“Reginald would not dirty his hands with murder. He paid one of the guards to do so, and well past time. The fool had but one task, and all he did was bludgeon you without getting the evidence we needed him to destroy.”
“Why did you not look for evidence?” Pippa asked. “You lived beneath the same roof.”
Another incremental move.
Croydon did not seem to notice.
“I would have, but the chance of me getting caught was too great. I could not afford to bring suspicion upon my Reginald. It was decided that Watts ought to search to make certain there was not more evidence aside from what you had already turned over to Scotland Yard. That witless George Shaw, keeping all the evidence of his crimes for anyone to see… I told Reginald we ought to have killed him long before we did. Now he will understand he should have listened to his mother.”
I told Reginald we ought to have killed him long before we did.
The words settled over her. Sank into her. Pippa could scarcely comprehend them.
“Youkilled George?”
But that was impossible. He’d had a bad heart. His end had been sudden.
For the first time in her acquaintance with the woman, Croydon smiled. “I poisoned him. Reginald was doing all the work, but Shaw was demanding more than half of the funds. Even an imbecile ought to have known that we could carry on without him, and that all the money would be ours instead. He grew too bold and too smug. Hedeservedto die. I wanted to poison you as well. I should have done. But this way shall have to do now.”
Sweet heavens.
How terrible.
The woman was a monster. Pippa had been surrounded by them. George had seen to that. And suddenly, everything made sense. Terrible, awful sense.
“But if you kill me, you will go to prison as your son has,” she pointed out, slipping along the bedclothes again.
Just a bit.
A fraction.
“I have no intention of going to prison,” Croydon said, her voice as chilling as her stare. “I am going to kill you, and then I am going to kill myself.”
No.
Pippa was going to fight. Charlotte needed her. Roland needed her. And she had just found happiness. This woman was not going to take her from them. Not if Pippa had anything to say about it.
A plan formed.
Her hand, which was already beneath the bedclothes, found her pillow. She grasped it, knowing she had precious little time remaining to take action.
One. Two. Three!
Pippa threw the pillow at Croydon with all her might and screamed as loudly as she could. There was the loud report of a pistol as she leapt from the bed.
* * *
Roland’s heartturned to ice. He, Stone, and half a dozen of Stone’s best men were racing up the staircase of his townhome when the gunshot rang out. A flurry of motion erupted. He had never run as fast in his life as he did now. He barreled through the door of Pippa’s chamber with a complete disregard for Stone’s shouts to let him go first.
“Pippa!” he cried, crashing into the shadowy chamber, desperate to find her, to save her.
“Roland! I am here!”
Her frantic cry led him across the room, to the end of her bed where the unmistakable shadows of two people could be seen. Thankfully, enough light was filtering through the curtains to illuminate the room at this proximity. He stopped just short of where she was, atop a woman clad in black bombazine skirts he would recognize anywhere. Croydon, the dour nursemaid, was holding her hands over her face. There was something wet and dark spreading from the other woman’s fingers.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded of Pippa.
“No, but I do believe I may have broken Croydon’s nose,” she said with a hysterical giggle that turned into a sob.
