All was now silent. I looked back at my bed. A beam of moonlight pierced the gap in the window’s curtains and crossed the counterpane, marking the spot where I should be lying. I set my shoulders and closed my door behind me. It wouldn’t take long to search for the source of the noise. And perhaps when I was done, a nice cup of milk of my own would be my reward.
I first went to Perrin’s study, but the newly installed windows remained whole. I heaved a sigh of relief. The rest of the windows on the ground floor were similarly unscathed.
I paused at the steps down to the kitchen but decided to search the bottom floor last. That cup of milk was supposed tobe a reward for finishing the search, after all. I climbed to the first floor and peeked my head in the now empty guest rooms. The staircase up to the servants’ quarters was illuminated by the nearly full moon, but even I didn’t have the gumption to go knocking on the servants’ bedroom doors to ask if they’d heard anything. All that remained on this floor was the ballroom, and with all the glass and mirrors in that room, it seemed probable that might be the source of the disturbance.
If there were any ghosts, they would be here. It was the room Katherine had seen the face in when coming back from the ice house. But no phantasm met me. Only my own reflection, bouncing from the mirrors to the floor-to-ceiling windows. The white of my wrapper nearly glowed in the moonlight. If someone saw me now, they would think I was the ghost.
A muffled whine halted my step. My eyes searched the shadows in the corners of the room. It was the dog. It had to be. He’d knocked over something, broken it, and now would cut his paws on his own mess.
I was tempted to leave him to it. I grimaced. “You dratted dog. Where are you?”
For once, Southey didn’t come running when he heard me. The beast must actually be hurt.
My mouth went dry. “Southey.” I clapped my hands softly. “Let me know where you are, boy.”
The shadows shifted in the far corner, and I heaved a breath of relief. I started forward. “Don’t move. I’ll come get….”
My feet froze. The movement from the corner was much larger than any dog. The darkness curled, transformed, until Bertram emerged to stand in the moonlight. Southey was clamped in his arms, his snout held in Bertram’s hand.
I faltered back a step. “Bertram? What are you doing here?” My question didn’t even sound convincing to my ears. I knewwhy he was here. And he knew that I knew. Or else, why would he come back?
“Do you remember dancing in this room?” He swayed back and forth, his gaze soft even as he squeezed Southey tighter to stop his wriggling. “What times we had. You and Cavindish. Me and Martha. Miranda and….” His swaying stopped. “Well, it would have been better had it just been Miranda.”
I sidestepped, putting a high round table between me and Bertram. “But then, who would she have danced with?” I asked lightly. I should have seen it earlier. There was something wrong with Bertram. Dreadfully wrong. I’d tried to excuse his oddities as a man grieved with loneliness, but there was something more.
“She could have married anyone, lovely as she was.” Bertram glided forward, his expression vacant. “Father had to choose the one who would hurt her.”
I circled the table as he approached, darting behind a low settee. “I won’t deny Perrin was a right sot, but he wasn’t violent. He didn’t harm her.” Not violent, but vicious. He probably did hurt his wife, in a thousand tiny ways, but I had a feeling Bertram was referring to something more than cutting words.
That seemed to snap Bertram out of his dreamlike stupor. “He killed her! She would have wanted me to make him pay. I’m only sorry I took so long.”
Southey whimpered.
I held up my hands. “That’s only a servants’ tale. Something told to frighten newcomers. It isn’t real.”
“Martha told me you wouldn’t believe. She knew you’d betray us.”
Arguing with a madman was difficult enough; I didn’t think I could persuade a dead wife, too. “Your sister fell from a ladder. She never recovered.” There had been witnesses. It had been an accident. And Perrin had seemed genuinely grieved. No, itwasn’t Bertram’s sister whose death I started to wonder about. It was his wife’s.
I remembered her hand tremors. How she couldn’t recall that I’d been married the last time I’d seen her. I’d believed Bertram when he’d said she suffered from scrofula. Died from it. Now other possibilities arose. I’d heard the rumors of Bertram’s infidelities early in his marriage. His trips to the unmentionable London clubs. The symptoms all fit, and my heart broke.
“He pushed her.” Bertram threw his arms out, flinging Southey away from him. The pup hit the mirrored wall and fell to the ground. He didn’t move. “But Martha and Miranda told me how to repay him. She told me all about her pretty flower. How I could use the roots, leaves, and petals to avenge her.”
“What plant?” I gripped the head of my walking stick, my palms growing slick as I trotted behind a low and long table. Something bit into the heel of my slipper, and I chanced a glance down. The remains of an oil lamp lay shattered on the floor, the fuel making the glass-strewn floor slippery.
My shoulders raised another inch closer to my ears. Bertram had already poisoned and stabbed as methods of execution. I didn’t know what he had in mind for me, but now burning to death seemed a possibility.
“Lily of the Valley. It’s a lovely flower with white, bell-shaped blossoms. I’ll make you a bouquet.”
To be lain on my grave, no doubt. “And you made a tisane from the plant? Put it in Perrin’s wine?” The cup of hot water he requested each night made sense now. Perhaps he did like to drink it before bed, but he’d used at least one to brew the poison.
“He could never have tasted it over the wormwood flavor.” Bertram kicked the settee out of the way, making a clearer path to me.
“And Mr. Taylor? Why did he have to die?”
“Taylor?” Bertram rubbed his jaw. “Oh, yes. The secretary. Grasping, greedy man. He threatened to expose me if I didn’t pay him. He saw me holding the wormwood wine the day Perrin died. I told him at the time that I wanted to try it, but after you told everyone it had been poisoned, he knew. Can you believe the audacity of the man? Society has become so fallen.”
I almost laughed. Murder was justified but greed was a sin. But I shouldn’t expect logic from the insane. “And locking Mr. Evans and Miss Smith in the ice house? Did you try to kill them, too?”
