The Adventuress (33 page)

“All things being equal, Em, I much prefer Cannes to Nice.”

“Is that so?” I asked, doing my best to restore both of our spirits. “It seems to me you ought to rethink your position. I am beginning to believe that your life was threatened multiple times in Cannes, yet only once in Nice.”

“Multiple times?” he asked, sitting next to me on the hard bench against the wall of the wagon. “I am not certain about that. Regardless, the attempt here was far more dramatic. You know I have no stomach for drama. And my head may never recover from that fellow's blow. Yes, I blame Nice entirely. Much prefer Cannes.”

I took his hand and smiled before letting my head drop onto his shoulder. “The ruins are lovely,” I said, “yet I find myself forced to agree with you. Cannes was much better.”

 

23

It did not take long for the doctors at the hospital to treat Amity. Despite my lack of skills when it came to firearms, the bullet, as I had intended, passed cleanly through her shoulder, and she required nothing more than stitches to close the wound. I insisted that the police allow Jeremy and me to be in the room when they questioned her, pointing out that we had more information about the full extent of her crimes than they. She did not look at Jeremy even once while she spoke, but her eyes were full of hate when she met mine. She had already confessed to having poisoned the whisky in Jeremy's room, and, hence, to Mr. Neville's murder, but I was still confused about something.

“Why did you kill Hélène?” I asked.

“She was insurance,” Amity said. “Although I believed my plan to be sound, I worried there was a slim possibility that something would go awry. I knew any one of the dancers would serve my purpose, so I went to the casino a few days before the party, after my father had arranged for the girls to dance, and paid Hélène a little extra to make sure she would shower special attention on his grace. She did try to insist she wasn't
that
sort of a girl, but she did not hesitate to take my money. I asked Augustus to let me know when he returned from the casino that night, and to tell me whether his grace”—apparently she would no longer say Jeremy's name—“had spoken to her.” Her voice was shockingly cold.

“Was Augustus aware of what you were doing when you waited up for him that evening?” I asked.

“No. Why would I have wanted anyone to know what I was doing? Taking someone into my confidence would have served only to make me vulnerable to that person. I am not foolish enough to have done that, and I needed very little help to complete my tasks. It only took a matter of minutes to prepare everything in his grace's room. While I was still in Cairo, I bought a set of tools and taught myself to pick locks—it is not so difficult as you might expect—and also procured the poison. I had prepared the whisky earlier in the day, so had only to place it on the bedside table and remove every other beverage from the room to ensure his grace wouldn't be able to choose something else to drink. That done, I went and sat in the lobby until I saw my brother, who confirmed his grace was no longer with the girl.”

“When did you kill her?” I asked.

“Early the next morning. When I paid her for the extra services at the party, I insisted that she tell me where she lived. If she thought it was an odd request, she didn't show it, and certainly didn't object. The early morning strolls I made a point of telling you all I took were in fact drives to her neighborhood. I watched her to learn her habits. She always went back upstairs after she breakfasted with her landlady. That morning, when she was downstairs eating, I slipped to her room, picked the lock, and hid, waiting for her to return. I took her completely by surprise. She didn't even see me. I came upon her from behind and bashed in—”

“I do not need further details,” I said, swallowing bile.

“It was simple to slip out of her rooms unnoticed. The butcher was busy with customers and his wife saddled with washing the dishes.” Amity scowled. “I had hoped the girl's death would have been noticed sooner. Perhaps I should have left her valise at the bottom of the stairs instead of taking it with me and disposing of it so that someone would have gone upstairs to look for her. That was my one mistake. I should have figured out a better way to draw attention to her demise.”

“
That
was your one mistake?” Jeremy's eyes bulged and the thick veins in his neck pulsed. Amity only turned her head farther away from him.

“What about the cuff links?” I asked.

“I took them when I left the whisky and then hid them in the girl's room after I took care of her. If his grace's death were ruled a suicide, that would be that, but if it weren't, the cuff links could connect the two crimes.”

“How so?” I asked. “Did you want the gendarmes to believe that Jeremy had murdered Hélène after she stole his cuff links?”

“Yes,” Amity said. “And then gone back and, consumed with guilt over his rash act, taken his own life. I was a bit concerned about not being able to deal with the girl until the following morning, but I did not think it would be possible for the coroner to determine the time of death with enough precision that a few hours would prove problematic.”

“If Jeremy had gone to her room surely he would have recovered the cuff links?” I asked.

“Not if he couldn't find them. Everyone would believe that he had known that they had been stolen and that she was the only one who had the opportunity to take them. The police would have found them eventually, though, and then if people—like you—started asking questions about why his grace had killed himself, their investigations would lead to the dancer with whom his grace had left the casino.”

“But of course none of this went according to plan, and poor Neville—” Jeremy's voice cracked and he turned to the wall. “I can listen to no more.” He left the room. I followed soon thereafter, once Amity had answered my few remaining questions.

Mr. and Mrs. Wells made no comment as we passed them in the hospital corridor. They were standing, speaking to the physician who had treated their daughter, and I could hear him telling them he was confident she would make a full recovery. The look on Mrs. Wells's face left me to wonder whether she considered that a favorable outcome. Augustus was nowhere to be seen; he might not yet know what had transpired.

A gendarme took Jeremy and me back to the hotel, where outside the entrance to the lobby, the cat from the ruins was standing. She followed us inside, keeping very close to my skirts. How she knew to wait for us there is inexplicable, but I do not think it possible to interpret her actions as anything but deliberate. The desk clerk told us our friends had not yet returned, so I instructed him to send them up the moment they arrived and to also have a bottle of whisky delivered to the room. Jeremy clasped my hand in his and led me to the elevator. “I know you prefer the stairs,” he said.

“I do not think either of us is in any condition to do much walking,” I replied.

“I told the clerk, when your back was turned, to send up port as well as whisky. I am not the only one in dire need of fortification.”

When we reached my room, we sat in silence, Jeremy with his whisky, me with my port, the cat purring contentedly in my lap. After what felt like an eternity, he spoke. “You are a terrible shot, Em. You have always been a terrible shot.”

“I know.”

“But your aim was true tonight.”

“I am so sorry, Jeremy. I never meant—”

“To shoot my fiancée?” He gave me a wry smile. “No, I would imagine not, although I had the distinct impression all along you were not fond of her.”

“No, that is not true. I—” He waved his hand to stop me.

“This will make for quite a scandal, won't it?” he asked. “And only think—the queen is occupying rooms two floors above us. What will your mother say?”

“Something far worse than whatever Her Majesty says. I wonder if she will still expect me to breakfast with her in the morning?”

Keys rattled in the lock and Jeremy looked up at me, pain over his face. “I thought Amity loved me, Em. What a fool I am.”

“You are not a fool,” I said. “She is an excellent player. She had everyone fooled.”

“Except you—”

The door burst open before he could finish his thought, and Colin and Jack were all but fighting to be the first to enter the room. The hotel physician came next, followed by the rest of our friends. Neither Jeremy nor I was willing to succumb to medical inspection—we had already refused it at the hospital—and the fierceness of our stance on the matter convinced the man that our health was not in imminent danger. He left without further pressing his case.

“Tell us everything,” Margaret said. “The desk clerk said the police brought you to the hotel and that the two of you looked a fright. We knew something dreadful must have happened, especially once we learned Amity never returned to her room. How did you find Emily, Jeremy?”

“Do not give me any of the credit for our rescue,” he said. “The message that came for me at the Promenade des Anglais—Amity had sent it herself—purported to be from Emily. It said she had twisted her ankle at the ruins and required my immediate assistance. I will thank you, Hargreaves, to refrain from commenting on my reaction to this.”

Colin crossed his arms, but remained silent.

“The man claiming to have been Monsieur Guérin brought me the note and took me to the ruins himself. He said that he did not think Emily's injuries were serious in the least, but that his wife had insisted he fetch me at once. I should have known at once something was wrong. She would have sent for you, Hargreaves, but sometimes we choose to believe…” Jeremy's voice trailed and pain crossed his face. “He offered me a cigar as we went into the ruins, and the next thing I knew, he was whacking me on the head and leaving me tied to a column.”

“Were you there already, Emily?” Colin asked, sitting by my side as I recounted the story, his dark eyes full of concern as he listened, doing his best to remain perfectly still. The cat had, at first, objected to his presence, but accepted it after I explained the situation. She was much happier when Colin, unable to contain himself any longer, rose from his seat and started to pace, as was his habit when he was stressed. When I reached the end of my narrative—Jeremy interjecting only occasionally—I turned to my husband. “You will agree, after this, that I ought to learn how to shoot?”

“I will shoot Monsieur Hargreaves myself if he does not,” Cécile said. “And you know that I am, in fact, an excellent shot.”

“I know the futility of arguing with either of you,” Colin said.

“The poison was intended for my brother all along?” Jack's face had gone ghost pale as we revealed the details of our adventure. “And Amity thought I would marry her after she killed him?”

“No one was ever to suspect anything other than suicide,” I said. “You and Amity were already close friends, and it would be natural for you to console her after the tragic death of her fiancé left her devastated.”

“From there, it would not have been difficult to convince you to marry her,” Jeremy said, “or so she believed. After all, there is plenty of precedent for younger brothers stepping in after such an event. Princess May of Teck married Prince George after his elder brother died, and that was only a few years ago.”

“That does not mean I would marry her,” Jack said, his face turning crimson.

“She wanted to live in India with you,” I said, “and admitted that she was concerned that such an outcome might not be possible if you were duke, as there was the estate to be run, but she decided you were worth more to her than India.” Jack cringed. “Regardless, when Mr. Neville succumbed to her poison instead of Jeremy, she had to try something else. She was not about to give up on her dream of marrying Jack—not after she had already had to abandon her previous love, Marshall Cabot.”

“Marshall Cabot?” Christabel asked. “I never heard her mention that name.”

“Amity loved him, long before she went to India, but her parents did not consider him to be a worthy husband,” I said. “They refused to let her marry him and stopped her planned elopement. The next time she fancied herself in love, this time with an equally unsuitable younger son, she decided to take matters firmly into her own hands, and to do whatever she deemed necessary to make the object of her affection a catch certain to meet with her parents' approval. When Mr. Neville drank the poison instead of Jeremy, she pressed on with her plan. She tried again to achieve her desired result, first on the parapet by the castle in Cannes, where she pretended to trip and fall against Jeremy. The force of her weight was not nearly enough to send him careening over the edge as she had hoped, but she thought it worth a try.”

“Then,” I continued, “she made another attempt, on the boat. She had hoped that Jeremy's swim would result either in him drowning or in him falling ill.”

“Evidently she felt she could help me along my way, so to speak, if the illness weren't enough to kill me on its own,” Jeremy said. “She planned to insist on nursing me back to health, or, well, somewhere else.”

Margaret, sitting next to him, took his hand. “I cannot tell you how sorry I am—how sorry I know we all are—”

“Please, don't,” he said. “Having lived through it is embarrassment enough.”

“Are you sure that was her intention?” Christabel asked. “Amity was trying to convince Jeremy not to swim.”

“That is what she wanted us all to think,” I said, “but she knew Jeremy well enough to know that if she goaded him in just the right way, he would decide on his own that the swim was a good idea.”

“She goaded him the way she accused you of having done,” Christabel said, tears springing to her eyes.

“I am afraid that is all too true,” Jeremy said. “It was she who brought up the story of Colin swimming the Bosphorus, going on at length about how dangerous it had been and how brave—but foolish—he must be and how Emily's heart must have … Well, you get the general idea. I took the bait with little coaxing. The moment she tried to forbid me from leaping overboard was the moment I set my mind to the task. The more she tried to stop me, the more certain it was that I would go through with the action. Had I been thinking clearly I should have taken this as a sign she would prefer Jack to me. He's the chap for feats of physical strength.”