“I’m sure she was,” Lydia said flatly. “Did you see my yellow bloodstained gown anywhere in her room?”
“It’s been a long time, Lydia. I don’t recall—”
“Let me help you. I left it hanging over the back of the room’s only chair. Do you remember seeing it now? No? Allow me to help you again. The reason you didn’t see it is because it wasn’t there then. Ginny didn’t do anything with it because I would never have gotten a piece of it delivered to me weeks later. No, Ginny didn’t do anything with my gown—her killer did. My yellow ballgown was one of a kind, Nathan. The killer picked it up because it meant something to him; it placed me in Ginny’s room some time that night. He held on to it because he didn’t know how it might help him just then, but it was a kind of security against a day when things might not go his way.
“That day came when I sent him jumping out of my bedroom window. His best friend warned me that I’d made an enemy, but I didn’t understand.” She drew in a breath and released it slowly. “So…so when I received the parcel and the note and the fabric I thought it was from you. I went to your hotel room with a check to buy you off and a gun to kill you if nothing else worked.
Brigham met me at the door and I made it so easy for him to lie. I was already convinced you were the one I needed to be afraid of. Brig didn’t have to do or say much to make his presence there seem logical. By the time I realized he had no intention of letting me go, it was too late.
“But there was something Brig did while we were talking that stayed with me, something that kept pointing to him as the author of the note had I been able to realize it then.” Lydia began folding the paper in her hands. Each crease was made by running her fingernails sharply over the fold. The sound of her nails on the paper raised gooseflesh on her arms, but she kept on folding. “I gave him the check that was made out to you, and this is what he did with it. I can’t stand that sound, Nathan. It makes me want to shiver and grit my teeth. But you see what it does to the paper, how pressed and neat the folds are? That was the condition of the note I received. You didn’t send it to me. Brig did. Brig had the gown, not you. Brig’s the killer, not you.”
Flames licked at the logs in the fireplace. The stack shifted and crackled. Otherwise the room was oppressively silent. Nathan stared at the folded piece of paper in Lydia’s hand, finally took it from her, and walked over to the fireplace and pitched it in. Fingers of fire traced its edges before it exploded into heat and light.
“How long have you known?” he asked. He stood with his legs apart, gently rocking on the balls of his feet, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched.
“Not as long as you might think,” she said. “The realization didn’t happen until after I left Ballaburn, although once my memory returned I was troubled by the incident at the Silver Lady. I could never piece everything together.”
“You never bothered asking.”
“To what purpose? You told me once that you hadn’t murdered Ginny Flynt. You said the same about the murder that got you transported. You avoided my questions about your conversation with Fa’amusami’s father. If you had denied sending the note and fabric to me, I don’t know whether I would have believed you.”
Nathan flinched at her honesty. “Is it part of the reason you were so anxious to leave Ballaburn?”
“No. Did it ever occur to you I didn’t ask because I was afraid to know the whole truth?”
“You seem to have gone after it anyway.”
She shook her head. “Not intentionally I didn’t. It took a room full of children all folding paper at the same time, making each crease with painstaking precision, setting my teeth on edge until I begged them to stop, to finally open my eyes. I clearly remembered the note, the way Brig toyed with the check later, and the way you folded a newspaper. I’d seen you do it several times, pressing the folds with your fingertips or using the side of your hand to flatten a crease. You never used your nails. I would remember.” Her light laughter sounded tinny and nervous to her own ears. “It would have led me to murder.”
Nathan didn’t respond to her black humor. He continued to stare at the fire. He could feel Lydia approaching, but he didn’t turn. “In spite of what you think, I’ve never known with one hundred percent certainty. I’ve never had anything closely resembling proof. Coincidence does not equal proof, Lydia, and that’s all I had. I never knew how Brig got you to leave your home and show up at the Silver Lady until you mentioned rather offhandedly at Ballaburn that there was a note. Since I didn’t write it, I knew it was Brig. It was clear you still suspected me and I was too proud to tell you differently. This is the first I’ve ever heard about your ballgown. It’s the only piece of evidence I know that puts Brig in Ginny’s room. It doesn’t make him guilty, Lydia. It only puts him there.”
“But—”
“I know what you think. I think it, too. But I was the one transported for murder at fourteen. I’m the one with the record. A person doesn’t have to dig very deep to discover that the young woman’s murder in London bears a striking resemblance to Ginny Flynt’s murder. No matter what I suspected in San Francisco, I wouldn’t have turned on Brigham. Suspicion would have fallen very quickly on me. There’s little that I feel for Brig because of a misplaced sense of loyalty, as you called it. Most of what I do or don’t do is guided by a sense of self-preservation.”
“When you’re not trying to protect others,” she said.
He laughed dryly, without humor. “I’m hardly successful at it. You know of three murders: London, San Francisco, and Samoa. In Frisco Ginny’s suicide was accepted. Sometimes that happens. I know of two suicides here, one in Sydney about four years ago, and one in Melbourne in November two years back, just around Cup day, that were probably Brig’s work. I wasn’t successful in stopping them. In fact, I wonder if I didn’t somehow contribute to them. I’m always around when they happen, just close enough to be considered a suspect if I went to anyone with my information, but never close enough to stop it from happening. I never know when it’s going to happen or who the victim might be. The woman in London was the mistress of a powerful lord. Ginny and the woman in Sydney were both prostitutes. The woman in Melbourne was the widow of a convict Brig knew. Fiame assures me the Samoan girl was an innocent. She may have died simply for saying no to Brig.”
“Does Brig know that you suspect him?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never said anything to him. It would be a challenge in his eyes.”
Lydia sighed, her shoulders slumping. “God, what a horrible mess.”
Nathan turned sharply and demanded, “Haveyoutold Brig any of your suspicions?”
Startled, Lydia took a step backward. She shook her head vigorously. “No. I’ve never said anything to him. He thinks I believe you had something to do with Ginny’s murder.”
The tight coil of tension in Nathan’s abdomen unwound fractionally. “Good. Don’t ever let him know differently. That’s your best protection.” He paused. “That, and coming to Ballaburn with me.”
Lydia didn’t say anything for a moment, marshaling her thoughts and her defenses. “Actually, Nathan, that’s related to what I was writing you about. I wish you had received any letter before coming here. You may have decided the trip was unnecessary.”
“Oh?” She hadn’t said anything and already Nathan didn’t like where the conversation was heading.
“I know I’ve said that I don’t want a divorce...”
“And now you do?” His eyes had narrowed.
