I got to my feet and followed Miss Sandington out of the room and up another flight of stairs. She took me to a bedroom, which was dark but for one candle on a chest of drawers. When Miss Sandington lit another candle, I saw Sarah Oswald.
She reclined on a chaise, propped up on pillows that overflowed onto the floor. A bright quilt covered her to her neck, and the dark curls I’d seen peeping from her cap in the drawing now tumbled in a swath to her lap.
“There,” Miss Sandington said, raising the candle high. “Go back and tell her father aboutthis.”
Sarah’s face was no longer the sweet, fresh one of the drawing. Someone had smashed it, smashed it so the planes of her face had altered and flattened and were covered with dark bruises. Her mouth was open, and ragged, moist breathing came from between her lips. Her hands in her lap, tangled in her long hair, were twisted and broken.
Miss Sandington touched Sarah’s shoulder, very gently, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Sarah, darling,” she whispered.
Sarah’s eyes flicked open. She looked dully up at me, swept her gaze to Miss Sandington, and closed her eyes again.
“Good God,” I said. “Who did this to her?”
“I do not know.” Miss Sandington kissed Sarah again, straightened, and turned to me. “A week ago, she went out, not saying where, and was hours late coming home. I grew frantic, but she made it back here somehow. I found her on the scullery stairs, like this. A surgeon has tried to help her, but he is not optimistic.”
“Can she not speak?”
“She has not said a word since she returned. Most of the time, she simply sleeps.” Tears filled Miss Sandington’s eyes once again.
I looked down at the broken, thin body that had once belonged to a robust girl. Sarah had been harmless, innocent, moved about by people who cared nothing for her happiness. Here, in Miss Sandington’s home, she had at last found a haven, but someone had destroyed her even then.
I would discover who, and I would make them pay.
“What was she wearing the day this happened?” I asked.
Miss Sandington gave me a blank look. “Her dress was in shreds and her cloak was ruined. We threw them away.”
“Did she have a reticule, or a pocket? She might have had something with her that showed where she’d gone that day, or who she’d seen.”
Miss Sandington shook her head. “The maid who helped me put her to bed would have put anything she found in the dressing table.”
“May I?”
Miss Sandington nodded, and I went to the dressing table. Its surface was cluttered with ribbons and lace, combs and inexpensive jewelry, the frippery that Clothilde Oswald had so condemned. I found scraps of paper in the drawer: a fragment from a newspaper announcing an exhibition at Egyptian House, a list of popular novels, and receipt from a chocolate shop.
I glanced back at Miss Sandington. She sat on a straight-backed chair pulled to the chaise and was bent over Sarah’s inert body. I slipped papers into my pocket, stood up, and quietly thanked Miss Sandington for telling me the tale.
She said good-bye to me, her eyes holding the blankness of sorrow, and I departed.
***
Lacey,” Robert Oswald greeted me as I met him going into the door of his lodgings. “Come upstairs and let me take my revenge. I have cards and brandy.”
“No, thank you. I have come to tell you what I’ve discovered about your sister.”
Robert’s smile vanished, and he led me quickly up the stairs to a first-floor flat.
A thin, worried-looking man opened the door to us. Robert stripped off his gloves and tossed them at him, and the man fumbled and dropped them.
“Impudence.” Robert retrieved the gloves himself, slapped the servant with them, and shoved him out of the room. “Sit down, Lacey, and tell me about it. You look grave. Is Sarah dead?”
I remained standing. “Your sister is alive,” I said. “But she’s been beaten so badly, it’s doubtful she’ll live.”
Robert’s eyes widened, and he dropped onto a soiled damask chair. “Beaten? By, er, one of her men, do you mean?”
“I spoke with the woman who is looking after her. Sarah hasn’t been able to tell her who hurt her.”
“The devil,” Robert said. “What woman? Where is she?”
