Norton, Andre - Novel 39 (30 page)

 
          
 
Take action? Mrs. Kirby had killed to protect
her secret.
Poole
died because he knew about Dr. Jekyll's
potion; Utterson, because he knew that much more. And now—

 
          
 
Hester voiced the thought as she shook her
head. "It will do you no good to dispose of me. Bertha and Sallie share
knowledge of your dealings."

 
          
 
"Bertha is my creature. She will never
betray me!"

 
          
 
"How can you be certain of that?"

 
          
 
A clawlike hand dipped beneath the level of
the desktop, then rose quickly. "This is my assurance."

 
          
 
Hester stared at the muzzle of the weapon.
"And the child—?"

 
          
 
"Do not waste your sympathies on her. It
is your own fate that must concern you now/'

 
          
 
"You wouldn't dare risk killing me!"

 
          
 
"No one will know. When they find you
with this in your hand, the verdict will be one of suicide."

 
          
 
Hester frowned. "But they'll investigate.
They'll realize I had no reason—"

 
          
 
A taloned forefinger tapped the typed document
on the desk. "This is your reason. What you signed is a full confession of
your perfidy—how you discovered Utterson's knowledge of Jekyll's identity as
Hyde, forced him to assign the estate to you,
then
did
away with him. And lest there be an autopsy performed on Hyde that might reveal
he was Jekyll, you stole the body from the grave and destroyed it." The
vulpine grin returned. "That is what I did, of course, but they'll never
know. This account merely states you have undergone a last-minute change of
heart and intend to destroy yourself instead."

 
          
 
Again Hester frowned. "But the
money—"

 
          
 
"—will be mine." The forefinger
stabbed down. "This is also a last testament. You direct that as partial
atonement for your crimes, your estate shall pass to charity—namely to me and
my good works among the needy."

 
          
 
"Are you mad?" Hester's outburst
could not be contained. "They'll never believe you!"

 
          
 
"They?
Who are
these people you refer to? Who in London knows you well enough to judge your
nature?"

 
          
 
"Albert." Hester spoke quickly.
"Albert Prothore. He'll be here soon—"

 
          
 
Again the raucous laughter sounded. "Will
he, indeed? The woman leaned forward. "What do you suppose Bertha was
whispering about, eh? She told me that while you tended the child your precious
Albert did appear. It was Bertha who dispatched him."

 
          
 
"She sent him away?"

 
          
 
"Once and for
all."
The woman stirred, cloak rustling as she
rose,
trigger cocking as she aimed her weapon. "Don't move." The murmur was
faint against the seethe and crackle of the flames. "Close range.
As if by your own hand."

 
          
 
Hester tried to edge back without seeming to
do so. She could control the movement of her body but her thoughts trembled.

 
          
 
He was dead. Albert was dead. Now she knew the
meaning of the blood on Bertha's knife. She was indeed the older woman's
creature, the wretched, evil creature of her mistress's madness.

 
          
 
And Mrs. Kirby was mad, just as Dr. Jekyll had
been, when the power of the potion possessed him. Hester inched away, feeling
the heat of the fireplace fanning her back.

 
          
 
The muzzle was leveling. A talon tightened
against the trigger.

 
          
 
"No—!" Hester screamed.

 
          
 
And screamed again, as a
bullet tore through Mrs. Kirby's cheek, shattering bone.
The second shot
sounded from the doorway and the cloaked figure reeled back, stumbling against
the projecting base of the hearthstone. One of the flailing arms caught fire
and in a moment the cloak was ablaze.

 
          
 
It seemed to Hester that the rest happened
very quickly; the turn to the doorway, her recognition of Inspector New-comen
moving into the room accompanied by the constables, their attempts to smother
the flames. But however swift, the effort came too late.

 
          
 
When at last the burning cloak ceased
smoldering, it held only the charred corpse of what might once have been a
human being.
Perhaps something less than human.

 
          
 
Or more . . .

 
          
 
The dreary, everlasting rain that had meant
London to Hester since her arrival had apparently done its worst, ending in the
heavy storm on that night now two weeks past, as if the last of its flood had
been sent to wash away more than the grime that plastered walls and streets.
Hester sat at the small desk, her journal in her hands. Maybe someday she would
be able to read it again. She had made herself set down the details she had
known of the adventure—her part in it—and what she had been told by others.

 
          
 
She looked slowly around the room, from the
cheerful fire on the hearth to the silken draperies at the windows, the bed
with its coverlet of delicate flowers embroidered by skillful fingers perhaps
two generations ago. Never, she knew, could she successfully express to dear
Lady Farlie, Margaret as her hostess had insisted upon being called, or to Sir
Henry what their instantly offered assistance had meant in the days just past.

 
          
 
It had been Margaret, when Hester was still
dazed and distraught, who had appeared in a carriage, carried her off from that
sinister house to this nest in the Farlie's own home.

 
          
 
While both Margaret and the Colonel had been
with her in full support at her last interview with Newcomen, even now she gave
a small shiver remembering that.

 
          
 
Quickly she glanced at her watch. A quarter
hour yet before it would be time to go. She put aside her pen and wondered how
long she would continue to feel that small stab of fear. It was all over, yes.
She was welcomed into this fortress protected by friendship and the warmth of
family she had never known before.

 
          
 
But—

 
          
 
Albert, as she had seen him last, braced
against the pillows on that narrow bed in Dr. Hammond's nursing home. Albert
who could have so easily have been lost had Bertha not aimed an inch or so too
high with that murderous blade of hers. Bertha whom she had liked so well, had
accepted so eagerly—Bertha whose outer form might not have been twisted, but
who, inside, was as blackened and shrunken as—

 
          
 
Hester put her hands over her eyes. Much of
the comfort of the room had vanished—as if it had been a blown-out candle.
Bertha—and that—that other.

 
          
 
The girl thought she could even begin to
believe that there was absolute evil in this world. The more of the story she
had learned from Inspector Newcomen, the darker and stronger seemed to be the
webs wickedness could spin.

 
          
 
Bertha and her prisoner, Sallie, had been
taken by the inspector's men even as the older girl was forcing her captive
into a waiting cab. There were others whose part in the crime had not been
known until she whose will held them fast to serve her purposes was gone. The
cabman, two other ruffians Sallie could identify—the ill-favored Murch—

 
          
 
Only the one who had been the center of the
web had escaped; if indeed her terrible fate might be called an escape.

 
          
 
Even as Dr. Jekyll, Mrs. Kirby had lived two
lives. Unlike the doctor she had not regretted her metamorphosis from the
gentle, ministering widow, whose actions had aroused admiration and respect, to
her role as a notorious procurer.

 
          
 
Sometimes Hester thought now she could never
again be quite sure of anyone. What did lie behind the respectable mask-faces
of many of those she saw passing in the street?

 
          
 
Bertha and the men were in prison awaiting
trial but even that would not be what justice demanded—only what men thought to
be justice. Newcomen admitted that he had had orders "from above."
Scandal, that unforgivable sin that must ever be avoided, dictated
that the true story be locked in the minds of a few.
Bertha, murderous
though she had planned to be, would be charged under a lesser crime.

 
          
 
And Sallie.
The
second shock of Bertha's attack on top of her own frightful experience had
changed the once bright and happy child into a white-faced, shivering creature who
cringed from any touch and seemed to have lost all the lively intelligence she
had once shown.

 
          
 
Captain Ellison had taken her—she would be
protected, treated gently, sheltered from anything that would hold evil
memories. She had been moved already down to a cottage in Cornwall belonging to
Captain Ellison's sister and there she would be given a quiet life, treated
with kindness, which might someday break through the barrier evil had set
around her. Hester was told she could not see her, that it was best for Sallie
to be in no way reminded of the past.

 
          
 
But even if she might not see Sallie, she
could provide for her future and she already had, working through Sir Henry's
solicitor, who had taken over her affairs at the Colonel's request.

 
          
 
Thus she had learned about the will. Mr.
Utterson had moved to make very sure that she would be provided for. Since the
will of Dr. Jekyll had given him the property, he had, in turn, drawn up papers
passing it along to her, binding the gift as tight as any man learned for
nearly fifty years in the law could. But she would never enter that house
again. Sir Henry had assured her it would be sold.

 
          
 
She might not be any great heiress but she
would be provided for in a comfortable fashion—and perhaps her own wishes that
some of the small fortune be given to the Army and used for such as Sallie
would take the taint from it.

 
          
 
There was a knock at the door.

 
          
 
"Hester, dear
— ?"

 
          
 
She was out of her chair in a moment, already
reaching for her hat.

 
          
 
"Coming, Margaret!"

 
          
 
There was her mantle, her gloves, and, last of
all, what had been waiting since this morning in a vase on the windowsill, a
bouquet of fragrant roses—not red, but a pale cream that had caught her eyes at
once when she and Mamie had been on an errand to match thread for Margaret.

 
          
 
The stems were wrapped in damp cotton and then
in the silver paper to make a festive gift and she smelled them as she took
them from the vase.

 
          
 
"Why, Hester, what beautiful
flowers!" Margaret was waiting in the hall for her. "They are so
fragrant. Gentlemen often make the pretense that such things as fine scents do
not mean much, but I have seen Albert pick a rose such as these for his
buttonhole at times.
And—oh, Hester, such marvelous
news!"
Lady Farlie laid a hand on the girl's arm. "Henry had a
word with Dr. Hammond this morning—they will let us bring Albert home
tomorrow!"

 
          
 
Hester felt the warmth of color in her cheeks.
She had gone every day to the nursing home with Margaret—first tense with guilt
for it was because of her and her concerns that he had been nearly killed. He
had been found, after great loss of blood, by Newcomen. But somehow Prothore
had not allowed that guilt to linger. Even on that first day when he had been
so weak and white, and Dr. Hammond seemed to her to radiate a false
cheerfulness, Albert had looked to her and smiled a little.

 
          
 
Through the other days they had talked
generalities, with Margaret to start cheerful topics of conversation. Then
once, when his sister had left the room to confer with the head nurse, Albert
had spoken hurriedly and urgently to her.

 
          
 
"You must not in any way blame
yourself—"

 
          
 
How had he guessed that this heavy guilt was
her hourly burden, never to be forgotten?

 
          
 
"I was—I believed—" She tried to
marshal her words properly but they would not come, and Albert's face was
blurred by tears she hoped she would not shed. She had always been so sure—

 
          
 
"People with far more knowledge of the
world than you have
were
equally deceived," he
had continued quickly, hitching forward on his pillows. "Newcomen
himself—and who could know more of the dark part of the city than he— had not
the least thought of such imposture until the very last."

 
          
 
"Bertha—she—" Even after knowing the
truth for so many days, Hester could not associate the Bertha who had been so
cheerful and companionable in the sewing room with that stranger holding a
knife, already bloodstained, to Sallie's throat. The Bertha she had believed in
and trusted had never really existed.

 
          
 
"You are not to blame yourself!" His
voice was an order, sharp, with that in it which once would have stirred her
anger. "Look at me, Hester!"

 
          
 
Nor could she deny that demand. She blinked
and blinked again and raised her eyes to his.

 
          
 
"You have been blind but with better cause
than I can offer. This devilish affair started long before you came to
London
. Me, I was content never to look below the
comfortable surface of the life I lived since birth. I did not want to know—you
learned and were ready to strive to help. No one could have foreseen the hidden
poison that Jekyll had released and left behind him.

 
          
 
"In the end, Hester, it was your part in
the affair that brought that evil into the open. If you had not come to
London
, taken a part in this, what would that
woman have continued to do? How many more Sallies would have fallen prey to
her? In her own words you heard that she delighted in what she had done, in
what that which was evil within her had been released to accomplish. Jekyll
came to realize his sins, she gloried in hers. This is the truth, Hester, you
must believe it."

 
          
 
Margaret had returned then and from that visit
they had never had a chance to talk so intimately again.

 
          
 
Jekyll—the name now seemed like a brand to
her. Some earlier trouble must have driven her father away from the company of
his cousin, led him to change his name. What further horrors might lie hidden
in the past?

           
 
Now as she was seated in the carriage and the
scent of the roses strong, she longed to be away from here. Margaret had
bustled in beside her, a lidded basket handed in by the footman, to be most
carefully balanced on her knees.

 
          
 
"Mrs. Brodie's cream pudding," she
informed Hester. "She was kitchen maid at our old home and she always had
a soft heart for Albert—treats for his sweet tooth whenever Nannie wasn't
around. We were lucky to get her again. Next week when we go to Marsden she
will be so prepared to bully all the tradesmen that we shall be served the very
best at every meal.

 
          
 
"Marsden ..." Lady Farlie smiled.
"That used to mean!
paradise
to us when we were
small! Oh, Hester, it will be such a delight to show it all to you. The old
pony cart—yes, that must be furbished again so we can go berrying in the
brambles. They grow so thick along some of the lanes. And Albert will be his
old self in no time.

 
          
 
"You know that report that he was so
determined to do for Sir John? Henry tells me that it has caused a sensation at
their committee and there is a chance that Albert will be given a post if Sir
John can prevail, which of course he will."