Louisa and the Missing Heiress (32 page)

“Mr. Wortham?” I called, gently at first and then louder. “Mr. Wortham?” No answer. Digby did not respond to my call, either. I shifted my weight and a board creaked underfoot.

Perhaps he had fled after all, leaving that fine coat behind.

Pressing through the darkness, my hands before me like a sleepwalker, I moved deeper into the hall, near the twin arched doorways, one of which led into the dining room, the other into the front parlor. The room was cold and silent as a tomb; not even embers glowed in the fireplace. Beside a pile of torn newspapers on the mantel I found a candle and matchbox. I wondered what it would be like to tear paper into kindling strips and see a front-page box of yourself with the announcement
Murderer!
under it. The scratch of the match striking the sandpaper on the side of the tin box was startlingly loud, since all else was so quiet.

By candlelight I saw that the room was almost emptied, the few remaining pieces of furniture draped with cloths. But the packed valise was still there. He hadn’t left yet.

The emptiness had a strange feel to it.

And I knew then, with all of my senses alert and in alarm, that he was watching me, waiting. I realized now how vulnerable I was, standing in the surrounding darkness, made visible with that candle in my hand.

Quickly I blew out the candle and moved closer to the wall, sheltering at least my back from the attack I knew was to come. For underneath those perfect manners, that suave calmness, was the nature of a murderer, and I had come to accuse him, to stop him from leaving before justice could be done. And he would try to stop me.

Where were Cobban and Sylvia? Why didn’t they hurry?

My silk skirt rustled in a sudden draft and I pressed closer to the wall. A door had been closed somewhere. I peered into the darkness, and as I shifted my weight a board creaked underfoot, the same board that had creaked under my foot in the hallway. He had closed the front door, locking me in.

I stood statue-still again, waiting. Another board creaked, closer.

“I know you’re here.” I spoke into the darkness, forcing my voice to be steady. “Let us talk and make an end of this. It is over. You can do no more harm to that family. You must leave them in peace now.”

“It is indeed over,” a man’s voice whispered in the darkness. “I don’t hope you expect gratitude from me, Miss Alcott.”

“Redemption is yet possible. Evil can be turned away,” I whispered, for I knew he was very close, and coming closer. Yet another board creaked and I heard the stiff leather crackle of his polished shoes, smelled the rich fragrance of imported French cologne.

“Redemption!” He stepped in front of me, looming, a figure darker than the darkness of night because of his black suit, and I realized too late that the wall that had protected my back now entrapped me. I was too far from the front door; I would never reach it in time.

I raised my hand and the candlestick it held, attempting a defense.

Effortlessly, as though I were no more than a child playing with forbidden toys, he forced the candlestick from my grasp. I felt his fingers, gloved, powerful, strong enough to circle my throat, to strangle Dorothy’s throat, the windpipe broken . . . that hand closed over my own, taking me prisoner.

“Redemption,” he repeated, stepping close enough now that even in the darkness I could see his face.

He raised the candlestick.

“No,” I said. He still held the candlestick in midair, poised to strike me down, and I knew a blow of that heavy silver against my head could be lethal. How to stop him? Not physically.
No, think,
I instructed myself.
His nature. What is his nature? Vanity. He is vain and proud.

“You were so clever,” I said quietly. “You had so many people fooled and terrified for so long. You had such power over them.”

The hand holding the candlestick lowered an inch. “It could have gone on longer,” he said after a moment. “Why did you interfere? I warned you.”

“Why Dorothy?” I asked.

“She was an opportunity. A good businessman never misses an opportunity.” The candlestick came within inches of my head, but crashed into the wood paneling behind my right ear. I felt the cold breeze of it, heard the wood splinter, but knew he hadn’t missed. He hadn’t meant to hit me. He wanted to strike me down, but was unable, for the moment, at least. Why? Because for the first time he could talk freely? Perhaps I was simply not a good business opportunity. Perhaps his nature, for all his crime, was not yet thoroughly calcified, and murder came harder to him than he expected.

I sensed an opportunity for life, for escape. Talk. Words.

“You followed me . . . that night in the street . . .” I said, keeping my voice as calm as possible, trying to draw him out.

“I apologize for the push. Very bad manners, I know. But necessary. You ask so many questions, Miss Alcott.” He wrenched the candlestick out of the wood paneling and raised it once again. His black-clothed arm was silhouetted in the darkness, his mourning coat darker than the night itself. And the very hand that had killed Dorothy was now raised against me. The silver candlestick gleamed.

“Tell me about Dorothy, about Mrs. Wortham,” I said. “Tell me how you knew.”

“I suspect you already know all there is to know about Mrs. Wortham, and what happened that day,” he said. The candlestick was still raised, ready to strike.

“Tell me anyway,” I said. “I’m sure there are things I have overlooked.”

“You think me a fool,” he sneered. “You and your kind have looked down your noses at me for far too long. But I have a long journey ahead of me, so I must excuse myself, Miss Alcott.”

His nature—vain, but also with a strong sense of practicality. The night was disappearing, and the day must find him elsewhere.

The candlestick finished the arc of its swing and I saw that this time it would not land in the wood paneling. My vision filled with exploding red, and then black. My last thought was that he would get away. We hadn’t been in time.

 

 

TEN MINUTES LATER, Sylvia, Cobban, and Jenkins found me crumpled on the parlor floor of the empty Wortham mansion. Fog-thinned moonlight glistened on a trickle of red running down my forehead and over my left cheek. My hands were ice-cold, but something was tickling my nose.

“She’s breathing,” Cobban said, taking away the feather with which he had ascertained that fact. In the confusion of throbbing but renewed consciousness I wondered if he always carried a feather in his pocket for just such a reason, and how strange the life of a constable must be.

Cobban, aided by Jenkins, carried me to the cloth-draped couch and chafed my wrists while Sylvia fetched a vial of salts from her reticule and held it under my nose. I sneezed fiercely and flailed at the air.

“No, no,” Cobban said gently, holding my wrists to restrain me, “you are safe, Miss Alcott; you are with friends.”

“Have you got him?” I asked, staring about wild-eyed. “Is he here?”

“Don’t move so quickly,” Constable Cobban said. “Lie back down, Miss Alcott, or you’ll faint.”

“I don’t faint,” I protested. “Not unless someone thwacks me on the head. Have you stopped him?”

Jenkins cleared his throat. “If you mean the gent that rushed down the street past us and almost knocked me over, why then no, we don’t have him, miss.”

“We didn’t think to grab him. We were just thinking of you,” Sylvia said somewhat apologetically.

I sighed heavily and lay back down, rubbing my forehead. “Gone,” I said. “Why didn’t you go after him?”

“Don’t worry,” Cobban said. “He won’t get far. We’ll send telegrams to all the stations and ports with his description, and Wortham will be in custody by tomorrow evening.”

“Wortham?” I sat up again.

At that very moment we heard a groaning rise from somewhere deep in the back rooms of the house.

Cobban cocked his head to one side, listening.

“Isn’t it Preston whom we must pursue?” Sylvia asked, thoroughly confused.

“That is Wortham you hear now,” I said with weary patience. “It is Digby who has made good his escape.”

“Digby?” said Cobban, Jenkins, and Sylvia in unison.

I held my head and rubbed at the lump on my forehead. “Of course. Jenkins, you must report this immediately to the night watch, and give the officers a description of Wortham’s manservant, Digby. Tall, black-haired, dark-eyed. He will, again, be wearing Wortham’s own hat and coat. He has a penchant for borrowing his employer’s items of clothing. He may be traveling with a female companion.”

And so Jenkins went off again into the night to make a report, as a confused Sylvia and Constable Cobban helped me search the mansion.

We found Wortham locked in the back pantry. He was bound and gagged and was more in need of smelling salts than I, for even after he was released from his ropes his teeth chattered with fear.

“Oh, Mr. Wortham.” I sighed, stroking back the hair from his forehead. He, like I, had a bleeding gash on the side of his head and a black eye as well, and bruises about the mouth.

Preston grinned ruefully, relief lightening the pain of his injuries. “You don’t know the worst of it. He was going to murder me; I have no doubt of it. But then he heard a noise—you, Miss Alcott—so he left me for the moment. You saved my life.”

“Digby,” Cobban said, still piecing it together. “Of course. He would have murdered you, I have no doubt, had not Miss Alcott arrived and provided a distraction. Though I do wish you had waited for me,” Cobban said, frowning.

“I couldn’t. I knew he was about to fly and there was no time to lose.”

“Digby?” Sylvia repeated.

“Yes,” I said. “All the signs were there; it just took me time to see them. Who else is better situated to blackmail someone than a trusted employee?”

“I need not ask what he was blackmailing you about, considering your reputation.” Cobban looked harshly at Wortham.

“No. You need not ask. Especially not in front of ladies. But to murder Dorothy just to further terrorize me . . . Wasn’t it enough that he forced me to take him into service, into my very household, where he went through my income with an ease even I could not manage? But why murder Dorothy?”

“You really do not know,” I said, shaking my head.

“No. But something in your voice tells me I will need the swooning couch in a moment.” Wortham’s battered face grew yet more somber.

“Be brave, Mr. Wortham,” I said. “You suspected it yourself. There was another person in Dorothy’s life, and Digby was blackmailing her.”

Wortham grew so pale the blood on his forehead seemed black against the whiteness of his skin. He drew his lips into a tight, furious line and was unable to speak. He was the very image of that dreadful dime-novel terror, the jealous husband who discovers his wife has loved another. For a moment he looked truly capable of murder.

I pressed forward, eager now to say all that needed to be said, all that had been kept in darkness, all that had harmed this family so terribly.

“That other person was a child, Mr. Wortham. Dorothy had a child. Digby had been blackmailing her as well, and her mother, Mrs. Brownly. He murdered Dorothy because she was going to tell the father about her past and bring the child into her home. The blackmail would end.”

“A child?” he said.

“Mr. Wortham, the child was your own. Agnes.” There. I had said aloud what had been kept hidden for six years. A deep sense of relief washed over me. I sensed that Dorothy would have been pleased.

“Mine?” he asked, stunned.

“Yours. From that summer in Newport. Did you really think that, once in love, Dorothy would ever be disloyal, or forget that love? There was no other man coming between you, only a little girl whose mother had been forbidden to acknowledge her.”

Wortham looked faint . . . as would any man who learned he has a six-year-old daughter, not a six-year-old sister-in-law.

“My child,” he repeated in a kind of stupor.

 

 

WE LEFT WORTHAM in his emptied mansion. The news of his child had overpowered his physical pains and agitation. “A child,” he kept repeating to himself, running his fingers through his hair.

With Jenkins off to file a report, Sylvia and I had no choice but to walk home, despite our exhaustion and my bloody gash. Cobban offered to escort us, and since it was late and I was dizzy, I accepted his offer.

“That makes it a different matter altogether,” he admitted with an apologetic smile as we closed the door behind us and went again into the night. “Wortham was the father and she married him.”

But I remembered what he had said earlier that evening, that cutting comment about “a woman like that.”

“Indeed,” I said somewhat coolly. “Does Dorothy meet your standards now, Constable?”

He blushed fiery red and mumbled that perhaps he was harsh in his statements about young Mrs. Wortham’s character, but I was still concerned with a more immediate matter.

“Do you think Jenkins has arrived at the station yet?” I asked, sorry now that I had not gone along with him and unwilling to admit that my head injury was causing me some distress. I could walk only with assistance.

“Most likely. As soon as you are safely home, I’ll go to the station and file my own report. We’ll find Digby. Don’t worry,” Cobban said.

Abba was a light sleeper, well used to late-night knocks on the door. She sighed and shook her head under its crooked, old-fashioned lace nightcap and went to fetch a bundle of gauze for my wounds. On the hall table was the basket of food and clothing prepared for the “travelers” and I hoped Cobban would not remark upon them. He did not, or at least pretended not to see them.

“Is it over yet, Louisa?” Abba asked. “You can’t take much more, I fear.”

“It is almost over. Now we can only wait and see if Digby is caught.”