“All I have to do is call, and I’ll have a room full of men coming to my aid,” Lancer warned, though the deep swallow suggested more fear than threat.
If that were true, the man would already have called for assistance. Spencer stepped around the desk to stand behind the man. He slid the pistol against the thick, white hair. “Go ahead.” Spencer shrugged. “Call for help if you must, but then I will be forced to kill them as well. I would prefer not to do that.”
“Did she send you?” His voice wavered. Then he shook his head as if answering his own question. “Surely not.”
Enough playing. As much as Spencer enjoyed the torment for his own personal enjoyment, he had a task to accomplish. “No more talking,” he whispered. Then he placed the cushion between the pistol and the man’s temple and pulled the trigger.
Only four more to go.
* * *
Sabine Tobias turned over in bed and stared at the dark ceiling above her. She hadn’t been sleeping well since they moved to London seven months before. After living in a country village for the first twenty-four years of her life, she hadn’t yet grown accustomed to the sounds of the city. Tonight she would have sworn she’d heard something, or rather someone, rustling down below her window. Inhaling, she held her breath and attuned her ears, listening. There, she heard it again. Perhaps merely the wind, or an alley cat, but there was definitely a noise.
Her ears seemed to pick up every stray sound. It was probably nothing, but what if it was more? A thief, perhaps. Or a murderer? Sweat beaded down the center of her chest. Her stomach roiled with nerves.
She swung her legs to the floor and padded out of her tiny room and into the hallway. There she nearly ran into her eldest aunt, Lydia.
“Did you hear it, too?” the older woman asked.
“I did,” Sabine whispered.
“I think someone is outside.” Lydia held her candle out in front of her as she walked to the staircase, her pale-yellow nightdress billowing behind her.
They hadn’t even gotten halfway down the stairs before her other two aunts left their rooms, and together they all crept to the first floor to investigate. Lydia stopped at the base of the stairs.
“The noise,” Lydia whispered. “It’s inside now.”
Sabine’s heart seized with panic. Slowly the four of them tiptoed into the storeroom at the back of their little shop. There, sitting at a small table, was a man. It was an intruder!
“I’m sorry to wake you,” the man said, his voice wispy and full of breath.
“Madigan?” Lydia asked. She rushed forward.
Relief washed over Sabine so quickly she nearly fell over. At least her aunts knew this intruder.
“’Tis me,” he said.
“You scared the devil out of us,” Agnes said. Her fading red hair hung loose in a braid down her back. It flipped over her shoulder as she chastised the man.
He shook his head, then coughed. “I don’t have much time. I’ve come to warn the child.”
Lydia placed her candle on the table, then lowered herself into the chair next to him. “Calliope,” she said to her youngest sister. “Let us get some more light in here.”
Soft light spread through the room as Sabine helped Calliope light the wall sconces. They hadn’t yet been able to afford the new electric lights, but the old lamps shone brightly.
Madigan, as Lydia had called him, crouched in the wooden chair, looking pale and in pain. At the first complete sight of him, Sabine’s aunts gasped.
“What has happened to you?” Agnes asked, moving closer to him.
Calliope withdrew a bottle of homemade liquor from behind a cabinet and poured him a glass. “You don’t look well, old friend.”
All three of her aunts knew this man and yet she had never seen him, nor heard them speak of him. And she had lived with them her entire life. Even when her parents were alive, her aunts had always been there. Sabine knew he was not from their village, of that she was certain. Nor had she seen him here in London, and they had been here with their little shop for nearly a year.
He drank the whiskey, then nodded toward Sabine. “Come here, all of you.”
It was on her tongue to give him a tart reply, because she did not know this man, but Lydia shook her head. “Sabine, now is not the time,” she said.
Sabine nodded, then drew closer and sat in the chair Lydia had abandoned. Agnes sat next to her, and Calliope hovered with her bottle of whiskey.
