His eyes lit at that last bit, and with barely a glance at my companions, he trotted out of my office and went about emptying the club.
“I’m pleased you both are taking this so calmly.” Miss Abbott slid to the edge of her chair. “When I pulled this gun on Bannister, he was far from tranquil. He kept repeating the question, ‘Why?’” She mimicked weeping sounds. “‘Why are you doing this?’ He went on and on. Don’t you want to know?”
I looked at the gun again. How much time did it take between firing one bullet and another? If I got out of this alive, I really must make a study of firearms. If I rushed her, would Eleanor be able to escape? Or would she be shot, as well? “Since it seems you wish to tell us, I’ll ask. Why?”
“I know.” Eleanor shifted, sliding her second hand into the muff she carried. “It’s what I came here to tell you,” she saidto me. “I spoke with Mrs. Sanders. You remember her? Short, blonde, has an irritating laugh? Well, she’s another member of their little blackmail gang. She told me.”
“Edna doesn’t know anything,” Miss Abbott spat out.
“She knew enough.” Eleanor’s shoulders trembled, but she kept her voice even. “Enough for me to piece together the true reason you killed Lady Richford. She said that you were…closer than friends.” Eleanor swallowed. “That you were in love with her. And Lady Richford didn’t love you in return.”
I sat back. I…hadn’t been expecting that. I’d deduced that Miss Abbott was the guilty party because no one else had had the opportunity to obtain that letter, excepting Lord Richford and his son. In their grief, they’d let Miss Abbott into their home, into Lady Richford’s bedroom, to choose what clothes the victim would be buried in.
That unrequited love was the reason for the murder had never crossed my mind.
It should have. Just because Sapphos weren’t common didn’t mean they didn’t exist. I had just been too blind to see it.
“The letter I found in your apartment.” I tapped the folded paper in my sleeve. “I knew it was addressed to you, that the MRS had been added later. What were you planning on doing it with it after you’d added to it to make it look as though it were addressed to Mrs. Lynton?”
“Leaving it somewhere that the Runner might find,” Miss Abbott said. “I wanted to press the point home that Mrs. Lynton had been wronged by Sue.”
I cocked my head. “I’d thought Lady Richford was expressing her apologies that she wouldn’t continue the blackmail scheme any longer. But she was ending the relationship with you, wasn’t she?”
“She didn’t mean it. Sue was confused.” Miss Abbott waved the pistol about as she waved her hands. “It was that husband ofhers. That son. They made her feel guilty for being her true self. But she was an exceptional woman, one who didn’t bend to fit society’s rules. She would have come around.”
I couldn’t stop the laugh that burst from my lips. “Come around? You’re the one who ensured that could never happen. You killed her.”
“I didn’t—She wouldn’t listen!” The gun bounced in the direction of my chest, and my lungs stalled. “I told her what they were doing, told her she couldn’t leave me. She wouldn’t listen.”
“The viscountess wanted to renew her relationship with her husband.” I couldn’t think of a reason to keep her talking beyond prolonging the inevitable, but it was all I had. “They were planning a trip to the Continent.”
“She got scared when Lord Anglia threatened to tell her husband about her activities,” Miss Abbott said. “She said she’d come too close to ruining her family’s reputation.”
I dug my thumb into my breastbone, my heart aching. “Because she loved them. Often, it’s only when we come close to losing something that we realize just how much.”
“She loved me.” Miss Abbott’s face mottled with anger.
“I’m sure she did,” Eleanor said, her eyes urging me to join in appeasing the killer.
It was the smart play, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Miss Abbott struck me as someone who’d lived most of her life without anyone telling her she was wrong, that her behavior wouldn’t be tolerated. If these were to be my last words, I didn’t have the stomach to let her continue in that delusion.
“No, the viscountess loved the excitement of the forbidden relationship, of the blackmail, but she didn’t love Miss Abbott.” The viscountess barely knew how to love. I didn’t know if it made the situation more or less tragic that Lady Richford had decided to try to learn how to love her family right before her death. “And Miss Abbott certainly didn’t love her. It wasn’t her rejection ofyour relationship that cut so deep, was it? It was the fact that the viscountess was rejecting the kind of person you are inside, your lifestyle of selfishness and deceit that made you angry enough to kill.”
“You don’t know my mind.” Miss Abbott stood, her body moving jerkily.
“Perhaps not.” I pursed my lips. “But I’m not certain you know it, either.”
Miss Abbott went to the door and peered out. “If you didn’t know about my special relationship with Susan, why did you break into my home?”
“The other letter, the one written by Mrs. Lynton.” I slid my fingers underneath the lip of my top desk drawer and inched it open. “The one you told Mr. Rollins you saw in Lady Richford’s home. The one you took and placed in Bannister’s apartment to implicate Eleanor’s mother.”
“What about it?” She leaned against the doorframe, letting her arms drop to her sides.
A sliver of sharpened brass met my gaze in the drawer, the letter opener a tantalizing weapon. “Lady Richford would have no reason to bring it to her son’s home before she was murdered, and if Bannister had found the hidden drawer in his mother’s writing desk, he would have taken the other letters, cash, and jewelry, as well. You had access to the Richford’s home as a close family friend. Did Bannister figure out what you and his mother had been up to? Is that why you killed him?”
“Stupid boy.” Miss Abbott snorted. “He found one of Susan’s stashes hidden in her closet. He knew we must have been working together and thought to turn the tables and blackmail me.” She twisted her lips. “He even guessed that I killed his mother. He didn’t care, except to the extent he could get more blunt with that information. You understand why I had to kill him.”
I suppose I did, at least to her mind.
