“Look, she’s running away. She’s trying to escape.” Mr. Fairbanks pointed at the wall.
“Not a chance. I love a good hunt.” Mr. Ludlow took up the chase, just as the bookshelf door to a secret passage closed. He felt along the wall but couldn’t find the opening. He cursed.
“I notice you didn’t go after her. You’re not a very good maid, are you?” Mrs. Hemlock said.
Miss Hawkins lowered her knitting. “No. She only hired me to pretend to be her maid and chaperone for this party. I was between jobs, so I accepted. But I don’t like none of this. It’s not right, all this running around and scaring each other. She said it’d be a laugh to dress her up and give you all a fright. But I don’t hold with her attacking the old man, and I didn’t know she’d done it, either. He was nice. I’m sorry,” she told Violet.
“Where would she go? Would she hide?”
“No, not with the rain washing the roads out. She’d take a horse, most likely.”
“Find her,” Violet said.
Mr. Ludlow dashed from the room.
“How did you know?” Mrs. Hemlock asked.
“It was something she said at the beginning. When we first met, she mentioned knowing the house from before and having been here. And we know from their trick earlier tonight that Miss Eagle knew at least one of the secret passages. When we found my uncle, I knew it had to have been someone with prior knowledge of the house. The rest of us are new to this place. None of us knew about exactly where the secret passages were located. Mr. Fairbanks and I realized that’s how she must have escaped from her room to the attic without being seen, and again when we found my uncle.”
“Hmph. You’re smarter than you look.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Violet hurried to the foyer to make her way outside to the stables, then paused.
“What is it?” Mrs. Hemlock asked, a pace behind her.
“My uncle. I was silly and told Miss Eagle that he was alive and well. What if she went after him again?”
“If only we knew where the secret passage from the study leads.”
Violet was moving, hurrying to the stairs, picking up her purple skirts as she ran. She dashed up the stairwell with Mrs. Hemlock on her trail, crossing the hall to see her uncle’s room open, and a manservant lying on the floor, unconscious. A silver candlestick was on the floor by his head. Her heart in her throat, Violet dashed inside and nearly tripped over the unconscious body of a maid before she spied Miss Eagle with a pillow in her hands, holding it over her uncle’s face.
Violet lunged at her and leapt onto the bed, crashing into them both. She crashed into Miss Eagle and they tumbled to the floor, whilst her uncle slipped off the bed and fell.
Violet saw Miss Eagle cry out in anger and throw the pillow away, clawing at her face. Her long nails dragged against her cheek and neck, tangling in her hair. “Stop!”
Miss Eagle grunted as Violet punched her in the face and she rocked back. Violet’s hand got tangled in the necklace at her throat and she wrenched her hand free, tearing the locket from Miss Eagle’s neck in the process.
“No!” Miss Eagle ignored her bleeding nose and scrambled for it, lunging and clawing at Violet.
Violet held it away. “Why is this necklace so precious to you? Why would you try to kill my uncle a second time?”
The was the click of a revolver loading into place, and the women froze. “Answer her, Miss Eagle, and be quick about it,” came Mr. Fairbanks’s voice.
Violet stared at her. She didn’t dare look at Mr. Fairbanks.
“The locket,” whimpered Miss Eagle. “It’s mine. It’s…”
Violet clicked open the locket. Inside was a portrait of a young woman. “Why, it’s…” Her blood ran cold. “It’s the woman. The ghost.”
“My older sister. It’s all I have left of her,” Miss Eagle said thickly. She wiped her bloody nose on her sleeve.
Violet stared at the miniature portrait. “I’ve been seeing this woman all evening.”
“No, you’ve been seeingme. Dressed up as her.”
“But why? This goes farther than a joke.”
Miss Eagle hung her head. “My sister and I are—were—Romani. But no one wants to hear about that. People dismiss us, call us nasty things. When we were children, our mother took us away from our people so we’d have a better life, even if it meant forsaking our community. She worked in the kitchens here but never married a great man of business. I’ve worked all my life.” She sighed. “I was working at a party when I heard your uncle talk about her death and his bet with old Conway like a great joke, as if she were a thing to be laughed at. But she was a person, and she was everything to me. I couldn’t bear to see her memory be the butt of jokes like that, so I got an idea. I’d steal some clothing from the lady of the house, dress up as a debutante, and make your uncle’s acquaintance, then bring the topic around to ghosts and spirits. He’d invite me around for sure, and he did.”
