The Bellingham Bloodbath (13 page)

“Very kind. . . .” Colin nodded, sweeping up one of each and willfully causing opposing crumbs to drop as he did. Miss Easterbrooke's brow furrowed the slightest hint, but she said nothing. When she turned the plate in my direction I shook my head with a smile, unwilling to get involved with the whole sordid mess.

“Are you certain?” she prodded, and I'm sure I detected a note of distress in her voice. When I declined yet again, she set the plate on the floor and the heretofore knackered Buster Brown leapt up and bolted forward, sucking down the remaining half-dozen biscuits with evident passion. “That's my boy.” She chuckled. “I simply cannot refuse him anything.” She stuck her fingers out and the dog greedily lapped at the salts on her skin.

“He seems to have a sweet nature to go along with his sweet tooth.”

“Indeed he does. . . .” She giggled, picking up a napkin and carefully wiping her fingers one after the other. “He was a Dorchester County champion at three. After that . . . ,” she sighed, “. . . he started putting on a bit of weight. I do think the judges insist the dogs be too thin these days.” She continued to wipe her fingers with the napkin, folding it in half each time she used it. “And then Lady Priscilla started to be shown. Buster Brown simply didn't have a chance after she came along.”

“Which is precisely why we are here.”

“I presumed. I heard about her disappearance. Dreadful, simply dreadful. Who would
do
such a thing?”

“That's what we're going to find out. Have you known anyone to make threats against Lady Nesbitt-Normand or her pup?”

“Absolutely not. Lady Nesbitt-Normand is a lovely woman and a formidable challenger.”

“Still . . . ,” Colin prodded, “I know things can happen in the passion of competition.”

“You don't understand the show circuit, Mr. Pendragon. We are quite like a family really, with our four-legged dears as much our children as if we had borne them ourselves.” She leaned forward and wedged the tiny square that was left of her napkin under the teapot, compelling it to stay in the minute shape she had forced it into.

“Understandable. And what is your Buster doing in his retirement?”

“Well”—she hesitated—“I should very much like to breed him . . .” As though to approve her intention to roll her Buster Brown out to pasture, the pug suddenly began digging at the carpet in what I felt sure was a desperate attempt to free any crumbs he had not already inhaled from the plate. “Now you stop that,” she scolded, reaching out and shaking a finger in the dog's face. “You know better than that.” He stared at her a moment, apparently deciding she meant no ill will, and immediately resumed his frantic digging.
“Alvin!”
his mistress hollered, rising from her chair as though it had suddenly become quite hot.
“Come and get Buster.”

She shooed Buster with her arms, herding the pug toward the stairs even as the poor pup cast mournful glances backwards. By the time she managed to coerce him across the room, her houseman, Alvin, bobbed into view, moving with a rapidity that seemed to suggest he had been fearing just such a summons.

“Take him upstairs,” Miss Easterbrooke commanded. “Put him to bed.”

“Yes, ma'am.” He stooped and swept up the dog. The pup craned its head around to keep us, or the room, in view for as long as he could, which lasted only a moment before he finally disappeared aloft. Miss Easterbrooke came gliding back to us.

“I am so sorry.” She settled on the edge of the same chair again, her face now quite flush.

“You've nothing to apologize for and I shall only trouble you to answer one more question.”

“You mustn't rush off. More tea?”

“No, thank you. I'm just wondering if you have made any plans yet to start the breeding process?”

“Oh!” She stiffened, flicking her eyes between Colin and me. “Such a topic for mixed company.” Her face pursed uncomfortably as she looked down at her hands. “Not yet, Mr. Pendragon. It's just so hard to find a good bitch.”

“I'm sure it is.” He stood up and slid his teacup onto the tray. “We have taken up more than enough of your time, Miss Easterbrooke. You have been most kind and I only hope you will allow us a further visitation should it prove necessary.”

“But of course.” She smiled, casually pushing Colin's cup into a more symmetrical placement. “We are at your service.” She took my cup and settled it with equal care before standing up and brushing at her dress, ridding herself of crumbs that only she could see. “None of us will rest until Lady Priscilla is home again. I won't even allow Buster to go outside by himself anymore and you can just imagine how he hates that.”

“I really don't think you or your little charge has anything to worry about,” Colin soothed. “I'm quite certain that Lady Priscilla's theft was very specific.”

“Oh dear. . . .” She hugged her bony arms around her thin frame as though they could actually be of use in protecting her. “Somehow that makes it even worse.”

We were outside hailing a cab within minutes, my mood plunging at our lack of progress, when Colin abruptly seized my elbow and said, “That was outstanding.”

“What was outstanding?”

He ushered me into the coach and called out our home address. “We have solved the case,” he announced with a hearty grin, his dimples alight.

“What?!”

“Edwina Easterbrooke and her corpulent henchman are holding Lady Priscilla prisoner in that flat,” he announced with great self-assurance.

“You cannot possibly know that.”

“I absolutely do.”

“Then why didn't you say something?”

“Because now we have to prove it.”

I
was sitting on a too-hard chair back at Buckingham Palace in a small room in which the only sound I could hear was the drumming of my heartbeat in my ears. Major Hampstead had gotten word to us the moment we returned home that I could come and speak with young Albert Bellingham. The very idea had immediately sunk my mood, and it had only spiraled from there as I'd been forced to gird myself and head back. I had thought of entreating Colin for a reprieve this once; after all, hadn't I gotten that blasted autopsy report for him? And on the heels of that very thought I had realized this was my chance to redeem myself. We would not end up in prison when this conversation was done, though I wondered if that mightn't be preferable to the mental state I was quickly descending into.

Footsteps echoed from the hallway and a moment later a little boy with curly white-blond hair, brilliant brown eyes, and a wide, open face entered with a tall, lanky woman at his side. She wore the white uniform of a nurse and a sour expression that alerted me to the fact that she hated what this lad was about to be subjected to. I couldn't have agreed with her more.

The woman did not introduce herself, nor did I care, but after settling the boy in she pointedly let me know she would be back in fifteen minutes—fifteen minutes exactly—and that would be all the time I would be allotted. I nodded, dispensing with the sham of a smile, and she left, her shoes clicking reproachfully as she disappeared back down the hallway.

Albert looked drawn and tired, and I knew he wasn't sleeping well. I could see it in his eyes. I could remember those first nights myself.

“I'm sorry for what you've been through,” I mumbled so disconcertingly that it even startled me. The boy just stared back. I could hardly blame him. “My name”—I took a deep breath—“is Ethan Pruitt. I have been asked to help make sure that whoever hurt your mum and dad gets captured. I know that's what you want, isn't it?” If I could have bit the words back, I would have. They were inane and stupid, and I wasn't at all surprised when the boy kept silent.

“I need to ask you about the night your parents died, Albert, because you might know something that could help—” And once again I blanched at my own words as I realized they were the same ones that had been used on me so many years before. I was repeating them as if they had been said to me yesterday, still so fresh even after twenty-seven years. Every bit as much as the sound of someone calling me. A woman. My mother.

“Ethan!”
she was hollering, her voice high-pitched to the point of shrillness.
“Ethan!”
she bellowed again, and this time I could hear the note of desperation.

“Leave him be,” a man's voice soothed. My father's voice.

“I want him,” she answered harshly, her tone distorted by the talons of her hysteria. “We should be together. We
need
to be together.”

I was aware that I was trembling, my whole body quaking as though trying to rid itself of a fever, but I wasn't sick, I was scared. No, I was terrified.

“Come back in here,” my father was urging, his tone as soft and calm as a breeze, but even I could hear the worry coloring his words. “Bring the baby and come back. We'll be fine. Just the three of us.”

Oh god. Oh no.

My throat clenched and I couldn't draw a breath. I wanted to scream and tell my father not to go in there with her, not to take the baby, that poor innocent baby, so beautiful and pure, but no sound would escape my mouth. Nothing at all. I longed to move, to run, to flail about, to do anything to make some noise and stop what I
knew
was about to happen, but my legs and arms were as seized as my throat and I could not will them to cooperate. It felt like I had been drugged or cast into a mire from which there was no hope of escape.

And then I heard the door shut. It wasn't a slam, it wasn't done with anger, but there was a definitiveness about it that I would always remember. It was only a sound—
click!
—but it was crisp and tidy and signaled the end of everything.

I tasted the tears before I realized I was crying. My nose was running, slick and viscous, and I cursed myself for cowering there, unable to move, unable to yell, unable to do anything but leak snot and salt water. My shaking had become so severe that at some point I wrapped my arms around myself as if I might be about to fly apart. Selfish to the end. And still I did not move,
could
not move. The silence in the flat was deafening. Taunting me. Extending itself languorously because it knew that
I
knew what was about to happen. Even so, I could not unravel myself from my hiding place.

Pop!

My body jerked and in that same instant my bladder released.

Pop!

I flinched as though I had been hit, my back arching up and hitting something, something hard and unforgiving. Wood. My eyes focused and I remembered I was under my bed. I had crushed myself into the farthest corner and could not move because I had wedged myself between the walls on two sides and the bottom of the frame just above.

Pop!

And suddenly my feet heaved against the corner where the walls met and I was able to propel myself forward, bursting out into the moonlight streaming through the sole window in my room. But still my limbs would not cooperate, my knees and arms scrabbling about, struggling for purchase on the shiny wood floor. My face was streaked with wetness and I was soiled. And there was something else. A heavy smell: dark, burnt, metallic. Gunpowder. And just like that my voice roared back and I screamed. From the depths of my soul I hollered so hard and so long that I feared I would never stop....

I stared across at Albert a moment, unaware of whether I had said or done anything. His face remained impassive however, leaving me grateful that my terrors had not escaped my lips. As I drew in a long breath I understood that I could do this. I
would
do this. So by the time the woman came back to fetch him, we had finished our conversation and I prayed he might sleep better this night.

B
y the time I returned home, Colin's mood had dipped. I could tell his initial enthusiasm was tempered by the enormity of the task at hand around both the Bellingham murders and the Nesbitt-Normand case. What made it worse was that I had nothing to offer him from young Albert Bellingham. The boy had heard the two gunshots, those innocuous
pops
he would never forget, and the occasional muffled cry of his father overhead, another sound that would haunt him until his own death, but had seen no one and heard no other voices.

“Have you given any more thought to Sergeant Mulrooney?” I prodded Colin, concerned about the poor lad being under his uncle's vitriolic stewardship if even for a few weeks. And if the sergeant proved to be involved in the murders . . . I could not help the glare I leveled on Colin.

“In what way?” he responded with a clipped abruptness, clearly driven by unsettling thoughts of his own.

“He has to be considered,” I said.

“He
is
being considered. They are
all
being considered. What
are
you prattling on about?”

I didn't take his bait, deciding it was indeed best for me to leave him to his brooding for the next couple of days. Without a further word, I went straight to our bedroom to collect a few things for my stay at the Devonshire Hotel.

“What the bleedin' 'ell are you doin'?” Mrs. Behmoth startled me as I stuffed my writing into a valise before even bothering to consider clothing.

“I'm leaving Colin alone for a bit. This Bellingham case is crushing and I'm afraid I have been more distraction than aid.”

“That's daft. 'E ain't no good without you underfoot.”

“Oh, come now.” I scowled as I stuffed a few things into a sack, certain she was having a laugh at my expense. “You shouldn't let him hear you say that.”

“I'll tell 'im meself!” she snapped as she turned and left.

I should have told her to leave him be, but she was gone before I thought of it and, truthfully, there was still a part of me that hoped he might come back and insist I stop my foolishness. Heaving a sigh of annoyance, I finished pulling things from the armoire and set my sights on the top of the commode.

“You're bein' a ruddy arse!” I heard Mrs. Behmoth growl from the other room.

“If you
please,
” Colin shot back.

A moment later I felt him lurking in the doorway even before I looked up to find him standing there. “You don't have to do this . . . , ” he said, but there was little conviction in his tone.

“I'll be two minutes down the street and shall do any bidding you need.” I gave him an earnest smile. “I just need the rest of my things from the loo.” I moved past him, confident that I was indeed doing the right thing, and quickly grabbed my few toiletries, taking care not to disturb any of Colin's face creams or hair oils. I looked at the little shelf and felt the void of my presence for the first time as I stared at my empty side.

“You needn't take everything . . . ,” he piped up from behind me.

“Objets de beauté.”
I smirked.

He gave a small smile as he stepped in and shut the door. “I'm sorry. I know I've become intolerable about this Bellingham case—”

“You haven't.” I took his hand. “There's enormous pressure on you and I do
not
wish to contribute to it any more than I already have by landing us in prison and kicking the Rintons' dog. . . .” I sighed heavily as he snickered and slid his arms around my waist.

“I wouldn't have you any other way,” he said, his hands beginning to drift.

“What are you doing? Where's Mrs. Behmoth?”

He looked at me, his eyes sweeping my face with amusement. “Downstairs, I suppose. Why? Did you want her to join us?”

I laughed as his powerful arms squeezed me as though trying to fuse the two of us together. And in that moment nothing else mattered, not the cases, not my blunders, not even the incessant sweeping of the clock's hands; there was only the two of us, fitting with ease and surety.

Such pinnacles are as ethereal as the beating of a hummingbird's wings, however, for in what seemed the span of a breath I was down on the street, my bags in tow, waiting for Colin to hail a cab. He had decided to come with me to the Devonshire before we went our separate ways, me to see Lady Nesbitt-Normand while he headed back to Buckingham.

“To the Devonshire,” he called up to the driver as we settled in for the short ride. “Are you sure about this place? I don't remember it being very enchanting.”

I laughed. “I shall be perfectly fine. Heaven knows I've stayed in worse places in my life.”

“Hmmmm . . . ,” was all he said, and I knew he didn't like the reference to my years in the East End.

In less time than it took me to consider my task ahead at the Nesbitt-Normand estate, our coach was swinging around in front of the Devonshire. As I stared up at the dilapidated structure I realized that my recollection of it had been far too forgiving. A flat-fronted brick building without benefit of any ornamentation, its austerity was surpassed only by its overall dereliction. The paint around the windows was cracked and peeling, and the front door was in such sorrowful shape that the interior could be spied through the splits between its lashed boards. Even the sign no longer correctly reflected its name, revealing a bizarrely truncated version that read:
De on ire Hote,
with nothing but sun-bleached stains where the missing letters had been.

“ 'Ere ya be,” the driver called as he brought us to a stop. “Not one a yer finer places.”

“We really don't require any commentary,” I shot back as Colin began hoisting my few pieces of luggage down. I paid the man and went into the lobby with Colin on my heels and found that it consisted of little more than a narrow pass-through with the front desk tucked in beneath a staircase. A series of oddly lopsided wood cubbies were trussed up along the wall behind the counter and there was a smattering of wallpaper hanging in irregular patches displaying a repetitious pattern of roses that had faded to the color of ancient parchment. Worst of all, however, was the cloying aroma of mildew that assaulted the nose.

“This will not do,” Colin said the moment he stepped inside.

“Nonsense.” I waved him off, determined to prove my mettle as I moved to the counter and slapped at the misshapen bell rotting there. “I wasn't raised among the nobles in India. I didn't have an elephant for a plaything—”

“She was
not
my plaything.”

“I'm staying,” I decreed with finality, completely aware that my stubbornness was accomplishing little more than earning me a night in the sort of place I thought I had left far behind.

He shook his head as he yanked out his watch and scowled at it.
“Bollocks!”
He stabbed an arm out and assaulted the raggedy bell with a great deal more determination than I had, adding to its overall disgrace.

A heavyset woman in an ill-fitting robe came through a door on our left and plodded back behind the counter. She moved with the determination of someone to whom motivation is as foreign as zeal. Gray circles enveloped her eyes and her skin matched the color of the wallpaper remnants. She had a poorly rolled, unlit cigarette hanging from a corner of her flaming red lips and an explosion of black hair piled high upon her head that was barely being contained by a pitted dinner fork. As she squeezed behind the counter I felt her eyes rake across us as though gauging our worth. “One room er two?”

“One,” I said.

She stared at me a moment with an expression I could not place. “How many hours?”

“Two
nights,
” I corrected.

“Two of ya cost extra.”

“It'll just be me,” I said, sliding the posted fee across the counter.

Her eyebrows knit as she shot a withering glance at Colin. “Suit yerself, but remember, two of ya cost extra.”

“We shall remember it like the gospels themselves,” Colin enunciated pointedly.

The woman scrutinized the money I had given her carefully before stuffing it down the front of her robe. She snatched a key from beneath the counter and shoved it back at me. “Ya turn yer key in before ya go out or it'll cost ya extra. And if ya want someone ta clean yer room or change the bed—”

“It'll cost bloody extra!” Colin snapped. “Thank heaven the bugs and mold are free.”

The woman sucked in a tight breath before slamming a fist down on the key just as I was about to pick it up. “That kinda attitude will get yer arse thrown out.”

“He's not staying anyway,” I grumbled back as I reached for the key again, stopping just short of her fleshy mitt, until she finally, grudgingly, lifted it and took a step back. “Thank you,” I said with what charm I could muster, grabbing my valise and leaving the bag for Colin. “Which way?”

“Upstairs.” She gestured with her chin before tossing a smirk at us. “Top floor.”

“Fine,” I said quickly, heading for the stairs before Colin could add anything else.

We made our way up the five flights without talking. At first it was a choice, but eventually it became a necessity as the climb took its toll on our lungs, although it was certainly truer of me than Colin. By the time we reached the uppermost landing we were both out of breath and I could tell he was even further out of sorts.

“She put you up here on purpose,” he seethed.

“Perhaps there'll be fewer bugs on the top floor,” I muttered, getting the lock to release by giving the door a boot.

I tossed the valise onto the lumpy bed shoved against the wall before walking over and yanking the threadbare curtains wide. Sunlight filled the room, and for a moment I wasn't at all sure that was a good thing. A single chair leaned against the far wall, looking to be in a losing battle with gravity. There was a cracked washbasin streaked with the calcified remains of yellowed minerals pitched awkwardly next to it. The room held no other furniture, which, given what was there, seemed like a wise choice. “Sparse,” I said.

“If you—”

“I'll be fine,” I waved him off haughtily, turning back to the window to let in a bit of fresh air. To my utter consternation, however, it held fast. I checked for a lock or dowel rod before trying again, but still it defied me. “Would you please open this blasted thing?!”

“Of course.” He stalked forward, grabbed the bottom of the window, and threw his considerable strength into it, but it still would not give so much as a millimeter.
“Dammit to rotting hell!”
he shouted. He tossed his coat and vest onto the drooping bed and rolled up his sleeves. With his face set in a scowl of heroic indignation, he turned back to the window and seized the small wooden handle, struggling against the frame to the point that I could see the muscles of his arms straining against his upturned sleeves even as his face surged to a cautionary shade of crimson. And then, all at once, the window gave with a shuddering
screeeeeeeeeeeeeech,
ratcheting up so abruptly that it shattered the instant it slammed against its upper casement.
“There!”
he roared as tinkling shards of glass rained down onto the floor. “That should give you a nice breeze.”

“And
that . . .
,” I muttered, “. . . is going to cost extra.”