I followed them, watching as Millie felt around, her hands skimming over her surroundings, before settling down. “She’s blind,” I murmured.
Mr. Larsen made sure she had one hand grasping the cart’s edge before he let her go. “Aye. Has been since birth, although we didn’t know for months.”
A woman like Mrs. Larsen, somewhat selfish herself and certainly impatient, would consider a blind child a burden. Particularly if she didn’t love the girl as a daughter in the first place. Lady Wrexham had called Millie “damaged”, so I suspected Pearl had told Lord Wrexham about Millie’s blindness and his wife had overheard. Lady Wrexham and Mrs. Larsen were of like-mind in their view of blindness.To Lady Wrexham, Millie was a social burden. To Mrs. Larsen, she was a financial one.
Mrs. Larsen had demanded Pearl give her money for Millie on Christmas Day, and I suspected it was more than the usual monthly amount. And I knew why.
“There’s a school for the blind you want to send Millie to. She alluded to it when I was here. But it costs money, doesn’t it?”
Mr. Larsen leaned back against the cart with a heavy sigh. “The school itself isn’t costly, but it requires us to move to a more expensive area. We can’t afford it, right now. Not until I find work.”
“And your wife did not want the financial burden to fall on you both, so she asked Pearl to fund your move. When Pearl didn’t pay straight away, Mrs. Larsen sought her out at the theater and they argued. Perhaps Pearl told her then that she was trying to get the money. But your wife ran out of patience and returned the next day. Do you know if it was an accident? Or did Mrs. Larsen push her over the balcony on purpose?”
Mr. Larsen dragged a hand over his face. When it came away, his skin was ashen. “She’s my wife. The mother of my child. I can’t tell you what happened. Iwon’t.”
I stepped closer, but Mr. Armitage put his arm out, blocking me. He shook his head in warning. “Is that the woman you want raising Millie?” I asked. “A woman capable of murdering her own sister and showing no remorse?”
He squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in his hands.
“Tell me what happened on the day Pearl died,” I said gently.
Footsteps pounded on the cobbles behind me. I swung around to see Mrs. Larsen wielding a glass bottle above her head. I stumbled back, arms up to protect myself, as she brought it down.
Mr. Armitage caught her wrist, the bottle just inches from my head.
She screamed in frustration, like a starving hawk denied her prey. “Stop talking to them!”
Mr. Larsen stood in front of Millie, his hands at the readyto capture his wife if she got free of Mr. Armitage. But Mr. Armitage held her firmly. He wrenched the bottle from her and gave it to me then forced both her hands behind her back. She spat and snarled, cursing us and her sister.
A neighbor must have heard the commotion and emerged from her house. Mr. Armitage asked her to fetch a constable. She raced out through the arch, past the basket Mrs. Larsen had set down on the ground.
“Nellie deserved to die!” Mrs. Larsen shouted. “She was the most selfish, inconsiderate person you’d ever meet. She didn’t care about her daughter. She’d forget to pay us for her upkeep some months.”
“We didn’t need the money,” Mr. Larsen said. He sounded exhausted, but not surprised or angry. He’d known all along that his wife killed Pearl.
“You lost your job! It was left to me to bake pies just to make enough to put food on the table. We would have starved if it weren’t for me. Nellie didn’t care. And then you went and mentioned that bloody school to Millie. Once she got the idea into her head, it was all she spoke about, when the idiot of a girl did speak. Over and over, every day. It was driving me mad!”
“She’s not an idiot.”
She scoffed. “I wish Nellie had wanted her back. I’d have gladly got rid of her.”
“You don’t mean that.” He picked up Millie and cuddled her, but the girl seemed unaware of the events unfolding around her.
“You admit you did it?” Mr. Armitage asked. “You pushed her over the balcony?”
Mrs. Larsen tried to wrench free of his grip, but it was useless. She growled in frustration and kicked out at me, standing directly in front of her. I dodged her foot and kicked back, hitting her in the shin with the toe of my boot. She howled in pain. It was the only way to stop her from doing it again.
“I don’t regret it,” she snarled. “Nellie got every advantage in life. It all came so easily to her. From the time she was born, our parents doted on her, their beautiful little girl. They gave her whatever she wanted, let her do whatshe wanted. And she repaid them by bringing shame to them when she took to the stage. The world is better off without her, and I willnotapologize for that.”
Two sisters, both so different, yet one was wildly jealous of the other to the point where it consumed her, and turned her into something unrecognizable. Was that how my mother and Aunt Lilian were before my mother left to marry my father? Aunt Lilian told me she’d been jealous of my mother’s easy, friendly nature, her natural poise and intelligence. If she thought my mother had been given every advantage, could she too have become consumed by hatred if my mother had never left?
But my aunt wasn’t like Mrs. Larsen. She had a good heart and she admitted that she regretted her jealousy. Nor was my mother as selfish as Pearl. The two sets of sisters couldn’t be compared.
The neighbor returned, bringing two constables with her. Mr. Armitage gave them a brief account as he handed Mrs. Larsen over to them. They handcuffed her and wrote down our details then took her away.
Mr. Larsen watched them go, his gaze unblinking. He looked pale and his hands shook as he set Millie down on the ground.
She started humming, rousing him from his stupor. “What happens now?” he muttered.
