Elizabeth Thornton - [Special Branch 02] (33 page)

“So?” said Harper. He was frowning again.

Gwyn touched a hand to her bosom. “I have an awful feeling inside me, Harper. I think that something may have happened to Gracie and her ladyship. Don’t ask me how I know. I’m like Myrtle. I can feel it, that’s all.”

He regarded her steadily for a long time then, sighing, said, “You want to go to Hampstead?”

Gwyn nodded.

“You know she may have given a false address?”

“That’s what we have to find out.”

Gwyn didn’t see why they couldn’t simply leave a note for Jason propped up on the mantelpiece, but that suggestion appalled Harper. Anyone could find it and read it, he said. So he gave the note to their landlady with strict instructions to give it to no one but Mr. Radley. And to add weight to his words, Harper tossed in a threat. If Mrs. Bodley were so incautious as to give it to anyone else, she’d be charged with treason. Far from frightening Mrs. Bodley, Harper’s threat made her eyes glow with patriotism. She still seemed to think they were at war with the French. Then they hired a hackney to take them out to the village of Hampstead, only a short drive away.

They were both quiet on the drive out. Gwyn was completely absorbed in her own thoughts, and Harper was absorbed by thoughts of her. From time to time, he patted her hand awkwardly. Gwyn scarcely noticed. The name
Bryant
rattled inside her head, just like the hackney was rattling over cobblestones, jarring her, making it impossible for her to think straight. But one thing she knew for certain was that she’d heard the name Bryant before. In the reference room of the Ladies’ Library, there was a box of Williard Bryant’s sketches and designs for Rosemount’s gardens.

Gwyn didn’t believe in coincidences anymore.

When their cab left London and the cobblestones behind, she turned her thoughts to Gracie, and the one and only time they had met. She’d liked her. Just like Myrtle, she’d taken a liking to Gracie, though she
couldn’t have been with her more than four or five minutes. The girl had been fearful, and she’d assumed that she was a young married woman trying to escape a cruel husband. But that wasn’t the picture that was forming in her mind now. Her ladyship seemed to fill the role of Gracie’s employer. She’d paid for Gracie’s coat. And her ladyship had worn a veil. So she’d wanted to keep her identity a secret. Why? Who was she?

Gwyn searched her mind, trying to remember her conversation with Gracie.
She talks about you all the time. Her ladyship, I mean. You have a son, don’t you, called Mark?

She’d thought Gracie was talking about Lady Octavia and that had surprised her, because Lady Octavia could never remember Mark’s name. But what if Gracie had been referring to this other lady, Lady Mary Bryant?

What did it mean?

The more she discovered, Gwyn thought despairingly, the more confused she became.

Gracie’s voice, husky and fearful, flitted into her mind.
You don’t know him, miss. He’ll do anything to stop me
.

Mr. High-and-Mighty?

Her blood chilled. So much time had passed. So much time.

They paid off their driver at the top of Myrtle Lane and waited until he’d driven away. As Harper explained it, a waiting coach would only arouse curiosity, and they could hire another in the village after their business was done.

It was a glorious afternoon, almost like summer, and the heat of the sun dried the rain-soaked leaves and grass, scenting the air with the fresh smell of
woodlands and pastures. The swallows had returned and were out in force, diving and circling overhead in a wild dervish. Along the dry stone walls that formed the lane, wild flowers grew in profusion.

Gwyn’s eyes were fixed on the horizon. Hampstead Heath, the vast parkland of a once gracious manor, was spread out before them like one of Constable’s landscapes.

There was only one cottage in Myrtle Lane, and it was right at the edge of the heath. Gwyn remembered something Richard Maitland had said, words to the effect that a secluded hiding place wasn’t always the safest place to hide. This house wasn’t secluded. It was isolated.

Gracie’s blue coat was still folded over her arm, and she smoothed out a wrinkle.

As though it mattered.

“Ready?” said Harper.

She had to swallow before she could meet his eyes. “Ready,” she said.

The cottage was smaller than she’d anticipated, only a one-storey building, but it was well cared for, with fresh paint on the trim and a thatched roof that looked fairly new to her inexperienced eye. But it had the neglected air of a place that had been abandoned. It must have had an acre of pasture and gardens, but these were a sad contrast to the house. The grass was overgrown; autumn leaves still littered the ground; the heads of withered flowers—hyacinths, primroses, daffodils—drooped forlornly on their stems.

Harper drew his pistol. At a nod from him, she used the knocker, but they weren’t surprised when no one answered the door. At another nod from Harper, she turned the door handle and the door swung open.

“Stay behind me,” ordered Harper, and he stepped over the threshold.

Gwyn’s nerves were stretched taut as she entered
the hallway. As an army wife, she knew the smell of putrefying flesh. The battlefields of Spain had been a harsh teacher. She inhaled slowly, then let out a shaken breath. There was no odor of putrefying flesh in this house.

Harper heard that relieved breath and his eyes crinkled at the corners. He’d feared the worst and he, too, was relieved.

“Where’s your pistol?” he asked.

She dug in her reticule and produced her pistol. “Right here.”

“Why are you hanging on to that coat? Here, give it to me.”

He hung the coat on a hook by the door and motioned her to stay where she was. The two doors on the inside of the entrance were open. He entered first one, then the other, and after shaking his head made for the back of the house. A few minutes later, he returned.

“Someone’s been here,” he said, “and they’ve turned the place upside down. Stay here and I’ll take a look outside.”

When Harper went outside, she cautiously entered the room on her right. Though it was sparsely furnished, it was obviously the parlor. Dust lay thick on every surface. Every drawer and door was opened, and the contents of cupboards thrown on the floor. She saw lace doilies, and cushions that had been ripped apart, and reels of thread. She left the parlor and entered the room opposite, a bedchamber. The same frenzied disarray was apparent here, too. Moving quickly now, Gwyn went to the back of the house. She found another, smaller bedchamber that had been ransacked as well.

The last room in the house was the kitchen, and though the drawers had been left open, it was relatively
untouched. The first thing she noticed was the black umbrella, unfurled, and set out on the hearth to dry. There was nothing unusual about that umbrella. It could have belonged to anyone in England, but she knew, she
knew
, it was Gracie’s, and that she’d last seen it in the office of the Ladies’ Library.

Her eyes strayed to the table. Someone, evidently, had been interrupted in the middle of a meal. She walked over and studied everything in detail. There was a mug that was rimmed with tea leaves and mold. She didn’t lift the lid of the teapot because she was beginning to feel queasy. There was a loaf of blackened bread that had two slices cut from it. She didn’t look at it too closely either after something scurried across the kitchen floor and disappeared under a cupboard. She saw mouse droppings on the table, and there was a candle that had burned all the way down in its candleholder and drowned in its own wax. And last but not least, there was a sheet of paper that was crumpled and stained. Gwyn picked it up. She recognized it at once. It was the program for the Open House at the Ladies’ Library.

Her pulse was racing now. She returned first to one bedchamber then the other. One thought possessed her mind. She was looking for her own blue coat. It was nowhere to be found. But she found something she’d missed before. On a hook, on the back of the door of the smaller bedchamber, was a bonnet just like the one Gracie had worn to the Open House.

She returned to the kitchen, and tried to imagine exactly what had taken place the night the cottage had been abandoned. Gracie would have come in the front door and locked it. She would have come to the kitchen first to light a candle.

But what if Gracie had come home in the middle
of the afternoon? Gwyn shook her head. Then the umbrella would have dried out before she lit the candle and she would have put it away. So the umbrella was wet when Gracie came home and she’d put it in front of the fire to dry. She’d lit the candle, then the fire. She’d removed her bonnet, but the house was still too cold to remove her coat, so she’d kept it on while she made herself a pot of tea.

Then what?

Then Harry had come calling. She was sure of it.

Chills ran up and down her spine, and she made a supreme effort to concentrate on the clues Gracie had left her. The candle was in the kitchen, so that’s where Gracie must have been when Harry knocked on the door.

Her eyes strayed to the door. It was so like the attack in her own home that the hair on her neck began to rise. She saw Harry standing there with his wicked grin and his devilish air. How had Gracie managed to get away from him? Gracie wouldn’t have had a pistol.

Slow down
, Gwyn told herself.
Start over
.

Gracie was drinking tea and cutting herself a slice of bread when Harry knocked on the door. She must have been very sure of who was knocking on that door before she went to open it. So she’d jumped up … But it wasn’t the person she was expecting.

And the knife was still in her hand
.

Where was the knife now? It wasn’t on the table, or anywhere that Gwyn could see. As though she were Gracie holding a knife in her hand, she backed away from the man who had entered her kitchen. She retreated slowly, then she was through the door and racing down the hall to the front door.

It didn’t work. Harry would have caught her as she tried to unlock the front door. Gwyn returned to the kitchen and started over. How could Gracie have slowed him down?

She’d used the knife, of course. Then she’d turned and run.

She was Gracie, and she was running the race of her life. She opened the front door and burst into the sunlight.
“Harper!”
she screamed.
“Harper!”

He was a good fifty yards away, crouched down on the grass, examining something under a bush.

Then she knew.

“Gracie!”
she moaned
“Gracie!”

Harper was on his feet and coming toward her. “Keep back!” he shouted.

She kept running toward him, her pistol clutched to her breast like a sickly babe. She could smell it now, the nauseating stench of decay, but it didn’t stop her. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Oh, Gracie! Oh, Gracie! Gracie!

She fought Harper off, then she saw it. Not a person. Not a body. Just a seething mass of maggots intertwined with scraps of material, and a woman’s hair spread out on the bloody leaves.

Harper wrestled her back, and as she sank to her knees, she dropped her pistol, and her stomach began to heave. She heard something, but she didn’t pay attention.

Harper said, “Mr. Radley, I’m right glad to see you, sir.”

Jason’s voice was savage in its anger. “What in hell’s name do you two think …” His words died when he looked at Gwyn.

Blinking through tears, she gazed up at him.

“It’s Gracie,” said Harper. “She’s been murdered.”

“No!” cried Gwyn.

Jason crouched down beside her and steadied her with his hands clasped on her arms. “What is it, Gwyn?”

She said, “I don’t know who that poor wretch is, but it’s not Gracie. Gracie was wearing my blue coat and her hair is blond.”

Harper answered Jason’s silent question. “This woman, if it is a woman, has black hair and was dressed in brown.”

“Gracie got away from him!” she cried “She got away from him!”

H
arper wanted them out of the way before he made his report to the local authorities. He was an officer of the law. They wouldn’t hold him for questioning, but there was no saying what they would make of Mrs. Barrie’s story, so it was best not to tell them anything at all. He didn’t want them to leave. They should wait for him in that nice little hostelry they’d passed at the edge of the village.