CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A few heartbeats later , the blast still ringing in her ears, someone pounded on the front door.
Leona sneezed into her handkerchief and reached for the wine.
Even when the door splintered, and it could have been Lawrence’s crew for all she cared, she went on drinking until she’d emptied the glass.
The door certainly was stubborn and gave the intruder a fight.
Moving into the kitchen, she stirred the embers and added more wood.
When the fire blazed up, she tossed in the reticule, the gory packaging, and the false confession.
The silk scarf followed, but she held back the earrings from the fire.
Jack had given them to her, and their sacrifice would hurt.
She settled into the rocking chair where she’d sat with Millie and invited her into her home, promising to keep her safe.
The front door finally gave way with a splintering crash.
Frantic bootsteps stomped through the first floor, stopped in the dining room, then reached the kitchen door. It creaked open a few inches.
“Mrs. Gladney?”
The voice was familiar. It took another moment for her to recognize Detective Day.
“Stay back, you lot. I’ll handle this. She knows me. Someone find her grandfather. Do it now.” The kitchen door opened a few more inches. “Are you armed? Can you slide the pistol over to me, please?”
She did as he asked. The fulsome tide of emotion receded, leaving her stranded on the road of nothingness; she marched endlessly with no rest and no destination in sight. As close as she sat to the fire, she could not get warm. Her teeth chattered, and her body shook.
Day stepped in, picked up the gun, and tucked it into his waistband.
“Mr. Gladney is dead.”
“He’s not my husband Gilbert. Darius Varney had it right.
He’s Lawrence Gladney. Gilbert Gladney died many years ago.
” She could barely see out of her right eye.
The entire right side of her face throbbed with pain.
“There is a letter detailing exactly who and what he is. He was going to torture me to get his hands on it.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I lied to you about the Frosts,” she said, because for her it had begun there, this descent into hell.
“I pretended to be someone else seeking enlightenment, but I wanted to find Audrey—Iris, I mean. Then they found me out, and I ran off before they could stop me. I told Gil—Lawrence what happened and he—he killed them. I went back the next day because I was afraid they would leave town, but I found them all, except for Millie, dead.” She was sure she wasn’t making any sense, but the words forced themselves out as if she’d swallowed burning coal.
The detective pulled an old shawl from the hook and draped it carefully around her. “So, you solved the murder of your friend Daphne only to stumble upon another.”
“And now my own,” she murmured. Her nose began to tingle, her eyes to water, so she reached quickly into her pocket for her handkerchief. A hearty sneeze rattled her skull and set her bruised face throbbing harder.
“Have you got any brandy?” He spoke in a quiet voice she found it oddly soothing.
She pointed at the bottle on a shelf. He poured a generous portion into a teacup, handed it to her, and sat in the chair beside her.
“I have been in conversation with your suspicious grandfather but tonight Abigail McCarthy feared for your life at the hands of that diabolical man. She brought a notebook to the Fourth Precinct and told them she believed he really was Lawrence Gladney and that all his perfidies were contained within if it could be decoded. Good Lord, they treated her like a raving madwoman. Fortunately for you, one of her nephews was working tonight, and he came to find me, though I couldn’t be sure what was happening here until I heard the shot. ”
Leona sipped at the brandy but barely tasted it. “He’s killed Helen Caldwell-Jones. I’m sure he pushed her though he said she fell down the stairs to her kitchen and the rats are—” She stopped unable to go on. A single sob escaped her. “Oh, Helen.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He was getting ready to leave, to cut his ties to any potential witnesses, I think.” She sneezed again, wanting only her bed, a hot water bottle, and her long-dead mother.
Detective Day stepped out and spoke to his men, dispatching them to Helen’s house. While they waited, he followed her up the stairs to her study, where Henry’s letter lay, which Day took as evidence. The men returned from Cobble Hill with grim confirmation of Helen’s fate.
One moment, she was sitting with the detective in her kitchen, the aftermath of violence still ringing in her ears.
The next, the kitchen filled with men—more uniformed men sent for by neighbors who heard the shot.
Detective Day got into a shouting match with the officer in charge of this group, Sergeant Hoskins.
Abigail arrived with her husband and her rolling pin.
Then her grandfather was there, like all the best and worst times of her life.
After Hoskins examined the body in the dining room, even Day couldn’t keep the policemen from putting handcuffs on her. Everyone shouted as they did so, excited and wrong. She hadn’t killed her unarmed husband but a monster in human guise. Yet, somehow, this had made her the monster.
Detective Day and Mr. McCarthy held back her grandfather as they took her outside. Their neighbors came out in their nightclothes and boots with lanterns to watch the procession.
“I swear I’ll get you out,” Day called to her as the police shut the door of the paddy wagon, closing her within.
Her body swayed and jolted with the motion of the enclosed cart, but she barely felt it.
Her mind traveled far away, searching for comfort from the one who came to warn her about Lawrence, but in vain.
All of her turned inward until the outside had the appearance of hardened rock.
The morning edition of the newspaper would claim Leona’s heart was made of stone.
“What’s she doing here?” Sergeant O’Brien shouted when they entered the jailhouse. “What are you doing here, Mrs. Gladney?”
“Killed her husband,” Hoskins said, then called for the matron to take her to the Women’s Annex. “Dead as a doornail on the dining room floor.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Sergeant O’Brien slapped his forehead with his palm. “That damned Varney.”
“Come along, now,” Matron said, snatching at Leona’s arm.
But she wrenched it away and stepped toward Mal O’Brien. “Mr. Varney is right! My husband is Lawrence Gladney pretending to be his brother Gilbert. But Mr. Varney is in danger. Is there any way to get word to him?”
“He’s gone back home, lass. What kind of danger do you think he’s in?”
“Lawrence Gladney’s hired killers are searching for him right now. Please, you’ve got to find him.” Save him, save someone from this wretched pit Lawrence had flung them into.
Matron snatched at her once more and led her away to a humiliating strip search, though they let her have her own clothes back. Once locked in the cell, she realized she’d missed lunch and dinner, and his words came back to her.
You’ll be sorry later if you don’t eat now.
She managed a croaking chuckle; later the papers would report this as a cackle of glee. She lay down on the floor with no blanket, just as the other women had.
“Well, it’s not Blackwell’s,” Leona muttered, and the woman lying beside her laughed.