English Trifle (37 page)

The letter she’d taken yesterday had been postmarked December 22, but until now she hadn’t noticed that there was no year on the stamp. Her stomach got heavy. She’d assumed that the letter was from this year, and Grant had seemed to confirm that. There were more letters, with postmarks through April. With each one Sadie looked at, her stomach twisted a bit tighter in her belly.

Her hands slowed when she reached the bottom of the drawer and discovered what looked like the bottom layer of a triplicate form—thin pink carbon paper, folded in half. She picked it up and opened it, stiffening as she realized it was a receipt containing the burial information for one Estella Bernice Contine, buried May 18.

The notebook caught her eye again. Grant would have known that she suspected Austin already—and he’d done a good job of tipping the scales right before he was leaving for the holiday. The promise she’d made to him that she’d be sure he still got to go burned in her chest. He’d played her perfectly, giving an eleventh-hour confession and playing upon her sympathies so that she didn’t insist he talk to the police right then. She had wanted to believe it was all Austin, and so she’d gone against her better judgment and trusted Grant too much, too quickly. He, on the other hand, was a quick thinker. When she’d confronted him in the countess’s bedroom yesterday, he’d easily parried each of her questions—leading her toward Austin and away from himself by telling her a jumbled version of the truth.

Her eyes returned to the burial papers in her hand and another name caught her eye, causing her to furrow her brow. Under the portion labeled “Responsible for Payment” was the printed name of Harriet Brinton—Dowager Lady Hane—followed by a swirling signature.

Her stomach sank even lower as the picture in her mind shifted, becoming clearer in the process.

The earl had insisted Essie get help and although Essie might have gone along with it in the beginning, she couldn’t do it. After she left treatment, Essie was buried in London and Lady Hane had paid for it. Was Grant in cahoots with Lady Hane before that, or did Lady Hane come to him when he was in need?

She thought back to Austin’s adamant denial of having killed John Henry. A denial Sadie didn’t believe due solely on the fact that Grant claimed to have seen Austin at the estate earlier than Austin would admit.

“But what if it was Grant who killed John Henry after all?” Sadie said out loud. “What if the butler did it all along?”

~ ~ ~

Sadie hurried from Grant’s room, taking the staff stairs to the main floor. She noticed that Breanna’s backpack wasn’t in the foyer with Sadie’s bags, which hadn’t been loaded into the car yet. With any luck Breanna was still packing. She took the stairs two at a time—groaning with each step—reached the second floor, and hurried to their room.

“Breanna, I just—” She cut off when she realized Breanna wasn’t there. Her backpack was gone as well.

Sadie pulled out her cell phone and typed a quick message.

Where r u?

When she didn’t have a response after ten whole seconds, she hurried toward Liam’s room in the east wing while telling herself that she was totally overreacting. Breanna and Liam are saying good-bye, she told herself, prepared to perhaps interrupt a farewell kiss very much in need of being interrupted.

Surely Grant, knowing that the truth would come out, would have made quick work of getting as far from Southgate as possible. They weren’t in danger from Grant, and he certainly wouldn’t risk coming back here. Sadie was just tired and overwrought and jumping at shadows.

She told herself all of this, but she didn’t believe a single word and her optimism faded quickly.

What if he had come back? What if Grant blamed the earl for Essie’s death? His going along with the plan wouldn’t be blackmail like it was with the others—it would be revenge. He’d have no hesitation telling the truth about the safe because that didn’t factor into his own situation. It was one thing to feel foolish about believing him, but what she felt now was more than that.

If Grant were five hundred miles away, then why was she feeling so sick to her stomach? Why wasn’t Breanna answering her phone? And why was there so much fear in her chest that she could barely breathe?

Her hand was on the doorknob to Liam’s room when she heard the gunshot.

~ ~ ~

Sadie’s entire world came to a halt with the sound of gunfire, only starting again when Breanna screamed Liam’s name and Grant said “Don’t touch him!”

Sadie’s instincts told her to break down the door, but she forced herself to think before she reacted. With her heart thundering in her ears, she looked around the hallway for some kind of weapon. She saw a large, flat bronze bowl on the table next to the earl’s suite. She ran for it while digging her phone out of her pocket and then dialing 999—much easier to do than 911—and then ran back to the door to Liam’s room. Just before opening the door, she put the phone to her mouth and said as quietly as she could but as loud as she dared, “Gunshots at Southgate estate—tell Inspector Kent.” Then she put the phone on the floor near the doorway, dug the whistle out of her pocket, gripped the doorknob, and pushed the door open, blowing into the whistle as hard as she could.

In the instant her foot entered the room at a run, she took in the scene: Liam in a pile in one corner near his luggage and Breanna’s backpack; Breanna cowering at the foot of the bed; and Grant, with a gun in his hand, turning in reaction to the shrieking banshee that had just exploded through the door. It took only a fling of Sadie’s wrist to send the flat bronze bowl spinning across the room like the Frisbee she believed it was meant to be in the first place.

Grant pulled the trigger of the small black gun he was holding, but just as Sadie hoped, the shot went too high in his panic, hitting the top of the doorframe behind her. A split second later, the bowl caught him in the throat, knocking him backwards as he fired another shot into the ceiling. Sadie dove for Breanna, pulling her away from the bed and back toward the door.

“Liam!” Breanna cried as they reached the threshold. She pulled against Sadie, but Sadie tightened her grip so much that she feared she might break Breanna’s arm if she held on any tighter.

“No,” Sadie said, dragging her daughter out of the room. “We’ll come back.” Every action film she’d ever seen showed people crying and comforting each other while their supposedly unconscious pursuer remained in the room with them. Usually it led to one more attempt at the good guy’s life. Sadie wouldn’t let that happen to the good guys this time. She prayed that Liam was okay, but she would not risk her life or the life of her daughter long enough to see. The bowl was still clattering on the floor as they passed through the doorway and slammed it shut. Sadie bent down to grab the phone she’d left on the floor while Breanna stumbled behind her.

The first door she saw was to the earl’s suite across the hall. Afraid that heading toward the stairs made them too vulnerable, Sadie grabbed the doorknob of the earl’s sitting room, practically dragged Breanna inside, and then pushed the door closed. She locked the door before talking into the phone. “Hello,” she said in a harsh whisper, heading for the door to the countess’s bedroom, fumbling in her pocket for her keys.

“They’re back on the line,” she heard a frantic voice say on the phone. “Hello, hello? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” Sadie said breathlessly as she put the key in the lock and turned it before looking back, wondering why Breanna wasn’t following her. Breanna was crying and staring at the door they’d come in as she walked backwards toward her mother. Sadie followed Breanna’s eyes to see what had captured her daughter’s attention and saw the deadbolt turn. How could she have forgotten that Grant was the other person with a key to everything? Moving even faster, she opened the door to the countess’s bedroom and both she and Breanna ran inside, closing the door and locking it, but not before she’d seen the earl’s sitting room door begin to open.

“The balcony,” Sadie whispered, shooing Breanna toward it. “Get down somehow and circle back inside.” She placed her phone, still open, on top of the armoire next to the window. If the emergency service was still on the line she hoped they could hear what was happening.

Breanna’s face was wet with tears and she looked completely frantic. “But—”

“Go,” Sadie hissed. “Liam needs you to get help.”

And Sadie needed to know that Breanna was safe. There was little protection Sadie could offer if they were both trying to scamper down the trellis. Breanna would be faster alone anyway, and time was of the essence.

Breanna turned immediately and headed for the French doors. Sadie followed her, releasing the tieback that held the heavy draperies back. The thick fabric fell forward, covering the windows and shrouding the room in muted light she hoped would hide her better. Sadie scanned the room, looking for another Frisbee bowl but finding nothing she could use to defend herself. Everything in the room was obnoxiously soft and the bed was solid wood all the way to the floor. The mountain of pillows on the bed caught her attention and she dove for them, burrowing in through the side, as close to the headboard as possible. She pressed herself against the headboard while wiggling her whole self in, trying to keep from upsetting the pillows too much and hoping like crazy that there were enough of them to cover her. She wished for squeaky hinges that would signal that Grant was coming in, but had to settle for soft footfalls, further muted by the pillows piled above her. She held her breath as she heard him move around the room. She wished she could see what was happening.

“Can you believe this room, Essie?” he said softly, his voice tender and soft, at odds with the man she’d seen pointing a gun at her daughter just minutes earlier. “I’d have given it to you if I could.”

Is he talking to me? Sadie wondered.

She felt the bed shift and her breath caught in her throat. After a few seconds, she parted the pillows and her heart jumped to see Grant sitting at the end of the bed—just a few feet from where the pillows ended. He looked at the closed drapes as if they were open windows. He held the gun in his right hand, pressed sideways against the bed while his left hand massaged his neck, presumably where the bowl had hit him. He didn’t seem tense or worried that he might need to defend himself. Maybe his coming into this room was a coincidence rather than a pursuit. She hoped so.

“They suffered, Essie. They suffered as much as you did.”

Sadie didn’t dare move for fear it would give her away but wondered how long he planned to sit here. She hoped the police would hurry. She hoped that Breanna, and maybe Kevin, were helping Liam. Sadie just needed to wait Grant out until help arrived. Waiting had never been her strong suit, but in this case she didn’t foresee a problem since the price of impatience was unacceptable. Suddenly Grant’s head turned to the side, putting his face in profile against the curtains that seemed to glow in the morning light on the other side of the windows. “I know you’re there, Mrs. Hoffmiller,” he said. “You should know there’s only one bullet left and this one won’t go awry.”

Sadie went absolutely still.

Grant let out a breath, smiled slightly, and continued talking over his shoulder as though she’d answered him. “Who’d have guessed you’d look behind a curtain panel in the sitting room?” He paused, shaking his head. “Had you left as expected, John Henry would have washed up on a riverbank somewhere; the victim of some anonymous act of foul play. Instead, things got complicated, didn’t they?” He sighed and shifted on the bed. Sadie tensed, but listened intently. I can only assume that John Henry went to Lacy with the note because she was the only person with nothing to hide in this whole charade. She actually put that note on the tea tray.” He paused and shook his head before continuing. Sadie was still only interested in listening at this point, wondering if he’d tell her anything she didn’t already know.

“I take pride in my ability to think on my feet, you see. So it wasn’t difficult to put you on the path that led to Lord Melcalfe’s deception without implicating myself. It helped that you wanted to believe the things I told you—you wanted Lord Melcalfe to be guilty, and in fact he earned that, I think. But I appreciated that you believed me so easily, Mrs. Hoffmiller. Though I spend my life noticing things for others, not many people pay much attention to me. But you did, which is why I’m not going after your daughter even though I know she’s gone for help—hasn’t she? See, I noticed that the door to the earl’s sitting room was locked when it shouldn’t be. And then the light changed under this door when you shut the curtains I’d left open after we spoke yesterday. And then I noticed that the pillows weren’t just quite right.” He looked forward again. “I notice things, that’s my job.”

He went silent and Sadie swallowed the thick lump in her throat. She didn’t know what to do or what to say and hated feeling like a sitting duck doing nothing. Up until a few minutes ago, she’d still believed Austin was the person responsible for all the horrible things that had been happening here—but he wasn’t. Or at least he wasn’t alone. Perhaps she could figure out why things happened the way they did and how she’d missed it all. She could only hope that asking questions wouldn’t be the last thing she did.

“I’m sorry,” she managed to whisper though her mouth felt like it was full of sand. She pushed out of the pillows a little bit, watching him carefully in case she would need to make a run for it. “About Essie, I mean. I’m sorry about what happened to her.”

She braced herself for his reaction but he didn’t move at all, other than let out a breath. “The earl did it,” he said after a few seconds, not seeming surprised that Sadie knew. “He said she had to get help or he’d be forced to let her go.” He turned his head to the side again, not looking at her but putting his face in profile once more. “He said he didn’t want to do it, but he did it anyway. Now what kind of a gentleman does that? I’ve spent my life watching them, attending to the details of their lives that they can’t be bothered with, and I can tell you that not a one of them does what he doesn’t want to do. He was angry with my Essie, he was tired of dealing with her imperfections. But not me. I loved her, I took care of her. Did the earl do that?” His voice grew louder and Sadie tried to calm her increasingly panicked heart rate. “Did the earl ever clean her up when she vomited all over herself? Did the earl ever once hide the liquor so she couldn’t find it? No, he didn’t—not even one time. And yet he said he wanted to help her—by sending her to Bethelridge where she’d be surrounded by aristocrats who couldn’t hold their liquor. That would put her in her place, all right. That would show her humility—put her in a room of people whining about their paltry allowance of fifty thousand a year. He sent her there to fail, that’s what he did. He wanted her gone and—like any gentleman—he got exactly what he wanted, didn’t he?”