“A week after Charles’s death, she wrote to me of their affair, demanding money, threatening to reveal the liaison. I’d lived for years, blind to his secrets.” She struck her chest with the knife flat in her hand. “I would not live my last years with her and her threats. No. It was intolerable.”
Mary willed herself to speak slowly and calmly. “Louisa, you suffered terribly. I see that now. But my dear, you cannot mean to kill me.”
Louisa dropped her gaze and frowned, drumming the end of the knife on the table. The staccato taps cut through the silent room.
“It wasn’t part of my plan.” She stopped and looked up. “Not you.”
Suddenly, pounding and shouting at the front door shattered the quiet.
“Mary, Mary—for God’s sake, someone open this door!”
It was Will.
In a flash, Louisa was up and out. Mary followed her through the door, staring as her sister-in-law fled across the entrance hall and up the staircase, passing an astonished Alfred. Something crashed through the front door’s stained-glass side panel. An arm thrust through the gap, feeling around for the handle. When the servant yanked the door open, Will staggered in.
He shouted, “Mary,” and seized Alfred by the upper arms. “Where is Miss Allingham?”
“Will.” Mary ran across the hall and flung herself at him.
“Thank God,” he said, his voice ragged, repeating the words into her hair.
She pulled away, still clutching his coat. “Louisa ran upstairs. To her room, I think. She has a knife.”
Will and Alfred took the stairs two at a time, with Mary trailing them. When they tried Louisa’s door, they found it locked.
Mary knocked and called, “Louisa. Lou, my dear, open the door.”
She stood aside while Will and Alfred took turns ramming their shoulders into the door and kicking it. But three inches of solid oak refused to budge. The scullery maid and the bootboycame running upstairs from the kitchen. Louisa’s lady’s maid and the housekeeper followed from the servants’ quarters.
“Billy, go to the stables,” Mary shouted. “Find an ax.” The bootboy turned on his heels and ran.
Louisa’s maid said, “Try the door in Mister Allingham’s dressing room.”
Mary moaned, “Oh God, I didn’t think . . . through here, Will.” Mary led them through her brother’s study and into his dressing room.
Louisa had locked the communicating door, but it looked more vulnerable to attack.
Will said to Alfred, “Brace me,” and the servant buttressed him as he pounded the door with the heel of his boot. After six kicks, it splintered away from the frame and crashed open.
Louisa was on the floor, doubled backward in agony, the soles of her feet curving toward her head. She gasped, choked, wrenched at the collar of her dress, frothing at the mouth.
Mary turned away in horror, leaving Will and Alfred to witness Louisa’s last spasms.
And then it was over.
* * *
Their cab was halfway up the drive when O’Malley said, “Something’s wrong. The front door is standing open.” Then a man with an ax, followed by a boy, ran from the back of the house.
The cabbie reined in the horses, and O’Malley leaped from the carriage while it was still rolling. Tennant and Julia scrambled after him.
The side panel by the front door was shattered; a stone cherub sat amid the broken glass. They crunched across a rainbow field of shards as Will Quain came down the staircase supporting Mary.
Quain said, “Louisa is upstairs in her room. She’s dead.”
Tennant looked up the staircase and then at Julia. “Doctor?”
“I’ll follow in a minute.”
