Vital Secrets (15 page)

Clarence Beasley was staring straight ahead with a glazed expression that was unreadable, but exhaustion was telegraphed in every aspect of his collapsed posture. Leaning on his shoulder, unremarked, was Dawson Armstrong, who, having sobered up enough to have realized the severity of what had happened, had then promptly fallen asleep. Lastly, Jeremiah Jefferson lay with his head on the table, holding his left cheek and moaning softly. His bloated countenance was not likely due to any remorse or particular sorrow over Merriwether's demise.

Unfortunately, Armstrong seemed to have the most obvious motive for doing away with his rival while having the least
capacity for doing the deed. Thea Clarkson appeared too ill to have wielded that bloody sword, even if Marc were able to discover a motive for her. While he could envision Mrs. Thedford defending her ward against attack from any quarter, she would have to have been mad or bent on self-destruction to have plunged a sword through the heart of her own enterprise. His best bet seemed to be Beasley, although if he had smouldering depths, they were ingeniously disguised. The mute was a possibility, but a slim one. Marc wanted to sit them down one by one right then and thrash the necessary truths out of them, but he realized he would get nothing coherent from any of them until morning.

Poor Frank looked worse than any of the actors. His eyes, very far apart in his moon-face, seemed to be searching for each other without much success, and his hand-wringing was pathetic to behold. Though he was a known Orangeman who might conceivably hate Americans, it was not plausible that he had built a theatre worthy of attracting professional troupes from abroad, only to murder the first bona fide star to step onto his stage.

“What do you want us to do now?” Frank asked. “Miss Guildersleeve's asleep in our spare room and my missus is beside herself with worry.”

“I'll decide what to do with everybody in a few minutes. Try to keep from despairing, sir.” Other than this vacuous advice, Marc could think of nothing to say that might be remotely consoling.

“Lieutenant, it is now nearly three o'clock in the morning. The governor will be frantic—”

“Please leave me alone with Hilliard,” Marc said curtly to Spooner.

“I think we should do as the lieutenant suggests,” Withers said with a barely suppressed yawn.

“Five minutes, that's all!” Spooner said to Marc with a lopsided twitch of his moustache, which simultaneously activated a similar twitch of the left eyebrow. “And I'll be standing beside the bar, where I can keep an eye on you.”

“Do you want me to help?” Sturges said.

“May I have Constable Cobb to assist me?”

“Well, what do you say, Cobb?” Sturges said to his favourite constable.

Cobb had been standing aside in deference to his superior, but not without periodic, baleful glowerings at Spooner when loyalty demanded such. “Ya mean fer the rest of the time it takes us to finish the job?” he enquired.

“I do,” Marc said.

“But you have no authority to deputize anybody!” Spooner bellowed from his post at the bar.

“I believe the governor will back me up,” Marc said. “And this way, the local constabulary will have a say in what is at least partly their affair.”

“What a fine solution,” Sturges said, and moved across to join Spooner at the bar some ten paces away.

Marc took a deep breath and drew a chair up beside Rick, who had not raised his head once since Marc and the others had entered the taproom. It was doubtful if he'd even heard a word of the conversation around him. Cobb placed his generous profile between Rick and the men at the bar.

“Rick, it's me. I'm here to help you.”

“Marc?” The voice was shrunken, scarcely recognizable; the eyes remained downcast. Merriwether's blood had begun to dry in ugly brown smears on his scarlet jacket with its green-and-gold trim. His flies were still untied, but the flaps had been closed. There was blood on his pants, on the backs of both hands, and on his head, where his palms had rested in despair or remorse.

“I need to talk to you, man-to-man.”

“They won't tell me what happened to her.”

“Tessa is resting. She's had a terrible shock, but I don't think she's badly injured.”

“They won't let me see her.”

“I'll talk to her the second she wakes up in the morning. That's a promise.”

Rick's next statement was nearly a sob: “I'm not sure she'll want to see me.”

“A lot depends on what you can tell me now, Rick. I realize that it must be horrific to think about what happened up there, but I've been sent by the governor to find the truth, all of it. Don't worry about that trumped-up martinet Spooner; I am
in charge. You can trust me.” Marc leaned over and whispered into Rick's ear: “And I don't believe for one moment that you drove your sabre through an unconscious man.”

Rick Hilliard raised his head slowly, peering up at Marc with round, enquiring, frightened eyes. “What can I tell you?” He looked away with a sigh, but when his gaze fell upon the bib of blood on his tunic, he looked back up at Marc and kept his eyes steadily upon his friend.

“Tell me everything you can remember about tonight, starting with what Tessa and you did when you went into her room shortly before eleven o'clock.”

Rick seemed puzzled by the question, or else was just more deeply in shock than Marc realized. But when Marc merely waited, he said at last, “We just laughed and talked … about the play … and how wonderful she was in it … and how much the audience loved it … just talk …
you
know.”

“Yes, I do. But think carefully now. When did you or Tessa take a drink of the sherry?”

“Not for a while. She was bubbling with excitement. Her eyes were like saucers. It must have been about eleven-thirty or after—there was a clock in the corner chiming the quarters, I remember—when I suggested we have a drink. I did promise Owen I would not stay long … I wanted to, oh, how I did, but I know that he … he saw us go into Tessa's room—”

“Merriwether?”

“Yes, and Mrs. Thedford, too, but she smiled and told us to be careful. I didn't want to let Owen down, or Mrs.
Thedford either, and I didn't want to harm Tessa's reputation … but look what I've done. Oh, God, this is awful … this is unbearable.”

“Get on with it, Edwards! I'm not going to listen to this blackguard blubber and wail all night!”

Cobb looked as if he were about to take five giant strides to the bar, pick Spooner up, plop him over the curve of his belly, and snap his brittle pomposity in two like a tinder-stick. But he stayed put.

“You can't hold me here! I'm an American citizen!” Apparently Dawson Armstrong had risen briefly to the surface.

“Shut up in there!” Sturges yelled.

“So you had your toast to success,” Marc prompted. “Just one?”

“Tessa had one, then insisted I have another … just one more for the road, she said, and laughed so deliciously my heart melted …”

“Then what happened? You must tell me everything.”

“We were sitting on the settee. I don't know how she managed it, but suddenly there was only one candle lit in the room, over by the bed, and a shaft of moonlight came in through the window and laid itself over us … we were in each other's arms …”

“Go on, Rick. How far did things go?”

“Too far. She was so young, but so beautiful there in the moonlight … and she wanted me. I started to feel very drowsy. I thought ‘How odd,' because I was getting very aroused, you
see, even as my eyelids started to feel like lead … I swear to God, she opened my flies.”

“Was she getting sleepy, too?”

“I don't think so … it's hard to remember because everything was starting to get fuzzy in the room, but I did see her get up, like a ghost in her white dress, and sort of drift over to the bed. I couldn't see clearly, though, because of my grogginess and the shadows on the bed. I remember her dress floating to the floor … she was in her shift, that gauzy thing she wore in the
Lear
scene. She was sinking back onto the pillows … I heard her giggle … I started to get up … and oh, Christ, I knew what I was going to do, and she was there—I swear it—with her shift raised above her knees …”

“And then?” Marc could hardly breathe as he waited for the answer.

“My legs went rubbery and I started falling backwards and the last thing I recall is the settee hitting the backs of my knees, and I sank back onto it. Then the room went away.”

“Listen carefully. Both you and Tessa were drugged. If you've remembered these details accurately, you took twice as much drink as Tessa. You're sure Tessa drank her glassful?”

“Oh, yes. We clinked glasses and watched each other drain them. But who would do something like that?”

“I need to know exactly when you came to, and what you saw. Your life may depend on your answer.”

Rick paled, checked Marc's face for signs of duplicity, found none, and, struggling for the right words, said, “I heard Tessa cry
out. I thought I was dreaming it, but my eyes opened. The room seemed dark except for the strip of moonlight over the settee and a bit of candlelight somewhere. I turned towards the bed, but all I could see—I was still groggy—was the white crumple of something on or under a sheet. I felt a sort of black panic … Tessa was hurt or in trouble, was all I could think, then nothing. I've been sitting here for an hour trying to remember what happened during those blank seconds. But I can't.”

“But you did come to again?”

“Yes. I was sitting on the settee, something wet and sticky all down my front … I knew it was blood, I don't know how, and there in the moonlight I saw my sword sticking up out of the carpet. I walked slowly over to it and that's when I saw the body, Merriwether … ghastly. I thought, ‘I've stabbed Merriwether.' I was reaching to pull the sword out when I remembered Tessa and I was just about to turn towards the bed when the door swung open, and Beasley, I think, was standing there with a candle in his hand and a horrified look on his face. One of us screamed. I was rooted to the spot, couldn't move a muscle.”

Marc waited while Rick struggled to control his emotions and Cobb dared Spooner to disrupt the proceedings.

“I could hear Beasley banging on doors and creating havoc, but it was nothing compared to the havoc in my mind. Then Beasley was back with Mrs. Thedford and Jefferson … I heard her shriek and I thought Tessa was dead and my heart stopped, but Mrs. Thedford picked Tessa up off the bed as if she was
a doll and ran out of the room with her, Jefferson following. Beasley pulled me aside … sometime later the room was full of policemen.”

With the aid of Cobb's lantern, Marc carefully examined the bloodstains on Rick's jacket, breeches, and boots. The smear patterns on the jacket appeared to have been caused by Rick rubbing his hands over the splotches there, but there was a curious and unexplainable absence of blood spatters. If Merriwether's ruptured aorta was spouting blood, surely there should have been spots of it where it had sprayed and landed.

Marc knelt down in front of the distraught ensign. “You could only have blanked out the second time for a minute or so at most,” he said calmly. “Beasley's told Cobb he heard Tessa's cry, too, and reached the room as soon as he could. It appears, and I say
appears,
that Merriwether was struck and stabbed in the time between Tessa's cry and Beasley's arrival. Now tell me: you say you've concluded that you murdered Merriwether, but you have no actual memory of doing so?”

“I have no memory of killing Merriwether. I had no idea he was even in the room.”

“Then, until you do remember it, I am going to assume you are innocent, and look for the killer elsewhere.”

Tears of gratitude welled up in Hilliard's eyes. “But I must've done it, Marc. Tessa had to be saved from—”

“Stuff and nonsense!” Spooner cried, prancing across the room with a sequence of stiff manoeuvres found in no training manual. “I've heard enough of this drivel!”

Cobb stepped out in front of him, but Marc drew the constable gently away. “Lieutenant Spooner, I intend to report to Sir Francis in the morning that the case is still unresolved. Ensign Hilliard is a prime suspect, but there was, patently, a rape or attempted rape engineered by the victim with the aid of drugged wine, something I need to know a lot more about before laying any charge of murder.”

“You have no evidence for that assumption!” Spooner tipped up on his toes, but the effort merely brought his bristling gaze level with Marc's chest.

“I intend to get it, sir.”

“The girl'll be able to tell us more in the mornin',” Cobb added.

A smirk spread across Spooner's narrow face, he jutted out his receding jaw, and his metallic locks shook. “Mrs. Frank says the girl is saying nothing. So how do we know that it wasn't your friend Hilliard who attempted to violate the young lady, was interrupted by Merriwether, who heard her cry from his room just across the hall and came running to the rescue in his nightshirt, only to be butchered by this scoundrel?”

Rick flinched, but said nothing.

Marc was seething inside, but he realized the deceptive plausibility of this version of events. “So Ensign Hilliard drugged himself as well as Tessa in order to facilitate his purpose?” he asked sarcastically.

“Attempts at drugging have gone awry more than once,” Spooner sputtered, tipping up on his toes to drive his argument
forward like a puff-adder seeking the insertion point. “And if you don't inform the governor of this possibility, I shall take it upon myself to do so.”

“The only thing you're gonna take on yerself is my fist!” Cobb hissed.

“Gentlemen!” Dr. Withers chided, coming across the room.

“We all need to put a damper on our tempers,” Sturges said with a sharp look at Cobb. “It's the middle of the bloody night an' we're all damn near bushed.”