with weariness, he slumped against the door jamb. “You could not live with yourself.”
He did not know what she could live with. Her emotions absented themselves, and she shouted into an empty void, her words sharp and hard. “I want to talk about Darius Varney.”
He appeared taken aback. “You are determined to talk about this? Now?”
“You should have told me about Lawrence!” She hardly knew what she was saying, but all the terror broke to the surface in a rush. “You are angry because you say I keep secrets, but you too have much you don’t tell me. And look what happened, Gil!”
“Leona,” he said in a warning tone. “It’s you who let that she-fiend into the house.”
He raised his hand and took a step toward her.
She lifted her chin, daring him to strike with her grandfather in the house.
He thought better of it but grabbed her by the upper arms and shook her harder than she thought him capable until she pushed him away with a strength that appeared to shock him.
“Why are you making so much trouble for me now? Other husbands have wives who give them children and keep a happy home as a proper woman should.”
“When will you stay home to make those children with me?”
He let her go, and she staggered back.
“You are never happy.”
“I was once,” she cried. “But I know in my heart Helen is your mistress—”
“You have cut me to the quick, for all we have just been through together. Varney is going to ruin what reputation I have left after you and Henry have nearly destroyed it.” He gave that strange bitter laugh she’d first heard in the police station.
“You will see a doctor about these odd fantasies of yours. You are getting worse, not better.” He shuddered, but his demeanor softened.
“We’ll get you well, darling. We’ll take that Scottish holiday soon. But you will see the doctor first.”
He left her standing dumbfounded in the kitchen. Her thoughts tried to stir themselves, but despair and confusion had a tight hold on them. I am not mad. I love him, God help me, but this is how he returns my love?
Gil reappeared in the doorway. “I want my luncheon.” He turned away.
Once she cleaned the kitchen, it didn’t take long to slice the chicken and bread and lay them out with the cheese on a tray for Gil.
She opened the small cedar chest that held the silver and found it empty.
The gold baby spoon from Jack’s parents no longer nestled in a corner of the chest. Surprised she had any tears left, she got out paper and pencil to begin the list her husband had tasked her with.
Trying not to cry, though she was unsuccessful.
Which was how her grandfather found her, weeping into her apron.
Not comprehending at all what had happened, he patted her back and murmured endearments.
This only made her yearn more fiercely for high summer on Halcyon Farm.
For her grandmother and happier times. Why did the mad clock inside her head return her to the battlefield and not to brighter days?