Fatal as a Fallen Woman (5 page)

"Stay back!"

"Murderous tendencies are rarely inherited," Diana said in a dry voice. She held both hands out in front of her in a placating gesture. "Why do you believe my mother killed him? What evidence is there that she stabbed my father?"

"She ran away when the police tried to question her! What more proof do you need!"

"A great deal, I assure you."

The arrival of a scrawny boy and a crookbacked older man with mean little eyes put an end to any hope Diana had of getting more information out of her father's widow. She didn't recognize either of them and the man did not look like the sort of person she could reason with.

"Show this woman the door," ordered the second Mrs. Torrence.

Diana didn't wait to be evicted. Spinning on her heel, she stalked out of the sitting room and left the house before either of Miranda's lackeys could make a move.

Irish Harry was long gone. He'd left her luggage in a neat pile on the front porch. Gathering up as much as she could carry by herself, Diana descended the steps. She'd reached the street before she realized she had no idea where to go.

Chapter Three

As Diana stood dithering before the gate, she heard a hail from beyond the hedges that sheltered the house next door.

"Diana? Miss Torrence? Is that you?"

When she was a girl, Diana recalled, the neighbors had been a Mrs. Hastings and her son. Mrs. Hastings and Diana's mother had been friendly, after a fashion, since they'd moved in the same social circles. The son—Mike? No, Matt—had been several years older than Diana. They'd had little to do with each other, but she remembered him without difficulty when his tall, gangly frame and homely face appeared.

Matt Hastings had always made her think of a clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln. His resemblance to portraits of the assassinated President was less marked now that he'd allowed side-whiskers to grow, but the dull brown hair and watery blue eyes were unchanged. He blinked at her, the eager, hopeful look on his face overshadowed by uncertainty when he got a good look at her. Doubt crept into a voice so deep it reverberated with each word. "Diana?"

This unexpected encounter, coming so soon after the emotional scene with Miranda, unsettled Diana further. She had to shake off a sense of trepidation before she could manage any semblance of normal conversation. Feeling unaccountably flustered as he continued to stare at her, she forced herself to speak.

"I am flattered that you know me. I was still a schoolgirl when we last met."

A smile of welcome flashed her way before he recalled why she must have returned to Denver. "You've heard about your father."

"And my mother. But with scarcely any details."

"You'd best come in." He nodded towards the residence on the opposite side of the street. Diana looked the way he indicated just in time to see a curtain twitch. Matt apparently wasn't the only neighbor interested in what went on at the Torrence house.

"You're right. We shouldn't talk in the street." This was her opportunity, Diana realized, to get answers to at least a few of her questions. Matt was bound to know something about the new Mrs. Torrence. They were neighbors, after all.

Besides, she had nowhere better to go.

A short time later, Diana found herself ensconced on a pillow-strewn couch in the sitting room, a steaming cup of tea in her hand. The last of the day's sunlight streamed in through tall windows, picking out dust motes and illuminating the plethora of family photographs, small figurines, and assorted bric-a-brac set out on the richly embroidered cream color scarf atop an ebony piano. More pictures dotted the walls.

As yet, Diana knew nothing more of her own mother's fate, but she had learned that Mrs. Hastings had died two years earlier. Matt, who was a lawyer, now lived in this large red-brick house alone, save for a cook who had her own quarters near the kitchen and a single manservant.

"The remainder of your luggage has been safely rescued and deposited in the entry hall," he reported, rejoining her. He'd sent his man to retrieve her belongings from the veranda of the Torrence house.

"Thank you. I'm sorry to be such a bother."

"I only wish I could do more to help." He poured himself a cup of tea and settled into the chair opposite her. His knees stuck up at an odd angle. All the furniture in the sitting room was low, with broad seats, better suited to women and children than to a tall man.

"If you really mean that, then you can answer a few questions for me. My father's . . . widow was not very forthcoming." To her dismay, her hands began to tremble. Bone china rattled ominously.

Diana despised herself for this show of weakness. Anger would be far better, but she didn't seem to have the strength to summon any.

The hard contact of Matt's big hand, patting her forearm in an awkward gesture of sympathy, very nearly sent the cup and saucer tumbling to the carpet. To avert catastrophe, she hastily placed the as-yet-untouched tea on the nearest table. It was still too hot to drink and, in truth, she'd lost interest in politely sipping a beverage better suited to society's poses and pretenses than to the harsh reality that had brought her to Denver.

"I didn't know about the divorce, let alone that Father had remarried. I've been estranged from my parents since my marriage six years ago."

"Your husband is . . .?"

"I am a widow. I reside in New York and earn my living as a journalist. That's how I heard about Father's murder. Through a dispatch. But it was lamentably lacking in detail."

Matt took a moment to sip his tea and absorb the information she'd just given him. She supposed most of it came as a surprise to him.

"Perhaps I should have waited in New York for more information to come in, but I felt I needed to be here."

Matt looked ill at ease but determined. "I will try to answer your questions. I'm afraid I know very little myself."

"Father was murdered. Stabbed to death. Where?"

"In a suite at the Windsor Hotel."

"The Windsor?" Diana could not keep the surprise out of her voice.

She remembered the hotel not from her childhood, but from the month she'd spent in Denver in the autumn of 1885. The hotel had been fairly new then, and very grand, and had charged three dollars a day for a room. She and Evan and the rest of Todd's Touring Thespians had stayed elsewhere. When the troupe had gone on to the next stand without them, they'd moved into a slightly better hotel, but still hadn't been able to afford the Windsor.

"What was he doing there?" Diana asked. "And why should the authorities leap to the conclusion that my mother murdered him when they'd been divorced for four years. Was she caught red-handed, standing over the body with the knife?" Nothing less would convince Diana of Elmira's guilt.

Matt cleared his throat. "There was evidence found at another location." An expression of acute embarrassment flickered across his long, narrow face.

"What location?"

"The Elmira." Matt shifted in his chair and avoided meeting Diana's searching gaze.

"The
Elmira
?"

"A hotel." The rest of his explanation came out in a rush. "It was the only thing your father ceded to your mother in the divorce."

That made some sense. Diana recalled her mother telling her that her grandparents had owned and operated a hotel.

"The police had reason to suspect her, Diana. She'd threatened your father before witnesses. I don't know what evidence they found, but everything I've heard seems to indicate there's enough to convict her."

"You think she's guilty?" Disappointed to discover he was not an ally after all, Diana went very still.

"By the time they made up their minds to arrest her, she'd disappeared. What else is anybody to think? I'm sorry."

It would have been easier to bear if he'd slammed the door in her face and treated her as a pariah. Then outrage and resentment might have sustained her. Instead, Diana suddenly found she had no resistance left. The last of her strength had seeped out of her like air from a deflating balloon. She buried her head in her hands. "Did I ever understand either of them?" she whispered, almost choking on the words. Her throat felt so tight and painful that she could barely swallow.

"You were a child when you left here." The distant rumble of Matt's voice was oddly soothing.

"I had fourteen years with them."

"Then remember those, Diana. Think of the early days."

The constriction eased a little as she let her thoughts drift back to her youth. "They were different people then. Before they had money. When I was small, we didn't live in Denver all year round. We came here only in the winter and went back to the mountains at the first hint of spring."

Life had been simple in the mining camps. They'd been poor in material things, but rich in other ways. Her father had always found time to whittle toys for her. Mother, though less demonstrative, had made sure she'd had warm clothing and something in her belly, even if she and Diana's father had been obliged to do without. Then everything had changed.

"Being rich turned my father into a tyrant." Lifting her head, she met Matt's questioning gaze. "A benevolent despot. He thought wealth gave him the right to decide everyone's future."

He'd even founded his own town near the mine and named it after himself. He'd declared himself mayor of Torrence, Colorado, but that hadn't been enough for him. At the first opportunity, he'd moved his wife and child into a mansion in the state capitol. He'd wanted to be close to power, to money, to prestige.

"I was just as bad. I loved having pretty clothes and riding in a fine carriage." She gestured toward her old home, just visible through the sitting room windows. "After we moved into that house, I hardly ever saw either of my parents, and before I knew it, Father decided I should be sent away to finishing school."

"I seem to remember that you wanted to go," Matt said mildly.

"I'm surprised you even noticed my existence."

"Oh, I noticed."

Momentarily disconcerted by the admiration in his voice, she did not know how to respond. When she'd left Denver for the Young Ladies Seminary in San Francisco at fourteen, Matt had been twenty-one. A chasm had separated them. But now that she was a woman grown, the age difference seemed negligible. In fact, now that she thought about it, Diana realized that Ben Northcote was a bit older than Matt.

As if embarrassed by his comment, Matt rose and went to stand at the window. Darkness had begun to fall in earnest now and lights winked out at them from Miranda's house. "She was his mistress before she became his wife."

Diana tensed. Even her face went taut. "Miranda said it was my father who petitioned for the divorce. That can't be right. Mother would never have betrayed him with another man."

"He had great wealth, Diana. And a ruthless streak. When your mother refused to divorce him, he found a man willing to swear he'd had an affair with her. She denied it, of course, but the judge was in Torrence's pocket. She lost everything."

"Except a hotel." Diana waited until he looked at her. "Take me there, Matt. That's where I'll find answers."

"It's getting late. Better to visit in the morning."

"I have no other place to go. Since Mother owns the Elmira, they'll have to let me stay in her quarters."

"Diana, I don't think—look, move in here. I've plenty of room."

"That's generous of you, Matt, but if you have a law practice here in Denver, you don't want to run the risk of scandal."

Her gentle reminder of just how improper if would be for a bachelor and a widow to share an abode brought a rush of color into his face. "My cook can act as chaperone. You know her, Diana. Dorcas Johnson. She used to work for your mother."

"Dorcas is here?" She stood with a rustle of skirts and would have headed straight into the kitchen if Matt hadn't held up a hand to stop her.

"She's away for a few days, taking care of a sick friend in Argo, but she'd come back if I sent for her."

"No, Matt. Don't trouble her."

"Argo's only on the outskirts of Denver."

"I'd like to see her again. I hope I do before I leave. But her presence here wouldn't be enough to quell salacious rumors. There's simply no alternative. I must go to the Elmira Hotel."

"You're right, of course. About not staying here because of the potential for gossip. But you mustn't go to the Elmira, either. It's in a bad section of town."

"I suspect I've lived in worse. I was married to an actor, Matt."

"Stay at the Windsor." He winced, remembering too late that her father had died there. "Or the St. James. I'll loan you funds if you need them."

Why, she wondered, was he trying so hard to keep her away from the Elmira Hotel? His very determination made her dig in her heels. "That's extremely generous, Matt, but letting you pay for a hotel room would be almost as scandalous as my staying here. Please, just take me to my mother's place."

He looked as if he wanted to continue protesting. With a visible effort, he bit back further argument. "I suppose you'll have to see for yourself." He rang for his manservant. "Hitch the horses to the trap, Gilbert," he ordered when the fellow appeared, "and load Mrs. Spaulding's belongings into the back."

* * * *

Matt had been right when he'd said the Elmira Hotel was not in the best part of town. Noise, and the occasional ruffian, spilled forth from dozens of saloons and gambling houses as they retraced the route Irish Harry had taken along Seventeenth Street from the depot. It was only marginally quieter on the street Matt turned onto. A few blocks later, he brought the trap to a halt in front of a nondescript three-story building constructed of the same red brick as his house.

"That's it. That's the Elmira."

Diana frowned, wondering how he knew. There was no hotel sign, and the windows, protected by iron grillwork, were all heavily curtained, making it difficult to see if the place was open or not. "It doesn't look very hospitable."

Her heart went out to her mother, forced to shelter in this dark, drab building after enjoying so many years in the luxury of the Torrence mansion. If she hadn't believed in the bitterness of her parents' divorce before, she did now. It had been just plain vindictive of her father to cede this place to her mother.