Accomplished In Murder (7 page)

He glanced at Lord Litchfield but appeared
too weary to summon any emotion beyond defeat. “But the ultimate
deceit was my own. I can blame no one else for it. In the end, it
was I who acceded to my father’s wishes. I fooled poor Celeste into
loving me and I married her. Only it wasn’t a true marriage in the
legal sense because…”

“Because you already had a wife,” Drucilla
supplied. “One who was still very much alive.”

He cleared his throat. “Yes, quite.”

There was something else she had to know.
“When did Celeste discover the truth?”

He looked startled. “Why, she never did, so
far as I know. On my word, I might have treated the girl less than
honorably but I would never have been beast enough to let her know
the true situation. She would have been horrified. Humiliated.”

Drucilla worried her bottom lip.
“Nevertheless, she did discover the true state of things somehow.
I’m certain of it.” She was thinking of the poem.

“If she did, it wasn’t me who informed her,”
Lord Absalom insisted.

She was surprised to find she believed
him.

“Very well, it wasn’t you. But it was you who
shoved her off the roof when you found out she was planning to
leave you.”

“What!” cried Lord Absalom.

At the same moment, his father slapped the
table and shouted, “How dare you, young woman? Do you call my son a
murderer as well as a bigamist?”

Drucilla struggled to keep her composure. “I
believe he has already confessed to the latter. As to the former,
that is my accusation, yes.”

Lord Absalom swore, sounding more shocked
than angry.

Drucilla risked a glance at Southorn, but
there was no support to be found in that direction. He sat back
watching the scene unfold before him with as much apparent
amusement as if it had been contrived entirely for his
entertainment.

And a grim sort of entertainment it was.

Lord Absalom spoke with a marked effort at
controlling his emotions. “Miss Winterbourne, I can understand your
low opinion of me after the way I deceived Celeste. I have earned
your disgust. But I beg you never to believe me guilty of directly
harming Celeste in any physical way. It’s true, I didn’t love her.
But she was a good, innocent girl and I would never have hurt her.
I’m a deceiver, not a monster.

“Besides, you know of my attachment to Evita.
So why should I have tried to prevent Celeste leaving me, if indeed
she ever had such a plan?”

Drucilla looked into his earnest eyes, looked
at all the questioning faces around the table. And she realized she
had made a terrible error. She had forgotten the one thing no
amateur sleuth should neglect: Motive. Lord Absalom had none.

She felt suddenly ill. She had dragged Lord
Absalom through the mud, had unearthed secrets that could be of no
help to anyone at this late date. And why? She had gained nothing
and had probably done a great deal of damage to this family.

“Forgive me,” she mumbled through lips that
felt numb, as she shoved back from the table. She was suddenly in
desperate need of air.

She fled the dining room, ignoring the
consternation that erupted behind her, and ran through the hall and
up the stairs.

Bypassing her guestroom, she took another
flight of stairs that led up, up to the roof.

Bursting through a heavy door and out onto
the deserted rooftop, she ran to the railing and leaned her head
over the edge. She felt as if she was about to be violently
ill.

Wrong. She had got it all wrong. How could
she have been so blind?

It had to be the father. She saw that now.
The son had no reason to kill Celeste to prevent her leaving. He
felt no affection for her and had no fear of scandal.

But there was one person in this house who
had already demonstrated his hatred of scandal, one person who had
gone to great lengths to see Celeste’s money came to the family and
that Celeste herself never left it.

Despite a strong, cold wind sweeping across
the roof and whipping her hair around her face, Drucilla began to
sweat.

Then the door opened behind her. She was no
longer alone on the rooftop.

“Not who you expected, am I?” asked a
familiar voice.

She spun around and her heart seemed to
freeze.

Chapter Twelve

“Southorn?” she asked. “I don’t understand.
It couldn’t be…you?”

“Why shouldn’t it be? As the insignificant
younger son, always shoved aside, never taken seriously, I had
little to lose. Celeste alone understood me. She was the only one
who had the sense to fear me.”

Drucilla’s thoughts raced. “So you taunted
her and dogged her steps. You were the ‘ghost’ she spoke of.”

“Clever girl. In some ways, you’re actually
much quicker at figuring things out than she was. She was wary of
me but that didn’t stop her from meeting me on the roof that night.
We were alone, just like now, with Father and Absalom quarreling in
a distant part of the house and no one near enough to see or hear
anything. There was a storm brewing. Like this one.”

He indicated the forks of lightening
streaking the dark sky in the distance.

“Yes,” he continued, “this is much like that
other night. Who is to say it will not end just as
dramatically?”

Drucilla saw all too clearly the direction
this conversation was going. Unfortunately, he saw where
she
was going, as she inched nearer toward the door and he moved to
position himself in her path.

“Save your efforts,” he said, as she looked
around her wildly. “There are only two ways off this roof. The way
we both came up…or the way Celeste went down.”

Backing away as he advanced, Drucilla tried
to remain calm.

“Why did you do it?” she asked, stalling for
a miracle. “Celeste never harmed you or anyone else. Why should you
kill her?”

“You amuse me, Miss Winterbourne—or Drucilla.
May I call you that? As the man who is about to end your life, I
feel we’re practically on intimate terms.” He didn’t await an
answer. “You can be so clever at times and on other occasions so
terribly unimaginative. For instance, you assume Celeste would have
to lay a finger on me to harm me. But she didn’t need to do that,
don’t you see? Her very existence hurt me. Because she was my
brother’s wife, or so the world thought. And she was carrying his
child. A child that would be his heir, if it were born male.”

“A child? I had no idea.”

“Neither did my brother. Funnily enough, I
was the only one around who kept his eyes and ears open enough to
learn the truth. As it turns out, ladies talk to their maids and
some servants can be induced to confide those secrets.”

Drucilla recalled the chatty maid, Rosie, and
Absalom’s remark about Southorn’s penchant for tormenting the
servants. She couldn’t blame the maid for being bullied into giving
information.

She said, “So you learned of Celeste’s
condition before anyone else. I still fail to see your motive.
Child or no child, there remains another heir to stand in the way
of you becoming master of Blackridge. In order for you to inherit,
something would also have to befall…”

She trailed off, realization dawning.

He smiled, crookedly. “You begin to
comprehend. My plan was to dispose of Celeste in such a way as
could be believed accidental. Railings grow old after all. Why
shouldn’t one collapse when a lady leaned against it? I told myself
after Celeste I’d wait a length of time to allay suspicion before
removing the final obstacle in my path: My brother. I would have
done that particular deed more carefully, of course. Poison or some
such subtle means. I still will when the time comes. Do you want to
know why? Because there will be no one to stop me.”

While he was speaking, he had begun removing
his silk neck cloth.

Drucilla didn’t want to find out what he
planned on doing with it. “But why the taunting of Celeste,” she
asked. “Why the ‘ghostly’ charade?”

His eyes glinted with dark amusement. “You’re
trying to put me off. But that’s all right. I don’t mind taking a
moment to satisfy your curiosity. Unlike you, I’ve got all the time
in the world.”

He tipped his head to the side and appeared
to consider her question. “In the beginning, I was only watching
her to learn her habits, to discover her weaknesses, while I
plotted the least obvious method of removing her. But after awhile,
it became a sort of game between us, I the hunter and she the prey.
There’s something thrilling in watching your victim, knowing you’re
going to kill them. What power could be greater than holding
another being’s life in your hands?”

Her expression must have shown her disgust
but he did not appear to mind the lack of appreciation.

“The ghost costume was a precaution,” he
continued, “in case anyone should witness me stalking her about.
The fact she mistook me at first for a real specter was unintended
but entertaining. Rather like when I arranged for her to discover
‘Mrs. Portillo’ was Absalom’s real wife. I had known the truth
there for some time but didn’t see any hope of convincing others of
it. Perhaps I lack your impressive skills of persuasion.”

“So it was through you Celeste learned about
the secret marriage? Why? What advantage was there to be
gained?”

“I briefly entertained the idea of
undermining my brother with a denouncement. Allowing the truth to
be known, that his current ‘marriage’ was invalid, would make the
child Celeste was bearing him an illegitimate heir. I thought I
could use Celeste as a tool for bringing that about but it didn’t
happen as I’d hoped. She didn’t confront him publically, didn’t
even tell him she knew, apparently. And so I was forced to find a
different solution to my most pressing problem, the little
heir-to-be.”

He paused. “And that catches us up to our
current dilemma. You proved surprisingly perceptive in sniffing out
my brother’s secret. I knew then I couldn’t risk your delving into
my own little mystery. And so it must end.”

She shuddered but maintained a brave façade.
“Surely you don’t intend throwing me off the roof too? That has
been done, after all. You don’t think it would seem a trifle
suspicious for two women to die by the same ‘accidental’ means
within mere days of one another?”

“Come, you must give me more credit than
that, Drucilla. I am not stupid. No, I’ve chosen an entirely
different method of removing you, one that will actually serve a
dual purpose. Perhaps you can take comfort in that, the knowledge
that your death will be particularly useful to me. You see, I’ve
been looking about for a method of removing my brother and you have
now provided it. As many witnesses as were present during that
unpleasant scene at the dinner table, there will be no question
that Absalom has an excess of motive for revenge.”

“You would frame your own brother for my
murder?”

“Do not look so surprised, Drucilla,” he
chided. “I thought we had already established the lengths of my
ambition.”

She swallowed, throat tightening as it became
clear how conveniently she had played into his hands. She said,
“You’re insane.”

He shrugged. “Possibly. It depends on your
definition of insanity. Is greed equivalent to madness? Because if
it is, I’m not the first or the last in my family to demonstrate
the signs.”

Drucilla did not realize how far she had
backed across the roof until she felt the railing behind her. She
was growing increasingly desperate.

Southorn seemed to sense her fear. “In case
you were thinking of screaming,” he said, “if I were you, I’d save
my breath. You’ll soon be needing it. Anyway, I assure you, there
is no one near enough to hear.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

He twined the silk neck cloth around his
hands. “I’ve always thought strangulation must be a rather
satisfying way to kill,” he said conversationally. “What do you
think? I imagine it would feel…what’s the word? Empowering?”

“Barbaric?” she suggested. “Beastly?”

“Now you’re hurling insults. I think that
means we’ve talked long enough. Shall we draw this delightful
conversation to a close?”

He lunged at her.

His movement was so sudden she scarcely had
time to react. She attempted to dodge aside but her clumsy skirts
tripped her up, so that she ended up sprawling across the roof
stones.

Unable to stop, he slammed into the railing
where she had stood mere seconds ago.

The ancient structure groaned beneath his
weight and gave way.

Chapter Thirteen

Drucilla watched out the train window as the
dark figure of Lord Litchfield standing back on the railway
platform was enveloped in a cloud of smoke.

He had been kind enough to drive Drucilla,
Aunt Bridget, the maids, and their baggage to the Morcastle station
immediately following the double funeral of his younger son and his
daughter-in-law. Considering Drucilla was at least partially
responsible for his youngest son’s death and the revelation of his
elder son’s shocking affairs, it seemed a generous action.

The lord had maintained admirable composure
following what happened with Southorn. There was grief in his eyes
to be sure but not shock. Perhaps some part of him had always
suspected Southorn’s inner darkness but refused to accept it.

As for Absalom, he found his courage during
the aftermath of Southorn’s death. He was determined to acknowledge
Evita as his wife. Between them, Drucilla and Lord Litchfield
managed to persuade him to a better course of action: to allow it
to be believed that he and Evita had married only
after
Celeste’s death. This would spare Celeste’s London family further
grief and would lessen the scandal surrounding the entire
business.