THREE
She needed to run.
She needed to get out of there as fast as possible, before someone came looking for her, or him, or just found them there, him with a knife sticking out of his neck and her…
Vivian stared at her hands, covered with his blood.
Even if she ran, even if she made it out the front door, someone would see her hurrying down the street. She had already talked to the servants—had left her purse and her deliveries upstairs—they knew her name and where she worked.
She couldn’t run.
Vivian’s heart beat so frantically she thought she would choke on it. And Mr. Buchanan’s wasn’t beating at all. She could see his face, pale above his soaked collar, his lips blue where they weren’t streaked with blood.
She could see that he wasn’t breathing, not anymore.
She didn’t know a thing about him, didn’t even know if he wasa good man. But he had cared whether she was out in the cold in a skimpy coat, and he had a daughter she might be a little bit like. He had talked to her like she was a real person, and then he had bled to death alone on the floor.
She couldn’t leave him like that. She couldn’t run.
Vivian took one slow step backward, then another, until she was at the door. She had left it open when she came in. As if from miles away, she could hear a murmur of voices, servants returning to their work downstairs.
Vivian took a deep breath. She screamed for help as loud as she could.
“And you claim you just found him there?”
Vivian hunched her shoulders, as if that could shield her against the disbelief in the officer’s voice. “I don’t claim I just found him there, I did find him there. Sir,” she added, not wanting to make things worse.
She was sitting on the house’s grand staircase, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her hands had left bloody prints on the faded cotton, and she kept trying to move them, trying to shift the stains out of her sight, but it didn’t seem to work. If she glanced up, toward the floor where Mr. Buchanan’s body was still waiting for the coroner to arrive, the carved wood of the banister and its supports cut across her view like the bars of a cage.
“Tell me again.”
She shivered. “I was looking for a piece of paper, and no one answered when I knocked. So I went in and…”
She hadn’t expected good things when she yelled for help. But it had been so much worse than she had imagined. Mrs. Buchanan, just arrived home, had screamed when she saw Vivian smeared in blood.The servants had grabbed her and pinned her against the wall. Everyone was yelling for the police, the doctor, some kind of help.
Then the officers had arrived, faster than she’d ever seen police turn up to help folks where she lived. They had asked the housekeeper for a blanket, sat her on the steps, asked for a statement. For a few brief moments, she had thought they would listen. She waited for someone to suggest she wash her hands, to ask if she was all right.
But the questions kept coming. Who she was. When she had arrived. Why she had waited over an hour for a client who was clearly not coming, without going to find the housekeeper or anyone else. Why she had gone to Mr. Buchanan’s study at all.
Why her hands were covered in his blood.
And when they got to the end of their questions, they started at the beginning again, pouncing on her stumbling words, the moments she didn’t remember clearly, the things she couldn’t explain in the first place.
“And who was this man you say he was meeting with?”
Vivian clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. Or maybe it was to stop herself from screaming. “I don’t know.” She closed her eyes for a moment, but all she saw behind her eyelids was the look of shock on Mr. Buchanan’s face, the blood that had trickled across his lips while he was dying. She opened her eyes quickly. “The maid said someone was waiting for him. She didn’t say a name, and Mr. Buchanan didn’t ask, just said bye to me and went out after her.”
There were footsteps on the parquet floor of the hall below them, then thumping up the stairs. The two officers stepped to the side as a man in a dapper suit, carrying a doctor’s bag, nodded to them and continued toward Buchanan’s study. He was followed by two young officers carrying a stretcher between them. The coroner didn’t spare Vivian a glance, but the two with the stretcher gave her a quick look over. One of them couldn’t hide his flinch as he caught sight of her bloody hands.
They were both young—Vivian thought the one who had flinched might even be younger than she was. She wondered if they liked to go out dancing or drinking on their nights off. She wondered how the flincher would feel when he saw Mr. Buchanan’s body lying on the floor.
“Let me see her!”
There was someone else on the steps, a red-haired man in an elegant suit that was too rumpled, as though he’d been out all night in it and was finally coming home. He had his hat in his hand and he was glaring at another junior officer who was blocking his way.
“I’m very sorry, Mister…”
“Rokesby. Cornelius Rokesby,” the young man said impatiently. “My mother is Mr. Buchanan’s wife. Where is she?”
